Angel Eyes by Eric Lustbader

Author:Eric Lustbader [Lustbader, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780345466822
Publisher: Fawcett
Published: 1991-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Angel Eyes

BOOK THREE

THE ZEN POLICEMAN

It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done. —OSCAR WILDE

TEN

TOKYO/STAR TOWN/MOSCOW/ARKHANGELSKOE

"That bastard Hitasura.''

Big Ezoe, standing in the wet subway tunnel beneath the Kinji-to, looked down at the broken body of Fukuda. He saw the blow tube still gripped between her teeth, noted with sorrow that the tiny steel shuriken had not been launched. On the other hand, her ferocious expression, not unlike a tigress about to strike its prey, filled him with satisfaction. She had died a warrior's death.

"That bastard Hitasura.''

Still, he did not like losing a member of his family, especially one as valuable as Fukuda had been.

The rumble of the subway trains in adjacent tunnels filled the flickering semidarkness, building to crescendos, then dying away in echoes.

“That bastard Hitasura came in here with his troops and did this.”

Koi, the hard machine who had once been Honno Kansei, knelt by his side. Her fingers touched the crepuscular flesh of Fukuda's cheek. ''Hitasura's men didn't do this.'' Her voice was cool, detached. “Before she was shot, she went one on one with someone. Someone better than she was.”

“Tori Nunn.” Big Ezoe spit out the name. "That's why, at the first sign of the trap, Hitasura escaped the Kinji-to to get his men. He brought them back into the museum, down here into the subway system where Fukuda had lured Tori Num. He risked the Metropolitan Police for that woman. She's teamed up with Hitasura again. That's bad news for me.''

“No,” Koi said, rising. “It's bad news for her.”

The first streaks of sunlight, pressed like orange pulp through the gun-metal gauze of the clouds, filled the eastern sky. When they struck the curve of the Sumida River which Big Ezoe's apartment overlooked, the sluggish water was trans?formed into a ribbon of molten lead.

Koi stared out and down at the increasing dazzle, broken now by the pewter bow wave of a fishing boat heading toward the Tsukiji Fish Market. There were so many shades of gray on the river, in the long shadows along its banks, that Koi kept counting them, as if there was a lesson to be learned in attempting to measure infinity.

“We have several tasks before us,” Big Ezoe was saying. "First, I want us to find a way to usurp Hitasura's deal with Kunio Michita. Michita must be paying Hitasura a fortune for his go-between work. The breadth and depth of the political corruption Sakata's ledgers revealed is breathtaking; the tapestry of bribes they recorded is priceless. Why should he have his fingers in that pie and not me?

''But it will not be easy. As you know, there is a gap in Kakuei Sakata's ledgers. The physical connection between the two— Hitasura and Michita—is never mentioned. Is it because of ig?norance or by design?

“Second, we must punish Hitasura for his transgressions against members of my family. Third, we must destroy Tori Nunn for her part in all this. She murdered Fukuda.”

There was a gull on the river, Koi saw,

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