The Nicholas Linnear Novels (8 page)

“What is it, Vincent? I suspect this isn’t a strictly personal call.”

“No. It isn’t.”

“What’s up?”

“You read about the stiff they took out of the water a couple of days ago?”

“Yeah.” His stomach rolled over. “What about him?”

“That’s why I’m out here.” Vincent cleared his throat, obviously uneasy. “I’m at the M.E.’s building in Hauppauge. Do you know where it is?”

“I know how to get to Hauppauge, if that’s what you’re aiming at,” he said shortly.

“I’m afraid I am, Nick.”

He felt as if he were abruptly holding onto three pounds of air. “What the hell is going on? Why all the goddamn secrecy?”

“I think you ought to see what we’ve got for yourself.” Vincent’s voice seemed strained. “I don’t—I don’t want to prejudice you in any way. That’s why I’m not giving you anything to think about over the phone.”

“Buddy, you’re wrong about that. You’re giving me plenty to think about.” He glanced at his watch: 7:15. “Give me about forty minutes, okay?”

“Sure. I’ll meet you outside, guide you in.” There was silence for a moment. “Sorry, buddy.”

“Yeah.”

When he put down the phone, he found that the palm of his hand was slippery with sweat.

Nicholas looked again at the sliver of metal under the eye of the microscope, a fractional shaving from the small piece Doc Deerforth had recovered from the breastbone of the corpse.

“Here are the spectrometer readouts,” Vincent said, slipping the sheets across the zinc alloy table. Nicholas took his eye from the microscopic fragment. “We ran it through three times to be certain.”

Nicholas picked up the sheets, running his gaze over the figures. But he already suspected what he would find there. Still, it seemed incredible to him.

“This steel,” he said carefully, “was manufactured from a particular type of magnetic iron and ferruginous sand. There are perhaps twenty separate layers. The size of the fragment makes it difficult to tell. I’m going by past experience.”

Vincent, whose eyes had never left Nicholas’, took a deep breath, said, “It wasn’t made in this country.”

“No,” Nicholas agreed. “It was manufactured in Japan.”

“Do you know what this means?” Vincent said. He sat back, including Doc Deerforth in the discussion.

“What can be inferred from that alone?” Nicholas asked.

Vincent took a folder off the tabletop, handed it to Nicholas. “Take a look at page three.”

Nicholas opened the folder, leafed through the pages. His eyes dropped down the typewritten sheet. He sat perfectly still but, abruptly, he could feel the rushing of his blood through his veins. His heart raced. He was nearing that far shore. He looked up. “Who did the chemical analysis?”

“I did,” Doc Deerforth said. “There’s no error. I was stationed in the Philippines during the war. I’ve come across this particular substance once before.”

“Do you know what this is?” Nicholas asked him.

“I can make a pretty good guess. It’s a nonsynthetic poison that affects the cardiovascular system.”

“It’s
doku
,” Nicholas said, “an enormously powerful poison distilled from the pistils of the chrysanthemum. The technique of its manufacture is virtually unknown outside of Japan and even among the Japanese very few know how to make it. Its origins, it is said, lie in China.”

“Then we know how the poison was administered,” Vincent said.

“What do you mean?” Doc Deerforth broke in.

“He means,” Nicholas said heavily, “that the man was killed by a
shaken—
a Japanese throwing star—part of a
skuriken
, a small-blade arsenal—dipped in
doku
.”

“Which means we also know
who
killed him,” Vincent said.

Nicholas nodded. “That’s right. Only one kind of man could. A ninja.”

For reasons of security, Doc Deerforth hustled them out of the building. They were careful to take with them all the pertinent readouts and evidence.

Since none of them had bothered with breakfast, they stopped on the way back to West Bay Bridge, pulling into a diner right off Montauk Highway that offered authentic Portuguese food.

Over strong black coffee, broiled sardines and clams in a rich steaming winy broth, they sat and watched the cars silently pass on the highway. No one seemed to want to begin. But someone had to and Vincent said, “Who’s the new lady, Nick?”

“Hmm?” Nicholas turned from the window and smiled. “Her name’s Justine Tobin. She lives right down the beach from me.”

“On Dune Road?” Doc Deerforth said and when Nicholas nodded, he added, “I know her. Beautiful girl. Only her name’s Tomkin.”

“Sorry, Doc,” Nicholas said. “You must be mistaken. This Justine’s named Tobin.”

