The Art of Arrow Cutting Page 9

  “Yeah, that figures. Thanks.” The cop took the denim jacket, slipped back into his shoes and reached into his pocket. “Here. He said this was yours, asked me to give it back to you.” He threw Takumo the key and shut the door behind him.

  Takumo twisted the braided hair around his fingers, stared at the key, and thought very hard.

  11

  Kelly

  To Mage’s delight, the assistant P.D. was a woman in her late twenties; women, experience told him, were far more likely to believe him than men were. And she was attractive … or maybe “striking” would have been more apt. She towered above Mage; he guessed her height at six-foot-four, minus two or three inches for her afro and her heels, but still his height or taller. Though she was slender, her hands and wrists and her carriage suggested strength. She wore gray, which looked wrong against her mahogany skin; her suit seemed more a part of the detention-room walls than of her. No wedding or engagement ring or any other jewelry, not even earrings, and no makeup except the dark-red varnish on her short nails. She didn’t offer to shake hands, and Mage decided not to stand; she didn’t seem to be the sort to respond to chivalry.

  “Michelangelo Magistrale?” Her voice was crisp, businesslike, rather deep. Not a California accent. Washington or Boston, probably.

  “Yes.” He tried to smile, and failed.

  “I’m Kelly Barbet. Public Defender’s Office.” She placed the folder in her hand on the table, faceup, and looked at him with her first hint of uncertainty. “Well?”

  Mage shrugged eloquently. “What do you want me to say? I didn’t do it, I didn’t see her in Calgary. Hell, I didn’t even know she was dead until the cops told me! When did she die?”

  Kelly opened the file to the first page. “The condition the body was in, it was hard to tell. Probably sometime between midnight and one a.m., but it was cold that night and it could have been two or three hours earlier or later. Do you have an alibi for the night?”

  “On the twenty-third?”

  “No, the twenty-second.”

  Mage blinked. “The morning of the twenty-second?”

  “Yes. Where were you?”

  “In a youth hostel.”

  She looked down at the file. “On Seventh Avenue?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “That’s where they found her body. On the twenty-fourth.”

  Mage thought, and suddenly turned pale. “Where …”

  “Where what?”

  “Where did they find the body?”

  “In the garbage bin, outside.”

  He vomited.

  Are you okay now?” she asked when he returned from the washroom.

  “Do I look okay?” he asked sarcastically, then shook his head. “Sorry. Charlie volunteered us for garbage detail that morning. I must’ve been a couple of feet from her body and not known it. Jesus.”

  “Who’s Charlie?”

  “Charlie Takumo. I met him in the hostel; I was staying with him when the cops picked me up.”

  “Did he know Amanda Sharmon?”

  “No. Well, not as far as I know. Look, is this necessary? I told you I didn’t know she was dead. Hell, I spent the whole next day looking for her, you know that …”

  “The prosecution could say you were trying to create an alibi.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, disgusted. “Okay. Look, just as a matter of interest, how was she killed?”

  Kelly sighed, flipped the file open and began turning pages. Suddenly she looked up, her face gray. Mage stared at her, then stood, drawing himself up to his full height.

  “Look,” he said, “whatever it is, I didn’t do it! I’m not going to make any sort of confession, any sort of bargain; I didn’t do it, and if you can’t believe that, then get me a lawyer who can!”

  They glared at each other for several seconds, then Kelly shut the file. “Okay, sit down. You’ve made your point.”

  Mage didn’t budge. “Was she raped?”

  “No. No evidence of penetration … not recently, anyway.”

  “Mutilated?”

  “No, nothing like that. She was strangled, but that isn’t …” Kelly grabbed the table with both hands and took a deep breath. Mage was startled to notice tears in her eyes. “Did you know she had leukemia?”

  “I heard.”

  Kelly nodded, her face bleak. “She didn’t have it.”

