by Marc Olden
Michi said, “Please when we are in public, call me Michelle. I am Michelle Asama, of Eurasian descent.”
He waited for her to explain.
She sipped tea, holding the cup in two delicate hands, each of which had a jade ring on the forefinger.
“My father, as you know, had dealings in Saigon that were not always moral and truthful. That part of him I wish to cut away from myself. I do not wish the attention of American authorities or the CIA or anyone else who might associate me with him and that time. I have a new life now.”
“You do not wish me to ruin it for you. Is that why you came to me tonight in the dojo?”
“I would not have come if I did not still love you and you know the truth of this. But yes, I did not wish to be embarrassed by an unplanned meeting and so I did come to you. But there is no second word with me. Sometimes we children of samurai are allowed hoben no uso, the truth of convenience. What you call ‘white lies.’ But I am not telling you that.”
“I believe you. Michelle. Pretty name. French.”
She poured tea for him. “The French are still in Indochina years after their defeat. I suppose the same will happen with the Americans. So it is agreed between us, then. I am Michelle. In public.”
“You knew I would agree before you asked.”
“Yes.”
He looked at her again. She was stronger, yes. More determined. At twenty-eight, she looked ten years younger. For some reason he suspected she already knew quite a bit about him, and that was why she was not asking those questions one asks after a separation of six years. Decker pushed the thought aside. Nothing must come between him and Michi. Nothing.
“Your father,” he said.
“He was sold to the Viet Cong. They had a price on his head. Someone decided to collect. Do not ask me who. In time, Manny. In time.”
She left him to return to the alcove, where she stood as though gaining strength from her ancient ancestors. Decker joined her. For the second time that night, he wept And when she reached over and took his hand, he remembered another promise they had made to each other, in another time, in another sacred place.
Tokyo. They had flown there on separate planes, to temporarily escape the war and her father. Here, they had climbed the short hill to Yasukuni Shrine, one of Japan’s most famous religious centers. The grounds and all of the buildings were dedicated to the souls of soldiers who had fought and died for the nation. Michi and Decker walked among cherry blossom trees, gazed at stone lanterns hundreds of years old and took water from a little trough to purify their lips before entering some of the sacred buildings. In front of the Main Worship Hall they tossed coins in a box, clapped their hands to awaken the sleeping gods inside, then folded their hands, bowed their heads and made a wish.
Michi said, “Even if we die separately, we shall meet again and bloom in the garden here, which is a haven for all flowers.”
“We will meet here after death, Michi. I promise.”
In front of the alcove she said, “Do you understand that my obligation to my family, to my father comes before all else. Even before you?”
“I understand.” He didn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do.
From the alcove she led him to the small room where she slept. In Japanese fashion, Michi slept on the floor, on futon, quilted bedding sweetened by pine scent. Both slipped out of their kimonos and Decker stared at her lovely, small-breasted body, remembering, wishing. It wasn’t necessary to make love to her. Not yet.
To hold her was enough. They lay side by side under a pale lavender quilt. But more questions floated to the surface of Decker’s mind. He said nothing. Instead, he fought against sleep. Jesus, he didn’t want to close his eyes and have it end, to awake and find Michi, Michelle, gone. And him alone in his own apartment, still pained by her loss.
But Michi stroked his face, fingertips brushing the scar over his nose, her lips on his eyes, and she told him that she would be beside him in the morning. He gave up, the fight and fell asleep in her arms.
Michi held him, stroked his hair.
Waited.
And when his breathing grew deeper and his grip on her relaxed, she knew that she could leave. Easing off the bed, she knelt, hands folded, and stared at him. He didn’t move. She knew he wouldn’t, for she had drugged his tea.
Slipped the tablet in his cup.
A tear formed in a corner of Michi’s eye and slowly made its way down her cheek. Where there is love, there is pain.
She pressed her temples with both fists. To reason about love was to lose one’s reason.
Manny, my dearest love, forgive me.
She walked from the room, leaving him alone with his ghosts, his dreams.
