Angel Eyes (62 page)

But Tori wasn't listening. "Christ," she continued, "if he's involved in cocaine smuggling, he might not even talk to me.''

''But he's got to," Russell said. "He owes you, doesn't he?''

Tori gave him a small smile. "If only it were that simple." She shook her head. ''No matter what giri Hitasura feels toward me, I am still gaijin, an outsider. That fact outweighs everything else, even giri, because to a Japanese a gaijin might speak of giri, but it is impossible to believe that he will live by it. That gives him the leeway to speak of giri to me, without actually meaning it."

"Christ. If he feels he owes you nothing, how will you get him to admit to his involvement, let alone tell you what's going on?"

"Right now, I haven't the faintest idea," Tori said.

Russell sat on the bed, took her in his arms. ''You scared the hell out of me, you know."

"Russ, you're losing your director's perspective."

"Fuck being a director. I'm a field executive now."

She smiled. "You've been demoted."

"Is that how you see it? I don't. I've gotten a sense of the Mall that I never had before. It seems that the higher you get in any hierarchy, the less you know about the nuts and bolts of running it." He leaned forward. "That's because you have to turn off and disconnect yourself from one set of alliances in order to plug yourself into the political sockets needed to keep the jackals on Capitol Hill at bay.''

''Dangerous stuff.''

Russell nodded. "But a month ago I would have wasted my time and yours by shouting you down. Being out here in the field has allowed me to finally see the danger in what I and Bernard do. We get more and more insulated, devising policies-theoretical canvasses which we then order you to color with your blood. I'm beginning to understand that Bernard and I have lost all perspective. Politics and life are often wildly out of sync, that's what being out here in the wild has taught me."

Tori kissed him lightly. "We all have expectations of things: people, events, situations, you name it, but the reality is so often different. You know, there was a story Bernard told me about when he was younger.''

"You mean when he supposedly went to Chicago to look up his long-lost dad, and Dad turned out to be a sonuvabitch after all?"

Tori stared at Russell. "He told you, too."

Here we go, Russell thought. I'm never going to get a better shot at this. "Tori, Bernard loves to tell that story, but it's bullshit, pure and simple. He tried it on me, only I had done my homework. I knew he came from bluebloods in Virginia. His father was a wealthy and successful attorney, founding a dynastic law office. Until his death some years ago, he had been happily married to his wife-Bernard's mother-for more than fifty years."

"But that story . . ."

He could feel her drawing away from him, a familiar coldness coming into her, but still he persisted; it was time for her to know the truth. "Bernard thinks it makes him seem more human. He tells it to people like you to help bind them to him.''

"Oh, come on," Tori said. "Bernard's not that cynical."

"He doesn't think of himself that way," Russell said. "According to Bernard, business is conducted in any manner that gets the job done."

"I don't believe you," Tori said.

"Then you certainly won't believe that before I left with you on this assignment Bernard told me what to do to you if your undisciplined methodology got in the way." Russell rose. "He told me to terminate you."

It was dusk by the time Ton returned from the Mall offices at the Sumitomo Building in Shinjuku. By that time it had begun to rain, fine silver needles spraying the sidewalks, streets, and car tops, smearing the city grit across windshields. Gray water dripped from building facades. The sidewalks were a sea of umbrellas. Neon had taken over from daylight.

Russell had remained at the office to transmit a progress report and clear up the mountain of paperwork that accumulated during a transcontinental trip.

Tori was shaken by her foray into the Mall Central computers. Her suspicions had been made all too real. The travel information contained there confirmed everything that Koi had told her about the coalition between the industrialist Kunio Michita, Fumida Ten, chairman of Kaga, and Tori's friend, Hitasura, with Estilo acting as willing middleman supplier.

Koi's repeated mention of the mysterious American "who didn't have the appearance of a businessman" had set off warning bells in Tori's mind. Now she recalled her and Russell's puzzlement over why Estilo would give them information that seemed detrimental to him. In revealing his involvement, he had not only implicated himself-thus risking a termination of what must be a lucrative business deal to supply the decidedly odd Michita-Ten-Hitasura coalition with illegal hafnium-but he also had pointed them toward the one person in Japan who could help them further: Hitasura. Why?

