Gerard was
silent as Francesca continued. “You were seen to load the M-60 machine gun and
other weapons into the trunk of the Grand Prix, and then drive it to the
Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Boulevard, where you checked into one of the
bungalows in the name of Wisby. Then you immediately caught a cab and came back
here.
Gerard looked
down at the polished surface of his leather-topped desk, and then back up at
Francesca. All of a sudden, he saw what she was. Hard, certainly: but with that
implacable well-trained hardness of a law-enforcement officer.
Aquisitive, yes, but only for facts and figures and damning
information.
A gold digger who was digging for convictions, not diamond
bracelets. She had gone to bed with him not for himself but for evidence.
Everything he had boasted about, every extravagant gift he had bought her–it
had all gone down in a notebook somewhere, to be given as meticulous
information for the prosecution when he was eventually brought to court.
“Well,” he
said, “
it
seems like I’ve made quite a fool of
myself.’’
Francesca said,
“You can still save yourself a lot of trouble if you tell me what’s going on.
You’re involved in something, aren’t you, with Mr. Esmeralda?
Something more than forming a team of karate bodyguards.”
Gerard struck a
match and slowly began to feed a cigar. “What are you?” he asked her. “U.S.
Customs?
What?”
Francesca
didn’t answer. All she said was, “There’s only one way you can save yourself,
Gerard.
You have to
tell me what’s going on.
Gerard asked,
“You’ve reported any of this?
The guns?
Do your bosses
know what’s going on?”
“They will.”
“They will,
huh?”
“I have a
certain amount of discretionary power when I’m operating undercover in the
field.”
Gerard slowly
shook his head, like a man who has watched his favorite hockey team let in
eleven goals in a row. “So, going to bed with me was ‘operating in the field,’
was it? I’m glad to know that romance is not yet dead.”
“You’ve been
running guns and you’ve been smuggling narcotics,” said Francesca. “You’ve also
been dealing in industrial and military information. You didn’t really expect
the CIA not to show some interest in you, did you? You’re not that modest?”
“I don’t think
modesty has much to do it,” said Gerard frostily. There was a feeling inside of
him like boiling oxygen, the kind of freezing steam that surrounds a rocket
just beore its launch. “I was actually stupid enough to believe that you were
my lover. I run a few deals, sure. You know that. You’ve helped me to organize
some of them.
A caper here and a caper there.
Something
to keep the cashflow flowing. But is it really worth this? Is it really worth
your sleeping with me, pretending to love me, taking me away from my wife?
Wouldn’t you call than entrapment? Well, maybe you wouldn’t. It seems like your
morality is a whole lot different from mine.”
“Gerard, I have
to know what the guns are for.”
Gerard shook
his head. “No, Francesca, you don’t have to know what the guns are for. You’re
going to get the hell out of this office, and get the hell out of my life, and
if I ever set eyes on you anywhere near me again, I’m going to bang you one
right in the nose. You understand me?”
“Do you want me
to have you arrested?” asked Francesca. “I can do that just by picking up the
phone.”
“Go on, then,”
said Gerard. “Pick up the phone.”
Francesca
stayed where she was. “Gerard,” she said, “you’re making this too difficult.”
“It’s easy,”
Gerard told her. He lifted up the receiver and held it out to her. “Here it is.
Dial.
Have me
arrested.”
“Gerard...”
Gerard slammed
the phone down again. He was furious, shaking with temper. “You dumb bitch!
Either bust me or leave me alone! If you’ve got the goddamned nerve to go to
bed with me, at least have the goddamned nerve to finish the job and pull me
in!”
“Gerard, I need
to know about Esmeralda. I need to know about the guns.”
“Well, fuck
you,” shouted Gerard, “because I’m not going to tell you anything about either
of them without a formal arrest and without a lawyer. And if you’re not going
to arrest me, or question me formally, then you can get the hell out of here
because you’re fired, as my secretary, and right now you’re trespassing.”
Francesca stood
up. “All right,” she said. “Don’t say that I didn’t give you a fair chance.”
“If your name
never passes my lips again, baby, that’ll be far too often for me. Now, out.”
