The Key to Midnight

of Asian wisdom that was partly a joke and partly serious. 'Honorable detective should know that repetition of a truth does not make it any less true, and resistance to the truth can never be more than a brief folly.'
        She closed the door, and Alex didn't move until he heard the lock bolt slide into place.
        The black taxi was waiting for him in the snow-skinned street. A few snowflakes still spiraled out of the morning sky.
        A red Toyota followed his cab all the way to the hotel.

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    23
        
        Exhaustion overcame insomnia. Alex slept four hours and got out of bed at twenty past eleven, Thursday morning.
        He shaved, showered, and quickly changed the bandage on his arm, concerned that he wouldn't be ready to meet the courier from Chicago if the man arrived on time.
        As he was dressing, the telephone rang. He snatched up the handset on the nightstand.
        'Mr. Hunter?'
        The voice was familiar, and Alex said, 'Yes?'
        'We met last night.'
        'Dr. Mifuni?'
        'No, Mr. Hunter. You have my pistol.' It was the gaunt-faced man from the alleyway. 'You'll be receiving a message soon.'
        'What message?' 'You'll see,' the man said, and he hung up.
        After Alex hurriedly finished dressing, he removed the silencer from the 9mm automatic. He put the sound suppressor in an inside pocket of his suit coat and tucked the gun itself under his belt. He was sure that it was no more legal to carry a concealed handgun without a permit in Japan than it was in the U.S., but he preferred risking arrest to being defenseless.
        At six minutes past noon, just as he buttoned his suit coat over the pistol, a sharp knock came at the door.
        He went into the foyer. 'Who's there?' he asked in Japanese.
        'Bellhop, Mr. Hunter.'
        The view through the fish-eye lens revealed the bellman who had brought his luggage upstairs when he had checked into the hotel. The man was clearly distressed, fidgeting.
        When Alex opened the door, the bellman bowed and said, 'I'm so sorry to disturb you, sir, but do you know a Mr. Wayne Kennedy?'
        'Yes, of course. He works for me.'
        'There's been an accident. Almost fifteen minutes ago,' the bellman said anxiously. 'A car, this pedestrian, very terrible, right here in front of the hotel.'
        Although Blankenship hadn't mentioned the courier in the fax that he had sent yesterday, Kennedy was no doubt the man.
        The bellman said, 'The ambulance crew wants to take Mr. Kennedy to the hospital, but every time they get close to him, he kicks and punches and tries to bite them.'
        Because they were speaking Japanese and because the bellman was speaking very fast, Alex thought he had misunderstood. 'Kicking and punching, you said?'
        'Yes, sir. He refuses to let anyone touch him or take him away until he talks to you. The police don't want to handle him because they're afraid of aggravating his injuries.'
        They hurried to the elevator alcove. Another bellman was holding open the doors at one of the elevators.
        On the way down, Alex said, 'Did you see it happen?'
        'Yes, sir,' said the first bellman. 'Mr. Kennedy got out of the taxi, and a car angled through the traffic, jumped the curb, hit him.'
        'Do they have the driver?'
        'He got away.'
        'Didn't stop?'
        'No, sir,' the bellman said, clearly embarrassed that any Japanese citizen could behave so lawlessly.
        'What's Mr. Kennedy's condition?'
        'It's his leg,' said the bellman uneasily.
        'Broken?' Alex asked.
        'There's a lot of blood.'
        The hotel lobby was nearly deserted. Everyone except the desk clerks was at the scene of the accident in the street.
        Alex pushed through the crowd and saw Wayne Kennedy sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the building, flanked by two blood-smeared and badly battered suitcases. The wide-eyed onlookers kept a respectful distance on three sides of him, as if he were a wild animal that no one dared approach. He was shouting furiously at a uniformed ambulance attendant who had ventured within six or seven feet of him.
        Kennedy was an impressive sight: a handsome black man, about thirty years old, six foot five, two hundred forty pounds, with fierce dark eyes. Cursing at the top of his voice, shaking one huge fist at the paramedics, he looked as if he might be