The Katana Page 3
“Mr. Johns, Mr. Johns, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m—” Oh, Christ in heaven. When things go wrong, they go wrong in droves, just droves. First the call from Europe, saying the buyer for the Katana was having “a little trouble.” A little trouble. That meant money. Could the deal be set for a day or two later? He’d get back to Edgar tomorrow to let him know exactly when, but he was sure Edgar “understood the situation.”
Edgar understood. The buyer was an Italian, a collector of Japanese artifacts, a nobleman named Count Vittorio Falcone, whose money came from olive oil, real estate, hotels on Capri and Sardinia, and according to reliable rumors, also from the Sicilian Mafia.
Like others in art and antiques, Edgar, Wilfred Leo, and Count Falcone didn’t care if an object was stolen or who it was stolen from. What mattered was the price—could one person afford to buy it, and could another person make a profit from it.
Falcone was delaying the buy. That’s what Edgar Johns had called to tell his partner. A long distance call from Rome with the “good news.” Good news. Damn, was there any such thing anymore?
“Mr. Johns—”
“Yes, yes. I’m still here.”
“Here?” said the tiger voice. “You are at home, yah?”
Without thinking about what he was saying, his mind now trapped in thoughts of the delay and the pressure of holding onto the stolen Katana for one or two days more, Edgar Johns casually said, “Yes, I’m at home. I’m—”
He stopped. That voice! He knew, oh sweet Jesus, he knew who—
The tiger voice purred. “That is good, yah. I shall tell Mr. Leo when he returns.”
Dazed, fear growing bigger in him by seconds, Edgar Johns said, “Uh, yes, uh, well, yes. Uh, thank you.” He hung up, slamming the receiver down, keeping his hands in place on top of it. His flabby body shook as though the room was zero temperature, and tears filled his eyes, blinding him. Blinking, he sent the hot water sliding down his round, pink, pudgy face.
Sweet Jesus, he had been a fool. He’d told her, told her where he was.
That voice. It belonged to Mrs. Thomms, that mountainous dyke who worked for Francis Flowers.
Francis Ivanhoe Flowers. God in heaven, he knew too! Flowers knew he had been double-crossed and he’d sent Mrs. Thomms to New York to—
The pudgy man leaped to his feet, both hands clutching his heart like a vaudeville actor, his eyes wide open. In time of stress, Edgar Johns’ melodramatic tendencies became more pronounced. A drop of rain can make you a raging bitch, Wilfred used to say to him.
Mrs. Thomms was more than a drop of rain. She was a typhoon, a tidal wave with a seventeen-inch neck.
Edgar Johns had met her only once, when she had come to New York three years ago to straighten out a business deal between Francis Flowers and an antique dealer who had sold Flowers twelve portraits, each painted on ten-inch porcelain and all of them supposedly originals from 1795.
Three of the portraits were forgeries. And the dealer had died in a fall from his twenty-two-story apartment house. A suicide, said the official verdict.
Wilfred Leo had been the contact with Francis Flowers and he was the one who spoke to Flowers, Mrs. Thomms, and/or anyone else in Flowers’ organization. Edgar Johns had met Mrs. Thomms that day, thought she was the ugliest woman he’d ever seen, and wondered if even an elephant could effectively sexually service this hideous bitch.
In fact, Edgar Johns had found her so distasteful and loathsome, so esthetically disgusting, that he vowed he’d never meet her again. He’d spoken to her over the telephone a few times but quickly developed a mental block against the ugly bitch’s voice. That’s why he hadn’t recognized her immediately this time.
Passing on stolen artwork and antiques to Francis Flowers or disposing of them for him was one thing. That was business and business was money.
But Mrs. Thomms—!
Lord God, that creature was so totally undivine that the mind boggled and re-boggled at the thought of her.
The thought of her—
Edgar Johns shook, his body trembling sharply, his mind whirling with confusion and fear.
Fear made the pudgy, pink-faced man move in awkward swiftness. Pack a bag and leave the apartment. Quickly.
As he dashed throughout his huge duplex crammed with antiques, paintings, and expensive furniture, throwing clothes at an open suitcase on his round bed, he didn’t look at the Katana.
It also lay on the bed, half-covered by monogrammed, green silk boxer shorts, its three red rubies gleaming like bright warnings of danger.