Francesca
hesitated for a moment, looking at him, trying to appeal to him. But he rammed
his hands into his trouscr pockets and stalked to the window, staring out over
the Avenue of the Stars and smoking his cigar in steady, furious puffs.
She said, “It
wasn’t all business, Gerard. I can’t turn around now and say that I wasn’t fond
of you, or that you weren’t any good in bed. You’re selfish, and you’re
distant, but you know how to give a woman what she wants.’’
Gerard said
nothing, but continued to puff at his cigar.
“So long, then”
said Francesca.
She opened the
office door, and it was then that the Tengu burst in, half tearing the door off
its hinges, knocking Francesca right back against Gerard’s desk, sprawling over
the top of it in a shower of calendars, pens, photographs, paper clips, and
letters. She didn’t even have time to scream.
Gerard shouted,
“Who the f–!” but then he saw the white No mask, the brutally scarred,
half-naked body, the wealth of snake and dragon tattooes, and a sensation of
utter cold dread soaked through him like ice water soaked up by blotting paper.
He knew what it was all about.
He knew why the
Tengu was here. Esmeralda had sent it around to silence him, and to punish him
for his failure in arranging the death of Jerry Sennett and Admiral Thorson.
The deal was up, the game was over. He had been right from the very start.
Esmeralda had particularly selected him and Nancy Shiranuka and all the rest of
the team be-Tengu cause they were dispensable, murderable, easily disposed of
at the end of the day’s work.
Panting heavily
behind his mask, the Tengu circled the office and stalked toward him. Gerard
backed off, reaching for the wall behind him, his cold eyes darting from side
to side, calculating, checking distances,
looking
for
any way to get out. Francesca was climbing slowly to her feet, dazed, her skirt
torn open to the waist.
Gerard moved
round behind his desk, keeping his eyes on the Tengu all the time. He coaxed
open the top right-hand drawer, and there was his .357 Python revolver. He
curled his finger into the drawer and hooked the gun out by the trigger guard.
Francesca
screamed, “Gerard!” as the Tengu made a sudden and inexorable rush toward him.
Gerard cocked
his revolver, held it high with both hands, and fired. The bullet went right
through the Tengu’s chest in a splatter of blood, and the impact of it made the
Tengu stagger.
But it raised
its masked face, with a question mark of its own blood splashed onto one cheek,
and kept coming toward him, more slowly, more cautiously, but just as
threateningly.
Gerard raised
his revolver once again and carefully squeezed off a shot at close range, into
the Tengu’s face. The bullet was fired so near that the varnish on the Tengu’s
No mask was burned black on one cheek by flaring gunpowder. From the neat hole
in the papier-mach6, the slug must have drilled straight into his left
cheekbone. But still the Tengu kept coming, grunting with pain and effort, and
it was clear to Gerard that nothing would stop it. Hadn’t Mr. Esmeralda told
him, with a warm smile, that the Tengu were unstoppable?
Tense,
sweating, Gerard reached for the arm of his high-backed leather swivel chair
and drew it cautiously between himself and the Tengu. The Tengu raised his
hands, ready to seize Gerard and tear him to pieces. Francesca said, in a high,
almost hysterical voice, “Gerard, what shall I do? Gerard, tell me what to do
Gerard didn’t listen to her. Instead, he pulled back his chair as far as he
could against his legs and gripped it as tightly as possible, until white spots
showed on his knuckles. He licked his lips, his mouth dry, judging his moment,
judging his distance.
“Francesca,”
warned Gerard, “move away from the window. Get over toward the door.”
Francesca,
panicking, said, “What?”
“Just do what I
tell you, get away from the
window.
”
But then it was
too late. The Tengu rushed forward, and Gerard couldn’t think about anything
but shoving his chair toward it as fast and as powerfully as he could, catching
the Tengu right in the knees, sweeping it into the rolling castored chair with
the sheer momentum of his desperate forward run; half wheeling, half forcing
the Tengu clear across the room and driving him straight into the
floor-to-ceiling window at a careering, uncontrolled pace, right into the net
curtains, until there was an awesome creaking of glass, and then an explosive
shatter. The Tengu hurtled straight out into the afternoon sky, followed by the
black leather chair, and both dropped floors, 332 feet, the Tengu
spread-eagled, surrounded by glittering tumbling glass, and taking slightly
less than four seconds to hit the ground. They heard the bang of flesh against
concrete, even from so far up, and the clatter of the chair.
