The Miko - 02 (46 page)

“No. Nangi-san is
sempai.
”

“Yes. I see.”

“Besides,” Sato admitted, “Nangi-san is no good when it comes to the past. There are many things that he would rather forget, some because they are too hateful, others because they are just too full of intimate emotion. You may think Nangi-san cold and heartless but this is not true. No, no. On the contrary, emotion is quite dear to him.

“He wept bitterly when my Obā-chama died. He was heartsick at having to sell a pair of her T’ang Dynasty cups. Sadly, we were forced to do so in order to come to Tokyo and begin our careers just after the war ended.

“These cups, you know, were superb examples of the genius of those faraway Chinese artisans, as limpid as a mountain stream. But beyond their undeniable aesthetic value I believe a component of Nangi-san’s attachment to them stemmed from the poignant circumstances under which my Obā-chama received them.” He told Nicholas the story of his grandmother’s distant relative fleeing the firebombing of Tokyo. “I think for Nangi-san this incident more than any other exemplified the useless cruelty of the war. The past is dear to him, and I think you can understand why he would not wish to speak of it.”

Sato shook his head. “I’m afraid he cannot be counted on, there. Memory is an affliction with him. He will not speak of the past, even with me.”

“Then it must be up to you, Sato-san.”

“I know,” the older man said miserably, “but up to now I have been able to remember nothing out of the ordinary. You know what it was like here after the war. Those were extraordinary times. More often than not survival called for taking extraordinary measures. Regimes came and went. Alliances were hastily formed and just as hastily dissolved.” Sato poured them both more wine.

“I understand. Many enemies could have been made then, as well as friends.”

Sato nodded. “Those were pressurized times. I often think that decades were compressed into years, years into months. We accomplished so much in such a small amount of time, coming back from the abyss of defeat, regaining our self-confidence. It was as if we had to begin all over again. The holocaust purged us in a way of many of the worst elements we had allowed to run our society.

“Like the contents of Noah’s Ark, we stepped ashore on Mount Ararat prepared to begin a new society. And we did just that. We overcame runaway inflation, we directed the growth of our industry through MITI and allowed picked sections to enjoy the most high speed growth known in the world.”

He looked at Nicholas and smiled. “We were even successful at turning the slogan ‘Made in Japan’ from a derogation into a status symbol.

“None of this was an accident; none of it was luck. Our
karma
is great, and we continue to thrive though we sometimes experience growing pains.”

He poured more sakē, slopping some onto the lacquer. “But do you know the one thing we still cannot tolerate, Linnear-san? It is the knowledge that even in times of an oil glut there is what amounts to a caravan of tankers arriving and departing Japan, day and night, dotting the Pacific in an endless stream.

“The world must feed us in order for us to survive. Like a mewling infant who cannot make his own food, we are stuck on these beautiful islands, on rock devoid of all fossil fuels.

“Can you understand how galling that is for us, Linnear-san?” He nodded sagely. “But of course you can. You are part of us, after all. I can see that even if others cannot. And you know there is truth to the saying that misfortune never lasts a lifetime.”

He sighed heavily. “But I tell you that sometimes I am not certain.” His hair hung lankly on his head and his kimono had come partly unwrapped so that Nicholas could see a broad section of his hairless chest and the edge of one dark nipple.

“The truth is,” he said, his voice slurring slightly, “that there are times when I miss my wife. Oh, not Akiko. No, no. I was married before. Mariko was her name. Beautiful Mariko. She was very young when we met.” He smiled again and Nicholas could discern a light, boyish quality pushing through the years of accumulated sorrow. “And I? Well, I was a good deal younger, too.

“Nangi-san and I already knew each other. He was in MITI and I was in business. I had several
kobun
in those days and all were successful. In some matters I relied on Mariko’s judgment. It was she who had recommended that I buy the Ikiru Cosmetics Company. This was in 1976. Ikiru manufactured face creams and astringents, and when I purchased it the Japanese cosmetics boom was just beginning its sharp upswing.

“The investment was fantastic. In the first year of acquisition alone the
keiretsu
made back its purchase price and even showed a small profit from Ikiru. The future looked bright indeed for the second year.

