She came into the living room, balancing the plate of zucchini bread on top of her mug of oolong. Gibbons was sitting on the couch, looking through the book she'd brought him, a scholarly study of the function of the centurion in the Roman army between 450
BC
and 350
AD
. He liked books about the Roman empire, but she'd made it clear that this wasn't a peace offering. She'd explained that it was a complimentary copy sent from the publisher courtesy of the author, a tweedy Boston Brahmin now teaching at UCLA who always brings some exotic liqueur to the Classical and Medieval History Society convention each year in the hope of luring her back to his hotel room. Last year it was a green potion from the Abruzzi region of Italy called Cent'Erbe, she said. The year before it was a rare Spanish armagnac. He was good-looking in a waspy sort of way, but she'd never taken him up on his standing invitation. This little slice of academic life was her way of getting back at him. He watched her set down his tea on the coffee table. If the convention were tomorrow, bet she'd go to bed with the jerk for a can of Bud just to fix him.
“So how's the case going?” Her voice was very frosty. Very out of character for her.
Gibbons flipped to the table of contents in the book. “Slow.” He didn't look up from the page.
“No leads?” More frost.
“Not really. You want to go out to a movie tonight?” Better than sitting here in the meat locker.
“You hate going to movies.”
He looked up at her. “You don't.”
“I don't think so. There's nothing I'm dying to see.”
Can't butter you up, huh? “Oh. Okay.” He went back to the book.
“Ivers must be getting antsy. He hates bad press, doesn't he? You once told me that ritual murders that aren't solved quickly create very bad publicity for the Bureau.”
He looked up at her. Since when do you care about bad publicity for the Bureau? “Who said anything about ritual murders?”
“Well, the way the killer cut them . . . It certainly seems ritualistic. That's what Michael says.”
He shut the book, tossed it on the coffee table, and reached for his tea. “That was yesterday's theory. Now he's hot on karate killers.”
“I take it from your tone of voice that you don't agree.”
Gibbons shook his head. “The problem with Tozzi is that whatever comes into his head goes out his mouth. Tomorrow it'll be something else.”
She broke off a piece of zucchini bread. “If you don't try out different theories, how else do you solve the case? Don't you have to consider every possibility, no matter how strange it may seem?”
“That's Tozzi's usual style. He's gotta jerk around for a while with the tangential stuff before he gets down to business.”
“You don't jerk around?”
He looked at her. “No.”
“Never?”
“Come on, let's go to a movie.” He started to get up.
“I said I didn't want to go.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
Gibbons sighed. He could see it coming. “Why not?”
“Do you really think street punks are capable of this kind of carnage? Or was it the Mafia? You always like to blame the Mafia. That's
your
thing.” She was getting testy. “But how many people would have the intestinal fortitude to make incisions like that, then pick up the bodies and put them in a car? It had to have been some extraordinary fiend. Even professional hit men do it quickly and get away fast. You told me that yourself.”
“What do you do, take notes when I say things?”
“Well?
Do
you think the Mafia is responsible?”
Gibbons shrugged. “Could be.”
“Do you
really
think the murderer was some guy acting on orders from his boss? It seems to me that it would take a hell of a lot of loyalty to kill like this. No, you're wrong. I don't think it was the Mafia.” She was gloating.
Gibbons shook his head slowly. “Who's more dedicated to their bosses than Mafia guys? They'll put you through a meat grinder and make hamburger if their boss tells them to. They're as vicious as they come. Believe me. I've seen.”
She looked him in the eye. “So why the hell did you go back to all that?”
The play of moonlight and shadow on the cobblestones turned the alley into the knotted armor on a giant samurai's chest. Mashiro stood in the shadows and felt his ancestor's presence under his feet. He counted the floors of the building across the way. There were lights on in the apartment. He crumpled the note with the address written on it and threw it away, then reached into his pocket for a handful of salt. He mumbled a prayer to the venerable Yamashita and tossed the salt onto the cobblestones.
