Second Skin (42 page)

She seemed so excited about this possibility that he hated to spoil her mood. But he had no choice. Quickly, he told her about Caesare’s move on the Goldoni family, about Margarite and Paul Chiaramonte. Vesper and Margarite had been friends and associates since Margarite had taken over her brother Dominic’s role.

‘Christ, Margarite.’ Her hands balled into white-knuckled fists. ‘We’ve got to find a way to get her the hell away from Caesare.’

‘Bad Clams is gonna make that very hard to do.’

Vesper put a hand on his arm. ‘Leave Caesare to me. You deal with the women.’ She bit her lip. ‘So Tony D. got whacked.’ She shook her head. ‘Why didn’t we see this coming?’

‘My thoughts exactly. But now’s not the time for recriminations.’

Vesper nodded in agreement. ‘Bad Clams told me a friend of his named Paul would be coming in today – with his girlfriend. I’ll bet anything he’ll stash them in the guesthouse.’ She looked at Croaker. ‘You okay?’

He nodded. ‘What about you?’

‘Fine.’ She didn’t want to talk about her and Caesare. Instead, she squeezed his arm. ‘We’ll get them back, don’t worry.’

‘Sure.’

‘After this, he’ll be giving me his confidence, Lew. I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it?’ She took a deep breath. ‘Meanwhile, we’ve got the next thirty seconds to get through. Now, listen, it’s just like drowning.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘Don’t try to breathe.’ Someone hammered on the door. ‘Just relax and let it happen. Let me do everything.’

He grinned fiercely. ‘One day, maybe I’ll take you up on that.’

‘Dream on.’ She laughed, then gave his arm a last squeeze. ‘Anyway, you’ll be too busy with Margarite and Francie. They’re going to need you now more than ever.’ She flipped the lock behind them. ‘We’d better get out of here. Ready?’

He nodded.

‘See you on the other side,’ she said, and they piled out of the toilet, past an indignant woman in winged sunglasses and orange lipstick, who muttered, ‘The nerve of some people!’

When Caesare saw Vesper hurrying out of the restaurant, he took note immediately. He did not like the look on her face.

‘Caesare!’ she called, and looked back over her shoulder.

Caesare took a step toward her. ‘What th’ fuck –!’ He saw Croaker racing out of the restaurant after her.

‘Hey!’ Croaker shouted. ‘Hey! You can’t get away from me that easily. Who the fuck you think you are?’

‘Get away from me!’ Vesper cried as he reached out for her blouse.

The sound of ripping silk made Caesare sprint toward her. Then, everything seemed to go into fast-forward so that, even later, it all seemed one brief blur to him.

Croaker, his hand full of Vesper’s rent blouse, slapped her hard across the face. She whirled and screamed.

‘Hey, you washed up fucker, get the fuck offa her!’ Caesare shouted as he scrabbled for the automatic in his left armpit.

People jumped, electrified at the explosion that shoved Croaker back like a giant fist. Caesare got a glimpse of the gun in Vesper’s hand, the blood seeping from the left side of Croaker’s chest as a table and chairs went flying. Diners shrieked, waitresses dropped trays and ran, panic escalated as the second explosion came. This time, Caesare was sure he saw the bullet slam into Croaker’s chest just millimeters from the first. The ex-cop was thrown off the canted overturned table, crumpling to the ground. Weirdly, in the midst of all the madness, Caesare found himself thinking with admiration and a bit of awe what a crack shot Vesper was.

Caesare knew he had to get them out of there as he clambered over scrambling bodies, shoved and punched others out of the way. It was like trying to swim against a riptide. He was inundated with people in a frenzy to get clear. The screams of the terrified onlookers built to an eerie crescendo. Caesare ignored it all, got to her, and pulled her to him.

‘That sonuvabitch,’ he heard her panting. ‘Nobody treats me like a piece of shit.’

He held her, knowing she was in serious trouble and that she needed his protection, his power, that without him she was finished. This was the confidence he was now prepared to give her, the confidence he
wanted
to give her; this was what the con game was all about. By needing him, Vesper would win his complete trust and bind him to her. It was simple human nature.

He took a step toward where Croaker lay, bent and bleeding. Was he dead? Jesus, how could he not be? Vesper had pumped two bullets into his heart. Jesus, she had nerves of steel.

He grabbed Vesper up in his arms and hustled her out of there, racing down Ocean Boulevard as the wail of the police sirens could be heard over the hip-hop blasting from cruising convertibles and out of packed restaurant terraces.

