“What's his name? Maybe I know him.”
You rotten bitch, he thought. He took his wallet from his inside jacket pocket. “How much?”
She pretended to be confused. “For what?”
“You know.”
“Look, mister, so far as I know you're a cop. And I ain't going to proposition no cop, no way.”
“Sex,” he said.
“Not interested,” she said, turning away from the window.
“Hey! What about your friend?” He nodded at the girl behind her.
“I'll ask her.”
The other girl came to the window. She was a petite brunette, in her late teens or early twenties. She was wearing tight jeans and a long-sleeved white sweater and a short buckskin jacket. “Yeah?”
“How much?”
“You just did that routine with Velma.”
“Okay, okay.” Embarrassed, he told her what he wanted.
She appraised the car and said, “Seventy bucks.”
“Okay.”
“You have a motel room, or what?”
“I thought maybe we could use your place,” he said.
“That's ten extra.”
“Okay.”
“Eighty — in advance.”
“Sure.”
She went over to the blonde, and they talked for almost a minute. Then she came back, got in the car, and gave him her address.
She had three rooms and a bath on the fourth floor of a thirty-year-old apartment house. There was a new wall-to-wall carpet in every room, including the kitchen; but she didn't have much furniture. What pieces she did have were expensive and in good taste.
In the bedroom, when they had both undressed, he said, “I'll stand up. You get on your knees.”
“Whatever makes you happy.” She got down before him and took his penis in one hand.
Before she could bring it to her lips, he chopped a knee into her chin and knocked her backward. As she fell he tried to imagine that she was not a hooker, that she was McAlister, that he was beating McAlister. He kicked her alongside the head and laughed when her eyes rolled back. He imagined that he was kicking McAlister and David Canning and the President and everyone else who had ever gotten the best of him or held authority over him. He even imagined that he was kicking A. W. West — and that made him feel best of all. He stopped kicking her and stood over her, gasping for breath. Then he dropped to his knees beside her and touched the bloody froth at her nostrils. Sighing contentedly, he began to use his fists.
TWO
Someone knocked gently on the door, three times.
Canning stood up. He put one hand under his coat and touched the butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster.
The knocking came again, somewhat louder and more insistent than it had been the first tune.
Keeping one hand inside his jacket, he turned away from the door which opened on the hotel corridor. The knocking came from the other door, the one that connected to the adjoining room. He walked over to it and stood against the wall. When the knocking sounded a third time, quite loud now, he said, “Who is it?”
“Tanaka.” The voice was rather soft and high-pitched, just as McAlister had described it.
That didn't mean it was Tanaka.
It could be anyone.
It could even be the man who had followed him from the airport, the man who had watched him board the elevator.
“Are you there?”
“I'm here.”
“Open up.”
Whether or not it was Tanaka, he couldn't just stand here and wait for something to happen; he had to make it happen.
“Just a minute,” he said.
He drew his pistol and stepped to one side of the door. He pushed the chair out from under the knob and out of the way. Then he twisted the brass key, pulled the door open, stepped past it, and shoved the silenced barrel of the Colt against the trim belly of a strikingly lovely young Japanese woman.
“I'm so happy to meet you, too,” she said.
“What?”
“A gun in the stomach is so much more interesting than a plain old handshake.”
“Huh?”
“A saying of Confucius.”
He stared at her.
“Ah, and you're so articulate!”
He blinked. “Who are you?”
“Lee Ann Tanaka. Or would you like me to be someone else?”
“But…”
“Yes?”
He looked at her face carefully and saw that she fit the description that McAlister had given him. A tiny scar marked the left corner of her upper lip — although it was only as wide as a hair and half an inch long, certainly not a souvenir of a fight to the death with broken bottles. High on her left cheek there was a tiny black beauty mark: the “mole” for which McAlister had advised him to look. Finally, her hair was full, rich, and as black as raven wings. McAlister's only sin was one of omission.
“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“Oh, then you were worried about my heart.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My heart.”
He shook his head.
She said, “Fear is good for the heart. Speeds it up. Gives the heart muscles much-needed exercise. Cleans out the system. How nice of you to be worried about my heart, Mr. Canning.”
He put the pistol back in his holster. '"I'm sorry.”
“But my heart needed the exercise!” she said.
“I'm sorry for almost shooting you.”
“Was it that close?”
“Close enough.”
She put one hand to her breast. “Now you're giving my heart too damned much exercise.” She stepped back a pace and said, “Do you have any luggage?”
“Two pieces.”
“Bring it.”
He fetched the suitcases and followed her into the adjoining room. It was a large, airy bedchamber decorated with imitations of old Japanese rice-paper water-colors and with genuine eighteenth-century Japanese furniture.
“This won't be good enough,” he said.
In the middle of the room she stopped and turned to look back at him. “What won't be good enough?”
“Someone will be watching the door to my room.”
“Right you are, Mr. Canning. You're under surveillance.”
“If I don't come out and make a target of myself, sooner than later there are some goons who'll break in there and try to get me.”
“Break right into your room?”
“One way or the other.”
“What is Japan coming to? It's as bad here as in the States.”
“And if I'm not in my room,” Canning said, “they'll know that I didn't go out the front door. And they'll know I couldn't have climbed out onto the window ledge with two heavy suitcases. So the first place they'll look is in here.”
She clapped her hands. “Marvelous!”
“What's marvelous?”
“Your magnificent exhibition of deductive reasoning,” she said brightly. She gave him a big, very pretty smile.
He felt as if he had stepped into a whirlwind. He didn't quite know how to deal with her, and he couldn't understand why McAlister had put him in the hands of a woman, any woman, and especially this woman. “Look, Miss Tanaka, when these men don't find me next door, they'll simply come over here. They'll find me here. And they'll shoot me.”
“Ah, I have confidence in you,” she said. “You're much too fast on the draw for them.” She rubbed her stomach where he'd held the gun on her.
“Miss Tanaka—”
“They won't shoot you,” she said. “Because you won't be here.” She turned and walked toward what he thought was the bathroom door. Over her shoulder she said, “Come along.”
“Where to?”