The Art of Arrow Cutting Read online

  He had no idea how soon an emergency would arise.

  Takumo turned the table over, revealing the weapons gaffer-taped to its underside: a ninjato in a black scabbard, three star-shaped shuriken, and a black butterfly knife. He had just fitted the large square tsuba onto the ninjato when he heard a knock on the door. He sat there silently until the knock was repeated, then took the unsheathed sword and crept to the door. It hadn’t been Mage’s knock—too quiet for a New Yorker, and too quick. That, he suspected, also ruled out the cops and Mandaglione. It sounded like a child’s knock, or a very small woman’s. Of course, this could be a deception. He glanced at the window and was mildly astonished to realize that it was already dusk. Mage was late returning home; in the time it took to cross the living room, Takumo had thought of three fates that could have befallen the photographer and was imagining a fourth as he peered through the peephole.

  Mika!

  Hastily he slid the chain across, opened the door and welcomed the girl with open arms. She shrank back, and he suddenly remembered that he was still brandishing the ninjato. “Oh, shit, sorry. Forgot it was there. Come in! What’s happening?”

  She continued to stare at the sword. He backed off slightly and placed it on the kitchen counter. “Mike?”

  “Hi, Charlie.”

  “Come in!”

  “Thank you.” She smiled prettily and closed the door behind her. They stood facing each other, and she stared at both of his hands, then down at his belt.

  “Look, it’s okay,” he said. “I’m unarmed.” He took a cautious step forward and slowly brought his hands up to caress her face. She flinched away.

  “Mike …?”

  “Sumimasen, Charlie,” she replied softly.

  Takumo, equally sorry, looked at her and nodded. He stepped into the sitting room just as she reached out to touch him. They stood there, frozen off balance, and then she bent down to remove her shoes. Takumo cursed himself: on a good day, he could somersault over a five-foot fence, parry shuriken or arrows, walk silently over ice, escape from a straitjacket, climb a bare brick wall and defend himself against three opponents twice his size … and yet, a nineteen-year-old girl, barely five feet tall in stiletto heels, could instantly render him as clumsy as a newborn kitten. He took a deep breath, retreated slowly into a corner and sat down. She tiptoed toward him and knelt, her hand gently moving towards his—

  The phone rang, making them both jump. Takumo hesitated, then decided that it might be Mage. He muttered, “Sorry,” and reached for the receiver.

  “Hello? Who’s calling, please?”

  “Charlie?”

  It took him several seconds to recognize the voice: Elena had never called him before. “Elena?”

  “Are you okay?”

  I was about to ask the same question, thought Takumo, bewildered. “Yeah. Great.”

  “You sound … I don’t know, worried. Uptight.”

  “No, everything’s cool,” he replied. “Mike’s here.” He glanced at the girl and smiled, he hoped reassuringly. She sat back on her haunches and seemed to fume slightly.

  “Everything’s not cool,” replied Elena. “I just did a hexagram and it told me you were in danger. Two hexagrams, really; one told me a close friend was in danger, one told me it was you—”

  “Hey, hey … I’m not in any danger. Not now, anyway.”

  “You are,” she insisted, “or you will be soon.”

  Takumo hesitated. Elena had been right last time, twenty-two thousand dollars worth of right—but last time he’d been using the key.

  “Charlie, I’m sure. I rolled the hexagrams twice and got the same answer each time! And it’s now—”

  There was a knock on the door. Takumo froze.

  “Shall I get it?” his guest asked.

  “No!” he hissed. “Elena, I have to go, there’s someone at the door. I’ll call you back. Promise.”

  “Charlie—”

  Takumo eased the receiver down. “Mike …” For the second time in a week he cursed the lack of a fire escape. Where could he hide her? The closet? She was certainly small enough, and if he was killed, there was no reason for the attackers to look for her. Pity the bathroom cabinet was full.

  Another knock, louder.

  “Quick!” he murmured in Japanese. “Into the bedroom. Hide behind the door.”

  “Who is it? New girlfriend?”

