The Kaisho (16 page)

“Right. There was someone else.”

They went farther into the house. The smell of old paint, turpentine, wet, and rot saturated the clotted atmosphere. The hall ended in an old-fashioned bathroom with tiny black-and-white tiles, cracked and smudged beyond the pale of any cleanser. A claw-footed bathtub, a square sink with some of the porcelain chipped off, no towels on the iron bars, the rustle of scuttling insects, it was as sad and desolate a spot as Croaker could remember seeing.

Lillehammer’s mouth twitched again. “Do you smell something?”

Croaker took the plugs out of his nostrils.
“Christ!”
he said, lunging for the door on the opposite side of the room. It was locked. He raised his left hand to the height of the lock. A thin metallic nail was extruded from the tip of the index finger. Croaker inserted it into the lock.

Lillehammer looked on in obvious fascination as Croaker turned the nail back and forth, feeling for the grooves. A moment later, there was an audible click.

“Well done!” Lillehammer said.

Croaker turned the knob and opened the door outward.

“Bloody hell! What?” Lillehammer took out a handkerchief, pressed it over his nose and mouth. “This stench is worse than the one in the kitchen.”

“I think we’ve found our other person,” Croaker said as they entered the room.

On the bed was a young woman or, to be more truthful—what had once been a young woman. She was spread out in a star—the arms, legs, and head making up the five points. Her torso had been incised—cut all the way through as finely and precisely as if it had been done by a surgeon. Croaker, circling the bed, counted the number of incisions. There were seven. Tucked neatly into the seventh cut was a white bird’s feather, stained with blood.

Lillehammer, following him, said softly, “Lord, she was a pretty thing, once.”

“Another ritual.”

“Look at that!”

Carved into the center of her forehead was a vertical crescent, dark with dried blood. Lower down, where the navel had once been, was a dark hole across which something was woven. It had once been white, but was now stained dark with blood.

Croaker said, “Is that some kind of bird feather stitched between the flesh and organ?”

“It looks that way. As soon as we’re finished here, I’m going to have it checked out with an ornithologist.” Lillehammer’s gaze seemed rooted to the bloody feather. “I’d better get the forensic team in here as quickly as possible.”

“I’ve always been a big believer in old-fashioned police work, but in this case, I doubt it’ll do any good. What we need is a sorcerer. Our murderer isn’t about to leave fingerprints.”

“He left his semen,” Lillehammer reminded him.

“Yes he did,” Croaker said thoughtfully, still examining the bloody crescent. “It was a signpost, and look where it led us.” He turned to regard Lillehammer. “But there’s another question that needs to be answered: What in hell happened to Dominic Goldoni’s head?”

Mikio Okami said, “You see, Linnear-san, I came to Venice many years ago for a specific purpose. Here, I have been working to channel the old criminal Yakuza money into new legitimate businesses that will ensure the Yakuza’s existence into the twenty-first century.

“As you must know, the Yakuza were officially outlawed in April of 1992. One can no longer assume the status quo will remain in effect. Myths are crumbling, even ones so powerful as those surrounding the Yakuza.

“About a year ago everything changed for me: friends, foes, alliances I have maintained for decades. This change was forced upon me by a growing disaffection within my own inner council. The results have been legion. One of my old partners was murdered, and now I have a very powerful enemy. He is a member of a group that calls itself the Godaishu.’”

“Five Continents,” Nicholas said, unconsciously translating from the Japanese.

Okami nodded. “The Godaishu’s philosophy is diametrically opposed to mine. These
oyabun
feel terribly threatened by my plan to bring them within the scope of the law. These men revel in their lawlessness because it is the only thing that gives them community, status, and influence. Without it, they feel they would be reduced to little people, and their fear of losing the status and privilege their old life affords them is all-consuming. They’re power addicts, unable to face a world stripped of the adrenaline rush their money, force, and clandestine life provides. ‘What is the value of life without the razor’s edge?’ I’ve heard them ask this question time and again.

