Tengu

by Graham Masterton

  ‘‘ A paraplegic ?’’ Jerry frowned.

  “Don’t ask me,” said Gerard. “I never knew there were any paraplegics involved in this.”

  “But Esmeralda obviously does,” said Jerry. “And when Nancy Shiranuka sent Kcmo to find out who it was that Esmeralda was seeing–you remember, after he’d met you at Inca’s restaurant–Kemo was killed by one of these Onis.”

  “I don’t see what you’re trying to say,” said Gerard.

  “Somebody powerful is running this Tengu business, that’s what I’m trying to say. Somebody who has kept his or her identity secret the whole time, using Esmeralda as a go-between.

  Esmeralda’s not the top guy, is he? I mean, he’s made it clear to you that he’s only passing on instructions, rather than initiating them. Kemo was killed because he tried to find out who the top banana was, and it’s my guess that the top banana is this paraplegic.”

  “Well, well,” said Gerard sarcastically. “Sherlock Holmes.”

  ‘‘Nothing of the kind,’’ Jerry retorted. “We have an organization here that consists mainly of Oni adepts, and that means young, physically fit men, the fastest and the most deadly exponents of any Japanese martial art ever devised. Those guys can make kung-fu adepts look like idiots, as you well know. They have to go through six years of shadow-training before they’re even allowed to fight each other. So what is a paraplegic doing among people like this? He obviously can’t compete with them on a physical level, so he can’t be one of the regular gang. The only way in which he can possibly compete is on a mental level, and that means to me that he’s probably the boss.’’

  “Jerry,” said Gerard, unexpectedly putting his arm around his shoulders, “you are a genius. The only problem is, what is this dictatorial paraplegic up to, and why, and where the hell is he?”

  Jerry said, “He must be here in Los Angeles, otherwise Kemo wouldn’t have been killed so quickly when he tried to locate him. Second point: if he’s going to do anything soon, like assassinate the President or the Governor, then he’s going to have to do it pretty damned quick, because he knows that we’re on to him, and the police are, too. Why do you think Esmeralda was renting a yacht for him? To make his getaway, I suspect, when his assassination or robbery or whatever it is starts going down.”

  “A getaway, by yacht!”

  “It makes sense. The first place that the cops cordon off is the airport, followed by the highways, followed, as a distinct afterthought, by the seaways. You’re probably fifty times more likely to get away with a crime if you escape by water than by any other means.”

  “You’ve carried out a survey?” asked Gerard sharply. “Maybe I should rob a couple of million from Wells Fargo and flush myself down the toilet. I’11’be floating off to Hawaii in the company of ten tons of soggy toilet tissue before the police even know that I’m gone.”

  Jerry let out a short, testy breath. “You don’t buy this, do you?”

  “I don’t see why I should,” said Gerard. “There could be a thousand reasons why Esmeralda wanted equipment for paraplegics on a cruise to Panama. Maybe his sister has polio. Who knows? You can’t read anything into it until you know the truth.”

  “By that time,” said Jerry, “it all may be far too late”

  Gerard said, “This is ridiculous. Let’s start heading back to the cars.”

  “Just a minute, listen,” insisted Jerry. “We’ve got ourselves a paraplegic, right? And the odds seem to be that he’s Japanese. For some reason, he’s involved in a series of unusually violent killings, cither against Americans in particular, or Americans in general. Who does he hit? First me, unsuccessfully, killing Sherry instead; then an innocent policeman who’s only trying to do his duty by busting a couple of Nipponese lunatics for running a red light. Then, en masse, the security and intensive-care staff of Rancho Encino Hospital and Admiral Thorson. What’s he trying to do? He’s one of the most eclectic killers I’ve ever come across.”

  “We were supposed to be trying to keep you quiet,” said Gerard. “Esmeralda said that if you’d heard about Tengus on the media, you’d have immediately warned the authorities.”

  “Yes, but why should I have heard about Tengus in the media?”

  “I don’t know. They were supposed to have been killer bodyguards for very wealthy people.

  Don’t tell me that isn’t a story. ‘Richard Burton buys Liz Taylor a million-dollar Japanese martial-arts expert, just to keep would-be admirers out of her hair.’