“Let me tell you something.” Gibbons was on the edge of the couch, pointing his finger at her. “You've got a bug up your ass because I went back to work. You think there's something wrong with me because you think I get off on this kind of violent shit.”
“Well, don't you.”
“No, I don't. Maybe Tozzi does. But I don't.”
“We're not talking about Michael.”
“You know, you and your cousin are two of a kind. You have to blow everything way out of proportion. Well, put this in your notes. The motives for murder are almost always very simple ones. Hate, greed, revenge. One guy sees another guy scratching his new car in a parking lot and he goes nuts, bashes the other guy's head in with a tire iron. That's a typical murder.”
“Are you telling me these two kids were slaughtered and mutilated because they scratched the wrong man's car?”
“Don't act so stupid, will ya? The point I'm trying to make is that in a murder investigation you've got to concentrate on the motivation for the murders, not how it was done.
That's
how you investigate a homicide. Once you get bogged down in all kinds of irrelevant crap, you end up chasing your own tail.”
“Maybe
you're
the one missing the point. Thirty years as a special agent doesn't necessarily make you an expert on every crime, past, present, and future. I think you're being too close-minded about this.
It's a strange world and it gets stranger every day. You have to admit this was no ordinary killer. This was done by a killing machine.”
Gibbons chewed his upper lip and squinted at her. He was getting heartburn. “You sure you don't want to go to a movie?”
“Yes, I'm sure.”
Come on, maybe
Jaws
is playing somewhere.
Looking down at the cobblestone alley from the fire escape, Mashiro could see his ancestor's body, a giant warrior lying in state, noble in death. He bowed his head in reverence, then mounted the next step of the iron stairs, treading carefully. He stared up at the lighted windows three floors above and thought about the young tiger who challenged him at Toyota, remembering the tingle along the edge of his hand as he watched the young man sprawled out on the bathroom floor in that bar. He thought about his promise to his lord Nagai, then proceeded toward his mission.
“I never thought you had such a limited imagination,” she said, shaking her head. “I'm really disappointed in you. You insist on the most mundane plausibilities. Maybe this killer is a psychopath. A psychopath who thinks he's a . . .” âher eye caught the book on the coffee tableâ “a Roman centurion, let's say. You would never consider that, would you?”
“You're all wet. Psycho killers are a whole different ballgame.”
“No, no, just listen to me for a minute. Here's this individual, well-read in the history of ancient Rome, someone who gets a real charge out of wearing a short sword and a breast plate. But then one day he snaps, and because he's so entrenched in the lore of the Roman campaigns, he starts to believe that he's a centurion. But the thing about the centurions is that they lived only for the army, they were born to take orders. So what does our killer need to complete his reincarnation as a true centurion? A Caesar, right? Now let's suppose some villain enters his life, someone who sees that he can use this poor demented soul for his own evil ends if he just plays along and tells the guy he's his general.
Think about it.”
“I'm thinking about having you committed. Can we change the subject now?” He started to put his arm around her.
“No.” She pushed his arm away. “You're not listening to me. That's your whole goddamn problem. You don't consider anyone
else's point of view. How can you ever solve a crime if you can't acknowledge someone else's reality? Maybe you could before, but you can't now. Face it, you can't do it.” She grabbed her mug and gulped tea with her eyes closed. She was trying not to cry.
That awful, gut-wrenching silence stuffed the room then. He felt like a real turd. His going back to work upset her a lot more than he thought. He really was a shit-head sometimes. “I know you're pissed as hell at me,” he finally said. “I'm sorry. We should've talked about it first, I guess.”
She slammed down the mug on the coffeetable and splashed tea. “Saying âI'm sorry' isn't an eraser. It doesn't make it all disappear.”
“I'm apologizing. What else can Iâ”
“It's not enough. It doesn't make up for the past. You always do this to me. You shut me out all the time. You never think in terms of
us
.”
