Sleepless

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Authors: Charlie Huston
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Thrillers
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they were required to be until I exited from her presence. Relieving me of my weapons not having been sufficient security as far as her various attendants and staff were concerned. Though it wasn't me personally they were so leery of. From what I understood, everyone admitted to her office was required to do the same.
    An overly talkative greeter from her lobby staff, whom I had run into by chance having a drink at the Cameo in Santa Monica, shared with me over too many sake-tinis that visitors arriving pocketless were provided with an adjustable plastic belt equipped with two small cloth sacks lined in disposable tissue. He felt that a tasteful black blazer, with pockets, might make guests more comfortable, and intended to make such a suggestion to his employer's personal secretary the following morning.
    After that encounter I never again saw the young man at the office. I don't expect it was the temerity he displayed in making such a suggestion that lost him his job but rather the lack of perception and awareness that it indicated. Not realizing that the point of such a belt was to disgrace visitors who didn't know enough to bring their own pockets was a demonstration that he was simply not one of her kind.
    But no one was her kind.
    No kith, no kin, no kind.
    Unique and terrible. As exotic, and nearly as mythical, as the dragon tattooed on her arm.
    I never forgot my pockets when I came to call. My hands rested inside faun summer-weight wool, the bottom of the left pocket seamed with a thin strip of nearly silent MicroPlast that I could push through should I want to get at the Boker Infinity ceramic drop-point blade tucked alongside my scrotum. A bit of custom tailoring I'd asked for after I'd first come to see her in her office. Mr. Lee had made these particular pockets for me before he was killed by a stray bullet fired by a Little Ethiopia gangster robbing the Jack in the Box near his shop.
    For the record, I had nothing to do with Mr. Lee's untimely death soon after he made these and similarly styled slacks in black and navy. I would never dream of killing an excellent tailor, not even to keep a secret that could endanger my life.
    However, in the interest of full disclosure, it was not by chance that I ran into the young greeter at Cameo. I had, in fact, overheard him mentioning to another greeter his plans for that evening and managed to find myself there as well. In truth, none of the intelligence I gleaned from him was of particular use, but he was shallowly charming, very fit, extremely pliable, and left the hotel room I arranged for us long before I stopped feigning sleep and rose to order breakfast.
    So, not a total loss.
    Chizu, lady of a thousand storks, watched as I approached her work-table. A rectangular slab of redwood, polished and smoothed by the oils in her hands. She knelt before it on the floor, one thin cushion under her knees, another between her narrow buttocks and the heels of her tiny feet.
    She didn't look up.
    "Is it always something dead or mutilated that amuses you?"
    I stopped gliding, rose on my toes, lowered myself to my heels.
    "No. Rarely. If ever. It was, I assure you, a rueful smile."
    She made a slight hum and turned her attention to the gutted 1928 Rem-Blick in front of her, dabbing gun cleaner along the armature of one of the thirty keys of the vaguely insectoid typewheel typewriter.
    "I need you to find something for me."
    I allowed my gaze to elevate, letting it hopscotch over the dozens of cubbyholes that made up the long back wall of her office. The cubbies were filled with typewriters from every era, up until word processing software had dealt the machine its deathblow. Well, not quite, as evidenced by a Chinese Generation 3000, manufactured in 2005, displayed in an upper cubby. And truly, as things deteriorated, the manual typewriter was poised to make a comeback. But though all of these, from a wood-cased, gold paint-detailed 1873 Sholes & Glidden, to a marvelously

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