Aces Abroad

" 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?"

"The Japanese, you mean? No way."

"There must have been something."

Hiram closed his eyes. "Okay. Maybe there was a picture of a duck. Side view. Looked like a decoy, back home. Just an outline."

"Okay. And you've told me everything that happened at the club."

"Everything."

"And the next day the kobun found you at lunch." "Kobun?"

"The yakuza soldier."

Hiram blushed again. "He just walked in. I don't know how he got past the security. He stood right across the table from where I was sitting. He bowed from the waist with his legs spread; his right hand is out like this, palm up. He introduced himself, but I was so scared I couldn't remember the name. Then he handed me a bill. The amount was two hundred and fifty thousand yen. There was a note in English at the bottom. It said the amount would double every day at midnight until I paid it."

Fortunato worked the figures out in his head. In U.S. money the debt was now close to seven thousand dollars. Hiram said, "If it's not paid by Thursday they said…"

"What?"

"They said I would never even see the man who killed me."

Fortunato phoned Peregrine from a pay phone, colorcoded red for local calls only. He fed it a handful of ten-yen coins to keep it from beeping at him every three minutes.

"I found him," Fortunato said. "He wasn't a lot of help."

"Is he okay?" Peregrine sounded sleepy. It was all too easy for Fortunato to picture her stretched out in bed, covered only by a thin white sheet. He had no powers left. He couldn't stop time or project his astral body or hurl bolts of prana or move around inside people's thoughts. But his senses were still acute, sharper than they'd ever been before the virus, and he could remember the smell of her perfume and her hair and her desire as if they were there all around him.

"He's nervous and losing weight. But nothing's happened to him yet."

"Yet?"

"The yakuza want money from him. A few thousand. It's basically a misunderstanding. I tried to get him to back down, but he wouldn't. It's a pride thing. He sure picked the country for it. People die from pride here by the thousands, every year."

"You think it's going to come to that?"

"Yes. I offered to pay the money for him. He refused. I'd do it behind his back, but I can't find out which clan is after him. What scares me is it sounds like they're threatening him with some kind of invisible killer."

"You mean, like an ace?"

"Maybe. In all the time I've been here I've only heard about one actual confirmed ace, a zen roshi up north on Hokkaido Island. For one thing, I think the spores had pretty much settled out before they could get here. And even if any did, you might never hear about them. We're talking about a culture here that makes self-effacement into a religion. Nobody wants to stand out. So if we're up against some kind of ace, it's possible nobody's even heard of him."

"Can I do anything?"

He wasn't sure what she was offering and he didn't want to think too hard about it. "No," he said. "Not now"

"Where are you?"