Kamakura Inn

by Marshall Browne

  Watanabe. He stopped in the middle of dressing. Whatever it was the superintendent had in his sights, Hideo Aoki was expendable. With a jolt, Aoki knew that.

  Before, he’d felt something coming. Leaving the room, he smelled a smell he couldn’t identify, and there was a foul taste in his mouth. He grimaced, uneasy. He heard an echo of music, a calming melody. From a samisen! Tokie had played the instrument. Was she trying to talk to him in that way, too?

  It seemed all his senses were hyper, including the sixth.

  ~ * ~

  In the anteroom, Saito was surrounded by guttering candles; the room had become a grotto of slippery light and shadow, a feast of mysteriousness. The Go-player appeared as immersed in it as Aoki had been in the bath. Locked in battle, the stones glinted. “Ah, you reappear, bathed and fresh for the evening. For the anniversary night! And they are here!”

  Aoki stared at Saito. So! He knew about it, but that figured.

  “How does a detective’s mind view it?”

  Aoki gave a shrug. The bank’s predicament was overshadowing everything. How could it be otherwise for these guys? Financial life and death.

  Aoki went in to eat his dinner. He wore a clean padded kimono, which had been laid out in his room by invisible hands from the ryokan’s underworld, maybe Mori’s. He would be especially watchful tonight. The sensation he’d had in the corridor outside his room had shaken him up. He did feel alert, and fresher.

  Ito and Yamazaki bowed to him as they went to their table. Ito looked grim but more in charge of himself, and Yamazaki had the same cool demeanor. Side by side the tall MOF official and the stubby bank chairman were an incongruous pair, yet their minds must be pretty well in tune. Yamazaki was just as exposed to the banking drama as Ito. An MOF official absent on a junket with a bank’s delinquent chairman when it crashes! Any ordinary official would be sweating blood.

  The unseen chef and kitchen staff had been hard at work. Aoki stared across the room. More out-of-sight inhabitants of the ryokan. The dishes came and went for the anniversary banquet. It must be that. Aoki drank three small flasks of sake, and the warm scented alcohol lulled his brain. In the far corner, they conversed as they ate and drank, the same guarded talk. They didn’t look in his direction, but Ito, at least, had revealed that he was agitated about Aoki’s presence, and Yamazaki had talked to him in the bath.

  Aoki’s fingers stroked his mole. He’d drunk more than he’d intended.

  At nine, he went out to the anteroom to play chess with Saito. He was annoyed with himself for agreeing to it. How could he concentrate on chess? They played beside the Go board. Aoki received a rook’s handicap and lost the first game in fifteen minutes; the next lasted only ten. They stared at the board, at the last massacre.

  Saito jerked his bead toward the dining room. “Why doesn’t the food choke them, Mr. Aoki? Two of the chief players in our catastrophic financial system, as blameworthy as hell. In medieval days our country was covered by entangled forests. These days the myriad banking bad debts are those forests—even more dangerous. “

  Aoki’s head was a little fuzzy, but he caught the flicker of Saito’s smile. The man was amused by it all, was mocking the players—the system. Did he really give a fuck about the critiques he was laying out, or was it all a game, like his Go?

  Saito said, “In your own niche, you’ve looked up the system’s backside, and it’s shit on you.”

  Aoki took out a toothpick and went to work on his teeth. This guy was an outrageous mixture of rough edges and old Japanese culture. His father had had the last, but otherwise his character was as remote from this fellow’s as Hokkaido was from Kyushu.

  The Go-player sat motionless. “What do you think? Are all the facts being laid on the table? Are they emptying their minds of Madam Ito’s case—bits and pieces the police never knew, the papers never dug up? But will it give them an answer?”

  Aoki sucked at his teeth. “How can we know what they’re talking about?” he said harshly. Abruptly, the man’s unrelenting ego was angering him. “They’ll be talking survival.” His face felt flushed from the alcohol.

