Authors: Rex Burns
Bunch expected the manager to match the decor. But instead of a wizened and suspicious old man, the girl—possibly as old as twenty—could have been pretty if her face hadn’t been pale and lined with weariness. And if her hair hadn’t hung in lifeless ropes to frame that drawn face. From somewhere behind her came the thin, sickly wail of a baby exhausted from long crying. The odor of dirty diapers floated into the cool air through the open door. “Yes?”
“You’re the manager?”
“His wife. You looking for a room? All we got’s one without a kitchenette. All the kitchenettes been taken.”
“I’m looking for one of your roomers. Korean guy named Soon.” He showed a corner of the envelope. “I got a letter for him.”
“Korean? I thought he was Chinese or something. You a police officer? That a summons?”
Bunch shook his head. “It’s a letter I’m supposed to give him personally.”
“You look like a policeman.”
“Well, I’m not. What cabin’s he in?”
The baby’s howl rose. “Five. Down on your left.” She closed the door while her hand fumbled at her blouse. A moment later, the fitful crying stopped.
Bunch’s shoes crunched in the gravel as he passed a rusty station wagon with a slab of cardboard in place of one of the rear windows. An equally battered bumper sticker announced, “I Voted for Reagan When I Was Rich.”
Cabin 5 was half hidden beneath a towering cottonwood tree whose dry leaves clattered in the evening breeze like a small stream. In the twilight, Bunch saw the flicker of a television set through the window of cabin 3. As he passed, the loud noise of the set drowned out the chatter of leaves, and a silhouette of three heads—one adult, two children—made bumps of darkness against the pale glow. The only light from cabin 5 was a faint yellow fringe around a tightly pulled blind. Bunch knocked on the doorframe.
“Kim Soon? We need to talk.” He knocked again. A few curls of green paint spiraled down.
No answer.
He tried the doorknob. The fragile lock gave with a metallic twang and the door sagged inward. Another flake of paint settled on the back of his hand like a warning touch.
“Soon?”
Through the partly open door, he glimpsed a corner of the room crowded with a rumpled bed and lit dimly by a lamp. Bunch pushed the door slowly wider to show the empty bed. A small end table held the lamp and a telephone. A sagging upholstered chair was jammed close to a dark bureau. He glanced through the crack between the door hinges. The dark behind the door was empty. “Konichi-wa?” He stepped in carefully and closed it behind him. On a folding stand rested a suitcase, shut but not locked. From behind a closed door came the faint sigh of a running shower. Bunch eased across the room to listen at the dark wood. Then he turned the handle slowly.
He opened the door to a wisp of steam and the louder rush of water. The tiny shower stall billowed hot mist over the top of a plastic curtain, and the wetness beaded on his jacket and swirled across his eyes. Bunch stepped past the bulge of a toilet to rap on the fiberglass wall. He wasn’t sure if it was a sound or a tiny flicker of motion beneath the fogged glass of the mirror or just the feeling on the back of his neck, but he wheeled in time to see a gleaming arc of silver swing toward him through the hazy air: a sword.
A squat, barrel-chested man wearing black pants and a white undershirt lunged from the recess beside the shower stall. Both hands swung a samurai sword in a chopping curve toward the base of Bunch’s neck. He fell back to shove against the toilet with all his strength and felt the porcelain stool tip and rock as he pulled the door hard against the falling blade. It caught in the wood with a solid chop, biting a deep slice into the door’s edge. It stopped at Bunch’s ear and sent a spray of splinters prickling his cheek. Soon wrenched the blade free and jabbed, a two-handed thrust that pierced the loose fold of Bunch’s coat and sliced upward, reaching for his clutching stomach and lungs. Grabbing the man’s wrists, Bunch shoved. The blade ripped clear of his coat to clang against the shower stall and dig a furry gap in the fiberglass wall. The Korean, a round face with black eyes squeezed almost shut by high cheekbones and the effort to push against Bunch’s strength, grunted something and aimed a sudden knee at Bunch’s crotch. The big man swiveled to take the thudding blow on his hip and drove the point of his elbow into Soon’s solar plexus. A burst of garlic-smelling air, and Bunch followed with a hard chop up under the Korean’s chin. He aimed for the throat but half missed as Soon saw it coming and twisted away to try a jabbing kick to Bunch’s face. It glanced off his shoulder. He wrenched the Korean’s hands and drove the heel of his own hand against the back of Soon’s elbow. The gristle squealed and popped and the Korean’s lipless mouth, a slash of agony across his face, opened in a strangled howl.
