Kage (30 page)

“Guy like this is gonna be able to put a hit on you whether

he’s in jail or out,” Micky said.

“Which means?”

“You know what it means,” my brother said quietly. He

spoke slowly, tapping the scarred planks of the table for empha-

sis. “Bait gets set. Big man arrives. You take him out.”

I had known where they were going, of course. But part of

me hoped that they had an alternative. This was crossing a line

for al of us. I wanted to find another solution. We al did. But

life is what you get, not what you wish for.

I sighed. “So we go down there?”

“Wel , technical y, no… you go down there,” Art said with a

half smile. “The two of us are stil under something of a cloud.”

“They’re not gonna let us anywhere near the border anytime

soon,” Micky explained.

“You’re going to send me alone?”

“Who better?” Art shrugged. “You’re already up to your eye-

bal s in this thing.”

I stared at Micky. “You two just finished tel ing me I was in

over my head!”

He smiled tightly. “Yeah. But at least now you know it.

Besides, we can pul some strings and get you some backup.”

Art took a letter-size manila envelope out of his jacket and

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Kage

slid it over to me. “Four thousand in cash. It’s al we could come

up with. Plus a plane ticket to Tucson.”

“You got a few good days,” Micky instructed. “You get down

there and find who’s after you…”

“How’m I gonna do that?” I protested.

“We know a guy out there. Former INS inspector named

Steve Daley. He owes me. He’l meet you at the plane.”

“Keep a low profile, Connor,” Art said. “Stay off the grid.

No credit cards, nothing that wil leave a trace.”He looked at his

watch. “Clock’s ticking. TM-7 wil be back. They’l be looking

for you, so you gotta move quick.”

They let me think about it. I heard the faint tinkle of ice

in a glass, the murmur of distant conversation near the bar. I

thought of Sarah and the things I could lose if I went. Then I

thought of what I might lose if I didn’t.

“OK,” I sighed.

They nodded, but neither man seemed particularly happy.

“Listen up,” Art said quietly. “There’s no tel ing who’s watch-

ing you or watching us at this point in time. We’re gonna walk

out of here and drive away. There’s an overnight bag for you up

front with the cashier. Don’t go back to Yamashita’s. Take the

bag and use the subway to get to JFK. Get on a plane to Tucson.

Get this done…”

“One more thing,” my brother interjected. He handed me a

black cel phone. “Take this.”

“I have a phone, Mick.”

“I’ve seen your phone. It’s a piece of shit. Take this, Keep it

charged up and on at al times. If I find out anything, if I can

do anything, I wil .” But his voice was terse and devoid of any

comfort. I’m not even sure that he believed what he was saying.

I took the phone and sat there while he and his partner

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John Donohue

stumped away, grim, unhappy, and vaguely guilty.

“This is what happens,” Yamashita told me with deep dis-

pleasure. I had gone back to see him before leaving, of course.

There’s something deep in the Burke DNA that makes us con-

genital y incapable of obeying orders.

We were seated on the floor in the
dojo.
It was dim and silent,

a vast clean expanse of space. I could hear my heart thudding as

I tried to explain.

“I don’t know any other way out of this,” I told him.

His eyes were hol ow slits in a rigid mask. My
sensei
doesn’t

leak much energy, but when he does, you can feel it. It washed

over me, a tide of anger and disapproval. I had spent more than

a decade with this man, accepting his guidance, working for his

respect. Now I felt as if every move I made was both inevitable

and unacceptable to him.

I bowed slightly. “
Moushiwake arimasen
.” It’s the most for-

mal way to say that you’re sorry to a superior. But Yamashita

wasn’t buying it; he didn’t even blink in acknowledgement.

“Contrition is beside the point,” he said tightly. “Do you

know what you are doing?”

“I do,” I began.

“
Bakka
!” he cut me off. Idiot. “You have no idea!” His

rebuke stung: I rocked back on my heels. I opened my mouth

to continue, but he made a chopping motion with his hand to

silence me.

“This is their world, Burke, not ours. It is without rules. It…

compromises your honor.”

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, Sensei.”

He looked to one side as if seeking patience in another loca-

tion. “Please. You are like a child. What you meant to do and

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Kage

what has been done are two different things. It was why I warned

you against getting too involved.”

I swal owed. I thought of Sarah and her dreams. I knew that

something had to be done, even if Yamashita objected.

“But I am involved” I told him.

Yamashita sighed. “You are. As are others. And now, you will

place yourself in danger…”

“It’s what you have trained me to do.” It was an almost

involuntary comment, but I flinched; the relationship between

a teacher and pupil in the martial arts isn’t one that encourages

a free exchange of opinion.

Yamashita’s nostrils flared. “I have spent years training you.

And now—to run the risk of throwing it al away…” His voice

trailed off and we both sat in silence, stunned at the rare admis-

sion of concern.

We both knew about the danger I faced. The warriors of old

Japan knew that every confrontation was more than likely to

end in disaster. The dispiriting rule of the
samurai
: a superior

opponent wil certainly kil you; an equal y matched opponent

wil probably kil you even if you manage to kil him as wel ;

only someone vastly inferior in skil wil permit you to emerge

unscathed.

“It’s something I have to do,” I said quietly.

Yamashita fidgeted slightly. “I know,” he answered, his tone

bitter. “But these are thugs… they are animals…”

“I have to stop them,” I added. “For Sarah.”

My teacher squinted at me. “There is
on
here, Burke, I know.

On,
the tug of human relationships. “But what of
giri
, your

duty to the
dojo
?” He licked his lips as if the next question took

some effort. “What of your duty to me?”

