A Deadly Kind of Love

by Victor J. Banis

  When he came into the house, though, he found his employer alone, dressed in a yellow silk kimono. So, he had not just come in; he had been here for some time, long enough to change from his business suit into the more comfortable robe.

  “Nakamura-san,” Yoki greeted him, bowing respectfully from the waist. “Forgive me for being slow to respond to your summons. I did not expect to hear from you.”

  “No, I am sure you did not.” Nakamura stood in the center of the large living room, his hands inside his kimono. His face and his voice were stern. Yoki felt a twinge of concern. He made it a point of honor always to please his employer. Nakamura-san did not look happy just at the moment, however.

  “Is my master displeased?” he asked, bowing again.

  Instead of answering that question directly, Nakamura-san said, “You had company today.”

  Yoki looked a bit embarrassed, but no longer felt greatly concerned. It was nothing, then, really. Perhaps he should have mentioned this visit in advance. He knew his master was very jealous of his privacy. In the future he would ask permission beforehand, just to be safe. He liked his job and the man for whom he worked. His pay was generous, and the apartment provided was a very comfortable one.

  “Yes,” he said with a smile. “A friend stopped by for some time. I hope that I did not exceed the bounds of my service by inviting him to come see me. I thought, since it was my day off—”

  “And this friend,” Nakamura-san interrupted him and asked almost as an aside, “it was only one friend, was it?” Yoki nodded, puzzled. “Is this friend someone I might know?”

  “You met him, yes. Mr. Rafferty. Chris. He was here for lunch, what, three days ago. We… well, we rather caught one another’s eyes on that day, so when he called to ask if we might meet—”

  “Ah, yes. Christopher. He came for lunch with Tom and Stanley. The San Francisco detectives.”

  “Yes. And with Eddie.” Yoki found himself growing uncomfortable. Something in the way Nakamura-san had pronounced those words—clipped, harsh. San Francisco detectives. “They are friends, the four of them. Tom and Stanley and Chris and Eddie.”

  When his employer continued to glower at him with what was surely an angry expression, Yoki said, “Perhaps I should have asked permission to have Chris visit me. But I did not mean to offend. You have never forbidden me to have friends up to my apartment.”

  “To your apartment? No, of course not. What you do there is your own business. I told you that when you first came to work for me.”

  “Then… that is where we were, the whole time. We….” Yoki blushed. “Well, we played about for a bit, and we took a shower together, and afterward I fixed some lunch. But we never came down here, to the house. I swear it. I would not bring someone in here, into your home, when you were away.”

  He paused. Nakamura-san continued to stare coldly at him. Angrily. Yes, he was angry, Yoki could see that clearly. But over what? Frightened anew, Yoki burst out, “Why do you look at me in that way? What have I done that was wrong?”

  “And while you were entertaining your new friend, Mr. Rafferty,” Nakamura said in an icy voice, “where were his friends?”

  Yoki looked momentarily puzzled. “Eddie and…?”

  Nakamura made a dismissive gesture. “Do not be a fool. I am not concerned with Eddie. He is of no consequence. It is Tom and Stanley to whom I refer.”

  “Why… I have no idea where they were. I never saw them. It was just Chris who came….”

  “I can tell you where they were, Yoki, exactly where they were while you entertained Mr. Rafferty. They were here, in my home.”

  “But… but that cannot be….”

  “Indeed it is so. They were seen. Tom Danzel and Stanley Korski were seen entering this house, minutes after Mr. Rafferty went into your apartment. And they left only a short time before he did. What would you estimate that span of time to be? An hour, perhaps? A bit less?”

  “Oh, no, I cannot believe….” Yoki was aghast now, his mouth hanging open, his eyes bulging.

  “It was enough time, certainly, to search to their heart’s content, to seek out my most private secrets, would you not say?”

  Yoki gasped, covering his face with his hands. “I cannot believe…. I trusted him. I thought he was genuinely interested in me….”

