Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 10 (31 page)

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.

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?”

The door opened wider and displayed her full face with the astonished expression frozen there, though her lips quivered and seemed almost to form a smile. “…What?”

“Always meeting in hotel rooms.”

And she backed away, shaking her head in disbelief, hand over her mouth, eyes filling with tears, as I stepped into the room, shutting the door behind me; she was thin but not emaciated, her face gaunt but not skeletal. She wore a short-sleeve mannish sportshirt and rust-color slacks and no shoes and looked neat and clean.

That’s all I had time to take in before she flew into my arms, clutching me desperately, and I held her close, held her tight, as she wept into my clerical suitcoat, saying my name over and over, and I kissed the nape of her neck, and maybe I wept a little, too.

“You’re here,” she was saying, “how can you be here? Crazy…you’re here…so crazy…here….”

Our first kiss in a very long time was salty and tender and yearning and tried not to end, but when at last she drew away from me, just a little, still in my arms, and looked at me with bewilderment, she didn’t seem able to form any more words, the surprise had knocked the wind from her.

And so she kissed me again, greedily; I savored it, then pulled gently away.

“Take it easy, baby,” I said, running a finger around my clerical collar. “I got a vow of celibacy to maintain.”

And she laughed—with only a little hysteria in it—and said, “Nathan Heller a priest? That’s good…. That’s rich.”

“That’s Father Brian O’Leary,” I corrected, stepping away from her, taking a look around her room. “If anyone should ask….”

Her living quarters were identical to mine, save for a few additional allowances for an American “guest”: a well-worn faded green upholstered armchair and, near the window looking onto the neighboring house and the rooftops beyond, a small Japanese-magazine-arrayed table with a reading lamp and an ashtray bearing the residue of several incense sticks. Incense fragrance lingered, apparently Amy’s antidote to the ever-present Garapan bouquet of dried fish and copra.

But she had the same woven-reed carpet, padded quilts for a bed, low-slung teakwood table with floor cushions. On the clothesrack, among a few simple dresses and the inevitable plaid shirts, hung the oil-stained, weathered leather flight jacket she’d worn when she flew me in her Vega from St. Louis to Burbank. I checked the walls—including behind her dresser mirror—for drilled holes, found nothing to indicate we were being monitored. I didn’t figure we had much to worry about: the Japanese weren’t exactly known for their technical wizardry.

Nonetheless, we both kept our voices hushed.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, studying me with wide eyes that didn’t seem to know whether to be filled with joy, disbelief or fear. “How in God’s name did you…?”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” she said, with a sigh of a laugh, “hell no,” a rare swear word from this proper creature, and she flung herself into my arms again. I squeezed her tight, then held her face in my hands and studied it, memorized it, and kissed her as sweetly as I knew how.

“Why did do you this?” she asked, cheek pressed against my chest, arms clasped around me, grasped around me, as if she were afraid I might bolt. “Why did you…?”

“You know me,” I said. “I was hired. Works out to a grand a week.”

And she was laughing quietly into my suitcoat.

“You just can’t admit it, can you?” She looked up at me, grinning her wonderful gap-toothed grin. “You’re a romantic fool. My mercenary detective…coming halfway around the world for a woman….”

There was something I had to ask, had to know, though I knew she was brimming with so many questions she didn’t know where or how to start. With us standing there, in each other’s arms, I said, “I thought…maybe…”

She was studying me now, almost amused. “What?”

“That there might be…someone else here with you.”

“Who?” She winced. “Fred? He’s in that horrible jail…poor thing.”

“No, I…Amy, was there a baby?” It came out in a rush of ridiculous words. “Did you have your baby and they took it away from you?”

She smiled half a smile, and it settled on one side of her face; she touched the tip of my nose with a finger lightly, then asked, “Who told you I was pregnant?”

“Your secretary.”

“Margot?” The grin widened. “I bet you slept with her.”

“Almost. How about you?”

She slapped my chest. “I shouldn’t have confided in that foolish girl. I hope you’re not too disappointed…. I hope you didn’t make this trip just to be a father…but most men would be relieved to hear it was a false alarm.”

I hugged her to me, whispered my response into her hair. “I am relieved…not that I wouldn’t mind being a father to a child of yours…but to think our kid would be caught up in these circumstances.”

She drew away, her eyes hooded in understanding, nodded, taking my hand, leading me to the quilted sleeping mats on the floor. We sat there, cross-legged, like kids playing Indian, holding hands.

Her smile was a half-circle of embarrassment. “Nathan, I’m afraid…it was something else…”

“What was?”

“What I thought was the baby. There never will be a baby…not in these circumstances, or any other.”

“What do you mean?”

She squeezed my hand. “What I thought was pregnancy, Nathan…was early menopause…” Shaking her head, her expression grooved with wry regret, she added, “The, uh, symptoms
are
similar.”

I slipped an arm around her, pulled her against me. “You picked a hell of a climate for hot flashes, lady.”

She laughed softly. “I didn’t feel a thing…I was so ill with dysentery when they brought me here…can you imagine? I arrive at the dysentery capital of the world
with
a case of the world-class trots…. They had me in the hospital here for many, many months…I almost died.”

“Were you ever in that jail?”

She rolled her eyes, nodded vigorously. “Oh my goodness, yes…the ‘calaboose,’ they call it. Same cellblock as Fred—that dirty little building with the four nasty cells. But I only lasted three days. I passed out and woke up, I don’t know…six months later.”

I frowned. “Then you really did almost die. What, were you in a coma?”

