December 6

by Martin Cruz Smith

  “Tetsu!”

  Tetsu was not in his office. Harry found cases of cigarettes, packs of cards, dumbbells, tattoo books, but no sign of blood or disarray. Harry returned to the bathroom door. Had Ishigami surprised Michiko in the bathroom? Had she put the gun down out of reach? Had she meekly sunk to her knees? Did she see the head box? Of course, Ishigami was the man who had peered deeply into her and found the geisha. In some ways, he might know her more intimately than Harry.

  Then he set her up. He moved her with her toes dragging to a table in the middle of the ballroom floor and sat her in a chair. There he stretched her arms across the table as if setting the head box down or respectfully offering a gift. Then he locked the front door, which made no sense unless he wanted only Harry to find her. Harry had told her to wait at the ballroom. He was the one man sure to try every door.

  Harry pictured it. Wood wasn’t paper, and Ishigami couldn’t punch through the restroom wall, but he could slip through the door, and in such poor light Michiko might not immediately see who he was. It still wasn’t right. Nobody who ever made love with Michiko came away unscathed. There’d be a shot or some of Ishigami’s blood. Overhead, the mirror ball hung like a ghostly daytime moon. Harry remembered her in her sequined jacket. There’d be something.

  He approached the table again, circling as he neared, trying to chase the shakes out of his knees. Bullets were different. Once they left a gun they became, to some degree, middlemen between the killer and the victim. There was distance, if only an inch, and at long distance a sniper’s objectivity. A sword, however, never left the hand and was never less than personal. Harry remembered being the butt of bayonet practice at school and how passionately the drill sergeant sprayed spit as he urged students to plunge their bamboo poles through Harry’s wicker armor. How smooth, in comparison, Ishigami was. An artist. Americans wondered how samurai could fight in loose-sleeved kimonos, not understanding how the robes accentuated the sweep and thrust of the sword, and how the final plunge of steel through silk wrapped agony in beauty. Harry thought all this as if each idea were armor protecting him from the simple reality of a headless girl sitting like a sack of potatoes in a chair.

  Death changed people, but that much?

  Harry tentatively raised the lid of the box. The wood was white wisteria sanded to a sheen that emphasized the glossy black of the hair inside, cut short. He dug his fingers in and lifted. Since the head faced away he first saw damp, matted hair and two wounds down to the skull that must have preceded the final slice. A broad neck. Small ears with thick lobes. He turned the head around to face Haruko. Her eyes were slitted, mouth parted, forehead creased by a frown. It was an expression she might wear if a friend had suddenly accosted her with a a trick question, something she didn’t have the answer for and was still figuring out.

  Haruko in her own dress. That explained a lot. After telling Harry on the phone that Michiko had taken the dress, Haruko must have gone after it and found Michiko, and the two must have come to the ballroom together. Why Michiko didn’t wait and Haruko did, Harry couldn’t understand, although it explained why Haruko was taken so completely by surprise. In the murk of the restroom, with no gun and no warning, how could she defend herself from Ishigami?

  A reverberation pounded at the back door and died. Harry fought the impulse to run. Where to? The door opened for a man dressed in shadow who moved through the scenery racks, emerged onto the ballroom parquet and peeled his goggles back. It was Gen in a leather coat and helmet. He slowed as he approached the table.

  “Harry, what did you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing. Who is that?” Gen nodded toward the head in Harry’s hands.

  “Haruko.”

  “The waitress from your club?”

  “Yes.”

  Harry had a ringing in his ears that he couldn’t place as either alarm or relief. He put the head into the box as gently as he could and replaced the lid.

  “Any witnesses, Harry?”

  “I don’t know, I wasn’t here.”

  “Okay.” Gen followed the trail to the restroom and edged in, careful to stay out of the blood. He emerged breathing hard and shaking his head. “You’ve done it now, Harry.”

  “It was Ishigami. If you’d gotten him out of town when I asked, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Gen made a show of looking right and left. “I don’t see Ishigami. What I see is you and Haruko.”

  “If I did it, where’s the sword?”

  “You tell me. Did you kill her?”