“As part of her familial duty Mariko began to use Ikiru’s products herself, rationalizing that she certainly could not expect all her friends to use Ikiru’s products if she herself did not.

“Because her perfect porcelain skin was her pride she used the face cream and astringent twice a day as she had with her former brands. Several months later she began complaining of headaches of migraine intensity. These would often last several days. She would become alarmingly dizzy on and off during that time.

“I took her to a doctor. He could find nothing wrong with her and suggested a week at a spa for relaxation. Dutifully following his advice, I packed her off to the peaceful countryside. But at the spa Mariko became ill with a fever that went well above 103. When another physician was summoned by the worried proprietors, he found her heartbeat irregular and far too rapid.

“At their urging, he phoned me. I went immediately and fetched her. In Tokyo, she was referred to a specialist, who after administering a battery of tests informed her that she was having trouble with her gall bladder. He prescribed some medicine.

“But the fevers persisted and now she began to feel that the flesh of her face was sticky beneath the glossy skin, so she used the astringent even more religiously after each application of the face cream.

“Until one morning she woke up to discover that the skin all over her body was as slick and smooth as that of her face. Running her hand down her leg, it seemed more the appendage of a wax doll than that of a human being.

“More upset than ever, she returned to the specialist, who subjected her to yet another battery of tests. This time he assured her it was her pancreas. More medicine was prescribed and dutifully consumed.

“A week later Mariko awoke in a sweat. She sat up with a start, her heart beating like a triphammer. She had been dreaming. Blood in her dreams. And now looking down at her pillow she saw a reddish brown stain there.

“Automatically she put her palm up to her cheek. It came away smeared with blood and some other discharge she could not name. Hysterical now, she called out for me, and this time I insisted she be admitted to the hospital.

“She had lost a lot of weight and now she had trouble breathing. Yet the doctors could detect nothing wrong with her lungs or indeed her respiratory system. Matter continued to ooze from her pores and Mariko had to be restrained lest the incessant itching cause her to lacerate her skin. She continued to insist that something was under her skin.

“The matter she exuded was sent to the hospital’s toxicological lab for analysis but the technicians were overworked, and in any event testing takes time.

“In the interim, Mariko went on continuous IV, unable to eat. Slowly she slipped away from me, submerged in a coma that was as inexplicable to the physicians as were all of her other symptoms.

“She died less than a week later, drifting from the twilight of coma, from half-death to the full measure of sleep, without ever having regained consciousness. I cannot remember having said good-bye to her or even that I loved her during those long days and even longer nights.”

There was no more food and even the wine was gone. Empty plates stared at them from the litter of the table.

“It was only some consolation,” Sato said, “when the toxicological lab finally worked out the problem. It seemed that the face cream she had been using contained a paraffinlike polymer, similar to one used in the manufacture of enamel paint. The astringent dissolved that particular polymer, thus allowing it to be absorbed by her bloodstream. It had blocked the pores of her skin, suffocating her by minute degrees, and had affected a number of her internal organs, including her gall bladder and pancreas.

“At once thunderstruck and heartsick, I immediately took steps to alter the formulas of Ikiru’s products and, that done, began to list all the ingredients in Ikiru products on their containers. But it was not until 1979 that the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare, acting on the prolonged outcry not only from me but from the thousands who had suffered from the less than fatal
kokuhisho
, black skin syndrome, from the inclusion of Red 219, a coal tar dye, in some creams, established the act requiring the listing of all cosmetic ingredients.

“Six months after Mariko’s death, when I could think clearly again, I founded
Keshohinkogai higaisha no kai
, the Organization of Cosmetic Victims, using profits from Ikiru.”

There was pain in Nicholas’ heart at the enormity of what Sato had to bear. Mariko had not been the sole victim of
kokuhisho.
Other victims’ suffering and death could be only slightly less painful to Sato. And atonement, as Nicholas knew well, was not the same as never having sinned at all.

