The Assassin's Touch

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Last night, at Sanja Matsuri,” said the other. “We lost him in the crowd.”

  Sano thanked the bodyguards and Lieutenant Oda for their information, gave them permission to take their master’s body home, and told them to let the brothel resume its business. He and Hirata and their men walked down the street toward the gate.

  “That festival turns Asakusa Temple into a wild mob scene,” Hirata said. “It would have been a perfect place for the assassin to stalk Colonel Ibe and give him the touch of death.”

  “With no one the wiser until now,” Sano said.

  He paused at the gate, turned, and looked down Naka-nocho. He saw the bodyguards carrying out the shrouded corpse of Colonel Ibe on a litter. As people gathered to watch, Sano heard the buzz of excited conversation and saw the crowds in the street group into clusters, spreading the news. Courtesans pressed their faces against the bars of their windows and revelers spilled from the teahouses, eager to learn the cause of the commotion.

  “Do you think it was Captain Nakai?” Hirata asked.

  “We need to find out where he was last night,” Sano said. “And we’d better go back to Edo Castle and report this latest murder to Lord Matsudaira.” Trepidation filled him as he imagined how Lord Matsudaira would react.

  Chapter 19

  The teahouse was the fourteenth that Reiko had visited since she’d left the Court of Justice.

  She’d already searched for Yugao’s onetime friend in all the teahouses near the Hundred-Day Theater, but none of the customers, proprietors, or servants at them knew Tama. Extending her search into the outlying neighborhoods, Reiko stepped from her palanquin in front of this teahouse on a street lined with tenements above shops that sold preserved vegetables and fruit. It was almost identical to all the others she’d seen. A curtain hung from the eaves halfway down an open storefront. A maid leaned, downcast and bored, against a pillar at the edge of its raised plank floor. The room behind her was vacant except for the proprietor, a middle-aged man who squatted beside his sake urn, decanters, and cups. She spotted Reiko’s guards, and her face brightened.

  “Hello, there,” she called to Lieutenant Asukai. She was past her youth, but her figure was voluptuous. Her eyes gleamed at the prospect of male company and big tips. “May I serve you and your friends a drink?”

  “Thank you,” Asukai said. “By the way, my mistress has some questions that you will please answer.”

  Curious but wary, the maid beheld Reiko. “Whatever you like.”

  The proprietor poured sake, and while the maid served the men, Reiko said, “I’m looking for a woman named Tama. She works at a teahouse around here. Do you know her?”

  “Oh, yes,” the maid said. “We used to work together, here. Tama’s father used to own this teahouse.” Reiko’s spirits leapt. “Can you tell me where I can find Tama?”

  But the maid shook her head. “Sorry. Haven’t seen her in, oh, two years. She and her family moved out of the neighborhood. I don’t know where they went. Her father sold the teahouse to him.” She waved at the proprietor, who sat with Reiko’s escorts, engaging them in polite chat. “Hey, what ever became of Tama?”

  He shook his head in ignorance. Disappointed, Reiko pressed on. “Did you know a girl named Yugao? She was friends with Tama.”

  “No...” The maid reconsidered. “Oh, yes, there was a girl who used to come around to visit.” But when Reiko asked her about Yugao’s character and family, she couldn’t provide any information. “Say, why all these questions? Has Tama done something wrong?”

  “Not that I know of,” Reiko said, “but I must find her.” Tama seemed Reiko’s only chance at facts that might shed light on the murders. “Where did Tama used to live?”

  The maid gave directions to a house some distance away, then said, “Maybe I can find out what happened to her. I can ask around, if you like.” She jingled the money in a pouch she wore on her sash, hinting for a bribe.

  Reiko paid her a silver coin. “If you find Tama, send word to Lady Reiko at Magistrate Ueda’s Court of Justice, and I’ll pay you twice as much.”

  As she climbed into her palanquin, she told the bearers to take her to the house where Tama had once lived. The time until her father’s deadline was slipping away, and Reiko had an urgent sense that she must discover the truth about the crimes before Yugao was executed, or there would be consequences dire beyond her imagination.

