The Miko - 02 (74 page)

“But in this case we need no outside verification,” the young man went on. “Because, you see, the foreign devil locked in the embrace of Succulent Pien is Charles Percy Redman himself. And no one in Hong Kong, least of all Succulent Pien, would dare risk feeding him false information of this sort. He’s so well plugged in he’d know in a shot and she would never see the light of dawn.”

Nangi, his hand in his breast pocket, touched the glossy surface of the red envelope Liu had given him, thus causing him to lose enormous face. Now he allowed his elation full rein.

“What do you mean you can’t read it?”

“Just that, Protorov-san,” Koten said.

“It’s Japanese, isn’t it?” Protorov, who had never bothered to learn the difficult and time-consuming Japanese language, could nevertheless not understand that failing in anyone else.

“It is and it isn’t.”

“I don’t pay you to give me riddles.”

“I did what I was ordered,” the immense
sumō
champion said. “I infiltrated Sato’s
kobun
, I worked with your Lieutenant Russilov at the
rotenburo
, and as a consequence we lost your last spy. I have done my duty.”

“Your duty,” Viktor Protorov said, “is precisely what I tell you it is. You must read the papers from the Tenshin Shoden Katori. Your very life depends upon it.”

“Then I must surely die, Protorov-san, for I cannot translate this paper. True, it is based on Chinese ideograms on which, also, my own language is based. However, it uses ideograms that
kanji
discarded as being, perhaps, too complex, difficult, or open to misinterpretation.” He spread his pudgy-fingered hands. “This might as well be Arabic as far as I am concerned. There is no doubt that this is the
ryu
’s code. If you had allowed me to handle matters at the
rotenburo
, your spy would now be here instead of six feet underground. No doubt he could have translated this.” His shoulders lifted, fell. “But now—”

Protorov slammed the tabletop, grabbed up the sheets of paper in his fist. It was so unfair! Here was the secret to
Tenchi
literally in the palm of his hand, the fruition of the most important clandestine operation he had ever mounted, the sword he needed to dazzle the GRU generals, to galvanize the Red Army, to begin his coup, and he could not read it. It was unbelievable!

For a moment he thought he might go mad with frustration. Then he took several deep breaths to calm his racing pulse. One, two, three. Set his mind to working.

“Linnear is ninja,” Koten said softly. “He got his training at the Tenshin Shodien Katori. It is conceivable…” He allowed his voice to trail off.

Hope exploded like a lightning flash across Protorov’s mind. Yes. Linnear was his only hope now. It had been many years since he had lived at the
ryu
but still, traditions in Japan rarely die. Protorov knew that there was at least some chance that the code would be the same. On the surface it seemed a desperate gamble, but he was now working under a severe time element. Mironenko was gathering the generals. In six days’ time they would meet and he had to be there to present his plan to them; he had to deliver
Tenchi
to them or lose them forever. With the Neanderthals who inhabited the GRU there could never be another opening; not, at least, for the KGB.

Protorov spun and strode from the small room, calling for the doctor and his magic needle.

“I need to speak with the subject now,” he said to the bespectacled physician.

“Now?” The doctor’s eyes were round and startled behind his thick lenses. “But you told me you were giving me forty-eight hours for the softening-up process.”

“I no longer have the time,” Protorov snapped. “The real world, Doctor, is infinitely mutable. You must get used to these sudden changes.”

“But I don’t know how much I can do on this short a notice,” the doctor said, falling into step with Protorov. “I’m getting erratic readings from the cerebral cortex; I can’t make head nor tail of them. I can’t guarantee how far he’s under, if at all.”

“Then double the dose,” Protorov ordered. “Triple it, I don’t care. Just so long as he talks now.”

The doctor was frantic. “But that strength will surely kill him in fifteen minutes, twenty at the outside.”

Protorov nodded. “That’s all the time I’ll need, Doctor. Please go to work on him at once.”

“His name is Gordon Minck and he came down to Key West every so often to be with me.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘be with me.’”

“He loved the way I went down on him,” Alix Logan said somewhat nastily. “Does that answer your question?”

“I think it does,” Croaker said.

They were in the car, heading through the fumy innards of the Lincoln Tunnel on their way to Matty the Mouth’s place.

