Second Skin (55 page)

‘Oh, shit!’ Waxman softly hit the side of his head, and Eiko turned around. ‘I left the lights on in my car.’ He gave her a smile that made his scars burn white. ‘I tell you what, honey. You go on ahead and get everything ready and I’ll be right along.’

‘Hai.’
Eiko pointed out the room to him, then gave him a little bow and trotted off down the hall.

Waxman turned and took a couple of steps back down the hall. But when he heard the door to the room slide shut, he went back to stand outside the Colonel’s rooms to overhear more of the conversation with that lying sonuvabitch Black Paul Mattaccino.

‘Mr Mattaccino, you’re sorely trying my patience... Is that so?... I don’t take kindly to threats like that... See here, I’ll have you picked up and – Hello? Hello?’ Sound of the receiver slamming onto its pips. ‘Sodding hell!’

Johnny Leonforte had heard enough. A sly, secret smile broadened his mouth. He knocked on the door, and when a voice muttered, ‘Come in,’ he did just that.

The Colonel looked up. ‘Can I help you? I think you’ve come to the wrong place.’

‘Nah, I don’t think so.’ Johnny hooked an ankle around a chair leg, brought it under him, and sank into it.

‘And you are?’

A limey, Johnny thought. And a colonel to boot. ‘Leon Waxman.’ He did not extend a hand, remembering vaguely how formal limeys were.

‘Col. Denis Linnear.’ The Colonel gave him a curt nod and, closing a file in which he had been writing, slipped it into the top left-hand drawer of a desk. He slid it firmly shut, then clasped his hands across the desktop. ‘How may I be of help, Mr Waxman?’

‘I think you got it the wrong way around,’ Johnny said with a little grin.

The Colonel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Is that so?’

‘Yeah. I hear you got problems with a man named Black Paul Mattaccino.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Yeah, well, I have. Fact is, I know the bastard inside out. Bettah maybe than his own mama.’

‘That’s all very interesting but –’

At that moment, Eiko burst in, breathless and sweating. ‘Colonel-san,’ she cried, ‘please come quick. A fight between two clients. One is bleeding and the other –’

‘Excuse me, Mr Waxman, I’ll be right back,’ the Colonel said, leaping up. In two strides he was out of the room. Johnny could hear the two of them racing down the hall.

‘That’s all right,’ he said to the empty room, ‘take your time.’ Then he got up and, after taking a peek at the empty hallway, sat down behind the Colonel’s desk. He slid open the top left-hand drawer and took out the file in which the Colonel had been writing. It had a
TOP SECRET
G-2 stamp. American military intelligence, Johnny thought. He opened it, found the plans to bring Sen. Jacklyn McCabe to Tokyo early the next week. In the left-hand margin was handwritten in hurried script:

Donnough bringing McC here

2300 hrs, tues. Use rm 7.

Mk sure security airtight.

Johnny’s heart was hammering hard in his chest. Senator McCabe was going to be here at Tenki. Johnny knew everything: date, time, place. He knew this was the break of a lifetime. Neither his father nor his brother Alphonse had been able to get to see McCabe. Now he had his chance. The Leonforte family had a great deal to offer the senator, and McCabe was nothing if not a pragmatic man. Johnny glanced up.
Thank you, Colonel Linnear,
he thought. Then, as he heard voices in the hall, he closed the file, shoved it into the drawer, and slid it shut. He got up and was just settling himself in the chair across the desk when the Colonel came in.

‘You still here?’ The Colonel, clearly annoyed, sat down behind his desk and began making hurried notes.

‘Trouble?’ Johnny asked nonchalantly.

‘Nothing I can’t handle.’

‘Take it from me, it won’t be so easy with Black Paul Mattaccino.’

The Colonel’s eyes flicked up. ‘I told you, I don’t know the man.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Listen, Mr...’

‘Waxman.’

‘Mr Waxman, we’re wasting each other’s time here.’

Johnny put up his palms and rose. ‘Okay. Maybe you’re right.’ He flashed the Colonel a brief smile. ‘See you around.’

That Tuesday night, the Colonel was nervous. So much was riding on a plan that was as fragile as it was audacious. So many vectors heading toward one nexus point, so many variables, so much to go wrong.

‘Fragile,’ Eiko said, turning the word over in her mouth as the Colonel voiced his fears. Then she shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. It’s all a matter of human nature, isn’t it? And that’s the surest thing in the world,’ She flashed him a smile. ‘Don’t worry, Colonel-san. What is the worst that can happen?’