  A corridor as dim and dank as an underground tunnel extended past the prison cells in Edo Jail. Down this trudged a jailer who carried a stack of wooden trays that held food. He paused to shove a tray through the slot under each locked door. Uproarious cries from the captives greeted the food’s arrival.

  Inside one cell, eight women pounced on their meal like starving cats. They shoved and clawed at one another and shrieked as they fought over rice, pickled vegetables, and dried fish. Yugao managed to grab a rice ball. She fled to a corner of the cell, which was only ten paces square and lit by a tiny barred window near the ceiling, to eat. The other women knelt, gobbling their food. Their hair hung shaggy around their faces; they licked their fingers and wiped them on their dirty hemp robes. Yugao gnawed the tough, gluey rice. How disgusting that a few days in jail had reduced her, as well as her fellow inmates, to wild animals! But she reminded herself that she’d chosen this fate. It was part of her plan. She must, and would, endure.

  Finishing her food, Yugao reached for the water jar. But Sachiko, a thief awaiting trial, got to it first. She was a tough, homely girl in her teens who’d grown up on Edo’s streets and lived with a band of gangsters before her arrest. She upended the jar and drank, then fixed a belligerent stare on Yugao.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “Are you thirsty?”

  “Give me that.” Yugao snatched at the jar.

  Sachiko held it out of her reach and grinned. “If you ask me nicely, I might give you some.”

  The other women watched eagerly to see what would happen. They all played up to Sachiko because they were afraid of her. Yugao scorned them for their weakness, and she hated Sachiko. She wouldn’t bow to the bully.

  “Don’t annoy me,” Yugao said in a quiet, menacing tone.

  “I’m a murderess. I killed three people. Give me the water, or I’ll kill you, too.”

  Sudden trepidation erased Sachiko’s grin. Yugao knew that her crime, the most serious of all, gave her a special status at the jail. The other women thought she was mad and therefore dangerous. Ever since Yugao had been imprisoned with them, Sachiko had been spoiling for a confrontation, and if she wanted to keep her place as the leader of this cell, she couldn’t let Yugao intimidate her.

  “You must think you’re better than the rest of us,” Sachiko said. “I heard the guards say the magistrate delayed the verdict at your trial and they took you out yesterday because he wanted to see you again. What for? Did he make you suck him?”

  She pantomimed fellatio and laughed; the other women dutifully laughed with her. “You must not have done it good enough, or he’d have let you off instead of sending you back.”

  Anger burned in Yugao, but she knew that Sachiko was jealous of her, with good reason. She, unlike these other sorry creatures, had a chance to avoid punishment. She need only make up a story that someone else had killed her family. That foolish Lady Reiko would believe her and tell the magistrate to set her free. But Yugao wasn’t tempted to take back her confession and bargain for her life. Whether or not they thought she was guilty, she wanted credit for the crime. It was her gift to the person who mattered most in the world to her. How she hated them for trying to trick her into saying too much and betraying him! She hated them for delaying her death sentence and prolonging her stay in this hell. Her resentment toward them enflamed her anger at Sachiko.

  “Shut your ugly mouth,” Yugao snapped, “or I’ll shut it for you. Now give me that water.” “If you want it that bad, you can have it,” Sachiko said disdainfully.

  She hurled the water at Yugao. It splashed
her face, drenched her robe. Murderous rage filled Yugao. She lunged at Sachiko, and the impact knocked them both to the floor. She pummeled her fists against Sachiko’s face, clawed at her eyes. Sachiko beat Yugao’s head, tore her hair. The other women cried, “Get her, Sachiko! Show her who’s boss!”

  Sachiko was bigger than Yugao, and she knew how to fight. Soon she was on top of Yugao. Pinned down, Yugao thrashed, striking out at Sachiko, whose hands grasped her throat. Yugao coughed and choked as Sachiko squeezed the breath from her. But she felt an overriding determination not to die here, in a stupid prison brawl, but to stay alive and receive her rightful death sentence at the execution ground. Her flailing hands found the heavy ceramic water jar. She seized it and bashed Sachiko across the face. Sachiko howled, let go of Yugao, and fell backward. Blood poured from her nose. Yugao flung herself on Sachiko and began beating her head with the jar.

  “Stop!” Sachiko cried, sobbing in pain and terror. “That’s enough. You win!”

