The Art of Arrow Cutting Read online

  “Eh, they’re okay.”

  “You mean you haven’t told them yet?”

  “Well, I’m breaking it to them gently,” Mandaglione admitted. “Your father hasn’t been well, Mikey. Which is no miracle—the man makes me look like number-nine vermicelli. Seems like you got your mother’s genes. She knows something’s up, all right, but she doesn’t know the size of it; never did have much of an imagination, thank Christ. I hope you haven’t made the New York papers?”

  “I don’t think so. Dad only reads the sports pages, anyway.” He was more concerned about upsetting his sisters than his parents—and he knew Mandaglione knew that—but there was no point in saying so.

  “Well, you’re not likely to make the front page, not while Wall Street’s having convulsions. When’s the trial?”

  “Three weeks at the earliest. If I can get bail, I’ll try to delay it; if not, I’d like to get it over with.”

  “Well, I can’t help you there,” Mandaglione said glumly. “I can’t raise a tenth of that—and all you have is your camera, right?”

  “Right.”

  “The family might be able to—”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  “If they ask, tell them bail was denied. I won’t take their money; this is my mess.”

  The two men sat there in embarrassed silence for half a minute. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Ah, don’t mention it. I heard there was a sale on at Dangerous Visions.”

  “Good. I could do with something to read.”

  “What shall I get you?”

  “Something escapist.” Mandaglione laughed. “But not another copy of Inferno, and nothing of yours. If I want murder mysteries or horror stories, I just have to look around. If you can get it …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something on Japanese mythology—something good.”

  14

  Dangerous Visions

  Twenty-two thousand dollars, plus change: to Takumo, an outrageous fortune. He looked at the chips, glanced at the croupier—who was smiling nervously, her manicured nails hovering just above the felt (fingertips on the table, Takumo knew, signaled that a player was cheating)—and decided to call it quits. For one thing, he wasn’t sure whose luck he was playing with here, his or Magistrale’s; for another, money didn’t really interest him. American currency was as ugly as a gun; the display outside Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, a million in ten-thousand-dollar bills, looked to Takumo like so much computer printout. He could imagine someone wanting to collect Canadian banknotes, however worthless they might be as money, but U.S. bills looked as though you were meant to rid yourself of them with all possible haste. He cashed his chips and resolved to do exactly that.

  A stunning silk-clad hostess tried to stop him, offering him a free dinner, a free room … gifts usually extended to big losers. Maybe they expected his luck to change. Despite her obvious charms, he declined politely and hurried out before she could offer anything further.

  He arrived at the Greyhound station with forty minutes to spare and disappeared into the toilets to compose himself. In his agitation, he had not noticed a man following him from the Sunrise.

  Sitting on the toilet, trying to ignore the smells of fresh poverty and despair, Takumo counted the money again as quietly as he could. Twenty-two thousand, three hundred and seventy dollars; he had been in movies that he would have sworn had cost less. He folded the large bills carefully, tucked them into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, closed his eyes and meditated.

  Packer looked under the cubicle door, saw the sneakered feet and swore silently. He was carrying only two guns: a Metzger Arms Spectre 15 and a Smith & Wesson Model 38 Bodyguard. The Spectre was silenced, but it was only loaded with 9mm Parabellum hollow-points; a round fired through the door would be unlikely to kill his victim. Besides, knowing his luck, he’d probably put a bullet through the money. He backed away from the door, faced the mirror and waited.

  It was a long wait. Four times men entered the room and left while he stood at the hand basin. Packer peered under the cubicle door twice to convince himself that Takumo hadn’t teleported out, or become invisible, or whatever it was ninja were supposed to be able to do. Inagaki had warned him about this one, reminding him to stay well out of his reach—as though Packer was planning to risk a repetition of that embarrassing incident in Totem Rock.

  Finally the door opened and Takumo emerged, his face calm. Packer turned off the taps and walked over to the hand drier, increasing the distance between them, then reached into his jacket for the Spectre.

