“Have you found out what happened to the girl’s servant?”
“Not yet. But we know. She is surely lying garroted in a ravine somewhere. We can take that as true.”
“Yes. I think so, too. We have them here and they are safe. But we must save them from him. And here is what we thought of. We need your help to find a lacquer maker you can trust. We must have . . .” And she gave him a list.
After the storm on the day they moved to the mansion of the princess’s father, there were days of rain and cooler temperature. Overnight, it seemed, the leaves curled and lost their grip on the branches, falling in dips and slides, scuttling in drifts around the courtyards and having to be fished from the water of the garden lake.
As expected, Little Brother offered to send a replacement for the nurse, and the woman came and was competent and reserved. They kept her, at first, to only brief contact with Takako. Her mother attended to bathing and dressing her, nervous and with a set face, steadfast in following the plan.
Meanwhile, the Combmaker visited again and left a packet and two small bottles with O-hana. Then came a secret privacy while the woman from outside was visiting the house of Little Brother. Though she said she needed clothes she had left behind, they knew she had gone to report to him.
The girl was undressed and covered with a cloth, leaving her shoulders exposed. O-hana brought a thin mixture of lacquer and red cinnabar powder, Aoi herself painted a broad irregular birthmark along the base of the girl’s throat but far enough back that it was easily concealed under clothing. Teishi was hysterical between giggles and tears, the girl seemed delighted to be involved in a conspiracy, and urged Aoi to make an even larger imperfection. But Aoi was not to overdo the plot. Anything too outrageous would be suspect, she thought. In the end, there was a small stain, pale red like a couple of wilted flower petals, not actually unattractive but definitely a mark.
The woman came back and was greeted courteously, which rather caused her to open her eyes. Though they had not received her rudely, they had been cool. That night when it was time to retire, she was asked to help her mistress settle the girl for the night. Aoi and O-hana listened and, indeed, heard a small cry from the girl’s quarters. They exchanged serious glances, afraid to smile.
Then they waited. The woman bustled away first thing in the morning to the house she had visited the day before. O-hana saw her going and remarked that they might need her, but the woman pretended not to hear. Little Brother could not be kept waiting for this tremendous news.
First he sent a letter, all grace and compliments and expressions of affection for his brother’s wife and admiration for the Great Minister of the Right, their protector. With it came a cask of rice wine and a set of lacquer cups from which to drink it. After only a day more, he asked to visit. They invited him to come at a time near dusk, when the light would be uncertain.
Aoi met him in the broad reception corridor. She was dressed in clothes that were rich but of subdued color, her fan held just below the eyes, her attitude that of extreme respect. He surged toward her then checked his pace and came on more slowly. He wore hunting clothes, as usual, but elegant ones, not at all mussed and stained. Aoi had not seen him for two months, since the disastrous session about his health. He looked unusually presentable, but she observed that the excessive pulse still pounded at the sides of his neck, that his eyes were as off-color as before. He was not a handsome man, but he was sturdy and heavily built. The word “little” did not apply. For the briefest moment he glanced up as they entered the main part of the house, and his eyes betrayed a blind and bitter hope, instantly shut down. He thought to see the minister, Aoi believed, and that he would think well of his colleague’s brother. But surely he knew that the Great Minister of the Right was not in the city. Everyone always knew that sort of thing. What a pity he is not here, Aoi said to herself. I should have liked for him to see that glance, so adeptly shuttered. Masahira regarded her with an overbearing stare and a manner of brushing aside in advance anything that might be said to him.
She led him to a cushion made of rushes, where he sat before a wide curtain screen, behind which were Teishi and Takako. Aoi, in her capacity of lady-in-waiting, was not customarily as concealed as family women, but she joined the others behind the screen. She did not think it safe to let Teishi feel lonely in this situation. O-hana came with a flask of wine and some grilled vegetables in a spicy sauce. They surprised him with thin slices of duck, a gift from one of the minister’s friends. At first he made a show of refusing the food, the ultimate insult, but then he began to eat and finished everything.
“This trouble with your daughter,” he began.
Teishi, suddenly rigid, countered in her rash way, “Trouble? We have no trouble. Except that something has happened to a valued woman of my house and we feel threatened.”
“And is that not trouble? And is it not because of your stubbornness about your daughter? You must agree that it is only I who can see her safely married.”
“I do not want— She does not want—’’
“She is said to be attractive.”
“Ah, as for that—” Teishi looked to Aoi for help.
“But now I hear of a defect.” He overrode anything Aoi had meant to say. “How can there be such a thing, when everyone says . . . What are you concealing?” Such a question in a rising voice from such a man was terrifying to Teishi and she could not speak.
Aoi said, “It is true there is a mark, a small one. But it will disappear as she grows, I have seen it before.”
He became so agitated that she feared a blow to destroy the fabric between them. Suddenly he was shouting, “I will be shown this girl! She is my responsi—” But he choked and could only grind his teeth, gasping for breath, curbing his temper. Was there fear in his glance aside, as if he might find the owner of the house listening? Aoi had a moment of doubt, but she could not allow any softening of her purpose.
