The Japanese Corpse (31 page)

"So the game is stalled," the commissaris said, and Yuiko translated. "What do you suggest we all do now?"

The setting sun burst through a dip in the hills surrounding the lake and the daimyo's face was suddenly lit up. He closed his eyes and smiled widely, enjoying the warmth spreading over his face. "Go home," he said leisurely. "Let's all go home. It's been a good day but nothing lasts and we need a meal and a rest. I would like to invite you gentlemen to a party at my house in the Rokko Mountains. It's hard to find so I will send a car. The car will take you to the airport and a plane will get you to us in half an hour. We have a private airport close by. Today is Wednesday, how about Friday night? The car can pick you up at your inn at four in the afternoon?"

Dorin's lips were still a narrow line in his face. "A party?" he asked flatly.

"Yes. And you can all stay the weekend. I think we should have time to talk. The business you have interfered with is very profitable. We can help you buy at this end and you can sell at your end, in Holland and in the other European countries. Dorin-san has proved himself in many ways during the last weeks. He can be the communication officer. You have been winning for some time now but nobody wins forever. If we join forces our chances will increase."

"A fusion," the commissaris said, and offered the daimyo a cigar from his flat tin. The daimyo struck a match and the two old men bent toward each other.

"A party," de Gier said. "Will your musicians from the Golden Dragon bar be at the party too?"

"Surely," the daimyo said. "You like jazz, don't you?"

"Sometimes," de Gier said. "Your musicians are very good."

"They have had a lot of practice and they are talented," the daimyo said. "I like jazz myself. I heard them play on a ship once. We were on a cruise. They said they would like to settle in Kyoto, that was some years ago. Since then they have played in our bars and nightclubs and they are well known now. Yes, they will be at the party and I am sure they will do their very best."

"I'd like to go," the commissaris said to Dorin. Dorin bowed. He was looking at the daimyo. His eyes glittered and his hand on the machine pistol's grip twitched.

"Don't bother to bring your arms," the daimyo said, and waved at the cutter, which turned and began to sail toward the two tied-up boats. "We are honorable people. You will be our guests until the moment we return you to your inn. If you disagree with our suggestions you will still be our guests. The yakusa believe in friendship." He put his hand on Yuiko's forearm. "Jin-gi."

"Jin-gi," Yuiko said. "The daimyo wants you to hear the word in Japanese. It means more than friendship."

The daimyo's thick index finger was tracing the characters in the air. "Jin-gi," he said again. "Dorin-san will be able to explain it to you. A most important word. You have shown us that you know the idea behind the word."

He bowed to de Gier. "You saved the life of a yakusa girl."

He turned heavily and bowed to the commissaris. "If you hadn't dressed Kono's wound he might have lost his hand. Our doctor said so. Kono isn't a healthy man; microbes can catch him easily."

The cutter came alongside and the daimyo got up and grabbed the rope on the sailboat's foredeck. The young man who had been pushed overboard by de Gier came aboard the fishing boat.

"Perhaps we should all return in our own boats," the daimyo suggested.

There were bows and smiles. Dorin smiled too, but his eyes still glittered.

\\\\\ 26 /////

"A
HA," THE COMMISSARIS SAID, AND READJUSTED THE sash of his striped kimono. "That was an excellent meal, sergeant, and it was an excellent day too." He grinned delightedly and got up. They had been eating in their room and the two maids had just cleared the table. They had left a full coffeepot and two cups and cleaned the ashtray. The room was spotless as usual, and the soft colors of the tatamis blended with the evening light coming in through the open balcony doors.

"I am glad you feel well, sir. I thought the day on the water would have affected your legs." The sergeant was lying flat on his back, his head resting on his clasped hands. He had found the commissaris in the bathroom when he came back, after having dropped Yuiko off at her apartment. She had asked him in but he had excused himself, promising to phone the next day to make arrangements for picking her up for the daimyo's party. He had been sure that the commissaris would be in pain, but the old man had been singing in the wooden bathtub, only pausing long enough to ask de Gier to light a cigar for him.