  It was the silencer, slowing down Packer’s draw, that saved Takumo’s life. He saw the gunman fumble and turned to face him … but they were standing nearly three yards apart.

  Packer pulled the gun free and was bringing it to bear when Takumo reached for his wallet. “Okay, man, it’s yours.”

  “What?”

  “Easy come, easy go,” said Takumo wistfully and threw the wallet toward Packer’s knees—throwing it at his face or groin might have caused him to duck, or to fire reflexively. The gunman looked down and Takumo clenched his fist around the key, closed his eyes and thought himself into a textbook-perfect flying forward kick. An instant later he felt his foot connect with the gunman’s face and prepared himself for a roll.

  When he opened his eyes again, the world had disappeared.

  Michelangelo Magistrale …”

  Carol looked up. “What?”

  “Isn’t that the name of the guy who was staying with you? The photographer?”

  Carol nodded. She hadn’t heard from Mage since the day after he’d left; a cop had called the day before, asking her what she knew about his movements but without telling her why. She hadn’t told him about the gunman and was wondering if that had been wise when Jeannie said, “It says here he’s murdered someone.”

  “What?”

  Jeannie put the newspaper down on the counter, open to the story. “Says he murdered a girl he met here in town. Did you know her?”

  Carol looked at the photograph of Amanda and shrugged. “I might have seen her in here …” She smiled sourly. “Looks like a passport photo. Mage always said if you looked like the picture in your passport, you were much too sick to travel. I don’t recognize the name.”

  “Me neither.” Jeannie read the rest of the story and shook her head. “Guess you were lucky it wasn’t you.”

  Packer, dazed, opened his eyes and tried to focus but found nothing to focus on. He looked around the featureless expanse of whiteness and finally saw the Spectre lying somewhere beyond his feet. He sat up slowly, shaking his ringing head, and touched his face. His nose was bleeding, his cheek swelling, and a few of his teeth felt loose. He tried to remember what had happened. That little Jap had come out of the crapper and—

  Where the hell was he? Was he dead? If this was Heaven, he didn’t like it at all; if it was Hell, he supposed he could tolerate it for a while. He turned his head painfully and saw Takumo standing—crouching, rather—on apparent nothingness. “What the fuck …” Packer began, slowly bringing his body around while reaching for the .38 in his ankle holster. Takumo spun on his left heel, and his right foot lashed out toward Packer’s chin, knocking the gunman back to the floor. Packer barely had time to grunt before the whiteness dissolved into supernovae, which vanished into darkness an instant later.

  Takumo dropped to one knee and ran his fingers lightly over the floor. The tiles and the grouting were still there, whatever that meant; they simply weren’t visible. What the freakin’ hell had happened?

  He looked at himself and then at Packer. The gunman had apparently seen the same infinite blankness—or at least, Takumo told himself, he’d seen something changed, something unexpected. He vaguely regretted having to knock the man out again, but he seemed more of a liability than a help. With a slight sigh, he proceeded to search the gunman’s body. First priority was the holdout pistol in the ankle holster; he r
emoved it, glanced at it incuriously, swung the cylinder out and emptied it onto the floor, then threw the gun underarm toward its partner.

  It bounced off an invisible something with a clang of metal on metal before dropping out of sight well short of the floor. Takumo stared at the nothingness, then at Packer, and then stepped carefully over the body and tiptoed cautiously toward the place where the revolver had disappeared, remembering stories of explorers lost in the Antarctic whiteout walking blindly into crevasses. To his relief, the floor (floor?) remained solid and level beneath his feet.

  His flailing hands bumped something cold and angular before he saw it and he groped around until he recognized the shape and texture: the corner of a hand basin. He peered into the invisible sink and there saw the gun floating in mid blankness. He picked it up—it was slightly wet—and dropped it on the floor. He then circumnavigated the room slowly. As near as his hands could tell, nothing had changed except the appearance. He came to a cubicle door and hesitated before opening it. What the hell had he done?

  Be careful what you wish for… .

  What had he been thinking? His foot into Packer’s face… .

