“I thought you were kidding,” muttered Mage.
“No.”
“It’s razor-edged?”
“No.” Takumo moved back into the shade of the porch, accepted the mug of tea and leaned against the corner post. It creaked alarmingly, and he shifted his weight away from it and folded himself into a lotus position. “Have you used the focus—the key—since I gave it back?”
“Yeah, to get into your place. Oh, and when the rukoro-kubi attacked,” and Mage quickly told him the story of the pepper shaker.
“Neat. So now you’re a mover and a shaker. Finish your coffee and we’ll get to work.”
“Work?” repeated Mage dubiously, staring at the Frisbee.
“Work.” repeated Takumo firmly. “I don’t like the word either, but sometimes it’s necessary.”
They spent the next few minutes throwing the Frisbee to each other, until Mage had learned to grab rather than duck. “Yadomejutsu,” explained Takumo. “The art of arrow cutting.”
“What that’s got to do—”
“Watch this.” Takumo threw the Frisbee in an arc so that it passed just out of Mage’s reach and returned to himself. “Okay?”
“I—”
“You saw it?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“Great. You saw the shakers move, right? You moved them, controlled them, dig? Okay, it was slow, for sure. You’re going to have to speed it up. Like this.” And he threw the Frisbee directly at Mage’s groin. Unable to dodge, the photographer knocked it aside.
“Okay. Send it back here and watch it fly. Experience it.”
Mage threw the Frisbee back and Takumo caught it deftly, swinging on his heel and hurling it back on the same movement. Mage closed his eyes, stretched out, caught it, fumbled, and dropped it.
“That’s cool. Confidence, man. Try it again.”
A few minutes later Takumo tied Mage’s hands behind his back, walked away, and sent the Frisbee spinning toward his navel. Mage grit his teeth and imagined it arcing off at the last moment.
It did.
Within an hour Mage was sending the Frisbee into boomerang curves, zigzags, even spirals. Seeing it rise from the ground and fly proved difficult, until Takumo advised him to watch the Frisbee hit the sand at the end of its flight and imagine it running through a projector in reverse.
A few minutes before nine o’clock, Takumo untied Mage’s hands and instructed him not to use them. Breaking old habits took nearly an hour. When Takumo was convinced that Mage had mastered the trick, he walked inside and returned with another Frisbee, a Moonlighter.
By eleven, the Frisbee was orbiting the shack while the friends threw the Moonlighter to each other, catching it left-handedly. Takumo plucked the Frisbee from midair and returned it sharply; then, with his right hand, he threw a shuriken at the photographer’s chest. Mage blinked, then stopped the Moonlighter short, dropping it onto the shuriken. The Frisbee also fell to the ground.
“Not bad.”
“You—”
“I told you I’d teach you arrow cutting. Don’t worry, it’s a prop, a fake. It couldn’t hurt you unless you tried to swallow it. Plastic, and very blunt. Getting warm, isn’t it?”
Mage’s shoulders fell. “You bastard.”
Takumo nodded. “I guess that’s enough for today. We’d better get inside. I, for one, could use some sleep.”
23
Hide and Seek
Tamenaga, in his bath, received the news of Yukitaka’s death with his usual monolithic calm; he had, after all, been expecting it. When Sakura added that the police had collected car and body, she noticed the cobra tattoo on his right arm swell slightly, but nothing more.
“Where are Magistrale and Takumo?”
Sakura blinked mentally. “I don’t know. Packer hasn’t reported any phone calls, there’ve been no sightings at the airports or the Greyhound depots, and your orders were not to have them followed or watched.”
Tamenaga stared at her balefully and then nodded. Magistrate was learning to see even more clearly, and to use the focus. Tamenaga had not expected him to advance so rapidly, even with the threat of prison to goad him. And Takumo astonished him; his out-of-date affectations concealed sharpness, determination, and intelligence. And he was fond of playing ninja; his apartment would certainly be tricked out to show him if anyone had broken in, however carefully. Unfortunately, none of the nearby apartments were empty; there had been no chance of peering through the walls or ceiling, or even of recording their comings and goings along the balcony.