And I saw him with new eyes: an old battered man, sitting

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John Donohue

there in the dimness, wondering what the future was for his

school and his pupils. His anger was for the possibility of a leg-

acy squandered as much as it was generated by concern for me.

“Sensei,” I began, “you know what you mean to me…”

“And yet there is this rebel ious streak,” he said coldly. “The

dojo
is your world, Burke. Not this other place…”

“How can you say that? You worked for the
Kunaicho
!”

In years past, Yamashita had been deeply involved with the

more clandestine activities of the Japanese Imperial Household

Agency. The details were fuzzy and he didn’t like to talk about

it much.

His bul et head nodded slightly and he sipped at the air.

“Yes. And at the time, I thought I was doing what was right…

but it brought only pain. You know some of this, Burke.”

Yamashita was gazing at the floor, avoiding eye contact or

perhaps lost in painful memories from his past.

“And yet you did it,” I prompted gently. “Because you

thought it was the right thing.”

“It brought only pain,” he repeated, as if to himself.

“Sensei…”

Yamashita waived me to silence. “Go. You wil do what you

wil do.” He rose to his feet and, since we were alone, he did not

mask the pain involved in the movement. “I had hoped…” he

said, but paused as if something was caught in his throat. “I had

hoped that as a teacher I could save my pupil from the same

mistakes I had made—that I would find someone wise enough

to heed me.” He looked up and his voice was old and raspy. “It

was not to be.”

Before he turned away, I saw his eyes: glittering with regret

and dismissal.

208

18

Into the West

The junkie’s skin was brown from the sun, but looked as if

it had a faint covering of ash on it. His eyes were red-rimmed

and furtive. There was a restless animal prowling inside his

head, simultaneously wary, distracted, and frightened.

I watched Steve Daley work him. It wasn’t the questions he

asked so much as the way they were delivered that made him

effective: words that emerged like random gunshots from unex-

pected quarters, elliptical, phrased differently each time. His

voice disoriented his victim and its tone demanded a response.

Daley lightly pinched the back of the junkie’s stringy neck

between the thumb and fingers of his hand as they talked. The

touch transferred an oscillating current: alternately avuncular

and menacing, a soothing touch or the prelude to a shake that

could rattle what was left of the junkie’s brains around his skull

like a stone in a gourd.

This was the last in a succession of informants he’d inter-

rogated. It was always the same. And it wasn’t pretty to watch;

this type of interrogation is about breaking people down. There

wasn’t much left of a junkie like this one; the questioning felt

needlessly cruel, one of a final series of humiliations that would

dot the dizzy downward spiral of his life. Daley was oblivious

to this, or perhaps he was just jaded. He ground at this lat-

est junkie informant mercilessly, testing and probing for lies or

inconsistencies, flaws in the answers. In the end, Daley wrung

the junkie out. You would have thought that there was nothing

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John Donohue

left in that jumble of ashy skin and nerve but a consciousness

that winked on and off like some distant, failing light, powered

only by the need for its next fix.

“They all know things,” Daley confided to me. We were

back in his car, letting the air conditioner wash the heat away

from our bodies. He was tall and lanky, with long graying

hair pushed behind his ears and a goatee that, along with the

Hawaiian shirt and cowboy boots, completed an odd image:

Jimmy Buffet channeling Buffalo Bill Cody. “But they all lie.”

“So what’s the point?”

“You see what they lie about—then you start comparing

stories. And then you start drilling.” Daley slipped his sun-

glasses on and pulled the car out into traffic. His hands were

freckled and the muscles on his forearms were long and ropy.

Daley had been baked by the desert into a taut machine; most

of the softness in him had been desiccated and worn until it

had simply blown away. What was left was wiry and functional

and supremely competent: sinew, bone, and the bright eye of

a predator.

He had met me at the airport, standing at the end of the

chute where arriving passengers were funneled like cattle away

from the gate area. At the screening complex, the serious peo-

ple from the TSA were warily searching carry-on luggage, alive

to the possibility of exploding toothpaste tubes. Daley stood

slightly apart from the other drivers, men in dark suits who

held small whiteboards with the names of their fares written on

them. Daley slouched in isolation and held up a ragged piece of

cardboard with the single word “Burke” scrawled on it in bad

handwriting. As I got closer, I noticed that he had used the top

from a discarded pizza box.

I stopped in front of him. “I’m Burke.”

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Kage

Daley had obviously spoken to my brother: he knew what

I was up to and regarded me with weary skepticism He didn’t

say hello and didn’t offer to shake hands, just jerked his head

to indicate the direction we needed to go. He spoke quietly as

we moved. “I can provide you with some support and informa-

tion, Burke. I owe your brother that much. I can help you set

this thing up, but it may take some time. And it may get dicey.

I can’t guarantee how it’s going to work out.”

“I got it,” I said.

Daley looked at me with those washed out eyes. “You’re

trouble, man. I can sense that. Know this: things start to fall

apart, I’m out of there. End of the day, it’s your problem, not

mine. We clear?”

I nodded.
Great help, Mick.
“I need to see about setting up

some contacts. The Westmann Resort…”

He cut me off. “Forget it. Your man Xochi has gone to

ground.”

“Whaddaya mean?” My basic plan was to get to Xochi and

tell him that I was willing to trade the Westmann manuscript

to whoever was trying to have me killed if they would just stop.

You’d think that the long flight would have provided me with

enough time to develop a plan of more elegance, or at least a

part two.

I stopped in consternation, however, wondering what my