Tengu

by Graham Masterton

  “Admiral Thorson was in a coma. He had been for months. Why should they bother to send out a Tengu to kill him?”

  “They’re crazy, that’s why,” said Gerard. “And, besides, they’re Japanese. Although they won’t admit it, a whole lot of what they’re doing has got something to do with the ancient Japanese principles of revenge and honor. You and Thorson knew about the Tengus: y6u had to die.

  Don’t ask me why. The whole thing’s like some kind of nightmare.”

  Jerry said, “I get the feeling you’re trying to tell me that you’re changing sides. You’re not trying to threaten me, are you? Or are you? You’re trying to find out if I’ll forgive you enough for what you’ve done to help you.”

  Gerard took out another cigar and clipped off the end. “This Tengu project isn’t what it seems, believe me. There’s something really heavy going down; and when I say heavy, I mean heavy.”

  Jerry picked up his sandwich, looked at it, and then put it down again. He said, “You took my son, right? All I want to hear from you is that you’re prepared to help me get him back again.”

  Gerard briefly closed his eyes, to indicate his assent.

  “I don’t trust you,” said Jerry. “For Christ’s sake, how can I trust you? It was you who took him in the first place.”

  “I’m not asking for anything,” Gerard said. “Not sympathy, not forgiveness, nothing. I’m just asking you to believe that in the past twenty-four hours, I’ve changed my mind about the people I work for, and I’ve begun to change my mind about myself. The motivation has been completely selfish. I’m scared, if you want to know the truth. I’ve never been scared of anyone or anything in my life, but I’m scared now. And the reason I’m scared is because I’m in love. I’ve been dating my secretary, Francesca. I was supposed to go back to Nancy Shiranuka’s place last night and talk about the Tengus, report on what we’d been doing out at Rancho Encino. But I didn’t go. Instead, I took Francesca to L’Ermitage, where nobody was going to find us, and I spent the whole night talking myself out.

  My past, my present, and my future. The whole Rancho Encino thing went wrong, it all turned into a massacre. I can’t live with that. When you’re really in love for the first time, you realize you can’t accept half the things you accepted before. You’ve got a responsibility to yourself, and to the person you love.”

  He smoked, and rubbed at his forehead, and then he said, “I can’t erase what’s happened, you know? I can’t bring Sherry Cantor back to life. But I would if I could. And I’ll do whatever I can to help you get your son back. I thought I was a frigid, emotionless tough guy before any of this started, and the fact is that I’m not. I don’t think anybody is, when you really take it down to the bottom line. You can’t be a lover and a killer at the same time. And that’s why I said I was sorry when I first came in.”

  Jerry said, “Nancy Shiranuka told me they were holding David at some ranch near Pacoima.’’

  “That’s right.”

  “What goes on there? When you say ‘they,’ who do you mean? How many people do they have there?”

  “The ranch at Pacoima is where they’re creating the Tengus,” said Gerard. “The head guy there is Doctor Gempaku, he’s the guy who actually develops the Tengus, brings them into being. Then there’s ten or eleven guards; they all wear black masks on their faces, so you can never tell which is which. But they’re all armed, and they’re all skilled in Oni, which is some kind of ancient martial art.”

  “I know about Oni,” said Jerry.

  “In that case, you’ll be quite aware that these guys are totally deadly,” said Gerard.

  “Yes,” said Jerry. He felt awkward with Gerard, suspicious of him. And yet at the same time he could recognize that Gerard was going through an inner turmoil that, if he only allowed it to, could bring him out of a life that had been shallow and cynical and exploitative, and into an existence that would be honest even if not particularly profitable.

  Jerry hadn’t been at L’Ermitage, during those hours in which Gerard had drunk whiskey after whiskey, and talked, and argued, and made love to Francesca in ways that had been both tender and fierce. Jerry^hadn’t seen that the news from Rancho Encino had shocked Gerard more than Gerard was prepared to admit, even to himself. Wheeling and dealing was one thing. Hearing secondhand stories about hits on treacherous Chinese dope dealers was chilling, but not personally alarming. But the slaughter at Rancho Encino and the kidnapping of David Sennett had made Gerard Crowley realize at last that he was out of his league. In spite of his apparent remoteness, in spite of his cynicism, he was a man who needed to feel that he was loved; and with loving and being loved came morality, and with morality came hesitation.

