The Kaisho (49 page)

Croaker snagged a waitress, ordered them steamers first, then lobsters. The local clams came almost immediately, redolent of brine and seaweed, in bowls so large they were daunting. Margarite, eating the sweet flesh slowly and deliberately, gained color in her face and seemed to recover a modicum of her composure.

“What I keep thinking about is how I’ve changed since he let me go.” She was finished with the steamers, and she pushed the bowl away from her, licked her fingers one by one, fastidious as a cat. “My marriage was, to be frank, a dismal failure. Tony and I don’t communicate—with the advantage of hindsight I don’t believe we ever did. As far as women are concerned, Tony does his communicating with his cock and his fists. He communicates with other men by negotiating—that’s life to him. When I spoke up, he beat me. I suppose, Sicilian that he is, he’s been pissed off at me ever since Francie was born. ‘What, no son?’” She tried to smile, but it came out a lopsided grimace.

The waitress came to clear the plates. She handed them foil packets of Handi Wipes. Margarite said she wanted a beer, and Croaker ordered a pair and the waitress bustled away.

“The thing is,” Croaker said gently, “you took it.
The beatings, I mean.”

Margarite leveled her gaze at him. “You’re not a woman. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I’m doing my best. I’m listening.”

She digested that for some time, staring out at the darkness coming down over the water. A fishing boat, running lights ablaze, navigated the channel outside, moving from left to right across the plate glass as if it were a television screen.

“Give me your hand,” she said quietly. “No, the other one.”

He put his biomechanical hand in hers.

She sat looking down at the confluence of skin and man-made elements.

“A man’s world is violent,” she said at last. “A woman’s world—well, a woman wonders why violence is part of the equation at all.”

“But passivity—”

“You’re still thinking like a man.” She smiled kindly at him. “Passivity doesn’t enter into it. Men make the mistake of thinking that because women can’t see the sense in violence, they must be passive creatures. It’s just not true.” She cocked her head. “In one important way, at least, men are the passive sex. Given a choice, they will always opt for the status quo. They hate change of any kind, and they fight against it constantly. On the other hand, what women want is stability, which when you stop to think about it is a very different animal.”

The lobsters came, along with the beers. They were given plastic-coated bibs that tied behind their necks. Margarite picked up a nutcracker, began to go to work on the bright orange-red shell.

“Having said that, I’ve come to understand that there is something else at work within me. Robert—that’s what he called himself—proved that to me. I was prepared to kill him. Coming back from that, I am here with you. I am at last able to say to my husband, ‘Fuck you,’ and feel its validity. I can see how screwed up my life has been, staying with him. It was the wrong decision, to want stability—for me
and
for my daughter. She’s bulimic for a damned good reason. She’s not stupid and she’s no longer a child. She sees what goes on around her, she feels the vibes more acutely than any adult. Maybe I’ve damaged her more than anyone else. Can you see as I do that it was Robert who allowed me to understand this important truth?”

Croaker was silent for some time. The steamers had filled him up, or the emotions of what had happened, what, possibly, would begin to happen here and now if he handled things right, had suppressed his appetite.

“You have a decision to make, Margarite. I think you’ve decided to help me find Robert. Do you want to see him again? What, possibly, can be gained from that? He’s a murderer—brutal, cunning, perhaps demented, but in any case dangerous in the extreme. You survived one encounter with him. Who can say what will happen the second time?”

“He won’t hurt me.”

“How can you be sure?”

She used her fingertip to tap the place just over her heart. “I know in the same way I eat or breathe. There’s a connection on some level so deep it bypasses conscious thought. Certainly, there’s no logic to it. Nevertheless, I’m sure.”

The thing was, he believed her. Looking into her clear eyes, he saw a truth there that was profoundly disturbing. He felt the hairs at the back of his neck stir, as if this man, who called himself Robert, could suddenly appear behind him. He shifted in his chair, abruptly uncomfortable.

Thinking of the scene he and Lillehammer had come upon in the house in Marine on St. Croix, Croaker said, “Perhaps you should concentrate on what Robert did to Dominic.”

“Do you think I can forget?” Margarite, too, had had enough of food, and Croaker signaled the waitress to clear the table. Margarite waited until she had gone before continuing. “But there’s more to it than just Dom’s death, and I’ve been thinking about this aspect ever since I got back from Minnesota.” She wiped her hands of brine and tiny flecks of pink-and-white lobster flesh. “I told you I wanted to confess everything. That wasn’t a theatrical gesture. I meant it.”