  “If it was all going to be that innocuous,” said Jerry, “why bother to keep us quiet at all? Or maybe there’s something heavier going down?”

  “Search me,” said Gerard uncomfortably.

  Jerry held his arm. “Wait a moment,” he said. “If this Japanese is a paraplegic, and he’s been trying to take his revenge on American people, then he must have been doing it for a reason.

  Maybe it’s our fault, maybe it’s my fault, that he was born a paraplegic.”

  From the veranda Mack called impatiently, “Come on, you guys, it’s a long haul back to the cars.”

  “Just a minute, Mack,” Jerry called back. Then to Gerard, “Listen, there have been nearly ten deaths in the past few days, but all of them have been connected with your attempts to kill just two people: me and Admiral Thorson.”

  “That’s right,” agreed Gerard suspiciously.

  “Admiral Thorson and I have one thing in common: we are the only two surviving members, as far as I know, of a Naval Intelligence team that gave President Truman the go-ahead to bomb Hiroshima.”

  Gerard stared at Jerry. Then he said slowly, “You’ve been talking about revenge, right? A Japanese paraplegic taking revenge, because of Hiroshima? Could that be it? Maybe he was crippled by the A-bomb. Maybe he was radiated with gamma rays when he was still in the womb and born deformed. “That happened to thousands of babies–thousands.’’

  Jerry beckoned to Mack. “Mack,” he said, “Gerard and I are beginning to think that this whole Tengu business has something to do with what I did at Hiroshima.”

  Mack glanced at Jerry suspiciously. He knew that Jerry had been to a psychiatrist, and the last thing he wanted to do was set off in hot pursuit of another man’s neurosis. But Gerard gave him a quick, quiet nod of the head, which meant to Mack that Jerry was probably still quite sane.

  “Olive’s husband works for the naval records department, doesn’t he?” asked Jerry.

  “Sure. He’s a whiz on Pacific war history. He can tell you the whole of the battle of Midway, in detail, like it’s some kind of drama. The Kaga sunk at 7:25 P.M., the Akagi was scuttled at five o’clock the next morning. He’s amazing. He’s also amazing to trust me with Olive.”

  Jerry said, “Is there any way that Olive can get in touch with him?”

  “Sure, he’s on the phone. The area code for Honolulu is 808. She calls him once or twice a week.

  At the Navy’s expense, I hasten to tell you, not mine.”

  “Right,” said Jerry, “call her now, from the phone upstairs, and ask her if she wouldn’t mind contacting him as soon as she can, and asking him to check if there were any clubs or organizations formed after the war to help Japanese people injured or deformed by the atomic bomb. Can you do that?”

  “You think this guy is going to belong to the Happy Disabled Club of Tokyo?” asked Gerard.

  “No,” said Jerry. “But anyone who has been severely handicapped has to come into contact at some time or another with official organizations, even if he’s only seeking advice or equipment.

  It’s likely, anyway, even if it isn’t a dead certainty.”

  Gerard said to Mack, “You want to give it a try?”

  “Okay,” breathed Mack. “But I think you’re wasting your time.”

  Gerard dry-washed his face with his hands. “Just do it,” he said. “Then we can all go back to the city and get ourselves a drink.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was a bad break, the worst of an operati
on that had been nothing but a whole series of bad breaks. He should never have listened to that voice on the Kii-Suido ferry; he should never have been tempted by Kappa’s money or Kappa’s beguiling voice. But everything that he was doing now had a terrible flawed inevitability about it; as if the foundation stone of an ancient Mayan ruin had cracked, and the balance of tons and tons of decorative stone could do nothing but crack and crack and eventually collapse.

  He had driven Doctor Gempaku and the dead Tengu to Laurel Canyon, and left them there.

  Doctor Gempaku had been unsympathetic and ungrateful for being rescued. He blamed Mr. Esmeralda for all the inadequacies of the security arrangements, and was furious that six Oni adepts had been shot dead so easily. He didn’t yet know that the Tengu building had blown up, and that half a dozen prospective Tengus had been blown into lumps of meat and bone. None of them was yet fully possessed by Tengu, and so their remains would never rise, not even for the Hour of Fire.