Of course, if Magistrate had killed Yukitaka and saved Takumo, then they knew they were being watched… . “Phone Takumo’s apartment. If they answer, say … no, a wrong number’s too obvious. Invent a charity or a survey. No, better still, offer him some life insurance.” He smiled sourly. “If nobody’s there, tell me immediately.”
After an early lunch of tofu and fruit leather, Takumo scattered his shuriken in the front room and chalked a roughly sumo-shaped silhouette on the door. “Target practice,” he said in answer to Mage’s raised eyebrow. “Wake me up at six, okay?”
“But—”
Takumo yawned and stretched, and something whistled through the air barely a foot from Mage’s ear. The photographer turned and saw a metal star embedded where the sumotori’s right eye would have been. The stuntman smiled sleepily and walked toward the tent, shedding clothes and weapons as he went. He flopped down on the air mattress, closed his eyes and was instantly asleep.
The first thing that Anna Judd noticed was that Takumo’s motorcycle was missing. It was three-thirty on a Monday morning, a time, she thought wryly, when even good little ninja should be home in bed. She sprinted silently up the stairs until she reached Takumo’s apartment, listened carefully and then pulled a set of skeleton keys out of her pocket. The door opened easily and no alarms rang; she shut it behind her and waited before turning on the light.
Anna Judd was not quite a ninja—hardly even a karima kunoichi. She had become one of Higuchi’s mistresses at the age of seventeen; Tsuchiya Shimako had recognized her intelligence and ambition and mentioned her to Tamenaga, who had recruited her to spy on Higuchi. When Higuchi began to tire of her, Anna had begun working at the Sunrise as a hostess, while being trained in ninjitsu by Shimako. In the four years since she had come to Vegas, she had helped to blackmail three businessmen, provided Shimako access to numerous wallets and briefcases, and given a double-dealing employee the kiss of death, luring him to his own murder. She had learned taijutsu, knife-fighting, and shurikenjutsu; she had learned how to kill a man with a hat pin and spit poisonous darts; she had learned stealth and disguise and burglary … and for four years, she had been kept in Vegas.
She examined the door and the floor around her feet, finding no gimmicks or traps that would let Takumo know anyone had broken in. The apartment was a mess; it looked almost as though another burglar had ransacked the room before her, yet there were still valuable items left—the sound and video systems, she estimated, must have been worth at least two thousand.
Within five minutes she had found Takumo’s hiding places for some of his weapons and made an educated guess at what was missing. She also noted the chaos in the bottom of the closet, and the absence of Takumo’s rucksack. She found nothing that obviously belonged to Magistrale anywhere in the apartment.
Anna continued to search, remembering her previous job for Tamenaga: sleeping with a middle-aged, hair-triggered Canuck farmboy, inept, inconsiderate, and probably virginal. Any other work had to be better than that. Besides, she had left a farm behind her five years before and had no wish to be reminded of it.
Nearly half an hour later she discovered Takumo’s passport, and smiled.
He took weapons but no passport; he’s not planning to leave the country,” she reported confidently. “He seems to have taken very few clothes but a lot of underwear. He probably intends to buy more clothes in another city and set up a new identity.”
Tame
naga, listening intently, immediately thought of several other possible explanations. A biker would not wish to burden himself with excess luggage. Takumo, with his erratic income and neo-hippy lifestyle, would have a different attitude to clothes than Anna Judd; he might have a spare passport, perhaps in another name, and he might not even wear underwear.
“You found nothing else to indicate where he might have gone?”
“No.”
“What was missing from the bathroom?”
“Toothpaste, toothbrush … Band-Aids. There was a square in the dust, a large box: probably his makeup kit …” she handed the Polaroids to Sakura. “… but not the luxuries. As you can see, the shampoo and soap are still there.”
“Luxuries …” mused Tamenaga. The girl had done her job well; still, it was a pity he hadn’t been able to persuade Sakura to return there. He listened to the rest of her report in silence, allowing Sakura and Tsuchiya to ask the questions, and brooded.
