“We know who entered.”
“—was surpassingly slipshod in their approach. Pulled down some burial urns, threw a couple of them into a duffel bag, overturned a few more, and then left. It looks staged because it is.”
Lieutenant Addario sighed. “He was misinformed, that’s all. He was searching for a hidden cache that wasn’t there. He says as much in his journal.”
“He also crows about how methodical he is, how carefully he operates. Remember his poor Irish mother trying to hide the jelly beans? Such a sorrowful tale. This?” She gestured to the crime scene. “This is not the work of a methodical mind.”
Rhodes nodded impatiently to the clerk, and the cave-like interior of the tomb now came up: broken pottery, shards of bone, a dirt floor with the stone walls illuminated by the flattening effects of a flashbulb. It smelled musty even from here.
“Certainly appears well looted, doesn’t it?” said Rhodes. “But is it? Look. Here—and here. Several of the urns haven’t even been opened. An Easter egg hunt would have been better executed. No. This wasn’t someone plundering a royal grave, this was a ploy, nothing more. A shell game, except instead of shells, he used turtleback tombs. And the phone? What about the phone?”
“What phone?”
“His cell phone.”
“He didn’t have a cell phone,” Addario said.
“That’s my point. What happened to it?”
“The owner of the guesthouse said she heard him talking to himself late at night and assumed he was on a call, but no one saw a cell phone. He may very well have been having a mental collapse at that point. Or perhaps he did have a phone, and he threw it off a cliff.”
“Or maybe,” said Rhodes, “someone took it.”
The colonel gave Rhodes a faint approximation of a smile. “Is that Boston I hear?”
“Salem,” she said. “I grew up just outside the city.”
He nodded, satisfied, as though it confirmed some pet theory of his. “Salem,” he said. “That’s where they burned the witches, isn’t it?”
“We didn’t burn any witches in Salem,” she said. “That’s a myth.”
He was genuinely surprised. “Is it?”
“We didn’t burn them, we hanged them.” She turned to the clerk. “Go to the next map.”
A bird’s-eye image of the Island of the Dead appeared.
Rhodes pointed to a spot on the other side of the island. “A second grave was looted over here. It’s the burial site of a minor Okinawan family. No obvious royal connections. We might never have known about it, because, unlike the break-in at the first grave, there was some effort made to disguise this one.”
The heavy stone that had covered the entrance of the second grave had been rolled back into place. Any footprints seem to have been swept clean.
“This break-in at the second grave was discovered only by chance, and several days after the fact, when the same groundskeeper noticed that the vegetation out front had been disturbed. Even then, he wouldn’t have thought anything of it except, with the royal Kara tomb desecrated earlier, he figured he’d better err on the side of caution and call someone. The prefectural police arrived and, sure enough, someone had been inside this tomb as well. No damage, but one of the urns had clearly been moved.”
“Treasure?” asked the Brits hopefully. So far there was a decided lack of treasure in what had purportedly been a treasure hunt.
Officer Gushiken answered for Rhodes. “No treasure. Is very rare to have valuables buried in such a place. Is just bones. And sometimes—What is the word in English?” He leaned in to the interpreter, who whispered, “Mementos.”
“Mementos,” Officer Gushiken repeated. “Not valuable. Just mementos.”
Lieutenant Addario tried to steer the conversation back on track. “We don’t know that there is any connection between the two graves, and even if there is, Mr. Moore may simply have targeted the wrong tomb at the outset, recognized his error, and then moved on. As should we.”
“But royal tombs are very distinct,” said Rhodes. “You can’t miss them. They’re much grander in size. The royal one that was broken into had this image of a stylized insect above the entrance. Easily spotted.”
“A firefly,” said Officer Gushiken. “The insect. It is the Kara family mon—like a symbol. Very famous.”
“Exactly. I can’t imagine any self-respecting grave robber mistaking the tomb of a minor military family for that of Okinawa’s royal line.”
Lieutenant Addario said, “There’s that word again. He wasn’t self-respecting. He wasn’t coolheaded. He was frantic. Perhaps this other grave was from an earlier scouting foray. Perhaps he was testing security, checking to see if it was doable.”
