Jack lay on the couch in his apartment, content and thoroughly spent after a leisurely hour of lovemaking with Gia. She lay curled against him, her head on his shoulder, her breath warm on his chest.
"Just to make him happy."
"And maybe just to shut him up?"
"Hopefully, that too."
"What happened to this firm resolve to tell him in no ' uncertain terms that you would never move to Florida?"
Jack shrugged, and the motion lifted Gia's head.
"I tried," he said, "but I just couldn't do it. The poor guy is so sincere. He wants so badly for me to succeed."
"Does he think you're such a failure?"
"Not so much a failure as a guy with no plan, no agenda, no rudder, so to speak. And in that sense I think he feels he failed me." Jack felt his contentment slipping away. Why had Gia brought this up? "That's what makes it so hard. It'd be easy to blow him off if he'd been a bad father. But he was a good one, always making an effort to be involved with his kids, and he can't understand where he went wrong with his youngest. So he keeps trying, figuring sooner or later he'll get it right."
"He did leave you a rudder of sorts," Gia said, staring at him with those blue wonders. "You've got a moral compass, a value system. That must have come from someone."
"Not him. He's a citizen. A white-collar, churchgoing, taxpaying veteran of Korea. He'd have a stroke if he knew the truth."
"You're sure of that?"
"Absolutely, positutely, one hundred percent sure."
"And so you're going down to Florida."
"Sure as hell looks that way."
"Can Vicky and I come along? At least as far as Orlando?"
"Hey, now there's an idea," he said, brightening. He kissed her forehead. "Disney World. We've never been there. And the Universal place. I want to see 'Terminator 3-D.'"
Maybe Florida wouldn't be so bad after all. For a week.
"Let's do it."
And then it was time to get dressed and pick up Vicky.
But "3-D" stuck in Jack's brain for some reason, and he treated Gia and Vicky to a late-afternoon IMAX 3-D movie.
Vicky loved it, but Jack came away disappointed. All that screen, those neat 3-D glasses… you'd think they could do something better than close-ups of bugs and fish. Why not a real movie—like a 3-D IMAX haunted house? That would be something to see.
They found a restaurant called Picholjne nearby, where they had dinner and made plans for going to Florida. Vicky was ready to bounce off the walls with excitement, and Jack found himself beginning to look forward to the trip.
What better way to see Disney World than with a child? he thought, drinking in her smile and her bright eyes.
The only time Vicky stopped talking about Mickey and Donald was when the fabulous dessert tray came by. She had two.
7.
Thomas Clayton had emerged from the strip joint after two hours and walked directly back to his apartment.
This, Yoshio had learned, was one of the patterns of Thomas Clayton's life. Very sad, he thought. He didn't know much about him, but felt sorry for him. This was a lonely, lonely man.
And with this Yoshio himself felt a rare pang of loneliness, a sudden yearning for home. Not for family, for he had none, and not for Tokyo, for New York had given him his fill of big cities. No, he wished he were booked into a little ryokan on Shikoku, overlooking the misty vistas of the Inland Sea.
He realized that he had wasted the day. All of the principals seemed to be in a holding pattern, as if waiting for something. But for what? Tomorrow, perhaps?
If so, Yoshio would wait with them.
His stomach didn't feel right. Perhaps the grease from that shish kebab meat—supposedly lamb—he had eaten while waiting for Thomas Clayton this afternoon. He decided to take a break from American food. He stopped at a restaurant in the East Fifties with a superior sushi bar. He spent a number of hours there, sipping Sapporo Draft, nibbling sashimi, and speaking Japanese.
Then he returned to his apartment and watched Kemel Muhallal and his superior hovering around that lamp in the back room of Muhallal's apartment, looking at their mystery object.
8.
Jack dropped off Gia and Vicky, then hurried over to Alicia's for a meeting with her and Sean O'Neill, her new lawyer.
As he stepped through the door, Jack handed her an envelope. He liked her wide-eyed look when she opened it and pulled out Mr. Sung's fifteen one-thousand-dollar bills. He told her it was a donation to the Center. She thought it was from him, but he assured her it wasn't. He told her the donor was a very caring real estate investor who wished to remain anonymous.
"He wants you to buy some 'fun things' for the kids," Jack told her. "You decide."
Jack then spent an hour or so with Sean and Alicia working out the plan for Monday morning. Sean had called Gordon Haffner at HRG on Friday and arranged a nine-thirty meeting there with his new client, Alicia Clayton. He'd made it clear that his client did not under any circumstances want her brother present. They would confer with Mr. Haffner alone, and he would convey the substance of the meeting to Thomas Clayton afterward.
And then with everything set and in place for tomorrow, Jack had gone home, ready to end this exceptionally fine weekend with another installment of the Dwight Frye festival. The Vampire Bat, perhaps.
Then Milkdud called, saying he'd just returned from successfully rehacking the Hand Building. Jack thought that was great until Milkdud explained what Jack would have to do tomorrow…
MONDAY
1.
"You rested and ready for this?" Milkdud said as he and Jack walked down Forty-fifth Street in their suits, carrying their briefcases.
"No."
As they neared the entrance to the Hand Building, Jack said, "You're sure there's no other way to do this?"
"If there is, I don't know it."
"I must be crazy."
Milkdud laughed. "Don't worry. You'll be fine."
Jack wished he was as sure about that.
They pushed through the revolving door into the lobby, looking like they belonged there, and breezed past the security counter where a pair of uniforms were sipping coffee and raptly checking out yesterday's football scores in the morning paper.
"Kind of gives you a new appreciation of the value of organized sports, doesn't it," Jack said as they approached the elevators.
"Especially football pools." Milkdud checked his watch. "Quarter to eight. The shifts are changing. That helps too."
"As does the lack of those dreadlocks you sported when I first met you."
He smiled. "I learned the hard way that dreads and hacking don't mix. They kept getting caught on things in tight spots. Besides, a big part of hacking is going unnoticed."
"Yeah. And I imagine that's kind of hard to do when you've got what looks like a hairy octopus hanging on your head."
A bell chimed to their left, and the center elevator opened its doors. Jack stepped toward it but Milkdud held him back.
"Uh-uh. We're taking the one over there on the left."
"What's the difference?"
"That's the one that's going to put you closest to where you want to go."
"I'm all for that," Jack said.
Milkdud reached inside the center cab and pressed a button, sending it back up.
Half a minute later, the doors to the left elevator opened.
"That's ours," Milkdud said.
As they started toward it, Jack spotted a red-haired woman rounding the corner. She headed their way.
"Move it, Dud," he whispered. "Company's coming."
They'd shown up early to ensure that they'd be able to ride an empty elevator car. This redheaded early bird was going to mess up their plans.