She shrugged. “Or they kept me doped up. I don’t really know….” She studied me through narrowed eyes, as if only now she had convinced herself I wasn’t an apparition. “What are you doing here, Nathan? Who sent you on this harebrained expedition? G. P.?”

My laugh was harsher than I intended. “Not hardly. He had you declared dead, I don’t know, two years ago; he’s already remarried.”

The blood drained out of her face; so did the emotion.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry…. I don’t mean to be so cold about it….”

“It’s all right. It’s just…I knew he didn’t love me, anymore. And I never loved him, not really. But we were…a kind of team, you know? A partnership. I think I…deserved a little better from him, is all.”

“You’re preaching to the choir on that one.”

She flashed me the gap-toothed grin and slipped a finger in my collar and tugged. “Preaching to the preacher, you mean. What’s this about? Who
did
send you, you wonderful lunatic?”

“The same star-spangled bunch who sold you out,” I said. “Uncle Sam and assorted nephews.”

And I filled her in, giving her a brief but fairly complete rundown, from my unofficial investigation in July of ’37 (she was fascinated and astounded to learn that I’d heard her capture on the Myers family Philco) to my current mission, right up to my role as I.R.A. emissary Father O’Leary—leaving out what Chief Suzuki had asked of me.

Then it was her turn, and she told how she and Noonan had been picked up by a launch from a battleship, and were held in a place called Jaluit where a doctor tended to injuries Noonan had received ditching in the water; they were bounced from one Japanese Naval station to another, islands with names like Kwajalein, Roi, Namor, and finally to Saipan, where they were interrogated by Suzuki and others—they denied being spies, having dropped their photographic equipment into the ocean—and were jailed.

“After my collapse in my cell, and that long stay in the hospital,” she said, “I was brought here to the Kobayashi Ryokan. And I’ve been treated more or less decently, ever since. I’m really under a kind of house arrest.”

“You mean, you can come and go as you please?”

She nodded, shrugged. “Within boundaries. There are always at least two of those native police lackeys watching me, here at the hotel—day and night; if I leave, they’re my shadows…even when it’s just a trip out to the privy.”

“How short a leash are you on?”

“I can venture out into the Garapan business district. Like a child, I have an allowance. I can get my hair done. Go to the movies. Stop at a teahouse—they don’t make cocoa here, unfortunately, so I’ve finally learned to drink tea and coffee, at this late date. But always my Chamorro chaperons are nearby.”

“You mean, if we wanted to leave right now,” I said, “we could go for a walk—we’d just have a couple of fat ugly tails on our behinds?”

“Yes.” She gripped my hand, tight. “But Nathan…don’t underestimate them—particularly the one named Jesus.” Her eyes took on a momentary glaze. “Lord Jesus, the islanders call him. His own people are frightened to death of him, even the ones he works with. He’s terribly cruel.”

I looked at her carefully. “You sound like you speak from experience….”

“I know he’s tortured Fred, many times.”

“It’s more than that.”

She nodded in admission, and shared the unpleasant memory: “Shortly after I got out of the hospital, Lord Jesus came to my room, this room, and tried to make me admit I was a spy….” She tilted her head to one side and pointed to her neck, where there were several nasty burn scars.

“Cigarettes?” I asked. A cold rage was rising in me.

She nodded. “But Chief Suzuki came in and saw what Jesus was doing, and put a stop to it.”

I didn’t bother to tell her that she’d just described an interrogation technique that dated back to the time of the original Jesus. Except for the cigarettes.

“This room has become a kind of…sanctuary for me,” she said. Then her tone turned bitter. “But I always remember that, whenever they want, any of them can come right through that door…torture me, rape me, whatever they please…. It’s a pleasant enough prison, Nathan—but it’s a prison.”

“Let’s go for that walk,” I suggested. “A priest and his parishioner.”

She nodded, springing to her feet with girlish enthusiasm. “Just let me grab my sandals….”

We went out through the lobby—a Chamorro clerk in a high-collared white shirt and bemused expression was at the check-in desk, now—and Jesus and Ramon were indeed still playing cards at their matchstick-, billy club-and machete-littered table. Under his misshapen straw fedora, the blunt-featured, knife-scarred, pockmarked puss of Lord Jesus frowned up at us in a startling mixture of indignation and contempt. How dare we interrupt his life?

“Catching some air,” I explained. “In Six—remember?”

He sneered at me, baring mahogany teeth and the space for one.

And then we stepped out onto the wooden sidewalk where a cool yet muggy afternoon awaited under a steel-wool sky. We strolled by the general merchandise store with its shelves open onto the street, dolls and cloisonné vases, cakes and confectioneries, condiments and bean curd, its salesgirls in colorful kimonos. But the passers-by were less formal, men in shorts, women in Western-style dresses, not a parasol in sight; a few young men on bicycles. A pair of green-denim-uniformed officers on a motorcycle and sidecar rolled by, in the direction of Chico Naval Base. This time, I couldn’t catch anybody even stealing a glance—word about my presence, here, must have gotten around.

“For such a striking couple,” I said, “we’re not attracting much attention.”

Not counting Jesus and Ramon, of course, who were behind us about a half a block; they were so fat, only one could walk on the boardwalk—the other had to trod along kicking up dust in the hard-dirt street, making an obstacle for bikes. The billy clubs were stuck in their belts like pirate swords; Jesus had the sheathed machete stuck there, too—all he lacked was the parrot and eyepatch.

“Oh, I’m old hat around here,” she said with a little smile. “They call me ‘Tokyo Rosa.’”

“Why?”

“Tokyo because I attract so much official attention. Rosa because it’s a female name in English they know from somewhere.”