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.
CHAPTER III
“Kum-ba-wa,” she said, which was, Brad figured, as good a way as any to greet a strange man from his own bed.
“Good evening,” he answered politely. What the hell else did a guy say to that much exposed rose-and-ivory skin?
The woman stretched, arching fine breasts and sliding one tapered leg in his direction.