  “What?” Mage blinked. He had already been astonished more often in the past few hours than he had in as many years; he’d been forced to believe in monsters and magic, and his credulity was beginning to wear thin. One more shock, he thought, and he would have trouble believing that the sky was blue. He searched through the mental haze for the most likely explanation and asked, hopefully, “She didn’t have leukemia? Then what was—I mean, why did she have to go to the hospital?”

  “Oh, she had leukemia then,” said Kelly sourly. “But … the body …”

  “You mean it wasn’t her?”

  “No, it was her. Her roommate identified her, and they checked the dental records just to be certain. It was Amanda Sharmon — and she didn’t have cancer.”

  Mage sat, bewildered. “I’m lost.” Kelly didn’t reply. “How is that possible?”

  “I wish I knew,” Kelly said, a little too sharply.

  Mage looked at her closely, putting his own fears aside as best he could. Maybe she’d lost someone to cancer— or some part of herself, he thought, noticing the defensive way she crossed her arms tightly across her breasts.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly after trying to think of something more intelligent or meaningful. “I’m sorry she’s dead, and I’m sorry—oh, hell, how do I say this?” He bit his lip and tried to start again. “I didn’t kill her, I don’t know who killed her, I met her only once and I don’t know very much about her at all, and …” He shook his head, drew a deep breath. “If she’d discovered a cure for cancer, I don’t know what it was, but I don’t think it makes her murder any more tragic.” Kelly looked up, her expression unreadable. “And if that gives you a reason to hate her killer, fine, we have something in common. Are we going to stand here and spit at each other, or are we going to try to find him?”

  Kelly was silent for a long, agonizing moment and then asked, “Him?”

  “Figure of speech. I don’t know anyone with any reason to kill her, I didn’t know her well enough. It might have been a he or a she or …” it, he thought, remembering the rokuro-kubi. “I just lent her some money, tried to help. Maybe if I hadn’t, she’d still be alive, but I didn’t murder her.”

  There were few doors in the world that could open quickly enough to suit Kelly Barbet, and her bad days resembled a blooper reel from Star Trek. Lieutenant Holliday had long expected her to hurtle bodily through the glass door of his office, and was occasionally tempted to help her. This was one such occasion. Kelly, leaving, slammed the door so hard that the partition walls were still rattling when she collided breast-first with Johnny Knapp.

  “Miss Barbet?” he said after each had taken a great step backward.

  Kelly, who liked the tall Iowan, reduced her internal thermostat to “Simmer.” “Yes?”

  “Harry and I arrested your Mr. Magistrale, and I was wondering if I could talk with you about him.” Kelly nodded. “If it helps, I don’t believe he did it. I don’t know what he has done, but he didn’t kill that girl.”

  “How do you know?”

  Knapp shuffled slightly. “This whole damn city is full of actors and fakes. You get used to it. Well, I never saw a performance like his, and if he was acting, he’s the best in town. Miss Barbet, I swear to God he didn’t know that girl was dead.”

  Kelly considered. Mage’s shock reactions had seemed genuine, but she lacked the faith in her judgment, her ability to read people, that Knapp had in his. “Would you be prepared to tell a jury that?”

  “Well, I would if I thought it’d help,” replied the cop without any hesitation. “But like I said, don’t ask me anythin
g else, and I don’t know as it’s in your best interests to give him a polygraph test, because he’s all keyed up about something—I mean, he’s afraid of all this, even more than everyone else is, but there’s something more …”

  Kelly nodded slightly. Polygraphs—popularly and inaccurately known as “lie detectors” —measured emotional responses. A polygraph test on an individual who was already emotionally overloaded would be inconclusive at best.

  “What do you think he’s done?” she asked.

  “I don’t know as it’s anything he’s done,” said Knapp slowly. “I think it’s more likely something he knows. Or something he saw.”

