The Samurai Strategy Part 6

I'd been meditating on a particular sword in my collection, a _katana_, which was totally without distinction except for a little oral history.

Reportedly the blade once tasted blood in a rather arcane episode. Noda probably would have approved. The story was, the samurai who'd commissioned it decided he liked it so much he didn't want the swordsmith telling anybody how he'd forged it. So after he'd thanked the guy graciously, deep bows and all the rest, he picked up the sword, bowed one more time, and then hauled back and sliced him in half, clean as a whistle. The _kesa _stroke, left collarbone straight through the right hip. It's said a samurai could do things such as that in the old days.

My meeting with Noda had made me want to look it over, to refresh my memory concerning that j.a.panese capacity for the unexpected. So after I let myself in through the front foyer, I tossed my raincoat over a banister, headed down to the kitchen to pour myself a nightcap, and proceeded upstairs to the "office."

I clicked on the light and then . . .

Jesus! The place had been trashed. Drawers open, files

tipped over, piles of paper askew. After the first numbing shock, that perception-delay your senses impose before you can actually accept what you're seeing, I quickly started taking inventory. Okay, what did they get this time?

Well, the computer and printer were both intact, cordless phone was there still, the little nine-inch Sony in the corner was untouched. . .

. Hey, could it be they hadn't actually lifted anything?

Then I remembered why I'd come upstairs. Off to the side, under the back stair, was a big walk-in closet I called my sword room, always kept under lock and key. I glanced over at the door.

Hold on. It was hanging open slightly. I strolled over and checked it more closely. The mechanism had been jimmied, professionally, but with enough force that the metal frame around the door was askew. Not a blatant entry, but a determined one.

My heart skipped a beat. That's why they didn't bother with TVs. These guys knew where the real action was, the lightweight, very expensive loot. I opened the door, took a deep breath, and felt for the light.

You could have heard my sigh of relief all the way out in the street.

From the looks of it, nothing was missing here either.

Be sure now. I quickly glanced down the racks, mentally cataloging the pieces. Everything had a place, and all the places were still full.

Strange. This stuff was worth thousands. Burglars break in to steal. So what happened? Maybe something scared them off. My sheepdog Benjamin, the fearless terror of the streets? He was now snoring at the foot of the stairs, but who knows . . .

Walton, you lucky stiff, this could have been a major hit. I cursed at the thought of having to have the door and lock repaired, made a mental note to remember to call the locksmith over by Sheridan Square in the morning, and pushed the damaged door closed.

What a h.e.l.l of a night. I pulled the Sotheby's catalogue out of my pocket, recalling the auction that had inaugurated this fateful evening, and turned to chuck it in the file cabinet where I kept all the records for my hobby: prices, news clippings, correspondence, the rest.

The cabinet, one of those cheap tin jobs you buy at discount office- supply places, was slightly askew. What's this? I yanked open the top drawer and saw chaos.

Uh, oh. I went down the row, checking. Tell you one thing, my intruders had been thorough. Every drawer was a mess, just like the office. Then I got to the bottom, the one with backup data on the collection.

Appraisals, provenance of the pieces, that kind of thing.

It was empty.

But of course! Any pro would know that half the value of a collection such as this would be in all the doc.u.mentation. Which meant my methodical thieves were no dummies; they'd started with the paperwork, the valuations and authenticity info . . . which meant they weren't through. I must have interrupted their . . .

My G.o.d! They could still be here.

I edged for the phone and punched 911, the police emergency number.

Next I went back and pulled down a sword, just for protection, and swept the empty house. It was all nice and tidy.

Finally New York's men in blue showed, an overweight Irishman and his Puerto Rican partner, both with mustaches. I actually knew them, having once received a ticket for walking Ben off the leash. We went through the formalities, lots of questions with no answers worth writing down, and then they offered to send around a fingerprint squad in the morning. Sure, why not. And you'd better get new locks for this place, Mr. . . . Walton. Right. We all thanked each other and I saw them out.

Then I headed back down to the kitchen. What was this all about?