She leaned forward, a certain intensity in her face. “Remember Francie telling you about her visits to Uncle Dom’s, how she often went with me, spent time in the kitchen sampling the contents of Dom’s ice cream freezer?” She nodded. “I wonder if you’ve asked yourself what I was doing there so often.”

“You were brother and sister—family.”

Now a genuine smile spread across Margarite’s face. “Christ, Lew, that’s what Dom always told me when I worried we were spending so much time together. He’d chuckle at my anxiety and say, ‘Of course,
bellissima,
we’re family. Who will wonder about the time we share? Not Tony, and certainly not the feds!’”

She paused for a moment to drink the last of her beer, but Croaker harbored the suspicion that she was gathering herself. He was right.

“You see, Lew, I believe now that my brother knew he was going to die. He was preparing for his death two years before it happened.”

He knew she was giving him clues, wanting to see if he could put aside logic, make the leap of faith necessary to solve the riddle. He did not think she was being deliberately obtuse, but genuinely needed to find a man who could take her brother’s place, who might rely on her for what she really was, not be swayed by her beauty, be fooled by her gender. She was so innately intelligent that she—

Good God! He was struck momentarily dumb as the thought hit him, a bolt so weird, so wild, so inconsistent with logic that he had a strong suspicion that it must be true.

“It was you. It was you all along. Ginnie Morris didn’t mean anything. Dominic broke the WITSEC rules in order to stay in touch with you.”

“Yes,” Margarite said, clearly delighted that he had worked it out. “I confess. It was me Dominic picked to be his successor. He wanted me to work behind the mask of my husband, who Dom officially designated his heir apparent. That was what my visits with my brother were all about. I was learning his business, using my own company as a front to meet his contacts and, under his aegis, transferring his influence to me.”

“But as a woman in a sacrosanct man’s world, wasn’t that all but impossible?”

“It was a difficult and time-consuming project, since I had to deal with Dom’s contacts in business, politics, and law enforcement in an entirely different manner than he had. I was always Tony’s wife, because Tony was the mask behind which I needed to hide. But I was the one who Dom confided in. I was the one who provided Tony with the information he needed to keep Dom’s contacts in line.”

Even having worked out the gist of this bizarre arrangement, Croaker needed some time to digest the details. “I don’t get it. I’m a cop and you’ve just confessed to—”

“Continuing my brother’s legitimate consulting business,” Margarite said with an ironic smile. “Let’s not get lost in legalities when there’s a more important aspect to deal with.”

“Which is?”

“Let’s return to logic. I now believe Dom was aware he was a marked man, that his murder was inevitable. I’ve come to the same conclusion. If we extrapolate from that beginning, we see that he began to plan for this future two years ago. He picked me, a woman, to transfer his power to. Why? It was perhaps the most difficult of his options. A woman has never had power in his business—
ever.
Why would he try for it now? The answer is because no one in his business would ever suspect a woman—even Dom’s sister—of having the secrets of his contacts, the intelligence—dirt, if you will—he had amassed over the years, which he used as leverage.”

Her head moved closer to his over the table, and her voice, already low, dropped to a ready whisper. “There is a war going on, Lew. A war in the corridors of power, locked away from the sight of most people. And it isn’t just a Mafia war—Goldoni against Leonforte, although, I have begun to suspect that this is an element more important than even I can as yet understand.”

“Isn’t this sounding a little melodramatic?”

“Don’t forget I have access to all of Dom’s intelligence. The roll call of powerful people he can force to his will would take your breath away, so I know the arena in which this is being played out.”

“Use the source of your brother’s information. Surely he can help us.”

“But I don’t know the identity of Dom’s contact; I merely receive periodic information at a dead-letter drop that is changed each time. It’s a one-way conduit; I have no way of contacting him.”

She shook her head. “What I am sure of is that this is a war of a far, far wider scope than just the Mafia. It involves the heads of the largest corporations, federal law enforcement agencies, governors and congressmen—even, perhaps, the White House. And right now, Robert is our only way in to its center.”

The thunderclap of his hands coming together, the chain-mail nodes of the
nekode
ringing musically as they struck the dagger’s blade, was the only sound in the shadow-shrouded room.

