Tengu Read online

  “One of these programs was an attempt to rediscover a derivative of the Heaven Drug, a kind of sleeping powder which the ancient samurai were said to have burned in censers around their battlegrounds, and which gave their enemies such strange and compelling hallucinations that they simply laid down their weapons and allowed themselves to be beheaded without a fight.

  “Another was the Water Flute, a magical wind instrument about which there are many curious legends in Shikoku. Its music was said to induce self-destructive madness; and I can tell you that it was actually tried, during the American landings on Eniwetok atoll. There is no record, however, of its success or failure. Presumably, it failed.”

  Kappa had paused for a while to regain his breath. He had begun to pant very hard; the young girl had quickly and quietly approached the basketwork throne with a porcelain dish of sake. Mr.

  Esmeralda had tried to see if he would lift his mask to drink, but the girl had carefully placed herself between him and her master, so that the ritual of his refreshment was completely obscured.

  The ferry had docked now at Wakayama, and Mr. Esmeralda glanced up at the ceiling of the cabin as the shuffling footsteps of disembarking passengers crossed the deck. He had been supposed to meet one of his agents on the pier, but he made no attempt to leave the cabin.

  At last, Kappa had said, “The most secret and most effective of all the programs, however, was that of the Tengu. It was carried out in Hiroshima in 1945 by Toshiro Mitoma, an extraordinary religious ascetic who believed implicitly in all the magic and demonology of ancient Japan, and who was often consulted during the course of the war by Japanese officers of field and flag rank.

  Admiral Nagumo trusted him as implicitly as Hitler trusted Dr. Morrell.”

  “What, exactly, was the Tengu?” Mr. Esmeralda had asked.

  “The Tengu was–is–the most terrible of all Japanese demons. There are stories of Tengus going back to the eighth century, and even earlier. They are related to the evil which manifests itself in all black birds, like crows and ravens and rooks. But they are capable of possessing a man’s body, taking him over like a fit of madness, and giving him extraordinary strength and resistance to attack. A man possessed by a Tengu could be hacked into tiny pieces with a sword before he would give up. And even when they have been destroyed, Tengu-men have remarkable regenerative powers. If you are looking for a Western comparison, I suppose you could say that the Tengu is like a zombie, except that a zombie is already dead and a Tengu can hardly ever be killed.”

  Mr. Esmeralda had said, “You’ll excuse me for smiling.”

  “You find this difficult to believe?”

  “I have my own superstitions. My own little foibles,” Mr. Esmeralda had said. “I try not to catch sight of the back of my head in a mirror. I do my best not to spill salt. But, Mr. Kappa, I really cannot invest any belief in ancient demons.”

  Kappa had said to one of his aides, “Give him the papers.” One of the young Japanese had come forward and silently handed Mr. Esmeralda a plastic envelope containing what looked like a military report sheet.

  “What is this?” Mr. Esmeralda had asked.

  “Read it,” Kappa had insisted.

  It was a Xerox copy of a top-secret memorandum from USMC Intelligence Guam, dated October 17, 1944;

  The failure of the attack on Cape Matatula on Tutuila Island on August 25 was due entirely to the presence on the Japanese side of no fewer than 10 but more than 12 individual troops wearing white masks and carrying no weapons but swords and knives. Reliable reports from five reputable career officers have indicated that these individual troops were able to walk through heavy enfilading rifle fire unharmed, and that they were responsible for the deaths of at least of our own men. Some of our men were killed by the Japanese soldiers’ bare hands, extremely brutally, although not in the style generally known as karate or kung fit. One of the Japanese troops was set afire by a Marine Corps sergeant operating a flame-thrower, and yet he continued to attack our positions and succeeded in strangling and killing two Marines while actually ablaze. Comprehensive accounts of what occurred were obtained from 15 officers and men during debriefing on USS Oxford, and these are attached. Meanwhile it is suggested that priority be given to intelligence investigation of these special Japanese troops, whom we have codenamed “Hogs.”

  Mr. Esmeralda had handed the plastic envelope back without a word.

  “Well?” Kappa had asked him breathily.