  “As I am sure he was. And why should he not be? You are an attractive young man, Yoki. I am sure that your guest enjoyed your little interlude very much. But it was not your physical charms alone that brought him here. You do understand what I am saying, do you not?”

  Yoki began to cry, tears coursing down his cheeks. Suddenly, with a loud groan, he dropped to his knees and crawled clumsily toward his employer, head bent. He took hold of the silk of Nakamura’s kimono and buried his face in it.

  “Oh, master, master, forgive me,” he cried. “I am so ashamed. I have betrayed you.”

  “Yes, Yoki, you have,” Nakamura said above him, standing statue still. A lengthy silence was broken only by Yoki’s abject sobs.

  Finally, Nakamura said, in a low voice, “You know what you must do now, to erase your shame, to atone for your betrayal.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Yoki lifted his tearstained face. Moments before, his master’s hands had been inside the folds of his kimono. Now he held a small sword in them. The wakizashi. The knife of atonement. The blade glittered like ice in the late day sun.

  Yoki’s eyes widened in fear. “Master… you do not mean…?”

  “It is the only way,” Nakamura said.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  TOM AND Stanley stayed late at the club, waiting for a glowing Chris to join them. “Maybe we can arrange a repeat,” Chris said when Tom told him of their lack of results.

  “Sounds like fun, but don’t do it on our behalf,” Tom said. “I’m thinking of other possibilities.”

  They left Chris at the bar and went back to their room just a little tipsy, and enjoyed a long and satisfying bout of sex. After which Tom slept like the proverbial log and woke famished.

  “Let’s go out for breakfast,” he said while they showered together. He soaped up Stanley’s back and scrubbed it thoroughly, making sure he reached all the sheltered places.

  “You don’t like the café here?” Stanley gave him a quick kiss and climbed out of the shower, handing Tom an oversized bath towel.

  “No, it’s fine. I just get tired of the same old.” Tom dried Stanley’s back, and Stanley returned the favor. In the bedroom, a red light was blinking on the telephone.

  “We’ve got a message,” Stanley said, slipping into a pair of jeans and pulling a polo shirt over his head.

  Dressed, Tom phoned the desk and was told there was a package for him.

  Since the incident with the yakuza, Tom had changed his mind about leaving the Sig behind in their room. Things had gotten a little too hairy for that. He donned the shoulder holster and wore a light windbreaker to cover it. Better to be a little overdressed in the desert heat than have to deal with any more ambushes.

  It was another perfect desert morning. Already they could hear the voices of men, young and old, gathered around the pool, but they went in the opposite direction to the lobby.

  The clerk saw them coming and handed Tom a plain manila envelope as he walked up.

  “Who left this?” Tom asked, taking the package.

  “He didn’t give a name. An Asian gentleman in a dark suit. He said it was something you needed to see. He said you’d understand.”

  Tom took the envelope from him. He had a bad vibe about this. Anonymous packages weren’t usually good news. Could be some kind of explosive device, or that stuff, what did they call it, anthrax. He held it in his hands for a moment, wondering. Should he get in touch with Hammond, have his experts open it? He gave it an experimental shake. Something rattled faintly inside.

  “Do you think…?” Stanley asked.

  “Too flat for a rattlesnake,” Tom said. And too light to be a bomb. It weighed alm
ost nothing. Coming to a decision, he undid the clasp and turned the envelope up. Three photographs slid into his hand.

  “Ah, shit,” he said, staring at the photos in dismay.

  “What?” Stanley asked.

  “You don’t want to see,” Tom said, but Stanley was not so easily put off. He snatched the photos out of Tom’s hand and looked at them.

  There were three of them, showing the same scene in a sequence of events. In the first one, Nakamura’s house man, Yoki, knelt naked on the floor, a silk scarf tied over his mouth, apparently to stifle any screams. He held a long, curved knife blade in both hands, its point pressed against his bare belly.

  In the second picture, the blade had sunk in almost to the hilt. Yoki’s neck was taut, his mouth straining against the silk scarf, his eyes wide with shock and pain.

  In the third photo, he had toppled over onto the floor, his guts spilling out of the gaping wound in his abdomen.