  12

  Turn, Turn, Turn

  Elena Dobrovolski was born in L.A. in 1952 and had never left the city. Her parents had escaped from Stalin’s purge of the Ukraine, never having previously traveled farther than fifty miles from their home. In 1983 they had retired and flown to Miami for a holiday. Their plane had crashed; that week Elena moved out of her apartment, finding another within a block of the bakery where she worked. She bought her food in the grocery store next door, and twice a year she walked downtown to buy new clothes. She had gone through school with Takumo’s mother; she had been plump then, and now she was immense. She had never been to Chinatown, much less to China, but she knew the I Ching better than anyone Takumo had ever known. He visited her whenever he wanted advice, a shoulder to cry on, or wholesale quantities of blueberry doughnuts.

  “So, Charlie,” she asked while she made the coffee. “What is it this time, your heart or your stomach?”

  Takumo thrust his tongue deep into his cheek and said, “Actually, I have this friend …”

  Elena chuckled. “Now where’ve I heard that before?”

  Takumo retrieved his tongue and said softly, “Okay. A friend of mine is in trouble—honest—and I think I can help him, but it’s rather complicated. Can I ask the I Ching a question without actually putting it in words?”

  “Sure. What kind of trouble?”

  “He’s been arrested. He’s innocent, but the circumstantial evidence against him is … scary.”

  “How d’you know he’s innocent? Is that what you want to ask?”

  Takumo caught that one with his eyebrows and considered it. “No, I don’t think so. I feel kind of honor-bound to trust him; doubting him would be too much like backing out. But I know things about him that I can’t explain, and that I wouldn’t ask you to believe. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” she said diffidently. Takumo wanted to explain further but couldn’t find the words. He twisted the thong around his hand, took the coins from Elena and closed his eyes.

  Fire on the Mountain … the Wanderer. I guess that’s you—and six in the second place, let’s see … ‘The Wanderer comes to an inn, with his property, and wins the loyalty of a young servant.’”

  Oh, wonderful, thought Takumo. If the Wanderer is Mage—and the description certainly fits—then I’m a servant. Great.

  “Does this answer your question?”

  “Not very much of it.”

  She shrugged. “You want to throw another hexagram?”

  Takumo smiled slightly. “‘Ask the next question.’”

  “Sorry?”

  “Never mind.”

  Shih Ho. ‘Biting through brings success. It is favorable to let justice be administered. Six in the fifth place means bite on lean dried meat, receive yellow gold. Be constantly aware of danger. No blame.’”

  They sat there silently for several seconds. Then Takumo sighed. “I’m a vegetarian, I don’t like money, and I don’t know from justice.”

  “Yes you do.”

  Takumo scooped up the coins and jingled them in his hands. “‘Bite on lean dried meat’?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you have to do something you don’t want to, something you’ve given up … or fight something that’s very old.”

  He closed his eyes, seeing a hand pinned to a bedpost with a butterfly knife, struggling like a fish in the sunlight. He had promised long ago never to use that knife, except to bluff. Bite on lean dried meat… .

  “And yellow gold?”

  “Does your friend need money?”

  “For sure. Bail’s set at twenty thousand. Where’m I supposed to find that, in a stick of beef jerky?”

  He heard the coins jingle and clatter as they hit the floor, and suddenly he knew the answer.

  He opened his eyes. Elena was staring at the hexagram. “It’s the same, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Shih Ho, six in the fifth place.”

  Be constantly aware of danger, he thought. Wonderful. “Thanks, Elena.”

  Boss? So sorry to disturb you, but there’s a Mr. Leasor on the phone—chairman of Pyramus Industries. He says he needs to talk to you.”

  Tamenaga glanced at the figures on the TV screen. “Put him through.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Leasor’s accent was pure west Texas, a lazily arrogant drawl. Tamenaga had never spoken to the man before— he was accustomed to thinking of companies as ordered collections of numbers, not accumulations of people—but he knew enough about the chairman to know that the laziness was a ruse; Leasor worked hours that would have won the admiration of the most tyrannical Tokyo employer and had never backed away from a fight. The arrogance, Tamenaga suspected, was real.

  “Mr. Tamenaga?”

  “Speaking.”

  “I’ll come straight to the point; I suspect your time’s worth just as much as mine. Why are you trying to buy my company?”

