Читать книгу Brute - Con Sellers - Страница 6

From the Classified rooms of the Mainichi newspaper, Brad rode the hurtling little “kamikaze” taxi back to his hotel. The Nomura wasn’t far from the fabulous Rocker Four Club, most luxurious setup in the world for Army NCOs. It was semi-deserted in the daytime, and passing it, Brad felt a momentary twinge of something indefinable.

Regret? he wondered. No. A sense of being on the outside, perhaps; of not belonging any more. The herd instinct normally strong in man, but stronger yet in the Service. Brad Saxon wasn’t sorry he wasn’t in uniform any more. The Army was for fighting wars; when there were no more wars, he could see little reason for its existence.

Of course, a standing army was necessary, but that kind of life irked Brad. Spit and polish and the boredom of repeated training; and, he told himself, he mustn’t forget the brass-plated and self-appointed gods. A little of them was more than enough. Sure, there were good men in command, even great ones. But there were also the free riders, the desk-and-briefcase politicians who never earned the right to be called soldiers.

Brad crawled out of the cab after it shrieked to a sliding stop outside the Nomura, and paid the gold-toothed hackie. Adding a fat tip, he said: “Here, sport—buy yourself a shrine. You keep driving that way, and you’re going to need it.”

The driver shrugged fatalistically and roared the taxi into traffic as Brad turned away and moved through the lobby. The desk clerk bowed slightly when he passed by and into the elevator. Brad grinned to himself. Tokyo—city of no questions asked, as long as you could pay your way. And the big display ad he’d just ordered in the Mainichi should pay its way, too. For the hundred-dollar reward he’d offered, half the city ought to be trying to find Sueko.

At the third floor, Brad turned down the carpeted hall and into his room. There was another lead he could follow himself, the dog-eared, carefully protected letter from Sueko—the last one. Seven years ago, but it had a return address, and not the New Opal Hotel. Her home, perhaps. She’d mentioned a family.

In the shower, Brad let the cool water flow over him, and thought for the hundredth time that his trip might not pay off. Sueko could be dead; she might be married to some GI, living respectably in the States. Brad stepped out and towelled himself. But he had to try. The years away from her had taught him one thing—that all other women stood in her shadow. He had to find her and take her back with him.

Brad plugged in the razor and massaged it over his stubble. Some guys he knew would think he’d flipped; they’d think any man who wanted to marry a prostitute was out of his head. During the past nine years Sueko had probably slept with a thousand men.

But Brad Saxon had been the first. And if he hadn’t been such a damned fool, he’d have been the only one. He grimaced at his battered face in the mirror. Well, even damned fools may get another chance, if they’re lucky. He wouldn’t louse up this opportunity. All the men between didn’t matter. Nothing did—except the vital, driving fact that he must hold Sueko in his arms again, permanently.

He took his big, hairy body into the bedroom and began fitting it into a tailored sharkskin suit. Maybe he’d honeymoon in Hong Kong with Sueko, if she liked the idea. They could stock up on good clothes there. Hell, he’d buy her the moon, if she wanted it.

And he could almost afford it. He’d never have to count the bruises again, never have to limp out on the field with the bad knee taped tight, hoping it would hold out through the game. Let the other clowns bang their heads together for the paychecks. Brad Saxon had his.

School had seemed so damned important. The old man had pushed a little, too, wanting Brad to follow him into the State Department. Still, he couldn’t blame school—nor the old man—for leaving Sueko as he had. Sure, the Army had a lot to do with it, hustling him back for discharge, tying up marriage applications in red tape. But Brad could have come back as a civilian. He should have come back.

Brad knotted his tie, ran a brush over cropped hair. Maybe he should blame the bid from the Forty-Niners, too. Only you don’t blame a job that brought you in almost thirty thousand per. It wasn’t bad pay for a big slob who enjoyed banging other big slobs around. A little rough on the hide, perhaps, but tackles weren’t supposed to be glamor boys. That was left to the backfield.

He grinned at himself. Some of the old gang were still on the sports pages, still dragging themselves off the field every Sunday. Through the old man’s needling and advice, Brad had invested his paychecks in solid payoff stocks, a little finagling here, a little quick selling there. Now he was fat. Now he could afford to run around the world, looking for a certain girl.