  “That’s for the daylight hours. Today they’ve exhausted themselves planning a counterattack for when they can get back. Each hour, Ito’s been annoying Madam Hatano about the phone, but fate has cut it off, and fate is controlling its reconnection.”

  To hell with this, Aoki thought. He tossed the toothpick into an ashtray. “How could Madam Ito be concealed here for so long? Somebody would know, and talk.”

  Saito gave the room a sweeping look. “The public areas of the ryokan are like the tip of the iceberg. Beyond them lies a labyrinth, a headache for any searcher. The minds of the builders of these places were complicated! And old servants are loyal.”

  “They would’ve brought in dogs.”

  “Places like this have always known about dogs. “

  The cavorting shadows from the firelight seemed to breathe danger to Aoki. He said, “How d’you know so much about this damned case?” It was the sake talking.

  “I told you before, I’m a collector.”

  Aoki was squinting at the dark face. “Are you an economist?”

  Saito laughed quietly. “Merely a businessman—”

  A wailing sound had begun in the dining room. At first Aoki barely heard it, then: “Oh-oh-oh-ah-eeee.” Higher and higher it went. The hair on the nape of Aoki’s neck crackled. An imitation of a woman coming to her orgasm!

  It was Yamazaki’s voice!

  The sound cut off. In the dining room Yamazaki was laughing now—unmistakably him.

  Aoki was shocked. He looked at Saito. The man from Osaka’s head was tilted to one side, his face like stone. Without a word Aoki got up and left the room. The sake had cleared from his head. In the corridor to the hall, he thought, the anniversary night. But what dominated his mind was that sound coming from deep in Yamazaki’s throat in the thick voice.

  His brow creased in concentration, he pulled up and stepped aside into an alcove. Neither man had cared for the woman; each had disdained and dishonored her. Perhaps each was here out of morbid curiosity or to probe for an advantage against the other. Perhaps, years ago, Yamazaki had mocked her with that cry. Aoki rubbed his cheekbone. He stepped out of the alcove and continued on to the hall.

  A raucous belch came from behind him. He whirled around as Ito caught up to him. The bank chairman’s face had changed: It was flame-red and contorted, as though flesh and bone were about to explode. He rushed past the stock-still Aoki, almost bumping him, as if the detective were invisible, and lurched into the hall. He pulled up, rocked on his heels, and rapped hard on the counter. Shoba was on his feet, his face alert. Kazu Hatano came out of the office. Aoki drew in his breath. She was moving like a sleepwalker, and there was a look on her face far beyond the one he’d observed when she’d faced Ito before—ceramic-hard and nerveless. From the corridor, he watched, spellbound.

  “When’ll the road be clear?” the banker demanded in a slurred voice.

  I can t say.

  “The phone?“ He swayed against the counter.

  “Is not yet in order.”

  “The instant you’re reconnected ...” His plump hands thudded again on the counter. He gave a peremptory bow, impatiently beckoned the bodyguard to follow, and weaved toward the staircase.

  Aoki gazed after the pair. Had the cuckold stepped out of the shadows? Had that gross simulation unlocked some latent core of feeling for his missing wife? He turned to find the proprietor standing there like a ghost. She’d heard that terrible sound. The ritual dishonoring of her mother had gone through the rambling rooms and corridors like a breath of evil.

  Aoki needed to speak to this woman who stood before him; instead, he stared at the shape of her head, her neck, the curve of her cheek, seeing her sister as she’d kneeled in the doorway of the Camellia Room. He blinked hard, sending the picture flying. Then he crossed to the counter and said quietly, “Could I speak with you?”


  The slender woman’s eyes moved slowly to his as if suddenly registering his presence. “Of course. Please come into the office.”

