The Nicholas Linnear Novels (71 page)

Nicholas looked at him, then at Tomkin waiting silently beside the limo. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

“I can’t. I’ve gotta nail him on this. You should be able to understand. It’s a matter of honor. If I don’t do it, nobody’s gonna be able to.”

“But are you sure of what you’ve got?”

Croaker stuck a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. His eyes were dark pools. His face seemed more lined tonight than it had two days ago, but perhaps it was only the harsh light. He told Nicholas about his conversation with Matty the Mouth. “You thought I was just shooting off my big mouth with Tomkin, didn’t you? Matty didn’t know who else was nosing around about this broad but I’ll bet it’s Frank who’s doing it. You seen him lately? No? Why don’t you ask your ex-boss, then, where Frank is, okay?”

“You won’t know anything until you talk to the woman, right?”

“Right. That’s why I’m taking off for Key West right away. But as far as the department is concerned, it’s just a long-overdue vacation.”

“I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for.”

The last ambulance started up, its siren screaming. For an instant they were bathed in the intense crimson glow from its revolving light. Then it had turned a corner and was gone. The night darkened as if from a swiftly advancing storm.

“That’s an odd thing to say,” Croaker said, “coming from you.”

“Nick! Are you coming?” Tomkin’s voice floated across to them as unreal as a dream.

“In a minute,” Nicholas called without looking over. To Croaker he said, “You going to see Gelda before you leave?”

“Can’t take the time. I’ll call her. Anyway, the number she gave me has a 516 area code. She’d never make it in.” He looked down at his feet for a moment. “I just want to tell her that everything’s okay now. And hey,” he said as Nicholas turned to leave, “you ought to do the same. Justine’s probably worried sick.”

When Tomkin saw Nicholas coming, he ducked his head, slid into the limo. Tom held the door until Nicholas got in, then he shut it softly and went around the front.

All the night sounds were gone in the thick quiet interior. The motor purred richly. The air conditioning was on.

There was still a lot of police activity going on outside. Nicholas could see Croaker talking to a rather young-looking patrolman. He shook his head once in response to a question and pointed into the bowels of the tower.

“I’m grateful, Nick,” Tomkin put his arm along the top of the back seat, his thick fingers partially curled. “I mean it. Tomorrow you’ll come up to the office for your check. Plus a bonus. You deserve it.”

Nicholas sat silently with his scabbarded
katana
across his knees. He put his head back and closed his eyes.

“And we can talk,” Tomkin continued, “about you staying on in the firm.”

“I’m not interested,” Nicholas said. “Thanks just the same.”

“Oh now, I wouldn’t make a decision like that so hastily.” His voice had lightened somewhat. But it was still as deep, ringing with sincerity. “I could use you. Somewhere high up. You’ve got remarkable talents.” Tomkin was silent for a time. Even with his eyes closed, Nicholas could tell that he was studying him. “How’d you like to go back to Japan?”

Nicholas opened his eyes, stared directly ahead at the plastic partition. “I don’t need you for that,” he said slowly.

“No,” Tomkin admitted. “Decidedly not. You could jump on a plane tonight and be there in ten hours. But if you went with me, it would mean a minimum of, oh, say, a quarter of a million dollars.”

Nicholas turned to look at Tomkin.

“Oh, I am perfectly serious. Just because this ninja has been killed doesn’t mean my problems over there are solved. Far from it. I need an expert who—”

Nicholas raised a hand. “Sorry, Tomkin.”

The other man shrugged. “Well, you think about it, anyway. There’s plenty of time now.”

Behind them, Nicholas could see Croaker climbing into his car.

Tomkin spoke to Tom. “Let’s go over to Third. I want to get a bite to eat before we drop Mr. Linnear off.”

The limo started up, heading left on Park, around the median so that they could take the eastbound street fronting the south side of the tower. Nicholas saw Croaker right behind them as he prepared to head back downtown to file his report before driving out to LaGuardia.

“How is Justine?” Tomkin asked.

He really is beneath contempt, Nicholas thought. He wanted to get home so that he could call her. “Did you have me followed to the disco?”

