The Nicholas Linnear Novels (29 page)

Then there came a momentous crashing as Fukashigi landed a ferocious overhead blow against Nicholas’ upraised sword. Nicholas was not moved backward, however, and as he stood immobile, the
sensei
sprang backward as lightly as a current of air, preparing himself for a second attack. But as the sword moved backward to gain momentum for the forward thrust, Nicholas was there, extending himself outward like a river, his own sword following precisely the path of the other’s and, beating down the “point,” stabbing inward at the
sensei
’s head. It touched the tip of the nose but, at the same instant, Fukashigi’s left fist was at Nicholas’ face in a blow that might have broken his nose and stunned him.

Both stepped back, bowed to each other. Neither of them seemed to be breathing hard.

Doc Deerforth had left. Justine sat over her drawing board working on a design that had eluded her for four days. Once or twice she seemed to have it conquered only to see it slip away from her as she sketched it out. It was like trying to catch a minnow with your fingers, she decided. At length she threw down her pen in disgust, ripped the sheet of tracing paper off its pushpin anchors and crumpled it up.

She went into the kitchen, fixed herself a tuna fish sandwich. She chewed at it without really tasting it, thinking of where she had gone wrong; surely the concept was sound enough. She washed the last of the sandwich down with a half glass of orange juice.

She was dressed in a Danskin bathing suit. For a moment she stood staring at the drawing board as if it were her enemy. Dangerous, she thought. She knew the signs.

She grabbed a towel and went out the door onto the beach. She ran now, dropping the towel onto the sand, high-stepping into the breakers, pushing herself through the heavy drag of the cold water until, seeing a wave looming high over her, ready to crash, she dived into its green side.

In solitude, she dimly heard its thunder over her, felt the slight quake of its violent passage. Then she was borne upward on the swell. She launched out with cupped hands and kicking legs, stroking powerfully outward, feeling the stretch in her lower back, her shoulders, her thighs. Bubbles streamed like molten metal from the corner of her mouth and she glided effortlessly upward, breaking the shivering surface, blinking, gulping air before she went under again.

Nicholas filled her thoughts and, despite what she had told Doc Deerforth, she considered going into the city. She hadn’t heard from him. Surely that meant he was busy. God, she didn’t want that anymore. But she wanted him, couldn’t help it. She continued to stroke outward, coming up just long enough to catch sweet air. When she was far enough out, she turned to her right to parallel the shore.

She found herself thinking of the long black and gold lacquered sheath hung on his wall. In her thoughts, she went across the room and, on tiptoes, reached up slowly, freeing it from its hook. It was heavy, satiny, perfectly balanced. She put her left hand around the end of the sheath, her right around the long hilt of the
katana.
Nicholas’
katana.
Inch by inch, as she exerted slow pressure, she saw the gleaming steel appear before her wide-open eyes, extending in a crescent horizon. It was a silver dazzle, blinding her, an enormous erection that continued to grow under her ministrations. Breath caught in her throat. Her heart pounded. The pumping blood sang in her ears. And the cool wash of the sea was like a caress over her swimming body. Her nipples erected and she felt an excitement stir between her legs. Still kicking, she put one hand down, cupped her mound. She moaned. Bubbles flew like birds thrown across the sky.

She felt a wash of cold water spiraling up her legs against her working thighs. It was so much like the stroking hand of a lover that, startled, her eyes flew open. The current encompassed her aching loins, now snaked up her torso. She rolled over. It was then that she felt the pull. At first it was only the tiniest of tugs but abruptly, as the tide and her swimming took her along, it wrenched at her.

Her impulse was to gasp but she clamped her teeth shut in time. The undertow was pulling her inexorably out to sea. She tumbled in its grasp, not end over end but around, as if she were a cylinder. Dizzied, she struck out blindly for the shore. She was an excellent swimmer and her breath capacity was good. Still, her first priority was to gain the surface.

Whirling, she struck out upward but made little headway. The grip upon her was as real as if a sea serpent had appeared from some unseen abyss and had wrapped its slippery coils about her.

She broke the surface, gasping and coughing. But in doing so she had lost ground to the sea. She tried to lift her head, shake her eyes clear of the stinging salt water so that she could get an accurate fix on the shoreline. She was jerked under.