The sword pulled free of Soon’s hands and quivered in the wall of the shower stall. Bunch twisted again, squeezing both the man’s wrists together like dried sticks. He drove a knee into his ribs to fold him backward into the steam and spewing water and thud his skull against the sagging sink. Another chopping blow with the side of his hand low against the man’s neck, and Soon grunted and sagged, not quite out. But he was numbed and boneless in Bunch’s fists.
Panting, Bunch dragged the man from the tiny, wrecked bathroom. He dropped him on his back in the middle of the grimy carpet and pulled the gleaming sword from the shower stall. Soon began to make rasping sounds and to dig his heels into the carpet. He tried to roll onto hands and knees. Bunch thudded the side of his fist against the man’s skull and he lay quiet.
“You speak English?”
No answer.
Bunch jabbed the Korean’s ribs with his shoe and held the sword’s blunt tip just under his chin. “Yo, jimbo, I asked you: You speak English?”
Soon’s round face twitched and one of his eyes blinked. The other was already swollen shut. His mouth was a clamped, soundless line.
Bunch, keeping his face and the sword toward the man, clicked on a floor lamp whose chain tinkled briefly against its ornate brass stand. Then he groped through the suitcase’s elastic pockets until he found what he wanted—a passport case and its booklet. The photograph matched the silent Korean, and the name beneath it, in both Japanese and English, said Soon Kim. Bunch studied the man on the carpet. The wiry muscles showed a lot of exercise. Dark scrolls of tattoos covered his arms and torso wherever it showed beneath the sleeveless undershirt. The left hand, lying splayed on the floor, was missing the last knuckle of its little finger. The single eye studied him in return, and all the grogginess was gone.
Bunch swung the sword in a long arc. Its blade made a deep hum in the quiet room. “I came here to talk. You willing to talk about all this Bushido crap?”
The eye glittered.
Bunch felt through his sliced jacket and drew out the envelope to lay on the suitcase. “Money—a lot of it. And a plane ticket for a direct flight to Tokyo. Leaves at nine forty-seven tonight. Be on it.” He waited, but Kim said nothing. “Mitsuko says go home. She ficky-fick round-eye now.”
“Son of bitch!”
“Ah. We’ve established communications.” Bunch sat on the side of the bed, which sank dangerously and squealed. “Your boss, Kobayashi-san, know you’re in America?”
No answer.
“Take the money and go. Tell Kobayashi you killed Saito and her boyfriend. Nobody knows the difference—you save face and get rich too.”
“Son of bitch!”
“You said that already.” Bunch picked up the telephone from the small table. It had a rotary dial, the kind Bunch hadn’t seen in years. “Mr. Humphries? No—not yet. Can I talk to Mitsuko, please?”
In a moment, she answered, voice breathless. “Yes?”
“I don’t know if I’m getting through to the guy. Tell him in Japanese, will you?” He held out the phone to the glaring man and gestured for him to take it.
Kim, eyes on Bunch, held the receiver to his ear. “Anone!”
The telephone buzzed, and every now and then Kim grunted. His one good eye focused on Bunch as he listened. Finally, “Ieh! Ieh!” Then, “Hail” Scornfully, the man yanked the wire out of the receiver and tossed it on the bed.
Bunch shook his head. “I sure hope you listened, Kim baby.” He stared for a dozen seconds at the man still sprawled on the grimy carpet. Its threads showed through in large gray patches beside the bed and in front of the bathroom door. “But I bet you didn’t.” He wiped again at the tickle on his neck and looked with surprise at the blood that gleamed on his fingers. The Korean’s thin lips tightened in the trace of a smile.
“By God, you nicked me, didn’t you?” Bunch touched the top of his ear where a flap of loose skin stung under his fingers. He tapped the sword on the floor and listened to its clear ring. “Good steel—I didn’t even feel it.”
Kim said nothing. Bunch saw that his arms and feet had gathered together into springing position.
He sighed and shook his head. “You’d try it, wouldn’t you? You didn’t listen to a goddamn thing Mitsuko-san said, did you?” He tossed the sword on the bed. Kim’s eye followed it. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”
He reached for the man. Kim flopped quickly to hands and feet and lunged for the sword. He jabbed a side -kick at Bunch’s knees as he moved. Bunch caught a foot under Soon’s thigh and lifted, turning him in the air and grabbing his left arm to fold it back and around his body in a kink that froze the Korean in an arc of pain. “This is going to hurt you more than it does me.”
