Night of the Tustumena

by Arne Bue

  The rain's thickness in the dock's lights reminded Mr. Nakano of tattered blankets draped from mother Noriko's clothesline across the alley in the old neighborhood. A string of dock lights filled his horizon. A spotlight shot ahead, seeking about the bow and the starboard side, Captain John Sewell looking for something in the water, all the while bringing the ship slowly closer.

  Anna Knight invaded the solarium speaker, wind-muffled words, not the usual sharpness, the ship's engines calling up through the stump of the stack, the rain filling the enclosed space of the solarium with its own curtain of sound.

  Please remain above the car deck until the ship is all fast at the dock and the arrival announcement has been made. Once again ladies and gentlemen, the Tustumena will be arriving at King Cove in just a few minutes.

  Captain Sewell turned the ship in the wind, probably, Mr. Nakano believed, using the bow thrusters he'd heard porter Billy Sullivan talk about to other passengers on an earlier voyage. The spotlight angled into the slop and flashed over the dock. Vehicles lined a parking area. Yellow-slickered men bobbed about, ready for tie up. Deck hands threw lines. The yellow-clad men hustled.

  Through drizzly, fogged panes, the midsection of the dock below gave Mr. Nakano the early morning thought of soaked flora wind-shorn of petals, though he knew the structure indeed was not round. But to Mr. Nakano, the surface appeared golden under the sodium-vapor lights. He imagined in poetic musings the driveway extending into the blackness not unlike a wind-fallen stem, and metal rails reached like shoots from edges over piles right and left. But they were only steel walkways, Nakano realized, bringing himself back. A dock sign announced "Call Harbor VHF Channel 64 Tying Up." A Bronco and an old flatbed approached, their headlights thorn-like shafts through the rain-streaked panes.

  The docking complete, the bow faced out into Deer Passage. Mr. Nakano looked at lights around him, a circle of pearls.

  Williwaws continued nonstop.

  Mr. Nakano's first boss, before Shige Nishimoto took over, understood lower class women did not satisfy Kenso Nakano, and certainly did not remedy his melancholy and unrelenting angst since his mother and father had died. This old crime boss's wife had suggested a marriage. The thin spider of a woman knew of a girl Kenso Nakano might enjoy as a wife. The old boss immediately arranged a meeting.

  The young woman came from a respectable hard-working family, not too well off, but of good reputation, and through relatives linked to the organization. A perfectly safe arrangement, the old one said. The crime boss proceeded to push upon Mr. Nakano this marriage.

  The marriage would create cover. The woman would remove depression. Mr. Nakano's productivity would increase.

  Reluctantly, after glaring pressure, Mr. Nakano agreed.

  My wife, Misako, Mr. Nakano thought.

  Rain slickered deckhands fastened gangway uprights. A winch murmured and lowered the gangway to the dock. Sheets of williwaw-driven rain drove against the men. Anna, yellow oilskins, hurried down the gangway. She talked to vehicle-owners wanting to drive onto the ship's turntable, wanting their cars and trucks lowered to the car deck, where Dick the watchman lay dead in the trunk of the white Nissan Sentra. To the right, among boats, were masts and buildings. An array of cobalt blue and turquoise lights glowed and bobbled among smaller white lights.

  Mr. Nakano, in a black knit pullover cap, dark coat. plastic raincoat, shivered. The sleepy seaman at the boarding area said nothing to him when he disembarked. On the dock he headed quickly step by step away from the ship. Anna Knight looked over, but did not seem alarmed or even interested.

  He would work fast. He headed for the fishing boats braced on a back section of dock, out of the water for winter. He approached blue, chipped metal containers, the size of those used to gather newspapers and aluminum cans for re-cycling. In these cavernous insides fishermen had stored block, tackle, net, cork and line.

  A man stood there. He was wearing a glistening green oilskin with a black hood. Sodium lights back-lighted the man. He stood with feet braced, as though expecting a wave to rock the dock.

  "Good morning, George," Nakano said in perfect English. Mr. Nakano held his camera as though to take a photograph of a ship docked in a storm. His red sports bag dripped.

  "Don't take no picture of me, man," George growled from under his breath. The hood threw a shadow over the man's face, but his beard was pointed and brown and jutted like an eel into the golden light. He must have used a ladder, come down from one of the winter-braced fishing boats.

