Then he waited. They would almost certainly come at him together, one from each side, coming in like an arrow, using the angles against him, planning to overwhelm him.
If he were arranging things, that’s how he’d have set it up. That was something he had picked up on his own in street fighting over the years, but studying the art of samurai had brought it home to him in a new, a more refined, way—kami-hasso, the samurai called it. Becoming one with your enemy. Entering not just into his mind, but his body as well. He concentrated, trying to meld with them.
Nobody had spoken, but street smarts told him when there were two of them advancing, somebody had to lead the parade. If they were going to attack simultaneously, one of them had to give the signal. He guessed it would be the one on the right, who was a little taller and a little older. If he was wrong, he was fucked for sure.
He wasn’t wrong. The tall one gave an almost imperceptible nod with his chin, and they both came in together, fast, knives held in slashing pattern.
Tom had been watching for the signal, though, and was ready for them. In situations like these, the attackers never expected to be attacked. Aggression could be an effective weapon, too, and Tom knew how to use it. When they charged, he pushed off with his foot from the building and charged at them. It took them by surprise and threw them off slightly, spoiled their choreography. He went right inside the hesitating knives, got each of them hard with an elbow to the face, felt teeth come loose on either side.
That left both of them dazed, but still on their feet. Tom spun around and caught the shorter guy with a punch to his ear, snapping his neck and making him lose his knife. It hit the pavement with a metallic clatter.
Tom didn’t wait to see how that played out, but spun again and drove a knee hard into the taller one’s belly, knocking the breath out of him in a noisy, “Whoof!”
He spun again and went back to the short one. A kidney punch dropped the attacker to his knees like a sack of potatoes. The tall one moved faster than he should have been able to, though, coming at Tom and swinging his knife in a high arc even as Tom was turning back.
If the knife had landed where it was intended, between Tom’s shoulder blades, the fight would have been over, but the guy stumbled as he charged. The assailants had been focused entirely on Tom for the immediate present and had forgotten Stanley in his doorway, but Stanley was not as helpless as he sometimes looked. Plus, in his own way, he felt as protective of Tom as Tom did of him.
He saw they were concentrating entirely on Tom, and taking quick advantage of their mistake, he danced out of the doorway as lightly as a butterfly, put out one foot, and tripped the man charging Tom. As the assailant fell forward, Tom delivered a solid uppercut to the jaw, and he went down too.
The one who’d hung back shouted something in what sounded like Japanese and turned toward the Mercedes. The shorter assailant tried to crawl to the knife he had dropped, but Stanley twirled around, the way he did on the dance floor, jumped into the air, and came down hard on the man’s hand. Bones cracked and the man screamed in pain.
Somehow the two gangsters managed to get to their feet and ran toward the car. It was already rolling when they jumped in.
“Baby, nice moves,” Tom said, grinning and brushing his hands on his trousers.
“Well, sure, everybody knows I’m a terrific dancer, the hip-hop queen. So, we’re just going to let them get away?” Stanley asked.
“No, no, you run after them and stop the car,” Tom said. “I’m going to stand here and catch my breath.”
“Hmphf,” Stanley grunted. He stood hands on hips, watching the dark car skid around the corner of the parking lot and disappear. “What was that all about, do you think? Who were they?”
“Yaks,” Tom said.
“Yaks?” Stanley did a double take. “You mean, like those Tibetan cows?”
“Yakuza. Gangsters,” Tom said, and added, “Japanese gangsters.”
“Japanese?”
Tom nodded.
“But that would mean….”
“Exactly,” Tom said. “My guess is they’re not local, but Hammond will know if he’s got yakuza hanging around town. If not, it means they were imported, probably from Los Angeles, hired by someone Japanese. Someone with enough money and influence to pull that off.”
“Nakamura,” Stanley said. “He could do it. He probably already has them on his payroll. Especially if they’re expensive and hard to come by. But why sic them on us?”
“For the same reason he’d put a snake in our room, or have one of them put it there, more likely. To scare us off.”
“Well, I’ll admit he’s scared me—but not off. It only makes me want to know the rest of the story.”
“Me too. I think it’s time we take a good hard look at Mr. Johnnie Nakamura, samurai.”
“Pretend samurai,” Stanley said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“AND I broke somebody’s fingers,” Stanley wrapped up his telling of the incident.
It was after dinner. They were in Chris’s room.
“Shoot. I miss all the excitement,” Chris said.
“You are welcome to my share next time,” Stanley said.
“So what do you think it meant, these guys trying to ambush you?” Chris asked Tom.
“I think it means we need to get into Nakamura’s house somehow,” Tom said. “If I can think of a way to do it without getting ourselves arrested.”
“I think I know how that can be managed,” Chris said with a Cheshire-cat grin.
“What have you got in mind?” Stanley asked. “Tell the truth and shame the devil.”
“That house man of his, Yoki, he was interested in little old me. He gave me the eye while we were there for lunch the other day. I feel sure I could distract him.”
“You sly puss,” Stanley said. “I didn’t even see this happening.”
“Oh, please, you weren’t supposed to.”
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Tom asked.
