The Kaisho (74 page)

He roared, staggering, and kicked out, catching Faith on the point of her hip. She screamed, went down on one knee. The horses, terrified, banged into the sides of their stalls, whinnying, eyes wide, nostrils flaring, catching whiffs of her fear and pain.

“Bitch!” Lillehammer shouted, freeing himself from the tackle and reaching for her.

He was right in front of the open stall door, and Faith slammed her shoulder into his knees with all the force she could muster. Lillehammer lost his balance, falling backward into the stall with the panicked stallion.

Lillehammer struck the stallion’s side with such force that the horse reared up, its forelegs clawing the air. The beast, clearly terrified out of its mind, brought its hooves down squarely on Lillehammer, who was rising. He crashed into the side of the stall, the noise and confusion further panicking the stallion, whose hooves beat a steady tattoo on the creature that had attacked it.

Faith, rising to her feet, could smell the blood.

“Oh, Mr. Dominic,” she said to the horse. “Poor, poor frightened baby.”

The stallion, his eyes still rolling, caught the tone of her familiar voice. He turned his great head, his left eye staring at her. She continued her cooing sounds, and he came down on his four legs, snorting, shaking his head. Like her, he did not care for the smell of blood.

She moved to the open doorway of the stall, reached up to stroke the place just above his nose. She put a cube of sugar in his mouth as she held on to him. He was quieting now, responding to her ministrations. It was only then she looked to her left, saw the red pulp that had been William Justice Lillehammer, crumpled against the stall wall.

“Ah, Mr. Dominic,” she whispered, kissing the stallion, nuzzling it. “Everything’s all right now.”

“I’m afraid you’re being a bit premature.”

She turned, knowing that voice, seeing the man she had spotted in Moon’s homemade video. He was truly hideous now, seeming in real life less like the Johnny Leonforte she had known than he had in the video. Ironically, she thought he could have been seated next to her at a restaurant or the opera and she might never have recognized him. Unless she happened to be looking at him as the lights went down, and in the shadows and half-light the man he had once been had emerged, as he had in the video, part real, part memory.

“Hello, Johnny. You’ve come a long way since I saw you last.”

“We both have. And it’s been a hard, painful journey.”

“For one of us, at least.”

Johnny Leonforte tried to smile, but the nerves on one side of his face didn’t seem to work, and the result was grotesque.

“Your friend Okami cut me up real good, but I’m too tough to kill.” He moved slightly with the movement of the stallion. “Really, Faith, I’d be much obliged if you’d move slowly out of the stall. Observing firsthand the rapport you have with these creatures, I see it was a mistake on Will’s part to think he could maneuver you and them just right.” He kept moving. “Besides, we don’t want you getting your hands on Will’s weaponry, do we?”

Faith, who had already thought of that, said, “Mr. Dominic is still agitated. I think it’d be best if I stayed here with him.”

Johnny took out a .357 magnum. “Where should I put the bullet, Faith, just below the horse’s right ear?” He aimed at the stallion’s head.

Faith broke her contact with the stallion, stepped out of the stall. “All right. Now what?”

“Close the door to the stall. We don’t want to be disturbed.”

She did as he said, moved down the stables, away from the stallion.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t want any mistakes. I don’t want you suddenly deciding to shoot Mr. Dominic.”

Johnny made a grimace. “Named after your not very dearly departed son, eh, Faith? Big mansion, stables, horses, more money and influence than you know what to do with. Jesus, what a life you’ve lived.”

She looked at him mutely.

“It’s my life you’ve been living, you queen bitch!”
The ferocity of his scream made her flinch. She could see all the rage and envy pent up over the years, swimming in his eyes like a school of ravenous sharks.

“You took everything away from me! You and that Jap sonuvabitch Okami. You schemed it all along! Fucking Goldoni, masquerading as Faith Sawhill. And I bought it. You threw your body at me and I took it!”

“It hurts, doesn’t it, to know that in the end you were just a man—like all the rest of the men I’ve known. I opened my thighs at will, took a slab of your flesh in my mouth, and everything I wanted followed as easily as saying ‘Open sesame’!”

“I’m gonna fucking kill you!”