The bone gave a muffled crackle like something crunchy under a shoe. Bunch saw beads of sweat spring out on Kim Soon’s wrinkled forehead. A strangled grunt came from his pinched lips but he made no other sound.
“Now the other arm.”
He tried to struggle. A swat across the broken arm took the fight out of the Korean, and Bunch bent the man’s right arm until a bone snapped.
“Nothing personal, right? Strictly business, Japanese style.”
The Korean’s face, a sick color that made his shaven whiskers stand out darkly against the wet flesh, stared back at Bunch. He made no sound. If there was any hunger for revenge in the eye, it had been washed out by pain. Bunch pulled a shirt and shoes from the suitcase and a jacket from the closet and tossed them to the hunched man. Then he locked the luggage and set it by the door. Kim Soon, his breath a loud whistle in his nose as the shirtsleeves pressed against his swelling arms, struggled into the clothes. Picking up the suitcase and sword, Bunch opened the door for the man, who walked in his untied shoes as if he were slightly drunk. Removing the cash from the envelope, he riffled the money under Kim’s nose and then stuffed it and the airplane ticket into Kim’s jacket pocket. Bunch would escort the Korean to the plane and watch it take off. When it landed, Kim could explain the money and the two broken arms to Japanese immigration. And then to Kobayashi and his yojimbo.
K
IRK DIDN’T REMEMBER
going to sleep. He did remember half waking a couple times to swig down some water from the glass by the bed; the infection had made him thirsty as well as sore. He remembered hearing the telephone ring a time or two before the answerer took over, and he remembered that he hadn’t cleared the calls when he came in. When he woke in the morning, it was with that odd feeling of dreams that were intense enough to cling beyond sleep. He sensed they had been replays of his fight with Pierson because of the lingering images of fortress walls and gun ports and rushing, threatening shapes that hung at the edge of recall. But despite that unease, he woke feeling better. The damp sheets told him that the fever had broken, and his ribs, though touchy, no longer held the heat of infection. He could even stretch a bit, torso still cramped from airplane seats that, even in the first-class section that Advantage Corporation paid for, were never big enough to support his spine or let his legs unfold all the way.
As he shaved, he listened to his telephone tape. A deal on carpet cleaning was spaced between silent gaps indicating the caller had hung up. By the time he limped into the office, the early-afternoon sunlight was already carving an arc on the rug. He rewound the answering machine there and listened to those messages while he cranked open one of the panels in the window. There was nothing from Bunch, and Kirk wondered vaguely what his partner was up to. He should have asked Bunch for a report on the Humphries file, but he had been too tired to follow the thought when it crossed his mind yesterday. A series of blank spots was on this tape too. A call had come in at 11:18 a.m. from Dave Miller, DPD Vice and Narcotics. He asked Bunch or Kirk to get in touch with him as soon as possible, and left a series of telephone numbers to try. Miller himself answered the second number on the list and told Kirk that there was a little problem with the Scott Martin drug bust. “The dope tested out at only two or three percent. That’s street-level, Kirk. That means Martin doesn’t come under the Kingpin Statute. So the most we can get him for is being a street pusher. The son of a bitch’ll get a slap on the wrist and that’s about it.”
“Three percent? The shipper on the other end—Schuler— said it left there at around ninety percent!”
“Hey, I don’t give a shit what he says or what you say. The lab report says it’s between two and three percent. You told me this was a first-rate bust, Kirk. The high end of a big operation. We let that other asshole go—Atencio—to cover your man Landrum. Now it looks like this whole thing’s going to fall apart, and all we’re left with is another street-level pusher. Big fucking deal, Kirk.” He asked, “Did you run a test on the stuff when it came out of the sealed shipping container?”
“No. There was no way to do that.”
“Did you keep your eye on the stuff all the way? Any possibility they split it at the factory?”
“We saw them take it out of the sealed container and go to the locker room. They came out a few minutes later and went to work. I don’t see how they had time to cut the stuff then. Right after work, they carried it from the locker room to their cars. We followed the cars to the storage lot where you ran the bust.”
“So you can’t even swear to a chain of possession?”