Francesca held
Gerard very tight, clinging,
almost
clawing. Her face
was so tense that it was ugly. Time passed, thirty seconds, a minute.
“Gerard,” she
said.
Gerard covered
his mouth with his hand. Then he said, “Listen. I know what you think you’ve
got to do. I know you’re supposed to arrest me, and all of that. But just give
me twelve hours.
Can you do
that? You’ve given me plenty of rope until now. Give me twelve hours more.”
Francesca said,
in a jumbled voice, “I don’t love you, you know. I don’t love you enough to
want to stay with you.”
“Francesca, I
just want the time.”
She released
her grip. The sound of police and ambulance sirens was already echoing across
the plaza below them. The wind
billowed
the nets and
sent letters headed CROWLEY TOBACCO
IMPORTS snowstorming across the room.
“All right,” she said.
“But call me tomorrow morning, when you’ve done whatever it is you have to do.
Don’t fail me, Gerard, because if you do, I’ll have to send them out looking
for you, and you know they’ll find you. They may even kill you.”
Gerard said
nothing, but went to his desk and took out a handful of cigars, which he pushed
into his inside pocket. He gave Francesca one last look, and then he walked out
the torn-open door, and through the reception area. In the corridor, he met two
breathless policemen.
“Hey, did you
see which office that guy fell out of?” one of the cops asked him.
Gerard pointed
two doors down, along the corridor,
herman
&
gublenik, attorneys at law. “I think it was that one,” he said. “Those two are
always fighting, Herman and Gublenik. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of them
pushed the other out of the window.
Either Gublenik or
Herman, who knows?”
“Okay, friend,”
said the cop, and went hurrying on.
Gerard walked
along to the elevator, stepped in, and pressed the button for the lobby. When
the doors closed, his eyes closed, too. Only his cold self-control prevented
him from trembling like a newborn foal.
T
he ambulance had been quick, but Mr. Esmeralda, who had been
parked in his limousine by the curb on the Avenue of the Stars, had been
quicker. With one of Kappa’s nameless Japanese to help him, he had shouldered
his way through the crowds which had surrounded the Tengu’s fallen body and dragged
the Tengu off to his car. A man had protested, “I’m a doctor. You can’t take
that man off like that. The police are going to want to see him.”
Mr. Esmeralda
had smiled at the doctor, all teeth and Latin charm. “You must understand that
I am this man’s personal physician,” he had lied. “If he had fallen from a
window, it is necessary that I examine him before the police. Ethics, you
know.”
The doctor had
started to protest again; but with a kick to the kidneys that was so fast that
it was practically invisible, the Oni paralyzed the doctor where he stood, so
that the doctor could do nothing but grasp in agony at his back and gasp for
breath.
Sweating, Mr.
Esmeralda had humped the Tengu’s body into the back of his limousine, slammed
the door, and driven off in a howling U-turn toward Santa Monica Boulevard.
Just as he had reached the traffic signals, a Doheny Medical Services ambulance
had come howling around the corner, its red lights flashing. Mr. Esmeralda had
put his foot down and barged his way into the east-west traffic, provoking a
chorus of very non-California hornblowing. Then he had roared off westward, as
fast as he could, toward Eva Crowley’s apartment.
Now Mr.
Esmeralda glanced in his rearview mirror at the dead Tengu, propped up in the
back seat, where Mr. Esmeralda himself used to sit, before Kappa had detained
Kuan-yin as a hostage. Mr. Esmeralda had imagined when he was younger than when
people fell from tall buildings, they were smashed into pieces; it was only
when he had seen Life magazine’s celebrated picture of a 23-year-old girl who
had thrown herself 86 floors from the observation deck of the Empire State
Building, to lie peacefully and apparently undamaged on the dented roof of a
limousine, that he had realized how peculiarly calm a death it was. You fall,
you stop falling. That was all.