If he tried shaving now, he'd cut himself to ribbons.
Able to think of nothing else to do to prepare himself, he sank into a chair facing the door to wait. When the telephone shrilled, Marcus actually knocked the chair over. He disentangled himself, and made it to the phone before the answering machine switched on.
"Hello?"
"Marcus," that familiar voice said-notably in English, not Latin. "We have business to discuss. Come to the Neo Edo, Room 3027. Bring your records."
The line clicked in his ear.
Marcus swallowed once in the silence. He still didn't even know the man's name. He swallowed again, against unreasoning fear. Nothing could really happen to him. And it was Kit's hotel he'd be going to, not some out-of-the-way corner of the terminal. Kit Carson was a friend. A powerful friend. Marcus clung to that thought.
Then he gathered up moneybox, records, and his courage and headed resolutely toward Kit Carson's world-famous hotel.
Getting into the Neo Edo was simple.
There were lots of ways into the luxury hotel besides the main lobby. Probably more, in fact, than Kit Carson knew existed, unless the previous owner, the legendary Homako Tani, had left blueprints behind when he'd deeded the enormous hotel to his long-ago time scouting partner. The Neo Edo's architect, working under Tani's direct supervision, had put in more melodramatic secret passageways, hidden entrances, and blind rooms built into the rocky foundations of the Himalayas themselves than even the gods of the mountaintops knew.
Skeeter had tried to pick locks on those doors more than once, slipping in through one of at least fifteen secret entrances he'd discovered thus far (and he hadn't even attempted the top three floors of the five-storey hotel yet, for fear of opening a hinged panel and emerging straight into Kit Carson's palatial office on the fifth floor. A gilt-and-wood dragon-shaped balcony, whose "scales" were Imperial Chrysanthemums, snaked completely around the open, atrium-style upper floor, which boasted bedrooms larger than his biological parents' entire home floorplan.
Rumor had it (and Skeeter's sources were pretty reliable) that Kit had discovered he owned the Neo Edo when a bunch of lawyers he didn't know had been allowed into La-La Land just long enough to hand-deliver a copy of Homako Tani's will, a brief letter, and the deed to the hotel.
Lawyers, however, were barred from conducting any official legal business (never mind set up a law firm!) in La-La Land by edict of none other than Bull Morgan. The squat, fire-plug of a station manager, who chewed cigars the way eight-year-olds chewed bubble gum, had put into place iron-clad rules he bent only when the "official lawyering" dealt with wills and inheritances.
In its way, so long as you obeyed the rules (or didn't get caught breaking them), La-La Land was a sanctuary beyond compare. He grinned. No one-probably not even Kit knew whether or not the Neo Edo's builder was really dead. Rumor (and here, even Skeeter's sources were of wildly mixed opinions) ran the gamut from Homako Taw dying at the hand of Japan's greatest warrior-artist-poet-swordsmith ever to live, Miyamoto Musashi, to walking up into the ceiling of the world and ending his last years as Dalai Lama in Tibet (not so far, actually, from the geographical, if not temporal, site of TT-86).
The world-famous temple at the roof of the world had finally been refurbished after tidal waves, earthquakes, famine, disease, and war with their hated northern neighbors had caused the great, sprawling bastion of communist socialism to crumble and finally leave Tibet to its prayer wheels, its solitary temples, its bamboo-munching pandas, and its mountains, where new snow falling on the great Himalayan peaks blew harshly.
Whatever the true story, Skeeter simply strolled into the lobby in his disguise, passed the huge mural of Sunrise over Edo Castle, which was supposed to be a copy of one that the same Musashi (who might have killed Homako Tani, for any possible reason, given Musashi"s temper) had painted. Skeeter reached the elevator and pinged the little lighted circle.
Moments later, he was on the third floor, stealing toward Charles Farley's expensive room on a carpet thick and fine as any the kings of Persia might have ordered woven for their winter pavilions. The subtle pattern of black and white reminded him of snow leopards, or those elusive creatures of the Mongolian steppes, the silent white tiger glimpsed through blasts of snow and wind. Skeeter shivered, recalling his terror when ordered by Yesukai to join a winter hunt in the sacred mountains of the Yakka clan's homeland. He still didn't know whether it had been skill or luck that his arrow had brought down the snow leopard before the huge cat could claw him to death, but he would take to his grave the scream of his pony, knocked from under him and mortally wounded before he knew anything was near.
Skeeter shook off those memories with some irritation and concentrated on the matter at hand: breaking into Room 3027. First, he listened, ear bent to the door with a stethoscope to hear what might be taking place beyond the closed door. He caught the sound of the shower and a man's voice singing Gilbert and Sullivan off key. Skeeter smiled, carefully slipped the lock while disabling the alarm with a little tool he'd invented all on his own, and entered the darkened hotel room.
Farley sang on, as Skeeter began a methodical hunt of the well-appointed bedroom. He rifled through the discarded clothing on the bed, searched every drawer, under the mattresses, in the closet, under every piece of furniture, even managed to open the room safe, only to find it empty.
Where? Skeeter fumed.
He eased the bathroom door open and risked a peek inside.
Steam hit his face, along with an unpleasant bellow about mausers and javelins, but there was no sign of a moneybelt draped over the toilet, sink, or towel rack. Had he worn the damned thing into the shower?
The song-and the spray of water-came to an abrupt end. Farley's shower was over. Skeeter cursed under his breath and ran for the hall. He slipped outside, locked Farley's hotel room door behind him, and leaned against it, breathing heavily as his heart raced.
"What are you doing here?" a familiar voice demanded.
Skeeter yelped an came at least three inches clear of the floor. Belatedly he recognized Marcus. "Oh, it's only you," he gasped, sagging again into the door for support. "For a second, I thought Goldie'd set Security on me again."
Marcus was frowning intensely. "You were attempting to steal from the room."
Skeeter planted hands on hips and studied his friend. "I do have a wager to win," he said quietly, "or had you forgotten that? If I lose, I get tossed off station."
"Yes, you and your stupid bet! Why must you cheat and steal from everyone, Skeeter Jackson?"
Marcus' anger surprised him. "I don't. I never steal from 'eighty-sixers. They're family. And I never steal from family."
Marcus' cheeks had flushed in the soft lighting of the hall. His breathing went fast and shallow. "Family! When will you learn, Skeeter? You are not a Mongol! You are an uptimer American, not some unwashed, stinking hordesman!"
Shock detonated through him. How had Marcus known about that?
"`A Mongol doesn't steal from his own kind,' " Marcus ranted on, evidently quoting some conversation Skeeter didn't remember at all. "Pretty morals for a pretty thief, yes? That is all you are. A thief. I am sick of hearing how the tourists deserve it. They aren't your enemies! They are only people trying to enjoy life, then you come and smash it up by thieving and lying and-" His eyes suddenly widened, then went savagely narrow. ""The money you gave to me. The bet you made in Rome. You did not win it honestly."