The air-conditioning had finally kicked in. Their sweat had chilled like frost on the skin. Damp hair grew cold.
Addario sighed. “I think we’re done here. Colonel?”
Protocol would dictate that he close the meeting. It was his base, after all. But the colonel looked at Rhodes, tilted his head as though trying to bring her into focus.
“You said ‘military.’ What did you mean by that?”
“Pardon?” said Rhodes.
“The second grave,” the colonel replied. “You said it was the burial ground of a minor military family. How military? How minor?”
“That was, ah, actually it was Officer Gushiken and…” She stumbled over the other name, which pleased Officer Gushiken to no end.
“River Stone,” Kawaishi offered helpfully. “My name means River Stone.”
“They were the ones who looked into this.”
River Stone flipped through his notes, happy to have something to contribute. “Yes. The second grave. It is listed in cemetery records as belonging to the Matsuda family. They were traditionally merchants. But a separate family line—the Ono-Isu—are also in this grave. Their bones, I mean. The Ono-Isu were a samurai family. A clan, I think you’d say? Retainers to the Kara. The Ono-Isu have a long tradition of military service. The current head of the family is an officer with the National Defense Force, stationed in Sapporo, I believe.” He looked to his superior for confirmation even though he knew this was correct. Gushiken nodded his assent.
“You’ve contacted the family?” asked the colonel.
“Yes. But as far as we know, no items were removed from this tomb. We are still waiting for confirmation on that.”
“And,” Officer Gushiken said, “any items inside would not be of value.”
“Oh. Right,” said the colonel. “You mentioned that. Just mementos. What kind exactly? Are y’all talking about family photos and such? Medals maybe?”
The two police officers exchanged looks. Several members of the Ono-Isu had been tried as war criminals after the Japanese surrendered in 1945.
“Maybe,” said River Stone.
But Officer Gushiken was firm. He was from Okinawa, after all. “No,” he said. “No medals in this grave. Not valuable like that. Just”—he checked the word again—“mementos.”
“From the war?” asked the colonel.
“Maybe.”
Colonel McNair leaned back, smiled a crooked smile. It was almost a grin. “Now, isn’t that something? Never would’a thought’a such a thing. Never would’ve entered my brain.”
They assumed the colonel was charmed by Okinawan rituals. And he was—though not quite in the way they imagined. If the room had stopped breathing, if they had killed the AC and listened carefully to the underlying silence, they might have caught the faint voice of a dead man reaching out to them. The colonel’s smile widened, and now it really was a grin. The dead are more alive than we realize.
Lieutenant Addario closed the file in front of her. “If it’s all right with everyone, I would move that we adjourn.”
The colonel nodded absentmindedly, waved his hand in a vague motion of agreement. But Rhodes stopped them.
“I’m not done.”
Lieutenant Addario leveled a steady gaze at her agent. “Yes. You are.”
People had begun gathering up papers, realigning caps and collars, cricking necks and suppressing yawns that were yearning to be released.
“Wait!” Gaddy Rhodes turned, wild-eyed, on Addario. “What about the egg?”
The egg?
“The Fabergé egg. Seventeen million dollars.”
“Oh, for god’s sake.” Addario rolled her eyes, almost audibly. “Agent Rhodes, this is neither the time nor the—”
But Rhodes had outflanked her. The colonel lowered his haunches back onto his seat, gestured for her to continue. She slid a memory stick across the table to the clerk. “Can you bring up the main file? The one marked FINDER.”
THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL
IS WELL PAST TEN WHEN Billy calls, texts it really, five days gone and only this, a terse reply, not like Billy at all, what with him so garrulous and full of boisterous proclamation like the bog Irish mick he is, and only three words and a measly question mark for his old pal peachy:
Who is this?
Ya feckin’ wanker, who do you think, its peachy innit, wondering if youse are back and full of riches like you promised or have you forgotten yer old friend now that yer a rich twat sittin arse friendly on a bag of cash somewhere and are ye not back in oc yet?
OC?
Okinawa city you twat. What the feck is up with you, has all that loot you was promised gone to your huge irish head, and when are ya goan t’hoist a pint and spin me the tales of billys adventures and how many armenian hookers and bags of blow can we get for what the wee man paid you? Rough estimate like.
