Konno would slouch in, taking off his raincoat and dragging it along the floor as they were led to a table in a platformed area above the tourists, the Japanese businessmen, American officers, contract pilots (recognizable by their drab short-sleeve shirts and fancy sunglasses, whatever the weather). Konno pocketed checks without seeming to pay and one night introduced Lee to a hostess named Tammy, a woman in a silver dress and shiny face paint.
Konno believed in riots.
Konno believed the U.S. had used germ warfare in Korea and was experimenting with a substance called lysergic acid here in Japan.
Life is hostile, he believed. The struggle is to merge your life with the greater tide of history.
To have true socialism, he said, we first establish capitalism, totally and heartlessly, and then destroy it by degrees, bury it in the sea.
He was a member of the Japanese-Soviet Friendship Society, the Japanese Peace Council, the Japan-China Cultural Exchange Association.
Foreign capital, foreign troops dominate modern Japan, he said.
All foreign troops are U.S. troops. Every Westerner is an American. Every American serves the cause of monopolistic capital.
Tammy took Lee to a Buddhist shrine.
One night at the Queen Bee, Konno announced that MACS-1, Lee's unit, would soon leave for the Philippines. This was news to the young Marine, He was beginning to like Japan. He liked coming to Tokyo. He counted on these discussions with Konno, who was able to argue Lee's own positions from a historic rather than a purely personal viewpoint, from the ashes, the rebuilt waste of a blasted landscape and economy.
Why were they shipping him out, now, of all times, when things were going well for a change, when he had things to look forward to, a woman, now and then, to crawl into bed with, people to talk to who did not see him as a figure in the shadows?
They went to the flat near the river. Konno paced the room, tugging at the ends of his silk scarf. He hinted there were others who knew about Pfc. Oswald and admired his political maturity. He said there were things that could be accomplished by people with similar ideas on world affairs, people situated in certain places, within easy reach of each other. He gave Lee a pistol, small and silver-plated, a derringer, a gift, modest, two-shot, and asked him to pick up some Luckies back at the base.
Reitmeyer tried to pick him up and turn him upside down, grabbing from behind, at the crotch and the shirt collar, basic aimless ballbreaking fun, but he messed it all up, ending with one hand gripping Ozzie's side pocket and the other in an armpit, with the victim more or less parallel to the ground, flailing for a door jamb. At first Ozzie reacted with good-natured yelping surprise, out for a midair swim; then, as Reitmeyer manhandled and yanked, refusing to see it wouldn't work, trying to cartwheel him halfway around, he complained in fierce whispers, with ultimatums and unfinished threats; then struggled hard to free himself, close to bursting into frustrated tears, a snared and wriggling kid, pink with rage; then, finally, and this brought forth a certain lurking satisfaction, familiar, falsehearted, awful, he went completely limp.
One night he wandered into a Tokyo bar that was either a queer hangout or some kind of kabuki show or maybe a little of both. The customers were all male and the hosts or hostesses-they looked increasingly like men as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark-wore bright kimonos and high swirling wigs, their mouths precisely painted, faces layered in chalk. Educational. Someone rustled nearby, a costumed man waiting to lead him to a table, but Ozzie walked quietly to the door, feeling watched, odd, peculiar, quaint. When he opened the door he saw a familiar figure in the street. It was a Marine from his unit, Heindel, just walking on by. Ozzie had a moment of small panic. He didn't want to be seen coming out of a place like this. They'd mop the barracks with him if word got out. They'd have a hog-wallow of gruesome fun. The oddball loner caught sneaking out of a swishy bar. He moved back into the dimness and ordered a beer, keeping an eye to the street. Hidell in a dark jacket with a pouncing tiger on the back. Ozzie drank his beer and got his bearings. The darkness was creepy. Whining music came from the walls.
He found a taxi and headed out to Konno's district. Chemical smoke pouring off the shipyards and factories. Skinhead kids on bikes shooting out of alleys, coming at a racing slant over the pot-holed streets.
Hidell means don't tell.
No one was home. He walked for miles, lost, before he found another cab. He went to the Queen Bee, greeted by a hostess whose sole duty was to bow to entering guests. Konno was alone at a table near the rear. They talked a long time. Girls in swimsuits passed across the stage, each throwing a hip toward the audience of businessmen and U.S. brass. It was a vast place, a noisy crowd. Konno was tired and hoarse, coming down with something. A silence at the table. Then Lee let it be known that he'd seen something interesting in Atsugi one day, a plane called a U-2.
He paused, measuring how he felt. Inside the bouncy music and applause, he occupied a pocket of calm. He was not connected to anything here and not quite connected to himself and he spoke less to Konno than to the person Konno would report to, someone out there, in the floating world, a collector of loose talk, a specialist who lived in the dark like the men with bright lips and spun-silk wigs.
He pointed out that the plane climbed right off the radarscopes.
He said it reached an altitude almost five miles above the known record. He suggested it was armed with amazing cameras and headed for hostile soil.
He barely noticed himself talking. That was the interesting part. The more he spoke, the more he felt he was softly split in two. It was all so remote he didn't think it mattered what he said. He never even looked at his companion. He sat in a white calm and let the sentences float. Konno studied him, listened, jittery, needing a shave, sniffing the nicotine on his fingers, a habit of his that seemed to imply there was never enough-enough of what you craved. Lee talked softly on. Ten thousand years of happiness, or whatever it means when they say banzai.
He let it be known that he'd figured out the U-2's rate of climb. He didn't say what it was but went into detail on other, minor matters, testing Konno's knowledge of technical things, lecturing a little, pointing out flaws in the base's security.
A man in a white tuxedo introduced the bathing beauties by name. Sincere applause. The two men went into the chill night. It was late and quiet and Lee pulled his windbreaker tight around him. Konno stood smoking, hunched away from the wind, knees bent, looking down an empty neon street.
Take the double-e from Lee.
Hide the double-/ in Hidell.
Hidell means hide the L.
Don't tell.
White ideograms. Roman letters ticking in the dark. Konno said they were waiting for one of the hostesses, Tammy, and he looked a little dejected about it, maybe because he needed sleep. She came out a side exit wrapped in plastic rainwear including a hat and floppy booties, and seemed ready for some hard-earned relaxation. She thought she knew a pachinko parlor that might still be open. She wanted to play pachinko.
A radarman named Bushnell was climbing the exterior stairs of his barracks when he heard a sharp noise, a single hard rap, like a ruler striking a desk. On second thought, no, that wasn't it. More like a little popping sound, a two-inch firecracker maybe. Except that wasn't it either. That wasn't even close. Maybe just a slamming door actually.
He went inside and saw Ozzie sitting on a footlocker, alone in the squadbay, showing his funny smile. He had a little bitty pistol in his hand and there was a streak of blood across his left arm, above the elbow.