  "Over here," George said.

  Mr. Nakano slipped on the lens cap and followed around. The blue containers and the building hid the two men from the main part of the dock. An overhang protected Mr. Nakano and George from much of the downpour, just as the containers hid them from some of the wind.

  "Here's the money. All of it." George had opened a backpack.

  The red sports bag opened. Packets disappeared into a waterproof backpack and wrapped money filled the red bag.

  "Jeffrey Johnson. I heard he got killed, man," George said.

  "An unfortunate circumstance." Williwaws rushed. Mr. Nakano would have to board quickly and make photographs of the dock, the lights and the rain, a demonstration to the crew of his reason for being about in such weather.

  George said, "I ain't done nothing. You know that."

  "Of course. Do not ever worry. Please." A strand of light reached under the glistening black hood for one of George's eyes, but Mr. Nakano couldn't see the face. The man held his arms straight out, and the shape looked to Mr. Nakano like a cross he'd seen on an American church.

  "I'm out of here. This is too much." George clambered up a ladder and coiled over a gunnel and vanished.

  Mr. Nakano trusted George, but a voice called up from his insides and he saw himself as in a dream. He was sitting in Shige Nishimoto's den, only now the den belonged to Mr. Nakano, and he could hear his own voice chiding, biting and bitter. He was saying, "Trust no one. If there is a shortage, Redbeard must make up for it. This is wife Misako's money, son Kano's money. If Redbeard does not make up for shortages...."

  Mr. Nakano shook his head. His hands shook. The cool weather tightened his knee, fists of pain gripped his chest. He thought of how his inspired route had been soiled by the senseless killing of Jeffrey Johnson. He thought of how foolish Tokyo management had stained his perfect creation. The assassin Kiichi Sugimoto prowled Sand Point, waiting, for what? Kiichi Sugimoto would never agree to be Jeffrey Johnson's replacement. He, surely, was there for another matter.

  Mr. Nakano must call the insulting accountant Yasumasa Uchigama. This was, unfortunately, the only way he may communicate from Alaska into the higher echelons of the organization. By phone. With the accountant. Never, could Mr. Nakano contact oyabun Nishimoto directly. A direct contact to him was a risk no one of Mr. Nakano's estate must ever take. He may contact the boss only through the intermediary, the "respectable" accountant Yasumasa Uchigama, rumored to be a distant relative of an employee of the Emperor's household, if one were to think of such stories important. He hated doing this, wished he could work the entire route with no calls whatsoever. The technical people in Tokyo had offered him a cellular phone to use, but all of the careless cocaine people used them. Police, Alaska State Troopers, knew how to listen. They taped cellular calls. Low-tech and infrequent was safer, and somehow added to the purity of his magnificent creation, his route.

  Only one phone booth stood on the King Cove dock.

  Between the cries of wind he heard cars offloading. He saw the white Sentra drive off. The assassin Sugimoto surely had hired someone to board in King Cove to take the car away. But one never really knows what Sugimoto will do. The driver could be Sugimoto himself. In minutes, waiting vehicles would drive onto the turntable from the dock.

  The booth fogged as soon as he closed the door. The light came on and he was sure Deck Officers could see him from the bridge, but no matter. A man making a phone call is a common sight when a ship do
cks.

  He dialed and waited.

  This will be an early awakening for Uchigama, Mr. Nakano murmured to himself.

  The sleepy voice of a woman answered, the wife of Yasumasa Uchigama.

  How fortunate for accountant Uchigama. He has a wife by his side, a wife who is not ill. Mr. Nakano's hand gripped the phone and his jaw hurt from the clenching. He must call up calmness.

  What are disciplines? Everyone, whether he is a common man or a way-seeker, should follow the precepts of good behavior. He should control both his mind and body, and guard the gates of his five senses. He should be afraid of even a trifling evil and, from moment to moment, should endeavor to practice only good deeds.

  A hand of wind pushed the telephone booth, and its breath whispered between the cracks. Mr. Nakano's heart and breathing slowed, and he spoke as though peace and tranquility abounded.

  "I must speak with Yasumasa," Mr. Nakano said.

  A minute passed, and he heard, "Yes?"

  "We must talk," Mr. Nakano said. The light in the phone booth seemed harsh and cruel.