“Dark hair, green eyes, one with red motes in it, about five-seven—”

“That’s her.”

Doc Deerforth nodded. “Name’s Justine Tomkin, Nick. At least, that’s how she was born. You know, Tomkin, as in Tomkin Oil.”

“
That
one?”

“Yep. Her daddy.”

Everyone knew about Raphael Tomkin. Oil was but one of his many multinational moneymakers but by all accounts the most lucrative. He was worth—where had he read it? In
Newsweek,
perhaps—somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred million dollars, the last time anybody had bothered to count; at that rarefied level, there did not seem to be much of a reason to do so.

“She doesn’t like him much,” Nicholas said.

Doc Deerforth laughed. “Yah. You could say that. She obviously doesn’t want any part of him.”

Nicholas recalled Justine’s words,
He’s as dead as he could possibly be.
Now he began to understand the irony of that remark. Still, he was annoyed at finding out this way.

“Now what can you tell me about the ninja?” Doc Deerforth said around a bit of clam flesh.

Outside, a white Ford with black trim pulled up next to the diner. As they watched, a big man with a red face and bulbous nose stepped out and walked toward them.

“Hope neither of you mind,” Doc Deerforth said. “I phoned Ray Florum when we got here. He’s the commander of the West Bay Bridge Village Police. I think he’s got a right to hear what’s going on. Okay?” Both Nicholas and Vincent nodded their assent. “Nick?”

“It’s okay, Doc,” he said as lightly as he could. “It just caught me off guard. I didn’t expect her to—” He waved a hand in lieu of finishing.

The door opened and Florum pushed into the diner. Doc Deerforth introduced him around and he sat down. They filled him in.

“Quite literally,” Nicholas said, “ninja means ‘in stealth.’” Florum poured himself some coffee as Nicholas continued. “Outside of Japan, there is almost nothing known about ninjutsu, the art of the ninja. Even there, it has been poorly documented primarily because it was knowledge that was both utterly secret and jealously guarded. One was born into a ninja family or one gave up all hope of becoming one.

“As you may know, Japanese society has always been rigorously stratified. There is a highly defined social order and no one would even contemplate deserting his station in life; it’s part of one’s karma, and this has religious as well as social overtones.

“The samurai, for instance, the warriors of feudal Japan, were gentlemen, of the
bushi
class; no one else was allowed to become a samurai or carry two swords. Well, the ninja evolved from the opposite end of the social spectrum, the
hinin.
This level was so low that the translation of that term means ‘not human.’ Naturally, they were a far cry from the aristocratic
bushi.
Yet, as clan warfare increased in Japan, the samurai recognized a growing need for the specific skills of the ninja, for the samurai themselves were bound by an iron-clad code of
bushido
which strictly forbade them many actions. Thus, the samurai clans hired the free-lance ninja to perform acts of arson, assassination, infiltration and terrorism which they themselves were duty-bound to shun. History tells us, for instance, that the ninja made their first important appearance in the sixth century
A.D.
Prince Regent Shotoku employed them as spies.

“So successful were they that their numbers increased dramatically during the Heian and Kamakura periods in Japanese history. They concentrated in the south. Kyoto, for example, was dominated by them at night.

“But the last we hear of them as a major factor in Japan is during the Shimabara war in 1637 when they were used to quell a Christian rebellion on the island of Kyūshū. Yet we know they were active all through the long Tokugawa shōgunate.”

“Just how wide is the scope of their skill?” Doc Deerforth’s nostrils were clogged with the rotting stench of the Philippine jungle.

“Very,” Nicholas said. “From the ninja the samurai learned woodsmanship, disguise, camouflage, codes and silent signaling, the preparation of fire bombs and smoke screens. In short, you would not be wrong to consider the ninja military Houdinis. But each
ryu
, that is, school and, in the ninja’s case, clan, specialized in different forms of combat, espionage, lore, and so on, so that one was often able to tell by his methods from which
ryu
a particular assassin came. For instance, the Fodo
ryu
was known for its work with many kinds of small concealed blades, the Gyōkku was expert at using thumb and forefinger on the body’s nerve centers in hand-to-hand combat, the Kotto was proficient at breaking bones, others used hypnotism and so on. Ninja were also quite often skilled
yogen—
that is, chemists.”

There was a heavy silence between them until Vincent cleared his throat and said, “Nick, I think you ought to tell them the rest of it.”

