Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
A lightning flash,
between the forest trees
I have seen water.
—Mosaoka Shiki
A woman in a bubblegum-pink angora sweater and a short, pleated skirt the color of the sky at dusk was waiting for Croaker when he walked into the lobby of the Holiday Inn Central on Rhode Island Avenue and Fifteenth Street. The color of her hair could only be termed violent black. It was blunt cut, perfectly straight, and came to just below her jawline. She had a heart-shaped face and wore wraparound sunglasses with mirrored lenses. She lounged against the check-in counter; under one arm was a thick manila envelope, which she handed to him when he approached the concierge’s desk.
“Samuel Johnson, I presume?” She had a low, husky voice that seemed more of a purr.
“And you are?”
“Just a voice on the other end of a coded line.” She regarded him as he opened the envelope.
“Shouldn’t we do this somewhere... more private?”
He looked up. “We? What are you doing here anyway?”
She shrugged. “I was intrigued. These days I’m so bored I go Rollerblading all afternoon.”
“Yeah?” He took a look at her legs, which were very long and beautifully shaped. “And what happens if you’re needed?”
“I get beeped.” She smiled. “Have cellular phone, will travel.”
He went through the documents quickly. “What got you so intrigued?”
“I was wondering why you wanted me to run down my sister’s car.”
“Your sister?”
“Yeah.” She pointed. “The Nissan 300 ragtop’s hers. Vesper Arkham.” She stuck out her hand. “My name’s Domino.” She laughed, looking at his expression. “I often get that look. Don’t worry. My father was a James Bond fanatic. He named his daughters after characters in the novels.”
“At least he didn’t name either of you Pussy.”
“Thank God for small favors.” She hooked her arm through his. “Now how about buying me breakfast while you tell me what you want with Vesper.”
At that hour there wasn’t much to choose from. She took him to the restaurant at the Four Seasons in Georgetown. If was out of the way, but that was the point. He ordered orange juice, coffee, eggs, and bacon.
Domino asked for coffee and toast, both of them black. “I like my toast charcoaled and my meat bloody, who knows why.”
When the waiter had gone, he said, “What do you know about Sen. Richard Dedalus?”
“Dedalus? How is he connected with my sister?”
“He may not be. It depends.”
The waiter appeared with the coffee and juice, then disappeared behind some potted foliage. Across the expansive room sunlight flooded through a narrow garden and into the restaurant. There were few other patrons; the closest was a beefy salesman, busily scrolling through a notebook computer, and unless he was equipped with a directional microphone, he was out of earshot.
“Actually, I went out with him for a while.” Domino sipped her coffee. “It was an assignment, really. Richie’s so influential it was thought, well, it might be best to vet him in this rather... unorthodox manner. I mean, we didn’t have access to flutter him or anything.” Fluttering meant submitting to a lie detector. “It was for his own good.”
“Sure it was.”
Domino made a face. “I didn’t sleep with him or anything.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
She put down her cup. “You didn’t have to.”
Their food came, and he was silent for some time, watching her take tiny bites out of her cindered toast. “Do you think you could take off those glasses? The lenses are giving me the willies.”
Domino removed them and he saw a pair of wide-apart emerald eyes, fully as large as the startling cornflower blue eyes he had glimpsed in her blond sister.
“I like Richie,” Domino continued. “He’s smart and quick. There’s nothing old about the way he thinks.”
Croaker broke one yolk, mopped up the mess with a slice of bacon. “He have any unusual friends?”
“Unusual?”
“For a United States senator.”
“Richie has a lot of friends.”
Richie. She was speaking about one of the most powerful men in America. “Was one of them Dominic Goldoni?”
“The Mafia boss? The guy who was murdered last year?”
“That’s the one.”
Domino wiped her fingertips on her napkin. “I guess so. I remember meeting his sister. What was her name?”
“Marilyn.”
“No. Margarite. I remember her very well. She impressed me; not like some Italian princesses I’ve met, if you get my drift.”
Croaker certainly did. “So Margarite and the senator got together. What did they do?”
Domino shook her head. “You first. What do you want with Vesper?”