  “No, I swear.”

  “On what, Harry? What would you swear on?”

  “I didn’t do it. Simple as that.”

  “Nothing is simple with you.” Gen looked at Harry coldly. “Did anyone see you come in? Tetsu? Anyone?”

  “No.”

  Gen started twice to say something and finally softened. “Come on.”

  THE SUN HAD SET while Harry was in the ballroom. He and Gen rode the motorbike the long way around to AsakusaPark. They joined a circle under a streetlamp watching a storyteller with a box of illustrated slides depicting the feats of the Golden Bat, the same show they had watched as kids. Around them the crowd was in constant motion, from food stalls to fortune-tellers, sandal and kimono shops, stands selling toys, masks, souvenirs. Some people flowed out to the movie-theater row while others restlessly wandered back to the precincts of the temple like a sea that didn’t know which way to go. Harry didn’t know where else to look for Michiko. Would she go to the apartment, the one place where Ishigami was sure to look? Every time Harry thought about her, the ringing in his ears returned like a deafening alarm. He kept moving, hoping to find Tetsu or someone else who might have seen her. In the slide box, the Golden Bat killed an ogre. Harry wiped his hands with his handkerchief. Gen had tucked his motorcycle cap under his arm, but he still drew admiring glances as if he’d parachuted in.

  Gen said, “I should be handing you to the police. What happened at the ballroom?”

  “I don’t know, but it was Ishigami.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Harry pushed through the crowd. “I asked you to get him out of town, and you didn’t.”

  “You also said he was after you. Why would he kill Haruko? Did they even know each other?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “It was a sudden homicidal impulse?”

  “Maybe. And he carried a head box, like a Boy Scout. ‘Be Prepared.’”

  “Harry, if Ishigami and Haruko didn’t have a relationship, then someone else was involved.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re holding back. I promise, no matter how bad it is, I’ll help, but you have to help me, too. Did you have a fight with Michiko over Haruko?”

  “No.”

  “The fact is, Harry, you have a reputation for women, and Michiko has a reputation for a temper.”

  “Leave Michiko out of this.”

  “Okay, okay. Did anyone see you at the ballroom?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s good. Where were you?”

  “At the golf course.”

  “With…?”

  “Actually, I was talking to the ambassador.”

  “The American ambassador? That’s great.”

  “Not really. He didn’t hear me.”

  Gen laughed. “Really? Did he see you?”

  “No.”

  Gen wore a smile that suggested he was enjoying a stick of Wrigley’s. “That’s one hell of an alibi. That’s rich. Anyone else?”

  “Yoshitaki.”

  “Of Yoshitaki Lines? Forget it, he has lawyers. He never talks to the police about anything. What did you want to talk to the ambassador about?”

  “I ran into my old friend Hooper. He said the ambassador wanted to talk to me. It turned out he didn’t.”

  “I wonder what it was about.”

  “We’ll never know.”

  The pillowy glow o
f paper lanterns led to the temple steps. Inside but visible, a row of monks with shaved heads chanted to the beat of a hanging drum. Sweating from steady effort, they repeated sutras over and over like oars pulling through deep water, while a younger monk shook brass cylinders containing fortunes to be sold. Fortunes were sold everywhere, in the forms of paper lilies that opened in water, paper letters with invisible ink, dream papers to take to bed. And prayers, too, with the purchase of candles, joss sticks or the toss of a coin through a temple grate. From the top step, Harry watched smoke billow from the joss sticks set in a great bronze urn. More than ever, people needed a prayer or hope for a son or brother just called to duty. They paid no mind to Gen or Harry.

  Gen said, “How are you going to find Michiko in this mob?”

  “I’m not going to sit still while Ishigami hunts her down.”

  “Why would he? You said he was after you.”

  “He’s gotten ambitious.”

  “So you have seen him. What happened?”

  Harry had never told Gen about the Chinese prisoners in Nanking, and he did not intend to get into the subject of DeGeorge. Haruko was bad enough.

  “Ishigami came to my place last night and saw Michiko with me.”

  “He’s after you but didn’t touch you?”

