Mona Lisa Overdrive

5 - Portobello

Kumiko woke in the enormous bed and lay very still, listening. There was a faint continuous murmur of distant traffic.

The air in the room was cold; she drew the rose duvet around her like a tent and climbed out. The small windows were patterned with bright frost. She went to the tub and nudged one of the swan's gilded wings. The bird coughed, gargled, began to fill the tub. Still huddled in the quilt, she opened her cases and began to select the day's garments, laying the chosen articles out on the bed.

When her bath was ready, she let the quilt slide to the floor and climbed over the marble parapet, stoically lowering herself into the painfully hot water. Steam from the tub had melted the frost; now the windows ran with condensation. Did all British bedrooms contain tubs like this? She wondered. She rubbed herself methodically with an oval bar of French soap, stood up, sluiced the suds off as best she could, wrapped herself in a large black towel, and, after some initial fumbling, discovered a sink, toilet, and bidet. These were hidden in a very small room that might once have been a closet, its walls fitted with dark veneer.

The theatrical-looking telephone chimed twice.

"Yes?"

"Petal here. Care for breakfast? Roger's here. Eager to meet you."

"Thank you," she said. "I'm dressing now."

She pulled on her best and baggiest pair of leather slacks, then burrowed into a hairy blue sweater so large that it would easily have fit Petal. When she opened her purse for her makeup, she saw the Maas-Neotek unit. Her hand closed on it automatically. She hadn't intended to summon him, but touch was enough; he was there, craning his neck comically and gaping at the low, mirrored ceiling.

"I take it we aren't in the Dorchester?"

"I'll ask the questions," she said. "What is this place?"

"A bedroom," he said. "In rather dubious taste."

"Answer my question, please."

"Well," he said, surveying the bed and tub, "by the decor, it could be a brothel. I can access historical data on most buildings in London, but there's nothing notable about this one. Built in 1848. Solid example of the prevalent classical Victorian style. The neighborhood's expensive without being fashionable, popular with lawyers of a certain sort." He shrugged; she could see the edge of the bed through the burnished gleam of his riding boots.

She dropped the unit into her purse and he was gone.

She managed the lift easily enough; once in the white-painted foyer, she followed the sound of voices. Along a sort of hallway. Around a corner.

"Good morning," said Petal, lifting the silver cover from a platter. Steam rose. "Here's the elusive Mr. Swain, Roger to you, and here's your breakfast."

"Hello," the man said, stepping forward, his hand extended. Pale eyes in a long, strong-boned face. Lank mouse-colored hair was brushed diagonally across his forehead. Kumiko found it impossible to guess his age; it was a young man's face, but there were deep wrinkles under the grayish eyes. He was tall, with the look of an athlete about his arms and shoulders. "Welcome to London." He took her hand, squeezed and released it.

"Thank you."

He wore a collarless shirt, very fine red stripes against a pale blue ground, the cuffs fastened with plain ovals of dull gold; open at the neck, it displayed a dark triangle of tattooed flesh. "I spoke with your father this morning, told him you'd arrived safely."

"You are a man of rank."

The pale eyes narrowed. "Pardon?"

"The dragons."

Petal laughed.

"Let her eat," someone said, a woman's voice.

Kumiko turned, discovering the slim dark figure against tall, mullioned windows; beyond the windows, a walled garden sheathed in snow. The woman's eyes were concealed by silver glasses that reflected the room and its occupants.

"Another of our guests," said Petal.

"Sally," the woman said, "Sally Shears. Eat up, honey. If you're as bored as I am, you feel like a walk." As Kumiko stared, her hand came up to touch the glasses, as though she were about to remove them. "Portobello Road's a couple blocks. I need some air." The mirrored lenses seemed to have no frames, no earpieces.

"Roger," Petal said, forking pink slices of bacon from a silver platter, "do you suppose Kumiko will be safe with our Sally?"

"Safer than I'd be, given the mood she's in," Swain said. "I'm afraid there isn't much here to amuse you," he said to Kumiko, leading her to the table, "but we'll try to make you as comfortable as possible and arrange for you to see a bit of the city. It isn't Tokyo, though."