  He grabbed her hand and kissed it; she flinched and her sharp nails scratched him. He hurried toward the door, grabbed the ninjato and stared through the peephole. At that instant the door opened, batting him in the face—and then stopped. Mage peered around the edge.

  “Sorry, Charlie. No one answered, and you told me to let myself in.”

  Takumo looked up at the photographer and opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was cut off by a feminine giggle.

  “Hi. I’m Mike.”

  Mage smiled and bowed. “What a coincidence, so’m I. Short for Michelangelo. Call me Mage.”

  He shot Takumo a “hope-I’m-not-interrupting-anything” look; Takumo shook his head slightly—which Mage correctly interpreted as “Not yet” —and stepped back. Mage walked in, shut the door behind him and stopped at the edge of the tatami. The tension in the room wasn’t quite thick enough to drive a nail into, but it was obvious that something was very wrong. He looked over at the girl. She was as pretty as her picture, but her body language didn’t match her expression.

  “I’d better be going,” she said suddenly.

  Takumo spun around to face her. “Mike …” he pleaded.

  “Maybe I’d better be going,” suggested Mage quietly.

  Takumo hesitated, then bit his lip savagely. If Elena had been right—if—then it would be better, safer, to let them both go. He dropped the sword, said, “I’ll be right back,” and turned to Mage, tossing his head at the door. They both backed out of the apartment, shutting the door behind them.

  “Do you have anywhere else you can go?” Takumo asked after a long and uncomfortable silence.

  “I’ll find somewhere. Can I get the rest of my stuff?”

  “Oh, for sure. Mage …” Oh, shit, he thought. If I tell him about Elena’s message, he’ll insist on staying. And why not? If the roles were reversed, I’d do the same. “Look, it’ll just be for tonight. I’ll give you the money for a hotel. Okay?”

  “Okay. I mean, forget the money.”

  Takumo nodded, then turned, opened the door, and they both squeezed in. “Sorry, Mike.” Mage was about to answer and then realized that Takumo was talking to the girl—who was studiously looking down at the tatami, meeting no one’s eye.

  Mage gathered his few belongings, said his good-byes, and furtively adjusted the shutter speed on his camera down to one-fifteenth of a second, the f-stop to 2.8. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.

  “I really should go too … It was nice meeting you.”

  “Hey, I’m just leaving,” said Mage, smiling. He pointed the lens at her, held the camera as still as possible and continued to talk loudly to cover the click of the shutter, then picked up his carry-bags.

  “Fifty?” asked Takumo.

  “I said …” Mage began, then shrugged. “Make it twenty; I’ll stay at a hostel or somewhere like that. Pity Dante’s already gone.” Takumo reached into his wallet, removed three tens and handed them over.

  Mage nodded and called “Good night, sweet lady,” as he walked away. As soon as the door was closed, he ran down the stairs to the street.

  Kelly was rummaging through the back of the pantry for a can of cat food when the phone rang. She swore mildly and turned to face the Abyssinian standing beside her. “Could you get that for me?”

  “Mrrow?”

  “Didn’t think so.” She sighed and walked into the hallway. “Barbet.”

  “Kelly? It’s Mage—Magistrale. Look, I can’t stay at Takumo’s tonight, I’ll explain later, and I don’t have enough for a hotel and a taxi.”

  There was a lo
ng pause.

  “Hello?”

  Kelly sighed softly. Logic said no; her instincts said why the hell not? She trusted him, didn’t she?

  “Where are you?”

  “Somewhere in Santa Monica, I think,” said Mage, twining the thong of hair around his fingers like a rosary. “A liquor store on Ocean Avenue.”

  “Okay. I have a couch, you know my address.”

  “Great. See you in half an hour.”

  Charlie, I’d better go …”

  “You just got here! You come all the way from China and you’re here for five minutes and—”

  “I knew this was a bad idea!” she snapped, then stood. “You’re just so possessive …”

  Takumo drew a deep breath and held up his hands, palms forward, fingers spread. “Okay, okay. Look, at least let me give you a lift.”

