The Assassin's Touch

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “That’s enough,” Hoshina interrupted angrily.

  “Go on,” Hirata said.

  The woman gave Hoshina a vindictive smirk. “He thought Yuki had pushed Moriwaki. He made her say so. He arrested her and took her to jail, even though I told him Yuki was a good girl who’d never hurt a fly. Next day, her head was cut off.”

  Hirata regarded the police commissioner with disgust. “That was good, quick detective work.”

  Nettled, Hoshina hurried to justify himself. “It was standard procedure.” Torture of suspects was legal and often used to obtain confessions. The disadvantage was that it tended to produce as many false confessions as true ones.

  “And today he comes back,” the woman said. “It’s plain to see that he’s found out that Yuki didn’t kill the treasury minister, because he’s poking around again, looking for some other innocent person to blame.”

  “Shut up, old woman!” Hoshina said, goaded to a rage. “I’ll close down your bathhouse, or—”

  Fists clenched, he advanced on her. Hirata’s detectives pushed him away. Hirata said, ’This woman is an important witness, and if you do anything to hurt her, you’ll be in more trouble than you already are.”

  Hoshina subsided, impotent but seething. Hirata took a petty pleasure in making Hoshina pay for insulting him today and sabotaging Sano in the past. He addressed the woman: “I intend to see that the real killer is caught. I need to ask you some questions about Treasury Minister Moriwaki.”

  Smug under his protection, the woman said, “Go right ahead.”

  “Did Moriwaki have any unusual bruises that you saw?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did.”

  Hoshina spoke through gritted teeth: “I ordered you to keep quiet about everything pertaining to this investigation.”

  “I can’t refuse to talk to the shogun’s detective, can I?” The woman feigned helpless innocence. She told Hirata, “He had a bruise right here,” and pointed to a spot near her temple.

  Hirata felt a ripple of excitement. “What did it look like?”

  “It was blue. Oval-shaped. Kind of like a fingerprint.”

  At last Hirata had definite evidence that connected one of the previous murders to Chief Ejima’s. Hoshina looked displeased; obviously, he’d wanted to hoard this important fact for his own use.

  “When did you see the bruise?” Hirata said.

  “Right after Moriwaki died. I washed the blood off him before his retainers took him home.” She added, “Whenever I bathed him, he would suckle on my breasts while we sat in the tub. Some men his age like to do that, you know. I’d spent so much time looking down at his head that I couldn’t help but notice the bruise because it hadn’t been there before.”

  That was more detail than Hirata needed, but it added veracity to her statement. “You said the treasury minister was a regular customer. Had he come here during the two days previous to his death?”

  Hoshina made angry, shushing gestures. The woman ignored him. “As a matter of fact, he was here just the day before.”

  Now Hirata could account for some of the time Moriwaki had spent away from Edo Castle. “Did you see anyone with him that day?”

  “I already asked her that,” Hoshina interrupted. “She doesn’t know anything. She’s inventing lies to please you.”

  The woman put her hands on her hips while her eyes shot angry sparks at Hoshina. “I’m not a liar. And if you think I am, then why were you so excited when I told you who I’d seen with Moriwaki?”

  Hoshina spat out a breath of frustration. Amused, Hirata said, “Tell me what you told the police commissioner.”

  “A samurai came into the bathhouse with Moriwaki. He begged to talk to him. Moriwaki said he was busy, but the samurai followed him into the dressing room. They started arguing. I didn’t notice what they said, but I think the samurai wanted a favor. Moriwaki told him to leave. He did.”

  Hirata sensed that he was on the verge of learning something critical. “Do you know who this samurai was?”

  “Yes. I asked Moriwaki, ’Who was that rude fellow?’ He said it was a Captain Nakai, from the Tokugawa army.” She grinned triumphantly at Hoshina.

  He stalked, cursing and furious, out of the room. Now Hirata understood why he’d wanted to keep the proprietress’s information a secret. Captain Nakai was an excellent suspect, who’d demonstrated his martial arts skills during the faction war. Connecting him with Treasury Minister Moriwaki was a stroke of luck, for he hadn’t appeared on the lists of people who’d had contact with any of the previous victims.

