The one-story extension served as the hotel’s minuscule lobby: at right, nobody was behind the check-in counter; at left, under a churning ceiling fan, straining their rattan chairs, sat two massive Chamorro men, playing cards on a rattan table with a deck turned splotchy from sweaty, dirty fingers. Also on the table were the kitchen matchsticks they were betting, a pack of Japanese cigarettes, two long black billy clubs, and a sheathed machete.
They were the first native males I’d seen wearing shirts; in fact, they wore suits, only soiled-looking, threadbare, as if these were hand-me-downs from the Japs.
But that seemed unlikely, because these were two very big boys. One of them was hatless, with a thatch of black hair atop a cantaloupe head with watermelon-seed eyes in walnut-shell pouches of skin in a litchi-nut-toned face so unwrinkled, it was as if neither thought nor emotion had ever traveled across that arid plain. Twenty years of age or maybe fifty, he was just plain fat, bursting his seams.
Such flab made him less dangerous than the other one, a bull-necked mass of muscle and fat in a straw fedora, with a face so ugly, features so flat and blunt, so wrinkled, so pockmarked, the white knife scar down his right cheek seemed gratuitous.
The worst part was the eyes: they were not stupid; they were hard and dark and glittering and smart. He looked at me above a hand of cards clutched in knife-handle fingers and said, “Six.”
At first I thought he was making a bet, but when a frown tightened around the hard dark eyes, I asked, “Pardon me?”
He was missing a front tooth; the others were the shade of stained oak, approximately the tone of his skin. “Six.”
“That’s, what? My room number? Room six?”
He played a card. “Six.”
“Do I need a key?”
“Six!”
That seemed about as close to getting directions as I was going to get, so I entered the main building through a doorless archway, making my way down a central corridor, my shoes echoing off the hardwood floor. Doors to rooms were on either side of me; the walls were plaster, not rice paper. Stairs to the second floor were at the rear, but there seemed to be no exit down there. Fire inspectors apparently played it fast and loose in Saipan.
Okay, Room 6. I stopped at number 6, tried the knob, found the door unlocked. Slippers awaited me just inside the door, and I traded my shoes for them. The pale yellow plaster walls were bare; a tall sheer-curtained window looked out on the side of the wood-frame residence next door. Though this was a Western-style structure, the room was in the style of a Japanese inn: a “carpet” of fine woven reed, padded quilts on the floor for a bed, two floor cushions to sit at a scuffed, low-riding teakwood table. No closet, but a rack with a pole was provided. The only concession to any non-Japanese visitors was a dresser with mirror.
My travel bag was on the dresser.
I checked inside, found my nine-millimeter; both the clip I’d loaded into the weapon, and my two spare clips, seemed untampered with. Weapon cradled in my hands, I looked up and saw my face in the mirror, or anyway the face of some confused fucking priest holding a gun.
Then I looked at the ceiling, not for guidance from the Lord, but thinking about what the shichokan had said: the woman, “Amira,” was on the second floor...
So what should I do? Go upstairs and start knocking on doors? And take my nine-millimeter along, in case I needed to bestow some blessings?
A knock startled me, and I didn’t know whether to tuck the gun away in the bag, or maybe in my waistband, with the black coat over it.
“Father O’Leary?”
Chief Suzuki’s voice.
“Father O’Leary, can speak?”
I returned the nine-millimeter to my bag, and opened the door.
Chief Suzuki stood respectfully, his pith helmet with the gold badge held in his hands. “I hope you find comfort.”
“Thank you. It’s nice. Please come in.”
Suzuki gave me a nod that was almost a bow, stepped inside and out of his shoes, and I closed the door.
“Those two in the lobby,” I said, “do they work for you?”
He frowned. “Jesus and Ramon? Did they give you trouble?”
“No. I just saw their clothing, and the billy clubs, and wondered.”
“Billy...?”
“Billy clubs. Nightsticks, batons?” I pantomimed holding a billy and slapping it in my open palm.
That he understood. “They are... native police. Ten Chamorro work with us — internal security. We have Jesus...” He traced a finger down his right cheek, in imitation of the bullnecked pockmarked Chamorro’s scar.
I nodded that I understood who he meant.
He continued: “We have Jesus on guard here many time. Jesus is my top jungkicho... detective. Jesus takes care of his people.”
All of a sudden Suzuki was sounding like the priest. But what I figured he meant was, Jesus took care of investigations into crimes among the Chamorro.
“Well,” I said, “he didn’t give me any trouble... The shichokan said you wanted a favor, involving a woman in this hotel.”
“Yes,” Captain Suzuki said. “May I sit?”
“Certainly...”
Soon we were seated on floor mats facing each other.
His skeletal, gray-mustached countenance was grave, and regret clung to his words like a vine on a trellis. “Some people think the woman in this hotel... in the room above yours... should receive mercy. They say she is a fine person. A beautiful person.”
Trying not to betray the chill his words had sent through me, I said easily, “If she is who the shichokan says she is, she is a famous person, too. Important.”
“Yes. This is true. Nonetheless I disagree — she came here to carry out duties as a spy, and it cannot be helped. She should be executed.”
And then Captain Suzuki asked his favor of Father O’Leary.
Chapter 18
The room directly above mine was number 14. Chief Suzuki did not accompany me up the stairs, nor were there any signs of Jesus Sablan or Ramon Reyes, the chief’s Chamorro watchdogs; Jesus and Ramon were apparently still down in the lobby, playing rummy with smeary cards. I was alone in the hallway; according to the chief, right now only a few guests were registered at this hotel, whose rooms were reserved by the Japanese for honored guests — and prisoners.
My two knocks made a lonely echo.
From behind the door came a soft, muffled, “Yes?”
Wrapped up in the sound of that one spoken word were so many hopes and dreams carried with me across the months, across the ocean, a single word spoken in that low, rich, matter-of-fact feminine voice I never thought I’d hear again.
“Amy?” I said to the door, my face almost rubbing against its harsh, paint-blistered surface.
But the door didn’t reply. The voice on the other side of it had granted me only that one word...
I looked both ways, a kid crossing the street for the first time — stairwell at one end, window at the other, no Chief Suzuki, no members of his Chamorro goon squad, either. I kept my voice at a whisper, in case someone was eavesdropping across the way.
“Amy — it’s Nathan.”
It seemed like forever, and was probably fifteen seconds, but finally the door creaked open to reveal a sliver of the pale, lightly powdered elongated oval of her face. Under the familiar tousle of dark blonde hair, one blue-gray eye, sunken but alert, gaped at me, as half of the sensuous mouth (no lipstick) dropped open in astonishment.
“You know what I hate,” I said, “about seeing a married woman?”