  When he left Doctor Gempaku and the Tengu at Laurel Canyon, Mr. Esmeralda was told that Kappa himself was sleeping, in preparation for tomorrow’s big day, and was not to be disturbed. If ever Mr. Esmeralda had felt like storming into Kappa’s inner sanctum, shaking the little toad awake, and twisting his head off his neck, it was then; but he knew that the Onis who guarded Kappa were faster than the human eye, and that he wouldn’t even have laid hands on Kappa before he was dead.

  As a Catholic, the kind of death that the Onis gave out to their victims appealed to Mr.

  Esmeralda very little. He did at least want to go to his grave intact. He mumbled, “Everything is completely under control,” and drove off before they could argue with him.

  He was alone now. He had left Eva Crowley and her twin daughters locked in the bedroom of his house on Camden Drive–all of them naked in case they felt like trying to escape–and an Oat guard at their door. Kappa didn’t realize that one of his own men was helping to protect Mr. Esmeralda’s own insurance policy, his ultimate protection against the wrath of the Tengu.

  Mr. Esmeralda whistled “La Cumparsita” as he drove. Then, at the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Sunset, at a red light, his foot accidentally slipped from the brake pedal and he noisily rearended a large Mercury station wagon. The driver of the station wagon climbed out, a ginger-haired woman in upswept eyeglasses.

  Mr. Esmeralda let down his window. “Madam,” he said, “I take full responsibility. I apologize. I am a clumsy idiot.”

  “You could have killed me, you know that?” the woman demanded. “As it is, you’ve whiplashed my neck. Do you have any idea how much it’s going to cost in doctor’s bills to straighten my neck out? Can you imagine?” Just then, a young motorcycle cop came over. “Is anything the matter here?”

  “It was all my fault,” said Mr. Esmeralda. “Usually, my chauffeur drives this car. I slipped on the pedal. My foot. I will pay for any damage to this lady’s automobile.”

  “This is your car, sir?” asked the cop.

  “Mine, in a sense,” said Mr. Esmeralda. “It belongs to my company.”

  “May I see your driver’s license, sir? And your registration?”

  Mr. Esmeralda opened his black alligator wallet and produced his license. The young cop said,’

  ‘Will you wait here a moment, please?”

  “I’m in a hurry,” said Mr. Esmeralda. “I have an appointment.’’

  “I won’t keep you longer than I have to, sir.”

  Mr. Esmeralda sat sweating in his seat as the cop walked back to his motorcycle, and began to read his license-plate and driver’s-license numbers over his radio. The woman whose car he had hit remained beside him, saying, “It’s going to cost a. fortune to straighten my neck out. I know it is. A fortune.”

  The cop came back, his eyes invisible beneath the peak of his helmet. Esmeralda tried to smile, but the cop unbuttoned his holster and said, “I want you to get out of the car, sir, please, keeping your hands in sight.”

  “I don’t understand, it was an accident,” protested Mr. Esmeralda.

  “This has nothing to do with the accident, sir,” the cop told him in that same even voice. ‘

  ‘You’re under arrest for attempting to murder a man named Gerard Arthur Crowley.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was nearly seven o’clock the following morning before Olive’s husband called back from Honolulu and told them what they wanted to know. He sounded tired, and more than a little slurred. “I’ve been drinking all night with this Japanese guy, Hachiro Nakamata. Suntory whiskey on the rocks. Hachiro used to work for the memorial museum in Hiroshima, indexing and filing the names of survivors. He knows more about the people who escaped from that blast than anybody. What happened to them, how they tried to live their lives afterward.”

  Olive said, “Did he know anything about societies for crippled people?”

  Robin Nesmith burped into his first, a burp that carried 2,000 miles, and said, “Sorry. Yes, he did. He knows all of them. The Society for the A-Bomb Handicapped, the Hiroshima Benevolent Group, dozens of them. But he particularly mentioned something that I’d never heard about before, the Circle of Burned Doves.”

  “The Circle of Burned Doves? What’s that?”