  “You are misinformed,” replied Tamenaga coolly. “I have bought no shares in your company. Good day, sir.”

  “Wait just a goddamn minute,” snapped Leasor. “I know, I know, you don’t own any shares; your daughter does. I’ve heard that one before, and I didn’t believe it then—”

  “My daughter is twenty-six years old,” replied Tamenaga. “At such an age, she is entitled to buy and own shares in her own right. She is also a native of this country; theoretically, at least, she could become President, were that position not clearly reserved for Caucasian males. She did not ask my advice, and I cannot say that I would have recommended the purchase if she had—but her husband was a degenerate gambler, and I suspect that she has acquired a taste for risky investments.”

  “You mean a kabuto.”

  “The word is bakuto,” corrected Tamenaga. “A bakuto is a gambler; a kabuto is a helmet, similar in shape to the ones American soldiers now wear—an excellent design, I understand. And if you are implying that my son-in-law had connections with the yakuza or any other criminal organization, I would recommend you keep such opinions to yourself; my daughter is still in mourning and such a slur would be certain to upset her. Do you understand?”

  “You want to talk slurs? We’re looking at a major defense contract here. Do you think we’re going to get it if the public thinks we’re run by Japanese?”

  You’ll get it, thought Tamenaga. It’s a good bid from a reliable company, and at least as important, it creates enough jobs in the right districts to get it through both houses. “You produce tractors,” he replied, a hint of boredom creeping into his voice. “Rather good tractors, or so I’ve heard, but definitely on the plowshares side of the swords-to-plowshares equation. I can understand that you would be experiencing financial difficulty at a time when so many farmers are already so deeply in debt, but I fail to see how this may be considered—”

  “We’ve put in a bid to build a new APC, as I’m sure you know damn well.”

  “Really? It is possible—indeed, likely—that I own shares in the corporations from which you will be buying the electronics, or any optical equipment; I have never heard anyone object to these being supplied by the Japanese. I may even be able to get you some ashtrays at considerably less than the twenty thousand dollars that I hear the Pentagon is accustomed to paying. But apart from these incidentals, I assure you again, I have no financial interest in your corporation or your bid. Good day.”
<
br />   Las Vegas.

  Takumo had visited the concentration camp where his grandparents had been interned during World War II, stood on Salem’s Gallows Hill, picketed munitions factories, camped at Spahn Movie Ranch, crossed Wall Street, biked hastily through Newark and Detroit, read the disused theater marquees in Times Square and the warning signs outside Alamogordo, and even traveled to the Mexican teocalli. None of them scared him as badly as Vegas.

  Unreal city… .

  He sat on the toilet, staring at the poker machine inside the door, and suddenly understood the fear. The concentration camp was derelict. Gallows Hill, Spahn Ranch, and Alamogordo had been touched by evil, but the evil was gone. New York was scary, sure, but people still lived there. The Toltecs had stood atop their pyramids and sacrificed their teenagers for victory in war, but that didn’t make them inhuman—Americans had sat in their Pentagon and done much the same. It was stupid, and maybe evil, but it was about life.

  Las Vegas was about money.

  Las Vegas was Midas, starving as his food—and then his children—turned to gold.

  Las Vegas was buying and selling husbands and wives; weddings as instant as a Polaroid photograph, divorce as easy as signing a check, sex … well, you got what you paid for. Las Vegas was cheap restaurants hidden inside casinos, and poker machines on lavatory doors. In Vegas you were expected to eat money, fuck money, and apparently shit money as well. Take away the money and there would be nothing but desert. The new “Family Entertainment” attractions only made it more frightening, as though the city were buying the souls of the children as well as their parents’. Takumo closed his eyes, wrapped the braided hair around his left hand, gripped the key tightly, dropped a nickel in the slot and pulled the lever.

  A lemon, a cherry, and another lemon. Not even good fruit salad.

  He stared at the key and again at the machine. How had he opened the locks at the house?

  He tried again. Again, nothing.