  “Was Captain Nakai alone with the treasury minister?” Hirata asked.

  “Yes. While Moriwaki was undressing.”

  “Did he touch Moriwaki?”

  “I don’t know. The curtain was closed.”

  Hirata was elated nonetheless. When he and the detectives left the bathhouse, he found Police Commissioner Hoshina waiting for him in the street, still fuming.

  “I just wanted to tell you that you won’t get away with making a fool of me in there,” Hoshina said. “And if you think you and Chamberlain Sano are going to solve this case and win more honors at my expense, you’re sadly mistaken. I’m going to ruin you both.”

  He shoved his hand against Hirata’s chest. Hirata lost his balance; his lame leg buckled. He fell into a pile of horse manure. A cry of indignation burst from him at this public humiliation. Hoshina and his attendants laughed.

  “That’s right where you belong,” Hoshina said as the detectives helped Hirata to his feet and wiped the manure off him. “Next time I strike, you’ll stay down.”

  Hoshina and his men mounted their horses and rode away. Detective Inoue said, “Don’t pay any attention to that loser, Hirata-san. He’s not worth worrying about.”

  But Hirata knew that Hoshina was dangerous as well as desperate to regain his status at court. Their skirmish was only the first round in what promised to be bloody political war. Hirata limped toward his horse. “Come on, we’re going back to Edo Castle. I want to tell Chamberlain Sano about Captain Nakai.” And he’d better warn Sano to expect trouble from his old enemy.

  Chapter 12

  The weather turned warm and muggy as Reiko and her escorts trudged through the hinin settlement. Smoke and sweat filmed her skin; ashes stung her eyes and parched her throat; and she felt as though she was absorbing contamination from the outcasts. Her visits to the first few houses nearest Yugao’s produced no new suspects or witnesses.

  “If you want to find the killer, you should look no further than Edo Jail,” the headman said as he and Reiko skirted a garbage heap in an alley.

  Reiko had begun to think Kanai was right. The rising temperature increased the stench; she was more than a little tempted to give up. The insolent Yugao hardly seemed worth this effort. But Reiko said, “I’m not finished here yet.”

  They circled, through lanes where ragged laundry dripped from clotheslines into overflowing gutters, around to the hovel behind Yugao’s. A yard filled with washtubs, broken tools, and other junk separated the two properties. The outcast who lived in the hovel was an old man who sat in his doorway, fashioning sandals out of scrap straw and twine. When Reiko asked him if he’d seen anyone at Yugao’s house besides her family on the night of the murder, he said, “There was the warden.”

  “From Edo Jail?” Reiko said.

  The old shoemaker nodded; his gnarled hands deftly plaited the straw. “He was Taruya’s boss.”

  “He’s a former gangster,” the headman told Reiko. “He was demoted for extorting money from merchants in the vegetable market and beating them up when they didn’t pay.”

  “When did you see him?” Reiko asked, excited because she’d discovered a new suspect, and one with violent tendencies.

  “I didn’t see him,” the shoemaker said, “but I heard his voice. He and Taruya were arguing. It was just after sundown.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “The shouting stopped a little while la
ter. He must have gone.”

  Reiko felt a pang of disappointment because the timing of his visit didn’t coincide with the crime. Yet perhaps the warden had returned later to settle his score.

  “Where can I find the warden?” Reiko asked.

  “Where everybody in this place eventually shows up.” Kanai’s expression indicated that he was losing patience with her, but he said, “Come along; I’ll take you.”

  They resumed traipsing through the settlement. Reiko questioned the inhabitants at hovels and passersby they encountered, to no avail. Her escorts looked bored and glum. A water-seller appeared, carrying buckets suspended from a pole on his shoulders, and Reiko longed for a drink but couldn’t bear to swallow water from this filthy place. She dabbed her perspiring face with her sleeve and squinted up at the sun that shone high and bright through the smoke. Against the sky rose the skeletal wooden structure of a fire-watch tower. On the platform under the bell that hung from its top stood a boy.

