Bad Blood (9 page)

Mashiro raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”

“Should I trust him?”

“You've trusted him this far.”

“So.”

Mashiro rested his hands on the hilt of the long sword in his belt. “Something is bothering you. What? What has D'Urso done?”

Nagai considered telling him then, but suddenly changed his mind. “There's nothing that he's done in particular. I just have a bad feeling about him sometimes. I always find myself wanting to know what he's really feeling. On the surface he seems fine, but there always seems to be a nasty undercurrent, especially whenever Francione is around. I just don't feel right around them.”

Mashiro scratched his neck. “I know little of feelings. Only actions.” Nagai knew he'd say something like that. You're a big help.

“I get the impression that D'Urso has some big ideas, ideas that could wreck our partnership with the Mafia. I couldn't let that happen.”

Mashiro shrugged. “What difference does it make who we sell our slaves to?”

“Hamabuchi wants us to do business with Antonelli's family. You know how he is about Antonelli, his old friend from the days after the war.”

“Everything is war, all the time. Which war?”

“The one we lost.” Wise guy. Is this how your ancestor spoke to his lord? “Hamabuchi told me right out. If our partnership with Antonelli's family falls apart, he'll blame me. He's already said as much. That's a lot of money he'd be losing.” Nagai then held up his hand, fingers spread to show Mashiro his two stumpy fingers. “Another finger won't satisfy him if this deal is blown. I'm in exile as it is. The only punishment left is . . .”

“Death.” Mashiro nodded like a horse. Who the hell's side was he on anyway?

The samurai got down on his knees then and bowed to his lord. “I will stand by you, no matter what. You have my pledge.”

Nagai grinned wearily. Mashiro was a good man and tough, too. But come on, he was only one guy. And could D'Urso's Mafia boys really protect him from Hamabuchi's revenge? Not if they were all like that joke Francione. “Hamabuchi has a lot of men over here watching us,” he said. “We've got sixty with us, but I know there're more here than that. The guys in our crew, the ones who supposedly take orders from us, they really get their orders directly from him. I
know
it. I'm living with assassins all around me.” Nagai threw another cherry into his mouth, then spit it out. What the hell was he eating these things for?

Mashiro got to his feet and gestured with his head toward the bowl of cherries. Didn't he hear any of this, goddamn him? Nagai grabbed a handful of cherries in disgust and threw them at him.

Mashiro drew both swords. Flashing steel surrounded him like an evil mist. He was a goddamn human food processor, sending specks of neon red flying in every direction. His final slash was with the short sword. A cherry half flew straight up into the air. When it came down, he caught it on the flat of his blade. “There will be no trouble with D'Urso and no trouble with Hamabuchi. You will be happy. I am dedicating myself to it. Please do not worry.” He flipped the sword up and tossed the cherry into his mouth. He bowed, grinned, and chewed.

Nagai forced a smile. Maybe he could switch sides and pull it off. Maybe Mashiro really was a one-man army. Musashi Miyamota apparently was. If Mashiro could keep him alive long enough for him to establish a power base here with D'Urso, it just might work out after all. It was possible. Nagai picked out another cherry from the bowl and popped it into his mouth. Life just might be okay after all.

IT WAS ALMOST seven when the PATH train from the World Trade Center rumbled into the Hoboken station. Tozzi's car was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Lots of oxblood leather briefcases, Burberry raincoats, tortoise-shell glasses, and panty-hose legs in white Reeboks, and they were all getting off here. Standing in line to get through the turnstiles, Tozzi wondered if Hoboken was really the place for him. He climbed the stairs up to the street with the crowd and crossed the wide cobblestone street. As he approached the curb on the other side, he saw himself in the reflection of a plate-glass window in a fern bar. The light gray suit and the black Italian loafers were too new; they weren't him yet. He took a good look and was a little disappointed with what he saw. He didn't look that different from the rest of the crowd. Maybe he did belong here.

