Baldy bowed upon seeing the two of them. His hair had receded all the way from his forehead. The swirl of hair that was left painted a black pattern on his pate.
“My name is Asai. I am pleased to meet you.”
“Please sit down,” Mephisto said, not deigning to introduce himself. He offered him a chair.
“No, that’s fine. If it is all right with you, we would like to invite you along to accommodations of our own. No, not you, Doctor. The young man.”
The pleasant smile on his face couldn’t hide the emotions in his eyes. Eyes like a snake. Eyes of the archetypal villain. He must be good at getting what was asked of him. This type was a dime a dozen in big business, starting off all deferential, but sooner or later carrying the weight of the entire enterprise on their shoulders.
He’d climbed the corporate criminal ladder kissing up to his superiors and selling out his subordinates. Once he’d gotten his hands on that brass ring, this kind of bottom feeder fully intended to count his own and the company’s success as one and the same. The worst of the crime families were turning into a bunch of men in gray flannel suits.
“And what business would you have with him?” Mephisto asked.
Setsura interrupted and said in a lazy voice, “Let’s cut to the chase, Baldy. What if I say no?”
The balding head darkened in a flash. Laboring to keep the snarl from his lips, he said, “You gotta leave here sometime, kid. Keeping people waiting tends to tick them off. Besides, we didn’t come here to put the hurt on you. There might even be some room here for cooperation and compromise. Let’s talk it over.”
“A negotiation with the mob, eh,” Setsura said, stretching mightily. “Sure, why not? Let’s hear what you have to say.”
Asai reined in his temper. When it counted, he was a man who could summon up great reserves of patience, the kind of patience it took to kiss all the ass that got him where he was today.
“Are you telling me there’s no way to convince you to accompany us to our premises?”
“Not bloody likely.”
“Then we have no choice but to stay here until you do.”
“Do you intend to raise a ruckus in the hospital?” Mephisto asked softly.
Asai paled a bit, cleared his throat, and said, “Rest assured you have nothing to worry about. Come along quietly.”
“Nobody will be coming along quietly. Neither can you leave. No patients come to this hospital and, still breathing, choose to stay. Though some boasting of no physical defects at all have, from time to time, been known to go missing.”
Asai raised his hand. Four men at the receptionist’s desk started towards them.
“Stand down, Setsura,” Mephisto murmured, twisting the ring on his finger.
A woman in white passed in front of the three like a shadow. The suits looked down their noses at the nurse standing in front of them. They were men who made a specialty of eradicating life, honing their skills on the monsters and demons that nested here in Shinjuku.
They carried five-round, hand-held missile launchers in the holsters under their arms. Guided by a visual recognition guidance system and streaking along at Mach three, one missile could light up an area sixty feet in diameter with two hundred thousand degrees of heat.
But now they were going to get up close and personal with a fear greater than anything else in their knowledge.
The nurse’s slender hands swept sideways. Two of the men flew backwards with crushed throats. The remaining two were halted in midair as they tried to retreat, the nurse’s arms buried in their stomachs up to her wrists.
Puncturing the abdominals of these mountain-sized men like tissue paper, she wrenched her hands and tore out their insides. Having seen to their gruesome mutual demise, throwing the two blood-soaked bodies over her shoulders, she marched back to the elevator.
Asai’s gaze was glued to her back. His forehead was covered with a sheen of sweat. His shirt was plastered to his chest.
Smiling, almost elfin eyes looked into his terror-stricken ones. “It is human nature to never learn from one’s mistakes, but a yakuza’s threats have little entertainment value. Do you know what will happen to them? Downstairs is a most efficient and well-equipped vivisection room. Brain cells in particular are useless once dead, so it’s best to conduct the procedures while the donor is still alive. You, too.”
Asai’s face twisted in fear. Mephisto gently restrained his raised hands. That alone froze the yakuza’s errand boy in place.
“If—if—you kill me—”
Mephisto’s forefinger touched his trembling lips. He whispered as if to a beloved child, “Time to take a nap.”
He lowered his hand and pushed his finger through Asai’s Adam’s apple. Asai’s eyes rolled back in his head. When Mephisto drew back his hand, not a drop of blood was left behind. Not the hint of a wound marred Asai’s skin.
Mephisto practiced as well in the field of psychic surgery, its effectiveness well-established for many years now, able to remove tumors without leaving a scar.
He said to the nurses that materialized like specters behind him, “Take him away.”
Asai slumped down into the chair. Perched on his knee was a disgusting, blue-green lump. A toad. Peering out from the warty skin, the heavy glistening eyes took in Setsura and Mephisto.
“Hoh,” said the delighted Mephisto. “It looks like somebody else has been stealing a march on Gento.”