  What had he seen? He’d controlled the poker machines by seeing cherries, the roulette wheel by seeing the ball next to the number. For the kick, he’d concentrated on—

  Oh, shit! he thought. A diagram. A page from a textbook. Two sketched figures on a blank background.

  Takumo looked down at himself and his sense of humor took over briefly. Lucky my clothes aren’t just painted on, he thought, and burst out giggling weakly, hysterically. Suddenly he stopped and listened, with a strong feeling that there was someone else in the room, someone watching him and laughing. Silence. He sat there for a few seconds, concentrating on his breathing—then, feeling much better, he unwrapped the braided hair from around his wrist, stuffed the focus into his pocket and opened the door.

  The toilet was still there. Apparently, whatever he had done had stopped where his line of sight stopped. At least I didn’t blow away the world, he thought, and sank to the floor, eyes shut. It’s still out there somewhere, if I can just find the right door.

  There was a groan from Packer. He dashed over to the body and pried open the gunman’s left eye. Still unconscious, and—Takumo estimated—liable to remain so for a couple of minutes. “Unpleasant dreams,” he murmured, and began searching the man.

  A spare clip for the Spectre and a small folding knife concealed in the belt buckle were the only weapons— unless you counted a half-empty packet of Camels and two matchbooks with a Sunrise logo as lethal. His pockets contained no wallet and no I.D., only a few loose coins—some American, some Canadian—and a room key for the Sunrise Hotel. His watch was a battered digital with a cammo band, with stopwatch and multiple time-zone functions and an alarm set for twenty-five past midnight. He wore no dog tags or jewelry, and had no obvious tattoos. His sleeveless safari suit was fairly new but inexpensive, off-the-rack and years out of fashion, and probably chosen chiefly for its numerous pockets; his shoes were old, severely scuffed, and looked like government issue, probably army surplus. His chestnut hair was close-cropped and receding, his nails short and clean, his hands large; his palms were fairly soft, but his knuckles had lived in interesting times. He was muscular, with a slight paunch, and looked to be in his late thirties. The only useful information that Takumo could glean from his search was that the man had recently been to Canada, and possibly was Canadian; he had a distinct and unpleasant feeling that that should mean something to him, but it didn’t. The blank surroundings made thinking difficult… .

  He retrieved his wallet and pocketed it, picked up the pistols and the empty magazine and dumped them in a toilet bowl, then stood approximately where he had been standing when Packer had first pulled the gun. He closed his eyes and concentrated, drawing on his memory of the room, then reached into his pocket for the key.

  A moment later he opened his eyes again. The room was no longer blank, but its lines and curves were extremely soft, and his reflection (thin and fuzzy except for the face) was frozen onto the mirror like a Hiroshima shadow. The “Vacant” signs on the doors were barely readable; the instructions on the hot-air hand drier were mere squiggles. He tried again and succeeded in sharpening some of the edges, but the overall effect still resembled the cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

  Finally he retreated into a cubicle, pulled his jacket over his head and imagined the mirror shattering, saw the fluorescent tubes explode. When he opened his eyes again, it was reassuringly dark. He walked to the door with mock confidence and closed it behind him. He had seven minutes before his bus left for L.A. Let the gunman explain the mess when they woke him up.

  He sat in the Greyhound station waiting, hiding his face behind a paperback copy of The Story of the Stone. It wasn’t the face of a man who’d just won twenty-two thousand dollars; it was the face of a frightened boy who’s just discovered that he can’t do magic …

  … but maybe, just maybe, he knew someone who could.

  15

  Negatives

  By the time Oshima Sakura arrived in Las Vegas, Packer was being strapped onto a stretcher by paramedics while grim-faced cops placed his guns in Ziploc bags. Twenty minutes later she was on the phone to a furious Tamenaga.

  Have you decided yet?”

  “Decided?”

  “About the polygraph.”

  Mage shook his head. “You don’t have any better ideas?”

  “No,” replied Kelly. “And forensics has developed that film; the cops have the negatives—evidence—but I asked for a set of the prints. Who’s this?” She handed over three eight-by-tens, and Mage winced.