The massed wail of electronic guitars at first sounded like the sirens from a thousand ambulances. Then, as the acoustics of the vast space allowed the ululations to rise through the eight heavily glyphed columns girdling Mūdra’s dance floor, sound was magically transmuted into music – an ear-piercing, pulse-pounding, adrenaline-rush type of thing, but still rife with melody, harmonies – plus, you could dance to it.

Nicholas and Tanaka Gin moved through the writhing, sweaty dancers and the sweeping laser beams of light, feeling as if they were fish in a tank. Periodically, the haunting Sanskrit glyphs and bodhisattva sculptures were lit by the passing lights, giving literal form to the enlightened beings, whose karma it was to forgo nirvana in order to help others attain that state.

Outside, though it was past four in the morning, the Kaigon-dōri was alive with street punks with money to burn, models, singers, teenaged actors,
talentos,
and the predatory types who prowled around them in the urban forest of the night. Uncaring, they crisscrossed over the spot where Giai Kurtz had been killed by the murderous hit-and-run.

Nicholas had responded to a call from the prosecutor, who had told him there was someone he wanted Nicholas to interview, had driven into the heart of Tokyo and the Shibaura district, pushing his modified Kawasaki hard. He had been up anyway, analyzing the preliminary information Okami had provided on the personnel in the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office. He hadn’t bothered to wake Koei, but had left her a note. Unlike Justine, she was not threatened by his nocturnal comings and goings. She recognized that this was part of him.

‘I discovered who Kurtz left his money to.’ Tanaka Gin had to fairly shout above the din. ‘It was Sterngold, his corporate entity.’

‘Interesting,’ Nicholas said as he dodged a spinning female body, breasts all but exposed, that came at him with the speed and single-mindedness of a missile.

‘Wait, it gets better.’ Tanaka Gin led them beyond the dance floor to a relatively safe spot near a semicircular bar that looked as if it were carved out of the side of an Angkor Wat temple. ‘Kurtz stipulated in his will that his share of the Denwa Partners be spun off into a separate entity, Worldtel, Inc. I spent the better part of the afternoon in the data bank checking out Worldtel. It’s got a couple of small Southeast Asian wireless interests, nothing big-time. Now it’s got Denwa.’

Nicholas was momentarily distracted by a young woman with a series of nose rings that ran like a chain from one nostril to her cheek. She wore black lipstick and her spiky hair was pure white. ‘So who controls Worldtel? The Sterngold board of directors?’

‘Maybe once, but not anymore,’ Tanaka Gin said. ‘Worldtel was sold so recently – within the last twenty-four hours – that I couldn’t get any of the details, except for the name of the company that snapped it up, something called Tenki Associates.’

Nicholas felt a stirring at the back of his neck. Tenki was the name of the
toruko
where, according to Kisoko’s son, Ken, his mother and Nangi had met thirty-four years before they had actually gotten together, and where Honniko’s mother had worked during the Occupation. ‘Tenki?’ In his world there was no such thing as coincidence. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘You check it out?’

Tanaka Gin nodded. ‘Naturally. It’s hollow, a holding company with an address in Sri Lanka. I called, got an answering machine, and left a message, but I’m not holding my breath for a call back.’

Nicholas thought a moment. ‘My guess is we find out who owns Tenki Associates and we might have a direct line on the Kurtzes’ murderer.’

‘You
have a direct line to the murderer, Linnear-san.’

The floor turned to jelly beneath Nicholas’s feet and he felt himself falling, falling until Mūdra’s light and sound machine arched far above him and he felt as if he were slithering through primeval ooze, sinking down farther, sound damped, light disappearing more swiftly than the blink of an eye.

The incessant buzz of the bees trapped inside his head made him dizzy. Darkness all around, the voices of the bees – for now he could determine that they
were
voices, a language forming, being translated even as he listened like a greedy and fearful observer, a young child slipping out of bed to listen to the brittle and forbidden chatter at his parents’ late-night party.

Kshira was filling him with its shining face of evil. It was slipping through his unconscious like a nocturnal predator, jaws gleaming in the moonlight. It was so near dawn and he had had so little sleep during the last thirty-six hours that he did not have the strength to fight it, to claw his way back to the light and sound far above him.

Change,
Kisoko had told him.
Whatever it is, you must allow it to take place. Banish fear. Trust in
kokoro.