She began to panic. Her stomach heaved and she shivered, not even swimming now but merely struggling futilely. Why hadn’t she screamed when she was in the air? She tried to rise again but the fierce grip would not let her. She sank. And in sinking, found her way home. Near the murky bottom the stillness was absolute. She wondered at this for a moment, her mind still trembling in fear until she realized that the tug of the current was gone. She reached out blindly, encountered rock. She pulled, keeping herself at this level, and began to make her way into shore.

Her lungs turned to fire and once her left thigh seemed seized in a cramp. She let it fall loose for a moment, relaxing her muscles, and it subsided. She went on scuttling over the bottom like an enormous crab. She desperately wanted to shoot upward to the surface but her terror of the undertow was absolute. She pushed on. Her eyes felt as if they were popping out of their sockets and an unquiet wind blew in her ears, roaring.

At last she felt the warmth of the shallower water and, simultaneously, the gentle push of the tide onto the rising sand.

She sprang upward, uncoiling her body fully, breaching the surface, sounding like a whale. She gasped and snorted, her insides turning to jelly. She felt the sand against her soles and, as she came out of the water, she found her legs would not support her. She fell to her knees and a wave inundated her. She fell over.

She heard the sound of raised voices as she vomited seawater into the surf. Then strong hands had her under her armpits. Her head hung down on her chest and she coughed.

“Are you all right?”

She tried to nod, only vomited again, heaving wretchedly. She felt the dry sand against her back. She was aware of her whole body gasping. She felt as if she would never get enough air inside her. Her lungs worked like bellows and the sound was so harsh and rasping to her ears that she might have been an asthmatic. There was a folded towel behind her head, elevating her face. A pins-and-needles tingling broke out along her cheeks and lips. She tried to raise her arms but they felt as if they belonged to another person. There was no strength left within her.

“Take it easy,” someone said above her. “Take it easy.”

She closed her eyes, feeling as she did so a kind of kinetic vertigo as one does after stepping off a violent ride at an amusement park. In her mind, she still spun in the grip of the undertow. Gradually this faded and, as it did so, her breathing began to return to normal.

“Okay now?”

She nodded, not daring yet to speak.

“Live around here?” It was a feminine voice.

She nodded.

“We’ve called for a doctor.”

“I’m all right,” she said. Her voice sounded strange to her.

“He’ll be here in a minute.”

She nodded, closing her eyes again. She thought of Gelda and the time at the seashore when they were both in the water. Perhaps Gelda was nine; she was six. They were playing and, as a joke, she had poked Gelda in the ribs. Her sister had turned to her, a look of fury on her face, and, reaching up her arms, had clamped her hands onto the top of Justine’s head. Down Justine had gone, under the water. At first it was all right. But then she wanted to get up, to breathe. Gelda held her down. She struggled, but still Gelda would not relent. In her mind, she pleaded with her sister, then she reviled her. When at last Gelda had let her up, she was hysterical. She ran from the water, crying, right into her mother’s arms. She had never told anyone what Gelda had done to her but for a week she would not look at, let alone talk to, her sister. Gelda’s only response had been to silently gloat.

Justine opened her eyes to find Doc Deerforth bending over her, talking to her. She reached up and, shuddering, cried against his chest.

When Lieutenant Croaker left Nicholas outside the
dōjō
, he called in through the car radio to see about messages. McCabe wanted him to call back—that was no doubt about the Tanaka-Okura thing; Vegas had dropped by to talk; and Finnigan wanted a progress report.

He was rolling crosstown and the traffic was fierce. “If you can still catch Vegas, tell him I’ll be back around four-thirty, okay?” He did not want to speak to the D.A. yet and as for Finnigan—fuck him!

No other calls. Croaker tried to clear his mind of the anticipation. But oh, how he wanted that call to come in. “That’s it,” he said. “Patch me through to Vincent Ito at the M.E.’s, will you?” The heat sat on wavy lines along the street. He wiped at his sweating forehead. When Vincent came on the line, Croaker set up a dinner. Vincent suggested Michita and gave Croaker the address.

