The Key to Midnight

by Dean Koontz

  The roar of the rain was so loud that Chelgrin raised his voice. “Moving her secretly from Jamaica to Switzerland was a nightmare.”

  “I remember it all too well.”

  “How will you get her out of Japan, all the way to Rotenhausen?”

  “She’s making it easy for us. She and Hunter are going to England to look into the British-Continental Insurance scam.”

  “When?”

  “The day after tomorrow. We’ve got a scenario planned for them. We’ll drop clues they can’t miss, steer them away from London and straight to Switzerland. We’ll put them on to Rotenhausen, and when they go after him, we’ll let the trap fall shut.”

  “You sound so confident.”

  “By Friday or Saturday, Hunter will be dead, and your lovely daughter will be back in Rotenhausen’s clinic.”

  43

  Wednesday afternoon, when the time came for Joanna to leave the Moonglow with Alex and take a taxi to the train depot, she didn’t want to leave. Each step out of the second-floor apartment, down the narrow stairs, and across the lounge was difficult. She seemed to be walking through deep water. She stopped several times on one pretense or another—a forgotten passport; a last-minute decision to wear a different pair of traveling shoes; a sudden desire to say good-bye to the head chef, who was even then preparing the sauces and soups for that evening’s customers—but eventually Alex insisted that she hurry lest they miss their train.

  Her delaying tactics resulted not from worry about what would happen to the business in her absence. She trusted Mariko to manage the club efficiently and profitably.

  Instead, her reluctance to depart was the result of a surprising homesickness that seized her even before she left home. She had come to this country under queer circumstances, a stranger in a strange land, and she had prospered. She loved Japan and Kyoto and the Gion district and the Moonglow Lounge. She loved the musical quality of the language, the extravagant politeness of the people, the merry ringing of finger bells at worship services, the beauty of the temple dancers, the scattered ancient structures that had survived both war and the encroachment of Western- style architecture. She loved the taste of sake and tempura, the delicious fragrance of hot brown kamo yorshino-ni. She felt a part of this ancient yet ever blossoming culture. This was her world now, the only place to which she had ever truly belonged, and she dreaded leaving it even temporarily.

  Nevertheless, she was determined not to let Alex go to England alone.

  While Alex went outside to be sure the taxi waited, Joanna and Mariko stood just inside the front door, hugging one last time.

  “I’ll miss you, Mariko-san.”

  “I’m scared for you,” Mariko said.

  “I have Alex. But you’re at risk too. Someone may decide that you know too much.”

  “Me and Uncle Omi and my whole family know too much. Too many of us know too much. There’s safety in numbers. Besides, we don’t actually have proof of anything. Just your fingerprints—and you’re taking those with you. I think these people are less of a danger to me than old Godzilla.”

  “I just realized—we’ll be staying overnight in Tokyo. His favorite stomping grounds.”

  “I don’t know why they keep rebuilding the city when they know he’s just going to come back and knock it down again.”

  Joanna smiled. “Maybe they figure one day he’ll learn the error of his ways. The Japanese are infinitely patient.”

  Mariko inclined her head. “Thank you for not saying ’stubborn,’ Joanna-san.”

  “One more thing, Mariko-san ... Is it true what Alex says about you and Wayne? That a certain attraction exists?”

  Mariko blushed fiercely. “He’s in the hospital. I’ve only sat at his bedside a few times to keep him company.”

  “And?”

  Lowering her eyes, Mariko said, “He is an interesting man.”

  “But?”

  “These things don’t happen, Joanna-san. You know how it is.”

  “Wayne is different, and there will be many people you love who will be unhappy with you. You don’t want them to feel that you’ve dishonored them. Yes, I know how it is. But life is short. A chance for great happiness doesn’t come along all that often.”

  Mariko said nothing.

  “When the bright-winged bird sees a fallen cherry on the ground beneath a tree,” Joanna said, “it seizes the fruit and flies, full of joy, and deals with the pit later.”

