Barry Eisler - Fault line

She emerged onto Columbus, and the quiet of the somnolent Chinatown evening ended abruptly with the traffic and neon of North Beach. There it was, Jazz at Pearl's, a first-floor club with windows on the street and a doorway under a red awning. She crossed the street and went inside, explaining to the doorman that she had no reservation but she was supposed to meet a friend here… could she just take a quick look around?

It was a small place, maybe thirty people, soft carpet and red-hued lighting and small round tables covered in white linen. A voluptuous black woman was singing “Need My Sugar” with piano and bass accompaniment, and the audience was toe-tapping heartily along with it. Ben wasn't there. Maybe he was in the bathroom? She waited five minutes and then gave up, surprised at how disappointed she was. If she didn't confront him, if she didn't get past this, she didn't know how the hell she was going to sleep tonight.

She had just turned left onto Columbus, thinking maybe she'd grab a bite at Cafe Prague before finding a Walgreens or something else open at night where she could pick up a change of underwear and a few other items, when someone called her name. She looked around, seeing no one. A bus went by. Had she imagined it? And then she heard it again. She looked up and saw Ben, in the second-story window of Vesuvio. “Come on over,” he called.

She felt an odd burst of pleasure that she couldn't quite placeexcitement? relief?-and crossed the street.

She went inside and immediately liked it. She supposed it was weird that she lived in San Francisco and had never been inside Vesuvio, but she'd never been to Alcatraz, either. It was one of those places, well known to tourists, you figured would always be there and you'd get to it eventually. Not that she'd been in too much of a hurry. In her imagination, the place was more of a Beat museum than a real bar someone might want to go to for a drink, but the atmosphere struck her immediately as authentic and she was glad she'd been wrong.

She went up to the second floor and walked alongside the balcony overlooking the bar below. The ceiling was close overhead, maybe seven feet, and painted dark brown or black. There was some light from the street but other than that it was so dim she found herself squinting. A few indistinct groups were talking and laughing around tables in booths. She made out Ben's shape against a window, silhouetted by the neon sign of the Tosca Cafe across the street. He was sitting away from his table, his feet planted on the floor. There was something about him that always seemed… ready. For what, she wasn't sure.

“What are you doing here?” he asked as she approached.

She stopped in front of the table but didn't sit down. “I wanted to talk to you.”

He nodded and looked out at the street, then back at her. “Do you have a problem with my putting my hands on you?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head, thinking she had misunderstood. “What?”

“I'm not going to be comfortable sitting here with you if I don't pat you down. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.”

She didn't know what to make of it. Was he serious?

As she stood there, trying to take it all in, he got up and stepped close to her. He leaned in close, and she realized this was for the benefit of anyone who might be watching, to obscure what he was really doing. She caught a whiff of the hotel's soap, and something else underneath it, something masculine she couldn't otherwise place. She felt his left hand move inside her coat and slide up her right side, the palm of his hand firm against her kidney, her ribs, the edge of her breast. Then his right hand was doing the same on the other side. He pulled her against him and ran his hands lightly across the small of her back and over her hips. She felt her heart beating fast and told herself it was because she was angry.

He took a step back and glanced around the bar, then knelt in front of her and quickly ran his hands up each of her legs, ankle to groin. She heard her breath moving forcefully in and out of her nose.

He stood and looked at her. She glared back. “Satisfied?” she asked.

He nodded and sat, with no indication she should do the same.

The insolence of it, and her failure to do anything effective in response other than a single lame word of sarcasm, made her so angry she imagined herself picking up a chair and swinging it at him like a baseball bat. “Stand up,” she said.

“What?”

“Stand up,” she said again.

He did.

She stepped in close and looked into his eyes. “We better both be careful, no?”

She slipped her hands inside his blazer and ran them slowly up his sides. She could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the muscles underneath. She never took her eyes from him. He wanted to play it mocking and insolent? She could play it that way, too.

She knelt in front of him and touched him with the same clinical ease, the same sense of entitlement, that he had used on her. Then she stood and put a hand on his stomach. It was hard and flat and she could feel it expanding and contracting slightly with his breathing.

“I guess you're unarmed,” she said, still looking into his eyes.

He put his hand over hers and started pushing it lower. She couldn't believe it… what was he doing, one-upping her? But she wasn't going to blink first.

Lower. Her heart was pounding but she wouldn't look away.

Her hand stopped at a hard protuberance just above his groin. She realized what it was-a gun, in some kind of special concealed holster.

“Maybe I can trust you after all,” he said.

She glared at him. “Why?”

“Because nobody, with even the most rudimentary training, could have done such a lame pat-down. Maybe you are just a lawyer.”

“And maybe you're just an asshole.”

“Oh, I'm a lot more than that.”

His hand was still covering hers. She pulled it away and sat down. After a moment he joined her.

“Well? What did you want to talk about?” he asked, his tone and expression casual enough to suggest that he didn't really care.

She looked at him for a long second, anger seething inside her. “Forget it,” she said, and stood to go.

He was out of his seat with such liquid speed it amazed her. He caught her arm. “Why?” he said. “You mad because I patted you down? Because I didn't get turned on when you did the same to me?”

“Getting turned on is a human quality. I don't see it in you.”

“Listen. I don't know you, so I don't trust you. It's not personal.”

“The hell it's not. You trusted me fine right up until you heard my name. So don't tell me it's not personal.”

“Why don't you sit down and I'll buy you a drink.”

“I'll buy my own drink.”

Ben glanced over her shoulder. “All right, buy one for me, too.”

She looked, and saw the waitress standing behind her.

“Bombay Sapphire martini,” Ben said. “No olive, no vermouth.”

The hell with it. She nodded to the waitress. “Make it two.”

They sat. Ben said, “You going to tell me why you're here?”

She felt her heart beating and it made her angry again. She hated that he could be so cool with her, and that at the same time he made her nervous. And she was scared about what she was going to say next.

She cleared her throat. “It's… about the Four Seasons. I'm thinking about what you're thinking, putting myself in the other person's shoes, the way you said to do. And if I were in your shoes, I'd be afraid that I might… go to the police or something. I'm afraid of what you might do to prevent that.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and she thought she saw something play across his eyes in the diffused light from the street. Sympathy? Regret?