Sensei (17 page)

I looked at Mori expectantly. He fidgeted under my scrutiny.

"The decision was made by all the sensei, Mr. Burke," he said. "Many were as deeply moved as Yamashita-san, but the will of the group ..."

"What happened to Tomita after that?" I asked.

"We are not able to track all his movements over time," Mori said. "But we know that he continued his training with various masters."

I looked at Yamashita and he shook his head sadly. "Not I. Others. They were not the sort of teachers he needed," was all he said.

"And," Mori said grimly, "we know that, recently, he began searching for Yamashita sensei. And the others. We do not know why. But some have already been found." The look on his face answered my silent questions about Ikagi and Kubata. But he seemed more comfortable with the story now that we were back to points that could be plotted out with clarity.

"And it's taken him this long to locate you, Sensei?" I asked Yamashita.

"I did not want to be found," Yamashita said simply.

"What has happned is regrettable, Mr. Burke," Mori interjected. "When your teacher left Japan, he maintained contact with only a select few. It is only recently that we have been in contact." Mori paused for a moment to let that sink in before he continued. "I had known for years that Tomita's humiliation was great. When I learned of the killings, I feared for Yamashita-san."

I thought of the sense of frustration Tomita must have harbored. The emotional impact of such a rejection. From hurt to hate is a small step.

"Now," Mori continued, "I believe thatTomita's search is over."

I looked at my sensei. "How can you be sure?"

Yamashita smiled a tight, grim smile. "Tomita hoped to deal with me the night your brother's friend was wounded. He stole Ittosai's sword to provoke me. He has tracked me through Ikagi-san ... Kubata Sensei... He is here. Somewhere. He will come for me again."

They seemed so placid. "I don't believe this!" I protested.

"Please," Mori said. "There can be no doubt."

I looked at Yamashita: he merely closed his eyes in affirmation.

Mori continued. "Everything else has been prelude. The wild dog now hunts your master, Mr. Burke."

In the squad room, phones chirped and papers rustled. Detectives called to one another over their cubicle separators. There was a low-level hum of activity, the air filled with the sound of people just barely keeping the influx of information under a semblance of control. Back on the job, Micky functioned with the easy efficiency of a man in his element.

He had taken in the substance of Yamashita s statement without comment. He was silent when the D.A. let my teacher go. Now Micky was cold, dispassionate, and efficient. His words were tight and fast, as if shaped by the effort of self-control. But he didn't say a thing that revealed his anger. He was too focused on the information and its impact on the hunt for Art's attacker.

They had a name. A description. Something to narrow the odds. Motivation was less important now. Micky knew that Tomita was in the City and why he had come. He had been a cop long enough to know that you could torture yourself endlessly with trying to figure out why people did things. It was enough to know that they did them. At the very least, it kept cops employed.

There had been a conference in the Bat Cave, where the detective squad mapped out a strategy for finding Tomita. I had not been invited, but my brother filled me in on the nuts and bolts of a manhunt. Endless checks of hotels and their environs. A review of airline manifests. Questioning of cab drivers. The citywide distribution of a description to all precincts.

"Sounds like you've got it under control, Mick. What do you need me for?"

He squinted at me. "I've got questions." He settled back in his desk chair and rummaged around for his cigarettes. The pack crinkled. He looked at it longingly, then at the No Smoking sign Art had posted on the wall between their desks. A handwritten addition scrawled across the bottom read: "This means you!!!" Micky sighed and sat forward.

"Asa says Tomita used a sword that night in the subway."

"A katana" I specified.

He nodded. "OK, whatever. No weapon of this type was used in the other two homicides." I agreed.

"It tells me that Tomita probably got the weapon after Kubata was killed," he said. "I gotta assume that you don't get these things at the local cutlery store."

"There are places you can get them in New York," I answered. "If this thing is a real katana. And I have to believe it is, based on Asa's description and the wounds ..." I tapered off, and thought of Art.

My brother gave me a come-on gesture. "Yeah, I know, I know. How many places like that are there around here?"

"Well, you can get cheesy imitation versions of a samurai sword all over town. But I don't think Tomita would use something like that. Not for something so important. There are probably two or three people who could sell you something like this ..."

He tossed me a pad. "Names. Addresses. I'll pay 'em a visit."

"It's not that easy, Mick. Most swords like this are custom made. They have to be ordered way in advance. From Japan. You can check, but I doubt Tomita was able to get something like this on short notice."