  Amused, Mariko met her eyes. “I didn’t hear the Zen warning siren.”

  Hugging her friend again, Joanna whispered: “Whoop-whoop-whoop.”

  “Too late,” said Mariko. “I think I might already have been enlightened.”

  The front door opened, and Alex leaned inside. “We’re going to miss that train if we don’t hurry.”

  As they drove away in the black-and-red taxi, Joanna looked back at the Moonglow Lounge and at Mariko in the open door. “It can all evaporate like a dream.”

  “What can?” Alex asked.

  “Happiness. Places. People. Everything.”

  He took her hand.

  The taxi turned a corner.

  The Moonglow Lounge was gone. Mariko too.

  The superexpress to Tokyo was a luxurious train with a buffet car, plush seats, and, considering the great speed it attained, surprisingly little rail noise and lateral motion. She wanted Alex to sit by the window for the four-hour trip, but he insisted that she have that privilege, and the porter was amused by their argument.

  At the Western-style hotel in Tokyo, a two-bedroom suite was reserved for them. The employees at the front desk were unable to conceal their amazement at this brassy behavior. A man and woman with different last names, using the same suite and making no effort to conceal their association, were considered decadent, regardless of the number of bedrooms at their disposal. Alex didn’t notice the raised eyebrows, but Joanna nudged him until he realized everyone was watching them surreptitiously. She was amused, and her unrepressed smile, interpreted as an expression of lascivious anticipation, only made matters worse. The registration clerk wouldn’t look at her directly. But they were not turned away. That would have been unthinkably impolite. Besides, in any hotel catering to Westerners, the employees knew that almost any boldness could be expected of Americans.

  Two shy young bellmen escorted her and Alex to the top floor, efficiently distributed their luggage between the bedrooms, adjusted the thermostat in the drawing room, opened the heavy drapes, and then refused tips until Alex assured them that he offered the gratuities only out of respect for their fine service and impeccable manners. Tipping had not yet taken hold in most of Japan, but Alex was so long accustomed to American expectations that he felt guilty if he didn’t provide anything.

  The accommodations looked pretty much like any good two-bedroom suite in Los Angeles or Dallas or Chicago or Boston. Only the view from the windows firmly established the Japanese setting.

  When they were alone, she moved into his arms. They stood by the window, all of Tokyo below them, and just held each other for a while.

  He kissed her once. Then again. They were lovely kisses, but the moment was not right for more than that. As he had said, their first time together must be special, because it was a commitment that would change both their lives forever.

  “What about sushi for dinner?” she asked.

  “Sounds good.”

  “At the Ozasa?”

  “You know Tokyo better than I do. Wherever you say.”

  Beyond the window, in the rapidly deepening twilight, the great city began to put on dazzling ornamental kimonos of neon.

  The restaurant, Ozasa, was in the Ginza district, around the corner from the Central Geisha Exchange. It was upstairs, cramped, and noisy, but it was one of the finest sushi shops in all of Japan. A scrubbed wooden counter ran the length of the place, and behind it were chefs dressed all in white, their hands red from continual washing.

  When Alex and Joanna entered, the chefs shou
ted the traditional greeting: “Irasshai!”

  The room was awash in wonderful aromas: ome- lets sizzling in vegetable oil, soy sauce, various spicy mustards, vinegared rice, horseradish, mushrooms that had been cooked in aromatic broth, and more. Not the slightest whiff of fish tainted the air, however, though raw seafood of many varieties was the primary ingredient in every dish in the house. The only fish fresher than Ozasa’s were those that still swam in the deeps.

  Joanna knew one of the chefs, Toshio, from her days as a Tokyo performer. She made introductions, and there was much bowing all around.

  She and Alex sat at the counter, and Toshio put large mugs of tea in front of them. They each received an oshibori, with which they wiped their hands while examining the selection of fish that filled a long refrigerated glass case behind the counter.