Celeste shrieked.

The point of the dagger held fast three centimeters from his heart as he clamped his palms on either side of it. He slapped it down as he would an insect, looked past Celeste into the gloom. He recognized the face he had glimpsed in Venice: deeply planed oriental features, a mole at the corner of the firm lips. Then, like the moon disappearing behind clouds, it winked out.

Nicholas, gaining strength every second from the rhythm of Akshara, rushed toward the precipice of physical combat. He kept his
tanjian
eye firmly closed, understanding that this enemy had the power to use Akshara against him. He must trust in his earliest martial arts training, trust his hands, his
tegatana.

His mind was open as he spotted the Messulethe in the shadows and, lunging out, grabbed his right wrist with his right hand. His open mind had chosen
sokumen iriminage
because he needed to end this quickly. The Messulethe’s psychic attack had shaken him to the core, had brought him to the very brink of death, and he was unsure how long his reserves of strength would carry him.

He turned the Messulethe’s wrist inside out and went for
suwari-waza,
stiffening his fingers, tilting his left hand upward, slamming the heavily callused heel of it into the Messulethe’s jaw. When he heard the sharp crack as the head snapped back, he swung his left arm back and down, using the Messulethe’s own momentum to sweep him off his feet.

The Messulethe’s body cartwheeled as Nicholas whipped him over, and he caught a flash of the inside of the figure’s wrist. The Messulethe hit the floor chin first, and his head snapped back.

“Shit!” Nicholas said, bending over the crumpled form.

“What is it?” Celeste had come up behind him.

Nicholas showed her the insides of the man’s left wrist. “We’ve got the wrong man. You see, there’s no blue crescent tattoo. He isn’t the Messulethe.”

She looked up. “You mean someone else is here?”

“Is,” Nicholas said, letting go the man’s wrists. “Or was.’’

He went back to the computer monitor he had been studying, but the screen was blank. He reached for the floppy drive slot, but it was empty.

“Damn, he’s taken all the Avalon files I found.” He showed her the cutout in the floor where the box of floppies had been hidden.

“What’s this?”

She pulled out a piece of paper, showed it to him.

What do you want to know? Where Okami is? Or why his death is necessary? Which question is more important to you? Who Okami controls? Or who he is?

Now is the time for decision. Come
alone
to the parish church of the Hill of the Martyrs. 2
P
.
M
. Tomorrow.

Not surprisingly, it was unsigned. Nicholas stared at the words, reciting them again as if they were a prayer. The scent of the snare reached him even from this distance, but he had to ask himself if it mattered. What was important was that whoever wrote this knew which questions to ask—and if there was even a ghost of a chance that he knew the answers to those questions, Nicholas knew he had to be at the Hill of the Martyrs at the appointed time.

“Mikio Okami is missing,” the little man said. “Missing and presumed dead.”

This was Tomoo Kozo, the
oyabun
of the Yamauchi clan. He was in his sixties, but looked a good deal younger; he kept himself fit with a rigorous daily regimen of open-hand and small-blade martial arts. He had a long, pinched face, as if at birth some sadistic doctor had put his head in a vise. The top of his head was shaved, shiny with oil, save for one spot at the back where his silver hair had been left to sprout out in a ponytail. He wore a pair of suit trousers held up with suspenders, but his shirt was open at the collar and his sleeves were rolled up enough to reveal the edges of wings and clawed feet—colorful
irizumi,
the unique tattoos of the Yakuza. His small, black eyes, not unlike those of a rat, peered suspiciously at everyone and everything, as if at any moment he expected to discover a new conspiracy.

Nangi watched, fascinated, as he moved restlessly around the room. This was as singular as its owner, no doubt reflecting Kozo’s personality. The wood floor was as highly polished as that of a martial arts dojo. The walls were gray ferroconcrete, interspersed with steel girders, half-emerged from the walls, like sentinels or bodybuilders. An oval shape was cut out of the center of the floor. It was lined with glass, filled with water, water-lilies, aquatic grasses, and the most astounding array of rare
koi.
The gold, black, copper, and white-spotted fish swam serenely, lit from above by a kind of crystal-shaped skylight, oval itself, so that a muscular shaft of sunlight struck downward onto the pool. There were no other windows in the room, so that the corners were left in shadow.