Where would Magistrale go? He hadn’t appeared in Boulder City or contacted his parents or sisters, and he certainly wouldn’t have returned to Canada—but Magistrale, without intending to hide, had been drifting from bed to bed for years, accumulating friends, lovers, and acquaintances in many cities and towns. He used no credit cards or checking accounts, and rarely needed to register at a hotel. In Tamenaga’s financial world, he was almost an invisible man; his dossier was very thin, and padded with guesswork, making him impossible to predict. He might return in time for his court case, but in that time he might have learned to use the focus.
Takumo, however, was a natural showman. He might be able to act inconspicuously and hide in a crowd, but only briefly. He was too easily recognizable; he would be far more likely to choose as secluded a refuge as possible. Perhaps a ghost town, or a bankrupt and semi-abandoned city, the sort they used for shooting post-Holocaust movies. Tamenaga reached for the photographs and stared at the film posters, smiling at the girls in skintight “ninja suits” and the incredibly clean-looking wasteland warriors.
Why would a man with shoulder-length hair leave home without soap or shampoo? Tamenaga shuddered slightly and glanced at the poster again, noticing the desert backdrop. Maybe the stuntman was hiding somewhere where water was scarce… .
“I want everything you can get me on Takumo. I need to know everywhere he’s lived—if possible, everywhere he’s been. Information on his relatives, friends, lovers, enemies, employers. Get copies of all his movies, and have somebody watch them.”
He swiveled his chair around to stare at the Murasama daisho. It meant turning his back on Judd, but that didn’t concern him; the chair was lined with kevlar plates, and as bullet-proof as the windows. “Magistrale had a visitor at the prison—his uncle, as I remember. Get me what you can on him, and put a tap on his phone.”
“He wouldn’t have gone there,” Judd began before it occurred to her that she might be contradicting her boss.
“No, of course not,” Tamenaga agreed. “But the uncle may know where they are, he may be supplying them … and if we need to lure Magistrale out of hiding, the man may be useful as bait.”
Judd nodded. “What about his parents?”
“No,” Tamenaga replied coldly. Involving a target’s immediate family was always a last resort. “That won’t be necessary. But his woman in Totem Rock, Mrs. Lancaster … have somebody watch her. Just in case.”
I want to try something a little different.”
“If it’s bullets, I don’t think I’m ready.”
Takumo grinned. “No. Watch this.” He walked back to the porch, donned his neko-de and grabbed his ninjato. He stood the ninjato against the wall and used the large square tsuba as a step, then climbed the wall and clambered onto the roof.
“Cute trick.”
“That isn’t the trick.” He stood, turned around and jumped back to the ground.
“That was the trick?”
“Were you watching?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. You ever watch any kung fu movies or Japanese TV shows? The Samurai? Phantom Agents?”
“Not since I was a kid.”
“You ever see them jumping backwards, up cliffs or into trees?”
“Sure. They ran the film in reverse—every six-year-old knows that one.”
“You think you can run it in reverse?”
“What?”
“Can you see in reverse? Put me back on the roof?”
Mage blinked very slowly. “Are you sure you want me to try? After what happened in Vegas?”
“That happened when I was using it. I don’t have the talent, the knack. I think you do. Besides, what’ve I got to lose?”
“Your life, your mind, your soul—” replied Mage, counting on his fingers.
“Think of it as moving me to a higher plane of consciousness.”
Manson?
Astonished, Tamenaga reached for the phone and called Lamm, asking for a printout of Manson’s prison and police files. Then he returned his attention to the file on Takumo’s mother. Compared to her, the young stuntman was a success story incarnate. It was as though every best-forgotten element of the sixties had chosen one girl to dump on: a loved and respected older brother disappearing in Vietnam, a gauntlet of sexual encounters as meaningless as a TV game show, bum trips and flashbacks, head injuries received in a riot, hitchhiking from San Francisco to Nirvana but getting no farther than Los Angeles … culminating in her joining the Manson Family in Death Valley. The seventies had been saner but even less kind, until finally she had broken and slowly died… . To Tamenaga, it endorsed what the focus had taught him: you had to know what you wanted, concentrate on it until you could see it. He had succeeded—become rich—because he understood large numbers, understood money, better than his competitors could… .
