“Two days.” Ayako swung her legs to the floor and sat up, facing Quinn. “But she is still safe, if that’s what you are wondering. Sato is a pig but, luckily, he’s been away from the country. He prefers girls who are unsullied, so his men will keep her that way. He returns from Guam tonight. We must get to her before then. So, you see? We have a common cause.”
“And you have some idea of a plan?” Quinn asked.
“I do, now that you are here.” Ayako smiled, nodding as if it was all so clear to her. “That is the most excellent part. If Emiko says you are the best, then you are surely the best. I want you to walk into Sato’s office and say, ‘Mr. Yakuza Boss, Miyu-chan is not a prostitute. She is my friend. You must give her to me or I will cut off your genitals’… or something like that.”
It was Quinn’s turn to laugh. “And if he doesn’t give her to me?”
“Then you must keep your word and cut off his genitals.”
“Or something like that.”
“Emiko-chan would agree with me,” Ayako said. “This one deserves it.”
Quinn rubbed the stubble on his chin, thinking things through. Fatigue from the long flight and the ocean crossing was beginning to catch up with him. “Why not ask this longtime client of yours about Miyu?” He asked. “If he works for Sato, then he should know where she’s being held.”
“Watanabe stinks of urine.” Ayako scoffed. “He has moved up the ranks in the underworld, but he still acts like a chinpira.”
Quinn chuckled, almost feeling sorry for this Watanabe guy. For a woman to describe a man as Ayako had, she had to have a pretty low opinion of him. To “smell of urine” was another way of calling someone immature in Japanese. Chinpira were low-level yakuza thugs who bullied people when they thought they could get away with it but groveled to their senior bosses. Quinn had met with a few such young hoodlums during his visits to Japan. The three bozozoku thugs he’d killed in Virginia had been perfect examples of such punks. Unless they happened to be on business from a higher authority, one look that said he meant business was usually enough to send them walking the other direction — as long as they could do so with their honor intact.
“In any case,” Ayako said, “Watanabe pays me well because it makes him feel like a big man. He asks for my complete loyalty but has none for me — only his boss. Sometimes he cries in his rice wine over how sad and thankless his life is in the Japanese mafia — and then falls asleep in the hotel bed all night, keeping me from seeing other customers. It is a hazard of my chosen occupation, I suppose.” She shrugged. “No use in clenching the buttocks when the gas has already passed…”
Quinn smiled. It was the colorful Japanese equivalent to not crying over spilled milk.
“Exactly where would I find this Sato?”
“Watanabe let it slip he will attend a boxing match in Fukuoka tonight, shortly after his flight arrives from Guam.”
“So, Miyu will be with him?” Quinn asked, thinking through his options.
“I do not know,” Ayako said. “But if she is not, we can follow Sato from the fights. He is sure to go straight to her afterward. He will not want to put off partaking of such a young treasure.”
Ayako looked at her watch, suddenly springing to her feet. “Shimata!” she snapped. Dammit! “I am late. My client will be disappointed if I am not there before he leaves for work.”
She rummaged through a pile of clothes on her bed, snatching up a frilly pink blouse and matching lace apron. She put on the denim jacket and shoved the new clothes inside it, next to her body to protect them from the rain during her bike ride.
Ayako tipped her head toward the bed while she gazed in the small vanity mirror to apply pink gloss to puckered lips. “Please, get some sleep. I will be out for some time.”
Quinn looked at the pile of tangled sheets and pillows, nodding slowly.
“Do not worry,” Ayako smiled with her freshly glossed lips. “This apartment is my sanctuary. You will be the first man to ever sleep here. Now please, get some rest before we go and visit Sato tonight. You will need it if you are forced to cut off his genitals.”
CHAPTER 42
The five local doctors and the nine additional docs and nurses CDC had sent in had their hands full seeing the rapidly weakening patients. News reports said stores in virtually every city west of the Rocky Mountains had run out of food and flashlight batteries. At first, students were sent home from school if they sneezed more than once. By the second day, the schools closed altogether. Thriving communities turned into ghost towns overnight as residents opted to stay inside and fill their minds with the endless supply of conspiracy theories and fearmongering on radio, television, and social media.
The disease manifested itself in such a horrific way that the media began to show seemingly nonstop footage of boil-infested bodies, heaping on to the already hysterical fear. Grassroots groups who had once fought the government for the right not to vaccinate their children clamored for action, demanding that same government do something to stop the spread of this “biblical plague of boils.”
The number of plague victims in Kanab appeared to have leveled off at twenty-one with no new cases in the last few hours, but in a town of 4,500, half of them Mormons, there were bound to be births. Broken arms, an emergency appendectomy, and a thumb cut off in a fight with a table saw all kept hospital and clinic personnel hopping.
CDC personnel took over as soon as they were on the ground — and Elton was happy to let them. They set up a triage unit in the clinic, sealing off the connected hospital with sheets of clear plastic and duct tape. Anyone going in had to don an orange chem-bio suit complete with hood and filter. FEMA engineers had arrived shortly after the CDC, landing in a squadron of dark helicopters that were certain to raise the blood pressure of more than just the conspiracy theorists in the little southern Utah burg.
Todd Elton pulled on one of the hoods and made his way past a knot of CDC staff gathered around a quaking Mrs. Johnson as she sat on the edge of a gurney in the hallway. The poor old woman’s white hair was still in perfect order, though her frail body had been overwhelmed with red sores. She deserved her own room, but there just weren’t any left, so she joined the others in a row of rolling beds in the hallway beside the nurse’s station.
The CDC docs had consulted with him at first, but after they felt they had the lay of the land, all but pushed him to the side. He’d been in close contact with the infected, so they saw him as a potential patient. As a scientist, he couldn’t really disagree.
Elton reached the room he was looking for, knocked on the door, and pushed it open.
The man on the bed groaned, turning his head to look up. “Hey, Doc,” he whispered, licking cracked lips. His lungs rattled and wheezed. “How you holding up?”
Elton picked up the chart hanging beside the monitor. He had only known R. J. Howard a few days, but it was impossible not to like him.
“You’re a strong guy, R.J.,” he said. “If news reports are correct, you and several others in your unit picked this up overseas.”
“Yeah, the CCD guys had me answer a whole list of questions about what we did over there.” Howard grinned. “I think they figured we were running around with the massage girls or something and caught it that way. But Bedford was a hundred percent loyal.” He turned away, sighing. “I was too, a lotta good it did me…”