  “It’s a group of people who were born deformed because of the effects of gamma radiation when the bomb dropped. All of them, in one way or another, have become wealthy and influential, and they apparently have wealthy contacts in several of the largest and best-known Japanese industries. When you consider that many of the chairmen and managers of the big Japanese industrial combines were officers in the Japanese forces during the war, it’s not surprising that they’ve been diverting some of their money and energy into getting revenge. The Japanese are not as fatalistic as many Western people seem to think; they’re fiery and emotional, and they never forget. The general feeling in Japan is still, even today, that the dropping of the atomic bombs was unnecessary and unjustified, apart from all the moral questions involved.

  And the Circle of Burned Doves is dedicated to making America pay for what she did–through economic attack and through any other means at their disposal.

  According to Hachiro–although I can’t say how true this is–our car industry was sunk almost entirely through the economic planning of the Circle of Burned Doves.’’

  Jerry, who had his ear pressed to the phone so that he could hear what Nesmith was saying, asked Olive, “Find out what ‘any other means at their disposal’ might mean.”

  Nesmith said, “I asked Hachiro that myself, but he was incredibly vague. All he said was, ‘It could mean an eye for an eye.’ “

  “You mean dropping an atomic bomb on America?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  Olive gave Robin her love, and then put down the phone.

  “Well,” said Mack, “where does this get us?”

  “Nowhere at all, much,” said Jerry. “Have you heard of the Circle of Burned Doves, Gerard?”

  Gerard hadn’t slept very well on Jerry’s sofa. His eyes were ringed with dark circles, and he was breakfasting off crackers, cheese, and Chivas Regal. He shook his head. “It doesn’t ring any bells.”

  Maurice said, “I’m going out for some muffins and stuff. Anybody want anything? Olive?”

  “No, thanks, Maurice.”

  Jerry, rolling up his shirtsleeve and nervously scratching at his elbow, walked across the window and stared out at the sunshine. “It looks as if we’ve been guessing right up until now, but I still don’t see why they’ve brought back the Tengus. They didn’t spend all that money and set up that center just to kill off me and Admiral Thorson. They’ve got to have something really catastrophic in mind.”

  At that moment, the phone rang again. It was Sergeant Skrolnik, sounding as tired as Robin Nesmith. “Mr. Sennett? I thought you might like to know that we’ve arrested a man in connection with the murder of Sherry Cantor, and with several other murders.”

  “You’ve arrested someone
? Who is it?”

  “I’d like you come down to headquarters, if you don’t mind, and take a look at him. His name’s Jesus Carlos Esmeralda, he’s a Colombian. We picked him up after a tipoff from the CIA.”

  Jerry said, “I’ll be right down,” and hung up the phone.

  “What’s going on?” asked Gerard.

  “That was Sergeant Skrolnik. He’s arrested your man Esmeralda. Apparently he was tipped off by the CIA.”

  “Francesca,” snapped Gerard angrily. “She agreed to give me some goddamned time.”

  Jerry said seriously, “Come on, Gerard, I think this is the time for us to throw in our hand with the police. We’ve come so far, but there isn’t very much else we can do, not on our own. If they’ve picked up Esmeralda, the police must be quite close to clearing this up themselves.

  Maybe we could help them.”

  “They didn’t say anything about my wife and daughters?” asked Gerard.

  Jerry said, ‘‘No. They just said Esmeralda.”

  “Fucking Esmeralda,” said Gerard.

  Mack put in, “Jerry could be right, you know? Maybe there’s some clue that we have that the cops don’t know about. And maybe they’ve got a whole of information that we don’t know.”

  Gerard opened his cigar case and found that it was empty. He tossed it onto the table, and stuck his hands into his pockets with undisguised glumness. “All right,” he said. “But you realize that I’m heavily implicated in all of this? If I go down to police headquarters with you, they’re going to bust me, too.”

  “You stay here, then,” said Jerry. “Maybe you can do me a favor and keep an eye on David; although why I’m entrusting you with the same boy you just kidnapped, I don’t know.”

  “You can trust me,” Gerard told him. “Just give me a call if you hear anything about Eva and the girls.”