Loud

Chapter 6 - Ducking into an Irish Bar to Plan a Little Blackmail

The threatening caller's number was stored in Rob's phone. Rob stared at its digital display. After a moment, he recognized the voice: Keating's guy. The one at the hotel that time. Rob had talked to him before bumping into Keating with the girls...

Margot contacted Keating's people just yesterday - maybe the day before - about Rob's photo exhibition. She was supposed to mention photographs, but she knew nothing about Rob's plan to blackmail him...

They had moved fast. Cynthia saw that black Cherokee two days ago. That means they had tailed Rob before Margot's call, which means someone in Keating's organization must have identified him earlier, probably after the Gears CD became a success...

They waited awhile... Damn, unless the Boston break-in, the stolen computers and photos, the well-dressed man in Mark's apartment... unless all that was them.

Pedestrians crammed the narrow sidewalk. They skirted around him without using elbows or dirty looks. Less than a block away, Nobu waited on the wall, unaware of him. Before Rob reached him, Nobu lifted his chin and popped up his hand. "Hey. You alright? Something wrong?"

"Yeah, I've been threatened."

Nobu stood and looked around. He pointed across the street. Cynthia huddled there with her male friends. When Rob looked, she ducked and covered her head. "By them?" Nobu said.

"No, not them." Cynthia must have spotted him fast-walking with the phone and thought it strange. Rob waved a thumbs-up. After a quick wave, Cynthia and her posse of young men ran down a side road.

Nobu examined the sidewalk behind Rob. "Was it someone between here and Roppongi Crossing?"

"Maybe. It was over the phone, but it felt like the caller was watching me."

Nobu wore jeans and a light red jacket. With his shaved head and bulky shoulders, he resembled a bouncer. Rob smiled. "You ready to rumble?"

"If I have to."

"That girl across the street was the one who slept on my couch, the one who didn't offer her body. She's going to help with Makiko."

Nobu looked for Cynthia again, but she was long gone. Finally he said, "I'm confused. Who threatened you?"

"One of Brian Keating's people."

Nobu's smile disappeared.

Just then, a loud motorcycle weaved around the cars in the lane closest to them. When the driver revved the engine, Nobu sprang against the wall. The motorcyclist raced through an opening in the traffic to a red light a block away.

"You're more skittish than I am," Rob said. Then he surveyed the street and sidewalks and found nothing out of the ordinary. "You alright?"

"Come." Nobu descended the stairs to the Irish bar.

Rob laughed. "Hey, don't be so jumpy. Brian Keating isn't going to send a motorcycle assassin. He's an actor, not a drug lord."

But Nobu was gone.

At the bottom of the stairs, stained wood surrounded the Irish bar's door. Gaelic music with a punk rock tempo screeched out. Maybe Nobu was anxious because of Mr. Endo, the Yakuza boss Rob had spotted at the hotel and at Nobu's father's temple.

Unlike Keating, the Yakuza was dangerous. That must be spooking Nobu.

Inside the bar, Rob noticed Nobu at a booth in back, so he ordered two pints of Guinness from the tattooed barmaid and waited on a stool for them. The first pint settled with the wavy darkness of a bog at night. Rob tried to read his fortune in it while the bartender filled the second pint. A Japanese kanji tattoo decorated the back of her neck. Before her skin hypnotized him entirely, he surveyed the bar's few patrons, all in suits.