“It is vital—even essential—for Yakuza interests to expand. And by that I do not mean multiply from vice to vice. Yes, we are in the process of gaining a foothold in vices historically the purview of America’s Mafia. These people are old and sick; the new blood is of a generation so removed from
omert
à
and the other matters of honor that there is no more fabric for them to build upon. One don rolls over on another at the slightest pressure from federal agents.”

He put a hand up, as if in some arcane form of benediction so that in an odd sense Nicholas was reminded of the liturgies he had overheard at the Church of San Belisario.

“Now it is time for the moral fiber of the Yakuza to take hold. The soil is ripe and ready for our strength of purpose. But this is not the Mafia’s purpose.

“No, I am speaking now of legitimate businesses we partially control or wish to control. Buying into such conglomerates is not easy. We have the American SEC to contend with as well as numerous banking regulatory agencies. We must be so circumspect in our purchases that no suspicion whatsoever is focused in our direction.”

“Why would you tell me all this, Okami-san?” Nicholas asked. “You must know that I am no friend to the Yakuza. I deplore how they prey upon the weaknesses of decent folk.”

“You have spoken frankly. So will I. You know nothing of what we do—or what we hope to accomplish. You would condemn us out of hand, as would our enemies.”

Nicholas gave Okami a wintry smile. “On the contrary, I know at least something of the private lives of the
oyabun.”

“But not mine.”

When Nicholas did not reply, Okami was forced to respond. “Have you no hope that we could be involved in a beneficial enterprise?”

“Beneficial to yourselves, yes.”

“This was not how your father saw matters.”

Nicholas put down his cup. “My father lived in different times. For him, a war was still on. He was involved in reinventing modern-day Japan.”

“You needn’t elaborate,” Okami said softly. “I was there with him.” Then he gave Nicholas a direct look. “These harsh words pain me. The two of us needn’t be at war.”

“Perhaps we are at war simply through ignorance. I have no knowledge of the origins of my father’s debt to you.”

“That is a secret we swore would remain between the two of us.”

Nicholas said nothing; the silence was as much as telling Okami that they had reached a stalemate.

“Would you forswear your own oath to your father?” Okami said suddenly, sharply. “Would you have me forswear my oath to him?”

“Your relationship with my father has its own life. Now you must deal with me. You and I must struggle toward our own understanding. Only from that can we expect a connection to evolve.”

Okami seemed surprised. “You are speaking of... an alliance.”

Nicholas nodded. “Perhaps, yes. But whatever our contact may eventually become, you cannot expect to use me blindly as a huntsman draws his arrow.”

“But your father—”

“Okami-san, please try to understand. I am not only my father’s son.”

Okami rose and, turning his back on Nicholas, went to the windows, there to stare out across the
rio.
His hands smacked one against the other as he pondered the problem. There wasn’t much to think about; Nicholas had given him what amounted to an ultimatum: tell me how the debt came into being or I will not honor it. It was now, Nicholas knew, strictly a matter of face.

“Your father was an extraordinary man,” Okami said without preamble. “He was extraordinary in many ways—some of which even you are not aware of. In a sense, your father was like an artist. What he saw was never strictly speaking reality, but rather what
lay
beyond
the reality. Simply put, your father saw the
potential
in every situation—and he knew how to exploit the situation in order to turn that potential into a very real future.”

Nicholas noticed that Okami’s back had straightened, the years seeming to slip away from him as he remembered his shared past with Col. Denis Linnear.

“I met your father in a very odd way, because it was not through business. The truth was, my sister was crazy about him, and it was she who brought us together. She insisted I meet him—an
iteki
I thought. I hated him on sight, I thought. That was before I got to know him.”

Okami took a deep breath, as if steeling himself. “You are no doubt aware that MacArthur’s SCAP command often liaised with certain members of the Yakuza. We were of use to them in combating the Communist incursions into Japan bent on subverting the new democratic order imposed by the Americans. At first, I—and others like me—felt as if we were caught between Scylla and Charybdis, trapped between two alien political systems, both of which would pervert the basic fabric of Japanese life. But, of course, of the two Communism was by far the more feared and hated—so we found ourselves siding with the Americans. What else could we do? It was a question that we asked ourselves continuously in those days—and one which your father and I debated endlessly.

