The Kaisho (63 page)

As he walked, he scanned the environment. He had been careful when they had left the restaurant in Alexandria, remembering that the concierge at their hotel had recommended it and, therefore, knew where they were going. Margarite, apparently of the same mind, had insisted that they walk some distance from the restaurant and then not take the first cab that cruised by. The directions she gave the cabdriver were exceedingly circuitous. She did not want anyone to know where they were going.

In front of the carved wooden door, Margarite turned to him, said, “I want you to understand something, Lew. I’m not responsible here, for anything. This place is something more than private property.”

He stared at her, trying to fathom the strange transformation she had undergone from the moment she had seen the photos of Ginnie Morris spread out on Lillehammer’s mean, government table.

She touched him gently on the wrist, tried to smile, then used the brass knocker. In a moment, the door opened, and a beautiful woman dressed in black wool trousers, a cream silk blouse, and an embroidered Spanish crop-waisted black jacket stood before them. The outfit, which would not have looked out of place on a runway model one quarter this woman’s age, accentuated her slim, long-waisted figure.

“Margarite! Thank God you’ve come!”

The woman’s smile, metallic as the ticking of the cab’s engine outside, caused Croaker to give her a harder look. Lines crinkled her face, at the corners of her eyes and mouth, along her upper lip, and he could see the years weighing on her, not heavily as they might in many other women, perhaps because of the indefatigable spark in her cerulean eyes, but lurking nonetheless.

By this smile alone Croaker knew she was a dangerous woman. And now he could scent like the discharge from a pistol the fear and reluctance that marked Margarite’s decision to return here.

“Come in, darling,” the woman said, closing the door behind them. She embraced Margarite, kissing her on both cheeks in the European fashion. “It’s so good to see you. Nothing’s been the same, it seems, since Dom died. Despite my best efforts to pull strings, even with the senior senator from Minnesota, who owes me a raft of favors, I’ve come up against a stone wall in trying to find out what happened to Dom.”

“I think we can help each other on that score,” Margarite said tightly.

“Darling, that’s the best news I’ve had in weeks,” Renata said. “Trust you to know the score. Dom always held you in the highest regard.”

As she held Margarite at arm’s length, she frowned, and Croaker could see more lines appear like writing in invisible ink materializing under the influence of an infrared bulb.

“But, my dear, you’ve come with a stranger. Where is Anthony?”

Margarite turned to him and he could clearly see the struggle in her eyes. Pain and half-heard heartache swirled like dark colors muddying an artist’s best work.

“Lew Croaker,” she said, “I’d like you to meet my stepmother, Renata Loti.”

Renata smiled sweetly, extending an astonishingly firm hand, which gripped Croaker’s strongly. “Do come in. My daughter is being uncommonly kind. I’ve been known by many names in my day. Renata Loti is the one Washington knows and it serves me well. But in times past I was known as Faith Goldoni. You know that name, don’t you, Mr. Croaker?”

This is
Dominic Goldoni’s mother,
Croaker thought, stunned.
Good God!

She did not invite them to take off their coats, but turned immediately, led them down a long pearwood-paneled hallway. Croaker noticed her slight limp. She made no mention of it, and he could see by the way she moved that she did not consider it a handicap. On the contrary, she had adapted herself to it so that her stride appeared, if not quite natural, then at least uniquely hers. They passed double doors behind which the sounds of a sedate party discreetly emanated.

“The main house is alive with guests tonight,” she said. “Knowing my daughter, I’m certain we could use some privacy.”

They entered the sweet-smelling pantry, then went through a vast tile-and-stainless-steel kitchen, redolent of fresh sage, olive oil, and red wine. A young chef in white apron and
toque de cuisinier
gave them hardly any notice as he worked on a pear tart.

Renata took a fur-lined, black vinyl slicker off a wooden peg, draped it over her shoulders. The rear door gave out onto a tiny herb garden and, to the left, a wood-and-brick loggia down which Renata Loti led them. Thick wisteria and woody grapevines protected them from the chill of the clear November night.

The yeasty scents of the kitchen were soon supplanted by the sharp, heady reek of horses, hay, and manure. Renata reached out, turned on a light, opened a wide door into the stables.