  “Well, what? All that happened a very long time ago. Men make some very strange mistakes when they are fighting battles. Perhaps all this talk of special Japanese soldiers was nothing more than an excuse to cover up the fact that the American Marines lost their nerve under fire, and had to retreat.”

  Kappa had laughed. “You are being deliberately stubborn.”

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Esmeralda had replied. “But why not? I have nothing to gain by associating myself with you. And, frankly, I find the idea of it extremely unpleasant.”

  “You forget that I will mutilate you if you refuse,” Kappa had whispered.

  Mr. Esmeralda had looked around him. The young Japanese in their impenetrable black masks were tense and poised, and he had been in no doubt at all that if he tried to escape they would catch him in a flash, and treat him without hesitation to whatever tortures Kappa might direct.

  Mr. Esmeralda disliked the idea of working for a shriveled quadriplegic in a basketwork chair; but on the other hand he disliked the idea of being parted from his penis even more. He had said quietly, “You want me to smuggle your Doctor Gempaku into the United States, and provide him with research facilities? You want me to help him create more of these Tengus, is that it?”

  Kappa had said, “I admire your quickness.”

  “But what is this all in aid of?” Mr. Esmeralda had insisted. “What exactly do you expect these Tengus to do?”

  “Just one thing,” Kappa had said. “Exact revenge on the American people for what they did in Hiroshima.’’

  Now, at the house in Laurel Canyon, Mr. Esmeralda was once more entering the presence of the malformed Kappa. Here, Kappa had been laid out in a chromium-and-canvas cot, his body mercifully covered by a sheet and his heavy masked head propped up on pillows. There were two televisions suspended from the ceiling on amateurishly homemade gimbals and tape recorders and telephones within easy reach, all adapted for use by someone with the severest of handicaps. The room itself was hung with white cotton drapes and lit only by candles, a nest of them on a small white table. There were no pictures on the walls, no flowers, no miniature trees, none of the decorative art that Mr. Esmeralda expected to see in a Japanese room. And there was that pervasive smell of human flesh that wasn’t quite dead but wasn’t quite alive, either.

  “I hear that things have been going dangerously awry,” Kappa said, his eyes glittering through the holes in his mask.

  “You could say that things haven’t been going as they were planned to go,” Mr. Esmeralda replied with great caution. “But, when one is asked to hire dispensable people, one sometimes has to make do with second best. The best people are indispensable.”

  “Nobody is indispensable,” said Kappa.

  “Good wheelers and dealers are indispensable,” Mr. Esmeralda argued, “Especially when one is obliged to import dozens of illegal Japanese immigrants, along with whole crates of ancient artifacts and God knows how many live Japanese animals and birds. One can’t expect miracles, Kapp.”

  “Do not fail me,” whispered Kappa.

  Mr. Esmeralda took out a pale lavender handkerchief and patted his sweating neck. “The last time I spoke to Doctor Gempaku, he said that everything was progressing quite well. We had difficulty with the first Tengu, I know, but by definition they aren’t easily controllable.”

  “The man Sennett remains alive.”

  “It was an understandable mistake. Yoshikazu was given a house number, and it turned out that the number was posted on a concrete pillar between Sennett’s
house and the girl’s house. The Tengu was directed to the wrong house, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s too late.”

  Kappa was silent for a while. Then he said, “You are sure that Sennett is the last remaining member of the naval intelligence team?”

  “Quite sure. The only other person who might conceivably understand what is happening is Admiral Knut Thorson, formerly of the Naval Intelligence Command; and poor Admiral Thorson is currently in an acute-care hospital at Rancho Encino. Everyone else who might have known what happened, and why, is long dead.”

  “You didn’t speak of this Admiral Thorson before.”

  “There was no need to. He suffered a stroke. His doctors say that he will probably never speak again.”

  “PmbaUyr

  “You don’t want me to send a Tengu to a hospital, to...”

  “Do it,” Kappa commanded.

  “But-”

  ‘‘Do itAnd ensure that you deal with Sennett as well.’’

  Mr. Esmeralda looked around him, unhappy. “All right,” he agreed at last. “If you say so. But if your plan works out the way you want it to, it doesn’t seem to me that there’s going to be very much need to worry about Sennett, or Thorson, or about anybody else.”