In the kitchen, she emptied Manny’s teacup and washed it. He was clever; she had seen the unspoken questions on his face tonight. Sooner or later those questions would have to be answered. Michi would have to be careful around him, which meant a constant awareness of small things.
Teacups, for example.
Next she dressed hurriedly, pants, boots, sweater, and walked to a small study, where she sat down at a desk to await an expected telephone call. Small things. She pulled the phone toward her, lifted it and turned off the bell that would sound when the phone rang. After a few seconds she reached under the desk blotter and removed a photograph she had hidden there. The photograph could mean Michi’s death.
Taken six years ago in a nightclub on Saigon’s Le Loi Boulevard, it was a black-and-white shot of five men sitting around a table; behind them stood Vietnamese and Thai hostesses, thin-shouldered women each in ao dai, the sensuous tuniclike dress. Michi’s father was the center figure. On his right was the hawk-faced Paul Molise, Jr., and Dorian Raymond; to the left was Robbie Ambrose and Trevor Sparrowhawk. As if convinced of their betrayal, none of the five men was smiling.
Treachery did occur. Michi’s father, mother and sister had been destroyed by the four Americans. As the sole survivor, she was obligated to avenge her dead. Repay injury with justice, said Confucius. Dishonor, said samurai tradition, was a scar on a tree, growing greater with time. After six years it was now time for Michi to kill the four Americans.
From a desk drawer she removed a sambo, a white wooden tray on which rested a kai-ken wrapped in tissue paper. Wound tightly around the knife’s black and gold handle were interwoven gold and silver threads. Its polished nine-inch blade was razor edged and spotless. Taking the knife in one hand, Michi slowly sliced the throats of the Americans in the photograph. Her hand was steady; her eyes never blinked. Finished, she returned the knife and tray to the drawer and locked it. Then, taking the photograph, she walked to the living room, found a table lighter and stepped to the fireplace, where she dropped the mutilated picture on an empty grate. She opened the damper, then thumbed the lighter’s tiny wheel, firing the corners of the photograph. It burned quickly, edges curling, blackening and then all of it disintegrated, floating up into the chimney in wispy bits.
Back in her study she had only a minute to wait before the small red light near the telephone dial began blinking. Michi brought the receiver to her ear, then spoke. “I can come to you now.”
She hung up and walked to the entrance of the room where Decker slept. Did he love her enough to forgive once he learned what she had done? Where one pardons, one could also condemn.
She went to a closet, found her fur coat and seconds later was in the hall, walking toward the elevator.
7
DORIAN RAYMOND’S APARTMENT ON Manhattan’s Amsterdam Avenue and 110th Street faced the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Over the years it had become known as St. John the Unfinished, with only two-thirds of the church having been completed since stonemasons began wielding trowel and mortar in 1892. Dorian’s apartment was equally unfinished, not that he gave a shit. After his separation from Romaine, a cop he knew had stumbled upon the dead and decaying bodies of twin seventy-five-year-old sisters in the apartment. They had died
of natural causes, one of a heart attack, the other of starvation. It coincided with Dorian’s needs at the moment. He was on the phone to the landlord while the bodies of the dead sisters were being wheeled down the hall. Why not?
Take care of numero uno.
All the interior decoration Dorian needed came from the police property clerk: a cheap bed, black and white television set, sagging couch, fridge, card table, a pair of folding chairs. On the bad side, the apartment was a little too close to Harlem to suit him, but at least he could handle the rent.
Tonight he blow-dried his hair in front of the bathroom mirror and reminded himself why he disliked the truth: once you knew it, you had to do something about it. Today he had made phone calls, told lies, spent a few bucks and come up with an educated guess about Robbie Ambrose. Which was that our Rob was a stone killer, a rapist-murderer who had trashed a few broads with his hands. And cock.
Problem: what to do with this bit of news. Give up Robbie? Or use the information to benefit Dorian Raymond in some way. True, a stronger case would have to be made before Robbie could legally be charged. No prosecutor would risk his reputation on the little that Dorian knew so far. But instinct and experience told him he was right. When it came to women, Robbie Ambrose was a headcase.
A homicidal looneytune.