A long pause, splintered with ice.
Let’s meet.
Of course you wanker, lets meet, that’s the hole entire point innit, to meet and toast billys luck and peachys good fortune at knowing youse, which never thought id say, you being a layabout and wastrel of the first order as most of you belfast boys are. When?
Tonight.
There ye go! Was that so hard billy boy, usual place then, same table if we can get it by the window, where last I saw you in thet rockabilly place past the night market out by ginjos pachinko, and you are buyin you feckin wanker, you are buyin.
I will be waiting.
* * *
THE BALLAD OF BILLY AND Peachy began at the Peace Love Rock Festival in Naha City—or was it the Peaceful Love Festival? The posters didn’t always agree. A pair of hardscrabble Ulstermen crossing paths on a tropical isle? A wonderful confluence of fortune, the two of them pooling their acumen and pimping their wares together like that. It had the feeling of something preordained.
Up in Okinawa City, with its US bases and yakuza feuds, it was the Wild West. So said Billy, who had never been to the American West, who had never been to America, but who understood appetites and the festering desires they whetted, all those itches that needed scratching, and that, my friend, was universal.
Billy and Peachy talked themselves into an alternate world as they soaked their bodies in the salubrious Japanese waters and egg-odored baths. Serpent gods and seahorses. The nonchalant nihilism of Buddhist teachings. And Billy always deep in books, as though there were a lost piece of him somewhere in those pages. “It’s the wheel of karma, y’see.” And oh his eyes would shine.
Okinawa was a giant pachinko board, silver balls cascading into a din of light, and here was Billy and Peachy in a state of exultation, their euphoria fueled as much by a future they could see taking shape in front of them as by any methamphetamine in their bloodstream, dreams wheeling out of control. Burner phones. Midnight rendezvouses. Untraceable calls. Conversations garnished with fabled confidences and whispered asides. And now, wouldn’t you know it but Billy had hit the jackpot. He had whispered in Peachy’s ear, scarce heard above the tub-thumping rockabilly tunes, “I’m not t’say a thing, but tha’ wee man over there, in the corner? Don’t look! I just said, Don’t look. Didn’t I just say? Anyways. Has a proposition for me, so he does.” And you can trust him? “Aye. An Ulsterman, same as us. Lost his accent somewhere along the way, but still of proper Nord Iron stock.” Not some Falls Road Fenian feck, surely? “Nah. Kicks the football with the correct boot, so he does.”
Peachy only ever saw the wee man that one time. It was dark and noisy in the rockabilly joint near the market by the corner past Ginjo’s pachinko, but even then, even as fleeting as that encounter had been, Peachy knew he was in the presence of something. Probably greatness.
A man of his word, that’s what he tells Billy, and Billy believes him. “Will come back rich,” Billy assures Peachy. “It’s a done deal like.” So off he fecks to Shangri-La, our Billy. “Not a word of contact till I am back, Peachy. Not a word. Y’unnerstand? Not a word.” Opaque intentions enshrouded in guile, and Peachy promising on his mother’s future grave (god forbid) that he wouldn’t say to any’n. But Peachy was Peachy and he couldn’t help himself. Easily excitable and lacking in grace. There was a restlessness in him, born of Sandy Row bonfires and kings on white horses. Exiles in our own home, us Prods. Shit upon from all sides and now, here it was, the future they’d dreamed for so long, suddenly within grasp. And now, Billy’s back and it’s time to celebrate.
Peachy tugged on his jean jacket, stepped out… and was swallowed by the night.
* * *
THE PACHINKO PINBALL OF OKINAWA City was firing wilder than ever. A ricochet of lights, streets thick with sounds, swimming with humidity. The ripple and wave of neon billboards, the traffic lights like an orchestral conductor. The cars stop and go, stop and go. Girls on long legs, like young deer. Throaty-voiced office ladies pealing by in cascades of laughter. Cries of “Mensore!” shouted in the noodle shops as customers entered, punching their way through the hanging half curtains.