“Yes, yes,” they both said. “We understand. We are prepared—”
Teishi brought forward her tiny daughter, who leaned into a deep bow to her uncle. They put her between them, turned her head so that falling hair shielded her face, and carefully exposed the red place on her shoulder.
He stared.
“It is not extreme,” Aoi said. “It will fade in just a few . . .”
But he had turned away, anger winning over caution in his twisted face. “How could you do this to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It is only a small spot . . . Some consider such a thing a mark of celestial favor.”
“It—is—disgusting.”
He could not leave soon enough, his bow only a trifling bend, his feet loud on the floorboards as he shouted for his men and the woman he had sent, also. The carriage waited beside the veranda, propped on its traces and level with the floor, for easy entry. He bent to lift the back curtain but folded helplessly downward and crashed to the floor, bones knocking as he fell, and blood shot from his mouth.
Aoi had not foreseen the hemorrhage but nothing else about this death surprised her. It was almost as if the blow of seeing his niece’s birthmark had been a physical one, too much for his weakened condition. Yet she could not feel satisfaction that she had been right about the danger of an extreme pulse.
The Great Minister of the Left gave Masahira, his despised Little Brother, an elaborate funeral, though he did not observe the whole prescribed time of mourning but appeared in robes of emerald and light blue too soon after. Aoi and O-hana returned to the house of the princess. Her father came back from his trip and sent for them, shaking his head but unable to hide his satisfaction. “How is it,” he said, “that while I am away, the most troublesome man in the capital is demolished by a few women?”
O-hana hid her face. Aoi forbore to look pleased. The last moments of Little Brother’s life had not been anything they had hoped for and she would not see what they had done as a victory, would not let herself feel relief that he had died. She had no
t needed death to solve this problem.
“We dealt with him gently,” she said. “If he died by violence, it was not our doing.”
“Well. But you seem sure that he had the woman Shosho killed because she stood against him in his plan. Don’t you see some justice here?”
Aoi only turned her face away.
“And the girl?”
“We cleaned off the mark and she and her mother have retired to a village by the shore. The Great Minister of the Left will provide for them and they will perhaps never return. But that is a truly beautiful young girl, she has every gift of nature. Her mother will protect her for a time. Then . . .”
She sat feeling dissatisfied and cross. “We could have tried to talk to him,” she said, remembering the look of hope and knowing that it was a thing she could never explain. “We could have appealed to reason . . . Ah!” The minister’s face told her what she knew: that there would have been no possibility of reasoning with that man. Yet she felt—what? Sad? Guilty?
A poem occurred to her, which she did not voice.
One can easily
Create so simple a thing
As an outer flaw.
But to do this secretly—
Is not that a flaw concealed?
Ah, Aoi, she said to herself, why not accept a good result? Outside, mist dimmed the red of the maples and the gardens dripped with dew from every leaf, under a ghost of sun. Finally she felt that she had discovered the root of her discontent. I would have liked, she thought, for Little Brother to have been happy for just one day. But who could have given him that?
“You are sad for him,” said the minister. “It is good that someone grieves.”
“Yes. I grieve for the Second Man, the man he might have been.”
Copyright © 2010 Ann Woodward
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FICTION
THE PAIN OF OTHERS
BLAKE CROUCH
The bite of conscience,
like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity . . .
Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good
and hang your own will over yourself as a law?
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Letty Dobesh, five weeks out of Fluvanna Correctional Center on a nine-month bit for felony theft, straightened the red wig over her short brown hair, adjusted the oversize Jimmy Choo sunglasses she’d lifted out of a locker two days ago at the Asheville Racquet and Fitness Club, and handed a twenty-spot to the cabbie.
“Want change, miss?” he asked.
“On a nine seventy-five fare? What does your heart tell you?”
Past the bellhop and into the Grove Park Inn carrying a small leather duffle bag, the cloudy autumn day just cool enough to warrant the fires at either end of the lobby, the fourteen-foot stone hearths sending forth drafts of intersecting warmth.
She sat down at a table on the outskirts of the lounge, noting the prickle in the tips of her ears that always started up right before. Adrenaline and fear and a shot of hope because you never knew what you might find. Better than sex on tweak.
The barkeep walked over and she ordered a San Pellegrino with lime. Checked her watch as he went back to the bar: 2:58 P.M. An older couple cuddled on a sofa by the closest fireplace with glasses of wine. A man in a navy blazer read a newspaper several tables away. Looked to her like money—top-shelf hair and skin. Must have owned a tanning bed or just returned from the islands. Two Mexicans washed windows that overlooked the terrace. All in all, quiet for a Saturday afternoon, and she felt reasonably anonymous, though it didn’t really matter. What would be recalled when the police showed up? An attractive thirtysomething with curly red hair and ridiculous sunglasses.
As her watch beeped three o’clock, she picked out the sound of approaching footsteps—the barkeep returning with her Pellegrino. He set the sweating glass on the table and pulled a napkin out of his vest pocket.
She glanced up. Smiled. Good-looking kid. Compulsive weightlifter.
“What do I owe you?”
“On the house,” he said.