“Of course I do. It means I’ve still got the old magic,” Chris said, fluffing up his hair and striking a pose.
“Umm, that too. But I was thinking like, maybe you could get him out of the house for an hour or so.”
“So you could do your usual break-and-enter routine?”
Tom grinned. “Legally, it’s better if you don’t know what we’re going to do. That way you’re not an accessory to anything.”
Chris pondered for a moment. “Maybe not out of the house, but I think I could keep him occupied in his room. It’s over the garage, by the way. He did manage to tell me that… when he was giving me his phone number.”
“Might work,” Tom said. “If he doesn’t hear us….”
“Once I get him in the sack, he won’t be listening for prowlers,” Chris said. “I double damn guarantee that.”
IT WAS easy enough to arrange. Chris called the houseman with Tom and Stanley leaning over his shoulders to listen.
“Tomorrow is cook’s day off,” Yoki said. Chris winked at Stanley. “You could come by in the morning.”
Tom mouthed the words “what about your employer,” and Chris repeated them aloud.
“The master is never home during the day, unless he has made a date for lunch, and he never does that on cook’s day off. Anyway, I happen to know, tomorrow he has an important meeting at his office. The house will be empty.”
“Sounds great,” Chris said. “What if I come, say, about eleven?” He eyed a question at Tom, and Tom nodded.
“Yes, eleven will be perfect. I will fix lunch for us,” he said, and added with a faint giggle, “after.”
“If you’ve still got the strength.” Yoki laughed again, louder this time. Chris hung up the phone. “Bingo,” he said.
“Mata Hari strikes again,” Stanley said.
THE GARAGES were in the rear. Chris drove around and parked there so his car would be out of sight—just in case. He took the stairs to the apartment two at a time, but befo
re he could knock, the door opened.
Yoki stood framed in the doorway, wearing a Japanese robe of muted blue shades. Chris handed him the small potted plant he’d brought.
“A cactus?” Yoki said, surprised.
“Eddie said flowers have meaning for the Japanese. He suggested a cactus.”
To his surprise, Yoki tittered. Chris thought at the moment he seemed very much like a little boy.
“What?” Chris asked.
“The cactus is the symbol of sex, of lust.”
Chris laughed too. He’d have to have a word with Eddie. He stepped past Yoki and slipped out of his shoes, not bothering with the paper slippers on offer—if things went as he planned, he’d just have to take them off again in a minute or two.
He turned back to give Yoki a hug, and saw that the robe had fallen to the floor in a pale blue puddle. Yoki was splendidly naked, his almond-colored skin gleaming like marble. His excitement was fully evident. He didn’t look at all like a little boy now.
“Ah, yes, you did mention lunch,” Chris said, opening his arms. Playing detective had never been so appetizing before.
TOM AND Stanley parked at the curb half a block back. Tom glanced at his watch. “We’ll give him twenty minutes to get things going,” he said.
“Make it ten,” Stanley suggested. “Chris works fast.”
When the ten minutes were up, they left the truck where it was and walked the rest of the way, donning rubber gloves as they went. It took Tom no more than seconds to pick the lock, and they were inside, Stanley’s heart beating a fast tattoo inside his chest. The house was eerily quiet, no ticking of clocks, no muted music. Even the air-conditioning was silent.
Stanley hated this part of their work, was always convinced that someone was going to be waiting in ambush for them, or would come in behind them and catch them in the act. Tom, though, was as nonchalant as if he were shopping at a department store.
“Isn’t that the room where he keeps his samurai collection?” Stanley asked, indicating the door.
Tom studied it for a moment. Their time was limited, and Nakamura had been too open about inviting him in there to see his treasures.
“We’ll skip that one for now,” he said. “Seems an unlikely place to me.”
“An unlikely place for what? What exactly are we looking for?” Stanley asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Don’t know till I find it. Anything that would tie him to the three murders.” He glanced again at his watch. “How long, do you think?”
“Twenty minutes.”
Tom’s eyes widened. “That’s all? Twenty minutes?”
“For round one. Five for Chris to get his breath back, and about twenty-five for round two.”
They started with what was obviously Nakamura’s office. It held two desks. Tom took one and Stanley the other. The desktop was essentially bare, but the drawers were full. The top one held pencils, ballpoint pens, a stapler and a box of staples, scotch tape, index cards. He tried the one below it—address labels, envelopes, canceled checks. The third held bills, receipts, tax forms. He picked out a file that appeared to be business papers, leafed through it, paused to read one.
“He’s got a place in Los Angeles too,” he said aloud. “Looks like a condo, downtown.”
“I thought nobody lived in downtown Los Angeles?”
“That’s all changed since they put in the Disney center. There’s a Four Seasons Hotel downtown too. Lots of luxury condos.”
“Copy the address. I might have to drive into town,” Tom said.
Tom turned on the computer and found it, as he had expected, password protected. He tried different words—Nakamura, samurai, even katana, but the computer continued to shut him out.
He’d have liked to take it with him. Hammond undoubtedly had techs who could break the code, probably in a minute or two. He couldn’t do that, though, considering this was an illegal entry, no matter how you sliced it. He tried without success to think of some way he could convince Hammond it was legit. They’d need a search warrant, and the coincidence of the Japanese gangsters wasn’t likely to be enough to get a judge to sign one.