Stealing files? Papers? Those doc.u.ments, lovingly and painstakingly a.s.sembled, were what made the swords somehow uniquely a part of my life. Something that actually wasn't going to decide to take a hike the next week. The stuff had no value to anybody except Matt Walton.

Or so I thought.

CHAPTER THREE

Some people will swear life runs on coincidence. Is it true? If so, here's one for the history books. It's the tale of an old flame. Before my ex-wife Joanna, before my later ill-starred adventure with Donna Austen. The lady's name was Tamara Richardson, and she was a professor at New York University. When I knew her, though, she was merely an a.s.sistant prof with a s.h.i.+ny new Ph.D. At any rate, she was fresh out of Columbia's graduate school and very much starting out. I was too. Best I can remember, we met shopping for green groceries at Balducci's, just up Sixth Avenue from my place, and we saw each other a few times. It had to be at least fifteen years (how time flies) since our brief episode.

Tam Richardson, however, was not easy to forget. There was a kind of under-the-surface intensity about the woman that seemed always close to the ignition point. When you were around her, you were always worried somebody might accidentally light a match. However, she had no shortage of men in her life, and eventually we each went our own way. s.h.i.+ps that pa.s.sed in the night. I never expected to hear of her again.

Things didn't quite work out that way, however. She started getting famous, as a thorn in the side of America's lackadaisical corporate management. Somewhere along the line, Tam Richardson had taken it upon herself to single-handedly kick some overpaid a.s.s in America's plush boardrooms, and she wasn't trying to win any popularity contests doing it. She was the kid in the story who pointed out the emperor had on no pants, while everybody else was claiming his tux was a great fit. Guess you can't fire somebody in academia merely for saying what everybody knows to be true but doesn't have the guts to verbalize.

Then about a year ago, I noticed a full-length profile of her

in an airline magazine spread about "America's New Achievers." No escaping her. Between the lines, I got the definite impression she hadn't really changed all that much over the years. She was around five seven, high cheekbones, dark hair that looked like it could use a brush, and eyes that made you think twice about giving her a lot of bulls.h.i.+t. Reminded me of, say, the young Glenda Jackson with a heavy spike of Debra Winger. For my money, though, she was just about ideal in the female department. Trim bottom, nice little twist in her stride, just enough cleavage to make you wonder. She didn't go out of her way to advertise, but you figured the goods were on board. My recollection in a nutsh.e.l.l? Tam Richardson was a better than average looker, d.a.m.ned smart, and she knew no fear. None.

There was something about her, though, that always left people puzzling. Where'd she come from? American, sure, but no way could she have been corn-fed Midwest like her surname. The answer was, she had a slightly more exotic, and probably painful, history than most of us.

Maybe that was part of the reason she always seemed to be a loner, never went along with the crowd. The one time she'd tried that, it hadn't worked. I got to know her well enough to hear a bit of the story, but I'd sort of repressed the details.

Maybe I'd do well to come clean and admit I still thought about Tam from time to time. What's more, I gleaned from the magazine piece that she still lived right around the corner. Made me think briefly about giving her a call, get together for a drink, the old days, etc. But I finally decided I'd had enough high-spirited women for a while. Time to mellow down. Why go looking for lightning in a bottle?

She'd always liked three things: good-looking men, telling the high and mighty unpleasant truths, and interior design. Consequently it was no great surprise that the magazine devoted a photo spread to her rambling six-room apartment. The place was in one of those NYU-owned buildings on the west side of Was.h.i.+ngton Square Park, and it was definitely a knockout. She'd played off the old cla.s.sic interior, a generously proportioned thirties layout, turning it into an environment that blended technology and design. Not for Tam, though, the utilitarian "high-tech" look so trendy a few years back; no ugly "state of the art"

machines. It was eclectic--modernism here, deco there.

Take her library-office. I smiled when I noticed that next to the latest IBM PC was a "streamlined" Raymond Loewy- designed calculator, pure thirties. Same old Tam. On the other hand, just to keep it all from getting too serious, she also had a collection of kitschy salt and pepper shakers scattered among the books--a dog peeing against a hydrant, a naked babe with spicy b.o.o.bs . . . she told the writer it was her "tribute to America."

