18mm Blues (32 page)

She took it to the bedroom to Grady, who was now slouched and sunk down reconditely among the heap of pillows. It appeared she'd lost him again and thought she had the damn interruption to blame for that. She dropped the envelope onto one of his few exposed areas and switched on the near lamp.

Grady squinted at his name as though it were entirely unfamiliar. The envelope was politely sealed at only the point of its flap. The note within read:

Dear Mr. Bowman:

I have only just this moment learned that you were here in my part of the world. We have never met, however, I would like to remedy that by inviting you to be my guest for a stay at my home in Bang Wan. Your schedule permitting, of course
.

No need to reply. My driver will fetch you tomorrow morning at nine
.

Respectfully
,

Hattori Kumura

Grady read it twice to himself and a third time aloud. A chance to meet Kumura, he thought. He'd probably never get another. Hell, Connecticut could wait! “Want to go?” he asked Julia.

“I thought you were itching to get back to San Francisco.”

“Do you know who Hattori Kumura is?”

“No, but I gather from the tone of this note he wants something. Is he wealthy?”

“I guess.”

“Wealthy people seldom if ever write fan letters.”

“That what you think this is?”

“Sure. This Kumura guy doesn't know you but infers that he knows of you and that he likes what he knows. Oblique flattery is often more compelling than the frontal kind.”

“What makes you so good at reading between the lines?”

“Well,” Julia arched, “I do have talents other than those I use to gratify you.”

“But I'd settle for the latter,” Grady grinned.

“So, who's this Kumura?”

“Kumura pearls.”

“Is that good?”

“In my estimation, but not only mine, Kumura pearls are unexcelled.”

“You sound like a testimonial advertisement in
Town and Country.”

He tried to fix her with a look of reproach. “I'm putting up with you right now. Do you realize that?”

She smiled. “Tell me about Kumura pearls.”

He did. She listened.

Then she read Kumura's note again, noticing his use of the word
fetch
and thinking that odd. She got the hotel's complimentary map of Thailand from the desk drawer. Shared it with Grady. The map didn't have an index, so there was no easy telling where the place mentioned in Kumura's note was located. Finding it became an undeclared competition. Grady thought logically it would be somewhere in the environs of Bangkok. Julia, meanwhile, searched all over the map. “Thailand's got a lot of Bangs,” she remarked as she saw village after village with that first name.

Then she found it, kept the tip of her fingernail on the tiny lettering that designated Bang Wan. It was situated on the west coast where Thailand narrowed, about two hundred and fifty miles to the south. “Shit,” Julia said sobering. “That's by no means a short drive.” She traced the ocher-colored highway that the map indicated was the only way to reach Bang Wan. “And the road's no interstate, either,” she added.

Grady merely glanced at where Bang Wan was, and he only half-heard Julia. He was distracted by the name of a village he'd come across on Thailand's east coast. An out-of-the-way settlement, nothing important or large close to it. “Here's that place you mentioned,” he said.

“What place? When?”

“When we were in Rangoon checking in. You said you'd stayed in a better room in Lam Pam, remember?”

“Nothing of the sort. You've insisted on this before, but believe me those sounds have never come out of my mouth.”

Grady looked her straight in the eyes.

Her eyes defied him to see Lam Pam in them.

Grady had the feeling that he did.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

At nine the following morning when Grady and Julia went down with their luggage Kumura's car was waiting in front. A white Bentley Turbo R, stretched to order and otherwise customized. The driver was standing his best attentive stance at the open rear door, had a hold on its handle ready to perform the duty of enclosing. He was tastefully liveried in a perfect fit of dove gray gabardine with black accessories, kid gloves and all. He was a Korean, typically chunky, his broad nose and chin emphasized by the shiny black overhang of the beak of his cap.

As soon as Julia stepped into the roomy plush of the Bentley, her concern over having to endure a daylong drive to Bang Wan was considerably lessened. She took a whiff of the sprig of jasmine that was in a tiny crystal vase permanently attached near the window on her right. She thought there'd surely be a thoughtfully packed lunch in the burled chestnut cabinet. She felt the smooth regardful surge of the Bentley as it got under way. She decided it wasn't too soon to remove her shoes.