Now it seemed clear: he had been warning Tori. If Estilo had betrayed their friendship, he had more than made up for it by what he had done. Tori thought now that she owed Estilo an enormous apology. He could have told her outright what was happening, but he knew that she would not be able to bring herself to believe him. He knew that she had to be led step by step toward the inevitable conclusion.

The information in the Mall Central computer confirmed that on the dates that the Kaga-Michita negotiations were commencing, Bernard Godwin had been out of the country. But there was some other reason why these dates seemed familiar. Tori racked her brain, but could not think of where she had come across them before.

Giving it up for the moment, she returned to the most immediate problem: where had Bernard Godwin gone? A search through the travel facilities of the Mall revealed that he had not used the company's services to book his flights.

Linking up to the American airlines computers had been more enlightening. A week before the Kaga-Michita negotiations had begun in earnest, Bernard Godwin had bought a first-class ticket to San Francisco. He was there just overnight. The next day he was on a flight to Tokyo. His return to the States was three weeks later.

Tori did not believe in coincidences. Bernard Godwin was the American who had instigated Michita's inquiry into the new Kaga process that had led to the forming of the coalition.

Bernard Godwin!

But that was patently impossible. For one thing, Tori could not believe that a man like Bernard would ever involve himself with cocaine trafficking. For another, even if the impossible had occurred, Godwin-along with Russell-had had a hand in bringing her back in order to track down the source of the lethal supercocaine. Recalling Bernard's outraged face as Russell described the effects of the new drug, Tori was more certain than ever that he had nothing to do with that part of it.

And yet Hitasura was an integral part of the coalition that Bernard must have put together so that he could supply these new nuclear weapons-whatever they were-to his precious nationalist movement in the Soviet Union. And Estilo had said that the untreated coke was being bought by Hitasura.

It's still not making sense. What am I missing? Tori asked herself.

There was only one path to take, and it led right through Hitasura.

Hitasura's tea-colored melanin birthmark, which ran up the left side of his jaw onto his cheek, seemed darker on this dark twilit day. The pachinko parlor in the Ginza was vast, as large as a castle. It was one of many owned by Hitasura's Yakuza family. The weekly amount of money Hitasura took in from just these betting game parlors, Tori knew, was astronomical.

Lights flashed on the rows of vertical game boards as steel balls whizzed through the maze of the pachinko. Men and women-especially women-stood enwrapped, playing game after game. The hardened veterans were sure to stake out one of the game machines that had a tiny color TV screen set in the middle of the game field so that they would not miss their favorite soap operas while they lost their money.

Hitasura sat in a glassed-in booth two floors above the action. The entire back wall of the booth was a bank of TV monitors which scanned the aisles and rows of players, making sure the house odds were not being tampered with.

"We got a kid in here last month," Hitasura said as Tori put down her dripping umbrella, came to sit beside him on a plain metal and green vinyl office chair. "You should have seen him, the sonuvabitch was some whiz. He had made a tiny electronic gadget that zapped the pachinko machine's circuits. He won every other time he played. Then he got carried away with himself and began to win every game. That was too much, don't you think?"

Tori said nothing. She ignored the TV monitors reproducing the frantic play going on below her. She had changed clothes at the Mall offices in Shinjuku. She wore a pair of tapered chocolate-colored leather pants, a man-tailored cream cotton blouse under a waist-length fawn-colored quilted rain jacket.

"How are you?" Hitasura inquired. He was wearing an expensive but ill-fitting sharkskin suit that was still rain-stained. "When we got to you in the tunnels and Mr. Slade told me you had been poisoned, I moved heaven and earth to make sure you wouldn't die."

"Deke's dead," Tori said. "Yen Yasuwara is maimed."

Hitasura rocked a little in his chair, as if he had developed a Western manner of mourning. "I am sorry you learned about Deke's death in this way," he said. "I had wanted to be the one who told you."

"Under the circumstances,'' Tori said carefully, "I agree that would have been proper.'' She noticed that he had not acknowledged in any way her reference to Yen.

Hitasura looked at her. "Perhaps you should speak to your newfound friend, the assassin who calls herself Koi. She killed Deke."