Croaker wiped his mouth, took a swig of coffee while wondering how big a hole the acid was going to burn in his stomach. “I saw her last night. At Moniker’s. She and Margarite took off in the black Nissan ragtop.”
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know.”
“And Richie?”
“Margarite arrived at the strip joint in Senator Dedalus’s limo.”
“So you’re following Goldoni’s sister.”
“No. Someone else who was at Moniker’s.” No way he was going to tell this woman the truth. He had trusted Lillehammer up to a point and had been betrayed.
Domino turned her head toward the sunlight streaming into the room while she thought over his answers. “My sister worked for Leon Waxman before his death.”
“I worked for William Justice Lillehammer.”
“Really? And you two never met? Lillehammer worked for Waxman.”
“Right. Same agency. I was recruited in the field. I never came to his office. In fact, I didn’t know he had one.”
Domino pursed her lips. “You sure you came by the codes legitimately? I’d hate to think I gave intelligence over to an interloper.”
“Lillehammer hired me as a freelance to look into Dominic Goldoni’s death.”
“And you’re still doing that? I had heard Goldoni was murdered by a crazy Vietnamese with a grudge—Duck something.”
Croaker couldn’t help smiling. “Do Duc, yes. But it’s never been made clear just who hired Do Duc. It’s my belief that it was Waxman.”
“That would make sense since Waxman turned out to be Johnny Leonforte.”
It was becoming clear that this woman was no dim-witted bureaucratic clerk.
Croaker thought a moment. “How did Dedalus come to hire Waxman in the first place?”
“He came highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“I wouldn’t know.” She contemplated him for some time. “Maybe Vesper does.”
“Another reason why I need to see her.”
She leaned across the table. “Who were you surveilling at Moniker’s?”
“I’m afraid that’s privileged information.”
She stood up. “Then I can’t help you with Margarite and the senator.”
“Sit down. Please.”
Reluctantly, she did as he asked. It was dawning on him that this woman was outmaneuvering him. That rankled him. He knew he shouldn’t feel that way. If she had been a man, he’d see this merely as an interesting adversarial confrontation. He wondered how to proceed. Perhaps a modicum of the truth was called for.
“The truth is Lillehammer brought me in because he was concerned about a traitor or traitors inside his agency. He warned me to trust no one; so far it’s been sound advice.”
“The trouble with it is, in order to get on with your investigation you’ve got to trust someone sometime.”
She was right, of course, but he hated to admit it. “I am curious about Dominic Goldoni’s relationship with Senator Dedalus. On the face of it, it’s odd enough to warrant investigation.”
“I agree. But when you know that Dedalus was in charge of a subcommittee looking into reregulating interstate trucking regulations and municipal bidding for new construction, Goldoni’s motivation for sucking up to the senator becomes clear.”
“And Margarite is continuing the relationship.”
“I imagine so. I can’t think of any other reason she would want to see Dedalus.” She gave him a playful smile. “You see? A little trust isn’t such a terrible thing to give away, is it?”
Nicholas opened his eyes into whiteness. He blinked rapidly, tears coming to his eyes, as he became aware of his breathing: in, out, in, out. The whiteness was everywhere, as if he existed, weightless, within a cloud. He could hear his heart beating like the
ki
of the sky, the blood coursing through his arteries and veins like the wind.
The harsh cry of a seagull took him out of himself; the soft rolling susurrus of the surf stole into his consciousness. He was very near an ocean; perhaps along a shoreline. Where?
“Have you ever had the recurring dream where you’re in a building—an office or a private house, it doesn’t matter which. Anyway, there are people all about—you can’t see them but you can feel them like lice on your skin, and you know you’ve got to hide from them. You don’t know why but you
must.”
“I never have, no.”
“Well, I have—all the time.”
Nicholas recognized Seiko’s voice, but who had answered her? A male voice, well modulated, educated. They were speaking Japanese.
There was the soft clink of ice against glassware, and Nicholas was aware of sweat on his bare skin, the whisper of a thin cotton sheet covering him from the waist down. White mosquito netting was tented over him so that he appeared suspended within a cloud.
“What happens in your dream?” the male voice asked.