She crushed the lime into the mineral water. Through the windows she could see the view from the terrace—bright trees under gray sky, downtown Asheville in the near distance, the crest of the Blue Ridge in the far, summits headless under the cloud deck. She sipped her drink and stared at the napkin the barkeep had left on the table. Four four-digit, handwritten numbers. Took her thirty seconds to memorize them, and a quick look around confirmed what she had hoped—the window washers and the hotel guests remained locked and absorbed in their own worlds. She lifted the napkin and slid the key card underneath it across the glass tabletop and into her grasp. Then shredded the napkin, sprinkling the pieces into the hissing water.
One hour later, she fished her BlackBerry out of her purse as she stepped off the elevator and onto the fifth floor. The corridor plush and vacant. No housekeeping carts. An ice machine humming around the corner.
Down the north wing, Letty flushing with the satisfaction that came when things went pitch-perfect. She could have quit now and called it a great haul, her duffle bag sagging with the weight of three high-end laptops, six hundred and forty-five in cash, one cell phone, two iPods, and the contents of three fully raided minibars.
Standing in front of the closed door of 5212, she dialed the front desk on her stolen BlackBerry.
“Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa. How may I direct your call?”
“Room 5212.”
“Certainly.”
Through the door, she heard the phone ringing, and she let it ring five times before ending the call and glancing once more up and down the corridor.
The master key card unlocked the door.
The room was the modest one of the four—a single king-sized bed (unmade), tiled bathroom with a shower and garden tub, the mirror still beaded with condensation. In the sitting area, an armoire, loveseat, leather chair, and floor-to-ceiling windows with a three hundred fifty dollar a night view of the Asheville skyline, the mountains, and a golf course—greens and fairways lined with pines and maple trees. A trace of expensive cologne lingered in the air, and the clothes on the bed smelled of cigar smoke.
She perused the bedside table drawer, the armoire, the dresser, the drawers under the bathroom sink, the closet, the suitcase, even under the sofa cushions, which occasionally yielded big scores from the rich too cheap or lazy to use the hotel safe.
Room 5212 was a bust—nothing but three Romeo y Julieta cigars, which she of course pocketed. Bonuses for the bellhop and barkeep.
On her way out, Letty unzipped her duffle bag and opened the minibar, her BlackBerry buzzing as she reached for a 1.5 ounce bottle of Glenlivet 12 Year.
Pressed TALK. “Yeah?”
“What room you in?”
Letty told him.
“Get out of there. He’s coming back.”
She closed the minibar. “How long do I have?”
“I got tied up giving directions. You might not have any time.”
She hoisted the duffle bag onto her shoulder, started toward the door, but the unmistakable sound of a key card sliding into the slot stopped her cold.
A muffled voice: “I think you’ve got it upside down.”
Letty opened the bifold closet doors and slipped in. With no doorknob on the inside, she had to pull them shut by the slats.
People entered the hotel suite. Letty let the duffle bag slide off her shoulder and onto the floor. Dug the BlackBerry out of her purse, powered it off as the door closed.
Through a ribbon of light, she watched two men walk past the closet, one in a navy blazer and khaki slacks, the other wearing a black suit, their faces obscured by the angle of the slats.
“Drink, Chase?”
“Jameson, if you’ve got it.”
She heard the minibar open.
The man who wasn’t named Chase poured the Irish whiskey into a rocks glass and cracked the cap o
n a bottle of beer and the men settled themselves in the sitting area. Letty drew in deep breaths, her heart slamming in her chest, her knees soft, as if her legs might buckle at any moment.
“Chase, I need to hear you say you’ve really thought this through, that you’re absolutely sure.”
“I am. I only went to Victor when I realized there was no other way. I’m really in a bind.”
“You brought the money?”
“Right here.”
“Mind if I have a look?”
Letty heard locks unclasp, what might have been a briefcase opening.
“Now, you didn’t just run down to your bank, ask for twenty-five large in hundred dollar bills?”
“I went to Victor.”
“Good. We’re still thinking tomorrow, yes?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I understand you have a son?”
“Skyler. He’s seven. From a previous marriage.”
“I want you to go out with your son tomorrow morning at ten. Buy some gas with a credit card. Go to Starbucks. Buy a coffee for yourself. A hot chocolate for Skyler. Wear a bright shirt. Flirt with the barista. Be memorable. Establish a record of you not being in your house from ten to noon.”
“And then I just go home?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you tell me what you’re going to do? So I can be prepared?”
“It’d be more natural, your conversations with the police I mean, if you were truly surprised.”
“I hear you on that, but I’ll play it better if I know going in. It’s the way I’d prefer it, Arnold.”
“Where does your wife typically shower?”
“Upstairs in the master bath, right off our bedroom.”
“As you’re stepping out of the shower, is the toilet close?”
“Yeah, a few feet away.”
“You’re going to find her on the floor beside the toilet, neck broken like she’d slipped getting out of the shower. It happens all the time.”
“Okay.” Chase exhaled. “Okay, that’ll work. I like that. Then I just call the police?”
“Call 911. Say you don’t know if she’s dead, but that she isn’t moving.”
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 Page 7