  But a savage lust for violence possessed Yugao. She mercilessly beat Sachiko.

  “Get her off me!” Sachiko screamed.

  Instead, the other women pounded on the door, calling, “Help! Help!”

  Caught up in her madness, Yugao barely heard the iron bars on the outside of the door drop and a jailer say, “What’s going on?” Suddenly the room was full of men. They dragged her off Sachiko, while she shouted and struggled. Sachiko lay moaning; the other women huddled in a corner. Guards dragged Yugao out of the cell.

  “We’ll teach you to behave yourself,” said the jailer.

  He and the guards pushed her onto her hands and knees in the passage. She fought them, but they held her. They pulled up her robe, and one man knelt behind her. She jerked as his erect organ probed between her buttocks. He plunged into her. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth against the agony. One after another, the men took their turns. Tears streamed down her face. She told herself that this was nothing compared to the disgrace and suffering that he had experienced. She must endure it for his sake, until the time came to die for him.

  The distant clanging of a bell impinged on her awareness. She heard one of the guards say, “That’s the fire signal.” The man violating her withdrew himself; the others let go of her. Yugao collapsed onto the floor, gasping. The guards rushed down the corridor. They unbarred and flung open doors, yelling, “Fire! Everybody out!”

  Amid cries of fear and excitement, prisoners burst from their cells. They ran down the corridor past Yugao. She smelled smoke from a blaze somewhere nearby. A guard kicked her ribs as he followed the prisoners out of the jail.

  “Get up and go unless you want to burn to death,” he said.

  The law ordered prisoners to be released from the jail when fire threatened it. This was one example of mercy in an otherwise cruel legal system. Yugao realized with amazement that everything had just changed. Once she’d thought that her death by execution was all she could offer him and they would meet again only in the paradise that lay on the other side of death. Now fate had intervened.

  She scrambled joyfully to her feet. Hobbling with pain and ignoring the blood trickling down her legs, she emerged with the other prisoners into a courtyard where sunlight momentarily blinded her. Clouds of acrid smoke burgeoned above the jail’s roofs in a neighborhood right outside its walls, but the air was fresher than in her cell. Yugao breathed gratefully. Prisoners swarmed from other wings of the jail. The guards hurried them out the main gate.

  “Don’t forget to come back as soon as the fire’s out,” the guards called to the departing horde.

  As Yugao cleared the bridge over the canal, the city spread before her, bright and beautiful and inviting. What a miraculous stroke of good fortune! She could live, for him and with him. Dizzied with freedom and hope, she raced ahead of the other prisoners and vanished into the alleys of the slums outside Edo Jail without a backward look.

  Chapter 20

  I told you that a killer was stalking the newly appointed officials,” Lord Matsudaira said when Sano reported the news of Colonel Ibe’s death. He leveled a triumphant glance at the shogun and Yoritomo seated on the dais above him, and the two elders kneeling nearby. “Do you believe me now?”

  “Yes. You were right,” Ihara conceded. Displeasure wrinkled his simian features.

  Kato nodded with reluctance that his mask-like face couldn’t hide. Sano, seated beside Hirata on the floor near the shogun’s right, observed the dismayed glance that passed between the two elders: They were worried because the latest murder had given more credence to Lord Matsudaira’s theory that there was a plot against his regime.

  Lord Matsudaira glared at Sano. “You were supposed to catch the killer.” His eyes flicked toward the elders, hinting that Sano should have implicated them in the plot. “But instead you tell me that the killer has struck again. How dare you let me down after I put my faith in you?”

  “A thousand pardons, my lord.” Sano was mortified, but he accepted the censure in the stoic manner that a samurai should. ’There’s no excuse.”

  The elders looked gratified by his disgrace and glad that he, not they, had become the target of Lord Matsudaira’s wrath. Hirata and Yoritomo looked worried.

  “I, ahh, beg to differ,” the shogun said with the same contrariness he’d previously shown toward Lord Matsudaira. “Sano-saw certainly does have an, ahh, legitimate excuse. It was only, ahh, the day before yesterday that he began investigating the murders. You shouldn’t be so impatient for results, Cousin.”