  Kappa rolled his masked head away from Mr. Esmeralda and said in a muffled voice, “What is going to happen to .the United States within the next few weeks must be a devastating mystery. They must never know why it happened, or how. It must seem like the revenge of God. If they were to discover that it was I who had initiated it, it would all seem explicable. They would be able to comprehend it; and in comprehending it, they would gradually be able to repair their morale and their spirit. That is what I specifically do not wish to happen. I wish this to be a blow of divine rage, from which the Americans will take years and years to recover. I want them to feel that they have been condemned to hell.”

  Mr. Esmeralda thoughtfully tugged at his mouth with his hand. Quite illogically, he found himself thinking about Eva Crowley. There was something helpless and bruised about her; something which gave him the urge to punish her and degrade her even more. But, he knew that he would have to treat her very carefully. He had other plans for Eva Crowley, apart from bed and his own particular brand of Colombian seduction. Eva Crowley was Mr. Esmcralda’s life-insurance policy.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sergeant Skrolnik was dozing over his typewriter that afternoon when Detective Pullet came into his office, tripped over the wastebasket, tipped over his styrofoam cup of cold coffee, and knocked a stack of law books off the” filing cabinet onto the floor.

  “What the helfi” Skrolnik demanded grumpily. His eyes were puffy, and he felt as if an armadillo had been sleeping in his mouth. Then he said, “Oh. It’s you.”

  Pullet dabbed ineffectually at the spilled coffee with a crumpled-up piece of yellow legal paper. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were resting.”

  Skrolnik gave Pullet a distinctly old-fashioned look, and sniffed. “I never rest. You should know that by now. I was simply seeking inspiration behind tactically closed eyelids.”

  “Did you find any?” asked Pullet. He was obviously pleased with himself about something. He picked up the law books, stacked them back on top of the filing cabinet, and frowned in irritation as they all clattered back to the floor again.

  “Inspiration? No, not really,” said Skrolnik. “But I did mentally marshal a number of interesting facts.”

  “Tell me,” said Pullet. “Sir,” he added when Skrolnik -glanced across at him in disapproval.”

  “Well,” said Skrolnik, “one of the most interesting facts is that when Officer Russo first caught sight of the van on Hollywood Boulevard, it was already speeding. That we know from the girl behind the counter at the drugstore where the officer stopped for antacid tablets. Now, why was it speeding, when there was no apparent pursuit, and when it contained a man who obviously wanted to do as little as possible to attract attention–since he had already torn Sherry Cantor into small pieces?”

  Pullet nodded, and kept up his “yes, I’m interested” face as brightly as he could, although Skrolnik could sense that he was absolutely bursting to make a startling announcement of his own.

  “The point is,” Skrolnik went on, “the point is that something must have been wrong. So wrong that the driver of the van was prepared to risk almost anything to get our suspect out of town as fast as possible, and off to wherever he was going. That could fit in with your orangutan theory.

  Maybe the murderer was actually a wild ape, and his tranquilizers were wearing off. But if the orangutan was tranquilized, how did it kill Sherry Cantor? So what we have to look at is this...”

  Detective Pullet couldn’t contain his excitement any longer. He reached into his frayed tweed sportscoat and produced, with a flourish, a folded-up poster.

  ‘‘You told me to think laterally,’’ he said. “Well, this is where lateral thinking got me.”

  The poster showed a hideous white masklike face, with a grinning red gash of a mouth.

  Underneath, it said, bright bros. grand circus, one week only, anaheim.

  “A circus?” asked Skrolnik, wrinkling up his nose.

  “Listen,” Pullet enthused, “I thought of every situation in which a man wears or appears to wear a white mask. The white mask is crucial. It was seen by three independent witnesses, and all their descriptions are very similiar. Well... people don’t wear white masks very often. Not full-face masks. A firefighter maybe. A skier. Maybe a ski mask would account for the pattern one of the witnesses said he saw on the suspect’s forehead. But then I thought, supposing the mask wasn’t a mask at all, but simply makeup, greasepaint? Who wears the white face? The clown in the circus.

