18mm Blues (41 page)

With the fifty million paid by Kumura and sizeable profits from the cultured pearls from the farm, Bertin could afford anything he might want or want to become. While his Mizner house was being built he went to Geneva and underwent a series of cosmetic surgeries. Didn't just have his nose idealized and the dissipation removed from around his eyes, but got himself an entirely different, more attractive face. Chin, cheekbones, brow ridges, ears and all. For a coinciding smile he had his crooked teeth extracted and replaced with believable implants. He'd explicitly told the surgeons the well-bred look he wanted and that was what they gave him.

Bertin's manners and personal style were bought. And Paulette helped finish him.

And now there he was in his second-floor study of his large, luxuriously appointed house with a true, twenty-five-dollar Havana being brought to the slicked hole formed by his lips so he could enjoy causing a plosive sound and a miniature thunderhead around him. “I believe,” he was saying, “our sense of self is influenced most by those things we possess. One must own to be one's own.”

William, from across the room, just outside the niche containing Daniel Lesage's various verifications, fixed on the man. He mentally reconstructed the face, added brow, added chin, coarsened the nose and reshaped the cheeks. William's memory confirmed the voice and the mannerisms and he was nearly certain who Lesage truly was.

Lesage must have sensed William's stare. He brought his eyes around to William's and they were opposed, eyes-to-eyes, for a long moment. William shifted his attention to the photographs of Lesage in the Légion Étrangère. With the keen, analytical vision of a gem cutter used to determining flaws, he studied the photographs closely and noticed how often the Lesage faces were identical in perspective, expression. Someone had done an excellent job, spliced the negatives, printed the photographs, retouched them, copied them and printed them again, so Lesage could confidently display them here. Captain Lesage, hero Lesage, fucking Bertin, William thought.

He again looked across the room at Lesage.

Lesage's eyes were still on him.

Had Lesage recognized him? Unlikely, William thought. He'd been only eight. Now at nearly thirty he was considerably changed. As a test William smiled amiably and nodded. Perhaps Lesage believed William was commending him for what was displayed in the niche. He returned the smile and nod.

What should he do? William thought. Expose Lesage then and there? (Who would believe or care?) Confront him one on one? (Such privacy would be too lenient.) Kill him? (What else?) With a gun? (He deserved a knife.) There were so many voices in William. Which should he heed? Whatever he decided on, he told himself, he shouldn't decide now.

He went out onto the balcony.

Grady was there out of range of the cigar smoke. Leaning on the railing of the balustrade, observing Julia and Paulette. They were directly below on the smooth decking of the swimming pool. The piece of music that was playing and had been playing over and over, as though it were a part of a conditioning process, was Diane Schurr's rendition of “Nobody Does Me Like You Do.” Julia and Paulette were slow dancing to it, pressed and barely moving their feet. Neither was leading. Their arms were around.

Julia seemed oblivious to anyone watching. Paulette, however, was well aware that Grady was up there. Three times she'd glanced up at him, not to convey he was being romantically eclipsed, just to ascertain that he was still there. It seemed his presence was essential and, in that respect, he wasn't excluded.

Not to worry, Grady told his possessiveness, he knew his Julia.

“Are you serious about going pearling?” William asked.

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“If possible tomorrow sometime. Soon as Kumura or someone checks me out on that ketch. Why?”

“My mind got changed,” William told him. “I better go with you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

In the three o'clock dark of the next morning, one of Kumura's white Bentleys arrived at his big house in Bang Wan. Bringing a female visitor.

Arrangements had been made for this visit a month ago. Through the intermediary in London who usually saw to such affairs on Kumura's behalf. As always before there'd been the telephone conversations between Kumura and the female, the purpose being to confirm in his mind that she was neither stupid nor pretentious, qualities that even in the long-gone best of times had dampened Kumura's erotic spirit.