  Reiko called to him, “Excuse me, were you on duty the night the Taruya family was murdered?”

  Peering down at her, he nodded.

  “Can you come down for a moment and talk?” Reiko said.

  He shimmied down the ladder, agile as a monkey. He was perhaps twelve years old, with an elfin face and knobby bones. Reiko asked him to describe what, if anything, he’d observed that night.

  “I heard screams,” he said. “I saw Ihei run away from the house.”

  “Who is Ihei?” Reiko asked. Interest revived her energy.

  “He lives by the river,” said the boy. “He used to visit Umeko.”

  “He was a thief in his former existence,” Kanai explained. “Now he’s a street-cleaner.”

  Reiko looked up at the tower, gauged its distance from Yugao’s house, and imagined how the settlement must look at midnight. “How did you recognize him?” she asked the boy. “Wasn’t it dark?”

  “There was lightning. And Ihei walks like this.” He hunched his back and shuffled.

  Reiko didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that she now had two suspects placed at the crime scene besides Yugao. She thanked the boy, who bowed and darted around her guards.

  Kanai shouted, “Wait just a moment!” He ran after the boy and grabbed him by his collar. “Give it back.”

  The boy reluctantly took a leather drawstring pouch from his pocket. It was the kind in which men carried money, medicines, religious items, or other small valuables.

  “Hey, that’s mine,” Lieutenant Asukai said, groping the empty place where the pouch had once dangled from his sash. He snatched it from the boy’s hand.

  “You have to be careful around him, his parents, his brothers, and his sisters,” Kanai said. “Every one of them is a sneak-thief.” He released the boy and swatted his rear end. “Behave yourself, or I’ll have another year added to all your sentences.”

  Soon Reiko and her companions reached their destination—a teahouse located in a large shack, enclosed by a thatched roof and plank walls, on the riverbank. Its front and back doors stood open to let the breeze refresh the men who lounged on the raised floor. The proprietor served liquor out of crude ceramic jugs. The teahouse appeared to be the social center of the outcast world. Down the river, boats housed brothels and teahouses for ordinary citizens; bridges led to neighborhoods on the opposite bank.

  The headman called to one of the customers: “What are you doing here so early, Warden? Did Edo Jail shut down, or are you sneaking a holiday?”

  “What’s it to you if I am?” said the warden. He was short, muscular, in his forties. His head was shaved bald and circled by a dirty white cotton band. He had heavy black eyebrows and whisker stubble, and a complexion rough with pits, swollen pores, old scars. Tattoos covered his arms.

  Ignoring his rudeness, the headman said, “This lady is the daughter of Magistrate Ueda. He’s sent her to investigate the murder of Taruya and his family. She wants to talk to you.”

  The warden turned his unblinking eyes on Reiko. The pinpoints of light reflected in them seemed abnormally bright. “I know who your father is.” He grinned, showing decayed teeth. “Not that I’ve ever met him, but I work for him.”

  Reiko noted the stains on his blue kimono and straw sandals, and the grime under his fingernails. Was it blood from criminals he’d tortured at the prison? A shudder rippled through her. This investigation was showing her the dark side of her father’s job as well as the underbelly of Edo.

  “Did you go to visit Taruya that night?” she asked.

  “So what if I did?”

  “Why did you?”

  “I had business with him.” The warden ogled Reiko and licked his lips.

  “What kind of business?” she said, trying not to flinch.

  “Taruya had started a gambling ring at the jail. He’d been cheating people who work there.” The ire in his voice told Reiko that the warden himself had been one of Taruya’s marks. “I went and ordered him to give back the money he’d stolen. He said he’d won it honestly, and he’d already spent no it. We got into a fight. I beat him up until his wife started hitting me with an iron pot and chased me out.”

  He grimaced in disgust, then smirked. “But now Taruya is dead. He’ll never cheat anybody again. His daughter did the world a favor when she took a knife to him.”

  His daughter wasn’t the only person who’d had reason to kill him, Reiko thought. “Where did you go after you left the house?”