  ‘‘The only way you can rescue your son alive is by hitting Doctor Gempaku when he’s least expecting it,” said Gerard. “Do you own a gun?”

  Jerry shook his head.

  “You’ll need something heavyweight,” said Gerard. “These Oni guards have Israeli Uzis, and they won’t hesitate to use them if they think that something’s wrong. I can get you an M-60E1 and a couple of Ingrams. You have some friends who could help you?”

  “I have some friends, for sure,” said Jerry. “But whether they’d help me or not... Are you suggesting I storm this place?”

  “What else are you going to do?” asked Gerard. “The minute those people see anything that looks like a police car, they’re going to kill your boy stone dead. My suggestion is that I take you in there, like you’ve given yourself up, and then two or three of your friends bust into the place and go through it with machine guns until there’s nobody left.”

  Jerry said, “You’re out of your minef. First of all you tell me, quite calmly, that it was you who kidnapped my son. Now you’re telling me that you’re prepared to help me rescue him by blowing all your fellow kidnappers away. I’m asking you, Crowley, are you nuts or am 7?”

  Gerard looked away. Then he said quietly, “This has all come too late–my conversion, if you want to call it that. Too late for any kind of sensible action. I’m just making a suggestion, that’s all. If you don’t like it, if you can think of something better, then do it. I won’t stand in your way.

  But I’m going to have to ask you one thing.”

  “What’s that?” asked Jerry.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to plead on my behalf, if this ever comes to the law. I’m in love with a beautiful girl, Sennett, and I don’t particularly feel like spending the next ten to twenty years in the penitentiary. That’s why I agreed to meet you today; that’s why I’m trying to help. It’s got to be a deal or else it’s no deal. You speak on my behalf; I’ll help you get your son back.”

  Jerry finished his beer, taking as long as he could, watching Gerard Crowley all the time.

  “You’ll get me the guns?” he asked at last.

  “An M-60E1, easy,” said Gerard. “Do you think you’ll know how to use it?”

  “I was trained on a Browning during the war.”

  “You’ll manage. I’m not so sure whether I can get the Ingrams, but I’ll do my best.”

  Jerry said, “Surely the police can manage this better. Maybe the SWAT team. I’m an old man, Crowley. Well, not old exactly, but getting on. I’m not even sure that my friends will want to help me.”

  “If you call the police in, I’m finished,” said Gerard. Tengu “Not only that, but your son will be too. You know how ham-fisted the cops can be, when it comes to a confrontation like this. It’ll be blood and dead bodies, and that’s it.”

  “You can show me where this place is, at Pacoima?”

  “Sure,” said Gerard. “Only I have to have your promise that you’ll back me up in court.”

  Jerry pressed his hands together in a mimickry of prayer. Then he said, “In principle, okay. In practice, I don’t know. I’ll have to go talk to my friends first. You’re asking me to risk my life so that you don’t have to risk yours.”

  “I’m supposed to tell you that your son ha
s thirty-six hours to live,” said Gerard. “Either you come out to Pacoima Ranch by midnight, or David dies.”

  Jerry said, “You’re a bastard, you know that?”

  “Sure I’m a bastard,” Gerard replied. “But every bastard has his moment of glory.”

  Jerry pushed his away his half-eaten sandwich. The world seemed suddenly strange, and cold, and threatening beyond belief. “Glory,” he said, mostly to himself. “Some glory.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Francesca was still at L’Ermitage, pinning up her hair, when Gerard and Jerry said goodbye to each other on the sidewalk outside of Zucky’s and walked off in opposite directions. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought: Francesca, you’d better not fall in love. Whatever else you want to do with your life, don’t fall in love. Not with Gerard Crowley.

  Last night, she had seen a side of Gerard which she hadn’t even realized existed. Gerard afraid. Gerard sensitive. Gerard thinking about nothing but her, and pleasing her; with champagne, and gardenias, and breast of duckling with Bordeaux sauce.