  Where’s the nearest circus? Bright Brothers at Anaheim, here this week. Now, you look at the clown’s face, and you realize what that pattern probably was–the painted black eyebrows on the clown’s forehead.”

  Skrolnik examined the poster for a long time, chewing his lips. Then he said, “Okay.... But you’re talking about a clown who can tear a woman to pieces, limb from limb, and then smash a fully grown, fully trained police officer’s head in?”

  “You don’t buy it?”

  “I’m not saying I don’t buy it. I’m just asking a sensible question.”

  Pullet reached across and tapped some lettering at the foot of the poster. “There’s one possible answer.”

  Skrolnik reached into his breast pocket and took out a pair of hornrimmed spectacles. He perched them self-consciously on the end of his snubby nose, and then peered closely at the poster again. It said: EL KRUSHO, THE strongest man in america, see him bend iinch-thick steel bars, As featured in the movie Kung Fu Revenge.

  “El Krusho?” Skrolnik asked, taking off his spectacles. “I have to go look for a homicide suspect called El Krusho? How am I going to live it down?”

  Pullet shrugged, a little embarrassed. “I know it seems kind of stupid. But I did some checking with the Screen Actors’ Guild, and a nice lady there told me that El Krusho is registered with them, and that his real name is Maurice Needs, and that he comes from Fridley, Minnesota.’’

  Skrolnik repeated dully, “Fridley, Minnesota? El Krusho, from Fridley Minnesota? I must be dreaming. Look, I’m closing my eyes again. Come back into the room quietly and wake me up, and tell me that I’ve been dreaming.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Pullet nasally, a little peeved. “I know it all sounds peculiar, but you have to admit that it’s a pretty peculiar case. A peculiar case, begging for a peculiar solution.”

  Skrolnik sniffed again, stood up, and said, “Why don’t you get some coffee? And bring me a couple of aspirin, too, while you’re at it. I feel like I’m going to have a terrible headache.”

  “I think we ought to go down to Anaheim, interview this guy El Krusho,” said Pullet.

  Skrolnik stared at him without any expression whatsoever.

  “I mean,” blustered Pullet
, “it does say here that he can bend inch-thick steel bars, and you remember the gates at Sherry Cantor’s house, the way they were...”

  He trailed off. Skrolnik was still staring at him.

  “You don’t think... ?” Pullet began again.

  Skrolnik said, “I don’t want to belittle your investigative talents, Detective Pullet. You have true genius at times. But you mustn’t start leaping to conclusions without sufficient evidence. You’ve come up with an excellent idea. White greasepaint, clowns, circuses, all that stuff. It’s an idea we’re going to have to look into exhaustively. But before we leap into a car and howl down to Anaheim in pursuit of this... Maurice Needs... well, we’re going to have ask ourselves a couple of questions, right? Like, how come the strong man is wearing the clown’s greasepaint? Like, why would he want to break into Sherry Cantor’s house and tear her to pieces? It certainly wasn’t for money, nothing was taken. It wasn’t a sexual attack, either. It was just rrrippp, killing for the sake of it. Dismemberment for the sake of it. So why? Because even if there isn’t a reason, there has to be a reason why there isn’t a reason. You get me?”

  Detective Pullet reached into his coat pocket. “This is the piece de resistance,” he said, and laid down on Skrolnik’s desk a glossy black-and-white publicity photograph. Skrolnik irritably reached for his glasses again and held the picture up to the light of his desklamp. It showed a young, curly-haired man arm in arm with a hugely built wrestler type. Both of them were grinning at the camera inanely, as if they were slightly high on ganja.

  “This curly-headed guy on the left is Mack Holt– Sherry Cantor’s ex-boyfriend,” said Skrolnik slowly.

  “And the big muscle bound guy on the right is Maurice Needs, a/k/a El Krusho,” said Detective Pullet. “This picture was taken on the set of a movie called Kung Fu Heroes, which was the picture that El Krusho made just before Kung Fu Revenge. Mack Holt played a young Hell’s Angel who appears on the screen just long enough to be smashed to pieces by three crazed exponents of the martial arts.”