Angel Eyes (60 page)

She took the kyotetsu-shoge, walked to the rear of the roof. Knotting a length of nylon rope she carried around the center of the weapon's chain, she wrapped the kyotetsu-shoge around a metal flue. Paying the rope out slowly until she tied the other end around her waist, she went over the side of the house.

When she got level with the pebbled-glass bathroom window, she braced herself by placing her feet on either side of it. It was partly open, but this was of no help to her, since the metal frame impinged on the space she needed to crawl through.

She spent the next two minutes detaching the window from its hinged brackets. Then she slid it carefully into the bathroom, followed it in.

It was a tight fit, but she made it. She untied herself from the nylon cord, stood absolutely still for ten minutes. While her eyes adjusted to the gloom inside, she accustomed her ears to listen to the natural sounds of the house: creaks, doors opening, closing, footfalls in the hallway, muffled voices. No TV, no radio, no stereo, no VCR. No loud sound, no doubt in deference to their sick house guest.

When Koi was certain that she had catalogued every sound, no matter how minute, and that she would pick up the slightest deviation, she opened the bathroom door a crack.

Again she was still for ten minutes, allowing the scents of the house to come to her while the repetition of the tiny sounds reassured her that all was as it should be.

She had come in on the fourth and top floor. It seemed logical to her for Hitasura to put Tori Nunn as high up as he could. Also, that he would put her in a room as near to a bathroom as possible.

Koi stepped out into a hallway. To her right was the landing of the open iron spiral staircase down to the third floor. Beyond were two rooms, both with their doors open, both dark. Koi forgot them. To her left was only one room, the door to which was closed. A crack of dim light filtered out into the hallway from the far edge, which was not quite fitted into the frame.

Still Koi did not move. Her peripheral vision had picked up a shadow moving. It crept up the open stairwell, illuminated by the lamps below. Someone was coming up the stairs.

She contracted her wa, stilled her breathing to the minimum. She watched as the top of a man's head came into view. It stopped, and she could hear voices talking softly. She craned her neck without otherwise moving, saw the top of a shorter man's head. He had been guarding the staircase, but because of his lack of height, she had not been able to see him from where she stood.

Koi waited. Eventually the conversation ceased, the shadow moved down the spiral staircase. The shorter man remained at his post, but he was concentrated on someone trying to come up the stairs. Koi slipped down the hallway to her left, out of his field of vision.

She stood by the lone door for a long time. She could hear nothing from inside the room. Her fingers on the door, a spider's deft touch. She pushed it inward.

Koi stepped into the room. It was a bedroom, furnished in Western style: mahogany bed, masculine dressers, a dark red and black patterned rug covering most of the floor. A mirror hung on the wall, along with several modern abstract prints. A lamp glowed on a night table beside the bed.

On Koi's face now spread that singular expression: ecstasy and despair.

In the bed was the sleeping form of a woman. Koi drank her in, the face beautiful even if her skin was still unhealthily pale. Her breasts rose and fell evenly from beneath the covers. Her long cinnamon-colored hair fanned out across the pillowcase. Very exotic, very American.

Tori Nunn.

ELEVEN

TOKYO

Tori Nunn, lying unconscious in the big bed in the fourth-floor bedroom of Hitasura's safehouse near Hammacho Station, was dreaming of one moment in time, when she was the Wild Child.

It was nine years ago, the year after she had stumbled across Hitasura, who had pulled her out of hiding after she and her brother Greg had been involved in the death of the young Yakuza; three months after she had been recruited into the Mall by Bernard Godwin.

The then-managing director of the Mail-and Godwin's right hand man-was Tom Royce. Royce was a lanky, rawboned man, a sunravaged Texan who rolled when he walked, and chewed rather than smoked small black cheroots. It was easy to imagine him in a ten-gallon hat, lassoing a dogie. Bernard had sent him to Japan to brief Tori on Mall procedure and discipline.

In Tori's opinion, Royce was entirely the wrong man to send to Japan. After the first interminable week with him, she cabled Bernard this conviction, but all the reply she received was a terse "Carry on. You're under discipline. Follow orders."