If he could find her.

There was a discreet knock on the door. “Yeah?” Brad said.

The man was small and shabby, with rimless spectacles and a jerky manner of bowing. “I’m Mr. Hara. May I come in?”

Brad shrugged. “I’ve only got a minute. I’m going out.” Whatever the guy was selling, Brad didn’t want any.

Hara smiled diffidently. “So. To search for Miss Kamiya?”

Brad stared at the little man. “Come in and shut the door. What do you know about her?”

Then he wondered how this man knew. The ad wouldn’t be in the paper until tomorrow. The New Opal? The girl there? Machiko had seemed to know something, but she’d been afraid to say anything. The omnipresent madam had made that plain. Brad asked his visitor where he got his information.

Hara bowed slightly. “A friend in the composing room of the Mainichi. He thought I would be interested.”

“Oh?” Eagerly, Brad leaned over the man. “Okay; I should care how. All I want to know is where she is.”

“I’m sorry,” Hara said, his English precise and stilted. “I do not know the whereabouts of Miss Kamiya. But I should like to offer my services. You will need an interpreter, a man who knows the city well.”

Leave it to the Nippers, Brad thought. Let them smell a dollar, and they’ll come running. Still, Hara was right; Brad would need help to sort the truth from rumors, the con men from people who actually knew something. This little guy looked and talked like a college professor down on his luck.

“For how much?” he asked.

Hara named a ridiculously low figure.

“You’re hired,” Brad said, and reached for the envelope with the return address. “Know where this is?”

Hara peered at the faded Oriental characters through his glasses. “We will find it.”

With the help of a voluble cabbie, they did. The house was small, crowded by others, set far back on an unpaved street. Brad stood at the gate while Hara rang the bell, and thought that this might be the place Sueko had played as a kid, the place she grew up. Before she had to go to work. And who the hell was he to censure her for turning prostitute? How else could a girl in Japan take care of a family then?

Brad tensed himself as the gate swung back. But a man stood in it, a man standing twisted because of a withered right leg, with bitter lines etched around his mouth and at the corners of his obsidian eyes. He flicked a glance at Brad, spat rapid Japanese at Mr. Hara. Hara answered politely, softly, while Brad shifted from one foot to the other. Dammit, did Sueko live here, or didn’t she?

The man was staring fixedly at Brad now, thin lips curled, hating. What the hell, Brad wondered. He’d never seen the guy before; why all the dirty looks? Mr. Hara touched his arm.

“This is Kamiya Saburo, and this is his house.”

“Kamiya?” Brad stuttered. “That’s Sueko’s last name. Who—her brother, maybe? Where is she? Where’s Sueko?”

The man looked down at his withered leg, back up at Brad. In English, he said: “I don’t know.”

Brad stepped close. “Hell—you must know. Look, I’ll pay you—plenty of money. Just tell me where she is. Isn’t Sueko your sister? Look—I’ll pay anything within reason. Just tell me—”

Saburo’s face was flinty. “You Americans already paid me,” he said savagely, and touched his crippled leg. “With this. Keep your dirty money. I tell you nothing.”

Involuntarily, Brad’s hands lifted to shake the information out of the sullen man. He stopped himself. Mr. Hara said something rapidly in Japanese; thin-voiced, Saburo answered him, hurling angry words. Then he hobbled back a few steps and slammed the gate. Brad heard a bolt slip into place on the other side. His legs tightened beneath him; his big shoulders lowered, readying him to smash through the wood, to pound the answers out of the sneering man.

“Please,” Hara said. “He will tell us nothing. A bitter man; a vengeful one.”

“Why, dammit? What the hell did I ever do to him? I don’t even know the guy; never saw him before. And is he related to Sueko?”

Hara nodded, led the way back to the waiting taxi. “Her brother, as you guessed. Why does he hate you? His leg—an American bombing raid. He was fourteen, and the planes also killed his father.”

Brad slammed into the back seat of the cab. “That’s my fault? Hell, you know better than that.”

Small, composed, the little Japanese settled back, told the driver where to go. “Yes, Mr. Saxon—I know. Perhaps I know better than most. But to such a man, you are a symbol, something to blame, someone to hate. He would tell me nothing, because I was with you.”