  She brushed out her long auburn hair in front of the mirror. She was naked except for a white lace G-string from Janet Reger of London. She had developed expensive tastes in the three years she had worked for the CIA, first as an undercover agent, and then as a kind of highly paid, high-class callgirl-cum-entrapment-operative.

  Gerard Crowley was not a particularly big fish. But Crowley Tobacco Imports was the central clearinghouse for five or six heavy smuggling operations, particularly the heroin business operated by the Jonas brothers, and the Metaxas weapons-smuggling ring which supplied machine guns and missiles to the terrorist groups of the Middle East. It had been Francesca’s job to gather sufficient evidence against Gerard Crowley to persuade him to testify against Billy and Nathan Jonas, Salvatore Mazzarino, and Giorgio Scarantino.

  She hadn’t reckoned with the surprise bonus of Mr. Esmeralda; but although she had reported back to her local CIA chief of operations everything she could find out about Gerard’s dealing with him, she hadn’t yet been able to decide exactly what it was that Mr. Esmeralda was up to.

  Gerard was obviously frightened of him; and did whatever he told him to. But whenever she tried to question Gerard about him, Gerard said nothing at all, or very little of any interest, and quickly changed the subject.

  Last night, she had known that Gerard was frantically worried. Instead of meeting her at the Bonaventure or her apartment, he had insisted on taking her to L’Ermitage, where he had booked a room for two and ordered up the most lavish meal on the menu. Then, he had talked for hours about his childhood, and about his days in Cuba, and how life had tricked him and trapped him into being a stooge. “How can you have any scruples when society expects you to be rich instead of poor, and yet makes it impossible for you to be rich by honest and honorable means?”

  He had made love to her four or five times, urgently and violently. She liked him because, over a period of several months, she had made an effort to like him. This was her third

  “secretary-mistress” operation, and she had learned that she had to do everything she could to see the best in her “marks,” no matter how brutal and coarse they were. There were some nights when she had lain in the dark with a man’s semen leaking out of her, as tackily as drying blood, and heard him snoring on the pillow next to her, and known that in two weeks’ time she would be standing in court testifying against him. And still she liked him.

  She didn’t know whether she was actually capable of love.

  She knew that Gerard had invested all of his affections in their relationship: that his marriage had fallen to pieces, and he was looking to her to provide him with his future. But she didn’t feel sorry for him, or guilty. One way or another, one day or another, with or without her, he would be caught for smuggling or milk extortion or drug-running or arms dealing or pimping. He was one of those men who had been born without a future, no matter how hard they tried. Next month, Franccsca would be smiling seductively at a new employer, and Gerard Crowley would be forgotten altogether.

  She finished brushing her hair, then walked across to the closet where her dress was hanging up.

  “Poor Gerard,” she thought. “My God, poor, lonely Gerard.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  After the killings, the staff of Rancho Encino Hospital had moved Admiral Thorson to the next wing, to a lemon-yellow room with a reproduction of “Some Steps in the Hospital Garden’’ by Van Gogh on the wall above his bed. Admiral Thorson was still shocked by what had happened, and by the realization that his wife was dead, but he was conscious and coherent. During the day he spoke three or four times to hospital staff, and to Harry Calsbeek, the Chief of Detectives from Encino police headquarters.

  There was little he could say: his wife had screamed, he had woken up to see a dark, flailing shape through the plastic of his oxygen tent. Then he had heard a salvo of gunfire, and blood had splattered in front of his eyes like an action painting. “I can tell you this, though,” the admiral had said hoarsely, “I shall never forget my Mary screaming until I leave this earth. I shall never forget it, ever.’’

  Sergeant Skrolnik and Detective Pullet arrived at Rancho Encino during the evening, tired, vexed, and arguing with each other. Detective Pullet had been attempting some more bursts of lateral thinking, and had come up with the idea that the killer might be a failed Japanese restaurateur with a grudge against American naval officers. Maybe they had patronized his original restaurant in Tokyo, but hadn’t taken the trouble to patronize his new restaurant in Los Angeles? Skrolnik had had enough of lateral thinking, and had told Pullet to keep his mouth shut and his mind on the facts.

