Brute. Con Sellers

toward the door. Getty pawed at the knob, struggled for a shred of composure. He started to say something, but thought better of it when Brad lifted both hands eagerly. Getty snatched the door wide and plunged through it into the hall. He almost ran over the little Japanese standing there.

      “Get the hell outa’ my way,” Getty snarled, and shoved the small man roughly aside. Brad heard his boots thumping hard against the carpeted stairs, and thought the MP enlisted men would catch hell tonight.

      “Please?” Mr. Hara said. “I heard shouting. May I be of help?”

      “Come on in,” Brad said. “I was just about to send down for another jug. You can help me with it.”

      Hara drifted in, closed the door softly. “American liquor is too strong for me.”

      “Tonight it’s like water,” Brad said, and proved it by downing a glassful. “I didn’t have time to introduce you to the MP captain—but then, he’s not a guy you’d like to know, anyway.”

      Mr. Hara sat gingerly upon a chair, hands folded. “Ah-so? Perhaps he had information?”

      Brad shook his head. “He told me the same thing the girl did—that Sueko is—dead.” The word was difficult to say. Brad went on. “He also hinted strongly that he’d have me worked over if I didn’t take my big nose out of Japan. Now what the hell do you suppose all that was about?”

      “I have heard of this captain,” Hara said. “A dangerous enemy.”

      “A jerk,” Brad corrected. “I’m not worried about him. His boys didn’t dig deep enough into my background. I have a friend or two, myself. My father is—well, pretty high up in the State Department. He wouldn’t like it if I got myself into a jam over here, but he’d pull me out. But I’d just like to know why a jerk like Getty is involved in this. And why. Why did he bother to come here to tell me Sueko is dead? And why all the lies about her?”

      If they were lies. Brad thought. Nine years could bring a lot of changes in a girl who had to scrape for a living. Especially one who had been deserted by the man she thought loved her; her first man. Who the hell could blame Sueko for doing anything—pushing heroin, trading on the black market, even for peddling bits of information gleaned from big-mouthed GIs to local communist bosses?

      But if she was dead, as two people said—why the interest in her? Katsue, Brad could understand. The girl would sell what was left of her soul for a few bucks. Probably Captain Getty would, too. Yet the fat MP officer hadn’t even mentioned money. Therefore, it figured that he was being paid from some other source. Who? and again—why?

      Brad gulped more brandy and turned to ask Mr. Hara these questions. The little man beat him to the punch. “Mr. Saxon—I think that Kamiya Sueko is not dead. I think she is very much alive.”