  Aoki followed her. A copper kettle purred on a brazier. Account ledgers were neatly stacked on a wooden chest. She offered him a seat beside an old-fashioned desk. A single sheet of paper lay on it, and Aoki glanced at it: a menu. He said, “I wish to introduce myself more formally. I’m a senior detective with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, at present on leave. “

  She gave a brief nod. His occupation wasn’t news, but from his first minute here he’d known that. He hesitated. Was it his curiosity or his ingrained police mentality that was making him take a step like this? Though fate might be the guiding hand at work, as Saito claimed.

  “As a junior detective, I was on your mother’s case.” This time her eyes reacted. Yeah, Aoki thought, when she heard that prolonged cry her blood must have run cold. His had; even Saito had seemed momentarily paralyzed. Yet she’d emerged from her trancelike state and was watching him now, her eyes clear and acute.

  Aoki paused. “I presume the police haven’t interviewed you for quite a while. With the hindsight of seven years, have you had any fresh thoughts on what happened?”

  A long moment. “No.” Unemotionally spoken; she seemed to be staring at him out of her past, the unchallenged mistress of it.

  “No theories at all?”

  “None.”

  “Tonight’s the seventh anniversary.”

  “You’re well informed.”

  No inflection in her voice. Seven years ago, Superintendent Watanabe must have given her and her sister a hard time as he’d questioned them. Aoki glanced down at the menu—quite a banquet, seven courses, hungry guys. His eyes stopped at the last. Vegetable dish: Chestnut dumplings with fern shoots and pickled plums. He said, “The two gentlemen from Tokyo being here must’ve brought back unhappy memories.”

  “The subject’s never far away.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “It surprises me you’d have them here.”

  He thought she wasn’t going to answer; then, almost in a whisper, she said, “This ryokan has a 250-year tradition of hospitality. It’s an obligation that stands above personal feelings.” Her gaze was unwavering. “They were here once before, on the first anniversary.”

  Aoki absorbed this. The first year, then a gap of six. He frowned. All that Saito had said to him struck him as accurate, yet he had an even stronger impression now that the Go-player’s agenda, for some reason, was to push him down the wrong path. He had similar thoughts about the owner of the mountain ryokan, but, staring at her pale face, into those steady eyes, he couldn’t be sure of a thing.

  ~ * ~

  In the Camellia Room, Aoki found jazz on the radio. He owned no books and not much other stuff, just a big collection of jazz records. It had been his interest since his teenage years, the only real one outside his work. Only half-humorously, Tokie had said once, “You could pack your life in two suitcases and disappear.” But she was the one who’d disappeared. He turned down the radio’s volume.

  He’d seen photographs of the bloodstained clothing and the other items recovered from the Central station locker. He screwed up his brow. A light green silk kimono finely embroidered with gold thread, an obi with gold cranes in flight, a beautiful amber crescent hair ornament, and a purse containing the valuable diamond ring Ito had given her at their engagement. Everything she’d been wearing that evening when they had dinner, Ito had confirmed. Only an antique ruby ring, inherited from her mother, had been missing.

  Aoki smoked a cigarette, puzzling over the locker and its contents. Did they stand for the abandonment of a wretched, dishonored life, and a payback? Or murder, or suicide? He yawned. He could still taste the sake on his palate, and his eyes were dead-heavy. It had stopped snowing late in the afternoon.

  Aoki was weary, but he had an urge to leave the Camellia Room, to walk the corridors, the staircases, through the dark halls, as though a door might open and lead him into a secret chamber where the mysteries at the ryokan would be graphically displayed on whiteboards, a place like the incident rooms at headquarters.

  He grimaced at this thinking and left his room. Coming down the staircase he crossed a lamp-lit corridor. A man came hurriedly out of it without warning and nearly collided with him, a man in a chef’s white uniform. Aoki jumped back, as did the man, then face-to-face they regarded each other for a moment. With a half-bow, the white-coated man stepped around Aoki and hurried down the staircase.