Alleyways radiating outward, haphazardly at times, with the narrow lanes circling back as though they’d forgotten something. Chinese characters, red and orange like spatters of paint. The darker corners of a watery world. Hooded doorways littered with louche young men of dubious intent who watched Peachy thread his way through, gave haughty nods as he passed. Here, clearly, was a man on the cadge. A tight-permed thug sucked on a cigarette, grinned at Peachy as he passed, let the smoke leak through his teeth.
Peachy was among his own now, the tattered and the torn, the slipshod and the shoddy, and by the time he reached the end of the alley, he had acquired a tout of his own, a doughy bow-tied man who clung to Peachy like a barnacle on a prow. “Piss show,” he hissed. Touts, unmovable, and women procurable. Peachy wrestled himself free. “Dah-meh,” he said. Leave me alone.
“You like girl? You like boy?” whispered another tout as he passed. “Filipina, very pretty.”
“Dah-meh, all of youse.”
Peachy could hear the distant thrum of taiko drums. A festival was mustering somewhere in the city. There was always a festival mustering. Summer in Okinawa was one long dance.
Past a yakiniku restaurant, its street-front grates rolled back to let air through, slabs of beef bleeding pink, US personnel boisterous and unbridled, guffaw and counterguffaw, muscular boys calling out for beer like they were summoning a medic. “Biiru, koo-da-sigh!” Bottles of Orion arriving as if on a treadmill, and Peachy spotting some of his customers in among the throng as he pushed past. “More biiru!”
The street widened and Peachy waded into a sea of food stalls. The sound of the festival grew louder, and pork knuckles were simmering in hot pots. Pig ears with vinegar and sliced cucumber. Vendors calling out. Purple sweet potatoes, roasted hot, served split and steaming. Fermented tofu steeped in awamori liquor, as thickly rendered as cheese. Paper lanterns that bobbed and bowed on the night wind.
The twang of Okinawan banjos, the slow building thunder of taiko drums, the hachimaki headbands twisted over brows, dancers turning, two steps forward, one step back, voices shrill and relentless. He could see Ginjo’s Silver Castle pachinko lit up in diva dressing room light bulbs, but his route was blocked by the festival that was now unraveling like a banner down the main streets. Rows of women, s
orted by age, moved past in a procession of yellow and blues, Okinawa kimonos, so much more vibrant than the subdued colors one sees on the Japanese mainland. These were the last days of Obon, the Festival of the Dead, and the eisa dancers were out in full force. It reminded Peachy of the Glorious Twelfth, of flutes and Lambeg drums beating out their lonely defiance. They, too, honored the dead.
Obon was a lively event, all things considered, and the spirits of the departing ancestors were being sent off with a raucous farewell. And how to separate the dancer from the dance? Billy had asked Peachy that once in a drug-fevered haze, and Peachy had laughed it off—he was always too deep for his own good, our Billy—but now Peachy could almost see it, what Billy was referring to, the shadow world behind the forms.
Then came the dragons.
There were four of them, slumbering in the street. Dragons green and dragons black, dragons red and gilded with gold. Shaggy bodies, chests heaving in fitful dreams, eyes rolled back and closed. Sleeping dragons must first be roused, and female dancers prodded them with tinny cymbals and yelping shouts. They woke with angry snaps, came to life, charged the crowds, stomped, shook their manes to and fro, rose and dropped to the beat of their tormentors.
Dragons, once woken, are hard to contain. On older maps of uncharted seas, sailors would warn each other on the edge of the page: Here be dragons. Perhaps it was Okinawa that the sailors were warning about. So thought Peachy as he walked with strange monsters down the street. He veered left. Narrow steps, leading to a basement jazz club. Cutting through a bedlam backbeat, smoke saturated, bodies swaying, loose limbed and dreamlike in the isolation that only loud music allows. The birth of the cool. Figures moved, became detached, and someone was following him and he spun around, but there were only silhouettes and the music of Miles Davis. He was getting jumpy.
Out the back, up the stairs and into an alley. Oily puddles and naked light bulbs, and again that feeling of being followed, and again he turned, and again no one was there. Peachy hurried on, panic rising.
The Finder Page 7