I noticed the display catalogue from Samurai House on a pile of papers. I never did get a chance to see the show. It seemed like something so distant as to be unreal. I picked the thing up. It was a glossy brochure that incorporated some of the stuff I had developed for Bobby Kay. "you're talking about weapons like these, Mick," I said, and waved the catalogue at him.

"OK, so where'd he get it?" Micky persisted.

I shrugged, and to stall while I thought, I leafed through the pages of Bobbys show. I was turning a page when something caught my eye. For a minute I couldn't quite figure out what was bothering me. Then it became clear.

My brother had been fidgeting in impatience but grew still as he read my body language. "What?" he asked.

"This is weird," I answered. "I had a chance to look at photos of some of the display items when I was writing that piece for Bobby. I remember this sword here," and I pointed at it. "But the photo of the sword in the catalogue is different."

Micky slewed the picture around, looking at it with interest. "How so?"

I pointed the features out. "This katana had a tens ho-zukuri hilt in the originals. In the catalogue, it's got a higo-zukuri hilt."

Micky took a calming breath. "Connor, would you please tell me something in English?"

"The handles are different shapes, Mick," I explained. "This sword is supposed to be four-hundred years old. Back then, they really used them for things. A tens ho-zukuri hilt is fluted toward the butt end. It helps you keep your grip on the sword. Modern swords tend to have a relatively straight hilt, the higo-zukuri'." I looked up at my brother. "Somebody must have gotten the pictures mixed up. Because this sword is not the one I had written about."

"A sword like this is valuable?" Micky asked. I nodded and he smiled. "And you could still use it?" oure.

"Well, buddy boy, I think maybe we've found where Tomita got his weapon."

"Huh?"

"Sure. We know he was in the gallery the night he killed Reilly. After you saw the picture of the sword. But before the catalogue was printed. He had opportunity. And a motive."

"But no katana was reported missing. Just the bokken" I protested, "You'd think Bobby Kay would want to make an insurance claim."

Micky got a crafty look on his face. '"&u know, all this Japanese stuff has really made this whole case hard to figure. Everything is way too exotic for my taste. But this ... this kinda thing I get. Maybe Bobby didn't want any more adverse publicity. Maybe he didn't want to scare away backers___Maybe, just maybe his insurance coverage is shady ..

"But he had to get all kinds of insurance for this show. He told me. Said it was costing a fortune."

Micky sat back and made some quick notes. "Precisely. And if you had to come up with a name of someone who might be likely to cut corners, who would you suggest?"

I got the point. "Bobby Kay."

My brother jumped up. "OK, I'm outta here. Got enough to work on for now."

"What about me?"

He was shrugging his coat on. """ifou've helped enough. Take off. Go ... I don't know. Go do what you do."

So I did.

The tiny waterfall in Yamashita s garden flows over gray rocks. It makes a musical sound that fills the small, green space behind the dojo. Yamashita tends the yard with a remorseless intensity. It is (nonetheless) green and soothing in the summer and, like the man himself, the product of discipline and a fierce attention to details. We sat on the little covered porch overlooking rocks and shrubs, watching small birds bounce and flutter in the yard's stillness. Yamashita talked quietly and evenly, his voice an expression of the gardens mood. An outsider would never guess he was talking with me about the finer points of killing a man.

When I arrived, the training hall was silent. There was still tension between us, and my teacher and I had drifted down into the empty space, instinctively seeking comfort in the familiar. The afternoon sun slanted in and cast bright stripes on the deep indigo arms of Yamashita's uniform. He stood alone in the center of the room, holding a wooden sword in gedan no kamae, the low defensive posture. His eyes seemed focused on something far away, but as I joined him, the sword swung up to track me. The motion brought his focus back to the here and now. I had told him what the police were doing. He did not seem particularly surprised at the turn of events. But the awareness of Tomitas intentions seemed to be still sinking in.

"So ..." he hissed and looked past me into space. "I suppose this is inevitable. The past cannot be avoided ..."

"That would be too simple," I offered.

"Too simple?" Yamashita replied, "No. I think, rather, it is too complicated."

I looked quizzically at him.

He sighed as he gathered his thoughts. "Burke, to create a warrior of this skill level is a work of years. It requires great care.

Attention must be paid, not only to technique but to the trainees. Their spirit becomes intertwined with their skills. If you take one away, the other suffers. Now we see the results."