"Not yet, anyway," said Petal, but Swain seemed not to hear.

"Thank you," Kumiko said, as Swain held her chair.

"An honor," Swain said. "Our respect for your father -- "

"Hey," the woman said, "she's too young to need that bullshit. Spare us."

"Sally's in something of a mood, you see," Petal said, as he put a poached egg on Kumiko's plate.

Sally Shears's mood, it developed, was one of barely suppressed rage, a fury that made itself known in her stride, in the angry gunshot crack of her black bootheels on icy pavement.

Kumiko had to scramble to keep up, as the woman stalked away from Swain's house in the crescent, her glasses flashing coldly in directionless winter sunlight. She wore narrow trousers of dark brown suede and a bulky black jacket, its collar turned up high; expensive clothing. With her short black hair, she might have been taken for a boy.

For the first time since leaving Tokyo, Kumiko felt fear.

The energy pent in the woman was almost tangible, a knot of anger that might slip at any moment.

Kumiko slid her hand into her purse and squeezed the Maas-Neotek unit; Colin was instantly beside her, strolling briskly along, his hands tucked in the pockets of his jacket, his boots leaving no imprint in the dirty snow. She released the unit then, and he was gone, but she felt reassured. She needn't fear losing Sally Shears, whose pace she found difficult; the ghost could certainly guide her back to Swain's. And if I run from her, she thought, he will help me. The woman dodged through moving traffic at an intersection, absently tugging Kumiko out of the path of a fat black Honda taxi and somehow managing to kick the fender as it slid past.

"You drink?" she asked, her hand around Kumiko's forearm.

Kumiko shook her head. "Please, you're hurting my arm."

Sally's grip loosened, but Kumiko was steered through doors of ornate frosted glass, into noise and warmth, a sort of crowded burrow lined in dark wood and worn fawn velour.

Soon they faced each other across a small marble table that supported a Bass ashtray, a mug of dark ale, the whiskey glass Sally had emptied on her way from the bar, and a glass of orange squash.

Kumiko saw that the silver lenses met the pale skin with no sign of a seam.

Sally reached for the empty whiskey glass, tilted it without lifting it from the table, and regarded it critically. "I met your father once," she said. "He wasn't as far up the ladder, back then." She abandoned the glass for her mug of ale. "Swain says you're half gaijin. Says your mother was Danish." She swallowed some of the ale. "You don't look it."

"She had them change my eyes."

"Suits you."

"Thank you. And your glasses," she said, automatically, "they are very handsome."

Sally shrugged. "Your old man let you see Chiba yet?"

Kumiko shook her head.

"Smart. I was him, I wouldn't either." She drank more ale. Her nails, evidently acrylic, were the shade and sheen of mother-of-pearl. "They told me about your mother." Her face burning, Kumiko lowered her eyes.

"That's not why you're here. You know that? He didn't pack you off to Swain because of her. There's a war on. There hasn't been high-level infighting in the Yakuza since before I was born, but there is now." The empty pint clinked as Sally set it down. "He can't have you around, is all. You'd be too easy to get to. A guy like Swain's pretty far off the map, far as Kanaka's rivals are concerned. Why you got a passport with a different name, right? Swain owes Kanaka. So you're okay, right?"

Kumiko felt the hot tears come.

"Okay, so you're not okay." The pearl nails drummed on marble. "So she did herself and you're not okay. Feel guilty, right?"

Kumiko looked up, into twin mirrors.

Portobello was choked Shinjuku-tight with tourists. Sally Shears, after insisting Kumiko drink the orange squash, which had grown warm and flat, led her out into the packed street. With Kumiko firmly in tow, Sally began to work her way along the pavement, past folding steel tables spread with torn velvet curtains and thousands of objects made of silver and crystal, brass and china. Kumiko stared as Sally drew her past arrays of Coronation plate and jowled Churchill teapots. "This is gomi," Kumiko ventured, when they paused at an intersection. Rubbish. In Tokyo, worn and useless things were landfill. Sally grinned wolfishly. "This is England. Gomi's a major natural resource. Gomi and talent. What I'm looking for now. Talent."