  “That’s… that’s barbaric,” Stanley gasped, letting the photos fall from his hand. They fluttered to the marble floor. “That bastard killed him.”

  “No, Yoki almost certainly killed himself,” Tom said. “This was the way to restore his honor. It’s called seppuku. He had disgraced himself, shamed his master.”

  “By letting us get into the house? But how did Nakamura know we’d been there?”

  Tom shrugged. “Video surveillance, maybe. I looked, and I didn’t see anything, but these days electronic equipment is a lot more sophisticated than it used to be.”

  He was thinking of that glimpse he thought he had gotten on their way back, of a green pickup truck tailing them. But why would cowboy Randy Patterson be spying on them for the Japanese businessman? They seemed an unlikely pair to be in cahoots.

  “Or maybe he just left some kind of trip wire so he could tell if anyone had been inside. Maybe nothing more than a hair on a doorframe, to show him it had been opened. He knew, is the important thing. Enough anyway to grill the houseman.”

  “Who probably caved pretty easily,” Stanley said. “He wasn’t the warrior type. He was just a sweet kid.”

  “It’s my fault. I screwed up,” Tom said. “I should have realized Nakamura would expect us to take a closer look at him after the yakuza attack backfired on him. He’d have known then that he was our number one suspect. And he must have known we’d hit his house. I should never have let Chris drag the houseboy into it. This was inevitable, given Nakamura’s samurai mindset. He’d have accepted nothing less from Yoki.”

  “I still say it’s barbaric,” Stanley said hotly. “And stop blaming yourself. You didn’t do this. He did.”

  Tom ran his hands over his eyes. A fourth young man dead, and they were no closer to pinning down the killer than they had been before. Nakamura seemed the likeliest suspect, but there was no real proof. These photos showed young Yoki killing himself. No jury would convict Nakamura of it. As for the other deaths, there were too many questions still unanswered. What was Randy Patterson’s part in all this? And could they really write off Hernando Vega?

  “Now what do we do?” Stanley asked.

  “I want to nail this bastard, if only for this.”

  “Good plan. But how exactly do we go about doing that?”

  Tom considered for a moment. “I’m thinking about that condo in Los Angeles. We’ve been looking around here in Palm Springs. He’ll expect us to continue. This is where the murders have taken place, after all. He likely wouldn’t expect us to turn our attention to LA. But now that I think of it, that’s where I should have been looking in the first place. If there’s any guilty secrets to uncover, that’s where they’re going to be.”

  “Great. When do we go?” Stanley asked.

  “I’m going this afternoon. You’re staying here.”

  “But why?”

  “First off, you’ll be making our presence here known. If Nakamura or his spies see you, they’ll think I’m close by. He knows how protective I am of you. He’ll never imagine that I’m leaving you on your own. Second, you’ll be out of mischief here. No arguments. And I want you out of that room of ours. You’ll move in with Chris.”

  “That’s the first place he’ll think of.”

  “That’s okay, as long as he thinks I’ve just gone to the store for something. And just to be safe, I’ll have Hammond send someone to keep an eye on you.”

  “Oh, Chris,” Stanley said suddenly, stooping down to pick up the photographs he had dropped. “He can’t see these. It would kill him.”

  “If he tries to arrange an encore with Yoki, he’s going to find out.”

  Stanley took another look at the photographs, and wiping a tear from his eye, he shoved them back into the manila envelope.

  “I’ll discourage the encore,” he said. “But I want to see that SOB pay.”

  “He’s going to, don’t worry.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “KEEP YOUR cell phone turned on and charged up,” Tom said. “I’ll call you if I learn anything. And if anything looks the slightest bit fishy to you, call me. Meantime, stay close with Chris and Eddie. There’s safety in numbers. Plus Hammond’s sending a plainclothes detective to keep an eye on the three of you.”

  “I still wish I were going with you,” Stanley said.

  “This is more a one-man kind of operation,” Tom said. “You just concentrate on staying out of mischief. I’ll be back by evening.”

