Eric van lustbader nic.., p.47
Eric van Lustbader - Nicholas Linnear 06, page 47
“Yeah, well, I don’ wanna hear it You wanted t’go straight t’the airport. Bad Clams woulda been able to track us for sure.”
“Okay, so maybe that was a bum idea.” Francie pulled him down onto the bed. It was covered in a spread whose pattern was reminiscent of something Frank Lloyd Wright would have designed. “But going back isn’t.”
“You’re nuts, you know that? The place is crawling with burton men. How we gonna get past ‘em?”
“No problem. They’re going to let us in.” Francie was grinning. “You put a gun to my head and tell them I escaped and you caught me. You’re just bringing me back is all.”
Paul rested his hands on his thighs. “Okay, genius. Then what?”
“Then we get my mom and split.”
Paul sighed. “An’ I s’pose Bad dams will sit back an’ let me do that.”
“Of course he won’t.” Francie pointed her forefinger and
cocked her thumb like a gun. “But when he tries to stop
us, you’ll shoot him.”
Paul laughed. “Kid, you give me too much credit.”
She jutted her chin. “Don’t have the balls for it, huh?”
Paul jumped up. “Would you, for the love of God, stop talking like, like …”
“Like what?” There was a defiant tone to her voice, hard as brass.
His hands flew in small circles. “Like a guy, damn it! Why don’t you act like what you are?”
“Did Jaqui?”
He pursed his lips, spurted air through them. “Did she what?”
“Act like a girl?”
“Sure she did.” But it was a lie and they both knew it. Paul raked a hand through his hair, sat down abruptly. “Ah, nuts.” He glanced at her. “My life went to shit the moment I met you.”
“It already was shit.” She went to the minibar and opened it. “Want something?”
“Nah, ever notice the prices they put on that crap? Six bucks for a Coke? What a rip-off.”
“What do you care?” She threw him a can of Coke, took a diet Coke for herself. “Chances are you’re not going to pay for it”
He laughed and they popped the tops at almost the same time. He took a swig. It felt almost as good as a beer going down. Thing was, he didn’t like to drink around her. It was probably stupid, he knew, but he couldn’t help himself. He felt proprietary toward her, as if she were his own daughter.
“How come you’re so smart?”
“I’m not so smart.” She ran her tongue around the beaded top of the can. “I just wised up pretty quickly. But I have to say I had some help. My mom, once she straightened herself up. Uncle Lew. And, the more I think about it, Sister Marie Rose-Jaqui, I mean.” She crossed one leg over the other, rocked it gently, watching her toes bounce up and down. “I used to hate her. What a little Hitler she is, I used to tell my mom. Rules, discipline, the law of God. ‘You should’ve been a watchmaker,’ I once told her. ‘Or a drill instructor.’ Her eyes rose to meet Paul’s. You know what she said to me? ‘It’s about time you paid me a compliment.’ “ Francie shook her head in disbelief. “I think I threw something, a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary or something. Shattered it into a million pieces.”
“Uh-oh. That’s bad.”
Francie drank some diet Coke. “You’d think so. But Sister Marie Rose never got angry with me no matter what nasty stuff I pulled. That was smart, now I think of it. I guess I was trying to get her mad, and when I found out
she wasn’t going to bite, I lost interest in being a beast
around her.” She took another swallow. “That was half of
it. The other half was when I discovered she never told Mom
how badly I acted with her. ‘Sister Marie Rose says you’re
such an angel,’ Mom said to me one day. ‘I wish I knew her
secret.’” Francie drained the can, put it aside. “Right then
I knew. Sister Marie Rose was on my side, no matter what
That made such a difference. My mother first took me to
see her when I was eight, and I saw her regularly. Then,
later, when I was sick with bulimia and everything-I mean,
really sick in my head, you know?-I needed someone who wasn’t going to judge me.”
“Yeah, but all those rules she laid on you.”
“But, see, they weren’t hers. They were God’s rules.” Francie put her hands together as if in prayer, “Then I found out that Sister Marie Rose had no rules of her own and I fell in love with her. She was my kind of person.” She laughed somewhat embarrassedly. “Imagine, a nun-and she was tha only one I could talk to-until Uncle Lew.”