He considered the nature of her response for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know that was a sore spot.”

Alix put her head back against the seat, closing her eyes. Her thick blond hair spread like sea foam around her cheeks. “What do you think? A guy who’s strong and handsome, powerful in an—oh, I don’t know—interior sort of way, goes all googley-eyed over me. He’s a dangerous man, you can see that on his face like a scar or a ridge of pockmarks.

“‘I should have you killed,’ he tells me, ‘but I can’t. I don’t ever want to think I’ll never see that face again.’”

“Oh, very cute,” Croaker cut in. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Shut up,” Alix snapped. “I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

Fluorescent light and shadow fell over them in a rhythmic pattern, like notes controlled by a metronome.

“‘I don’t want to lose you,’ he said, ‘but I’m in a business where I can’t afford to make a mistake.’ He looked at me in a way that made my insides go cold. ‘Will you be a mistake, Alix?’

“‘No, I won’t,’ I told him. ‘Is that a promise?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said, and I meant it.” She began to cry. “And now look what I’ve done.” Sobbing fully. “It’s all your fault.” It was the wail of a lost and confused child.

Croaker didn’t think he needed to refute that; it was too irrational. Instead, he changed the subject slightly. “So who’s this mystery man Minck.”

“Minck,” Alix Logan said. “Minck, Minck, Minck.” It was like a new toy which she did not want to give up. Then she decided. “Gordon Minck is the man who killed Angela Didion.”

Almost drove the car into the side of the tunnel.
“What?”
His head began to ache and there was a fearful red light behind his eyes. “You must be mistaken.” His voice was a dry rustle, no more than a whisper. It was all he could muster at the moment. But what if she’s right? he asked himself. All these months hiding, living in fear of discovery. He was a pariah at the New York City Police Department; he no longer even existed save as “Tex” Bristol. He had lied, stolen, gone beyond the law he had so many long years ago sworn to uphold and protect. What had happened to him? What madness had possessed him? He felt like a malaria victim who had just awakened from an endless fever through which he had been raving. He had believed so mightily in this truth: that Raphael Tomkin had murdered Angela Didion in cold blood. He had been so sure. All the facts had pointed to it. Now they darted like tiny frightened fish, weaving away from him as he sought again to compile them, to reassure himself that he was right and Alix was wrong.

Alix sniffed, wiped at her nose. “It’s like this,” she said, ignoring his interruption. “Tomkin made the mistake of talking to Angela about his connection with Minck, and Angela, the bitch, had a memory as deep as the ocean floor. She remembered
everything.
That was part of her scam, how she could get whatever she wanted from almost everyone. She remembered what they did not want known.

“So of course there came a day when she threw this knowledge up at Tomkin. I don’t really know why. Perhaps there was a diamond she wanted that he wouldn’t give her; maybe he wasn’t coming by enough, or maybe he was dropping in
too
much. You could never tell with Angela, she blew so hot and cold.

“Anyway, she could always spot a lever and she knew she had a powerful one with Tomkin. She wanted something from him and if he wouldn’t do it, she told him she’d go to the papers with what she had on him. It was S.O.P. with her.

“However, this time I don’t think she really understood the nature of the beast she had by the tail. Tomkin shut up immediately, refusing to get into an argument with her; he saw right away that she was intractable.

“So he called Minck and Minck sent out his hounds to snuff Angela. There was no negotiating, no thinking it over. Whatever Minck and Tomkin were into was far too big.

“Of course, Tomkin had to be there when it went down. Angela was so paranoid she wouldn’t’ve opened the door to Minck’s people. Tomkin was the front man. But once she unlatched the chain, the three of them came in.”

“Was Tomkin actually there when she bought it?” He trembled as he voiced it, knowing how important her answer was to him.

“In the apartment but not in the bedroom. He was at the bar, taking an anesthetic. His hands shook so much he got as much Scotch on the counter as he did in his glass. I had the angle from where I was hiding inside Angela’s clothes closet. I was just coming out of the bathroom when she went to answer the door.” Her eyes were bleak, almost as if they had lost their rich color. “I heard Angela’s high-pitched yelp. It sounded like a dog being whipped.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why, but I ducked into the closet right away.”