Go back to Nam. There, Dorian learned that he hadn’t known Robbie all that well after all. Take those occasions when Robbie went on missions alone, or with someone other than Dorian or Sparrowhawk. That’s when Dorian heard the stories about Robbie being a double veteran, a soldier who had sex with a Vietnamese woman before killing her. More than a few of them did it. Not Dorian. Shit, you drew the line somewhere.
He asked Robbie about it one day. The two of them were getting bombed on bami-bam, beer, and joints laced with opium. That made answers to questions a long time in coming. “Hey, man, what the fuck can I tell you,” said Robbie finally. “All fugazi over here. All fucked up. Number ten. The worst. Don’t matter what goes down in this asshole country, know what I mean? Hey, papa-san, don’t believe everything you hear, okay?”
Trouble was, Dorian had heard it from people who knew what they were talking about. Some of them, god, they weren’t even women; they were ten-year-old girls and they had been fucked, then killed with rifle butts, with wire tightened around their throats until they were practically beheaded, by C-4 plastique explosive attached to their thighs and vaginas, by being driven at bayonet point into mine fields. As laughing Americans watched.
Women killed after sex. Deliberately. By fresh-faced boys from the good ol’ U.S. of A.
But what the hell, Jack, it was Nam. Fugazi. Fucked up. Don’t even think about it. The only way to go was home. Think about that.
And then there was today, just hours after Dorian had put Alan Baksted out of the casino business. After a hit, he always checked newspapers and television newscasts. Curiosity. And some small sense of pride. This morning, at an out-of-town newsstand near Times Square, he checked Atlantic City, Philadelphia and the main Jersey papers for news about the late Alan B.
Made it. Front page in most, no less than page three in the rest. In New York the best he could do was page four in the Daily News, but he did pick up a paragraph in the New York Times, a first. Not bad.
Now came the hair in the butter, the turd in the punch bowl. It was a paragraph at the end of the Baksted story, a few lines with an Ocean City dateline. A woman had been raped and murdered. She had been a clerk in an Atlantic City gift shop, also moonlighting as a part-time hooker. Dorian frowned. Fucking unreal. In seconds his mind began to collect bits and pieces and shuffle them around.
Before returning to the precinct, he threw away the out-of-town newspapers and purchased copies of every karate or martial arts magazine he could find. Christ, it seemed that everybody and his brother was into this shit. Women as well. Old Rob had made all of the magazines. Dorian was impressed.
Robbie was ranked the number-one light-heavyweight title contender in something called full-contact karate, which Dorian assumed meant nobody pulls their punches. He was on the cover of three magazines, was the subject of stories in all of them and his matches seemed to draw the biggest crowds. A fucking superstar. Almost thirty knockouts.
Stories covering several months of tournaments told of Robbie’s fighting in Dallas, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Oklahoma City. All victories by knockouts, nothing past the fifth round. There were other stories: Robbie’s favorite fighting techniques; his plans to enter some world tournament next January; his challenge to the full-contact world champion in his division, who seemed to be ducking him. And why not, thought Dorian. You’d need a grenade in each hand to stop Robbie.
Back at his desk in the back of a crowded, frantic squad room, Dorian listed the dates of Robbie’s most recent four fights. Then the detective reached for the telephone. In less than twenty minutes he had his answers. According to police departments in four cities, a woman had been raped and killed within twenty-four hours of the day on which Robbie fought in those cities. And while a weapon might have been involved, it was believed in most cases the woman had been murdered by someone who knew how to use his hands.
Karate? Boxing?
Either one.
In those conversations with the four police departments, Robbie’s name never came up. Nor did Dorian mention why he wanted the information. The people he talked to didn’t give a shit. They had other things to worry about.
Dorian saved New York for last. Bingo. Two weeks ago a woman who worked as a story editor for a film company had been raped and murdered in her Fifth Avenue office. That information came from the green sheet. Since none of the martial arts magazines had any news on this month’s karate matches, Dorian phoned the biggest magazine at its California office and learned that there had been a major match in Madison Square Garden the night the film lady had gotten wasted.