In the end, however. Tori was proved correct. Japan got to Tom Royce.

Royce fancied himself a real cowboy. Wyatt Earp. When Tori found him in the alley behind her apartment shot to death with his own Colt pistol, she was hardly surprised. But she was angry. This was Tokyo, her city, and she had been charged with Royce's safety. Besides, the murder had come on what was the equivalent of her back porch.

She knelt beside Tom Royce's body, pulled the barrel of the Remington out of his throat. What a way to die. Yakuza, Tori was willing to bet. She went to see Hitasura.

The Yakuza oyabun was not forthcoming. "I do not know who killed this American," Hitasura said after they had had green tea and, as civilized protocol demanded, had spoken of many other unimportant matters, "but I will shed no tears for him. And neither will you," he added shrewdly.

''My personal feelings for Royce are unimportant,'' Tori said. "I was responsible for him. Whoever killed him knew that, and threw him up into my face."

"The American was without manners," Hitasura said, as if he had not heard her. ''He was loud, aggressive, he made passes at our women and insulted our men. I would think that the suspects in his murder would be many."

"Only one person killed him," Tori said, rising, "and that person must answer for the insult."

Hitasura had poured more tea. "This time, Tori-san, I would think it better if you let the matter drop."

"It is a question of honor," Tori said. "If I back away, then I am worth nothing. To my employers, to myself."

Hitasura said nothing, and she left him pouring more tea for himself and for a guest who was no longer there.

Over the next several weeks Tori dived deep into the bowels of Tokyo. She wheedled, cajoled, threatened, plied her contacts with drink. Nobody knew a thing about Tom Royce's murder. Either that or they were involved in a conspiracy of silence. It could happen. For all of Tori's fame, and the respect she was given by the Japanese, she was still gaijin, an outsider. And now, trying to run down Tom Royce's murder, she came to the realization that as much as she wanted-needed-Japan to be her home, it was not. She was born Caucasian, and here that alone counted too heavily and irrevocably against her.

With a kind of relief she never thought she would feel, she flew back to the States, spent ten days being debriefed by Bernard himself in Mall Central in Virginia, then headed west to Los Angeles and Diana's Garden.

Ellis Nunn didn't say, What the hell are you doing here? He didn't say anything; he was on a business trip in Europe. Greg was off on some top-secret assignment for NASA. That left Tori to fend for herself with her mother.

Within a week that familiar stifling feeling had returned, and Tori packed her bags, flew directly back to Tokyo.

It was good to be back. The city seemed scoured clean, bright with nervous energy, a beating heart that never faltered. It didn't matter that in her absence so many buildings had been torn down, others built in their stead, that she hardly recognized certain districts-that was part of Tokyo's uniqueness, and she felt immediately at ease.

She threw herself back into her work, but the specter of Tom Royce's murder continued to haunt her. Now she could not get her interview with Hitasura out of her mind; What if it was one of his lieutenants who had murdered Royce, or even worse, Hitasura himself?

Tori asked herself what she would do if the worse came to the worst. Would she try to bring Hitasura down, or would she back away, as he had first suggested?

This was the essential question that gnawed at her the night she was at The Neon Starfish. It was a club just this side of respectability, on the outskirts of the Ginza, starlit with colored lights, with a transparent floor beneath which lusciously colored tropical fish swam in lazy circles.

There were two Japanese businessmen, drunk on sake, who she had been aware of for some time. They looked as similar as bookends, though one was shorter than the other. They had already taken off their suit jackets, hung them up on seat backs. They wanted women, but were apparently too drunk to make it down the block to the local akachochin, where they could have their pick of the litter in return for a sum of money equal to a month's paycheck.

Instead they had begun a series of obnoxiously maudlin reports on the pathetic state of their home lives. Tori had just about had it with stories of their suckling at their wives teats as they had done with their mothers, when, as drunks are often wont to do, without warning they veered off on another topic entirely.

Now they were intent on impressing one another with tales from the office where, latter-day samurai as they apparently considered themselves, they were rife with legends of their boardroom prowess.

