Читать книгу Brute - Con Sellers - Страница 8

He was into the second bottle of Hennessy, and it wasn’t doing a hell of a lot of good. It kept him from kicking holes in the walls. Its narcotic effect stopped him from ripping apart the furniture. But that was all. No welcome blackout, where he couldn’t think and feel.

Brad had seen the identity card all prostitutes in Japan are forced to carry. The name on it was Kamiya Katsue; the address the same one he had visited earlier in the day. First the embittered brother, crippled and sullen; then Katsue, whose greed came before anything else. Well, she’d earned her damned blood money.

Another long drink slid down Brad’s throat. Hell-he couldn’t even put flowers on Sueko’s grave. Cremated, Katsue said. The ashes scattered into Tokyo Bay. Hell. He drank again. And again, until the dark curtain closed down around him.

Mr. Hara had rapped several times upon the door, listening between knocks. Finally, he glanced quickly up and down the hallway, and brought out a flat key. He worked it into the lock and slid deftly inside Brad’s room. He nodded at the sight of the big man stretched limp and sweating upon the bed, and eased to his wallet.

The little Japanese thumbed through the billfold, pausing at cards, pursing his lips at the passport. Carefully, he replaced the wallet on its former spot on the table. He didn’t take any money. He went through pockets of the suits hanging in the closet, searched between shirts and underwear in the dresser drawers. Then he went out as softly as he had come, closing and locking the door behind him. Mr. Hara didn’t turn into his own room, but instead moved down the stairs and out into the street. A dark, plain car pulled up at the curb and he ducked into it to be whisked away.

It must have been midnight when the burly man in uniform thumped Brad’s door. Brad stirred, muttered, and flung out one arm. The hammering continued, officious, demanding. Brad forced his eyes open and cursed.

The voice was American, rough and husky, used to command. “Saxon? I know you’re in there. Open up!”

Brad sat up, rubbed bleary eyes, tasted green fuzz inside his mouth. He washed away the taste with a mixture of melted ice and brandy. The pounding continued. Brad didn’t like it.

“Get the hell away from that door,” he said.

“Open up. This is Captain Getty—Military Police!”

Reflex action lifted Brad to his feet and across the room, where he turned the knob before he remembered he was a civilian, that the MPs didn’t have a damned thing to do with him, one way or another.

“So?” he said into the beefy red face.

The man was big—almost as large as Brad himself, but he’d gone to seed. A double roll of flesh bulged beneath his craggy chin; dark pouches sagged his eyes, and a swollen belly pushed at a too-small belt. The uniform was neat, the crossed pistols on its collar brightly polished. Houseboys, Brad thought, were handy to have around.

“May I come in?” Getty asked.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Brad said, and turned away. Getty followed him into the room, ID folder open in one sweaty hand. Brad glanced at it and looked back to the bottle. He’d have to wake up room service and order another, he decided.

“We understand you’re in Tokyo looking for a certain girl,” the captain said.

Brad didn’t offer him a drink. “You a stockholder on the newspaper? You might as well join the party. So what about it?”

Getty brought out a cigar, thumbed its cellophane away and stuck it between square teeth. He didn’t light it. “As an ex-soldier, you should know we have ways of obtaining information. It doesn’t matter how we know.”

Brad decided abruptly that he wanted no part of this fat slob, brass pistols and all. He said it slowly: “I thought that ‘we’ routine went out when the Great White Father got shanghaied from over here. You a leftover from his cabinet?”

Getty reddened, eyes bulging. “No need to take that attitude, Saxon. We—I—realize you’re a civilian, now.”

Jaw muscles tightening, Brad stared at the captain. “Make sure you do, buster. And the name is Mister Saxon, get it? Now say whatever the hell you came busting into my room to say, then haul it out of here and go shake down some business girl.”

The MP sputtered; veins stood out in his swollen throat. “Look here—”

One outthrust finger trip-hammered into Getty’s chest, banged hard and repeatedly against his collarbone. “You look,” Brad said, pushing, hoping the man would push back. “This is my room; Japan is a friendly country now; you and the MPs can go blow your tin whistles. You going to deliver your message before I throw you down the stairs?”

Paling, Getty moved back a step, and then another. “I—I came to—help you, dammit. The girl you’re looking for is dead. She died two years ago, according to our files.”

Brad set himself. “And what was her name doing in MP files?”

The captain blinked rapidly, tried to recover his dignity, his tone of command. “Surely you know what she was. All prostitutes are registered. And—there were other things.”

“What other things?”

Getty was sweating. “Black market; suspicion of thefts; consorting with known communists. She had quite a dossier.”

“You’re a damned liar. Sueko wouldn’t steal a dime. And she hated the Reds just as I did.”