Chapter 3
CLASH
“BOTH HANDS IN SIGHT, mates, just like what you’re doin’ now. Yeah, that’s the way. Just lean forward and grab your knees, so’s we can see your flippers. Now stay that way, the both of you, and you’ll come through this all right. Do something we don’t like and you’ll make a muck of it, know what I mean?”
The .38 was almost hidden by Dennis’ beefy red hand, which he moved up and down in short, choppy gestures as though the gun were a baton. “Stay put, you hear me? Now, me and my mate here, we’re gonna look around. After that, we’ll leave quietly and you both can get on with your lives. Got that?”
He was talking to the doorman and superintendent of Edgar Johns’ apartment building, both of whom sat on a long black velvet couch in Edgars’ apartment nodding stiffly at the intruders, fear making them rigid and attentive as toy soldiers.
Scared shitless, thought Dennis. Why not? Who the hell is paying them to be heroes? He turned to Giorgio, standing behind him looking around the huge duplex, wide-eyed and impressed by the great number of antiques and works of art. “OK, Peppino, got work to do. Get hopping. Now, you know what you’re looking for—”
Giorgio nodded, licking his lips, eyes on the beefy blond-haired cockney who said, “We want the ‘package’ or anything that can lead us to it, got that?”
Giorgio nodded again. Get the sword or come up with something that puts them closer to it. Shit, they’d better come up with something, because Mrs. Thomms was in an evil mood. Her brother was hurting, bleeding from the nose and crying like a fucking baby. And she had been holding him in her arms, breathing heavily as she rocked the unconscious Dieter back and forth, both of them on the floor, and her glaring, glaring up at Giorgio and Dennis.
Her eyes. God, her eyes. Giorgio remembered. They were green. Small and bright like marbles, hard and frightening as a snake’s. Those eyes. Christ. Hate as strong as speeding bullets came out of them, and she had raged at the gunmen in an ugly voice—“My brother is bleeding! Bleeding! Goddamn it, you bastards, get the fuck outta here and find that queen Johns before the nigger does! Hear me? Find him! And if you get your hands on that nigger, don’t kill him. Don’t kill him. Bring him to me, to me, you understand?” They understood.
She stared at them, snorting air through her nose like a horse after a race, Mrs. Thomms could turn Jack the Ripper into Jell-O. Her eyes stabbed you, and there was no way to avoid fear when she looked at you like that.
They ran. Giorgio and Dennis. Out of Wilfred Leo’s apartment and down the carpeted hallway toward the elevator, sneaking looks at each other and raising their eyebrows. The bitch was on fire because of her brother.
At the elevator, Giorgio punched the button again and again. “Wouldn’t want to be the black one, mate,” said Dennis, turning his head around to look back down the hall at Wilfred Leo’s apartment. “When princess gets her hands on him, she’ll pull the skin off his balls with a pair of pliers.”
Giorgio nodded. She sure would. And she’d enjoy it, too.
So the two men had moved in a hurry. Downtown to the Village, in a taxi driven by a gold-toothed Puerto Rican spurred on by the promise of a twenty-dollar bill. Quickly shoving a gun in the gut of the red-uniformed black doorman, keeping it there while he nervously telephoned the super and asked him to hurry over with a passkey for Edgar Johns’ apa
rtment.
“He ain’t there,” said the doorman, pleading for his own life without mentioning himself by name.
“We’re the careful type,” said Dennis, thinking of Mrs. Thomms and what he was going to tell her if the doorman was right and Edgar Johns really wasn’t in his apartment. “We’ll check anyway, if you don’t mind.”
Inside Edgar Johns’ apartment, Dennis and Giorgio stared at the huge living room, with its wall-to-wall beige carpet and dozens of antiques and pieces of artwork. Gone. The bastard was gone. Mrs. Thomms was going to have a shit fit when she got that piece of news.
“Was he carrying anything when he left?” Dennis turned to the two men on the black velvet couch. The super, a small, swarthy thirty-year-old Puerto Rican with wetted-down black hair parted in the middle, pointed to himself, dropping his jaw and whispering, “Me? You jask me?” Shit, he was scared. These two guys had guns, man, not knives but fucking guns.