  “Remember Sergeant Shozo and Corporal Go? They came by to ask some questions and scared Ishigami off.”

  “Last night? What time?”

  “Three in the morning.”

  “For questions?”

  “Oil-tank questions, Hawaii questions.” Harry caught the shift to impassivity on Gen’s face. The American breeziness always could be dropped like a mask. “They’re talking to someone in Naval Operations. Someone on your end is leaking like a sieve.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Good. Nothing about the Magic Show? Nothing about the C in C?”

  “No.”

  “Terrific. Look, Harry, the navy will protect you, but you’ve got to be honest. First, you’re lying about China. Colonel Ishigami isn’t going to chase you around Tokyo over a couple of cars you appropriated years ago in Nanking. Something else happened there. Second, you’re lying about last night. The colonel has a sense of honor. He wouldn’t harm a woman unless she had betrayed him in a personal way. How could Michiko or Haruko do that if they didn’t know him? Why would he hurt either one? Sometimes I think you lie like other people whistle. Do you know why I came by the ballroom? I was looking for you. Sergeant Shozo did you the favor of calling me to say you were one inch away from a prison cell. I vouched for you and went all over town to warn you, and what do I see when I find you?”

  “It wasn’t pretty.”

  “You used to be a lot slicker. I hate to say it, but you’ve lost your touch.”

  “Yeah, I agree.”

  Harry could see half of the temple and the park, the world where he and Gen had once run wild. And Taro, Jiro, Tetsu, even Hajime. The stalls and souvenir stands were designed for boys with deft hands and quick feet. Escape routes had led around the pond, behind the Buddhas, in back of the shrine and out to the movie crowds on the Rokku.

  “Once a con man, always a con man,” Gen said.

  “I guess so.”

  “So I’ll just ask you to be honest about one thing. One thing, and we’ll let the rest slide.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Did you fix the Long Beach books? The changes in the oil ledger, did Long Beach make them or did you?”

  “Me? I only looked at those books because the navy asked me to.”

  “Maybe you did more than that. Maybe you altered the numbers for Long Beach Oil, Manzanita and Petromar. Did you, Harry?”

  “I’m looking over there.” Harry started down the steps toward the torii gate at the other end of the temple grounds. “I’m searching for a killer and you’re talking about oil?”

  “Because oil is more important. Tell me about the oil tanks in Hawaii. Are they real or not?”

  “I don’t know. I told you about the loudmouth in Shanghai—”

  “I know the story. The bar, the whores, the drunk who boasted about the tanks. I know the story back and forth. So I’m going to ask you if you made it up. It will be between the two of us, just tell me the truth.”

  “It’s like I told you. Do secret tanks actually exist? I doubt it.”

  “You know that once the possibility is planted, doubts don’t matter.”

  “I only passed on what I heard. What you make of it is up to you.”

  “What we make of it can be very big, Harry.”

  Harry understood Gen’s predicament. He was the poor Asakusa boy made good, the C in C’s protégé, the hero of the Magic Show. He had brought the rumor of the Hawaiian tanks to the attention of Naval Operations. If there were a strike on Pearl, Operations would want to know exactly what to hit. Gen’s career was on the line. All the same, Harry said, “That’s up to you. I’m looking for Michiko.”

  Gen stayed at his shoulder. “Did you make up everything? Are the tanks a con?”

  “I have no idea. What does it matter? What’s so urgent about Hawaii?”

  Gen said nothing, but the two men came to a stop. This was the point in a game where you turned up the cards, Harry thought. He said, “Is it too late to tell your friends in Naval Operations to turn the ships around?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s happening, isn’t it? I saw Tojo taking an innocent ride in the park today, and I knew then it was a matter of hours. You know why I’ve done so well at cards over the years? The Japanese are lousy bluffers. They have too much honor, too much face. I don’t have either, so I’ve always had the odds on my side. You understand odds?”

  Gen looked like a fighter rattled by a combination. “I’ve heard this before.”

  “But you haven’t understood. Odds are the long run. In the short run, you may sink the American fleet, burn all the oil, send Hawaii under the sea. But you won’t win, because the other side will just produce more fleets, more oil and more islands if it needs to.” Harry started down the steps again. “I can’t believe someone as smart as Yamamoto went along with this.”