He let out a long sigh. “I hate these conversations. What am I supposed to do here? Cry? Sorry, I don't cry. You want me to say something, but I don't know what it is. If I thought my going back to work was going to get you all bent out of shape like thisâ”
“It's not that you went back to the Bureau. It's the fact that you didn't tell me what you intended to do.”
“Well, what the hell did you think I intended to do? After thirty years with the FBI, what am I going to do? Become a florist?”
She laughed through her tears and shook her head. “You'll never change, will you?”
He hooked his hand around her neck and drew her closer. He felt awful seeing her cry over him. “Look, I don't know what to say to you. I love you, butâ”
“Okay, shut up. That's all I wanted to hear. Just make me one promise and I'll be happy.”
“What?”
“Be more careful from now on. No more derring-do. My heart can't take it. You're not invincible, no one is. Cut the risks. Stick with Michael when it gets dangerous. Promise me that. I don't want to get old alone.”
Gibbons swallowed hard. “Okay . . . I promise. I'll be more careful.”
She hugged him close, pressing her lips to his, smothering a sob. She ground her mouth against his and reached into his shirt, rubbing
the hair on his chest. He held her tight. He didn't want to let go. She might see a teary eye if he did. She started to unbuckle his belt then.
He turned his head to disengage for a moment. “Hey, you sure you don't want to see a movie now?”
She sniffed and laughed, a real laugh. “Just lie back and relax, Gibbons.”
She unzipped his pants and went for him, squeezing tight until he was even harder than he already had been. He unbuttoned her blouse and fumbled with the bra hook in the front. Impatient, she unhooked it herself and quickly threw off the blouse and bra in one motion. He caressed one soft breast in his thick, callused hand as she twisted to kick off her slacks. His other hand smoothed the panties over her ass and outlined the seam around the edge of her pubic hair. She smiled through a kiss and tasted his tongue. Hers was delicious.
Suddenly she pulled away and arched her head back. “I just thought of something.”
“What'd I do now?”
“Not about you. About the killer.”
“Oh, shit . . .”
“Maybe he's not a centurion. Maybe he's a Russian cossack. Those guys were really sword crazy.” She grinned down at him slyly.
“Give it a rest, Bernstein.”
“You've got to consider the possibilities. Otherwise you get stale.” She was laughing softly as she leaned down and started nibbling his earlobe while he feather-stroked the crease where her thigh met her crotch. He grinned and groaned low like a horny bear.
Outside the living room window, the stout dark figure peered in at them. Mashiro glanced down through the iron grid under his feet at the moonlit cobblestones and frowned. Very dishonorable to attack a man making love to his woman. He turned and headed down the fire escape as silently as he came, trying to ignore the sounds of pleasure coming from inside.
THE DUSTY SMELLS of lawn fertilizer and weed control brought back memoriesânot entirely pleasant memories. When he was a teenager, Tozzi worked summers with a gardener from his neighborhood, busting his hump mowing lawns six days a week from seven till sundown, pushing those goddamn mowers back and forth, up terraces, down ravines, across lawns as big as outfields, his fingers itching with the constant vibration, going deaf from the noise of the motor, sweating buckets in the noonday sun. He could remember how much he hated those big expensive houses in Short Hills, Milburn, South Orange, West Orange, Livingston. You rarely saw any people living in them. The only signs of life were the rumbling central air-conditioning units, which he always took as a snub. Haha, you're hot, we're not. He still had something of an automatic prejudice against rich people. Sure, he realized now that if those rich people hadn't hired their gardeners, kids like him wouldn't have had summer jobs. Still, when you're pushing a lawnmower back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and it's ninety-six degrees, humid as hell, and you know there are people somewhere in those air-conditioned houses because the Caddy's in the drive, you tend to think in terms of plantations, white-suited Kentucky colonels, and chain gangs.