Nicholas was silent for a time.

“What does he mean?” Florum said.

Nicholas took a deep breath. “The art of ninjutsu,” he said, “is very ancient. So old, in fact, that no one is certain of its origin, though speculation is that it was born in a region of China. The Japanese took many things from Chinese culture over the centuries. There is an element of … superstition involved. One could even say magic.”

“Magic?” echoed Doc Deerforth. “Are you seriously suggesting …?”

“In the history of Japan,” Nicholas said, “it is oftentimes difficult to separate fact from legend. I am not trying to be melodramatic. This is the way it is in Japan. Feats have been ascribed to the ninja that would have been impossible without the aid of some kind of magic.”

“Tall tales,” said Florum. “Every country’s got ’em.”

“Yes. Possibly.”

“And the poison you found?”

“Is a ninja poison. Swallowed, it’s quite harmless. A favorite method of administering it was to make a quick-drying syrup of it and coat the
shaken
with it.”

“What’s that?” Florum asked.

“These are part of a ninja’s arsenal of silent, easily concealed weapons, his short-bladed
shuriken.
The
shaken
is a star-shaped metal object. Flung through the air by the ninja, it becomes a most lethal weapon. And coated with this poison, the weapon need not even puncture a vital spot for the victim to die.”

Florum snorted. “Are you trying to tell me that that stiff was killed by a ninja? Jesus, Linnear, you said they died out three hundred years ago.”

“No,” Nicholas corrected. “I merely said that that was the last time they were used in any major Way. Many things have changed in Japan since the sixteen hundreds and the Tokugawa shōgunate, and the country is, in many respects, no longer what it once was. However, there are traditions that are impossible to obliterate by either man or time.”

“There’s got to be another explanation,” Florum said, shaking his head. “What would a ninja be doing in West Bay Bridge?”

“I’m afraid that’s something I can’t answer,” Nicholas said. “But I know this. There is a ninja abroad here and in all the world there is no more deadly or clever foe. You must take extreme caution. Modern weapons—guns, grenades, tear gas—will give you no security against him, for he knows of all these things and they will not deter him from destroying his, intended target and escaping unseen.”

“Well, he’s already done that,” Florum said, getting up. “Thanks for the information.” He stuck out his hand. “Nice meeting you both.” He nodded. “Doc.” And with that he left.

The moment Justine heard the knock on her door she felt her heart sink. She put down her pen and, wiping her hands on a chamois cloth, came away from the drawing board. The light had been just right; she preferred the daylight to the gooseneck lamp clamped to the board, even though its combination of fluorescent and incandescent bulbs gave her a decent approximation of natural illumination.

She let Nicholas in.

“They called you about that body, didn’t they?” she said.

He went across the room and sat on the sofa, hands behind his head. “What body?”

“You know. The one they took out of the water the day we met.”

“Yes. That’s the one.” He looked tired and drawn to her.

“Why did they call you?”

He looked up at her. “They thought I might be able to help them find out how he died.”

“You mean he didn’t drown? But what would you—”

“Justine, why didn’t you tell me your father is Raphael Tomkin?”

Her hands, which had been in front of her, fingers interlaced, dropped to her side. “What possible reason would I have to tell you?” she said.

“Do you think I’d be after your money?”

“Don’t be absurd.” She gave a little laugh but it came out quite strangled. “I don’t have any money.”

“You know what I mean.”

“What difference could it make who my father is?”

“It doesn’t, really. I’m more interested in why you chose to change your name.”

“I don’t think it’s any of your business.”

He got up, went over to look at what she had been working on. “Nice,” he said. “I like it.” He went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator. “That man was murdered,” he told her over his shoulder. “By an expert assassin. But nobody knows why.” He took out a bottle of Perrier, opened it and emptied it into a glass. He took a drink. “Vincent was called in and he in turn asked for my help, because the murderer is in all likelihood a Japanese; a man who kills for money.” He turned around, went back into the living room where she still stood where he had left her. She stared at him, her eyes very bright. “Not a hit man—someone you read about in the papers when there’s some gangland killing in New Jersey or Brooklyn. No, this is the kind of man you never hear about. He’s far too clever to give himself any notoriety except among an elite core of potential clients. But I really don’t know too much about that end of it.” He looked up at her as he settled himself on the sofa once more. “Are you getting all this?”