“Now
you sound like the Johnny Leonforte I used to know,” she said as she backed down the stables away from his threat. “Not the Red Queen, who conned all of Washington’s mightiest minds. Speaking of influence, how many presidents did you manage to manipulate? Imagine! A Sicilian thug like you, an actor!” She laughed. “Why do you hate me, Johnny? I did you the biggest favor of your life. You were born to the shadows and acting. Remember how bored you were with the business side of things? You even talked about me taking over the bookkeeping. Remember?”

“You took
life
away from me, Faith! Look at my face. I was handsome once. I had to change my name, undergo so many operations I lost count. And the pain! And then I had to hide myself away, yes, in the shadows but without a house, a family, the admiration of blue bloods, all the things I ever wanted in life. You took them all!” Johnny’s face was so flushed it was as if she could see every venal emotion that drove him crawling along his skin like maggots. He came after her, his shoulders hunched as if against the words she flung at him like knives.

She laughed again, a cruel edge coming into her tone. “Nothing’s changed, Johnny. I’m still doing your bookkeeping!”

“No! You and Okami and Dominic were intent on putting me out of business!”

“You made bad friends, Johnny, when you decided to play both ends against the middle. To the feds you were the Red Queen, playing the deep-cover governmental spook, a hero to his country. But secretly, you were running Looking-Glass toward your own ends, handpicking Mafia men, using your nephew, Caesare, to move them up the Family ranks until they became dons, beholden to him and to you. You were hero
and
villain, wrapped up in one unholy package.”

She was against the far wall now, and she moved to her left, her body blocking his vision of what hung there on the wall. “And now you’re doing it again with the Godaishu. You linked Looking-Glass up with the Godaishu to undermine the feds, circumvent their laws, and expand your network into business worldwide. Only this time, you’re out of your league. Those boys in the Godaishu don’t care one iota about you. You thought you and Caesare were going to remain their partners? Sorry to disillusion you. They were using you. You and Caesare were their meal ticket into all the restricted areas of America.”

She brushed the softness of the scarred leather with her back, and it comforted her. “Think of it—the Mafia and the government in an alliance. It was an irresistible combination of the Japanese Yakuza.” She moved her right hand, felt the leather with her fingers. “But after the Godaishu was well established here, what do you imagine they’d do with you and Caesare?”

“I have protection against that possibility. It was intelligence passed to me by a powerful source code-named—” Johnny paused, then said, “But why shouldn’t I tell you now. What good will it do you? You’ll soon be dead.” He tried to smile, and Faith shivered. “My source is code-named Nishiki. His intelligence allowed me to rise in rank, to become the head of Looking-Glass.”

“Idiot. Nishiki is Mikio Okami. He only passed you intelligence that he and Dominic wanted you to have.”

“No! It can’t be! You lying bitch!”

The magnum came up, but Faith’s hand had already drawn the old revolver out of the scarred leather holster, the Colt she used in case a horse went down with a broken leg.

She smelled the oil, felt the hickory grips solid against her palm. She leveled the barrel and fired, once, twice, the stench of cordite filling her nostrils as the revolver bucked in her hand.

Later, she would remember Johnny Leonforte’s astonished expression, the stretched
O
of his mouth, so like a little boy’s. He staggered backward amid the rearing, stamping, whinnying horses, fell to his knees. Faith, in full possession of her wits, fired into his face, and he slammed backward onto the straw-covered plank floor.

“Not so hard to kill, after all,” she said, standing over him.

Just because you are supremely talented,
Kansatsu had said,
does not mean that you are capable of fully
comprehending
that talent.

Just how ironic he was being Nicholas could not appreciate until now.

A now that had perhaps been occurring over and over like ripples in a lake, expanding outward, affecting everything in its wake. A now that was as inevitable as taking another breath.

What had Seiko said to him at Narita airport in the last moment before he had flown to Venice, with something akin to panic in her eyes?
You will be different
—so different that no one will recognize you.

Yes. It was happening now.

Celeste, her heart beating fast at the knowledge of the Messulethe’s approach, held Nicholas’s hand, but he could not feel it. All his senses were turned inward to make this one great leap of faith. He had to abandon everything Kansatsu had taught him. He had to have faith now—not in his training, not in those who had trained him, whether in good faith or in bad, but in his own innate talent.