  Aoki stood transfixed, staring after him. All kinds of things were coming together in his head, but the key one was the front page of a Tokyo daily at the time of Madam Ito’s disappearance, showing separate photographs of the faces of four persons: Madam Ito in all her mature beauty; her husband, Ito; her lover, Yamazaki; and underneath that trio the identity-card-type shot of a man with a white scar over his left eye, her ex-husband, Hatano. The face of the man Aoki had just been staring at.

  Aoki turned and went straight back to his room.

  ~ * ~

  Inspector Aoki awoke at 3:10 A.M. instantly clearheaded. He wondered what had wakened him, and listened; just the faintest stirring of coals in the kotatsu. The memory of the incident late last night jumped into his mind. What in the hell was Hatano doing back at the ryokan? The ex-husband had been thrown out by Madam Ito, who’d then divorced him, long before she’d met Ito. Watanabe had tracked the chef down in Osaka and tried to pin his ex-wife’s disappearance on him. It hadn’t worked, and presumably he’d dropped from sight. Now he was here! The interesting questions were: Did Watanabe know he was here? Did Ito and Yamazaki? For sure, Kazu Hatano knew. For an hour, before he’d slept, Aoki had turned this over and over in his mind, wondering if there had been something to Watanabe’s last line of inquiry: that Hatano and his daughters had conspired to take Madam Ito out of circulation.

  Aoki threw back the quilt, put on his padded kimono and slippers, slid back the door, and played his flashlight beam into the corridor. Stepping out, he paused and listened again. The frigid air stung his cheeks, sharp as razor nicks.

  The cat’s eyes flashed. He started. It was sitting there, watching him. It came forward, rubbed its body against his legs, and meowed softly, a lonesome sound. Briefly, he stroked its back.

  He set off, walking quietly through the ryokan to the anteroom. He seemed to be on a mission of an indeterminate nature, but he was wide awake.

  In the anteroom nothing had changed, except that the last log had burned to ashes. He looked toward the windows and did see change. Huge icicles resembling daggers hung from the eaves. Daggers that could pierce your heart. Astonished, he stared at them, then swept his eyes over the snow-lit room. On the Go board, the stones were frozen in their own unique killing formations, just as Saito had left them.

  He retraced his steps to the hall, descended the stairs, and took a corridor. Another exploratory move on this unclear mission. Ahead, a door was partially open, the ghost-flower painted on it glimmering in the beam of his flashlight. Within, there was an incandescent glow like one from a bedside lamp. Aoki paused, then slid open the door fully and peered down the flashlight beam.

  His breath came out in a long hiss. The light had jumped with his reflexes but now held steady on the naked figure. Between the slender legs last seen afloat in the stone bath, the white bedding on the floor was drenched with blood. Mouth open, Aoki stared at the carnage. Probably the stab through the heart had been first, then the work down below; maybe a couple of swift slashes, then a more deliberate one—a big cut across the abdomen. Aoki smelled strong odors. He moved the flashlight, checking the room, and found the alcove and what was missing.

  The long penis and the pendulous testicles, raw and bloody as butcher’s meat, were displayed in a lacquer box beneath the hanging scroll, artistically arranged—as much as the objects would allow. The gaping wound on the abdomen looked surgical, and instantly Aoki knew an organ had been removed; he’d seen enough autopsies. He
stared at the butchery as though mentally photographing it. He’d witnessed much more chaotic rearrangements of human bodies; this seemed highly organized in comparison.

  Yamazaki’s eyes were open. The bleeding had ceased. It was useless to check for life; the MOF official’s arrogant spirit, his leasehold of power, had been terminated, his elegance despoiled. It was going to create a sensation. With this ending, Yamazaki would be less of a forgotten man than if his career had merely finished in humiliating ignominy.

  This was Yamazaki’s room, but it was the one Ito had stepped out of to peer after him. Aoki could feel a fluttering pulse beneath his left eye. He fumbled for his cigarettes and lit one quickly, tucking the flashlight under his arm. He wasn’t as inured to scenes of sudden death as he’d thought.