When he stepped through the door the tingle in his neck spread down his back. He was in the same room as the fucking Gaijin Masamune.
"Like I told you on the phone, I just want to see it." He'd worked up this story earlier in the day. "You said it was rusted out in spots, and that makes it pretty much worthless. But then I got to thinking that maybe it wasn't rust. Maybe it was some kind of design in the steel that hadn't been reported before. I need a look."
"Okay. You can look, you can touch, but you can't have."
"Sure. Fine. But a few days ago you were itching to sell. What made you change your mind?"
Gerrish's expression wavered from resolute to uncertain. "I'm not really sure."
"You sound pretty sure."
"When I… when it came into my possession, I had a feeling it was special… that I could, you know, move it for some decent change."
"So you called me."
"Yeah, but you turned me down."
"That I did." Schmuck that I am.
"Turned out I was glad you did. Because the thing's kinda been growing on me. I decided to keep it."
"Interesting. Where is it now?"
Gerrish motioned Tom down the short hallway to the main room where he made a flourish toward the coffee table.
"Ta-daaa!"
Tom stopped and stared. The room could have been made of solid gold and lined with the proverbial seventy-two naked virgins. Who cared? Tom had eyes for only one thing.
At first glance, with its Swiss-cheesed blade, it indeed looked like a piece of junk. As he bent and ran a finger along the random pattern of pocks and holes, every square millimeter of his skin began to tingle. He lifted it and rested it on his palms. These weren't rusted out or eaten out—these had been melted out.
He raised it and peeked through one of the holes. He experienced an instant of vertigo as he seemed to be standing on a low bridge looking out at a bustling city filled with rough-clad Asian men and kimonoed women. Then it all disappeared in a blinding flash as bright as the sun.
He snatched the blade away from his face and stood blinking at the purple afterimage.
"What's the matter?" Gerrish said.
Tom took another quick peek. This time all he saw was Gerrish.
"Nothing."
He lowered the blade again for a closer look. The jihada—the steel of the cutting edge—was unmarred. The swordsmith must have concentrated the best steel there. The hamon—the temper line—undulated like a series of gentle waves on a placid lake.
Tom moved down to the naked tang. This was where the swordsmith traditionally carved his mei—his signature. No signature here, only a Kanji symboclass="underline"
This was it—the Gaijin Masamune. He was holding the fucking Gaijin Masamune.
He noticed his hands starting to shake so he put it down. Not an easy thing to do. Maybe the hardest thing he'd ever done.
"I—" He swallowed around a dry tongue. "I was right the first time out: It's a piece of junk, good only for sentimental value."
"But it's so sharp," Gerrish said. "Watch this."
He stepped into the kitchen and returned with an apple. He lifted the sword by the tang and dropped the apple onto the upturned edge. A whole apple hit the blade. Two halves bounced onto the table.
"Yeah. Sharp."
Tom wanted to say, What else would you expect from a Masamune blade, especially one tempered in ground-zero atomic fire? But he held his tongue. This asshole had no idea what he had. Cutting an apple—like using a CO2 laser to make a paper doll. Christ.
He saw the smear of apple juice on the blade and wanted to scream at Gerrish to wipe it off.
No way was he walking out of here without that blade. Like leaving a small child alone with a pedophile. Uh-uh. Not gonna happen.
He pulled a Ziploc bag from his pocket.
"Brought you a present. Since you're gonna keep this piece of junk, it might as well have a handle—what the Japs call a tsuka."
He sat on the couch, pushed the apple halves aside, and dumped the contents on to the table next to the sword. Two pieces of halved bamboo, a bamboo peg, a piece of cloth, and strips of tightly wound silk.
"You don't really—"
"Sure I do. My way of saying thanks for letting me see it, even if it is junk." He held up the two pieces of bamboo. "These make up the ho."
He fitted them around the tang, noting how they obscured the gaijin symbol. He shook his head in wonder, thinking, You could own this thing all your damn life and never know you had the fucking Gaijin Masamune.
He picked up the bamboo peg.
"This is the mekugi and it fits through the holes in the ho and the tang to hold everything together."
That done, he wrapped the red cloth around the ho and began winding the silk cord around the cloth in a crude approximation of the traditional diamond pattern tsuka-ito. Once the sword was his, he'd fashion a suitably magnificent tsuka. But for now, this was all he had time for. He'd even skipped installing a hilt—the round, ornate tsuba. He wouldn't need one for what he had planned.
Finally he was done. To his collector's eye the job looked like crap. But to Gerrish…
"Hey, you're really something." He reached for it. "Thanks a lot."
Tom shook his head. Holding the katana handle with two hands now, he rose and faced Gerrish, pointing the blade at his chest.
"I'm taking this."
Gerrish's expression hardened. "No way. That's mine, O'Day."
"We both know it's not, or you wouldn't have come to me to fence it."
Gerrish stepped forward, reaching, but backed off when Tom gave the blade a couple of back-and-forth swings.
"Uh-uh. Look, I'm not out to steal it. I'll give you a good price for it. A damn good price."
Gerrish's eyes narrowed. "So it's not as worthless as you said."
"It's junk, but it's unique junk. I want it for my collection."
"No—"
"Hughie, babes, listen to me." He briefly freed a hand from the grip to fish a wad of hundreds from his pocket. He tossed it on the table. "A thousand bucks. Yours."
"It's not for sale."
What was wrong with this jerk? He was a small-time burglar in a crummy apartment. A cool thousand in cash sitting before him for the taking and he was turning it down?
What gives?
"Look, one way or another I'm walking out the door with this katana. You try to stop me"—he swung the blade in a quick horizontal arc—"off with your head."
He smiled as he said it. A joke. But something happened during that swing. His already long arms seemed to stretch even farther of their own accord just as Gerrish took a step forward.
At first he thought nothing had happened. A bowel-wrenching near miss. Gerrish stopped cold, a puzzled look on his face. Then Tom noticed a thin red line appear across the front of his throat. Gerrish's hands fluttered like uncertain butterflies toward his neck just as the wound burst open and spewed blood in all directions.
Gerrish stood there with a dumbfounded expression, a human fire hydrant with a sprinkler cap, his mouth working but only bubbling gurgles issuing from the slash. He pressed his hands over the wound, trying to close it, trying to stanch the flow.
Tom backed away, his stomach threatening to toss up the Big Mac he'd gobbled on his way over. He glanced down at the blade. Not a drop of blood along the tip. The slice had been so clean he hadn't felt the slightest tug of resistance.