  “I’ve got a car outside.”

  “When did you learn to drive?”

  She stopped for a moment, her expression frozen, and Takumo wondered if he’d hit a sore point. “Over there,” she said finally. “Sue—one of the other teachers—taught me. Goodbye, Charlie.”

  “I’ll call you—”

  She shook her head. “No. I really don’t think that’s a good idea. Look after yourself, Charlie.”

  For sure, he thought. No one else is going to do it for me. He accompanied her to her rental car and watched her drive away. He waved, then noticed the scratch on his wrist. Mike always was good at drawing blood, he thought sourly, and sucked at the wound before trudging back upstairs. So much for the invincible ninja, huh?

  He shut the door behind him and padded toward the bedroom. The futon was still rolled up at one end, the compartment open. He sat down on the tatami, curled his legs into a lotus and sucked at his wrist again. The faint taste of blood reminded him that he hadn’t visited the blood bank since before he’d left for Canada and that the night after tomorrow was Halloween: lots of parties, lots of road accidents. Have to make time for that, he thought, and then: time? Hell, what about now?

  Elena had predicted that he was in danger. Hey, he’d known that before she’d rung. Why else had he been taking stock of his weaponry? So, he could sit here and wait for it—or he could go out and avoid it. Or maybe confront it. “‘If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.’” It was a very Japanese thing for an Englishman to have written.

  Takumo inhaled deeply, slowly, and then stood—a little unsteadily. A moment later, clad in black, he jogged down the stairs to his bike and tore off into the night.

  Thanks. I don’t suppose you’re into photography?” Mage asked as soon as the door closed behind him.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t think so. Is there a twenty-four-hour developer near here, a quick one?” Everything else he’d seen in L.A. seemed to be open until very late—probably a reaction to the time it took to get anywhere.

  Kelly merely stared at him, incredulous. Even her cat, a sphynxlike Abyssinian named Oedipus, stopped twining himself around Mage’s legs to look at him strangely.

  “Look, I need this roll of film developed. Tonight, if possible.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Well, I won’t rule that out; it may be a good defense. Is there?”

  She sighed and nodded.

  “Walking distance?”

  “Six, seven blocks, but—”

  “All safe?”

  “Fairly safe, as long as you cross with the lights.”

  “Great. I’ll be back soon.” He dropped his bags beside the door, narrowly missing Oedipus, and rewound his film.

  It was more than seven blocks, it was ten and a half, and across two roads that pedestrians were obviously never intended to cross. The clerk balked at warming up the printer for one reel of film. It required all of Mage’s charm and his last ten-dollar bill to persuade her.

  “What’s on here that’s so important?” she asked as she shrugged her way to the developer.

  “I don’t know. That’s why it’s important.”

  “Why don’t you buy a Polaroid?”

  “I don’t take that sort of picture,” replied Mage dryly, then smiled. “Well, not often anyway. Besides, if you take a shot with a Polaroid, you’re stuck with reality. Use a real camera and you’ve got the negative—you can do anything with that.”

  “What’s wrong with reality?”

  Mage paused. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No,” she replied with a slight sniff. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Never mind,” he replied hastily. “I’m from out of town myself.”

  He realized that she’d taken the comment personally, and he wondered at it. He’d always prided himself on his tact, never arguing with women, rarely even bantering, keeping his opinions to himself … no, that wasn’t quite true. Suddenly he wasn’t sure he’d ever had any strong opinions. Something very strange was happening to him. For one thing, he hadn’t made a serious pass at anyone since his hasty departure from Totem Rock, and that was as difficult to believe as anything else that had happened to him, maybe more so. Granted that he’d been preoccupied, maybe even a little panicky, but even so, his recent lack of interest was almost unprecedented. Maybe, he thought, it was reluctance to get any woman involved in the mess he was in. He would have dismissed that as macho bullshit a month ago, but the mess was out of all proportion to anything that had ever happened to him before, and he couldn’t think of any woman whom he could have asked to help … not including Kelly, of course, and that was her job, and he probably wasn’t putting her in any danger.