“That would be Lew Croaker, the ex-cop.”
“You know him?”
He shook his head. “Only what I’ve picked up from Bad Clams.” Paul paused a moment. “You think he’s a good guy, huh?”
Francie’s eyes lit up. “Yeah.”
He got up and put his half-finished Coke on top of the minibar, then rubbed his palms down the sides of his trousers. He took out his gun, checked the cartridge. Then be replaced it, turned around to face her. “I may be nuts myself for sayin’ this but-” He nodded and gave her a lopsided grin she decided she liked a whole lot. “Okay, let’s go back an’ get your mom outta that den of thieves.”
“You are so very beautiful.”
Nicholas smiled at the slim European man with short hair and sensual lips.
“Care to accompany me? There’s a love hotel right around the corner.”
“Sorry,” Nicholas said. “I’ve already got a date.”
“Some other time, maybe.” The European slinked off toward another candidate on his predatory quest.
Nicholas went to the bar and ordered a Scotch and soda. He was in Twenty-One Roses, a gay bar in Shinjuku 2-chome. Many eyes wandered in his direction. He did not feel threatened in this atmosphere. Nanshoku, the idea of lust between males, had a long and hallowed history in Japan, where among samurai, showing any affinity toward women was considered a sign of weakness. Taking a young man or, even, a boy as a lover had its roots in the culture of ancient Greece, where the male form was revered. In Japan, the practice was widely attributed to the influx of
Buddhist monks from China.
Nicholas paid for his drink, turned, and scanned the room for any sign of Takuo Hatta. The prosecutor was notorious for spending a couple of nights a week in one gay bar or another in this district. Nicholas had confirmed with Hatta’s wife that he was not at home. Twenty-One Roses was the fourth bar Nicholas had been in that night. Male couples were slowdancing on the packed and minuscule dance floor, the bar was three deep, and everywhere bodies pressed las—civiously against one another. The place was dark and smoky, with a vaguely thirties look of seedy decadence that was at once evocative and comforting to its habitués.
Nicholas was propositioned twice more, was groped once intimately, and had made up his mind that this place was a real meat market when he saw someone who looked like Hatta emerging from the men’s room. With some difficulty he made his way through the shifting, sweaty throng. Someone grabbed his ass, and as he slithered through the dance floor, a Japanese salaryman with a wedding ring kissed him hard on the lips.
Nicholas survived it all and, arriving on the other side of the barely controlled melee, discovered that the figure was indeed Takuo Hatta. Unfortunately, Hatta spotted him. His eyes opened wide behind his spectacles and, shoving aside a pair of young men pawing each other, broke into an un—gainly run.
Slick as an eel, he made it to the front door before Nicholas could get to him. He darted out the door. Nicholas, feeling as if he were stuck in a dream, made progress as slowly as if he were in quicksand. Using his elbows, he wedged himself into one of the two main traffic lanes and was whirled, possibly by centrifugal force, toward the door.
Gaining the street, he saw Hatta opening the rear door of a big black Mercedes sedan idling at the curb. Nicholas shouted as he sprinted toward the car, and Hatta jerked his head around, his eyes opened wide in fear. He dove into the backseat of the Mercedes as the driver threw the car in gear and depressed the accelerator.
With a harsh squeal of rubber, the Mercedes peeled away
from the curb, banged to a temporary halt as it hit the front fender of a cruising taxi. It lurched, swung out in a wider arc.
Nicholas, who had been gaining on it, threw his body forward just as the driver accelerated the car again. He lunged out, extending his body fully, and grabbed onto the open window frame as the Mercedes hurtled into the rain-slicked street.
A wiry Yakuza kobun was driving the Mercedes. Now the kobun spun the wheel hard over, almost rocketing the Mercedes into the stainless-steel grille of an oncoming truck. Nicholas’s body slammed hard against the side of the car as he hung on. The Mercedes rocked on its shocks as, amid the shrill blare of an air horn, the kobun righted it and hurtled it down the street. As he did so, he swerved back and forth. Every time he jerked the car to the right Nicholas’s shoes would be flayed by the tarmac; and on each left-ward cut the prosecutor would be thrown hard against the door. And when the kobun took a skidding left turn, it seemed just another evasive maneuver.