Horses snorted and stamped, and Croaker was reminded of the hallucinatory moment in the cab, as if he had been eavesdropping on Margarite’s memories.

Huge dewy brown equine eyes regarded them with agitation and distrust. There were several high whinnies, as the horses adapted to the new scents.

He scanned the interior, as he always did, taking in details. “Odd,” he said. “There’s a gun in here.”

Renata looked at the revolver in its old, scarred leather holster hung on the far wall. “It’s a Colt. I keep it in perfect condition. I bought it when I put in these stables. Just a couple of miles from here I’d seen a horse with a broken leg suffering for over an hour while someone tried to find a gun, some humane way of putting it out of its misery. When I decided to ride horses, I vowed I’d never let any of mine suffer that way.”

Croaker studied her for some time, putting in sync the information she’d just provided with the elegant physical presence of the woman. “Frankly, you’ve taken me completely by surprise,” he said after a moment.

“Oh?”

“I was under the impression... I think the feds are, too, that Faith Goldoni died some time ago. I saw a Xerox of the death certificate myself in the file I was given on the Goldonis.”

“I don’t doubt it a bit. I
did
die some years ago. At least, Faith Goldoni did. Then Renata Loti was born and moved here within shouting distance of Capitol Hill, where she could do the most good.” She leaned against a horse stall, unraveling a piece of tack with her expert fingers. Hers was a body that had apparently never experienced arthritis. “Of course, taking different identities is nothing new for me. I served in the U.S. Army during World War Two under the name of Faith Sawhill.”

Croaker was shaking his head. “Assuming all of this is true, why are you letting me in on it? If even the feds I work with don’t know who you are, why risk telling me?’”

“First, you’re not a fed. Second, I know who
you
are.” Renata’s piercing blue eyes slid from Croaker to Margarite. “Third, my daughter brought you here.” She made a curious sound in the back of her throat that made the horses’ ears prick up. “Why, she doesn’t even do that with her husband.”

Apparently, Margarite had had enough of this because she pulled out a thick folded piece of paper. As she handed it to Renata, Croaker saw that it was a photo.

Wrapping her fingers around it, Renata looked into her stepdaughter’s eyes as if already alerted to the extraordinary nature of their visit.

“Ginnie Morris,” Margarite said woodenly. “Her body was found in the same house with Dom’s. There was a vertical crescent carved into her forehead.”

“Dear God,” Renata Loti breathed. “No wonder you came.” She was no longer leaning nonchalantly against the stall, but was gripping the folded photo with fingers made white with tension.

“I suppose you know who Ginnie Morris is,” Croaker said, suspecting the answer but needing it confirmed.

“I don’t believe my son had any secrets from me,” Renata said with a voice that made plain the burden of sharing another life. “In all ways, he was an exceptional man.” Her eyes flickered to Croaker’s. “Whatever opinion to the contrary you have already formed, he was a man for whom the word
Fidelity
should, in all cases, be capitalized. As to his sexual peccadilloes, he couldn’t help himself.” She gave a small, crescent smile. “Who among us can?”

Croaker, watching her in the manner in which he had been trained to study potential suspects, felt a peculiar chill go through him, as if it might be possible that she knew that he and Margarite had made love.

“There’s more,” Margarite said softly, “than just the mark carved on her.”

As Renata unfolded the photo, she studied the thoroughly unpleasant sight of a woman’s torso slit with seven evenly spaced horizontal wounds. Tucked into the lowest and seventh slash was the feather of the rare white magpie.

“Does something in that photo look familiar to you?” Croaker asked.

Renata had not taken her eyes from the photo. Croaker tried to read her, but her expression did not change. The horses shook their heads in the increasingly restless atmosphere. Perhaps they smelled a storm coming.

“The Soul Ladder,” Renata said at last.

“Pardon me?” Croaker said, leaning forward to hear her.

“This is part of a ritual of a people known as the Messulethe. Psycho-magicians older even than the Chinese civilization. Some say they were Cycladians, roamers of the seas, descendants of the Titans, others—”

Renata shrugged and pointed to the photo. “You see, there are seven cuts. In the lore of the Messulethe, there is a belief that the human soul must pass through seven levels in life and in the afterlife. The Messulethe priest often creates this Soul Ladder in, for instance, very ill people, by making seven incisions along the torso in order to help the soul to continue its journey.”