Same with the telephone. He ran through the preprogrammed numbers, found nothing that stood out. Probably, though, Nakamura carried a cell phone with him. That’s where the important numbers would be.
Other than the address of Nakamura’s Los Angeles condo, the desks offered nothing of interest, nor did most of the house. They went from room to room, quickly, methodically, mindful of the time rushing by, but with no success.
“Aside from that samurai room, it looks as if Mr. Nakamura has no significant interests in life,” Tom said.
“But he doesn’t strike me as that kind of guy,” Stanley said. “I’d have pegged him for a man of varied and probably passionate interests.”
“A lover?”
Stanley had to think about that. He had never really imagined Nakamura in sexual terms, and yet, now that he thought about it, he rather supposed he was probably something of a dynamo sexually. Not an attractive man, in Stanley’s opinion, but a man with an inner intensity. He was most definitely not the lie-there-and-let-it-happen sort. And in all probability, a top.
“Yes, a lover, and probably a very good one, if you like the type,” he said aloud. To which Tom only grunted.
“Doesn’t do anything for me,” he said.
“Me neither—but I can think of a queen or two….”
They were just about to conclude they were wasting their time, Tom all too conscious of the fact that they were running out of minutes, when they found another locked door at the opposite end of the house from the samurai room.
“Interesting,” Tom said, taking his picks from his pocket. “Everything else is so open, so on display. Have to wonder what it is he’s got hidden here.”
He made short work of the lock and swung the door open.
“Bonanza,” he said, pushing the door wide for Stanley to see.
“Zowie,” Stanley said, his eyes going wide. He found himself staring into a modern-day torture chamber.
Much of what was on display, he had seen before, of course, and what he had not specifically seen, he had heard of, certainly. Slings and manacles and whips and chains—they weren’t that unusual in the gay world. He had friends who were into the bondage and the S and M scenes, although it had never been his thing—in his opinion, pain hurt, period. He had often described his own tastes as Basic Sucking and Fucking 101.
The noose hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room was new to him, however—erotic asphyxiation, he thought immediately.
“Jeff Whiting,” he said aloud. “I’ll bet this is where he was killed.”
“I’d say this is where they played together. But it’s only circumstantial. It doesn’t really prove anything,” Tom said. “And Whiting was hand strangled. That could have happened anywhere.”
“If we could find….”
“Take a look at that table next to you. What do you see?”
Stanley peered down at the empty tabletop. “Uh, nothing, actually,” he said.
“Right. It’s been wiped clean as a baby’s bottom. And I’d bet money so has every other surface in this room. Even if Hammond had his techs dust, I’m guessing they wouldn’t find a single print.” As if to emphasize his words, he ran a latex-clad finger across the surface of a shelf. It left only a faint smudge.
“We’re not going to find anything here. He’s too sharp for that.” Tom frowned and glanced at his watch. “And it looks to me like it’s time we moved out. What do you think?”
Stanley glanced at his own watch. “Right about now, I’d guess Chris and friend are finishing a shower together. After which they’ll fix some lunch….”
“Here?”
“Maybe. Not having seen that apartment, it’s hard to say. Does it have a kitchen, or not? If not….”
“If not, they’ll be coming down here.” Tom sighed. “Which makes hanging around too risky. And a waste
of time. There’s not even any drawers or cabinets in this room to check out. This”—he indicated the torture room—“is interesting. It tells us about Nakamura’s tastes, and we already knew about Whiting’s. We can take it for granted they were an item. But it doesn’t prove anything, and Nakamura is too cagey to have anything incriminating in this house, even behind locked doors.”
They let themselves out of the house and walked back to the truck, Tom careful to lock doors behind them, Stanley breathing easily for the first time since they arrived. Tom pulled a U-turn and started back to Palm Springs. Out of habit, he checked the rearview mirror, and for just a second or two, he thought he saw a faded green pickup several vehicles behind them, but then it disappeared in the flow of traffic. He glanced up a few more times, but didn’t see it again.
“Something wrong?” Stanley asked.
Tom shook his head. “Just getting a little spooky, I think.” He took a last glimpse in the rearview mirror, but there was no sign of a green pickup. He had imagined it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SINCE IT was his day off, Yoki was rather surprised in the late afternoon when his employer buzzed him, meaning he wanted to see Yoki in the house. Yoki had been lounging about in his robe, savoring the memory of Chris’s visit earlier and contemplating when they might arrange a repeat. Chris had said he only expected to be in town for a few more days, which meant probably he would be gone by the time next week’s day off rolled around.
Still, Nakamura-san was often away for the day. It would surely not be too difficult to arrange an afternoon session. It need not be cook’s day off either. Cook never came out to Yoki’s apartment over the garage. Indeed, in nearly two years, Chris was the first one to set foot inside.
Yoki dressed quickly in what he thought of as his valet uniform—black trousers that fitted him like a second skin, and his pristine white tunic. Perhaps Nakamura-san had brought someone home with him for cocktails. That happened rarely, but it did happen.
A Deadly Kind of Love Page 16