  “The C in C does as he is ordered.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You may win the battle, but in the long run, you can’t win the war. The odds are too high.”

  “That’s what you want.”

  “No, that’s not at all what I want.”

  “Japan defeated is what you want.”

  “No.” Harry stayed one step ahead.

  “You have always been against a greater Japan.”

  “I’ll show you what I’m against. I’ll demonstrate.” At the bottom of the steps, Harry bought out a vendor’s stack of dream papers, the cheap prints of seven clownish gods meant to be placed under one’s pillow on New Year’s to inspire good luck. Harry carried them to the smoking urn, crumpled the papers and tossed them in among the joss sticks. People stepped back, horrified. Harry went on balling up the sheets and throwing them in until the urn was full. “These are paper houses, this is what Japanese people live in. Have you ever seen the effect of incendiary bullets on paper houses? This is what it looks like.”

  Harry’s lighter was good for one more flame. He touched it to a paper, which opened as it burned and touched off all the surrounding papers. They bloomed until the entire urn filled with a floating plasma of orange flames and the blue smoke of joss sticks. For a few seconds, the paper burned brilliantly and cast a light that Harry saw reflected in the eyes of the crowd; then it turned black and twisted on the sand amid the bare glowing wires of the sticks.

  Harry said, “That’s what I’m against. A Tokyo like that.”

  The space around him grew. Not all the people were strangers; some vendors had known Harry for years. No matter, all were shamed and offended. Everyone stared at the gaijin and made room only because courtesy prevented them from beating him.

 
; Gen said, “Harry, I know about the plane tomorrow. If you want to be on it, tell me about the tanks. If you want to get out, tell me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Harry turned and made his way through the crowd. The pariah’s privilege, he thought, was that people let you pass.

  THE HAPPY PARIS was only a few blocks away. The club felt cocked like a mousetrap. Harry expected Ishigami to step behind him at any moment. He took a deep breath before turning on the lights.

  Michiko wasn’t in the club or upstairs in the apartment. There was no note or indication of where she had gone or how she expected to connect with him. Maybe she didn’t intend to at all, Harry thought. Why stand next to a target on a firing range? If she took a powder, good for her. If she was smart, she’d go the far end of the island, and if he was smart, he’d be on the plane, so everything evened out. Harry realized that from the moment he stepped into the ballroom, he hadn’t even thought about the plane until Gen mentioned it. He hadn’t thought about Alice at all.

  He dug out a potato stored under the galley floorboards, cut it in two and left a cross-section wrapped in a towel to dry while he typed on the stationery that Goro had delivered. A Japanese typewriter was a special misery, a scroll that rotated over a tray of hundreds of characters that had to be picked up and linked one by one, but over the years Harry had become adept at the creation of documents. While he wrote an official approval of Iris’s politics from the War Ministry —that clean bill of health under the ministry letterhead that would allow her to accompany Willie on the Orinoco— he played some Ellington, getting up to punch in the numbers for “ Mood Indigo. ”

  What kept coming to mind were Haruko’s head and vacant eyes. Most awful, however, was his relief when he saw she wasn’t Michiko. Harry hadn’t thought she was, not once he’d glimpsed her wrists, but he hadn’t dared hope. To hope for anything that much was unlike Harry. You ain’t been blue, no, no, no / You ain’t been blue / Till you’ve had that mood indigo. Haruko had blue beat. Michiko was smart to lay low. Anyone who could be both the Record Girl and a geisha had a gift for survival.

  A PLAIN LETTER wasn’t enough. Just as important was a chop, an officer’s stamp. Harry applied the stamp impression Goro had given him to the round heel of the potato, and the extra-fine paper almost melted, leaving a clear impression in red. With his smallest, sharpest knife, Harry cut away the surface in between, just as Kato had taught him to carve a woodblock. He wet a red inkstone and made a practice impression. Trimmed the excess and stamped the letter. In China he’d done fifty illegal documents a day. There were artists and there were artists.