Read Online Temple of Fear by Nick Carter - Free Book Online Page B

nearly touching him. Her smile was sad. "Not in the Sanya district — that is still slums. You will probably have to leave the car near the bridge and walk in. The streets aren't much."
    "I know." He had seen slums the world over. Seen them and smelled them — the dung and the filth and the human garbage. The dogs that ate their own excreta. The babies that would never have a chance and the old waiting to die without dignity. Kunizo Matu, who was Eta,
Burakumin,
must feel very strongly about his people to return to a place like Sanya to die.
    She was in his arms. She pressed her slim body against his big hard one. He was surprised to see tears glistening in the long, almond-shaped eyes.
    "Go, then," she told him. "God be with you. I have done all I can, obeyed my honorable father in every detail. You will give him my — my respects?"
    Nick held her gently. She was trembling and there was a faint scent of sandalwood about her hair.
    "Just your respects? Not your love?"
    She would not look at him. She shook her head. "No. Just as — as I say. But do not think of that — it is between my father and me. You and I — we are different." She pulled a little away from him. "I have a promise to keep, Nick. I depend on you to make me do so."
    "I will."
    He kissed her. Her mouth was fragrant, soft, as moist and yielding as a rosebud. As he had suspected she was not wearing a bra, and he felt the swell of her breasts against him. For the moment they melded, shoulder to knee, and her trembling increased and her breathing roughened. Then she pushed him away. "No! We must not. That is all — come, I will show you how to leave this place. Do not bother to memorize it — you will not be coming back here."
    As they were leaving the room a thought struck him. "How about that body?"
    "That is our concern. It will not be the first we have disposed of — when the time is right we will put it into the harbor."
    Five minutes later Nick Carter felt the light touch of April rain on his face. Hardly more than a mist, really, and it was cool and soothing after the confines of that basement. There was a hint of damp chill in the air and he buttoned the old trenchcoat about his throat.
    Tonaka had led him into an alley. Overhead the dark turbid sky reflected the glare of the Ginza's neon lights half a block away. It was late but the street was still swinging. As he walked Nick could smell the two odors he identified with Tokyo — hot noodles and freshly poured concrete. To his right was a desolate flattened expanse where a new basement was being dug. The concrete smell was stronger. The cranes in the pit were like sleeping storks in the rain.
    He came to a side street and turned back toward the Ginza itself. He came out a block from the Nichigeki Theater. He paused on the corner and lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply and letting his eyes rove and register the frenetic scene. At nearly three in the morning the Ginza was cooling down a bit, but it was not yet dead. Vehicular traffic had thinned, but mobs of. people still ebbed and flowed up and down that fantastic street. Noodle vendors still piped. Brash music poured from the thousands of bars. Somewhere a samisen twanged softly. A late-running tram clanged past. Over it all, as though the sky was leaking rivulets of color, washed the bright surf of the neon. Tokyo. Brash, brawling, bastard of the West. Spawned by rape of the dignified maiden of the East.
    A ricksha went by, the coolie trotting wearily with his head down. A Yank sailor and a cute Japanese girl were in heavy embrace. Nick smiled and tossed his butt away. You hardly ever saw that any more. Rickshas. They were as old-fashioned as clogs, or the kimona and obi. Young Japan was hip — and there were plenty of hippies.
    High on his right, just under the clouds, winked the warning light on Tokyo Tower in Shiba park. Across the street the bright neon of a Chase Manhattan branch told him, in Japanese and English, that he had a friend. Nick's