This also proved to be boring, and Tori was considering changing tables to escape the white noise, when the shorter man said to his pal, "That's nothing. My boss killed a man. Yes, yes, of course, it's true. I swear it! We got drunk together last week, and he told me so himself. 'I killed an American,' he said. A drastic resolution to a problem, I said, but you know my boss, very old-fashioned, comes from the Murashitos-his ancestors it is said were samurai at the court of the first Shogun, Ieyasu Tokugawa. But now he tells me that this American raped his daughter, and I say, did you go to the police? 'What?' he said crossly, 'and involve my poor daughter further? Do you think I would consider holding her up for public inspection, or dragging her through the courts? No, no, not a chance.' This had to be settled quickly, privately, absolutely. I agreed. Yes, yes, I believe he did right."

Tori moved closer to the shorter businessman, and at one point, in leaning over to find something in her handbag, she palmed his wallet out of his inside jacket pocket. She dug out one of his business cards, and five minutes later slipped the wallet back without having been detected.

The next morning she presented herself at the executive offices of Tandom Polycarbon. They had a dozen floors in a huge building in Shinjuku, and the chairman's suite was on the top floor. She asked to see Tok Murashito, but was told that the chairman was in the middle of a board meeting and, furthermore, would be tied up all day. There was an appointment book on the secretary's burlwood desk, but she did not ask Tori if she wished to make an appointment. Tori was apparently beneath her notice.

Tori said sweetly, "Just tell Mr. Murashito that Tom Royce's sister is here to see him.''

"I'm afraid that Murashito-san has left instructions not to be disturbed," the secretary said.

Tori leaned over the desk, put her face close to the secretary's, expanded her wa to its limits. "Call him. I'll wait." The secretary jumped as if poked with a hot fork. Her hand trembled as it picked up the receiver. She dialed an internal number, spoke briefly, waited a moment, then spoke again at length. In a moment she hung up. She seemed frightened. "Murashito-san will see you in his office," she said, getting up. "I'll show you the way.''

The secretary led Tori through thick wooden doors, down a hushed carpeted corridor whose walls were covered with color blowups of microscopic views of different man-made fabrics that Tandom Polycarbon had designed, created, and patented. These photographs were matted and framed like works of art.

Tok Murashito had an office that faced west and south, a magnificent view that was in itself a major work of art. But the inner walls of his office were adorned with a Braque, a Schiele, and a Manet. Tori was impressed, as she was meant to be, both by Tok Murashito's wealth and his good taste.

Fuck good taste, Tori thought as the secretary withdrew.

Tok Murashito made certain that she had the office to herself before he made his entrance through a discreet side door hidden within the walnut paneling that housed a wet bar, a magnificent Olmec head that belonged in a Mexican museum, and six shelves of books more suitable to a lawyer's office.

He was shorter than the short drunk man who had spilled the beans the night before at The Neon Starfish, but he was thicker, too, with the wide shoulders and upper arms of a bodybuilder. The way his muscles stretched his suit, he seemed to belong in a dojo or a gym rather than a boardroom. The way he was built, Tori saw, he'd have to have all his clothes made to order.

"Well," Tok Murashito said without preliminaries, "what is it you want?"

Okay, Tori thought. "You murdered an American named Tom Royce."

Murashito didn't blink. "I had just cause."

"I wonder whether the police will think so."

"The police won't be called."

"Oh? What makes you think that?"

Tok Murashito walked past his desk, looked out his windows. It was a magnificent view, but it was also a long way down.

Murashito put his hands behind his back. "Why would the police be called?''

"They usually are when a murder has been committed."

He nodded. "That's true. In fact, they're already on the case.'' He smiled. "Surprised, Miss Royce? The police have been in contact with me. You see, we knew one another. Royce and I did business from time to time."

Tori recalled Tom Royce's cover as a textile salesman, thought, Fronts have to be maintained in order for them to seem legitimate. "So you knew him," she said. "Do the police also know you had a motive?"

Tbk Murashito went very still. "Who are you?" he said.

Tori ignored him. ''You didn't report the rape of your daughter, did you?"