  Sano thought how ironic it was that the shogun, who’d always expected instant results from him, should now defend him. The shogun was clearly put out by Lord Matsudaira’s control over him and seizing at opportunities to resist it. Maybe Yoritomo had been prodding him to stick up for Sano.

  “His Excellency is right,” Lord Matsudaira said, hiding annoyance and feigning contrition. “Forgive me, Chamberlain Sano. This latest murder isn’t your fault.” His dark glance at the elders proclaimed whose fault he thought it was. “Tell us what progress you’ve made toward catching the killer.”

  “I’ve identified a suspect,” Sano said.

  Lord Matsudaira leaned forward. “Who is it?”

  Sano watched Kato and Ihara brace themselves for an accusation against their clique. “Captain Nakai.”

  Surprise showed on the faces of Lord Matsudaira, the elders, and Yoritomo. The shogun frowned as if trying to recall who Nakai was.

  “But Captain Nakai...” Ihara began, then stopped.

  Fought on Lord Matsudaira’s side during the faction war. How could he be the person who is trying to undermine the new regime? The unvoiced words echoed in the room.

  “Why do you suspect Captain Nakai?” said Lord Matsudaira. Sano explained that Nakai had had contact with Chief Ejima and Treasury Minister Moriwaki during the critical period before their deaths. “And he’s displeased that he hasn’t been honored for his recent performance.”

  Lord Matsudaira narrowed his eyes and stroked his chin as he caught Sano’s meaning. The elders couldn’t quite hide their relief that one of his own men had been incriminated instead of them. “Let’s hear what Captain Nakai has to say for himself,” Lord Matsudaira said. “Where is he?”

  Sano would rather question Nakai privately, but his position was weak enough already. “He should be on duty in the castle guard command post.”

  “Fetch him,” Lord Matsudaira told an attendant.

  Soon Captain Nakai strode into the audience chamber. As he knelt and bowed, he shone with pride. “Your Excellency—Lord Matsudaira—this is an honor.” Sano could tell that he thought he was about to receive, at long last, the reward he craved. Then he saw Lord Matsudaira’s dark expression and noticed Sano. Apprehension crept into his eyes. “May I ask what this is about?”

  “Colonel Ibe has been murdered. Did you do it?” Lord Matsudaira said, eschewing formalities and cutting straight to the quick.

  “What?” Captain Nakai gaped in sho
ck that appeared genuine to Sano.

  “Did you also murder Metsuke Chief Ejima, Treasury Minister Moriwaki, Court Supervisor Ono, and Highway Commissioner Sasamura?” demanded Lord Matsudaira.

  “No!” Captain Nakai looked at Sano, and his shock turned to offense. “I told you I was innocent. I swear I am.” Horrified comprehension stunned him. “You’ve told His Excellency and Lord Matsudaira that I’m guilty.”

  “Well?” Lord Matsudaira’s stare challenged Sano. “Is he or isn’t he the culprit?”

  “There’s one way to settle the question. I must ask you to wait a moment.” Sano whispered to Detective Marume, “If Detective Tachibana is doing his job, he should be someplace nearby. Go find him and bring him in.”

  Marume went. A short interval passed, during which Lord Matsudaira and the elders waited in grim silence. Yoritomo murmured to the shogun, explaining what had happened. Captain Nakai looked from one person to another, as if for rescue. He opened his mouth to speak, then bit his lip. His muscles twitched and his hands fidgeted. All the physical strength that made him a hero on the battlefield couldn’t help him now. His fear of ruination and death permeated the air like a stench. Sano felt the tension in the room building toward a point beyond tolerance. Not a moment too soon, Detectives Marume and Tachibana arrived.

  “It’s most likely that the killer touched Colonel Ibe yesterday, at the festival at Asakusa Temple,” Sano said, then addressed Captain Nakai: “Where were you last night?”

  Something like relief, combined with defiance, crossed Nakai’s expression. “I was at home.”

  Sano turned to Detective Tachibana. “Is that true?”

  “Yes, Honorable Chamberlain,” Tachibana said, nervous in the presence of their superiors, but confident of his answer. “He was there all night. He never stirred from his house.”

  “I’ve had Captain Nakai under surveillance,” Sano explained to the assembly. “My detective’s statement confirms his alibi.”