“But the Communists were not the only threat. They were the overt enemy, and therefore easy for the SCAP command to identify. However, your father had ferreted out a far more subversive group, hiding deep below the surface of both our societies, and it was these people he recruited me to help him destroy.”

Okami turned around at last, sat on one of the pillows. He crossed one leg over the other, threw an arm across the windowsill. “You must understand, those were lawless days, Linnear-san. The black market was flourishing, and any enterprising person could make a fortune in a matter of months—if he had the contacts and the merchandise to sell.

“It was even easy if, for example, you were an officer in the American military police. Then you had the virtual run of the country. You were the law.

“Your father had discovered a nexus of the black market in Tokyo. It was being run by a certain MP captain named Jonathan Leonard, who was as ruthless as he was unscrupulous. He was also so well protected that your father could never pin anything on him, despite all his best efforts. Meanwhile, Captain Leonard was supplying the city with everything it didn’t need then: guns, ammo, weapons of every description—and drugs. Lots of drugs.

“Where was he getting this contraband from? Where was he storing it? Who was he using as a distribution network? Much to my surprise and rage I found certain Yakuza
kobun
involved on the street level. These were the disenchanted, the disloyal—soldiers who had been passed over for promotion or, more disturbingly, had been too impatient to work their way up the hierarchy.

“But who lay behind them? Captain Leonard? Why not? He was the one with the connections. Your father had done some further digging and had discovered that Leonard had legally changed his name just before he had enlisted in the Army. The name he had been bom with was John Leonforte.” Okami’s head nodded. “That’s right, Linnear-san, he was the kid brother to Alphonse Leonforte, the Mafia don who terrorized the States during the war years and afterward. Alphonse single-handedly consolidated the East Coast Mafia’s hold over the seaport of New York, as well as the construction and interstate trucking business, two areas whose growth in America would outstrip almost all others in the fifties.”

“Didn’t I read in that biography published several years ago that Al Leonforte’s kid brother died while he was in the Army?”

“That’s right. I killed him.”

Nicholas studied Okami for some time. Then he got up, went to the sideboard, and poured himself a brandy. He took it all down in one swallow, allowed the burn to reach his stomach before turning back to face Okami. “Are you saying you murdered Johnny Leonforte on orders from my father?”

Okami took the last of his espresso in his mouth and swallowed it. “Here’s something you
didn’t
read in that biography. Alphonse Leonforte’s last official act before he retired was to order the murder of James Hoffa. And do you know why they never found his body? I’ll tell you. The senior senator from New York at that time was a good friend of Leonforte’s—I forget his name, but it doesn’t matter. You can look it up in the biography, if you wish. In any event, this senator had a house—a summer house, I believe it was—on Shelter Island. Do you know that place, Linnear-san?”

“Very well,” Nicholas said with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Okami nodded. “I have not been there, but one day I would like to go. It is supposed to be very beautiful, very secluded.”

“It is all that and more.”

Okami inclined his head again. “As I have said, the senator had a house there where he went to relax. Leonforte loved that place, although he was never allowed near it during daylight hours. Too dangerous for the senator, perhaps. But there were a pair of fine Japanese maples on the property—magnificent specimens, even back then. Leonforte was passionate about those trees, especially when their leaves turned scarlet in the autumn.

“Perhaps the senator had left the maples in a state of benign neglect and Leonforte felt them in need of some extraordinary compost. Or, again, he might have been playing a kind of ironic prank on his friend. At this late date, who’s to say? But that was where Leonforte directed his men to bury Hoffa, beneath the roots of the senator’s maples. I am told the trees are there still, more magnificent than ever.”

Nicholas rubbed his forehead. “And this is the guy whose kid brother you murdered?”

“Not murdered. No, not really. We got into a fight, he and I. I suppose I am guilty of engineering that fight, yes. I remember he was strong and tough and he certainly had the instinct for survival. But I was, in those days, a very fine martial artist, and those kinds of fights...” He shrugged. “It is difficult to pull your punches. I think you know what I mean.”