“Yeah, I jask you, Zapata,” said Dennis, sneering in annoyance. Who the fuck else was there to ask.
“I no here,” said the super, whose name was Roig and who was now definitely going back to Puerto Rico as soon as he could. This fucking town, was crazy, too crazy for him.
“Yeah, that’s right, you no here. You, blackie, you were here. What did you see?”
“Uh, yeah, uh.” The black doorman was nervous, stiff as wood and finding it impossible to speak. He was a thirty-two-year-old bank teller working two jobs. Being a doorman at night paid child support for two daughters and stopped his ex-wife from having him thrown in alimony jail.
He coughed spit into his parched throat. Christ, he’d better say something. Try to remember. Try.
“Uh, yeah. He had one suitcase, yeah that’s it, one suitcase.”
“Anything else?”
“Mmm, no. Not unless he was carrying it under his coat. He wore a long fur coat. Cold out there, you know. November and—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dennis cut him off. Who the hell needed a weather report. The Katana. That or Edgar Johns. Or the black man in the blue suede jacket. Dennis didn’t want to be in blackie’s shoes. Mrs. Thomms had a memory like an elephant. She didn’t forget or forgive. Not ever.
The bitch looks like an elephant, too, thought Dennis.
“OK, Peppino, start ripping this whore’s palace apart.” Peppino was Dennis’ nickname for Giorgio, an Italian hood working for Francis Flowers as a collector. Giorgio was twenty-eight, girl crazy, proud of his long greasy hair, and spoke English better than most foreigners living in London. As a collector, one of several employed by Flowers, Giorgio’s job was to collect money owed, or if it looked like the money wasn’t going to be paid, Giorgio would collect other things.
Like a finger or an eye.
Italians like vendettas, Flowers had said. Give a wop a chance to collect for a wrong, his own or anyone else’s, and the greaser’s in paradise. Dennis thought the old man had a point. Giorgio loved getting back at people. It was as though he had decided that was all the reason he needed to kill and maim.
Dennis, thirty-eight, a boxer gone to fat, could only make a living with his fists, and Francis Flowers paid as well as anybody for that and better than most. From fists, it was easy to drift into guns, though Dennis, a mediocre light-heavyweight boxer, still preferred his hands. That had been a problem, because he’d used his hands on his wife, now his ex-wife, once too often and she’d ended up with a flattened nose and a cracked eye socket that never did heal correctly.
Settling that little affair had cost him a lot of money, all he had. Which meant he needed more money now, and where does an ex-boxer go for money if he’s not too bright to begin with? He goes where a lot of boxers the world over go—to people who want things done at night, things that bring pain to other people.
You get by any way you can, thought Dennis. And you don’t think about it at all. Thinking confuses you and it doesn’t change a thing. Not a thing.
“Check the bedroom, Peppino. Yell if you come up with anything. Now, you two sisters here, we’ll be watching you. Don’t do whatever you think you might like to do. You can’t outrun a bullet, mate, believe me. You stay put and we’ll be gone. Be smart, be happy, be very, very careful.” He grinned. People look funny when they’re scared. These two look as though they’ve just shit in their pants.
Giorgio nodded, turning to look for the bedroom. Finding it, he went inside, shutting the door after him, looking behind it. Got to be thorough.
Our Master Johns is some collector, thought Dennis, gazing around the living room. There were white copies of Greek statues, small ones, almost all of them statues of slim, beautiful boys. Dennis grinned. Now we know about you, Master Johns, don’t we? Best keep you away from the boy scouts, me lad.
Oil paintings in gold-painted wooden frames hung around the living room. Paintings of aristocratic-looking women from another time, women with white plumes in wide-brim hats and white lace at their throats and jeweled fans in hands that were as soft as white cotton. Women who knew their power, power that came from merely being beautiful women.
There were brightly colored vases and cups made of clear green glass. There were tables of highly polished wood on curved legs. Money. Dennis could smell it. The room reeked of it and Dennis hated Edgar Johns for having the money and intelligence to understand the meaning of the beautiful things in this room. Dennis didn’t.