He slipped deeper into the jellylike darkness, and as he did so, the buzzing of the ten thousand bees, the parsing of the unknown language, was reduced to a single voice.

You should be familiar with revolutionaries; you were brought up by one...
A voice that was as familiar as it was chilling.
I have made an exhaustive study of your father. The Colonel was the most secretive man I have come across. More secretive, even, than my own father, who changed identities so often I wondered finally if he remembered who he really was...
Mick Leonforte’s voice echoing in his head, at the center of his being as the dark constructs of Kshira continued to form a permanent home. But how? How?
I make it my business to ruthlessly deconstruct the past and re-create it in the image of the future...

Nicholas’s eyes snapped open into a light only he could see. Eerily, terrifyingly, Kshira was showing him its Path, a converging of possibilities all extrapolated from recent events, which, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, were being fit together to form the tapestry of the present... and the future.

And he could see now that Kshira’s Path was a mirror, or at least what he had thought to be a mirror that night at the Kurtzes’ when, feeling the presence of their murderer, he had stared into it and had seen himself.

But now he knew the truth: it was a window, not a mirror, and the image he saw within, that he had mistaken for his own, was in fact that of Mick Leonforte. Doppelgänger. That rather old-fashioned word sent a roll of thunder echoing through his mind.
He and I are mirror images.

But that was absurd. Mick had murdered the Kurtzes, he was certain of that now. Why? To gain possession of Rodney Kurtz’s share of Denwa? But how would murder accomplish that? It might certainly prove valuable, but enough to kill two people for? Perhaps, for a man like Mick Leonforte. But Nicholas could not dismiss the feeling that he was missing some vital part of the puzzle.

The fear had vanished, replaced by a kind of fierce and feral exhilaration. It was Kshira – not Akshara – that had shown him the truth. Why had he been so afraid of it? Had he conveniently forgotten the effect it had had on Kansatsu, his mad
sensei,
and on Okami when he had tried to access the dark path? Why bother bringing up needless memories when the truth was right in front of him. Kshira provided
chikaku,
the profound perception all mystics of whatever discipline spent their lifetime searching for.

‘Linnear-san?’ He blinked, was back amid crushing sound and light. He was on his knees near the edge of the dance floor, his field of vision filled with a pah – of Japanese girls with hair longer than their skirts, which were, in any case, riding so high on their thighs, the secret was out.

‘I saw him,’ Nicholas said as Tanaka Gin pulled him to his feet. ‘I know who killed the Kurtzes, Gin-san. It was Michael Leonforte.’ Tanaka Gin’s eyes opened wide as he led Nicholas back toward a dark area near the bar. ‘Leonforte, the man behind Floating City?’

‘He and the dead American warlord Rock, yes.’

‘But I thought Mick Leonforte had been nuked in the explosion that destroyed Floating City.’

‘That’s apparently what he wants everyone to believe, but now I think he’s the one who stole the TransRim vid-byte technology from us.’ Tanaka Gin looked hard at Nicholas. ‘It’s all connected, isn’t it, Linnear-san? The Kurtzes’ murders, the Sato industrial espionage. Our cases have converged.’

‘So it would seem. But the only way to confirm it is to find out who owns Tenki Associates.’ Tanaka Gin said nothing for some time. Inundated as they were by the machine of amplified music, it was as if silence had been banished to another dimension. Not a breath could be taken without the tang of slamming bodies in motion, not a sensation could be felt without the deep, bone-jarring beat of digitalized bass and synthesized percussion.

‘The only way for me, you mean.’ Tanaka Gin stood close to Nicholas. ‘I am beginning to understand this about you, Linnear-san: you have your own methods of looking into matters.’ He nodded, almost a formal bow. ‘Given your talents, perhaps this is not uncalled for. But I want you to understand this: I am sworn to uphold the law, and though I am convinced that you are an honorable man in every sense of the word, still it has occurred to me that my law and yours will not always be... the same.’ Once again, Nicholas was struck by this man’s remarkable insight. He was unlike any prosecutor Nicholas had ever met before. In telling Nicholas that he was an honorable man in every sense of the word, Tanaka Gin had paid him the highest compliment. It seemed their relationship was destined to take new and unexpected turns. Nicholas returned the other man’s nod. ‘This may be as you say, Gin-san. But I swear to you that they will always be compatible.’ Now Tanaka Gin presented Nicholas with a formal bow.