Kumura had rated her fascinating, which, according to his scale, was on the higher side. For instance, when he'd asked her name she'd been quick with the suggestion that he give her one. When he'd asked her age, just as quickly she'd thanked him for the opportunity to fib, said she loved to lie as much as she lied to love, was good at it because she had an excellent memory. Was he such a masochist that he insisted on the truth?

Kumura was amused. He decided to call her Celia, an Anglo name that had always appealed to him, and, according to the photographs of her he'd been sent, he believed it suited.

Now this stranger he'd christened Celia was in the house and up the stairs and on her way down the long hall to Kumura's bedroom suite in the south wing. Kumura heard the clips of her high heels on the adobe tiles, drawing closer.

He'd been informed of the progress of her journey from when she'd been picked up at her Belgravia flat and driven to Heathrow to a short while ago when his Falcon 50 had landed her at Muang Mai. In the interim she'd been allowed a two-day stopover in a suite at the Peninsula in Hong Kong. To recover from the long air trip. From one point of view that was thoughtful of Kumura, from another, to his benefit: she wouldn't be tired and lagged. Experience had taught him that bought, temporary women, no matter how promising their dispositions at the outset, could turn and make matters ugly when not feeling up to par and their margin of tolerance was thin.

The cadent clip of her heels was louder, more definite now, bringing her to him. His anticipation was peaking. He'd come to believe in the importance of anticipation in these sexual dramas. The eventual encounter and even the culmination ofttimes hadn't been as enjoyable for him as his anticipation. That was why he'd insisted on reports of her on the way. To anticipate her, to accumulate in his mind impressions of the effort she was expending to get to him.

She, this Celia, was at the door now. Kumura thought the thought that usually occurred to him at this juncture: that he should have bolted the door, allowed her rap on it to become a pounding, her insistence to increase to such an extent she became desperate and began sobbing.

Her rap was a polite one.

He didn't go to the door, remained across the room from it so his first sight of her would be a full-length view. Told her to enter.

She was in white, fashionably dressed, had on a short skirt that underslung her buttocks and conveyed that she knew how good her legs were. A tall blond with the sort of tight, conscientiously maintained body needed for success by women whose callings required exposure: showgirls, strippers and such.

She was more attractive than her photographs had shown. And she moved well, Kumura saw, as she came to him with her hand extended and introduced herself as Celia. Her hand was moist, which gave away she was nervous, but there was no other indication of that, and if she was under the influence of a drug it wasn't apparent.

They sat across from each other. She asked permission to smoke, lighted a Dunhill with a cheap, throwaway lighter. Exhaled so vigorously her mouth was momentarily ugly. That was her first and, Kumura hoped, her last self-betrayal.

The beginning was eased by discussion of her trip and London. Kumura inquired about where in England she'd been brought up and about her family, but he didn't expect truthful replies. It struck him how spurious this entire encounter was. He fought off the thought by contending to himself that he'd be able to cause her pleasure.

“How long will you want me here?” Celia asked.

“I don't yet know.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Why did you ask?”

“Merely to get things arranged in my mind. I'm not in a hurry, it's not that.”

Now, Kumura noticed, she had less composure than she'd had initially. Perhaps because of his Orientalness and the possibility of bizarre requirements. It made him wonder what she expected he'd want done and, on the other hand, what genuinely to arouse and please he could do to her. This was the guessing game with rules assumed: to inquire or divulge outright would spoil. Best to discern and tacitly disclose, send subtle signals.

“Would you care for something to drink, some wine perhaps?”

“Not yet,” she said.

“You'd like to freshen up?”

“Yes.”

Kumura rang for a servant.

“Will we … will I be coming back here?” she asked.

He told her she would. The servant showed her out.

At once Kumura gave his attention to the blue pearl. He'd wanted some prelusive time with this Celia, to ascertain that she was appealing enough before preparing it. If she hadn't been, if she'd been crass or brittle or dowdy he'd have sent her away and left the pearl intact.

