or anything. But he refuses to go into Hiram's brain and find out what's wrong. He says he doesn't have the right. He won't let any of us talk to Hiram, either. He says if somebody wants to leave the tour it's not our business. Maybe he's right. I know if I tried to talk to him, it wouldn't do any good."
"Why not? You two always got along."
"He's different now. He hasn't been the same since December. It's like some witch doctor put a curse on him while we were in the Caribbean."
"Did something specific happen to set him off?"
"Something happened, but we don't know what. We were having lunch at the Palace Sunday with Prime Minister Nakasone and all these other officials. Suddenly there's this man in a cheap suit. He just walks in and hands Hiram a piece of paper. Hiram got very pale and wouldn't say anything about it. That afternoon he went back to the hotel by himself. Said he wasn't feeling good. That must have been when he packed and moved out, because Sunday night he was gone."
"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.
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.