He'd promised the lady at Elysian Fields Realty that he'd be there at seven. He figured he may as well start looking for another apartment because there was no way he was going to be approved for the one on Adams Street that Mrs. Carlson had showed him. No wife, no good. He considered going to that meeting with the landlord on Friday anyway and telling them his wife had died unexpectedly, a brain tumor or something like that. Maybe the landlord would take him out of pity. But that was too stupid, he decided. Everything was stupid.

He'd spent the whole day trying to make a concrete connection
between the “Death Bug” murders, cult killers, and swords, and he came up with absolutely nothing. He'd somehow forgotten how frustrating it can be poring through files, cross-checking possibilities on the computer, spending hours and hours trying to make the facts work the way you want them to, then finally realizing that what you thought was a brilliant hunch wasn't worth shit. The deep cuts on the two bodies weren't quite like anything on file in the National Crime Information Center database. The labs kept insisting that the cuts were done simultaneously with a single blade, and there was nothing like that in the computer. Tozzi had found it hard to swallow when he first heard it, and he was still skeptical. It sounded physically impossible. The ME had to be wrong about that.

It was getting cold. The wind was beginning to bite. Tozzi shoved his hands in his pockets, wishing he had his trench coat with him, then remembered he didn't have that coat anymore. He'd have to get a new one. Shit. That was a nice coat, too.

Walking up Washington Street, he noticed the paper jack-o'-lanterns taped to the window of a very fancy Italian deli. There was a whole rack of designer pastas just inside the door and a freezer case next to it filled with a variety of frozen sauces. In his family, they called it “macaroni” not “pasta,” and “sauce” was “gravy.” He didn't care much for these nouvelle salumerias that specialized in sun-dried tomatoes and porcini mushrooms. He liked the older places down on the sidestreets where you could get a big ham and mozzarell' sandwich with sweet red peppers, where they make the mozzarell' fresh in the back, where you can put a ten-spot on a horse if they know you in some of them. Admittedly, he liked the kinds of places wiseguys liked. Except he wasn't a wiseguy. He was a fed.

Elysian Fields Realty was on the next block. Tozzi walked briskly, anxious to get in out of the cold, anxious to find a home. But then his eye caught a small, hand-painted sign hanging over a doorway:
HOBOKEN COOPERATIVE SCHOOL OF SELF-DEFENSE
. There were a bunch of Japanese or Chinese characters written under the words. Tozzi backed up to the curb and looked up to the second floor of the building over the florist shop on the ground floor. The windows were all brightly lit. He could see several figures in white uniforms moving around up there. Tozzi suddenly thought about the dead couple and the violent blows to the neck that killed them. He glanced down the
street at the Elysian Fields Realty storefront. That could wait. This was more important. He opened the door and went upstairs.

There was no one in the small, cheaply furnished waiting room so he poked his head into the studio. It was a big space, just about the entire length of the building, paint peeling off the ceiling, brightly lit. The wood floor was almost entirely covered with big blue mats. There were about a dozen or so people on the mats, mostly guys, four women, a pretty even mix of white belts, orange belts, blue belts, and brown. They were paired off, practicing some kind of move that involved throwing an attacker grabbing you in a choke hold from behind. The teacher—the
sensei
as Tozzi remembered—was a mellow-looking guy with a full, reddish-brown beard and a receding hairline. He weaved through the pairs, watching them, frequently stopping to correct their mistakes. He was wearing what looked like a pair of full-length, pleated black skirt-pants over his white
gi
uniform. Tozzi had taken some karate at Quantico as part of his FBI training, a very condensed version modified exclusively for police work. He remembered his
sensei
only wearing his black belt. These skirt-pants were something new to him.