However, twenty minutes later she was slipping her feet back into them as the Bentley arrived at a private area of Don Muang Airport where a Falcon 50 jet was all checked out, warmed up and idling sibilantly.

From an impeccable takeoff to an impeccable touchdown at the airport at Muang Mai took only a half hour. There, a similar driver and another white Bentley awaited to transport Grady and Julia, as though they were precious, fragile cargo, up Thailand Route 4 and across the Sarasin Bridge and onward north. Over a paved swath through verdant countryside and every so often a village (Klok Kloi, Wang Thang, Lam Pi and Phan Yai) that speed both brought into view and within seconds stole away.

Forty minutes of that.

Then the Bentley turned off Route 4 to be on a freshly paved private road, which after a short ways presented what had to be the start of a developed property—a woven steel fence not quite concealed here and there by a crowded growth of oleanders. Twenty-foot-tall oleanders fronting a twelve-foot-high fence. The sort of perimeter a discrete institution would have, Grady thought, to prevent some from getting out, others from getting in.

He assumed this was Kumura's place, didn't care for the feel of it. He acutely wished he hadn't been persuaded by his curiosity and Julia to make the trip. All the way he'd been on the verge of that feeling but this was as close as he'd come to retreat.
Stop!
his imagination ordered the driver,
turn around and take us just as nicely back to Bangkok so we can get on with our better life
. But to turn back now that they were within a throw of their destination would require a spectacular excuse, he thought. Even if he convincingly feigned something like a slipped disc he'd surely be taken on to Kumura's.

He gazed at the monotony of oleander and fence and, finally, those were interrupted for a gate, a heavy high gate with imposing piers. The Bentley didn't slow for it, proceeded on for at least another mile of oleander and fence before coming to another gate, this one as impressive as the first but for some reason not with the same forbiddance. Perhaps the reason was the pink jasmine that was climbing frivolously up its piers or the more delicate design of its lighter-gauge grillwork, or perhaps it was the way it parted and swung open voluntarily with what seemed to be more hospitality than ritual. Next came the crunching of the pebbled drive beneath the wheels and two gentle bends. The second brought the house into view. It was miniaturized by distance, situated beyond twenty tended acres mainly made up of lawn. The sort of estate-size house one would expect to find in Palm Beach or Santa Barbara and even in those places in an age past. No less than thirty rooms distributed over various levels, winged out and, in the main section, two storied. White stuccoed exterior, red tile roof, arched double windows. Though hemispherically out of place it appeared comfortable here, congruously settled.

The drive carried into an ample stone-paved courtyard. The Bentley stopped precisely at the main entrance, which had four wide, deep steps up to a landing.

There was Kumura.

As the Bentley's rear door was opened Kumura came with a smile down three of the steps, meeting Grady and Julia more than halfway. “How delightful that you could come,” he said with moderate enthusiasm, as though their arrival hadn't been a certainty.

Grady was sure Kumura had been assured of their coming every phase of the way.

“And on such short notice,” Kumura added a bit apologetically.

He and Grady shook hands. Grady introduced Julia. Julia extended her hand for an equal shake. Kumura pumped. “I trust it wasn't a trying trip,” he said.

“Quite the contrary,” Julia tossed brightly, “we never had to lay a hand on our luggage.” It was evident to her now why Kumura had used the word
fetch
in his note. He spoke with an educated British accent.

In appearance, however, he was unmistakably Japanese. Somewhat taller than average but typically slight. His hair was white, not variegated or here and there, but every strand white. Fine hair, a bit receded and sparse. He wore it middle parted. White as it was it helped his impression of immaculateness, possibly even purity. As did his complexion, so scrubbed and healthily pampered it seemed nearly to have a translucency. When he'd greeted Grady and Julia he'd removed his gold wire-framed sunglasses so the warmth of his reception would also be discernable in his eyes. He hadn't especially dressed for their coming, was wearing white slip-on sneakers, a pale pink short-sleeved linen shirt and tan shorts held by a web belt of a cerise shade.