  The unique and exquisitely tortuous tension between Alex and Joanna transformed even the simple act of eating dinner into a rare experience charged with erotic energy. He ordered tataki—little chunks of raw bonito that had been singed in wet straw; each would come wrapped in a bright yellow strip of omelet. Joanna began with an order of toro sushi, which was served first. Toshio had trained and practiced for years before he was permitted to serve his first customer; now his long apprenticeship was evident in the swift grace of his culinary art. He removed the toro—fatty, marbled tuna—from the glass case, and his hands moved as quickly and surely as those of a master magician. With a huge knife, he smoothly sliced off two pieces of tuna. From a large tub beside him, he grabbed a handful of vinegared rice and deftly kneaded it into two tiny loaves spiced with a dash of wasabi. Toshio pressed the bits of fish to the tops of the loaves, and with a proud flourish he placed the twin morsels before Joanna. The entire preparation required less than thirty seconds from the moment that he had slid open the door of the refrigerated case. The brief ceremony, which ended with Toshio washing his hands before creating the tataki, reminded Alex of the posthypnotic code words that Omi Inamura had used with Joanna: Toshio’s hands were like dancing butterflies. Sushi could be a messy dish, especially for a novice, but Joanna was no novice, and while consuming the toro, she managed to be both prissily neat and sensuous. She picked up one piece, dipped the rice portion in a saucer of shoyu, turned it over to keep it from dripping, and placed the entire morsel on her tongue. She closed her eyes and chewed slowly. The sight of her enjoying the toro increased the pleasure that Alex took in his own food. She ate with that peculiar combination of dainty grace and avid hunger that one saw in cats. Her slow pink tongue licked left and right at the corners of her mouth; she smiled as she opened her eyes and picked up the second piece of toro.

  Alex said, “Joanna, I...”

  “Yes?”

  He hesitated. “You’re beautiful.”

  That wasn’t everything he had intended to tell her, and it was surely not as much as she wanted to hear, but her smile seemed to say that she could not possibly have been happier.

  They drank tea and ordered other kinds of sushi—dark-red lean tuna, snow-white squid, blood-red akagai clams, octopus tentacles, pale shrimp, caviar, and abalone—and between servings they cleared their palates with sliced ginger.

  Each order of sushi contained two pieces, but they ate slowly, heartily, sampling every variety, then returned to their favorites. In Japan, Joanna explained, the complex system of etiquette, the rigid code of manners, and the tradition of excessive politeness ensured a special sensitivity to the sometimes multiple meanings of language, and the two-piece-and-only-two-piece servings of sushi was an example of that sensitivity. Nothing that was sliced could ever be served singly or in threes, for the Japanese words for “one slice” were hito kire, which also meant kill, and three slices was mi kire, which also meant kill myself. Therefore, if sliced food were presented in either of those quantities, it would be an insult to the customer as well as a tasteless reminder of an unpleasant subject.

  So they ate sushi two pieces at a time, and Alex thought about how desperately he wanted Joanna. They drank tea, and Alex wanted her more with each sip that he watched her take. They talked, they joked with Toshio, and when they weren’t eating they turned slightly toward each other so their knees rubbed together, and they chewed bits of ginger, and Alex wanted her. He was sweating slightly and not merely because of the fiercely hot wasabi in the sushi loaves.

  His inner heat was almost acute enough to be painful. That pain was the risk of commitment. But nothing worth having could be had without risk.

  More things than sushi came best in twos. A man and a woman. Love and hope.

  White faces. Bright lips. Eyes heavily outlined in black mascara. Eerie. Erotic.

  Ornate kimonos. The men in dark colors. Other men dressed as women in brilliant hues, bewigged, mincing, coy.

  And the knife.

  The lights dimmed. Suddenly a spotlight bored through the gloom.

  The knife appeared in the bright shaft, trembled in a pale fist, then plunged down.

  Light exploded again, illuminating all.

  The killer and victim were attached by the blade, an umbilical of death.

  The killer twisted the knife once, twice, three times, with gleeful ferocity, playing the midwife of the grave.