‘McCabe gets away scot-free and crucifies me for being a Communist-loving Jew and Okami finds out I’m hiding Johnny Leonforte from him.’ He looked at her over his pipe. ‘Two greater personal catastrophes I cannot imagine.’

‘Well, at least now you have it in perspective,’ Eiko said quietly, and in her tone and the look on her face the Colonel knew that she was proud to be involved in what he was doing. This gave him the flash of added confidence he needed.

‘Thank you, Eiko-san.’

Her eyes lowered before his gaze. ‘I have done nothing, Colonel-san.’

He put the flat of his hands on his desk and stood up. ‘Either way this goes, Eiko-san, I’m going to take you out tonight for the best sushi you’ve ever had.’

She said nothing, which, for her, was as good as acceptance.

At precisely 2300 hours – eleven
P.M.
civilian time – Donnough brought Jacklyn McCabe to Tenki. McCabe was a heavyset, balding man with a slab of a forehead, heavy jowls, blue with permanent stubble, and a thick roll of fat above the collar of his shirt. He smelled of cologne and sweat and he glowered at the world with equal amounts of distrust and hostility from out of piggish eyes set too close together.

But he had an undeniable force of personality and a sonorous speaking voice that could make the phone book interesting, and that, apparently, was what mattered most.

McCabe took a look around the operation as if he were a field commander inspecting the troops. The Colonel could almost see him licking his chops.

‘We sure can’t get this kind of service at home,’ McCabe said to Donnough. ‘The most I can expect is to poke a bull when no one’s looking.’ He roared with laughter.

At last, he was introduced to Eiko. ‘You got any boys in this rattrap? I mean real fine upstanding youths.’ McCabe guffawed again, enjoying himself immensely. Perhaps the freedom of the
toruko
after the intensive round of high-level meetings at SCAP HQ made him feel giddy.

‘All first-rate,’ Eiko said in her best imitation of pidgin English. ‘All up – up –’

‘Upstanding!’
McCabe roared, making a lewd gesture with one loosely held fist. And when she nodded vigorously and led him to room seven, he turned to Donnough as if she were not there and said, ‘This looks to be the highlight of a very acrimonious trip, Jack.’ He put his hand on the door and said in a dismissive tone, ‘Now you run along and wait till I’m done. Then, maybe we’ll get some chow.’

Room seven was set up and waiting for him. Through the two-way mirror, the Colonel snapped picture after picture of the senator’s hairy, overweight body performing a series of truly astonishing sexual gymnastics with a sleek-bodied Japanese boy of no more than twelve. The Colonel had been in the Orient far too long to be squeamish about such things. Still, he never failed to feel a deep pang of frustration that there was nothing to be done about such practices. He felt no anger and he had some time before put away prejudices that brought to mind the word
abuse.
Sex was a cultural thing and he had no jurisdiction – either legal or moral – to interfere.

When a naked Johnny Leonforte entered room seven, the Colonel allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. Human nature, as Eiko said. The young boy was slumped on the floor asleep, but the senator, still filled with energy, had rung for another.

‘Jesus Mother,’ he said when he saw Johnny, ‘you’re too fuckin’ old.’

Johnny laughed, stuck out his hand, and introduced himself. ‘Senator Jacklyn, you and I have a lot t’talk about.’

‘We do?’ McCabe gave a nervous glance at the Japanese youth.

‘Yes, indeed.’ Johnny gave him his broadest grin. ‘I, personally, will see to it you get blotto on sex and whatever else it is you want every night of the week.’

McCabe looked skeptical. ‘I live in the United States, Mr Waxman, in Washington, DC, to be exact. Folks over there don’t take too kindly to what gives me pleasure.’

‘But that’s the beauty part, Senator Jack. I’m in the business of, er, procurement.’ Johnny made a deep bow. ‘I’m your personal genie. Your wish is my command.’

The Colonel, watching this first contact through the two-way mirror, had to admire Johnny Leonforte’s nerve. This had been the most difficult part of his plan because he had no part in it. He’d had to rely on Leonforte to make contact with McCabe, to form a liaison close enough to bring him – and the entire Leonforte family – down when pictures of McCabe in the embrace of a twelve-year-old boy were circulated to every member of the Congressional Ethics Committee.