Tori said, "I have talked to her."

Hitasura turned his head away. His gaze was flicking from screen to screen on the wall of monitors. Suddenly Tori saw him start. "She's here," he said.

Tori looked at the screen that held his attention. It showed Koi making her way down one of the aisles on the floor below.

"What is she doing here?"

"I asked her to come," Tori said.

"You?" Hitasura's head swung around.

Tori watched him. "It's time to settle our accounts, to honor old debts."

Hitasura's face was now devoid of all emotion. It was as if his eyes had slid behind a veil. He reached behind him, produced a pistol from a holster strapped to the small of his back. He balanced the pistol on his right kneecap.

"Is that necessary?"

"When old friends reveal themselves as enemies," Hitasura said, "all precautions must be taken."

''What makes you think I've become your enemy?''

Hitasura gestured with his chin. "You bring Big Ezoe's assassin here to my ground, you have become friends with a monster who would murder you where you lay helpless in my bed. My bed! What else am I to think?"

"I don't know," Tori said. "I'm not the one whose conscience lies heavy."

Hitasura made a dismissing sound between his teeth.

Tori watched Koi as she passed from monitor to monitor, as she moved toward the metal staircase to the booth. Tori said, "As long as you brought up the notion, tell me, what kind of monster is it who concocts a new kind of cocaine so powerful its effects destroy the human mind and body in months?"

Hitasura sat very still, and with an icy crawling in the pit of her stomach, Tori had her answer. Estilo had not lied. Hitasura was the man.

Hitasura said, ''If she begins to climb the stairs to this office, I'll order her shot, I promise you.''

"And then you'll shoot me, and all your problems will be solved." Tori shook her head. "But, no. There's Russ to think of. What will you do about him, Hitasura? Kill him as well? What good will that do you? There will only be more people from the Mall come to avenge his death-and mine. You can't win this time."

Hitasura allowed himself a tiny smile. "Is that how you see the situation? Well, good. Then I have nothing at all to fear." Now a laugh leaked out of his mouth, quickly stifled, as if it had popped out unexpectedly. Hitasura wiped the smirk from his face. "Pardon me for laughing at you, but I could not help myself. You are so far off the mark, you have added a moment of unexpected amusement to an otherwise serious discussion."

"What's struck you so funny?" She had not wanted to give him the satisfaction of asking, but she, too, could not help herself.

"Mmm. I suppose you could not have forgotten Tom Royce. No, I see by the expression on your face, you have not. Then there is Tok Murashito. I know you remember him. What an interview you had with him, you the avenging angel out to nail him for killing that idiot Royce.''

Tori was astonished. "How do you know about my meeting with Murashito?"

"Well, it wasn't from you, was it?" Hitasura cocked his head. "Figure it out for yourself. Having trouble? Okay, I'll go on. Murashito killed Royce, all right, but he didn't do it because Royce had raped his daughter. The funny thing is that I think Tom Royce was fully capable of rape, but Murashito was far too clever to allow his daughter anywhere near Royce.

"No, Murashito killed Royce because he was ordered to. By whom? you are about to ask. Why, by Bernard Godwin. Royce had begun his own investigation into Godwin's involvement here in Japan, and the deeper he got, it seems the less he liked what he saw. That's why he angled to take the assignment to come to Japan to brief you. Godwin let him come; until that moment, he had not been sure that Royce was the one doing the burrowing behind his back. Once he was sure, Royce's fate was sealed. He was a dead man. So you can see how empty a threat you've just made. No one from the Mall will come to avenge your death-or that of Mr. Slade. There will no doubt be an investigation, but Bernard will handle it himself. The circumstances dictate it, after all." Another laugh was squeezed out of him, and Tori shivered.

Hitasura cocked his head again, responding to the dumbfounded look on Tori's face. "Are you shocked? Perhaps I've gone too fast and you're not following me. Shall I slow down?"

All she could think of was Bernard Godwin: how he had manipulated everyone around him, including her. She had thought of him as a surrogate father, when all along he had been using her. She heard Russell's voice, Bernard told me what to do to you if your undisciplined methodology got in the way. He told me to terminate you. How right Russell had been about him.