Nicholas was reaching into the interior for a better hold when something black and looming caught in the periphery of his vision. He turned his head slightly, saw the narrow
blackness of the alley coming up fast and knew he could
not remain where he was-there was hardly enough roonj
for the Mercedes itself to squeeze through.
A whump! And crackle as the near-side headlight smashed against a soot-encrusted wall presaged the car’s entrance into the alley. With no time to spare, Nicholas dropped his legs, let his heels hit painfully on the tarmac, bump up, did it again, this time harder, and used the more powerful bump upward as momentum to swing his body up over the open window and onto the roof of the car.
The Mercedes’ rocketed down the alley in a squeal of protesting body metal and occasional bright blue showers of sparks at the contact. Nicholas, on his stomach, was holding on with the curled tips of his fingers to the trim at the top of the windshield.
An explosion close to his ears caused him to twist his body, almost losing his fingerhold. Another one and he saw a chunk of the roof disintegrate, and he thought, The bastard’s shooting at me! He rolled back across the roof the other way as a third shot took a chunk of metal off.
Behind the wheel, the kobun dropped the gun on the seat beside him so he could grip the wheel with both hands, then slammed on the brakes. He was gratified to see Nicholas hurtling off the roof into the alley in front of him. He grabbed for the gun, but by that time Nicholas was running directly at him. The kobun stamped on the accelerator. In this cramped spot there was nowhere for Nicholas to hide—In a tenth of a second, Nicholas would be plowed under the vehicle. The kobun liked the sound rushing steel made when it hit a human body, but he liked the feel of it even more. There was a rush of power so strong …
Then he jerked back reflexively as Nicholas slammed heels first into the windshield. The safety glass spider—webbed, collapsing inward but holding together. The kobun heard Hatta screaming from the backseat and was distracted long enough for Nicholas to make a second powerful kick that broke through the safety film and showered the kobun with glass fragments. His finger closed around the trigger of the gun and he fired point-blank at the figure coming at him.
Nicholas felt the searing heat of the bullet even while his ears rang from the percussion of the shot. He felt something tear through the shoulder of his jacket, just as if he’d snagged it on barbed wire. Then he had slid halfway into the seat. The kobun slammed on the brakes, as much for self-preservation as for an offensive maneuver, hurtling Nicholas into the padded dashboard. The back of his head smashed into the CD player, and his legs got tangled up in the gearshift.
Pain exploded in his ribs and he grunted. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, and he felt the second blow through a veil of pain and growing numbness creeping up his side. He tried to roll out of the way of the blows, fetched up hard against the glove compartment for his efforts.
The kobun’s eyes were glossy, fever bright as he brought more and more adrenaline into his system. He was a young man in his early twenties, with a shaven head and veins popping along the curve of his shiny skull. Nicholas could
see by the dilation of his pupils that he was on something,
possibly cocaine. His strength was superhuman.
Another blow descended, this one more vicious, intended to crack a couple of vertebrae. Nicholas did not try to evade or ward off the blow, but instead reached out and caught the kobun’s hand. In the process, the sleeve of the kobun’s jacket rode up to his forearm, and Nicholas could see the beginning of the complex irezumi, the tattooing almost all Yakuza wore like a uniform. If he could see more of it, he’d know to which clan this man belonged.
Right now, however, he had other, more immediate considerations. The kobun bent forward from the waist, using the superior leverage of his position to pin Nicholas on his side back into the footwell of the front seat. He applied more and more pressure, exerting it slowly, inexorably, with the full knowledge of his advantage.
An expression almost of curiosity crossed his face as Nicholas uncoiled his upper leg, smashing his kneecap into the leading point of the kobun’s ribs. There was a sharp cracking sound. Curiosity metamorphosed into disbelief and then into a kind of disappointment bordering on astonishment as the kobun realized that his ribs were broken.
A bloom of pure rage shot through him, aided and abetted by the drugs he had ingested. He clamped down on the pain, went after Nicholas with the switchblade he kept in his waistband.