  Calsbeek was waiting for Skrolnik outside Admiral Thorson’s room.

  Calsbeek was heavily built, red-haired, with a face that looked scraped, like a raw rutabaga. His tweed suit hung around him in fold after fold, each pocket crammed with pieces of paper, rolled-up magazines, clips of .38 bullets, chewing gum, Life Savers, Swiss Army knives, loose Tengu buttons, and string. But while his appearance may have been gentle, sloppy, and shuffling, his mind and his tongue were as abrasive as sandpaper.

  “You should have been here three hours ago,” he told Skrolnik. “I’ve talked to the man all I can, there’s nothing more to be done.”

  “You took notes?” asked Skrolnik.

  “Of course I took fucking notes.”

  “By the way, this is Detective Pullet,” said Skrolnik. “Detective Pullet is our number one deductive thinker.”

  “I see,” said Calsbeek. “Well, maybe he can deduce why three loony Japs and a white man decided to burst into Rancho Encino Hospital and slaughter everybody in sight, because sure as hell / can’t.”

  Pullet said, “You have to go back to the fundamental reasons why anybody kills anybody else.

  Believe it or not, there are only eight reasons why people kill other people: robbery, rape, jealousy, self-defense, violent disagreement, pity, revenge, and to keep them quiet. Well... nobody wanted to rob Admiral Thorson, because he didn’t have any money on him. Nor did they want to rape him. I doubt if jealousy was the motive, because he didn’t have a particularly distinguished career, and he certainly wasn’t fooling with anybody’s wife.”

  Skrolnik said, “Will you get to the point, Pullet?”

  “Sure,” said Pullet. “Nobody killed him after a violent disagreement, because he was in a coma, and unable to argue with anybody. It’s urilikely that anybody attacked him so violently out of pity. That leaves us with revenge–which, considering his record in the Pacific theater of war against the Japanese, could well be likely. Or, the motive of keeping him quiet.”

  ‘‘He was in a coma, what could he say to anybody about anything?” asked Skrolnik. “Why should anybody want to keep him quiet?”

  “You’re right,” said Pullet. “So what are we left with? Revenge. A Japanese attacks a World War Two admiral, presumably with the intention of revenging Midway, or Leyte Gulf, or whatever.
It’s my guess that when you manage to identify this turkey, you’ll find that his father or his older brother went down with the Hirvu, something like that.”

  “Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?” said Skrolnik, turning to Calsbeek.

  Calsbeek said, “You can question the admiral at midnight, when they wake him up to give him his medication. Don’t press him too hard, you know? Give an old, sick man an even break. He’s just lost his wife and it hasn’t sunk in yet.”

  ‘‘We understand,’’ said Skrolnik. “Now, can we see the bodies?”

  Pullet said, “I’ll wait here, you know, stand guard.”

  Skrolnik said wearily, “Come on, Pullet. You’ve got all the theories, you’ve got to see the bodies, too.”

  Calsbeek led the way to the hospital morgue. A pale-faced young man unlocked the door for them, and they trooped reluctantly into the chilled, fluorescent-lit room where the hospital kept the remains of loved ones who had passed away during their stay.

  “Drawers eight, nine, and six,” the young man told them.

  Skrolnik, without hesitation, rolled out No. 8. It was Kenji, the Japanese who had been stabbed by Commander Ouvarov. His face was still locked in a ridiculous grimace of pain.

  “You can’t say that he died a serene death,” remarked Skrolnik.

  They opened the next drawer, No. 9. It was the Japanese who had been hit pointblank by one of the hospital security guards. The bridge of his nose was blown away, and his eyeballs were collapsing toward the middle of his face, giving him a ludicrous but horrifying squint.

  “You didn’t tell me this hospital had been attacked by Ben Turpin,” said Skrolnik laconically.

  Neither Pullet nor Calsbeek could find it in them to laugh. “Number six,” instructed Skrolnik, unperturbed. The body of the Tengu lay on the slab with his arms tucked neatly beside him, his bloodstained loincloth already black and feud, his chest and thighs gaping with anemic wounds. There was no head: only the protruding trachea, and a tangle of muscles and tendons and nerves.