Sato turned his cup over and placed his palm across it. “Tell me, Linnear-san, have you ever felt anything other than pleasure at being in love?” His damp head bobbed. “Ah, yes, Buddha knows there is pain and suffering sometimes when there are arguments, when animosity lingers, perhaps, for a day or so. But that is a temporary thing, surely. It fades like the snow each winter and when the sun shines, the blossoms open up again.

“I am speaking of something entirely different now.” His head was weaving, sunk down as it was onto his broad shoulders. “Experience means nothing in this realm. Have you ever felt imprisoned by your love, Linnear-san? As if you love despite yourself rather than because you wish to. No, no, you
must
, do you see?” His hand came away, and Nicholas could see that the tiny porcelain cup that had lain beneath was now gone. “As if some cruel heart had cast a spell over you?”

In the gloaming at the end of the day Lew Croaker sat slumped in the car that had taken them up the east coast of Florida. Traffic rushed by him, the procession of crimson taillights like searching eyes. Alix had just gone to the bathroom in one of the highway cafeterias. He felt the vibrations of the road as if they had become a part of him.

Just behind him was the Savannah River. Up ahead stretched Georgia, then South Carolina, North Carolina, and so on as I95 snaked its way northeast. They had not eaten since Jacksonville; there was no point in stopping in small towns along the way, leaving footprints for anyone to follow. Big cities had a habit of swallowing new arrivals and transients; no one paid attention.

Alix had wanted him to slow down as soon as they had crossed the Florida border, but Croaker had kept his foot on the accelerator. She thought he was being stubborn, but he didn’t want to tell her what he had found in the Red Monster’s Ford sedan. It was a Phoenix cipher transmitter / receiver that he had read about. The sight of it had sent chills down his spine. He did not think that anyone Raphael Tomkin would hire would know what to do with a Phoenix let alone have one in his car.

The Phoenix was a relatively new instrument that automatically turned the spoken word into a preset cipher. It was the code alone that was broadcast between units, so that rapid transmission was virtually indecipherable to an eavesdropper.

Now, alone in the gathering Georgia night with the endless miles of dazed flight still thrumming through him, Croaker wondered again where his obsession with Angela Didion’s murder was taking him. He had forsaken his job, his friends…and a woman he was just beginning to know and fall in love with. His entire existence had been turned inside out, upside down. And for what?

Vengeance against Raphael Tomkin. For despite the gathering evidence, Croaker was still convinced that the industrialist had murdered Angela Didion. How and why still had to be determined. But he had his key now. Alix Logan was the sole witness, and against all probabilities she was still alive. And again he asked himself, Why?

With a shiver, he went over it again. By all rights she should be deader than a doornail now. He saw her emerging from the lit doorway and gunned the engine. She was alive. And being kept that way by a brace of very deadly creatures. Why? And why in one place? Surely they could have moved her anywhere. Who were they protecting her from? Croaker? But “Croaker” was dead, drowned and crushed beyond recognition when his car went off the road in Key West. Who had instigated that? Tomkin?

With a start, Croaker remembered Matty the Mouth. He had been the fly on the wall who had delivered Alix Logan’s name and address to him. For a usurious price to be sure, but what the hell, he had come through, hadn’t he?

“Stay here,” Croaker said to Alix as he sprinted toward the cafeteria. Inside, he dug out some change and made a long-distance call. A woman answered. At first she professed to never having heard of Matty the Mouth. Croaker did some first-class persuasion. Matty was out, the voice didn’t know where, didn’t know when he’d be back. Since he got back from Aruba Matty’d gone low profile. Croaker said he understood, it was the same with him. He had no number to leave with her and under the circumstances wouldn’t’ve left one if he had. Said he’d call back.

“Let’s go,” he said as he slid behind the wheel and nosed the car out into traffic.

“I’m tired,” Alix said, golden girl beside him. She curled into a ball.

It was like having a dream come to life, sitting at his elbow. Lithe, blond, beautiful. Croaker had only seen women like this from afar. This close, he had expected her to turn to garbage at any minute. When she hadn’t, he was startled. It wasn’t that he lusted after her precisely as the Blue Monster had, although he had to admit there was an element of sexuality about how he felt.