“We—I—don’t want to break security, but she was all I said. A trouble-maker, a headache to the Japanese police as well.”

Brad frowned, moved closer. “And you came here in the middle of the night, just to tell me all this? You came here out of the goodness of your heart, because you wanted to help an ex-GI far from home? The hell you did, captain. Now spit out the rest of it before I run up one side of you and down the other.”

Getty’s small, pouched eyes turned mean. “Go ahead; I’d like to get you slammed into a Jap jail where friends of mine can get at you. I know your type, Saxon—a big shot football player, big wheel on the sports pages. You were nothing but a lousy sergeant in the Army. Go ahead—try roughing me up and see what happens.”

Softly, dangerously, Brad hissed the words: “Sure, you’ve got connections. A slob like you exists on connections. I’ll bet you even know somebody in the ambassador’s office, don’t you? Some cheap clerk who could get my visa yanked. I don’t doubt that—captain. I’m not even interested. But I am interested in you. I want to find out how many times you’ll bounce.”

Getty back-pedaled, squeaking. Low and sudden, Brad’s blocking shoulder thudded into the soft belly, hurled the gasping captain into the wall. Brad dug his feet into the floor, kept the man pinned there for a long moment. Then he slipped aside and allowed the breathless Getty to slide to the carpet where he held his stomach and sucked for air.

“You don’t bounce so well,” Brad said.

“D-damn you—”

“I’ll wait right here,” Brad said, “while you go tell your friends to make me persona non grata in this country. But you’d better have the CIC do a little more checking up. Tell them to nose around the State Department.”

He’d said the magic words. A flicker of fear crossed Getty’s face. He could almost see the man’s mind working furiously, going over any information he had on Brad Saxon, not finding anything concerning the State Department, but afraid to make a mistake that could cost him his bars.

Brad hooked a hand into Getty’s shirtfront, effortlessly jerked the captain to his feet. “I don’t know why you came here,” he said, “and I don’t give a damn if your connections reach all the way into the Imperial Palace. I do know you lied about Sueko, and that you’re damned anxious to get me out of Tokyo. Now hear me well, fat boy—I’m going to find out things. And if you get in my way, officially or unofficially, I’m going to bust you right in half.”

He flung the captain toward the door. Getty pawed at the knob, struggled for a shred of composure. He started to say something, but thought better of it when Brad lifted both hands eagerly. Getty snatched the door wide and plunged through it into the hall. He almost ran over the little Japanese standing there.

“Get the hell outa’ my way,” Getty snarled, and shoved the small man roughly aside. Brad heard his boots thumping hard against the carpeted stairs, and thought the MP enlisted men would catch hell tonight.

“Please?” Mr. Hara said. “I heard shouting. May I be of help?”

“Come on in,” Brad said. “I was just about to send down for another jug. You can help me with it.”

Hara drifted in, closed the door softly. “American liquor is too strong for me.”

“Tonight it’s like water,” Brad said, and proved it by downing a glassful. “I didn’t have time to introduce you to the MP captain—but then, he’s not a guy you’d like to know, anyway.”

Mr. Hara sat gingerly upon a chair, hands folded. “Ah-so? Perhaps he had information?”

Brad shook his head. “He told me the same thing the girl did—that Sueko is—dead.” The word was difficult to say. Brad went on. “He also hinted strongly that he’d have me worked over if I didn’t take my big nose out of Japan. Now what the hell do you suppose all that was about?”

“I have heard of this captain,” Hara said. “A dangerous enemy.”

“A jerk,” Brad corrected. “I’m not worried about him. His boys didn’t dig deep enough into my background. I have a friend or two, myself. My father is—well, pretty high up in the State Department. He wouldn’t like it if I got myself into a jam over here, but he’d pull me out. But I’d just like to know why a jerk like Getty is involved in this. And why. Why did he bother to come here to tell me Sueko is dead? And why all the lies about her?”

If they were lies. Brad thought. Nine years could bring a lot of changes in a girl who had to scrape for a living. Especially one who had been deserted by the man she thought loved her; her first man. Who the hell could blame Sueko for doing anything—pushing heroin, trading on the black market, even for peddling bits of information gleaned from big-mouthed GIs to local communist bosses?

But if she was dead, as two people said—why the interest in her? Katsue, Brad could understand. The girl would sell what was left of her soul for a few bucks. Probably Captain Getty would, too. Yet the fat MP officer hadn’t even mentioned money. Therefore, it figured that he was being paid from some other source. Who? and again—why?

Brad gulped more brandy and turned to ask Mr. Hara these questions. The little man beat him to the punch. “Mr. Saxon—I think that Kamiya Sueko is not dead. I think she is very much alive.”