  “I went to see my lady friend.”

  “She’s a nighthawk in the tent village,” the headman said.

  Leeriness shrank the bright pinpoints in the warden’s eyes. “If by some chance Magistrate Ueda is thinking of pinning the murders on me instead of Yugao, tell him that I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have. I was with my lady all night. She’ll swear to it.”

  Yet Reiko knew that a man who’d extorted money from merchants and beat them into paying wouldn’t balk at murder, and he looked capable of intimidating a woman into lying for him.

  “Any more questions?” His grin mocked Reiko; his gaze wandered over her body.

  “Not at the moment,” Reiko said. Unless she could find evidence against him, she had to let him go.

  “Then if you’ll excuse me ...” The warden ambled to the back door, reached under his kimono, and pulled his organ from his loincloth. After giving Reiko a good view of it, he urinated into a slop jar outside the teahouse. “Give Magistrate Ueda my best regards.”

  Offense and embarrassment burned inside Reiko. The headman said, “I apologize for his bad manners.” He glanced down the street. “If you want another chance to save Yugao, here he comes now.”

  A young man approached the teahouse, shoulders hunched, feet scuffling. He wore faded, torn clothes; a wicker hat shaded his face, which was scrunched in a frown that looked permanent. He carried a broom, dustpan, and trash basket.

  “That’s Ihei,” the headman said.

  The street-cleaner looked up as Reiko and her guards advanced on him. His face took on a look of alarm. He turned and scuffled rapidly away.

  “Stop him!” Reiko ordered her guards.

  They raced after the young man. Dropping his tools, he hastened down the street, but his awkward gait hampered his flight. The guards easily caught him and propelled him toward Reiko.

  “Let me go!” he cried, struggling in their grasp. “I didn’t do anything wrong!” His voice was high and weak, his grimy face taut with panic.

  “If you didn’t do anything wrong, then why did you run?” Reiko said.

  His frown deepened with his surprise at seeing a lady of her class in the settlement. He glanced at her guards. “I—I was afraid they would hurt me.”

  “Some samurai thugs beat him up,” Kanai said. “They broke a lot of bones. That’s why he’s deformed.”

  Reiko was appalled by yet another tale of the hinin’s cruel existence. “No one’s going to hurt you. I just want to talk. If you promise not to run, they’ll let you go.”


  His expression said he didn’t trust her, but Ihei nodded. The guards released him but stood ready to restrain him again if necessary. “Talk about what?”

  “About the night that Umeko and her parents were murdered,” Reiko said.

  Panic flashed in Ihei’s eyes. He backed away. The headman said, “Whoa!” and the guards grabbed Ihei, who cried, “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You were seen running away from the house,” Reiko said.

  His features drooped in dismay. “I had nothing to do with it.” Guilty bravado tinged his voice. “I—I swear!”

  “Then what were you doing there?”

  “I went to see Umeko.”

  “Why?” Reiko considered the possibility that Umeko had been the intended victim, despite the clues at the crime scene that indicated her father was killed first. She recalled that Yugao’s sister had been a prostitute. When Ihei hesitated, Reiko said, “Were you one of her customers?”

  “No!” Ihei exclaimed, offended.

  “Yes, you were,” Kanai said. “Don’t lie; you’ll get yourself in trouble.”

  Ihei sighed in resignation. “All right—I was Umeko’s customer. But it was more than the usual thing. I loved her.” His voice trembled; tears trickled lines through the grime on his cheeks. “And now she’s gone!”

  His grief seemed genuine, but sometimes killers did mourn the loss of loved ones they’d murdered. Reiko had watched them sob during their trials in her father’s court. “Why did you go to see her?”

  “That morning I’d asked her to marry me. She—she said no. She laughed at me.” Ihei’s eyes burned with humiliation. “She said she would never lower herself to marry a hunchback outcast. I said I knew she was born higher than me, but I told her that we were both hinin now. Fate had brought us together here. I told her how much I loved her. I said I would make her happy. I earn enough money that she could have moved into my hut and not have had to sell herself. But then she got angry.”