"No. I feel fine," the commissaris said. He had opened the door of the cupboard and rolled out his matress. "These hard little pillows are really very comfortable once you get used to them." He knocked the pillow into shape and lay down. "You pour the coffee, sergeant, I am not going to do anything anymore. How did you like me waving that machine pistol? Did I look dangerous?"

De Gier grinned. "You looked deadly, sir."

"Yes," the commissaris said, sitting up to accept the cup. "I always wanted to say, 'I'll pump you full of lead.' It's such an idiotic statement to make. Why don't you ask Dorin to come over, maybe we can cheer him up. He didn't say a word on the way back; not that I minded, I think I was asleep most of the time."

It took de Gier a little while to locate Dorin. He wasn't in his room and the sergeant had to go down to the inn's office. One of the maids said that he might have gone to a little bar close by, and offered to go and fetch him. De Gier said he would go himself but the maids covered their mouths and tittered. He shouldn't go into the street in his kimono. The sergeant didn't understand. Surely a kimono is the right thing to wear in Japan. But it wasn't. The innkeeper was summoned from his private quarters to explain. The kimono de Gier was wearing was a bath kimono, not to be worn outdoors. He protested that he had seen Japanese gentlemen in the train, dressed only in their underwear, and in the middle of the day. Yes, but that was different. He gave up and went back to his room. The maid ran off to fetch Dorin.

Dorin came in exhaling a strong sweet smell of alcohol. His eyes were bloodshot. He was smiling but the smile only touched his face. The commissaris fetched a cushion from the cupboard and placed it near the toko-noma in which the maids had placed fresh flowers, two wild roses, bending down gracefully from lone stems.

"I am sorry," the commissaris said. "I didn't want to disturb you, but the sergeant and I thought that you might like to have coffee with us. You haven't had your bath yet?"

Dorin was still wearing the clothes he had worn on the launch, a Windbreaker and a pair of jeans, and his hair stood up.

"Well," the commissaris said when Dorin had been given his coffee by the sergeant. "How do you feel about our quest now? Do you think we have made some headway?"

Dorin nodded once and raised the cup to his lips.

"You don't?" the commissaris asked, and looked at the scroll which formed the background of the two wild roses in the tokonoma. The scroll showed a single character, drawn with a thick brush. The innkeeper had told him that the character stood for "dreams" and had been given to his father by the former abbot of Daidharmaji. It had been drawn by the abbot just before he died. He had made a number of scrolls, all with the same character, and had given them to the people he had known well, explaining that the word summed up his total experience of the life he was about to finish.

"Dreams," the commissaris muttered.

"Pardon?" Dorin asked.

The commissaris pointed at the scroll. Dorin turned to look at the character. "Yes," he said. "Dreams. Nightmares. I had one today. I saw the face of a pig." He turned back and stared at his hands which were lying motionless on his thighs. "Pig!" he said again, spitting out the word.

"Whom did you see?" de Gier asked. "You are not referring to the daimyo, are you?"

"I am," Dorin said, spilling coffee on his jeans and absentmindedly wiping the drops. "We know what the animal looks like now. Daimyo! You know what the word means?"

"Lord," the commissaris said.

"Right. Lord. In the old days the daimyos ruled parts of the country in the name of the emperor. They were dukes and counts and marquises, hand-picked for their valor and intelligence and insight. They weren't brothel-keepers and dealers in drugs and restaurant owners and buyers of stolen goods. Our little pig is nothing but a businessman gone wrong. A businessman is a merchant and merchants have never counted for much in our country. They are greedy small-minded individuals, hardly human, concerned with profit only. Their duty is the distribution of goods, but they are too stupid to know that they have a duty. If the daimyos needed the services of a merchant they would stroll into his store and take what they wanted and they wouldn't bother about asking a price. The merchant could collect his bill afterward, at the back-entrance of the palace, if he could find a clerk who had a few minutes available. The merchant would grovel in the dust at the side of the street as the daimyo rode past. And if the merchant turned out to be a crook he would be clubbed to death, quickly and in a quiet place so that he wouldn't disturb anyone with his screams."

