The Key to Midnight

music. A Glenn Miller tune. The legendary Miller was long dead. Lost in a mysterious plane crash in World War II. His body had never been found.
        Sometimes people vanish. The world goes on.

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    16
        
        Alex was surprised by his reaction to Joanna's rejection. He had the irrational urge to punch someone, anyone, and to pitch his whiskey glass at the bar mirror.
        He restrained himself but only because surrender to the urge would be an admission of how powerfully this woman affected him. He'd always thought that he was immune to the sickness of romance. Now he was uneasy about his response to her - and as yet unwilling to think seriously about it.
        He ate a light dinner at the Moonglow and left before the orchestra had finished its first set of the evening. The brassy, bouncy music - 'A String of Pearls' - followed him into the street.
        The sun had abandoned Kyoto. The city gave forth its own cold, electric illumination. With the arrival of darkness, the temperature had plummeted below freezing. Fat snow-flakes circled lazily through the light from windows, open doors, neon signs, and passing cars, but they melted upon contact with the pavement, where the same lights were reflected in a skin of icy water.
        Instead of putting on his topcoat, Alex draped it capelike over his shoulders. He could foresee several circumstances in which he might wish to be quickly free of such a bulky, encumbering garment.
        Standing outside the Moonglow Lounge, he looked around as if deciding where to go next. In seconds, he spotted one of the three men who had appeared to be following him earlier in the evening.
        The gaunt, middle-aged Japanese with a narrow face and prominent cheekbones waited thirty yards away, in front of a neon-emblazoned nightclub called Serene Dragon. Coat collar turned up, shoulders hunched against the wintry wind, he tried to blend with the pleasure-seekers streaming through the Gion, but his furtive manner made him conspicuous.
        Smiling, pretending to be unaware of being watched, Alex considered the possibilities. He could take an uneventful stroll to the Kyoto Hotel, return to his suite, and go to bed for the night - still buzzing with energy, tied in knots of frustration, and none the wiser about the people behind the Chelgrin kidnapping. Or he could have some fun with the man who had him under surveillance.
        The choice was easy.
        Whistling happily, Alex walked deeper into the glittering Gion. After five minutes, having changed streets twice, he glanced behind and saw the operative following at a discreet distance.
        In spite of the rising wind and shatters of snowflakes, the streets were still busy. Sometimes the nightlife in Kyoto seemed too frantic for Japan - perhaps because it was squeezed into fewer hours than in Tokyo and most Western cities. The nightclubs opened in late afternoon and usually closed by eleven-thirty. The two million residents of Kyoto had the provincial habit of going to bed before midnight. Already, by their schedule, half the night was gone, and they were in a rush to enjoy themselves.
        Alex was fascinated by the Gion: a complex maze of streets, alleys, winding passages, and covered footpaths, all crowded with nightclubs, bars, craft shops, short-time hotels, sedate inns, restaurants, public baths, temples, movie theaters, shrines, snack shops, geisha houses. The larger streets were noisy, exciting, garish, ablaze with rainbow neon that was reflected and refracted in acres of glass, polished steel, and plastic. Here, the wholesale adoption of the worst elements of Western style proved that not all of the Japanese possessed the good taste and highly refined sense of design for which the country was noted. In many alleyways and cobbled lanes, however, a more appealing Gion flourished. Off major thoroughfares, pockets of traditional architecture survived: houses that still served as homes, as well as old-style houses that had been transformed into expensive spas, restaurants, bars, or intimate cabarets; and all shared the time-honored construction of satiny, weather-smoothed woods and polished stones and heavy bronze or ironwork.
        Alex walked the backstreets, thinking furiously, searching for an opportunity to play turnabout with the man who was tailing him.
        The tail also assumed the role of a tourist. He did his phony window-shopping half a block behind Alex