  The onlookers watched in silence and awe.

  The victim shrieked, staggered backward. He spoke a line and then another: last words. Then the immense stage resounded with his mortal fall.

  Joanna and Alex stood in darkness at the back of the auditorium.

  Ordinarily, advance reservations were required by every kabuki theater in Tokyo, but Joanna knew the manager of this place.

  The program had begun at eleven o’clock that morning and would not end until ten o’clock that night. Like the other patrons, Joanna and Alex had stopped in for just one act.

  Kabuki was the essence of dramatic art: The act- ing was highly stylized, all emotions exaggerated; and the stage effects were elaborate, dazzling. In 1600, a woman named O-kuni, who was in the service of a shrine, organized a troupe of dancers and presented a show on the banks of the Kano River, in Kyoto, and thus began kabuki. In 1630, in an attempt to control so-called immoral practices, the government prohibited women from appearing on stage. Consequently, there arose the Oyama, specialized and highly accomplished male actors who took the roles of female characters in the kabuki plays. Eventually women were permitted to appear on stage again, but the newer tradition of all-male kabuki was by then firmly established and inviolate. In spite of the archaic language—which few members of the audience understood—and in spite of the artistic restrictions imposed by transvestism, the popularity of kabuki never waned, partly because of the gorgeous spectacle but largely because of the themes it explored—comedy and tragedy, love and hate, forgiveness and revenge—which were all made bigger and brighter than life by the ancient playwrights.

  As he watched, Alex realized that the basic emotions varied not at all from city to city, country to country, year to year, and century to century. The stimuli to which the heart responded might change slightly as people grew older: The child, the adolescent, the adult, and the elder didn’t respond to exactly the same causes of joy and sorrow. Nevertheless, the feelings were identical in all of them, for feelings were woven together to form the one true fabric of life, which was always and without exception a fabric with but one master pattern.

  Through the medium of kabuki, Alex achieved two sudden insights that, in a moment, changed him forever. First, if emotions were universal, then in one sense he was not alone, never had been alone, and never could be alone. As a child cowering under the harsh hands of his drunken parents, he had existed in despair, because he’d thought of himself as isolated and lost. But every night that Alex’s father had beaten him, other children in every corner of the world had suffered with him, victims of their own sick parents or of strangers, and together they had all endured. They were a family of sorts, united by suffering. No pain or happiness was unique. All humanity drank from the same riv
er of emotion; and by drinking, every race, religion, and nationality became one indivisible species. Therefore, no matter what protective emotional distance he tried to put between himself and his friends, between himself and his lovers, perfect isolation would forever elude him. Whether he liked it or not, life meant emotional involvement, and involvement meant taking risks.

  He also realized that if emotions were universal and time- less, they represented the greatest truths known to human-kind. If billions of people in scores of cultures had arrived independently at the same concept of love, then the reality of love could not be denied.

  The loud, dramatic music that had accompanied the murder now began to subside.

  On the huge stage, one of the “women” stepped forward to address the audience.

  The music fluttered and was extinguished by the Oyama’s first words.

  Joanna glanced at Alex. “Like it?”

  He was speechless. He merely nodded. His heart pounded, and with each hard beat, he came more awake to life.

  They went to a bar where the owner greeted them in English with three words: “Japanese only, please.”

  Joanna spoke rapidly in Japanese, assuring him that they were natives in mind and heart if not by birth. Won over, he smilingly admitted them.

  They had sake, and Joanna said, “Don’t drink it like that, dear.”

  Alex frowned. “What am I doing wrong?”

  “You shouldn’t hold the cup in your right hand.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s considered to be the sign of a gross, impatient drunkard.”

  “Maybe I am a gross, impatient drunkard.”

  “Ah, but do you wish everyone to know it, Alex-san?”

  “So I hold the cup in my left hand?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Like this?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I feel like I’ve been such a barbarian.”

  She blew on her sake to cool it slightly. “Later, when the time is right, you can use both hands on me.”