"Do you remember anything else about the man in the suit?"
"He had a tattoo. It came out from under his shirt and went down his wrist. God knows how far up his arm it went. It was really vivid, all these greens and reds and blues."
"It probably covered his whole body," Fortunato said. He rubbed his temples, where his regular daily headache had set in. "He was yakuza."
"Yakuza…" Jayewardene said.
Peregrine looked from Fortunato to Jayewardene and back. "Is that bad?"
"very bad," Jayewardene said. "Even I have heard of them. They're gangsters."
"Like the Mafia," Fortunato said. "Only not as centralized. Each family-they call them clans-is on its own. There's something like twenty-five hundred separate clans in Japan, each with its own oyabun. The oyabun is like the don. It means 'in the role of parent.' If Hiram's in trouble with the yak, we may not even be able to find out which clan is after him."
Peregrine took another piece of paper out of her purse. "This is the address of Hiram's hotel. I… told Tachyon I wouldn't see him. I told him somebody should have it in case of emergency. Then. Mr. Jayewardene told me about his vision…"
Fortunato put his hand on the paper but didn't look at it.
"I don't have any power left," he said. " I used everything I had fighting the Astronomer, and there isn't anything left." It had been back in September, Wild Card Day in New York. The fortieth anniversary of Jetboy's big fuckup, when the spores had fallen on the city and thousands had died, Jetboy among them. It was the day a man named the Astronomer chose to get even with the aces who had hounded him and broken his secret society of Egyptian Masons. He and Fortunato had fought it out with blazing fireballs of power over the East River. Fortunato had won, but it had cost him everything.
That had been the night he had made love to Peregrine for the first and last time. The night her child had been conceived.
"It doesn't matter," Peregrine said. "Hiram respects you. He'll listen to you."
In fact, Fortunato thought, he's afraid of me and he blames me for the death of a woman he used to love. A woman Fortunato had used as a pawn against the Astronomer, and lost. A woman Fortunato had loved too. Years ago.
But if he walked away now he wouldn't see Peregrine again. It had been hard enough to stay away from her, knowing that she was so close by. It was a whole other order of difficult to get up and walk away from her when she was right there in front of him, so tall and powerful and overflowing with emotions. The fact that she carried his child made it even harder, made just one more thing he wasn't ready to think about.
"I'll try," Fortunato said. "I'll do what I can."
Hiram's room was in the Akasaka Shanpia, a businessman's hotel near the train station. Except for the narrow hallways and the shoes outside the doors, it could have been any middle-price hotel in the U.S. Fortunato knocked on Hiram's door. There was a hush, as if all noises inside the room had suddenly stopped.
" I know you're in there," Fortunato said, bluffing. "It's Fortunato, man. You might as well let me in." After a couple of seconds the door opened.
Hiram had turned the place into a slum. There were clothes and towels all over the floor, plates of dried-out food and smudged highball glasses, stacks of newspapers and magazines. It smelled faintly of acetone and a mixture of sweat and old booze.
Hiram himself had lost weight. His clothes sagged around him like they were still on hangers. After he let Fortunato in, he walked back to the bed without saying anything. Fortunato shut the door, dumped a dirty shirt off a chair, and sat down. "So," Hiram said at last. "It would seem I've been ferreted out."
"They're worried. They think you might be in some kind of trouble."
"It's nothing. There's absolutely nothing for them to be concerned about. Didn't they get my note?"
"Don't bullshit me, Hiram. You've gotten messed up with the yakuza. Those are not the kind of people you take chances with. Tell me what happened."
Hiram stared at him. "If I don't tell you, you'll just come in and get it, won't you?" Fortunato shrugged, another bluff. "Yeah. Right."
" I just want to help," Fortunato said.
"Well, your help is not required. It's a small matter of money. Nothing else."
"How much money?"
"A few thousand."
"Dollars, of course." A thousand yen were worth a little over five dollars U.S. "How did it happen? Gambling?"
"Look, this is all rather embarrassing. I'd prefer not to talk about it, all right?"
"You're saying this to a man who was a pimp for thirty years. Do you think I'm going to come down on you? Whatever you did?"
Hiram took a, deep breath. "No. I suppose not."
"Talk to me."
"I was out walking Saturday night, kind of late, over on Roppongi Street…"
"By yourself?"
"Yes." He was embarrassed again. "I'd heard a lot about the women here. I just wanted to… tantalize myself, you know? The mysterious Orient. Women who would fulfill your wildest dreams. I'm a long way from home. I just… wanted to see."
It wasn't that different from what Fortunato had been doing the last six months. "I understand."
"I saw a sign that said `English-speaking hostesses.' I went in and there was a long hallway. I must have missed the place the sign was for. I went back into the building a long way. There was a padded kind of a door at the end, no sign or anything. When I got inside, they took my coat and went away with it somewhere. Nobody spoke English. Then these girls more or less dragged me over to a table and got me buying them drinks. There were three of them. I had one or two drinks myself. More than one or two. It was a sort of a dare. They were using sign language, teaching me some Japanese. God. They were so beautiful. So… delicate, you know? But with huge dark eyes that would look at you and then skitter away. Half shy and half… I don't know. Challenging. They said nobody had ever drunk ten jars of saki there before. Like no one had ever been quite man enough. So I did. By then they had me pretty well convinced I would get all three of them for a reward."
Hiram started to sweat. The drops ran down his face and he wiped them off with the cuff of a stained silk shirt. "I was… well, very aroused, shall we say. And drunk. They kept flirting and touching me on the arm, so lightly, like butterflies landing on my skin. I suggested we go somewhere. They kept putting me off. Ordering more drinks. And then I just lost control."
He looked up at Fortunato. "I haven't been… quite myself lately. Something just came over me in that bar. I guess I grabbed one of the girls. Sort of tried to take her dress off. She started screaming and all three of them ran away. Thep the bouncer started hustling me toward the door, waving a bill in my face. It was for fifty thousand yen. Even drunk I knew there was something wrong. He pointed at my coat and then at a number. Then the jars of saki and more numbers. Then the girls and more numbers. I think that was what really got to me. Paying so much money just to be flirted with."
"They were the wrong girls," Fortunato said. "Christ, there's a million women for sale in this town. All you have to do is ask a taxi driver."
"Okay. Okay. I made a mistake. It could happen to anybody. But they went too far."
"So you walked out."
"I walked out. They tried to chase me and I glued them to the floor. Somehow I got back to the hotel. It took me forever to find a cab."
"Okay," Fortunato said. "Where exactly was this place? Could you find it again?"
Hiram shook his head. "I tried. I've spent two days looking for it."
"What about the sign? Do you remember anything about it? Could you sketch any of the characters?"