Secrets of the Apple (22 page)

Ryoki let his eyes drift casually to the papers in the seat pocket. The conversation was going nowhere and he was tired of it.

“We pay him a fortune. What could he possibly need?”

“I don’t know,” she said, turning to gaze out the window with a shrug that felt like an ending.

Though he said nothing, Ryoki felt a hot sniff of anger in his nose. With all her rants about ethics and morals, she had ignored the uncomplicated fact that motivated both parties; Browning and Tanaka Inc. could make more money together than either could make separately, a fact that held sway whether Browning had one wife or fifteen. But those words would sound too harsh to someone like Kate who had not yet made peace with all the shades of gray. If she wanted to hold Browning’s divorces against him, that was her prerogative; no point discussing it further.

She pulled a novel from her bag. That was part of their agreement, free reading during travel time, to help offset the long hours. Ryoki pulled the reports from the seat pocket, but his mind kept tickling around their disagreement and he couldn’t concentrate. Kate’s fault, making him mad, wasting his time, eating up his energy. She appeared to sense his irritation and twisted a bit in her seat, giving him her back. It wasn’t until they were in the car traveling from the airport to Browning’s office that they had thawed sufficiently to make stilted comments on the weather and Porto Alegre’s interesting architectural mix.

Browning himself had scouted the location for the Tanaka Inc. branch in Porto Alegre, and the building turned out to be eye-catchingly lovely, reminiscent of old Europe. As they pulled up, Ryoki wondered if perhaps it had been chosen more for its impressive masonry than its convenient location. Unlike the São Paulo offices which took up seven floors of a skyscraper, the Porto Alegre branch required only two floors, though looking at the numbers, Ryoki thought they could have made do with one. Stepping out of the elevator onto the top floor, he understood the extra space. Apparently Browning liked to work on a scale that wasn’t just American, but Texan in size, much grander than São Paulo.
Don’t pay attention to his quirks,
Ryoki thought,
admit
it looks nice.

Reception had already announced Mr. Tanaka’s arrival and Browning was just leaving his office wearing the big smile of a gracious host. “Welcome to my neck of the woods. I hope you like what we’ve done with the place. I’ve worked ten years in Brazil off and on, and I’ve admired this building every time I came down here,” Browning said as he led them to his office, leonine muscles rippling, barely contained under his custom-fitted jacket, his skin the leathery tan of an aging outdoorsman, dark hair shot with gray. A man’s man, power and money. The Dream incarnate.

“I came down here with Ford, then with G.E. Got to know my way around the people.” A doe-eyed intern young enough to be his daughter watched Browning’s approach with a bright, expectant gaze, but he swept past without a glance. The girl’s head snapped back a fraction, her cheeks reddening like she’d been slapped. Ryoki wondered briefly whether Browning had been sleeping with her, but it was ridiculous to convict the man on such slim evidence and he put the thought down to the insidious influence of Kate’s feminist ravings. Still, as the group neared Browning’s door, Ryoki noticed the immediate area to be staffed almost exclusively with young, attractive Brazilian women, more so than he would have expected.

Unsurprisingly, Browning’s office turned out to be large, twice the size of Ryoki’s, with tall, ornate windows filling two walls. “Care for anything after that long trip?” Browning asked, hovering over the bar on the credenza. “I think I have most everything.” Kate and Ryoki politely declined. “Well, if you change your mind, be my guest.” He smiled, his exceedingly white teeth gleaming under the flattering jewelry store lighting. “Most people are interested in these,” Browning said, strolling to a wall of antique weapons with the languid grace of a conquering prince. He showed off warlike native headdresses from Africa, America and China, and pulled a wicked-looking knife from its sheath, holding the blade to the light. “The first time I cleared six figures, I bought this to celebrate. These all came from formerly savage races,” he said with a wink and a broad smile. “But this here is the crown jewel of my collection. Late eighteenth century.” He slid back a pair of pocket doors and flipped on the light inside a large glass display case set into the wall, illuminating a splendidly preserved set of leather samurai armor with complete weaponry, the metal helmet gleaming over a grimacing black mask. Even unoccupied it looked haughty, brutal, ready to cut itself free of its
gaijin
prison. “This here’s safety glass,” Browning said, tapping the front with a knuckle as if teasing a caged monkey. “Nothing gets in and nothing gets out. Gotta keep it safe. My wife said I was crazy shipping it all the way down here, but I wanted it near me. Thought you might appreciate it.”