Nicholas took a slash to his shoulder before jamming an elbow into the kobun’s Adam’s apple. He twisted away as the kobun, already beginning to gag, stabbed out in desperate reflex. The gearshift moved and the blade, bouncing off, buried itself in the polished leather of the seatback. Then Nicholas used his lower body against the kobun.
It was a mistake. The kobun’s foot slipped off the brake, pushed down spastically on the accelerator. The Mercedes shot forward with a ragged spray of blue and white sparks, careening off one wall, then another, hurtling out of the alley with terrifying speed.
Hatta screamed from the backseat. Nicholas made a desperate grab to take control of the wheel, and the kobun managed to jerk the switchblade free and make another attempt to disembowel Nicholas.
The Mercedes, more or less out of control, slammed into the rear end of a Nissan. Careening sideways, its tires screeching, it hit the opposite curb and, half-righted, kept on going, jumping the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered, shouting through the massed blare of horns.
The edge of the blade came so close to Nicholas’s neck it felt as hot as a furnace. Then, with a ragged wrench, Nicholas broke the kobun’s wrist. As he yelped in pain, Nicholas used his elbow to smash the kobun’s nose flat against his cheeks. The kobun rocketed back in the seat in a welter of blood, collapsing upon the wheel.
Nicholas hauled the kobun’s torso backward, trying to kick his foot clear of the accelerator. He managed to steer ‘ the Mercedes back onto the street, but it was no safer there, since they were now headed down the street the wrong way, toward oncoming traffic and an intersection with the wide Meiji-dori.
Sweat broke out on Nicholas’s face as he tried to get to
the accelerator or brake, but the kobun’s feet were wedged
tight. Nicholas felt dizzy, a buzzing in his brain. No! He
screamed silently. Not now! He fought down the oncoming
Kshira seizure. Had he blacked out for an instant? The
broad side of a trailer truck coming into the intersection
rushed up at them with frightening speed. Nicholas aban-
doned his efforts to get to the pedals, instead threw the
gearshift into neutral, switched off the engine.
The side of the truck looked as large as a building facade as they shot toward it. The engine was off but the momentum of the car continued to propel it forward. Nicholas pulled hard on the wheel and the Mercedes did a one-eighty. Blood rushed to his head as centrifugal force kicked in. Hatta continued his terrified screaming from the backseat, and the world became one long blur. Colors streaked by, then merged, images elongating, then disappearing altogether into this new and curiously exhilarating reality. All of this happened in a tenth of a second, but the sense of being so out of control was liberating. Nicholas felt his heart beating fast and close inside his chest. No sense of danger or of imminent death occurred to him.
Then the car came out of it, they were rear-ended, not hard but enough to throw Hatta against the back of the front seats and to make Nicholas’s molars click together. But now, with the engine dead, much of their momentum was dissipated, and Nicholas was able, at last, to guide the Mercedes to a gradual stop curbside.
There was a sour stench inside the car. The sound of the hot engine ticking over was slowly overtaken by the scream of sirens, the pounding of running feet. With an effort, Nicholas turned around, saw Hatta crouched half-off the seat, heaving. He had vomited all over the backseat The sound of the sirens was increasing. Quickly, Nicholas took up the knife and slit open the kobun’s jacket and shut to reveal the fantastic irezumi. Noting the kobun’s clan affiliation, he got out of the car, went around to the back, opened the door. By this time, the cops had arrived and he produced Tanaka Gin’s wallet and flashed them the credentials. Invoking prosecutor’s privilege, he hauled the cowering Hatta out of the backseat.
Rain light as an angel’s kiss fell on Nicholas’s face, clearing his mind. The police lights were flashing, merry as a carnival in full swing, and a crowd had begun to form. Some of the officers went to disperse the onlookers and to direct traffic, which was backed up all along the avenue. Others were waiting for Nicholas to make a statement. An ambulance drew up, its lights adding to the dark carnival atmosphere, but no one suggested Nicholas get in. Paramedics disembarked and, peering into the Mercedes, prepared to extract the twisted form of the kobun from behind the wheel.