  "Why are you calling me at this hour?" Uchigama's voice did not carry the weight of sleep. But he spoke as though to a common cur of the streets. He always became instantly alert. Mr. Nakano took on the voice of one in perfect control of all of life.

  "I have received a message. Perhaps a certain individual is living at a place I no longer visit?"

  "Take no note of that," Uchigama barked, as though to make Mr. Nakano cower in a dark corner. "If the message said such a thing, it is only an indirect comment. Did we not speak of indirectness?"

  "Why has this been withheld? I did not know. You knew all along of this," Mr. Nakano said in a lilting fashion. His words seemed to condense upon themselves in the damp confines of the phone booth. He had tried to sound filled with peace and tranquility, though in fact that was nearly impossible.

  "You did not hear me," Yasumasa Uchigama shouted. "I said, give no thought to that. That was simply an indirect comment!"

  Uchigama was no longer present to engage in more conversation, for Mr. Nakano heard only a pulsing sound on the phone and the williwaws like ghosts screeching against the fogged phone booth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  From the limp, Captain Sewell identified even in the howling gale the man on the dock as Mr. Nakano. Sewell had examined manifests going back several years. At first, looking at the alphabetical passenger lists, he surmised Nakano took this voyage but two years in a row, listed as "Nakano, Kenso," under the "N" section of the list. This meant, to Captain Sewell, he'd been traveling aboard the Tustumena for the two years of Sewell's regular captaincy of this ship. Looking closer, he discovered the same man traveled the two years prior to him taking over the Tustumena, but had given his name as Nakano Kenso; so, the passenger list showed him as "Kenso, Nakano," under the "K" section. And again, two years prior to that, his was listed as before, "Nakano, Kenso." He watched Nakano cross the dock, round a building, and soon he reappeared and entered the phone booth and closed the door. The light inside the booth came on.

  The car elevator arose from the ship's innards; vehicles drove off, one of them the white Nissan Sentra.

  Captain Sewell picked up the radiotelephone.

  "Forsen?" he said.

  "Here, Captain," the King Cove police officer said. "We're ready. Nissan Sentra, CMW 345. We'll stop the car, question the driver, take a look in the trunk."

  "You have a warrant?"

  "You said there's blood on the trunk. You said there's a missing crewman. Reasonable cause, Captain."

  "Rain will wash the blood away," Captain Sewell said.

  "No problem, if you and your crew's willing to testify."

  "She's off the ship, heading up the causeway now," Sewell said.

  "Right. We see it, coming our way," Officer Forsen said.

  "Did you connect with the Troopers, with Henderson?" Sewell asked.

  "Sure did. Says you've got a possible aboard, a Mr. Nickerson?"

  "No. Nakano. Kenso Nakano. You and Henderson want him?" Sewell asked.

  "Not now, Captain. Henderson wants this Nickerson or Nakano guy whoever he is to keep going. He wants you to keep tabs on him."

  "He might have killed our night watchman, Forsen. He should be arrested," Sewell said.

  "Henderson and DEA gave me strict orders, Captain. We go hands off the possible for now. We pick up the driver of the Sentra, coming our way right now. We want the driver first. Hands off Nakano."

  "Forsen, Dick's gone. He might be in the trunk of the Sentra," Sewell said.

  "One step at a time, Captain. Slow, easy. We don't want this to blow up in our faces by jumping the gun. First, the driver of the Sentra, we question him. We open the trunk."

  "I don't agree with this. I think we should go for Nakano," Sewell grumbled.

  "Not now, Captain. They're after bigger fish. Here he is. We're stopping him now. Got to go."

  Captain Sewell ducked into the Master's Quarters and called Juneau Headquarters. Captain Kelly came on.

  "King Cove has the driver now," Sewell said.

  "Why didn't you open the trunk when you saw the blood?" Kelly asked. The crew and especially Captain Sewell had wanted to open the trunk, but he had decided to wait until the police took over. Police could examine the trunk with no disturbance to whatever was in there from ship personnel.

  "We didn't want to contaminate evidence, Captain," Sewell said. "The police are working that. I don't know what's in the trunk, but I do know the crew's spooked, and even the possibility of them seeing Dick in there would virtually kill crew morale."