Ordinarily Ryoki did not object to collectors owning bits of Japanese history, but somehow the moment had a sinister cast, which was either Kate’s irritation making him moody, or the precursor to a wicked headache. Either way, he didn’t appreciate the display and managed only a thin smile and a few noncommittal hmms and haws before being saved from utter perjury by the fortuitous entrance of Browning’s assistant Ms. Blatislav, a Brazilian native of Russian descent. Smiling and fluttering like a tardy hostess, she walked over to stand beside Browning, who impatiently shook off the proprietary hand she placed on his arm.
Definitely sleeping with her,
Ryoki thought.

“They’re ready for you,” Ms. Blatislav said, gesturing to the door. Browning grinned broadly at Kate.

“You ready to keep track of everything?” Kate busied herself checking her bag for a notepad and pen, and he turned to Ryoki. “How does your girl here feel about touring the factories in those high heels? Some of the catwalks can be tricky, especially if you’re on stilts.” Ryoki watched Browning’s gaze sweep down from Kate’s face to look—no, leer at her legs. Ryoki shook his head in annoyance. Kate had put an idea in his head and it was distorting everything he saw. Browning was looking at her shoes. They were a poor choice, Ryoki thought; she should have been more sensible. Kate bared her teeth in a frosty smile and headed out the door.

She took assiduous notes as they toured two factories and listened to Browning’s booming voice as he strode among the workers, his darting eyes picking up the tiniest details, clapping the occasional foreman on the back, throwing out orders with the natural command of a king. By afternoon, Ryoki remembered clearly why they’d hired him, why he’d garnered the big salary. By the end, he had begun to compare him to his grandfather in his prime, the bullnecked sovereign of his domain. But in the car on the way back to Browning’s office, the heirloom armor ghosted into his mind, tasting like bile in his throat. With some effort he dismissed the impression as irrational and, in some immeasurable way, all Kate’s doing.

Before returning to the airport they regrouped in Browning’s office where they were joined by Ms. Blatislav, who offered them drinks and escorted them to a leather furniture grouping that Browning told them had once belonged to Lord somebody or other, Grosvenor Square, London. As he spoke he dropped into a large gilt-studded square armchair at the head of the formation. Ms. Blatislav offered Kate and Ryoki the low sofa before seating herself in a spindly round-backed armchair next to her boss. As they were exchanging final pleasantries, Ryoki noticed a large glass shadow box hanging on the far wall, lit from within and divided into many small cells that each held some oddly shaped white object with a jewel-colored center. He got up to get a closer look, wondering what manner of weapon this could be.

“Glass eyes,” Browning said with a kind a roaring laugh. “Been collecting eyes since my grandmother left me hers in her will, with an admonition to look up close for beauty and a lot of other old lady rot. Her glass peeper had fascinated me since I was a kid, and now I’ve collected them from the 1850s through 2000. I hadn’t planned on bringing this case down here. Didn’t think eyes went with the décor. But my wife shipped it down, said I needed watching, one of her little jokes.” Ryoki chuckled politely and Browning guffawed. As Ryoki returned to his seat he noticed Kate’s skirt had ridden up an inch above her knee. “Your girl there did just fine in those shoes,” Browning said, his eyes riveted on that top inch like a Victorian man salivating at the glimpse of an ankle. Kate did not appear to have noticed, but she tugged her hem and set to rifling through her papers. Ms. Blatislav cleared her throat and crossed her legs, her short skirt riding halfway up her thighs, but Browning took no notice. “Yes sir, she did
just fine.
” His eyes flicked from Kate to Ryoki and suddenly Ryoki knew Browning assumed he was sleeping with Kate.

His first impulse was to exonerate himself, subtly inform Browning that he had never engaged in such behavior with his staff. But he thought of the greedy way Browning had looked at Kate’s legs and changed his mind. It would be like serving her to a wolf. Abruptly a new thought occurred to him. What about that greedy look? Did Browning expect him to share?