“So you were an eyewitness all right.”

“There was nothing mean about what they did to her.” Her voice, like her eyes, had become washed out. Maybe, Croaker thought, it was her way of protecting herself from something no one should see. He took her hand in his, fingers entwined. “They were very…businesslike about what they did to her. It took no time. I remember, just afterwards, being so shocked by that. Such a monstrous thing…it should take a long time to undo life.” Her eyes closed for a moment. Incipient tears glistened along the lashes. “Afterward, they made it look like something else, of course. Not an execution. Then they went into the living room and thoroughly cleaned up after Tomkin. They didn’t find me because I crawled into a secret compartment Angela had built into the back of her closet to store her furs and jewelry; she loved being close to them. I had to curl up into a ball. It was stifling and I couldn’t hear anything. I was terrified that at any moment they’d discover me.

“They didn’t then, but they must’ve known about my relationship with Angela because they found me a week after I flew down to Key West. In the meantime, they’d done their homework. They knew where I was that night; they knew I’d seen it all. Minck’s men are professionals.”

“So I’ve come to learn,” Croaker said distantly. He put both hands on the wheel. So the truth was close…but not close enough. His inner laugh was ironic and bitter. The truth was nothing so clearcut as black and white. Tomkin
hadn’t
killed Angela; he had only set her up. He didn’t order it, didn’t execute that order. He merely went along with it, stood by, a wall away, while it was happening. Guilty as charged, your honor. The voice echoed hollowly in Croaker’s mind. But what was the charge? Not murder in the second degree; not even manslaughter. Instead, Tomkin had been an accessory to murder. It had not been he who had put pressure on the Commissioner to sweep the Didion murder under the police blotter. That had come all the way from Washington, D.C. From Minck himself.

Cloak-and-dagger Minck, Croaker thought bitterly. How many murders could he be held accountable for? Angela Didion’s was just one in a long line. He felt deflated and saddened by the vast gray areas of the world, within one of which he now found himself. It was a bog without form or substance, where direction became hazy before fading out altogether. Where to go now that Angela Didion’s murderer was beyond him? For he knew without doubt that he could never touch Minck on this charge or any other. He was defeated.

Sunshine hit them like a fist on the Manhattan side of the tunnel, bouncing off the hood like a starblaze. Croaker headed right, toward Thirty-fourth Street, where he turned left for several long blocks, then right after the light changed, heading downtown on Second Avenue. The city beckoned them with grimy fingers.

Anger bubbled inside him, turned without his knowing on Alix. Women’s motivations were so opaque to him. He wished to God she had told him all this days before—although what he would have done differently he did not know. They still had to make the trip out of there. Damn it, damn it, damn it!

She touched his arm and he glanced at her. “I’m sorry for what I said before. I know none of this’s your fault.” She ran tanned fingers through her hair. “I couldn’t stand it down there anymore; it was like prison—worse in some ways. At least in prison I imagine you know where you stand. In Key West, surrounded by those two, I didn’t know what to expect next. Would Minck continue to come? Would his feelings fade? Would one of them kill me then?

“It began to feel like there was a balloon inside my head and each day it was being filled with more air. Soon there’d be more balloon than brain and then I wouldn’t be able to think at all.” She gave a little strangled laugh. “Silly, isn’t it?”

“No,” Croaker said softly, “it isn’t.” It was remarkable how she could defuse his rage so utterly. She had only to touch him, to turn those eyes on him, to whisper softly, and all the blackness curled like ash inside him.

She gave a little sigh, as if it had been extremely important that he corroborate her feelings. “I wanted to tell you all of it right away, Lew. It’s important that you believe that.”

“I do,”

Her head was turned sideways toward him. “Not just say it.”

“I don’t say anything idly, Alix.”

She seemed to accept that. “I was in shock; you were such a—oh, I don’t know—a bolt out of the blue.”

“A knight in shining armor.”

It was a joke, but she did not take it that way. “Oh, yes. I wanted to believe that very much. But I was afraid to. It was almost like you were too good to be true. I had been involved with this for so long—all this knowledge inside my head like a time bomb with a hair trigger.