He shook his head; he was becoming sidetracked. He briefly wished he had Higuchi’s knack for making lucky guesses, a knack the gambler claimed was enhanced by the focus—but the kuromaku rarely guessed, and never trusted his guesses without sound logic. He stared at the file, concentrating. Death Valley… .
Tamenaga drummed his fingers quietly on the desk, six slow beats and seven quick, as though stalking his intercom. He hesitated, then stabbed his index finger at the “Call” button and summoned Oshima Sakura.
“Yes, boss?” she rasped. The mujina’s voice didn’t come across well over the phone. She sounded desiccated and decayed, as though she’d died of old age thousands of years before.
“Who’s watching those movies of Takumo’s?”
“Hubbard and Packer.”
Packer? “Are they enjoying them?” he asked dryly.
“Shall I ask?” Sakura had no sense of humor.
“No, but tell them that if they see anything filmed on location in Death Valley—no, make that in any desert— they’re to call you immediately. Check the credits for a location service, or if that fails, have one of the girls call the production company, if it still exists.”
“Anything else?”
Tamenaga glanced at his watch: nearly 1:00 p.m. They’d been working—he, Sakura, Tsuchiya, and Lamm—for twenty-six hours without a break; he hadn’t even read the stock-market report to see how Pyramus was doing.
“Yes, have a rest,” he said, choosing his words carefully. No one had ever seen the mujina sleep, except for her occasional mindless bedmates. Tamenaga wondered what happened to her face when she dreamed (if she dreamed). Maybe one day he’d have someone brave and dispensable watch her through a one-way mirror. Maybe Magistrale or Takumo. Maybe tomorrow.
Lamm, scarlet-eyed, wavered slightly on his feet as Tamenaga flipped through the printout. Eventually the kuromaku found the information he wanted and checked it against the other files on his desk; Manson’s blood type proved that he could not possibly be Takumo’s father. He wondered if the stuntman knew.
“Thank you, Mr. Lamm. What time is it?”
“Tuesday,” replied Lamm fuzzily. “I mean …” He glanced at his wat
ch. “Four fifty-one.”
“Good. Call the kitchen, order yourself a meal and go to bed. Ask one of the girls for a massage if you like.”
Lamm shook his head wearily. “Maybe after I wake up.”
Tamenaga smiled. “As you wish. I’ll call you if I need you again tonight. You do good work, Mr. Lamm.”
“You pay good money,” replied Lamm, returning the smile.
“Is there such a thing as bad money?”
Lamm looked at him cautiously. “I don’t know.”
“Personally, I’ve never met a dollar I didn’t like.”
The hacker shrugged. “They all look the same to me.”
“Ah, but that’s their beauty. Think about it. Pleasant—” The phone rang, cutting him off. “Excuse me.” He reached for the button that opened the door and waited until Lamm had gone before picking up the receiver. “Yes?”
“Location shooting for Age of the Sword was done at Butler Ranch,” rasped Sakura. “It’s between China and Coyote Lakes, near the Naval Weapons Center.”
“Good. Send” —Tamenaga thought quickly— “Tsuchiya, and let her pick whom she wants, but only kunoichi; I suspect that neither Mr. Magistrate or Takumo-san will willingly fight women.”
“Tonight?”
“No, they’ll be expecting us at night. Tomorrow afternoon.” Tamenaga sat down and relaxed for the first time in two days. “And send Packer back to Canada—not to Totem Rock, he’ll be recognized there. Let him go home. We don’t need him anymore.”
24
Again, Dangerous Visions
The shuriken veered away from Mage and embedded itself, two inches deep, in a splintered wooden corner post. Takumo stared at it, then blanched to a sickly yellow color.
“You said they were all fakes!” rasped Mage.
Takumo continued to stare, unmoving.
“You said they were all fakes!” repeated Mage stridently.
The Art of Arrow Cutting Page 18