Dim Sum Asylum(48)
What’d happened to Donnie was usually enough of a promise of what waited for anyone who’d cross that particular line. It was a pity no one’d learned that lesson earlier so I wouldn’t be standing on my daughters’ graves wishing I’d had just one more burned pancake Sunday breakfast with them.
“Fucking Hell, you’re here about the netsuke,” I muttered under my breath. Gods, I was slow at times. I hadn’t slept much since the damned scorpion tried to crawl past my teeth, and parts of my body were the color of crushed seedless black grapes, strings of bruises puddling across wide swaths of my skin. “Do you know who sent it after me?”
“If I did, we would not be standing here in the cold having this conversation.” He shifted his feet, moving to my right, nearly close enough to touch me, and the shadows in the fog shimmered closer. “Instead, your morgue would be opening gift-wrapped tiny scraps of someone’s body I’d left on your desk. But now that you bring it up, I have… people looking into it. Are you now going to tell me to not interfere?”
“Would it do any good?”
“No.” The lizard I called my grandfather smiled, a draconian sneer broad enough to flare his nostrils. “This isn’t about you, Rokugi—”
“Really? Because it sure as Hell felt all about me when the damned thing was slicing up my throat.” My raised voice troubled the old man’s security, because another shape emerged from the gray veil, only to drop back into hiding a moment later. “Might also be about the other dead people those things left behind.”
“If I do not make an example of whomever attacked you, then the others will think I’ve weakened. I can’t have that—”
“This isn’t some chess game, Grandfather, and you can’t keep rushing in to protect me. I’m not even on the board—”
“You are on the board because I’ve put you there,” he reminded me. “And you will stay there until you see reason. The others are too hotheaded, too volatile. I will not turn over generations of wealth and power to mewling, reactive imbeciles. If I had another choice, I would have turned my back on you a long time ago and let fate decide your life for you, but I can’t… I won’t… allow our family’s legacy to fall after I die. I will not be the last Takahashi to stand at the head of our clan.”
“Stop.” I held up my hand to stop him from going into the same tired lecture I heard every time we were in the same space for more than a few minutes. “I’ve got, what… fifteen first cousins? I know what some of them have been up to. They’re not stupid. Jujeng alone has three territories he controls for the family, and there are others just as strong. They have no loyalty to me, and me stepping in behind you is the last thing they want.”
“I am removing the family from its… less than legal means of doing business.” His bombshell had its desired effect, and I was left speechless. “I would rather cripple the family than watch it die.”
It took me a good half a minute before I could scramble my brain out of the unfolding maze he’d laid into my thoughts. No matter how I looked at it, the city’s underground would still be embroiled in a bloodbath, and I couldn’t see my way out of it.
Finally I exhaled the breath I’d been holding in. “You like murdering people too much.”
“I like knowing people will die because I say they should die,” he corrected, patting my shoulder. “There is a difference. That will not change, but I propose you consider what I have to offer you. Of all my prospects, you are the one closest to thinking like me. You weigh the possibilities, and people like you. People work harder for a man they like. Me, they fear, but you… you drive people to a loyalty I will never achieve. Now, as to the small matter of the netsuke that attacked you. It was the first of a set. A set of three.”
“How do you know that? We only saw the one.”
“I know because it came after me not more than an hour ago.” He motioned toward the dark shapes lurking around us. “Riyuchi has its remains in a bag. I brought it because I knew it would help you in your investigation, but make no mistake, my grandson, someone has marked us both for death.”
“Kind of egotistical, even for you. There were other murders, Grandfather,” I pointed out. “Lots of people kill for more reasons than taking you down.”
“That would be true if those other people weren’t just collateral damage.” His smile was back, as slippery and malevolent as before. “Every one of those killed were mine, Tombo, and I have my suspicions on where the one you fought with on the gōngyù was headed. Either join me and fight this, or you will end up as dead as your whore mistress at Kingfisher’s.”
“You’re lying, old man.” My blood ran cold, spreading an icy lace through my veins. “Jung Jie—”
“They just found her an hour ago with a stone scorpion in her throat. Ask your uncle Goma if you do not believe me, but someone out there is trying to kill us.” He leaned in, close enough for me to smell the butterscotch from the candies he liked on his breath. “This is about me—about the family—and whether you like it or not, Rokugi, this will eventually be about you as well.”
“SHE’S ALREADY gone, MacCormick,” Yamada dolefully informed me through my car’s open window. “Morgue guys took her in about five minutes ago. The casters got the netsuke, and Forensics still has the scene tied up while they go over it. You should just head home and let me handle the witnesses. You’re too close to this one. I can see it all over your face.”