  "Yeah but what if Dick's in there, and he s alive?" Kelly asked.

  "No. We pounded on the trunk and called inside. Listened, ears to the trunk. Called and pounded again and again. Not a sound. But we saw the blood on the outside and a few drops coming from underneath," Sewell said. "I wanted to pry it open. I sure did. But no. I made the call to let the police do this."

  "OK. Let me know," Captain Kelly said.

  "I'm putting Nakano under ship's arrest, in case Troopers or local police decide to go for him," Captain Sewell said.

  "No. Hands off Nakano," Kelly said.

  "I don't get it."

  "Troopers, DEA and King Cove police want to pretend nothing's up," Kelly said.

  "I don t agree with that shit at all. I'm going to put him under ship's arrest," Sewell said.

  "No, you're not, Captain Sewell."

  "Captain Kelly, he could be a murderer. He could kill another of my crew. Or hurt one of the passengers. I'm not going to let that happen. We'll keep him in his stateroom, post a guard."

  "I've been on the phone with both DEA and Troopers, as high up as you can go. You are not to go near Mr. Nakano until they give the word," Kelly said.

  "He may be dangerous," Captain Sewell said.

  "That's an order, Captain Sewell. Continue with the voyage, just as though nothing's gone wrong."

  "What are you going to tell Dick's family?" Sewell asked. "He has a brother and a sister in Sitka."

  "Dick's gone missing. No one at this time knows what's in the trunk. The brother and sister don't even know about the trunk. But for now, keep on, business as usual," Kelly said.

  "Kenso Nakano should be cuffed to the car deck stanchions," Sewell said. "He's an animal."

  "Once again, Captain Sewell, DEA and Troopers are in charge of Nakano. You keep your hands off. DEA and Troopers want him to stay on his schedule. They're watching his every move, port-by-port."

  "Undercover cops aboard?" Sewell asked.

  "In a sense, Captain."

  "In a sense?"

  "Yes, Captain Sewell. You're their undercover operative."

  "You son of a bitch," Sewell said. He broke off the contact.

  Captain Sewell paced in a tight circle about the Master's Quarters, trying to calm himself before calling Henderson. When he thought himself in hand, he made the connection. His heart rate went up as he
heard the snot nosed Trooper's voice on the other end.

  "Henderson."

  Captain Sewell said, "I've got my orders from Juneau Headquarters. I think it's a mistake to let Nakano run loose aboard my ship." Sewell heard only his own breathing on the phone.

  "You stay clear of the man," Henderson said, "but watch him. We're watching what he does at each docking."

  Henderson must be living in a fog, Sewell thought. And this will be my last trip. I'll take the early retirement package. Listen to this asshole. The Captain s thoughts whirred. He felt tired, drained and empty. The memory of Joyce nudged him. She was saying to him, "John, go with the flow. It'll work out for you. God loves you," just as she always did whenever he pushed too hard against the storms of the world. An uncontrollable sob overtook Captain Sewell, tears filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Second Mate Harry Lingenberry looked over at him, concerned. The Captain gathered himself together and let out an exasperated sigh. Wearily, he reconsidered his existence.

  "You alright out there, Captain?" Henderson asked on the phone.

  Sewell said, "You stupid little shit. I have no choice. I'll go along with you on this. But I want you to know something."

  "What s that?" Henderson said, his voice coming up.

  "I've talked to the King Cove cops. They'll be the ones to open the trunk."

  "That's OK by me," Henderson said. There was a pause, as though Henderson was trying to actually think. Sewell's mouth went dry. Henderson continued, "Go over this again, Captain. Someone saw Nakano with the night watchman?"

  "Why don t you get your facts straight. My purser says one of the porters thought he saw Mr. Nakano come up the car deck stairs, but when my purser questioned him, Nakano said he was only sketching the stairwell. He had a drawing to prove it, a good one. So she didn't think much of it."

  "Tell me again about the night watchman," Henderson said.

  "Reliable. Experienced. A good man," Sewell said.

  "And you're ready to go for Nakano," Henderson said.

  "We're suspicious. Even though he's quiet, studious, polite. And I don't think his health is that great. Walks around limping all the time. Doesn't seem strong enough to kill anyone." Captain Sewell made another try. "But I'm still of the opinion I should put him under ship's arrest."