“Sueko’s brother,” Brad said. “She said something about him, and mentioned a sister, too.”

But nothing about blaming every GI for her father’s death, Brad remembered; nothing about how tough it was to live with everything gone. Uncomplaining, gentle, Sueko might have been a carefree schoolgirl. Except schoolgirls didn’t work in the New Opal Hotel. Unless they had to.

“What now?” Brad asked. For some reason, he found himself liking Hara. The guy looked like a prototype of all Japanese, but there was something sturdy about him, something deep and sincere.

“The Namura,” Hara said, “unless you wish to do something else?”

Brad clutched the back of the seat as the cab skidded dizzily around a corner. He told Hara about the New Opal, his hunch that a girl there knew something and was afraid to tell. It was only a hunch, he said, but possibly worth following up. Would Mr. Hara take a room at the Namura, so he’d be handy? Brad would pay for it, of course. Mr. Hara would, happily.

Brad made arrangements for the room next to his, and they ate together in the hotel dining room. The food was excellent and well served. So were the pre-dinner martinis and the coffee-and-brandies, based, Brad knew, upon black market stock peddled by GIs and officers who got it dirt cheap.

All in the game, he thought, and eyed the crowded room, the string combo playing softly in one corner. Everybody sells, everybody busy. The Forty-Niners had bought his beef and muscle. He had bought a girl for the night, in the New Opal.

Almost like the one seated alone at the table over there. Smaller, though—a tiny Venus of jeweled parts; softer-looking than the girl at the table, too. Sueko had no lines around her mouth, no cynicism stamped upon her delicate face. A porcelain doll, shined and polished and put out for hire.

She’d been ashamed of being a virgin. Could you imagine that? Ashamed, dammit, because she didn’t have the proper experience. She’d begged him not to tell the madam. A hell of a thing. And a stupid kid who didn’t realize what he had. Kamiya Sueko. The names worked out as “The Last Flower in the Garden of the Gods,” he found out later. And for a few lousy Yen, Brad Saxon had accomplished the deflowering.

Trembling and afraid, she’d been, and he thought it was an act, some phony setup she used to fool corny GIs. Until she was spread bare and face-hidden for him on the bed; until he ran his hands over the utter loveliness of her tiny, perfect body and came to her like some savage bull of a lonely field. Then he knew it was no act.

Later that night, he’d been gentle. In the dawn, they curled together like kittens in soft contentment, the young, hell-bent sergeant and the younger, just professional prostitute. She was so damned beautiful, so damned sweet—

“Mr. Saxon,” Hara said. “The waiter wishes to know if you care for more brandy?”

Brad blinked, rubbed his face. “Yeah. Only not here. I want a couple of bottles set up. Hennessy: the good stuff.”

Hara nodded. “I understand. The waiting is bad. Perhaps tomorrow—” remember?

“Perhaps tonight,” Brad said, and took the check. “The New Opal, remember? Maybe you can talk the old lady there into saying something. Or the girl. But right now, I just want to crawl into a bottle and pull the cork after me.”

At the exit, a youngster stepped in front of Brad. He was in civilian clothes, but the short hair and GI shoes marked him as Army. “Excuse me,” he said, “I may be wrong but—aren’t you Brad Saxon? From the Forty-Niners, I mean?”

Even here, Brad thought; but in a couple of years, nobody would remember. “Yes,” he answered. “You from the Coast?”

“From the City,” the boy said, as all San Franciscans call their town. “Man—I remember that game against the Rams where you—”

“Me, too. I’ve got the lumps to prove it.”

There was more, with Mr. Hara standing patiently by, smiling to himself. Brad finally managed to break away from the fan, saying no, he was through playing ball, and sure, he was glad to meet somebody from home. But all he wanted was eight or nine big drinks, so he could stop remembering how it had been, with Sueko.

“An athlete,” Mr. Hara said in the elevator. “I thought so.”

“Sure,” Brad said. “Look at the footprints on me. Look—I’ll call you tonight; the New Opal is shut up until then. If we don’t find anything there, we’ll just have to wait until the ad stirs something up.”

“Yes,” Mr. Hara agreed, and went into his room.

Brad keyed his own door and went in, too. The girl was waiting for him inside, looking as if she belonged on his bed. All she wore was a thin kimono—open down the middle.