As he watched the
sensei
instruct the class, he soon realized that this wasn't karate, unless it was one of the more obscure forms. He doubted it, though, because it seemed nothing like karate. There were no kicks or chops. Everyone seemed very calm and poised. Whenever they paired off to practice, the person who initiated the attack invariably lost, usually winding up flat on his back or tumbling headfirst across the mat. The brown belts and some of the blue belts in particular seemed to exert very little effort when they threw their opponents. It almost didn't seem real. Tozzi was intrigued. He leaned up against the doorway and watched as the
sensei
called for an end to the practice of this technique. The partners stopped, bowed to each other, then rushed to kneel in a line facing their teacher.

The
sensei
then called on the biggest person in the class, a black guy who was built like a wide receiver. He handed the black guy a wooden sword and announced the Japanese name of the technique he was going to demonstrate. They faced off then, the black guy holding the sword in both hands. Suddenly he raised the sword over his head, lunged forward, and attacked as if he intended to slice the
sensei
right down the middle. Tozzi swore the guy was going to split his teacher's head open, but the
sensei
simply stepped to the side, grabbed the hilt of the sword over the black guy's big hands, apparently pumped up and down once, and flipped the big guy over head first. Holy shit! The floor shook when the black guy hit the mat. The
sensei
just stood there calmly with the wooden sword in his hand. Tozzi was impressed. It was just like something out of a kung-fu movie. When the black guy got back to his feet, the
sensei
presented him with the sword again. They did the same move a few more times. The black guy attacked a little more viciously each time, and each time he hit the mat a little harder. It almost looked fake to Tozzi.

“Shomen Uchi Kokyu Nage,”
the
sensei
repeated. “Also known as the ‘sledgehammer throw.' With motion this time. For demonstration,” he added with a little smile.

The
sensei
nodded to his partner, then turned and started to run with the black guy in hot pursuit. Tozzi was surprised to see him running away instead of taking a stand and fighting. There was no doubt that the black guy was going to catch him, given the length of the guy's legs. The
sensei
was quick, though, and the black guy had to hustle to catch up and get within striking distance. Suddenly the
sensei
changed directions. The black guy followed, but when they got to the middle of the mat again, the
sensei
turned and faced the swordsman rushing at him full-tilt. The sword came down in a loud
whoosh
. He stepped to the side and grabbed the hilt, made that little pump-move, and the poor black guy was really flying now. Tozzi winced. The black guy hit the mat
real
hard this time. He took his time getting up. The
sensei
stood there calm and erect with the sword in his hand.

When the black guy was ready again, the
sensei
gave back the sword and they repeated the technique slowly as he explained the fine points to the class. Finally he and the black guy knelt down and bowed to each other. “
Shomen Uchi Kokyu Nage
,” he said. “Please practice in two lines.
Without
motion, please.” A few people laughed.

Tozzi was curious. He'd never seen anything like this before. It looked fake, but he had a feeling it wasn't. He stayed for the rest of the class.

When class broke up, he waited for the students to disperse before
he went over to the
sensei
who had stepped out of those skirt-pants of his and was busy folding them on the mat. It seemed like a very involved procedure.

“Hi,” he said. He hunkered down in order to be eye level with the
sensei
.

The man stared at his feet. “No shoes on the mat, please.”

Tozzi immediately stood up and took off his loafers, embarrassed. He should've known better. “Sorry. Tell me, this wasn't karate you were just doing here, was it?”

The
sensei
smoothed the pleats of his pants and shook his head. “Adult karate classes meet on Thursday and Saturday.”

The guy wasn't unfriendly, but he had that sort of affable evasiveness a lot of people had in the sixties. You ask a question, he answers it, but you don't feel that you've gotten any information. “So what was this class?” Tozzi had to ask.

“Aikido.”

“Aikido.” Tozzi nodded. He'd heard of it, but he didn't know anything about it. “So tell me, what's aikido?”

The
sensei
stopped and looked up at him. He seemed to be sizing up Tozzi, trying to figure out what kind of answer he could handle. “Aikido is a Japanese martial art. It's based on harmonizing with the force of an attack and redirecting the attacker's momentum against him.”