On the plane back to São Paulo, Ryoki sat in silent fury, every impression of Browning coming back to him strangely chewed, like a rich dinner vomited into the toilet. Browning the commanding general gradually deteriorated into a corrupt despot, eager to entrap the unwary. He sat leaning forward, tensed against the seat belt for thirty minutes before Kate touched his arm, her face showing concern, and asked if he felt all right. He grunted “fine” and leaned back in his seat facing the window, breathing slowly and deeply to regain his composure. It took two hours for his anger to wax and wane, but by the time they reached home, Ryoki had calmed down enough to recognize he may have overreacted, just a tad.

Many details of his divorce had been translated into English, and were available to any curious person with a modicum of internet savvy. It was possible that Browning thought that a man once cuckolded could be so again. That’s really what set him off, the supposed personal insult. But as his anger cooled, he began to remember the atmosphere in the Porto Alegre office, the unproven but very real possibility that Browning considered office assistants fair game—a vulgar failing, certainly, but nothing that would stop him from fulfilling his contract. Men can compartmentalize; that’s what he told Kate.

By dinnertime he’d decided to send out a sternly worded company-wide memo outlining the policy on sexual harassment, a quiet warning to Browning and a notice of rights for the women in his office, a move that assuaged his conscience and would have made his mother proud, though she would never hear of it.

By the time he went to bed that night his anger had evaporated, leaving him perplexed by his wildly emotional reaction. Even a suspected personal affront should not have set him off that badly. Surely a man like himself, a man never particularly jealous by nature, couldn’t be capable of such obscene possessiveness, especially over a woman he wasn’t even dating.

Laying there in the dark, mulling over the rollercoaster of a day, Ryoki began to consciously recognize how fully Kate’s influence changed the dynamic of his work life, often for the better, but sometimes for the worse. The day changed because she considered Browning some sort of threat, and to be fair, he probably was a threat to her. What was it she’d called him? A player with swiss cheese ethics. Swiss cheese, nice image. It stuck with you.

In the darkness he rolled his eyes at his silent tantrum on the plane, sincerely hoping Kate hadn’t noticed, or worse, guessed what it was about. He needed to think with a businessman’s calm rationale, and in his mind he rehearsed all the excellent reasons Browning had been hired in the first place. But halfway through, Jake McLeary’s tortured face floated across his mind, winking and muttering to itself, like Jacob Marley haunting Scrooge. Swiss cheese ethics… stuck with you…

This wasn’t like Las Vegas, of course. Jackson Browning, respected businessman couldn’t be compared with Angelica Ruiz, serial killer. Browning’s record and credentials had been checked and rechecked. Plenty of security in place, too. Tanaka Inc. kept track of their employees. Everything planned in advance and carefully executed. Still, Browning was brilliant and he had insulated himself with a lot of his own people. It wouldn’t hurt to place a firewall someplace he’d never suspect, just as a little insurance. Ryoki pursed his lips.
Insurance—
sounded like a hack gangster novel.

The next morning he called Arima into his office and without ever using the word
spy,
arranged to insert a secret accountant into Browning’s inner circle, someone who would report directly back to him in São Paulo. Arima was surprised, but agreed, suggesting only that the infiltrator be in possession of a trench coat. “If it’s a female, warn her he’s a womanizer,” Ryoki said.

Ryoki intended to tell Kate what he had done, to ease her mind. But she didn’t refer to the subject again and in the course of the day, the whole episode slid to the back of his mind. As a personal indulgence, he decided to limit Kate’s time in Browning’s presence. No point resting a burning torch on an oil drum.

T
wo weeks later Ryoki happened to be standing in his doorway and caught sight of Kate breezing through the full length of the office corridor, radiating that impudent American audacity all the way from the elevators.

He’d worked out a few things since he and Kate had stood outside the Valentine’s Party. The Chopstick Experiment had exceeded his expectations. Two well-placed hints and she’d begun delicately fingering the chopsticks, blushing, exposing her self-consciousness. She’d even ordered a book on the subject, reading every word, yellow highlighter in hand.

Intrigued, he’d sprung other little traps, tests that seemed to reveal a spindle in the great cosmic balance. He had no proof, of course, but it almost appeared as if The Amazing Kate had been born with a wagonload of talents but only a thimbleful of native confidence. He suspected that much of her bravado had probably been earned drop by painstaking drop through the tenacious honing of natural aptitudes, and a good bit of outright pretending. This intrepid stride through the office, for example. Ryoki figured he was the only person for thousands of miles who recognized what a performance it was, a studied social behavior, a sheer effort of will, a secret he would protect to his grave.