The talent wore a bottle-green velvet suit and immaculate suede wingtips, and Sally found him in another pub, this one called the Rose and Crown. She introduced him as Tick. He was scarcely taller than Kumiko, and something was skewed in his back or hip, so that he walked with a pronounced limp that heightened an overall impression of asymmetry. His black hair was shaved close at the back and sides, but piled into an oily loaf of curls above his forehead.

Sally introduced Kumiko: "My friend from Japan and keep your hands to yourself." Tick smiled wanly and led them to a table.

"How's business, Tick?"

"Fine," he said glumly. "How's retirement?"

Sally seated herself on a padded bench, her back to the wall. "Well," she said, "it's sort of on again, off again."

Kumiko looked at her. The rage had evaporated, or else been expertly concealed. As Kumiko sat down, she slid her hand into her purse and found the unit. Colin popped into focus on the bench beside Sally.

"Nice of you to think of me," Tick said, taking a chair. "Been two years, I'd say." He cocked an eyebrow in Kumiko's direction.

"She's okay. You know Swain, Tick?"

"Strictly by reputation, thank you."

Colin was studying their exchange with amused fascination, moving his head from side to side as though he were watching a tennis match. Kumiko had to remind herself that only she could see him.

"I want you to turn him over for me. I don't want him to know."

He stared at her. The entire left half of his face contorted in a huge slow wink. "Well then," he said, "you don't half want much, do you?"

"Good money, Tick. The best."

"Looking for something in particular, or is it a laundry run? Isn't as though people don't know he's a top nob in the rackets. Can't say I'd want him to find me on his manor ... "

"But then there's the money, Tick."

Two very rapid winks.

"Roger's twisting me, Tick. Somebody's twisting him. I don't know what they've got on him, don't much care. What he's got on me is enough. What I want to know is who, where, when. Tap in to incoming and outgoing traffic. He's in touch with somebody, because the deal keeps changing."

"Would I know it if I saw it?"

"Just have a look, Tick. Do that for me."

The convulsive wink again. "Right, then. We'll have a go." He drummed his fingers nervously on the edge of the table. "Buy us a round?"

Colin looked across the table at Kumiko and rolled his eyes.

"I don't understand," Kumiko said, as she followed Sally back along Portobello Road. "You have involved me in an intrigue ... "

Sally turned up her collar against the wind.

"But I might betray you. You plot against my father's associate. You have no reason to trust me."

"Or you me, honey. Maybe I'm one of those bad people your daddy's worried about."

Kumiko considered this. "Are you?"

"No. And if you're Swain's spy, he's gotten a lot more baroque recently. If you're your old man's spy, maybe I don't need Tick. But if the Yakuza's running this, what's the point of using Roger for a blind?"

"I am no spy."

"Then start being your own. If Tokyo's the frying pan, you may just have landed in the fire."

"But why involve me?"

"You're already involved. You're here. You scared?"

"No," Kumiko said, and fell silent, wondering why this should be true.

Late that afternoon, alone in the mirrored garret, Kumiko sat on the edge of the huge bed and peeled off her wet boots. She took the Maas-Neotek unit from her purse.

"What are they?" she asked the ghost, who perched on the parapet of the black marble tub.

"Your pub friends?"

"Yes."

"Criminals. I'd advise you to associate with a better class, myself. The woman's foreign. North American. The man's a Londoner. East End. He's a data thief, evidently. I can't access police records, except with regard to crimes of historical interest."

"I don't know what to do ... "

"Turn the unit over."

"What?"

"On the back. You'll see a sort of half-moon groove there. Put your thumbnail in and twist ... "

A tiny hatch opened. Microswitches.

"Reset the A/B throw to B. Use something narrow, pointed, but not a biro."

"A what?"

"A pen. Ink and dust. Gum up the works. A toothpick's ideal. That'll set it for voice-activated recording."

"And then?"

"Hide it downstairs. We'll play it back tomorrow ... "