She licked her lips, the only sign she had made that she was in any way distressed. “In times of extreme hardship—like drought, when it is believed that the cosmic order is impaired—an animal is often sacrificed this way so that the balance can be restored.”

“So it’s some kind of ritual—what? Voodoo?”

Renata’s lips curled into a sardonic smile. “It is Ngoh-meih-yuht,” she said flatly. “That’s a phrase in an obscure Chinese dialect that means literally ‘the crescent moon.’ But of course that is not its meaning here. It is almost synonymous with another word, Gim, which is a kind of two-edged sword. The Gim is the symbol of the Messulethe priest: the vertical crescent, dark with woad.”

Croaker, listening with mounting fascination, said, “How on earth do you know about these people?”

Renata shrugged. “When one lives in Venice, Mr. Croaker, when one exists for so long suspended between the sea and the land, in a lagoon of mist and magic, one feels compelled to explore the beginning of things. Especially when one is not by birth Venetian and is reminded of that fact every day of one’s life.” She was not looking at Margarite, but Croaker had the feeling it was to her stepdaughter she was directing her reply.

“One might say that I am by nature acquisitive, an acquirer of knowledge.” Her eyes had turned dark. “Also, I explored the myths of these beginnings through my late husband, Margarite’s father. He was Venetian. Through him, through Margarite’s mother, and so through her, flowed the blood of the Cycladians, or so they maintained.” She shrugged, somehow managing to impart hidden meaning to even this most nondescript of gestures. “I may say that many ancient cultures claimed to have been the founders of Venice, even the last scholarly remnants of the Trojans, fleeing before the wrath of the brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon and their Achaean armada.”

Croaker, fascinated though he was, kept Margarite in the corner of his vision. He noted, as Renata spoke, that she turned her face more and more into shadow. It was as if these two had a long history of psychological conflict, pitting the force of one personality against the other. Was this why Margarite found it so difficult to return here?

“I don’t expect you to have heard of them,” Renata continued, “but in the highlands of North Vietnam and southern China live hill tribes called, collectively, the Nungs. These Nungs practice Ngoh-meih-yuht, the way of the Messulethe. They are not headhunters or cannibals, per se. But it is their conviction that in the unbroken bones of man and animal alike resides the essence of the ‘soul,’ from which transcendental enlightenment—energy and wisdom—may be reconstituted by the proper rituals and prayers.”

Renata had a way of speaking that could make the most fantastic tale sound credible. Not that Croaker believed for a moment that she would be giving this particular account to many people.

“The Nung priests believe that Ngoh-meih-yuht is the one true path to nirvana. Others have seen in their lore an ancient path to power that can be implemented in the modern world.” Her head swung away for a moment and it appeared to Croaker as if she stared through the walls of the stable to another place, another time.

“Like this man who killed Dominic and Ginnie.”

Renata nodded.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d give me some details,” he said. “For instance, what meaning does the white magpie feather have?”

“So you have done some research.” She shifted as if abruptly uncomfortable. The stallion next to her stamped and whinnied, as if scenting with its primitive brain the intimations of evil. “Should I tell you about the feather?” she asked rhetorically. “I suppose once having begun I am obligated to finish this.” She turned her head in Croaker’s direction, and he could feel the heat in her eyes.

What is Margarite thinking?
Croaker wondered, watching shadows like spiderwebs steal across her cheeks.
She must have known. She brought me here.
She’d known the moment she saw the seven wounds, the feather of the white magpie.
Perhaps it’s inevitable, like one second coming after another,
she had whispered in the moment before they had come inside.

“In Ngoh-meih-yuht,” Renata said, “the white magpie holds a singular status. You must understand that in every culture of the world flight is one of the greatest of shamanic powers. The bird is a symbol... not only of flight... but of the transformation of man into God.”

Croaker considered this a moment. His experiences with Nicholas had prepared him to believe in the fantastic. He knew, firsthand, that another, rarely glimpsed, and often misunderstood reality existed beyond the facade of the ordinary. Besides, he could sense like a navigator intuiting currents a confluence in what she was saying and the highly disturbing aura at the murder scene. This curious form of double vision like that associated with a migraine occurred in him when the previously unexplainable suddenly acquired both context and meaning.