  “Oh, Jesus …”

  “Strange name,” said Kelly. “Spanish?”

  “Very funny.”

  “He looks dead.”

  “No, just … unconscious. I knocked him out.”

  “Why?”

  “He was pointing a gun at me.”

  “What sort of gun?”

  “Machine pistol, with a silencer. An Ingram, I think.”

  “M-10 or M-11?”

  “I don’t know. It could even have been an Uzi, or almost anything; all I know about guns I got from watching movies and being mugged, and this one was a damn sight bigger than anything I’ve ever had pointed at me before.”

  Kelly nodded. “And you don’t know who he was?”

  “No.”

  “Had you seen him before?”

  “I don’t think so, and I have a pretty good memory for faces … though it’s not a memorable face.”

  It does look like government issue, thought Kelly. “Accent?”

  “Canadian. Probably western provinces; I heard similar accents in Calgary.”

  “And you knocked him out?”

  “The gun jammed. I hit him with my camera case.”

  “And this is the story you were scared we wouldn’t believe? The reason you won’t take a polygraph test?”

  “No,” said Mage glumly. “If I told you the incredible part … oh, forget it.”

  Kelly shrugged. “Why was he pointing a gun at you?”

  “He said he was looking for Amanda.”

  “Do you think he killed her?”

  Mage didn’t, but that wasn’t any reason to say so. “That … hadn’t occurred to me. I suppose he might have. I didn’t see him in Calgary …”

  Kelly looked at the photo and grimaced. “Maybe we should start at the beginning again. Now, when and where did you first meet Amanda Sharmon?”

  Mage had told the story as far as his checking into the youth hostel in Calgary and was wondering whether or not to mention Takumo’s unorthodox means of entry when there was a knock on the door. A sour-looking cop entered.

  “Miss Barbet?”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s some guy here with twenty thousand bucks, says he wants to pay Mr. Magistrale’s bail.”

  “My uncle?”

  “I dunno. Is your uncle Japanese?”<
br />
  “No, Australian,” replied Mage warily. A Japanese bailing him out? The rukoro-kubi, or one of its friends, setting him up?

  “Skinny little guy, about your age.”

  Mage grinned in mingled relief and incredulity. “Name Charlie Takumo?”

  “I didn’t catch his name. You want out or not?”

  “Sure I want out.” He turned to Kelly. “I also want my stuff back; can you arrange that?”

  “I can try.”

  For reasons that Kelly didn’t pretend to understand, the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division wanted to keep Mage’s camera case (but not his camera), his jacket, his sneakers, his backpack, his belt, and both pairs of jeans. He stalked out barefoot, wearing black track-suit pants and a faded NASA T-shirt, camera in one hand and carry-bags in the other, ignoring Takumo’s smiling assurances that his outfit would be utterly inconspicuous in L.A. The smog had cleared, the sun was out, the sidewalk was hot, and he logged to Takumo’s bike to avoid burning his feet. When a pretty girl wearing a muscle shirt and bicycle pants came Jogging the other way with a friendly smile, Mage grudgingly decided that he could probably learn to tolerate the city, eventually.

  Kelly and Takumo caught up with him half a block later. “Where are you going?” Kelly asked.

  “To buy some shoes,” Mage groaned, examining his scorched soles. “And some jeans. Doesn’t this count as cruel and unusual punishment?”

  Kelly ignored that. “Make certain they give you a receipt; I should be able to make forensics pay for them.”

  Mage grinned toothily. “Where’s the most expensive jeanery you know?”

  “Rodeo Drive,” replied Takumo. “Like, I never shop there myself, but it must be. You prefer mink or sable?”

  “Do you have the cash?” Kelly asked.

  “Some. Do they take cash in Beverly Hills?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” She caught Mage by the shoulder, turned him around. “Michael … Mage …” and then the right words abandoned her. “Will I see you again?” seemed sentimental; “Are you going to jump bail?” was unprofessionally gauche. She looked down at his camera. “Shouldn’t you have a lens cap on that?”