I thought this was an interesting way to avoid dealing with his part in Tomita's past, but I said nothing.

"I sometimes doubted that the Konoe-tai had the patience to train correctly," my teacher continued. He looked up and stared at nothing. "They seek to serve the Imperial House, which is a thing of great honor. Their zeal, however, was always greater than their wisdom."

"But you were part of it," I said, and regretted it immediately.

Yamashita glided smoothly across the floor. His feet rasped along the polished wood. He placed the bokken in a rack on the wall and turned to face me.

"You will learn Burke, that the true path is not always one we can clearly see. There are times when we lose the Way." He sounded sad for a minute, and old.

"But," his voice grew stronger, "this is why we train. Because we seek the Way. And because we can never be sure that we have found it."

"Is that why you left Japan?"

Yamashita closed his eyes in affirmation. "There was difficulty there, Burke. Budo, the Martial Way, uses the arts of a warrior to foster peace. After a time, I was not sure that the Konoe-tai was preserving this ... awareness ... in what they did. After a time, I came here to see whether a different way was possible for me."

"And did you know about Tomita even then? Is that why you dropped out of sight?" I had always wondered why such a prominent master shunned the limelight so fiercely.

He looked severe for a moment. "I did not run away, Burke. I left. With Tomita ... I was saddened by the group's decision. It was a waste of an excellent trainee. But no, I was informed of things by Mori only in the last few days. And now," he sighed, "I must decide on a course of action."

"Why now?" I asked.

"Tomita will not cease until he gets what he desires," Yamashita said. "He will continue to ... hurt... those connected with me. I see that now." He looked directly at me, his night-dark eyes still and hard. "I will not have him destroy what I have built here."

"The do joY

His head swiveled on his thick neck. "No. He will strike at what I value most, Burke. Those around me. My students." Again the hard look. "You."

I felt an electric surge of panic. My face flushed. But I controlled my breathing, and gradually my heartbeat began to slow again. I thought of the destruction Tomita had left, as deep and shocking as a blade s cut. And now Yamashita was certain there would be more. I needed to think of a way to stop it.

It finally came to me. Why not, I suggested after a time, lay a trap? We knew Tomita's patterns. And what he was after. How he would go about it. Why not provide him with the victim, in the way a tiger hunter stakes out a goat on a tether?

Yamashita would be the bait. He was the end point on the trail of bodies Tomita had strung across the continent. Yamashita had cast Tomita out of the Konoe-tai. He had been both father figure and sensei to Tomita. And the one who had rejected him. Tomita had been searching for him ever since he got to this country. Now we could dangle Yamashita in front of Tomita as bait. We knew the killer was close, biding his time. He was a predator, slowly circling in the murk, just out of sight.

Tomita needed to be attracted, I urged Yamashita, not just tracked. We would entice him to come to us. The hunt would become a seduction, made alluring by the scent of blood.

Yamashita heard out my proposition as if I were talking about a trip to the country.

"There is a logic in this, Burke," Yamashita said, nodding his head. "There is also no real trick to being the goat." He mused about this for a moment. Then those night-dark eyes bored into me. "The trick, of course, is being the goat that survives."

Which, in retrospect, is when my training really began.

My teacher had agreed to be the bait almost eagerly. There was, after all, honor involved. But he was skeptical about my assurances of safety, despite the fact that I thought that Micky would back us up. All bait, Yamashita said, can be eaten if the trap fails. So can the hunters. As a result, he treated our role in the plan as if either of us might really have to fight Tomita. "It is what he wants, after all, Burke." And so he had exacted a price from me. Yamashita thought that he would make me practice with him as he prepared for what he thought of as the inevitable confrontation with Tomita. "It will add some variety to your training," he commented wryly.

It had only been a few hours since that statement, and, as we sat there on the porch, I was sore in all the ways familiar to me from decades of martial arts training. The only difference was that now I hurt everywhere all at once. The tiny muscles in my feet ached. My stomach muscles spasmed involuntarily in certain positions. And I was tired.

"He hunts at night, this one," the master intoned. "He uses the body's rhythm as a weapon. The murders occur in the dark, when our ki, our vital energy, is ebbing."

I thought about the killings. All nocturnal. Most well after midnight. The quiet time, the small hours when infants awake for comfort, when sleep cycles shift. The time when the old and the ill and the weak let life slip away and are folded into oblivion.