The place was everything she was, a potpourri of the world, a mishmash of styles, and she clearly loved it. I probably missed a good half of the insider gags, this outrage up against that one, but I must say she brought it off with appreciable _elan_. Truthfully the place was a perfect reflection of the Tam I remembered--a woman who did her own thing.

She was now, so it said, a full professor at the university.

Undoubtedly she deserved it. She was also director of their new Center for Applied Technology, which she'd founded. When the interviewer asked her which department the Center was under, she'd apparently shrugged and said "certain people" at the university wanted to bring it in under the School of Business. But the Center had outside funding, was doing vital work, and she was darn well going to stay independent.

Whoops. That b.a.l.l.sy crack, although perfectly in character, meant she was now giving the back of her hand to university politics. Mouthing off in a national publication about some departmental power play is no way to endear yourself to college deans. It lays bare all their petty empire-building. Didn't seem to worry her, though; just like in the old days, she said exactly what she was thinking and let the chips tumble.

Her major occupation in recent years, as anybody who reads the op-ed pages around the country knows, was to shame American executives into getting off their duffs, to make them start diverting some of their executive perks into the serious problem of getting this country compet.i.tive again. She had plenty of ideas where the corporate-jet money could be better invested. Over the years she'd knocked out half a dozen books on technology and the American workplace--office automation, computer-aided design in engineering, robots and computer-integrated manufacturing, that kind of thing. Tam Richardson still believed America could whip the world, but it would take more than speeches and flag waving. Her latest expose of America's corporate fat cats, which actually got a sidebar in the story, claimed they'd better start cutting their million-dollar salaries and putting the money into creating American jobs, or we'd all soon end up fetching coffee for the new Pacific Rim dynamos and buying our goodies at East Asia's company store.

Only she didn't bother to say it that nicely. Worse than that, the book actually supplied a long list of America's more notoriously overpaid CEOs. I suspect there were a lot of corporate contributors to the university who'd just as soon seen her muzzled. Good luck, Tam.

Now the coincidence. The Sat.u.r.day following my Friday night episode with the inscrutable president of Nippon, Inc., an event occurred that would soon bring Tam Richardson back into my life. Random luck? Fate?

Anybody's guess. As it turned out, however, while I was on the phone leaving messages at country clubs for the building's attorneys, a mere five blocks away from my place Dr. Tamara Richardson was putting the final touches on preparations for an evening dinner party--destined to throw us together again only weeks later.

The dinner was supposed to be strictly social, to celebrate the beginning of her sabbatical--academic talk for a year off with three- quarters pay. There were a few dinner debts to square away, so the timing was perfect. She had several articles lined up; she'd finally axed a stormy year-long affair with a colleague in Economics named David Mason; and she was scheduled to begin a book on intelligent robots. She was trying not to think too much about academic politics and the real possibility her department chairman might consign her to some kind of academic hypers.p.a.ce, there to teach freshmen for the rest of her tenured days.

By mid-afternoon she was down to the last-minute refinements on the evening's plans. Since the overnight rain had purged the soot from the air, she was feeling great. She put on a new Vangelis CD, worked a few modern-dance moves into her routine as she cleared the loose books out of the living room, and continued trying to convince herself that breaking off with Dave Mason had been a smart move. After a while, though, she wasn't humming anymore, just thinking. Okay, it had only been a week, but why had she invited him to come to the dinner? Just to be a good sport?

The thing about it was, they'd actually had a more or less

unspoken understanding not to inquire too closely into each other's occasional little diversions. They were both adults, right? This time, however, Dave had pushed it too far. He'd finally broken the rules, bringing one of his admiring grad students up to the apartment--her apartment. She b.u.mped into them coming down in the elevator, and this one was a prize--stage makeup, bleached hair, the works.

Out of bounds. She'd nailed him right there in her marble lobby: you want to bang some Queens debutante, you'd better not be doing it here.