Main event: Robbie Ambrose vs. Canada’s light-heavyweight champion.
Robbie Ambrose the winner by a knockout in the second round.
At that point, Dorian left the squad room to walk outside in eighteen-degree cold and he didn’t stop walking until he found a bar, where he swallowed two doubles. Scotch, with beer chasers.
Five very dead ladies.
All disposed of by someone who could use his hands and it came up Robbie every time. Lord, tell me what I do next. Sparrowhawk. Dorian rested an elbow on the bar and covered his eyes. The Englishman would go bananas when he learned what Robbie had been up to in his spare time. He loved that bastard as if he were his own son. What’s more, he wouldn’t take kindly to Dorian harming him. Sparrowhawk was no one to have for an enemy.
Handle this one carefully, Dorian. Get smart, for once. Learn more about Robbie and his peculiar little ways, then figure out what’s best for you.
Dorian looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He had a scary thought. Had Robbie killed before each fight? Oh, God, if he had it meant he had murdered thirty women.
Dorian bowed his head. Unreal. And dangerous information for any man to have, should Robbie ever find out about it.
In the bathroom of his apartment, Dorian turned off the blow dryer. He needed a drink. Then the downstairs buzzer rang and he grinned, raising his eyebrows in mock lasciviousness. Party time. He patted his hair, took a swig of mouthwash, spat it out. And checked his hair again. Then he trotted to the kitchen to buzz downstairs.
When the door to his apartment buzzed, he patted his hair once more. Jesus, why wouldn’t it grow back? The money he had spent on treatments, salves, blow dryers, creams, clinics, pills. Just wasn’t fair. On the way to the door, he turned down the lights, the better to hide his hair.
He opened the front door and smiled. “Well, all right, all right, all right.”
She stepped inside and he closed the door behind her. Locked it. Looked at her again. Fucking beautiful. Different Class.
She stepped into his arms and he drew her into him. Mouths, tongues met. His hand squeezed
her buttocks. He got hard in record time. She helped. She found his penis, squeezed and Dorian was seconds away from coming in her hand. Her teeth nipped at his tongue.
He picked up Michi and carried her into the bedroom.
It had been easy to maneuver him into boasting. Sex, then flattery. Vanity was his weakness, drugs and liquor his vices.
Michi sipped from one glass, constantly refilling his, avoiding the drugs. She sat up in bed, sheet drawn close to her, head cocked to one side.
Listening.
Dorian, on his back, drew on a joint, held the smoke in his lungs before exhaling. “Everybody’s fascinated by the mob. Ever since The Godfather, all you ever hear is the mob, the mob, the mob. Bunch of comedians. Mob guy I know is scared somebody’s trying to kill him, so every morning he sends his wife out to start the car. If she don’t get blown up, that sucker comes out and drives off. Fucking sweetheart. When I was new on the force I listened to some wiretaps on which you had the Mafia listening to opera. I asked somebody why. I mean the people in crime, by and large, ain’t brain surgeons. I mean they get caught, right? Anyway, guy tells me the only language some wise guys speak is Italian. That’s why they listen to opera. It’s the only music they can understand.”
He giggled. “You Jap women sure can fuck. I mean that as a compliment.”
Michi stroked his thigh. “Tell me about the smart one, about Paul Molise.”
Women. Turned on by crime, by hoods, by cops. Always. Dorian giggled, remembering the woman who insisted that he shove four bullets up her ass one by one before allowing him to fuck her.
“Paulie,” he said. “Yeah, Paulie. Paulie the Beak, they call him, though he doesn’t like to hear that. Has this big schnozz, this long nose. Doesn’t mind being called Hawk, but otherwise don’t get cute about his nose.
“Paulie’s got smarts. I mean, who else figures out that by owning half the flea markets in New York, you got a great outlet for stolen goods. Paulie did. People go to flea markets all the time these days and they buy stolen shit and don’t even know it. Stolen securities, ripping off union pension funds, defaulting on bank loans, discount stores, storing toxic wastes. Plus the usual shit. Porn, drugs, hijacking. Christ, this joint’s had it.”