Peering through the mirror at the parade of young Japanese boys Johnny now ushered through the door, the Colonel could see he needn’t have worried. Johnny Leonforte was a clever and resourceful soul.

‘It’s over,’ Eiko said as she happily ate a huge plateful of sushi. ‘You took care of Senator McCabe
and
the Leonfortes. Bernice and Paul are very grateful.’

‘I trust you to make sure they fulfill their part of the bargain,’ the Colonel said. Her unabashed delight in the food made him happy.

‘Of that you can be assured.’ Eiko gripped a piece of fatty toro with the end of her chopsticks and, after dipping it delicately in soy sauce, popped it into her mouth. Her eyes closed as she chewed slowly and methodically. ‘This
is
the best sushi I’ve ever had. Where did you find this place?’

‘Okami owns it.’

‘Ah, Okami.’ She wiped her lips. ‘You have successfully kept all of this from him?’

‘It wasn’t easy and, to be honest, I’m not happy about it. I can only hope this deception doesn’t come back to haunt me one day.’ The Colonel looked past her. ‘But with his hot temper I knew the moment I told him that Leon Waxman was Johnny Leonforte, he’d go after him again and this time finish the job. That wouldn’t have fit into my plans. I needed Johnny to take all the Leonfortes down.’

‘I hope it was worth keeping him alive. In my estimation he’s a very dangerous man.’

Prophetic words, but the Colonel would never know that. In the autumn of 1963 he died, and everything he had worked for slowly started to come undone.

‘I
did this,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have done this,’ says my pride, remaining inexorable. Eventually, my memory yields.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nicholas found Tanzan Nangi in a back room of Kisoko’s town house. It was on the top floor, a place of musty smells from long disuse. Cobwebs crisscrossed the windows like bars in a prison. Somewhere a clock with an enormous pendulum was ticking sonorously. The pendulum’s shadow was cast across the dusty wooden floor like an admonishing finger.

Nangi was draped across the antique sleigh bed of bitter black ebony. The white sheets in which he was tangled were heavily stained, and when Nicholas approached, he could see blood, black as night, black as the ebony of the bed.

He called Nangi’s name but it was as if something in the walls absorbed his voice. The ticking of the clock. Or was it Nangi’s heart? He bent down and, scooping Nangi up, turned to take him away.

The ticking turned metallic. In the semidarkness, he saw another shadow cut through the swinging blade of the pendulum. He went slowly back across the room the way he had come. It seemed a very long way; with each step Nangi’s gray body grew heavier.

‘Who is it?’ Nicholas called. ‘Who’s there?’ But, again, the walls caught his voice and absorbed it.

Then, he saw movement, and the shadow of the pendulum was blotted out. Someone – he could not see who – seemed to be sitting cross-legged on the floor. He was blocking the only exit from the room.

Nicholas opened his
tanjian
eye, extending his psyche outward to get a sense of who was blocking the way.

That won’t work here.

Then, inexplicably, Akshara shut down. He gave a little cry, just as if he had extended his arm into unknown blackness only to have it lopped off at the shoulder. A cold shudder ran through him as, unbidden, his
tanjian
eye closed.

And, in that instant of panic, he saw the seated figure levitate off the floor. Floating, floating, a soft laughter echoing, bouncing off walls that absorbed his own voice. And then the figure shot toward him with such malignant intent Nicholas threw one arm reflexively across his face...

And awoke sitting bolt upright.

‘Nicholas, are you all right?’

He looked up into Honniko’s anxious face. ‘Where am I?’

‘In my apartment in Sunshine City. You had a – I don’t know what to call it – a seizure like the ones you had just before and at lunch. Marie Rose and I managed to get you to my futon before you passed out altogether.’ Honniko knelt on the bed, wiped his forehead. ‘You’re sweating. Maybe you’re sick?’

He shook his head. ‘No. It’s just a nightmare.’ But such a real nightmare, he thought. He put his head in his hands, went into prana to cleanse his respiratory system. The bouts with Kshira were getting worse; he had no memory of this one. It seemed clear to him now that deliberately summoning Kshira was making the involuntary seizures more acute.

‘Where is the mother superior?’

‘She left. I don’t know where.’ Honniko said it in a tone that made him understand she was not supposed to ask.

He looked up at her. ‘That story you told me – about your mother, Eiko, my father, and Johnny Leonforte –’