All he understood was violence and having enough money to eat, having a woman grunting under you every so often, and money for a night in a pub. Men who moved in the world of antiques and art were poofs. Queers. Fairies. Men not to be trusted. Except for Mr. Flowers. He was different. Dennis placed him in another category because Mr. Flowers was a thief. A master thief and a successful one, something Dennis could understand and relate to, even if Mr. Flowers was deep in the world of art. Mr. Flowers stole art, selling it for as much money as he could get.
To Dennis that was normal. And acceptable.
He moved around the room, mouth twisted in a sneer, strong in his feeling of superiority over the unseen Edgar Johns. Maybe you know a lot about art and old things, my friend, but we’re coming to get you, and when we do, you’ll bleed like anybody else. You know about all of these things here, but I can tear you down in a minute and that makes me the better man, doesn’t it?
He answered his own question silently: Yes it does. It does, indeed.
“Anything, Peppino?” The Italian was upstairs, still behind the closed bedroom door. Christ, that poof Johns had left this place like a bat out of hell. He sure was in a hurry.
“No, nothing.” A muffled voice from the bedroom.
“OK, OK, keep looking. And watch the front door. Our sun-tanned friend may put in an appearance. Mustn’t let him get away this time. Mother won’t be pleased.”
“Fuck mother,” yelled Peppino.
Dennis smiled. “Not me, mate. You can if you want.”
Peppino chuckled.
Dennis shook his head, the grin still on his face. Snapping his fingers, he turned to the two men on the couch. “You, doorman or general or whatever the hell that uniform is you got on—you see anybody else go by here tonight?”
“Like who?” The doorman didn’t like that remark about “general,” but he gave his answer in a low, soft voice, hoping he could get away with being slightly militant.
“Like one of your own. Black. Big, good-looking, well-dressed. Arrogant type.”
Hallelujah for the arrogant brother, thought the doorman. “No, didn’t see nobody like that.” You talk funny, you white cocksucker.
“Yeah, well, just thought I’d ask. Guess we got here first. Now, that front door’s locked. If it rings, you two keep on playing the game of seeing which of you can keep quiet the longest. Any sudden outburst of any kind, and the party what made it is gonna have an extra mouth, you comprehend my meaning?” He pointed to the gun in his left hand.
The doorman and the super nodded. They could comprehend his meaning and they didn’t
like it.
“Keep looking, Peppino. You-know-who ain’t gonna be happy if all we got to show for our trip is a key to this place.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Dennis grinned. Peppino didn’t like Mrs. Thomms either. No one did. Except Mr. Flowers and Dieter, her own brother.
We’d better get that fucking sword, he thought. If not now, then soon. Flowers ain’t gonna like losing all that money. Ain’t gonna like it one tiny bit. And neither is her highness. Keep looking. Keep looking. Something’s got to turn up. It’s got to.
In the bedroom, Giorgio shuddered. Cold as hell in here. What kind of freak was this Johns? An Eskimo would freeze to death in this place.
The Italian turned toward the window. It was opened, thin white curtains streaming back into the room, floating on sharp November night winds. Christ, New York was as cold as London this time of year. He wondered if he’d be in town long enough to get laid.
Giorgio shivered, picking up a black silk sheet from the floor and seeing a pink furry slipper, a pink pom-pom on the toe, lying on its side. He smiled. Another one. The fucking antique business had more fairies in it than a Walt Disney movie. Pink slippers. Too much.
Bending down, he pulled a pink blanket out of the way, tossing it aside and looking under the round bed. Shoes, slippers, a newspaper. No sword. Shit. Well, keep on looking.
Turning around on his hands and knees, Giorgio raised himself up on his knees, pushing down on the circular mattress with his right hand, preparing to stand up.
Wha—?
He frowned, leaning back with shock, surprise, a touch of fear, and as his brain started to deal with the sudden intrusion, the Italian’s tongue raced to form words.
The Black Samurai kicked Giorgio in the head, his right leg coming around in a fast, powerful roundhouse kick, the foot tearing into Giorgio’s jaw and sending his brain into a powerful white flash of light. The pain was terrible pain but it only lasted for a fraction of a second.
The Italian flew backward to the floor, his eyes turning up into his head, both hands flopping high over his head. The instant the unconscious Italian hit the floor, Robert Sand was hovering over him, tearing the .38 Smith & Wesson from his belt, snapping his head toward the door.