Jack had a feeling the “further notice” might never come. But even if they eventually unloaded all this at Rasalom’s new digs, when would that be? More weeks? Months? Jack had no way of knowing. And no way to know about the move if and when it happened.
He couldn’t set up a stakeout. Not while Rasalom was skulking about, planning who knew what.
He returned to the rear of the truck and climbed in. Rasalom’s stuff… maybe it would give some clue to the guy.
He began inspecting things, then throwing them out-pushing them off the edge of the bed to crash on the concrete floor. Chairs got an immediate heave-ho. Dressers and bureaus first had their drawers pulled out and inspected-all empty-then were dumped.
Empty, empty, empty.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
When he’d finished, he eased himself down amid the splintered remains of the furniture and found himself facing the cylinder. A rush of anger burned away his frustration.
The Dormentalists had been behind the ritual murder in that tube. The higher-ups behind it had paid, but others hadn’t. William Blagden was a Dormentalist and had been involved, yet life was still business as usual for him. Maybe Jack should do something about that.
He knew his next step.
He retrieved the matchbook from the glove compartment and then popped the truck’s hood. Took him a moment to find the fuel line, took only a second to cut it. The sharp smell of gasoline spread as it spilled onto the floor. He waited for a good-size puddle to form, then struck a match, lit the book, and tossed it.
The gas went up with a woomp! and Jack headed for the door. Outside, he started his car and waited until the truck’s gas tank exploded, blowing out a number of windows. He watched a little longer, to be sure the building was catching. When he was, he put the Vic in gear and drove away.
Not at all what he’d come for, but at least the trip hadn’t been a total waste.
11
Gia zeroed in on the gauze as soon as Jack pulled off his T-shirt.
“What’s this?”
He pulled off the dressing and saw it had further healed to the point where it had stopped oozing. He’d forgotten about it because the pain was gone. This was scary.
“Just a scratch.” At least it was now.
Slim, with short blond hair and sky-blue eyes, Gia sat next to him on her bed. Vicky was asleep and they were enjoying a little private time.
“When? I don’t remember this yesterday.”
She removed her top and unfastened her bra as he gave her a quick rundown of the incident in Central Park. Her pink-tipped breasts weren’t large and weren’t small. A handful each… just right.
Her blue eyes were wide. “That shoot-out in the park? That was you?”
“I was just walking by-”
“How do you manage to get involved in these things?”
“I was minding my own business.”
He was reaching for one of her breasts but she pushed his hand away and leaned close, studying the wound.
“The news said a man was killed. That could have been you.” She frowned. “This looks almost healed.”
“Told you it was just a scratch. Doc Hargus said it hardly needed the butterflies.” To prove his point, Jack pulled them off. “There.”
He stared at the wound. No way the healing should be this far gone.
“You do heal fast.”
Jack opened his mouth to tell her, but closed it again. Why try to explain what he didn’t know for sure, what he only suspected? He’d talk to Glaeken first and see what he thought.
She ran a finger lightly along the line of the wound. “That other bullet scar is round.”
“That was a direct hit. This was a graze.”
“Looks like something a knife might make.” He’d expected her to be repulsed, and maybe if the wound looked fresher, she would be. But she seemed fascinated. “Or a sword.”
“Sword?” He laughed. “Where’d that come from?”
“I guess I have swords on my mind,” she said as she slipped out of her jeans. “I mean, since Vicky asked if I thought you’d mind if she brought your katana into school for show and tell.”
“The Gaijin Masamune?”
“Whatever.”
“How does she know about that?”
“Well, it’s visible on the top shelf of your front closet. Every time we hang up our coats-”
“Okay, okay. But how does she even know what a katana is?”
“A combination of things. They’re studying Japan in school, and today she happened to catch some of The Seven Samurai on TV.”
“But she hates black-and-white films.”
He remembered how he’d had to bribe her to watch the original King Kong.
“Well, she didn’t watch for long, and I’m pretty sure she would have flipped right past if they hadn’t been studying Japan. But she lasted long enough to recognize the swords in the samurais’ belts as just like the one in your closet.”
“And she wants to bring it to class?”
She slipped out of her panties.
“Don’t worry. I’ve already told her it’s not going to happen. Not with the schools’ zero-tolerance policy.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Right. They get freaked about toy light sabers. Imagine something that can really lop off limbs and heads. Besides, it’s pretty messed up.”
Gia kissed his wound. “Not like your other sword.”
“What other sword?”
She kissed his chest. “The pretty one. The one that only I see.”
“Oh… that one.” His skin tingled at her touch.
“Yes, that one. How’s it doing?”
“Ready for battle.”
She pushed him back and trailed her lips down along his abdomen.
“I sure hope so…”
THURSDAY
1
Jack yawned as he closed and locked his apartment door behind him.
One A.M. Long day.
But he couldn’t call it quits yet. Gia’s mention of the Gaijin Masamune had set him to thinking, and he didn’t like where his thoughts were going.
He pulled open the door to his closet and brought the scabbarded katana down from its high shelf. He pulled on the handle and unsheathed the blade. Vicky would be disappointed if she saw it, because it looked like a piece of junk. The blade was Swiss-cheesed and mottled with a random pattern of a hundred or so holes and pocks-not eaten or rusted out, melted out.
The story went that in the fourteenth century a gaijin warrior commissioned the legendary swordsmith Masamune to make a sword for him using metal that had fallen from the sky. It turned out to be the strongest steel Masamune had ever encountered, but he had enough for only a short kodachi. When the gaijin failed to return, Masamune melted down the kodachi and added more steel-Earth steel-but the two metals never fully blended. The resultant katana’s mottled finish embarrassed the swordsmith, and so he didn’t sign it. Instead he carved the two symbols for “gaijin” on the tang.
The so-called Gaijin Masamune became a legend-supposedly stronger and sharper than anything Masamune had ever made. Somehow it wound up at ground zero in Hiroshima on that fateful day. The atomic heat supposedly melted out the Earth steel, leaving only the metal from the sky, pocked and riddled with defects.
Jack angled the blade back and forth, watching the light play off the mottled surface. The edge and the undulating temper line that bordered it, however, were unmarred.
A lot of people had died by and for this sword. He wondered if it was cursed. Used to be Jack didn’t believe in curses. Used to be he didn’t believe in a lot of things he took for granted now.
Holding the katana safely away from his body-he’d seen what that blade could do-he wound through the Victorian oak furniture that cluttered his claustrophobic-Gia’s term, not his-front room. He occupied the third floor of a West Eighties brownstone that was much too small for all the neat stuff he’d accumulated over the years.