"Really?" the commissaris asked. Dorin's furious face, each facial muscle working, the gleaming teeth and the wildly gesticulating hands had reminded him of a prewar cartoon, showing a Japanese soldier and warning against the Yellow Peril that was about to attack the world. The soldier had been grinning evilly and had pointed his bayonetted rifle.

"So now we know what our perverted grocer looks like," Dorin said, jumping up suddenly and nearly upsetting the low table so that de Gier had to reach out to steady it. "Our mighty fellow who can speak into a microphone and summon an airplane from the sky and a boat full of bad men from the waves of Lake Biwa. I could have blasted that plane right into the clouds and exploded his nutshell. I also had a radio in the launch."

"Are your troops in the area now?" de Gier asked.

"Yes. They arrived two days ago. I have them quartered in an old army barracks east of the city. There is an air strip close to it. A hundred Snow Monkeys, four helicopters and two air force jet-fighters, all ready to take off at any moment. The man I had in the launch today is one of my officers."

"So why didn't you alert them?" the commissaris asked.

"Too soon," Dorin said. "I want to burn the pigpen with all the pigs in it. I was tempted this afternoon. We could have got the boat and the plane and the chief pig was sitting right in the palm of our hand, but he has got others in his so-called castle. When he invited us to the party I changed my mind. I would much rather blast them in the Rokko Mountains. Out there they are completely isolated, by their own stupidity. A mountain fort surrounded by private roads. We can slaughter them and nobody will hear them squeal. On the lake we might have had some publicity and I don't want Secret Service activities splashed all over the newspapers."

Dorin was getting more worked up and his words came out in a sharp whisper. The J'S of the Secret Service shot through the room like two cold little knives, and the commissaris closed his eyes for a moment.

"But can't we just have them arrested by the local police?" de Gier asked. "The daimyo revealed his identity today in the presence of three witnesses. If we make up a statement we can convince a judge and..."

"No," Dorin said sharply. "The police know who the daimyo is. When I attack the castle the police will be there, but I will have warned them at the very last moment and the castle will be burning as their cars approach. They will be there because I don't want them to lose face. They can pick through the ruins and find the bodies and afterward they can write reports which somebody can file."

"You don't trust the police?" de Gier asked.

"I trust the Snow Monkeys," Dorin said. "My own men, trained properly, tested in many ways. They are warriors who aren't interested in playing golf with gangsters. Golf is a great game in this country. If one man wants another to do him a favor he invites him to a game of golf. They bet with each other. High stakes, a few thousand dollars or more, whatever the favor is worth. And the man who wants the favor loses the game. I have met some high police officers who love to play golf. My men like other games."

"Yes," the commissaris said sleepily, and yawned. "I am sure they do. Your lieutenant looked most ferocious to me. He handled that machine pistol as if it was his favorite toy."

Dorin smiled mirthlessly. "The Uzzi
is
one of the lieutenant's favorite toys. He can also fight with a sword and he can pull and throw a knife in one movement, and I have never seen him miss. But he has other accomplishments too. Some weeks ago he talked to a corrupt official, in a bar in downtown Tokyo. It was a very pleasant conversation which contained nothing specific, but the official got very drunk that night and smashed up his car against a concrete pillar and died before the ambulance arrived."

"We wouldn't know about that sort of thing," the commissaris said. "We are only police officers."

"The police catch thieves and drunks and crooks and the man who forgets himself and manages to kill another citizen," Dorin said in his normal voice, "but there are other criminals who know how to hide and how to wear masks and who pull strings and who have friends who can say a word here and there. A police officer may start an investigation and come up with something, but he gets a note or somebody telephones him and he suddenly starts doing something else and forgets his case."

The commissaris yawned again and excused himself.

"Good night," Dorin said. "Tomorrow Mr. Woo comes to collect his pennies and he will telephone Hong Kong. Mr. Johnson tells me that he has arranged the matter with you and I believe the merchandise will be delivered to a Dutch vessel and taken to Amsterdam."

"Yes," the commissaris said happily. "That heroin should give us some interesting contacts in Europe. Mr. Woo is being very helpful."

"The Dutch police will take care of the connection?" Dorin asked.