Simon replaced the cards and put the magazine that lay on his lap under his arm and walked out of his bedroom. His eyes scanned the carpet at his feet. One hurt very bad. He did not cry.
The ringing in his ears crescendoed. Simon held the banister in his right hand and went down the steps as quickly as he could. He stopped there and searched the living room with one watery eye. He was not crying. “Mommy. Daddy.”
No answer came. Simon took a step then stopped. There was something at his feet. It was the man who showed him the puzzle. The man who hit him. “Mommy. Daddy.”
Nothing, and the sound in his head now deepened, gaining bass, thundering in time to the throbbing around his eye. Mommy and Daddy were not answering. He had to get to the basement. The man on the floor was in the way.
Simon’s feet shuffled in place for a moment. Then he lifted one over the man, and the other. He walked past the kitchen and stopped one last time as the avalanche of noise grew. “Mommy. Daddy.”
They were not here. If they were here they would come. Simon knew what to do.
He walked quickly to the door to the basement, opened it, and closed it behind. His footsteps were light on the stairs as he descended.
Chapter Four
The Friend Card
The silver Volvo 940 eased into the minor stream rushing down the gutter and stopped curbside in front of the Federal Building. Art opened the door and stepped across the waterway to enter the warm interior of the wedding present he’d given his wife. She accelerated into a break in the traffic and began the trek to the JFK Expressway.
“Thanks for the lift, babe,” Art said as he opened the front of his overcoat. Hot air washed over him from the vents.
“It’s no problem,” Anne replied tepidly, her eyes straight ahead, thumb tapping rhythmically on the steering wheel. The stereo was off. Her husband leaned over and kissed her cheek.
“My car took a crap this afternoon,” Art explained. Six months old and the Bureau Chevy had thrown a rod! “And can you believe there wasn’t one damn spare in pool?” Budget cuts were wonderful things, he was thinking when he realized Anne wasn’t commenting. He turned attention to her and saw her ‘I’m not pleased with myself’ face. Had it been her ‘I’m not pleased with you’ face she’d be looking at him, or at whoever was deserving of it. Instead, she stared blankly at the brake lights ahead, but Art knew she was really looking inside. “Something wrong, babe?”
Anne straightened and let out part of a breath she felt she’d been holding for almost an hour now. “Have you ever tried your damndest to make something happen, but it just wouldn’t?”
Every day, Art thought, but he knew that wasn’t what she needed to hear. “Sometimes.”
“Well, I had one of those sometimes this afternoon.” She frowned and shook her head, and even considered giving the steering wheel a good thump with the heel of her hand, but didn’t.
“Is this about that kid you told me about?” Art asked. Of course the Bulls had been on in the background when she was telling him in mild shouts from the kitchen of their home in Evanston, about an hour from the city on a good traffic day.
“Simon,” Anne said, irritation beneath the word. “The autistic young man?”
“I remember,” Art said.
Anne relaxed a bit. “Sorry.”
Art rubbed her leg through the blue skirt. “Forget it. Go on.”
“His…” She retracted the invective she almost let slip. “…father refuses to—” The ringing of a cell phone interrupted her complaint.
“Yours,” Art said.
Anne fished the phone from her purse with one hand and answered it after the third ring. “Hello… Yes, this is her… What?”
Art watched his wife lean forward to the steering wheel, almost as if she needed the support. “Babe?”
“When did this…” She pulled the Volvo hurriedly to the curb to a symphony of angry horns, and closed her eyes. “How did you get my number?”
Art saw her nod a few times, then she clicked off and practically dove toward him across the center console. “Babe, what is it?”
Anne pulled him very close, as tight as she could, and silently cursed herself for the thoughts she’d almost expressed toward Simon’s parents. “It’s…Simon,” she managed to say between sobs, then pulled back from Art and tried to regain her composure. She put both hands very properly on the steering wheel and said, “I’ve got to get to him.”
“What is it?” Art almost begged as his wife screeched back into traffic and doubled back toward the Eisenhower Expressway.
The Cadillac limousine was an hour outside of Tokyo when the youngish man facing Keiko finished reading her report on what the American had revealed. He looked to her and set the twelve pages on the seat next to him. “Again, you have done fine work. Mr. Chappell knew even more about the Americans’ position on tariff limits than we anticipated.”
Keiko stared back at him through dark glasses. She was reclined in the leather seat, facing the direction of travel, and had counted two trains passing the car on the right at a very great speed. She wore tight black jeans and a black blazer over a white tee-shirt. Her hair hung loose. One hand lay across her stomach. The other picked quietly at a seam in the upholstery.
“Mr. Kimodo will be pleased,” Mitsuo Heiji said, his expression cooling a bit before continuing. “But he is concerned with your…method.”
Keiko looked right, past the train tracks to the farmland beyond. In the far distance the morning sky was grey and threatening. The rain was going to come. “Are we going to turn back soon?” she asked the window, ignoring the question.
Heiji did not answer immediately. With her attention on something outside the car he let his eyes wander over her body. She was forty, and those years showed somewhat in her face, but her body could belong to a teenager. He might have chanced a proposition once, but not after seeing what remained of Carlton Kerr, the first American she’d handled some months before. Heiji had laid eyes upon the body before seeing to its disposal at a highway construction site. It was difficult to think of the man that way with his tongue torn out and one knee bent forward at an impossible angle. That this…woman had done that frightened Heiji more than a bit. If only she were tame his thoughts might be of pleasure.
“Mitsuo, don’t imagine yourself with me,” Keiko said without looking to him. “Imagination is the second most dangerous thing a man has.”
Heiji snickered a bit, nervously. He had been too obvious in his musings. “The second, is it?”
“Yes.”
“What is the first?”
“A heartbeat,” she answered while turning back to face him. A bulge rolled down his throat.
“Again, I must convey that your methods are of concern to Mr. Kimodo.”
“I got what he wanted,” Keiko said with quiet authority. Twelve pages of drivel that the American had offered quite freely after she’d crushed one of his testicles in her hand; the second she popped between her teeth just prior to gutting him alive, during the course of which he’d had the sense to die. Twelve pages of words. Trade policy decisions. Commerce Department needs. Tasks ahead and information desired by his superiors. Words. To Kimodo the business tycoon they were gold, but Keiko knew she’d felt the American’s true worth spill over her naked body in a spout from his open belly. She had come soon after that.
“But the remnants of your…success are quite graphic,” Heiji persisted, choosing his words haltingly at times, but with care. “These things are not public, of course, but to anger the Americans with a…distasteful display of one of their own is not wise.” He felt her stare harden, and added quickly, “In Mr. Kimodo’s eyes. Perhaps it would be wise to conclude your…sessions as you did with Mr. Hashimoto last year. You succeeded then, and left no…untidiness.”