Croaker went through Central Park at the Seventy-second Street Transverse and, moments later, he had pulled up outside the three-story brownstone that housed Terry Tanaka’s
dōjō.
There he interviewed all of the instructors. He called for a police artist to draw a composite of the strange Japanese who had visited the
dōjō
on the afternoon of the double murder. None of the people he interviewed had seen the man before or since. None knew where he had come from. The aikido
sensei
recalled his name as Hideyoshi, but that meant absolutely nothing to Croaker. Still, it was conceivable that the man was the killer or was, at least, tied in with him in some way.

It was well after four by the time he was finished. There had been no prints at Terry’s save for the two victims’, but he called for a print team to dust the
dōjō
anyway. It was not good practice to overlook any possibility, however remote. Who knows, he thought, we may be lucky and pull something. Then he asked for a detective sergeant to canvass the block to see if any neighbor had seen the man.

In the office he checked in with Irene, threw the two polythene bags of clothes and personal effects of Terry and Eileen into a corner.

He checked for calls. Nothing.

He was about to open the bundles for tagging when his doorway was darkened by Vegas. He was an enormous man with a full beard and eyes like points of lightning. His skin was so black it took on blue highlights in the fluorescent lighting of the station house.

“Hey,” Croaker said, turning his head.

“What it is.” Vegas’ voice was like the rumble of distant thunder.

“Heard you wanted to see me.”

“Yowsah.”

“Take a seat.”

Vegas sat down with a grunt. He wore faded jeans, Texas cowboy boots and a gray and black cowboy shirt with pearl snaps. “I gots to get outa there,” he said. He meant Narco. “I am being driven up the fuckin’ wall.”

“Sallyson?” He was the captain.

“You mean Captain Ahab.” Vegas snorted. “The fuckin’ bastard’s ready for the funny farm.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his long thighs. “Look, Lew, I want in here. Homicide.”

Croaker looked at his friend. He had known Vegas for a long time. They had been hooked up in plenty of wild busts; did each other favors all the time and never did one lightly. “Finnigan’s not an easy sonovabitch to take, my man,” Croaker said seriously. “He is one mean motherfucker.”

“Don’t make no nevermind to me, Jack,” Vegas said. “Long as I get away from Narco—those boys ain’t funny no more.”

Croaker squinted up at him. “Let’s see. Homicide’s not the only answer. Why, you could slip right into Vice, no trouble at all.”

Vegas’ face looked pained. “Sheeit! Sure, I could make a bundle, takin’ my part of the grease each month. Only trouble is, you sawed-off sonovabitch, those fuckers don’t allow no black man in on the big-time scam, you dig? They don’ want me over there.”

“Well, Vegas, I sure as hell don’t know whether Finnigan would want you either.”

“You know he’s an okay motherfucker when it comes to skin, Jack. Wassamatter, don’t you want to work with me?”

Croaker laughed. “I sure as hell would love it but right now the old man ain’t too pleased with me.”

“Shit! That ain’t no big thing. You know how he is. Next time you land a big one an’ the mayor hands him another bronze pin, he’ll be back kissin’ yo’ white ass.”

Croaker grinned. “Maybe so. Maybe so.”

“Ain’t no two ways about it, Jack.”

Croaker longed to tell Vegas about the Didion case: his suspicions and what he was working on. It was only procedure, after all—you needed a backup in any operation—but he knew that he could not do it. Not that he did not trust the man—they had saved each other’s lives too many times for trust ever to be a factor. It was unfair to the other man. It was one thing for Croaker to put himself in departmental jeopardy, quite another to rope someone else in unwittingly.

Croaker reached out, slapped the other’s leg. “Okay, you got it. I’ll ask Finnigan soon’s I think the times’s right and we got a chance of him not biting my head off.”

Vegas gave him a wide grin. “I dig. I dig.” He got up, towering over Croaker. “You lay it on him an’ we’ll see what pops up. Meanwhile, this is one nigger that’s got to hit the streets again. Sallyson’s given us all quotas to fill, dig? Sheeit!” He turned and waved. “Later.”

“Lay one on for me,” Croaker said.

Vegas smiled. “Only on the prettiest one, Jack.”

“I don’t know, Nick, it seems as if I’ve been here for a hundred years.” Vincent looked down at the peanut he was shelling. “It’s funny but Tokyo seems like a dream to me, nothing more.”

“You ought to go back, then. If only for a vacation.”