He used
haragei
to center himself, to bring his breathing, his pulse, down to almost nil. The color drained out of his face, but Celeste did not utter a sound though her heart skipped a beat. He had warned her.

Blood and energy pooled in
hara,
the center of intrinsic energy inside the body, as he returned himself to that moment in the cage when he and the Messulethe had been both physically and psychically linked, when the Messulethe, calling upon the help of the sacred white magpie, had summoned the opening of the Sixth Gate.

Nicholas had absorbed the incantation then, and now with the aid of
haragei,
he recalled it, pronouncing the strange syllables just as the Messulethe had done at the robot factory. The gate opened, and Nicholas, freed of Tau-tau altogether, entered the forbidden Sixth Gate.

“Dear God! He’s here!”

“Margarite!”

But she was already running down the hall, throwing open the front door, disappearing outside as Croaker, taken by surprise, ran belatedly after her.

A hundred yards away, through the stands of trees, he saw the other woman, rising up as out of the ground itself, looking toward Margarite as she ran. Racing after Margarite, he could make out her features. The thick red hair, the oval face with its beautiful, aggressive features, and his instinct told him who this woman must be.

“Celeste!”

He could hear Margarite calling the woman’s name, and a moment later, he saw the two sisters embracing.

There was no doubt in his mind that the redheaded Celeste must be the sister Margarite had alluded to. He came upon them, still clinging to one another, in tears.

“Lew,” Margarite said, “my sister, Celeste, has been with your friend Nicholas.”

“Nick! Where is he?”

And now he could see the despair in Margarite’s eyes as she wiped the tears off her cheeks.

“Nick and Do Duc—”

“Which way?”

“Lew,” Margarite said, “I have to go with you.”

“No!” Celeste cried. “You don’t know what the Messulethe’s like, what he’s done to Nick.”

“You don’t know what he’s done to me,” Margarite said quietly. “Celeste, he murdered Dom.”

“Ah, God!” It was a quiet wail, but it stirred the hairs at the back of Croaker’s neck. Celeste gripped her sister. “All the more reason for you to stay away.”

But Margarite shook her head. “He won’t harm me. There is something unspoken that must be done.” She looked hard into her sister’s beautiful face. “You understand what I’m saying?”

Croaker was aware of a subtle shift in the light and he shivered. He saw Celeste nodding. Then she said, “If you must... The two men are masked. This was Do Duc’s doing. He has Nicholas’s face and Nicholas has his. I think in some eerie way Do Duc wants to become Nicholas.”

“Let’s go,” Croaker said to Margarite as Celeste indicated the direction in which the two men had set out. And to Celeste: “There’s a man named Tanzan Nangi in Nick’s house. He’s a friend. You can trust him with your life. Stay with him.”

Celeste nodded uncertainly, watching them as they headed toward the stand of bare ginkgo and what lay beyond.

How many sins had he committed in his lifetime? He could not say. Either he had lost count or he no longer recognized the definition of sin. Except one.

He had murdered Ao.

For the one secret that Ao, in his wisdom, would not divulge to his student: the incantation that would open the Sixth Gate. Ao, who had taken in a homeless, frightened boy, had accepted him when, perhaps, the other elders of the Nungs would have done otherwise. Ao, who had tutored him, initiating him into the magic of the Messulethe, who had made him privy to the power of the ages.

Perhaps, Do Duc thought as he struck out through the woods in pursuit of Nicholas, he had known he would sin in that singular, unforgivable way. How else to explain why he had chosen the sacred white magpie as his familiar? Had Ao an intimation of the future as well, at that moment? Do Duc could see his face, the astonishment etched upon it at his pupil’s choice of the white magpie. Perhaps, in that moment, he scented his own death on the wind; perhaps the white magpie whispered it in his ear.

Ao, who had loved him, now dust.

Do Duc had pulled what he had wanted most from the depths of Ao’s dreaming mind and then, taking his insensate form down to the river, had closed his eyes and pushed the head beneath the water. There had been nothing else to do. He had violated every code of the Nungs. He had invaded the mind of their head shaman and so was marked for death. He had had to kill Ao.