I didn’t time-travel, he thought, relieved. Maybe I can’t … and then he shrugged. What if he could? Would he have changed the past? Refused to take the talisman? Would that have saved Amanda? No, probably not.
He stood, stretched, and walked around the room, glad to see that it was as he remembered it. Photographs, he thought. I’ll photograph all the places I’ll want to come back to, photograph myself uninjured… . That’s it, isn’t it? he asked the universe in general. That’s why you picked me, isn’t it? Because I’m a photographer? You have one sick sense of humor, universe; did anyone ever tell you that?
He grabbed Oedipus gently and dropped him onto the carpet, then staggered into Kelly’s room. The shotgun wasn’t in the closet or under the bed, and he hoped she had it with her. He couldn’t find the crossbow either, and the house was too large for him to search it; besides, he probably couldn’t have cocked the damn thing, let alone fired it accurately.
There was a mirror above the dressing table and another inside the closet door, and he positioned them so they reflected each other. Then he stood between them and glanced at the images, focusing on the one in which his T-shirt was legible. Then he closed his eyes and saw himself on the porch of Butler Ranch.
He opened his eyes again … and wished he hadn’t. Tear gas and smoke were still wafting from the doorway and the broken window. Apart from a few scattered shuriken, there was no sign of Takumo or the kunoichi.
He found them a few minutes later, at the bottom of a nearby ravine. The stuntman was doing his best to dig a pit in the loose, dead soil, and crying into the shallow hole. Mage, not wanting to sneak up on him, stood at the edge of the ravine and wondered what to say.
“Charlie?”
Takumo looked up, shading his eyes. “Mage?”
“Can I help you?”
“Can you help them?” He shot a bitter glance at the ground-sheet behind him, and Mage realized that it covered the bodies of the four girls. He tried to think of them as kunoichi, as assassins, and failed; he tried not to think of his four sisters, and failed at that too.
“No.”
Takumo nodded and returned to his task. “Can I help you?” Mage repeated.
“Not unless you brought another spade. Where the freakin’ hell’ve you been, anyway?”
“Canada.”
“Far out.”
“And your place, and Kelly’s. You don’t seem surprised.”
“‘Frankly, mah dear, I don’t give a damn,’” Takumo replied in the most unlikely Southern accent that Mage had ever heard. “What’re you going to do with it?”
Mage shrugged. He’d had only one idea, and he didn’t like it. “Is that grave for them, or for you?”
Takumo paused in his digging and then replied, “‘For my part, I do not lie in’t, and yet it is mine.’”
Mage, not recognizing the quote, pressed on regardless. “Isn’t it too hot to be working like that? You could at least wear a hat.”
Takumo hesitated. “The house is full of tear gas; it won’t be bearable for a couple of hours at least, and it’s cooler down here than it is up there … but yeah, you’re right. Let’s see if we can find some shade—or would you rather just beam back up to Canada? Someone has to bury these—” But his voice cracked suddenly and he dropped the spade into the pit.
“I’ll go back to town and get another spade. Do you want me to bring you back a drink?”
Takumo tried to laugh but gave up in mid gasp. “Yeah. Grapefruit juice, okay?”
Kelly Barbet returned home that evening to find a hastily scrawled note in the microwave: Kelly, please pick us up tonight. Mage. P.S. Don’t believe the cat. I already fed him.
I get the feeling we should say something,” said Takumo. “Like if I knew the segaki rite, the Buddhist funeral ritual, I could recite that, but I don’t. What do Catholics say?”
“‘Man that is born of woman has but a brief time to live …’ That’s all I remember, and I think they’ve already guessed that.” Mage shrugged, then recited:
“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is a shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
They stood there silently for a minute, and then Takumo asked, “What was that?”
“It’s from The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot. It’s about the only thing I remember from college, that and a few lines of “Journey of the Magi.” There was a girl doing Lit who was pretty obsessive about his stuff, and I was pretty obsessive about her for a while, so …” He picked up a handful of dust, stared at it for an instant, then threw it into the grave.
Takumo nodded. “I can relate to that.” He looked down at the sand for a moment and shrugged. “If it’s confession time, I’ve got a better one. Charlie Manson isn’t really my father.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He probably could have been—I know he had at least one son—and my mother really thought he was, but she didn’t know his blood type. I managed to find it out when I was seventeen; it couldn’t have been him … but by then, it didn’t really seem to matter. Mum was dead, and I’d been beaten up often enough for being the maniac’s son, and had frightened a few bullies off by being the maniac’s son … and frightened a few of the girls too, and fascinated a few others—I mean, like, crazy Charlie probably had more girls than you did and they wanted to see if whatever he had was hereditary … and it was a gimmick; agents and directors and casting consultants remembered me … but man, all I really wanted was to be someone, like in the Tracy Chapman song. I mean, that’s what it’s all about, neh? Not even someone special; I really, totally, didn’t know who I was.” He shook his head. “So, now I know something. I know I never want to kill anyone else.”