“I’m desperate not to be seen. I run through the rooms of the house, banging on the walls looking for a trapdoor. Then, as I am about to be overtaken, I turn a corner, reach up to the ceiling, and find one.”
“So you’re safe.”
A soft sound of fabric, a whiff of perfume, and Nicholas knew Seiko was moving around. “No, they find me anyway in that dark, cramped space.”
“I’m no Freudian, but—”
“I know, I know, it’s a birth dream. That’s one interpretation.”
“What’s
your
interpretation?”
“I’m ashamed of what I am doing.”
The man laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Perhaps not. Someone once said that all dreams are jokes, anyway.”
“I should hope so. Try as I may, shame is a sentiment I cannot connect with you.”
Nicholas groaned.
Seiko caught her breath. “He’s awake. Thank God.”
“I told you it wouldn’t take long.”
“And how would you know?” She reached the bed on which Nicholas was lying. She looked down at him and smiled, obvious relief on her face. “Thank God,” she said again as her hand gently passed across his forehead. She leaned down, pressed her lips against his.
“Where am I?” Nicholas said hoarsely.
“Give him a drink, for God’s sake,” the male voice said, slightly vexed. “Kisses can come later.”
Seiko, kneeling beside the bed, brought a tumbler of cold water to Nicholas’s mouth. He drank avidly.
“I want to sit up,” he whispered. He was aware of his cheek resting against Seiko’s shoulder. It was as cool as alabaster.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Oh, stop mothering him,” the male voice said. It was on the move, coming toward them. “He can do whatever he tells you he can do. I told you that.”
Nicholas felt rather than saw Seiko look up at this man. He was curious about the stranger, but instinctively he did not want to look into his face until he was on his feet.
“Where are we?” he said as Seiko helped him off the bed.
“Never mind. It’s someplace perfectly safe.”
He saw, much to his astonishment, that all he had on was a batik-print bathing suit.
“Look at him,” the man said. “Whatever superficial scrapes and bruises he had are all but gone.”
He was right, of course. Just as strenuous physical exercise caused important chemical changes within the mind and body, so Tau-tau could manipulate the body’s chemicals—endorphins, nucleopeptides—to aid the healing process.
Nicholas, on his feet, swung his head around. “Who the hell are you?”
“Nicholas Linnear, this is Tachi Shidare, the new
oyabun
of the Yamauchi clan.”
Shidare bowed, but not, Nicholas noticed, very deeply, being careful to limit the respect offered in the gesture.
“I know how you feel about Yakuza,” Seiko said. “But I was desperate. I needed to call on someone I could trust, someone without a hidden agenda.”
“You are Tomoo Kozo’s successor,” Nicholas said to Shidare.
The
oyabun
smiled thinly. He was young, perhaps only in his midthirties, tall, and had the avaricious black eyes of a crow. His long and narrow face had a deeply defined nose with flaring nostrils that were disturbingly feminine. There was about him the air of controlled menace, as if he were a fully stoked furnace carefully locked behind an iron door. Something told Nicholas that whoever sought to open that door did so at his peril.
“Already I feel the sins of my predecessor scourging my flesh.” Shidare’s expression indicated he did not mean a word of what he said.
He appeared to Nicholas as if he was one of the new breed of Yakuza—brash, arrogant, as secure in his license beyond the law as he was in the privilege of his formal education. In his manner and bearing it was clear that, unlike Chosa or Akinaga, he had not come from the streets, but was the product of a major university, perhaps even Todai—Tokyo University—and therefore could not share their peculiar outsider’s sense of isolation from society.
“I see you’ve come through your ordeal in remarkable fashion.”
“Nicholas,” Seiko said, “you saved us both, but I still don’t know exactly how. I felt your body on top of mine, and then a kind of liquid warmth, almost as if I’d been dipped in wax. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see. I panicked. I tried to squirm away, but the percussion came and I thought we’d be blown to pieces. I heard a howling as if from a long distance away, then I lost consciousness.”
Shidare was moving elegantly across the polished tile floor of the large sun-lit room. He wore a handsome off-white linen suit in the voluminous Italian fashion. Nicholas was finding it increasingly difficult to ignore him.
“I used Tau-tau,” Nicholas said softly. “I projected my
ki
outward to form—”