THE “BRUTE” MEETS BRUTE
The shriek came keening up the hatchway, full of pain and hate. A woman in agony, the sound torn from the throat of his lover!
He threw himself at the sliver of yellow light, fore at the hatch cover and hurled if info the night. Brad leaped feet first info the cabin below.
Gleaming nakedly and stretched painfully taut like an “X” of lovely flesh, she hung between iron ringbolts. There was a fleck of blood on each of her beautiful breasts. A man caught up in the insane folds of a nightmare, Brad started for her.
Getty stepped out from behind the bar and aimed a .38 at Brad’s middle. There was a sickly shine of sweat on his jowls.
Brad tensed. “Hit me right, Getty—stop me with the first one, or I’ll stick that gun down your throat . . .”
A raging blur, Brad leaped toward Getty. The .38 slammed, seared flame and slug—
BRUTE!
by the author of CARNAL ORGY
CON SELLERS
Copyright 1961 by Novel Books, Inc.
CHAPTER I
The New Opal Hotel wasn’t new any longer, but it was still shiny with a cheap, touched-up glitter. It was smaller than he remembered, too; at least from the outside.
Brad Saxon stood on the narrow sidewalk, oblivious to the traffic clangor behind him, to the hurrying, chattering throng that swirled around him. Nine years and six thousand miles of ocean rolled back; he was a young trooper again, a little drunk, a little eager for his first taste of the vaunted Japanese women. Nine years? It couldn’t be.
Brad shook himself, and knew that it had been. He didn’t know what the hell he was waiting for. Music throbbed from behind the New Opal’s door, back-grounded by the rattle of glasses and throaty laughter. That much hadn’t changed.
But she might not be there, and that’s what was keeping him standing outside, keeping him afraid to go in. He shifted weight from his trick leg, barely conscious of the awed glances of passing Japanese. Brad was used to being stared at. He wasn’t pretty, by a damned sight. Thrusting helmets and grinding shoulder pads and sly elbows hadn’t improved on a face that wasn’t much to start with; the cleat scar twisting one corner of his mouth made him look particularly satanic. Except the devil never had such a repeatedly broken nose. And Brad was even bigger in this land of little men—towering over the slim people. Bulking wide and thick like one of their stone demons.
Inside, a girl laughed high and tinkly. Brad swallowed hard. It sounded like Sueko, but so had all the women he’d heard since the plane landed. And they all had something of her in them, some tilt of their bluesheen heads, some innate grace in their tripping walks. Maybe he had come back to Japan to seek only an image.
Brad shook his head again. No; Sueko was the only real thing he’d known. Time couldn’t build a fantasy around her, couldn’t brighten the aura she already had.
“Hey Joe.”
Brad looked down at the tug on his sleeve, at the kid grinning old and wise up at him.
“You want girl, Joe?”
“No,” Brad lied, glad for this outward impetus that shoved him at the doorway of the New Opal Hotel.
He had to stoop, and angle the width of his shoulders to pass through, and the place even smelled the same—eddying cigaret smoke, beersweet odors, the drifting scents of a dozen perfumes.
The girl came gliding from neon shadows, sway-hipping in a tight red gown that plunged low between the modeled cones of arching breasts. Midnight hair cascaded richly over creamed ivory shoulders; ripe lips parted in a damp smile; the direct almond eyes—and the woman smell of her touched with sandalwood and spices.
But it wasn’t Sueko.
“Hello,” the girl said, and put a pale butterfly hand against his arm.
B-girl; hustler, hostess—and she didn’t act like one; none of them did. Not like the c’mon-gimmie-a-drink wenches in San Francisco and New Orleans; not like the greedy broads in a hundred other Stateside towns. Gentle; unhurried; the here-for-your-desire girls of the Orient.
“Hello,” Brad said, lifting his eyes then to search the shadowed corners of the bar. One girl dealing herself a hand of solitaire at a tiny table, waiting for the evening rush to begin. Another sorting records at a portable phonograph, a young GI with his arm about her trim waist. The lacquered face of the madam behind the bar, waiting. No one else. But it was early; maybe Sueko hadn’t come down yet.
Brad glanced down at the girl again. “Mind silting at the bar? I’d like to talk to you.”
He saw the hidden wariness, the balanced intent-ness go out of her. He could almost sense the working of her mind, the relief that this big one wasn’t drunk and brutal, even if he was ugly. Brad smiled at her, the old cleat mark twisting his mouth high on one side. The adage about treating a prostitute like a lady never held truer than in Japan, where most of the “business girls” could give cards and spades to some of the “ladies” Brad knew in the States and still come out ahead.
He cupped the girl’s elbow, helped her lift to sit on the stool. Her smile turned genuine. The madam waited, expressionless. Brad lifted a mangled eyebrow at the girl. “Port wine still the drink?”
She blinked sloe eyes, nodded slowly. “If—you wish.”
Port wine, the B-drink of the Orient, Asiatic substitute for the “champagne” other girls across the sea were conning out of visiting firemen. It came in a champagne glass, all right—a pale purple squirt of wine over a double handful of crushed ice.
“O-sake for me,” Brad said. “Hot,” and marked himself as a man who’d been some time in the Far East.
The girl’s words were accented, but showed an effort to break away from typical GI English; her voice had a lilt to it. Like Sueko’s. “My name Marie,” she said.
“Or Mariko,” Brad said, “or maybe Machiko. Which is it?”
She dimpled. “Machiko, but GIs don’t say that. Marie easier,”
“Machiko is prettier; do you mind if I use it?”
Machiko covered momentary embarrassment with a sip at her wine. “No.”
Brad’s sake came in its little bowl of hot water. The small graceful bottle seemed lost in his big hand. He asked the question. “Is—Sueko still here?”
Prettily, she frowned. “Sueko?”
“Kamiya,” Brad said, hurrying, “Kamiya Sueko. She works here.”
Did she, after nine years? Did she still make the unconscious motion of drawing her hands up into the flowing sleeves of the yukata, turning the prosaic sleeping kimono into the shape of a hovering butterfly? Did she—
“Sueko,” he repeated, his hand clenching the smoothness of her arm. “You know Kamiya Sueko, don’t you?”
Machiko bit her lips. “P-please—”
Brad took his hand away. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
The girl moistened her mouth, dark eyes flicking beyond him. She started to say something.
“No Sueko here,” the madam said, at his elbow. “You got wrong hotel.”
Brad explained. It had been a long time ago, but this was the place. He remembered the rooms across the courtyard—one of them, anyway. He could describe that one to the last detail. Painted face showing nothing, the madam shrugged.
“Many girls,” she said. “All time come, go. No Sueko here now.”
Machiko’s