“How did they die? I mean, apart from the one I killed.”
Takumo held up a pair of fingers. “Two you killed. The one who went for a drag died of poisoning from that shuriken you threw back at her: I think it was curare. The one I hit with the neko-de swallowed her fukumi-bari, a poisoned dart, and it either tore her throat open from the inside or—And the one with the ninjato hit me with a blinding powder, and I was trying to parry, and I ran her through, don’t ask me how. Karma, neh? But that’s it. I quit. No more.”
“I’m going to need your help.”
Takumo stared at him wearily and then nodded.
They found the rest of the rukoro-kubi,” said Kelly as soon as she was out of the car.
“Who?”
“The LAPD. They’re treating it as a yakuza killing. He had the full-body tattoo, the—”
“Irezumi,” volunteered Takumo.
“Thank you. Apart from that, they still haven’t identified him, and it’s driving forensics crazy. All the evidence suggests that he died in the car—there was even blood on the ceiling—but it looks as though the head and both hands were lopped off simultaneously. There’s no trace of metal in the wounds and not even a scratch anywhere inside the car. It was a Japanese car, to—no room to swing a cat, let alone a katana.”
“Stolen, of course,” said Takumo dryly.
“Supposedly. It wasn’t reported gone until after it was found, which means it must have been missing from the lot for more than twenty-four hours.”
“Whose lot?”
“Taisho Tours; it’s one of their rental cars. The company’s owned by a Mr. Nakatani, who also owns the Sunrise Hotel in Vegas and is alleged to have yakuza contacts.”
“Sorry,” Kelly replied, smiling slightly. “Mage, I remember you mentioning Tetsuo Tamenaga. According to the D.A., Tamenaga is involved in multimillion-dollar loan-sharking and money laundering, and Nakatani owes him a fortune. The LAPD’s sure that the body they found was working for one or the other, and scared that there may be a war beginning between the two of them.”
“Hey, you decapitated him,” Mage reminded her. “Not the yakuza. Let’s hope they never find his head.”
“Who’re they going to call in to identify the body?” asked Takumo.
“Probably the manager of Taisho if no one else comes forward. We don’t know his next of kin. Why?”
“Not Tamenaga?”
Kelly shook her head. “He’d just send one of his secretaries. As far as we know, he rarely leaves his property—”
“As far as we know?” echoed Takumo. “Who’s watching him?”
“I don’t know.”
“So make an educated guess.”
“A guess? No one. The cops can’t show probable cause; even if he’s not paying them off, Tamenaga is much too clever to dirty his hands. Some reporters have tried to sneak in, or break in, or even fly low over the place, and have ended up with nothing to show for their pains except bruises.”
“If he never leaves,” said Mage, “I guess I’m going to have to go in and talk to him.”
27
Face-off
They drove past the estate slowly, but not too slowly. There was no one visible at the gates; a single TV camera watched the road from behind a sheet of shatterproof glass. Beyond the barred gate, the driveway twisted around large trees that obscured any view of the house.
“I still say you’re crazy to go in alone,” murmured Takumo when they were well past the gates.
“I can always get out … and if I get a chance to take a photograph, I can always get back in again. I wish I could take you with me, but I can’t.” And if I die, Mage thought, I’m no great loss: Tamenaga gets his focus back, and hopefully he leaves you alone. “But I will need your help.”
Kelly had obtained copies of the original plans of the house and estate, but neither she nor Dante had been able to find any recent photographs. Only one freelance journalist admitted to having been in and escaped alive; after a few bourbons, he’d described “gardeners” who resembled the Incredible Hulk, and mastiffs as large as racehorses.
“Yeah, I know,” the stuntman replied sourly. “I get to kill the dogs.”
“Don’t think of them as dogs,” suggested Kelly. “They’re biologically engineered killing machines.”
Takumo shook his head, his expression grim. “Like four-footed ninja, neh? It’s not that I like dogs—I hate the freakin’ things, I think they’re evolution’s greatest mistake since the dinosaurs died out—but I don’t like killing.”
“Can you think of a way around them?”
“Stop being logical. Logic has nothing to do with this.” He grimaced. “I know, they’ll have been trained not to accept baits, and we can’t get a tranquilizer rifle without all sorts of paperwork, and they’re too damn slow anyway, and a stun gun’s next to useless—yes, I’ve tried thinking of ways around them—and that Tamenaga turned these animals into murderers—shit, he turned me into a murderer!” He closed his eyes and swallowed, trying to regain control of his breathing. Mage and Kelly watched and waited.
“If you get the chance,” Takumo whispered, “tell him what he’s done. And if you don’t come back, I’m going in myself.”
They returned at eleven, dressed all in black, and silent—except for Takumo, who chattered incessantly about land mines, envenomed tetsubishi, snag wires, pits, nightingale floors, oiled floors …
“Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“No warnings. If I start looking for traps, they’ll be there.”
Charlie shut up, and no one spoke until they reached the edge of the property. Kelly parked the car fifty yards from the entrance, turned off the lights and handed the shotgun to Mage.