  With a slight toss of her head that showed her profile to best advantage, the clerk turned her attention back to the developer. Mage noticed that she was pretty enough—prettier than Carol or Jenny—but her hair was an unconvincing shade of blond, her suntan also came from bottle, and her makeup, though competently done, looked more like a disguise. She might have walked out of a commercial. Nothing wrong with reality, huh?

  He reached into his shirt for the key. It felt more real (whatever that meant) than all of Los Angeles, and suddenly he was very glad of it.

  Another customer entered and the clerk flitted off. Mage spared the man a glance, guessed what he had come for —condoms—and waited. The clerk returned a moment later, her expression slightly sour.

  “You must get a lot of that, working alone here late at night.”

  “Oh, Christ, don’t you start.”

  He shrugged. “Sorry.”

  The developer switched from shuddering to a faint whispering grind, or a grinding whisper, and Mage, no great reader, began to wish that he’d brought a book.

  “I think you’re out of luck,” said the clerk.

  “What?”

  “Most of this roll is blank. What were you trying to photograph?”

  “I know it’s blank,” he said a little testily. “It’s the last shot I’m interested in.”

  The clerk glanced at the negatives and shrugged. “That doesn’t look too hot, either. Just be a few more minutes.”

  He nodded, glancing at his watch. Half past eight. For once, he wished he’d had a Polaroid.

  “These are the ones you were waiting for?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “She doesn’t have a face!”

  He snatched the still-wet print from the clerk and stared. The shot was slightly underexposed, with appalling depth of field, but he could clearly distinguish small details: the buttons on the girl’s blouse, her crimson nails, individual locks of hair. But her face was a void, utterly featureless, and somehow utterly terrifying. He tried to remember the list of monsters Takumo had told him about in Calgary, way back when he’d thought Amanda was still alive.

  “Can I use your phone?”

  “What?”

  “Can I—” Mage realized that he was whispering. “Can I use your phone?”

  The clerk stared at him, then n
odded. She edged toward the cash register and—Mage suspected—the alarm button. Slowly, deliberately, he punched in Takumo’s number.

  “Hi! This is Charlie Takumo, and I’m far out! I mean, I am really out of sight! But if you leave a message after you hear the tone—”

  Mage grit his teeth; it was that or scream. He disliked phones, and hated message recorders. “Charlie, this is Mage. I’m at Kelly’s. Ring me on—oh, hell—nine three six double two three oh. Please. It’s important. Ciao.”

  Packer sat back on the bed, watching The Terminator for the twenty-sixth time. Schwarzenegger was aiming his laser-sighted Longslide at Linda Hamilton, the red dot of light fixed on her forehead like a third eye, and suddenly the phone rang. Packer swore, reached for the remote control, switched it to “Pause” and waited.

  “Hi! This is Charlie Takumo, and I’m far out! I mean …”

  Packer yawned. He wished that Inagaki, or Hegarty, or whoever was boss around here, would give him his guns back and the order to go and blow both of those irritants away. Or any guns. There was a pawnshop next to the video library, with a collection nearly as large as his own—less powerful, of course, unless there was some good stuff under the counter—but he owed the Sunrise twenty or thirty thousand and didn’t have any cash. That still pissed him off; he’d been to Vegas before, for Soldier of Fortune conventions, and had never lost more than a hundred … but then, there’d been other stuff to keep him interested. Now he was stuck with this chickenshit outfit until he’d paid back his debts, and they wouldn’t even trust him with beer money; Hubbard, who had the shift from ten to eight, did all the shopping. He wondered how long—

  “Charlie, this is Mage. I’m at Kelly’s. Ring me on—oh, hell—nine three six double two three oh. Please. It’s important. Ciao.”

  Packer sat up and grinned. That was what they’d been waiting for, the reason he’d been sitting in this dump. He picked up the other phone and called Hegarty.

  19

  Bakemono

  It was a wet and extremely irritated Kelly Barbet who opened the door after half a minute of heavy pounding. “What the hell—”