Tomkin tried to laugh. “No, no. I knew I could never get away with that. No. Just a father’s intuition.”

If it had not been so sad, it might have been funny. Nicholas reflected. He just does not understand. “She’s fine.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

The light changed and they went across the avenue. Tomkin cleared his throat. He almost said something, then seemed to change his mind. They came abreast of the tower. The last few policemen were grouped on the broken sidewalk, talking amongst themselves.

“Nick, I know you don’t like me much but—still—I’d like to ask you for a favor.”

Nicholas said nothing. He watched as through the window the tower began to slide by.

“I want—that is, I
don’t
want Justine to be estranged from me. I’ve done—well, I don’t know what to do anymore and I thought maybe you could help—bring us together—”

This side of the building was filled with trucks and, midway along the block, a metal and wooden overhang three stories high that jutted out past the curb, used to maneuver the enormous panes of tinted glass into place.

“I think,” Nicholas said, “that that has to be between the two of you.”

“But you’re already involved,” Tomkin said in his million-dollar-deal voice.

The limo passed beneath the overhang and the night seemed to darken.

Nicholas turned away from the window to look at Tomkin. “By the way,” he said, “I haven’t seen Frank around for a couple of days. Where is he?”

There came, at that moment, a tremendous crash as the left side of the windshield shattered inward. Tom seemed to leap from behind the wheel as if he were a speared marlin. He slammed backward with such force that the plastic partition cracked. His arms fluttered like wings and Nicholas heard a soft moaning sound like a child sick with fever.

Abruptly, Tom’s suit jacket ripped and fully three inches of steel rammed itself past his spine. Blood spurted like a geyser and a terrible stench invaded the limo’s interior.

“Oh, my God! What—?” Tomkin’s face was pale.

The limo continued to head east along the street, passing the corner and crossing Lexington Avenue.

A great thrashing was coming from the front seat but Tom no longer screamed. Something or someone was squirming its way inside through the great rent in the windshield.

Driverless, the limo wandered to the left, running up on the curb until its front end smashed into a light stanchion that was part of the new building on the corner.

Blackness in the front of the limo as if the night itself had stolen in.

Nicholas had already taken the
katana
off his lap and was holding it in his left hand. No use drawing it in such a confined space. Beside him, Tomkin was scrabbling at the door handle but it would not open. The automatic door locks were controlled from up front. It had been a security precaution. Now Tomkin cursed it.

Tom’s corpse was flung to one side. The smell was so overpowering, it seemed as if there was nothing else in the world.

Something dark pounded at the cracked partition, trembling it. Nicholas waited until the third blow, timing it in his mind. Then as the fourth blow came he met it with a powerful kick with both feet flat against the plastic. The partition came apart at the force of the blow and Nicholas leaped into the front of the limo.

Saigō had come off the face of the tower, sliding carefully along the narrow ledge from which he had thrown the already dead body.

He had stayed in place long enough to ascertain that the decoy had worked, then slowly made his way within the shadows down the face of the building. Even those few cops still looking up at the shattered window in Tomkin’s top-floor office had not seen him. Only Nicholas, had he been down on the street, would have had a chance.

Crouching in the blackness, he had cursed silently for now he felt the sodden touch of fear. Nicholas a ninja! His mind reeled and, reflexively, he popped another rough brown cube into his mouth, chewing on it to make it work all the faster.

Soon the psychedelic was flowing through his system, speeded by the outlay of adrenalin pumping through his veins. Now the sky seemed to explode in a crimson and black mushroom cloud, his muscles bulged; his neck swelled with the power and his vision dazzled as it reached his brain. He was frying in energy.

Then the voices began in his left ear and he lifted one hand, touching a forefinger to the side of his head to settle more comfortably the electronic receiver in his ear canal. He heard Tomkin and Nicholas talking, heard “Third Avenue” and moved immediately toward the south side of the building where he knew the overhang jutted out into the street. When the limo passed by he swung down so silently and with such remarkable balance that no one inside knew.