“I don’t want it. What if I drop it and they trace it?”
Kelly shrugged. “It’s my husband’s.”
Takumo smiled behind his mask. Mage opened his mouth to comment, thought better of it and grabbed the gun.
They crept toward the gate, and Mage lifted Takumo to the top of the thirteen-foot-high wall while Kelly crawled under the TV camera’s field of vision and peered through the narrow gaps between the bars. Takumo, carefully avoiding both the cameras that he could see and the ones he knew had to exist, clambered over and hooked his kyotetsu-shoge onto the top of the gate before dropping to the ground.
Four heartbeats later three huge dogs raced out of the darkness toward the bars. Takumo grabbed the cord of the kyotetsu-shoge, back-flipped up and held himself out of reach. One of the mastiffs sprang at him and instantly received a crossbow bolt in the stomach. The second mastiff sniffed at the body and licked the blood while Kelly re-nocked hastily. Takumo descended like a spider lowering itself on its silk, and when one of the dogs snapped at his left arm, its teeth grating harmlessly on Takumo’s iron sleeve, he drove the point of his knife into its eye. The third dog seemed torn between attack and flight, and fell victim to a second crossbow bolt before it could decide.
Takumo waited for a few seconds, then reached into his pack for a knotted rope, enabling Mage to climb over the wall. Kelly handed Mage the shotgun between the bars, then threw his camera, basketball style, for Takumo to catch—which, to Mage’s obvious relief, he did without the slightest difficulty.
“Thank you—and now get the hell out of here,” Mage said. Takumo nodded and swarmed up the rope. Mage didn’t wait to see his friends leave; with the camera around his neck and the shotgun in his left hand, he set off in the direction of the house.
The door was opened a moment later by a sumo wrestler only slightly smaller than a football team. His face looked as though it had been drawn by a very young child. He didn’t speak, and Mage wasn’t sure that he could.
“I’m here to see Mr. Tamenaga.”
Yamada Kazafumi’s rubbery expression didn’t change. He looked Mage up and down, stared pointedly at the shotgun and shook his head.
Damn, thought Mage; I knew bringing the gun was a mistake. “Tamenaga will want to see me,” he said, enunciating carefully and clearly, “and he will certainly want to see this.” He opened his right hand, revealing the key and the braided hair. “So go tell him I’m here, before he gives you a job climbing the Empire State Building and swatting biplanes. Capiche?”
The wrestler stepped back slightly, but his massive arm blocked Mage’s path. The plan, Mage guessed, was to delay him until reinforcements arrived to escort him to Tamenaga—or to wherever Tamenaga wanted him. He stared past Yamada to the end of the hall, noticing several doors and a staircase. Then he thought himself into the picture and teleported. He found himself at the foot of the stairs and heard the startled sumotori grunt behind him, but he wasted no time turning around until he was on the landing of the second floor.
Yamada was running upstairs with remarkable speed for such a massive man. Mage looked at the polished wood and remembered Takumo’s warning about oiled floors—and the wrestler slipped, fell, and began to roll. He reached out and grabbed a banister, which slowed his descent briefly but cracked as soon as he tried to haul himself up. Mage allowed himself a slight smile, turned to look down the corridor …
… and saw Amanda Sharmon, wearing an expensive silk dress, emerge from a nearby door.
They stared at each other for nearly a minute, and she smiled slightly. “What kept you?” she asked softly.
Mage tried to swallow, and failed. “How long have you been here?”
“Ten days now.”
It was an unusually pat answer, he reflected, but Amanda was a math
ematician. “You were working for Tamenaga?”
“I wasn’t when I met you,” she assured him, “but he offered me a deal. If I’d refused, he would’ve killed me, and … I’m scared of dying. That’s why I stole the focus,” she said simply, softly. “All things considered, it was an amazingly good deal. Did you bring it?”
“It?”
“The focus.”
“Focus?”
“The key.”
“Oh, yeah.” He threw it to her, whispering, “I guess it’s yours.” She was obviously too startled to catch it; it bounced off her breast and fell near her feet. “Can I go now?”
“I suppose so, if you want to, but Tamenaga-san would like to talk to you.” She squatted slowly, not taking her eyes from Mage’s pale face, and reached out for the loop of hair. “Would you like a job?”
It was Mage’s turn to smile, and the smile became a chuckle, and the chuckle became a laugh.
“Mage?”
“He sent his thugs and his monsters to kill me, and now he wants me to work for him?”
She smiled again. “He pays well.”
“I’m not interested in money.”
“You’d be working with me, too.”
Mage’s smile twisted into something less pleasant. “Is that a proposition?”
She shrugged, and her breasts shifted enticingly underneath the tight silk. “He can get you anything you could possibly want.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” replied Mage heavily. “You know, the main reason I came here was because I thought he’d killed you. Okay, so he didn’t kill you, maybe he just killed someone who looked like you, but I’m not going to forgive him that easily. Who was she?”
The Art of Arrow Cutting Page 21