"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?"
"A pay phone, in the Roppongi district. The club where Hiram got in trouble is somewhere around here."
"It's just ... we never really had a chance to talk. With Jayewardene there and everything."
"I know."
"I went looking for you after Wild Card Day. Your mother said you were going to a monastery."
"I was. Then when I got here I heard about that monk, the one up on Hokkaido."
"The ace."
"Yeah. His name is Dogen. He can create mindblocks, a little like the Astronomer could, but not as drastic. He can make people forget things or take away worldly skills that might interfere with their meditation or-"
"Or take away somebody's wild card power. Yours, for instance."
"For instance."
"Did you see him?"
"He said he'd take me in. But only if I gave up my power."