There it was, on the surface of his desk, the last of all that many he'd bought from Bertin. Initially, when he'd believed Bertin could supply him with more, he'd used them with a frequency close to wasteful. Then, when he realized no more were forthcoming, he'd rationed them to himself, and now, it had come down to this last one, his last eighteen-millimeter blue.

Kumura cringed when he considered what lay beyond it, the inability without recourse. He remembered all too well what that had been like for him. In fact, he was able clearly to recall the first time impotency had chosen him: in the bed of a suite at the Carleton in Cannes with an Italian woman whose pleasure would have been his achievement. He'd been embarrassed rather than alarmed because it had never occurred to him before and, he thought, it wouldn't again.

But it did. It happened frequently. Then it happened more often than not. His penis became undependable, and because it couldn't be depended upon it became predictably undependable.

He consulted some of the most prominent London doctors, went from one to another along Harley Street. They expressed various theories regarding his condition but avoided offering diagnosis. How many medical hands clothed in powdered rubber gloves fingered at his flacid member and thought
there but for the grace of something or other go I
.

Urologists asked: did he have an erection upon awakening in the morning? Some mornings? Did he have nocturnal emissions? Was he able to masturbate? Would he consider a penile prosthesis, a sort of splint to aid insertion?

No, no, no, no, definitely not, were Kumura's replies.

Psychiatrists poked around among his childhood experiences and impressions. There was likely something causal there but they didn't find it. One psychiatrist, a Swiss with Luther in his gray matter, had to bite his tongue to keep from commenting that Kumura was a womanizer and by being made impotent he'd gotten what he deserved.

In many cultures, especially in the innately ashamed West, Kumura might well have been branded a womanizer. In Japan, however, his vigorous libido was a distinction. He was a swordsman to be reckoned with, a carnal samurai. He'd adored women all his life, it seemed, had been erotically aroused by them since infancy when his mother had shown off his penis to her female friends and allowed them to pinch it, boasted about his
ochinchin
, honorable tinkle-tinkle.

He'd been sexually precocious, actively so, knew how to satisfy and did before he himself was able to orgasm. When that capability was his and for years after he thought of it as a physical fortune that never depleted, that only required an interval, often hardly more than a pause, to replenish.

There were numerous
pichi-pichi-gyaru
(lively girls) in his young life. He preferred a
pikaichi
(dazzler) over one that was
kawaii
(cute) and he was wise to their guile, wanted to believe but seldom did when they asked him demurely to be
yasashi
(gentle) because their
kuri-chan
(little clit) was so sensitive.

School in England was supposed to temper him but, of course, it didn't. His parents believed the apparent propriety of the British would rub off on him. He, however, soon enough saw right through the British, disregarded their airs and got to their lust.

The women he encountered in England appealed to him far more than the women he'd been with in Japan. Those perennial Japanese schoolgirl pretenders with their wistful confusion and reliance on demureness couldn't hold a candle to the lithe and elegant English beauties who transformed so extremely in the little time it took to go from the drawing room to the bed.

English women. He loved their polarity. He would lie in the perfectly contrived light of some luxurious West End female lair and, while making the most of another afterfloat, feel sympathy for his former comrades half a world away; who, no doubt, were still enduring brothel and bar, hanging around the Mikado hoping for a night, or even an hour of sensual largess from one of the rare hostesses considered beautiful. Oh, the energy expended in search of a smile genuinely naughty, an assertion that couldn't be denied, a moan, shriek or wiggle truly induced. Unfortunate fellows, Kumura would think, as, beneath the sheet, long tapered female fingers found him and kept hold to enjoy even the first stirrings of another erection.

This being Kumura's nature one can well imagine the impact early impotency had on him. He was bereft, uninspired by everything, a huge portion of his existence, the most gratifying, fervent portion, had been obliterated. He stood naked before mirrors and gazed at his disinclined member. How much it had been loved, tactilely worshipped, how swift it had been to reply whenever called upon. And now…