  OF COURSE, the bodyguard Hammond sent them could not have been more obvious. Everyone else out by the pool was in bathing suits or, for the older men, tropical shirts and trousers, while the detective, seated at the table next to Stanley and friends, wore a suit, the jacket necessary to conceal the gun under his shoulder. He was sweating profusely in the Palm Springs heat. People noticed him.

  “We might as well be wearing fairy wings,” Chris said in a whisper. “Everybody’s looking at him.”

  “There’s an old expression: only the dead fish swims with the current,” Stanley whispered back. “In case you haven’t noticed, some of the glances our friend there is getting are downright lustful.”

  Chris and Eddie looked around. Stanley was right. “Maybe we should claim him for our own, move him over here with us,” Eddie said.

  “He is cute, sort of. In a loutish way,” Chris said.

  “That’s because he is a lout,” Stanley said. “He looks to me like he flunked sandbox.”

  Chris laughed. “I even gave him the smile. You know, the smile, and I got no response.”

  “Maybe,” Stanley said, “that just means the years are passing you by.”

  Chris snorted his disdain. “The years may have passed you by, but I assure you I have made note of them and taken every precaution.”

  Stanley took another good look at their bodyguard. “He’s straight,” he said. “No, I mean, seriously straight. He’s even pretending not to know he’s being cruised. How much straighter can you get than that?”

  They had just finished a first round of Cuba libres—plain cola for the detective. Eddie waved to the waiter for another round. At the next table, the detective’s cell phone rang. He spoke into it briefly, disconnected, and leaned over to Stanley’s table.

  “That was my sergeant,” he said. “Something’s come up. I have to leave for a few minutes.”

  “What about us?” Stanley asked. “You’re supposed to be looking after us.”

  “I’ll be back in ten minutes, fifteen tops. You stay right here.” He glanced around. “Lots of people. Nothing can happen to you here, okay?”

  When he had left, Chris said, “Frankly, I’m glad he’s gone. It would be different if I could get a tumble out of him. I still say he’s kind of attractive, though.”

  “Oh, get real, the only attractive part is dangling down his left thigh.”

  “You noticed that too?”

  “Well, it would be hard not to notice, and we’re not the only ones.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s obviously not going to do me any good.
” Chris looked around. “And he’s not helping our social standing here either. We couldn’t look more conspicuous if we tried.”

  “And heaven knows we have never tried to be conspicuous,” Stanley agreed with a relieved laugh. “Look, I forgot my sunscreen—it’s back in the room. I’m going to go get it before I turn into a potato chip.”

  “You want me to come with you?”

  Stanley shook his head. “No, it’s straight there and straight back. Don’t let my drink get warm.”

  Stanley had gotten almost to the door of the Alice Faye suite when Randy Patterson suddenly came into the corridor from the bar, hurrying straight toward him.

  “Stanley,” Patterson said, “come with me, quick.”

  Stanley couldn’t have been more surprised. “Come with you where?” he asked suspiciously.

  “There’s a bunch of gangsters out by the pool, hunting for you.”

  “I was there a minute ago—”

  “They just came in. Japanese yakuza, and they look plenty mean.”

  Stanley hesitated. “Maybe they’re not looking for me,” he said, but without conviction.

  Patterson snorted. “They aren’t here to cruise the pretty boys. Come on, we’ll go out the back way, through the kitchen. My truck’s right outside in the alley. We can disappear before they figure out that something’s gone wrong.”

  Stanley hesitated, reluctant to go with Patterson. Hadn’t Patterson been tailing them? Hadn’t he searched Barry Palmer’s house? “I’d better call Tom.” He took his cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Call him from the truck,” Patterson said. He took Stanley’s arm, all but dragging him in the direction of the kitchen. Stanley weighed his options. He couldn’t go back to the pool, if the yakuza were there, and he couldn’t stay here, either—if they came looking for him, he wouldn’t be hard to find. Maybe Patterson was right—not about the truck part of it, but maybe he’d be better off outside. Probably they wouldn’t think of looking for him in the alley.