He crouched on top and, unsheathing his
katana,
the night wind in his hair, thrust it down and inward through the windshield, screaming in ecstasy as the car beneath him shuddered like big game being brought down.

Croaker had been about to head south on Park when he thought he saw some movement near Tomkin’s limo as it went east. A sound came to him then. He could not identify it but he nevertheless braked hard, swinging the wheel abruptly to the left.

Tires screeched and his back end skidded outward. For a long moment he concentrated on holding the turn and not crashing into the median. Horns honked and he cursed softly, fighting the centrifugal force.

Then he was screeching uptown on Park back toward the tower.

In the first moments of shock he was at a distinct disadvantage. Saigō knew this and used it. He ducked under the initial force of Nicholas’ lunge and, twisting around, began the
kansetsu-waza
—the dislocation—with the point of his left elbow.

Nicholas, above Saigō, felt rather than saw the lack of resistance and immediately went into the
osae-waza
—the immobilization—defense and got it, deflecting Saigō’s elbow while, simultaneously, going on the offensive.

For an instant, Saigō had a short blade free. Then his hand clamped down and they were locked together, joined by the honed steel that was an extension of themselves—the most holy of holies, without which their lives themselves might have no meaning.

Muscles rippled along their hunched backs; sweat streamed from them. Saigō gritted his teeth. Nicholas pressed downward. It was as if the sun and the moon, offshoots of a single entity, had entered into conflict. Was this the awesome force which bound Cain and Abel, decreeing that their hands be raised against each other?

Now was the time of their desperation. For ninja they were; of
ryu
that were sworn enemies when the silent stars in the sky had different positions, when the summers were perhaps hotter, the winters far colder, the continents even showing the pimply faces of adolescence; such was the nature of endless time into which they had both willingly entered in their youth.

Nicholas went immediately for the air-sea change, to break the deadlock, but this Saigō had apparently been waiting for, for he countered with
shime-waza
—the three-finger strangulation—and caught Nicholas off guard. But the liver-kite, severely foreshortened because of the tight space, broke that. And all the time, Tom flopped intimately against them, his slowly coagulating blood smearing their faces and wrists.

Muscles bulged like puffing engines, veins and rolling sweat ribboning their glossy skin. Their panting breath mingled, magnified in this tiny, overheated space, and their eyes crossed to look at each other. Mere words were, for the moment, beyond them and they hissed their hate at each other in a kind of elemental language that had not been heard since the dawn of man.

The blade of the
tanto
was turned away from him and Nicholas used the angle to force Saigō’s wrist backward. But he was not
Kanaka na ninja,
not an adept in
koppo.
Saigō, however, was and he knew how to stop this maneuver. He drew his right knee up and, simultaneously, began a movement with his right hand. Which was the feint? Or were they both?

In the split second of deciding, Nicholas’ grip on Saigō’s left wrist loosened and then was dislodged. The point of the
tanto
blurred immediately upward toward Nicholas’ face. He caught the end of the hilt on the outer bone of his wrist, deflecting its flight.

There was only destruction in their hearts; their minds, cleansing themselves of the years of enmity, poured their power into the emotionalism of the moment; stoked by pumping adrenalin and the
hsing-i
, the so-called imaginary mental fist: that is, the enormous force of will their disciplines had imbued them with.

Now Nicholas used the heart-kite to break the deadlock and Saigō, stung and surprised, swung outward, landing a blow on the side of Nicholas’ head.

Immediately he rolled upward and out through the rent windshield. Nicholas followed, leaping from the hood of the stalled limo onto the sidewalk.

He saw Saigō, all in black, standing beyond the bent light post. He had thrown aside his
katana
’s scabbard and he held it now in the first position. He did not have to call to Nicholas.

In the periphery of his vision, Nicholas saw a car brake to a halt. Croaker got out. Without turning his head, Nicholas called out, “Leave us alone! See to Tomkin. He’s in the back of the limo.”

Then he advanced on Saigō.

When one is ninja, one sees not only with one’s eyes.
Haragei
allows one to see with the entire body. Thus it was that as Nicholas moved toward Saigō, it was his eyes which saw the other’s one-handed grip but his body was already reacting.