BLIND TRIAL Brian Deer (best novels for beginners TXT) 📖

He rose to his knees, dragged his shirt from his shoulders. Then he stood and shucked off his shorts.

Sumiko’s eyes widened as her gaze soaked his body. In the watery light, Pearl Jam rocked. Long. Slow. Insistent. Made for love.

Moody. Dark. Neo-Pink Floyd. Edging into white-hot squalls.

Thirty-one

The San Francisco Marriott Marquis, 22:35 Pacific

HIROSHI MURAYAMA strode in from Fourth Street and rode an escalator up to the lobby. He would change into sports gear, work out in the gym, grab a light snack, and call Sumiko.

As ever, he was dressed in his management uniform: black suit, white shirt, and red tie. This attire was specified in 1947 by the Founder, Yoshinobu Sanomo. In those austere, painful times, it was a point of great honor that the leaders of what was then a sulfonamide manufacturer should always be immaculately groomed.

He crossed the hotel atrium—with palm trees and a fountain—his leather soles skidding on marble. He hopped into an elevator, hit button 8 and, as the doors shut, tore off the tie. If there was one thing he loathed about working for Sanomo, it was that terrible Yoshinobu dress code. In the years since they hired him, fresh from Kyoto University, they’d abolished aged-based pay scales. They’d brought in flexible contracts. They’d scrapped the ban on hiring foreign scientists. But the suit-shirt-and-tie outfit? That would never change. And it made them all look such twats.

Even today, it had brought humiliation. He found such incidents unbearable. First, on the Dirty Harry Tour of San Francisco, a loud little girl tugged her mother’s elbow over a “penguin with its tongue hanging out.” Then he’d met for a beer with an old friend at Berkeley, who asked, “Do you wear it in bed?”

At the eighth floor, the elevator doors snapped open, and he stuffed the tie into a pocket. The maneuver was complicated by a white paper bag, clamped to his side with an elbow. This afternoon, shopping in the Haight-Ashbury district, he’d spotted a copy of “Ain’t That Loving You Baby” to add to his vinyl collection. Its sleeve was torn near the listening dog logo and some fool had scrawled a price on the back. But all he needed now was “Return to Sender” and “Money Honey” and framed on his bedroom walls in Nagoya would be the complete original singles of The King.

Finding this treasure had lightened his day. The rest was troubling. Not good. At breakfast, dear Sumiko was tense, abrupt. Perhaps he hadn’t pleased her enough. And tonight, he’d stopped by, but she wasn’t home at ten o’clock. He wondered if she needed more space. She had a meeting, she’d said. But could it go on so late? And she didn’t seem sure who would be there.

He’d pulled up on Potrero Hill and phoned from his car but saw that her lights were out. A scruffy man, like Jimi Hendrix, emerged from a side gate. But, if she’d taken another lover, it wasn’t him.

HE TAPPED his key card at room 807 and was startled when he pushed open the door. The lights were on. And not one or two lights. All of the lights were on.

He pressed the door wider, heard the sounds of TV, and saw a man sitting at the desk. He was Black, with a leather jacket, heavy glasses, and a beard. He was watching TV in a chair.

“Excuse me. My room?”

The man smiled. “You sure?”

He saw Viva Las Vegas on the bed.

Then he heard splashes—urination—from the bathroom, and a White man appeared, zipping his fly. And he was more than a man: an American police officer, in uniform, with badges, and a gun.

A police officer was using his bathroom.

The first man stood, reached into his jacket, produced a wallet, and flipped a gold badge.

“Mr. Murayama?”

“Correct. I am he.”

“Hiroshi Murayama?”

“Yes.”

The man flipped the badge away. “Raimundo Idahosa, SFPD. What are you saying now we found it? Personal use?”

“Found what? Personal use? Use what?”

“If it’s personal use, best say so now.”

“I do not understand this ‘personal use.’”

“Okay. Gave you a chance. Mr. Murayama, I’m arresting you on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance with the intent to sell.” The detective relieved him of “Ain’t That Loving You Baby” threw it on the bed and produced a pair of polished steel handcuffs. “Contrary to the laws of the State of California. Do you understand?”

He was paralyzed. Speechless. Must be wrong room. “Excuse me? Don’t understand.”

FRIDAY JULY 25

Thirty-two

SHE’D THOUGHT about the sex. She’d thought about his body. She’d even thought about him naked in her apartment. But what Sumiko Honda hadn’t considered was Ben Louviere staying the night. No fragments of the fantasies that had plagued her for a week envisaged him failing to leave. No shards of her daydreams since he arrived in San Francisco ended with him falling asleep. Yet here he was, at daybreak Friday, uncompromisingly asleep in her bed.

She sat at a dressing table near the foot of that bed and absorbed his physical presence. He lay right-sided under a sky-blue sheet with his shoulders and chest exposed. His left hand stretched behind him into the space from which she’d risen; the other pillowed a cheek of dark stubble. She watched his body swell as his lungs pulled air: swamping bronchioles, rushing alveoli, riding erythrocytes into his heart.

How long was their lovemaking? She couldn’t remember. Every move had felt so perfect. How long before he crashed on the living room settee? How long before he dragged her to the bedroom? How long did they lay, her mouth against his, until she fell asleep breathing his breath?

He’d been strong, determined. But so had she. He’d controlled her. But only to her will. She’d ridden upon wave upon wave of orgasm. He’d been worth bringing two-and-a-half thousand miles.

She tugged at the cord of a venetian blind, and the light doubled, tripled, quadrupled. She peered through its slats toward morning over Oakland. How quickly the night had passed. A vaporous