Grady put Kumura's age somewhere on the other side of sixty but not beyond sixty-five.

“I've been looking forward to your visit,” Kumura said as he led the way into the house. “There are so few people I'm able to exchange interesting discourse with these days, particularly in these parts.” He hesitated for a second thought. “But I suppose that's equally true wherever I might be. Except London, of course, and on rare occasions New York. I invariably get my fill in London.”

The man seemed to have the world, if only his own, by a string, Grady thought. He'd had no preconception of Kumura, hadn't, in fact, pictured a Kumura person. It had always only been the pearls, with whoever was behind them anonymous and unapproachable. If he had visualized someone it certainly wouldn't have been this man who was, now that Grady considered it, too much on the money, analogously pearllike with his pure white hair and rather translucent complexion.

They were now inside the house, pausing in the spacious reception hall to get used to the sudden gentler half light. The dark patina of polished terra-cotta tile floors and walls of plain white assisted in sustaining the airy coolness of the atmosphere, and like all houses, even those of grand size, this one had its distinctive fragrance.

Julia inhaled deeply to enjoy the arrangements of cut flowers that occupied the matched pair of gilt consoles off to each side. Grady glanced up at the crystal chandelier, so huge it made him uneasy to be directly beneath it. Ahead were left and right staircases that curved up to a second-floor landing.

“Take whatever time you need to get settled in,” Kumura said, “then come down and find me on the main terrace.”

Two servants saw to the luggage and showed Grady and Julia the way. Up to the second-floor landing and a wide hallway, past what must have been a dozen closed doors to a large room that was considerately remote. All its windows and doors were as open as possible, and the playful breeze that was entering had the sheer white panels billowed and the mosquito netting around the bed waving at itself.

Grady looked out the window to get his bearings. Down an easy slope about two hundred yards from the house was a beach, marked by several sizeable cabanas, the portable European type, bleached muslin fitted over a metal frame. The long blue and green split pennants that streamed from the peaks of the cabanas provided a festive touch. The beach wasn't right on the ocean, but rather on a bay of it. Two miles across the way was what made it a bay, a barrier strip of land, only visible now through the haze because of its darker color. Beyond that, Grady decided, would be the open sea. A nice layout, he thought.

“Well, shall I unpack or what?” Julia was saying. She had the luggage zipped open.

“Huh?”

“Are we going to stay or just stay overnight?”

“I don't know.”

“If it's going to be only overnight we could rough it, don't you think, live out of our suitcases? At least I know I could.” She toed off her shoes again. “You, though, I don't know how you'd be able to find what you need in this mess.” She plucked a soiled sock from his crushed and disordered things. “Are you all out of clean undies too?”

“Yeah. I'm wearing the not too awfully dirties.”

“Can't have that.”

“I figure as long as I keep my person clean I'll last until home.”

His person, she thought. Her person, she thought. An old heavy thought. She dropped it. “So are we or aren't we?” she asked. “Do I or don't I?”

“You call it.”

No indecision. She went right at it, transferring things neatly to the drawers of the commode and hanging whatever required hanging in the closet. She was sure his suits, especially his linen jackets, were wrinkled beyond recovery.

Grady, meanwhile, had flopped deadweight faceup on the bed. “I could do with a nap,” he said.

“You slept well last night.”

“How do you know? You were sleeping.” He did a major sigh. “I feel wasted, really.”

“Low blood sugar,” said Julia, giving her diagnosis.

“Low, that's for sure,” he mumbled.

“How's the bed?” she asked.

“Better than Burma but the mattress is too soft.”

“Want me to ask for some boards?” she said with a tinge of strained tolerance.

“To put under it you mean?”

“Yeah.” She was unpacking nonstop. “Is it the kind of mattress that we'll both end up sunk in the middle of?”