The Japanese Corpse

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "Uai?" she asked. "Pain?"

  "No pain." He walked into the bar and she came with him, holding his hand, but let it go when they were inside and wandered over to some Mends at the bar. He stopped and looked around in amazement. For a moment he thought that he was in an aquarium and that gleaming fish were swimming around him. A clever artist had been able to create a most mysterious light which flowed from the ceiling through small holes, and the girls, all dressed in very low blouses and short skirts, reflected a silver shine on their breasts. They were walking about slowly, a trick perhaps to lure the new arrival, and a fairylike glow moved with them. The light also reflected on the shaved skulls of the three barmen, shaved apart from one spot where their hair had been allowed to grow until it formed tails, the old-fashioned queues of the Chinese, and the tightly twisted hair ropes had been dipped in silver paint so that they glittered with every movement of their owners. The barmen were Chinese, and were talking to each other in the soft Canton dialect which he had heard so often in the old city of Amsterdam. They also spoke English, an exaggerated English with Oxford overtones.

  "Would you care for a whisky, sir? Scotch or local? Or would you prefer a Canadian brand, or a bourbon perhaps?"

  "A bourbon," de Gier said.

  "On the rocks, sir?"

  "On the rocks."

  "Very well, sir. One bourbon on the rocks coming up, sir."

  He raised his glass, returned the Chinese's flashing smile and drank. "Would you care for female company, sir? There is plenty of choice. If you tell me whom you prefer I will have her come over."

  "I'll find one," de Gier said, "later."

  "Very well, sir. Are you a poker player, sir? Or do you prefer roulette. Gambling has started about half an hour ago, sir."

  "Gambling has always bored me," de Gier said. "I don't know what it is, but rolling dice and shuffled cards make me sleepy. I would rather just sit and drink. This is a nice bar you've got here."

  "I only mentioned the gambling because it is in the back room, sir, and I haven't seen you before. I thought perhaps you might want to know about it. I don't like gambling myself, sir. Very strange for a Chinese, I don't even like mahjong."

  "Good," de Gier said. "So we are not alone in our perversions. Do you like watching football?"

  "No, sir."

  "Excellent. Neither do I. What do you like?"

  The barkeeper bent forward and whispered into de Gier's ear. "Watching flowers?" de Gier asked softly. "Where? In parks? Or do you grow them yourself?"

  "I have a small garden," the Chinese said. "Very small."

  More guests came in and the barman went over to see what they wanted to drink. De Gier stirred the crushed ice in his glass and thought about his balcony. His geraniums would be dead by now, and the nasturtiums, which he had been growing with great care, brushing the mites off twice a day, feeding with various vitamins, watering and spraying at set hours, should be in flower, but there wouldn't be much left except crumbling bone-dry brown stalks and leaves lying on cracked dry gray earth. And somewhere in the soil of Amsterdam rotted the corpse of Esther, and insects would be eating the cat Oliver, buried in the park opposite his apartment building. He thought painlessly, registering images, the images of death. He was staring at his glass while he thought, and he only looked up when he felt a thigh pressed against his leg and he recognized the girl who had gone into the rest room with him.

  "Amerikajin?" she asked.

  "Orandajin," he said. "From Holland. Do you know where Holland is?"

  Another girl had joined them. The girl laughed and said something in Japanese. De Gier caught a few words and reconstructed the meaning of the sentence. "Foreigners stink as a rule, but if they have eaten garlic they stink too badly, even for a whore."

  "I haven't eaten garlic," he said. "I ate some broiled fish in a Japanese-style restaurant. If I stink, I stink normally."

  "Oh," the two girls said in chorus, and clapped their hands over their mouths. "Do you speak Japanese?"

  "Two hundred words, but it was enough this time."

  "Sumimasen," the girl said. "Tai-hen sumimasen. Very very sorry. I was very rude. Please forgive."

  "Sure," de Gier said, and laughed. The girls looked as if they might break into tears any minute. "But of course."

  "Yuiko," the girl from the rest room said. "That's my name, and my friend is called Chicako. But maybe you don't like us so much now, maybe we better call other girls for you, yes? Please look around and tell us who we must call."

  "No, I like you both fine. Do you want a drink?"

  The bartender had placed a dish filled with brown mushy objects, floating in a thick sauce, on the counter, and de Gier pushed it toward Yuiko. "Have some of this, whatever it may be."

  "Thank you. They are mushrooms, very delicious. Try some yourself."

  De Gier sighed and picked one up gingerly. His tongue had difficulty dealing with it but he managed to get it between his teeth and chewed.

  "Nice?" Yuiko asked.

  The taste was pleasant and he smiled.

  "They look horrible, don't they?" Yuiko asked. "But they are very good. Have some more."

  They ate a few each, and he repeated his suggestion about the drinks.

  "Drinks are very expensive here," Yuiko said. "Maybe better not. Maybe we buy you a drink. Another bourbon?"

  "One bourbon," de Gier said to the Chinese, "and two of whatever the ladies like." He felt his back pocket. Dorin had given him a fair amount in cash when he arrived, and he had been giving him more since. Compliments of the Japanese Secret Service. He should have enough to get through the night, even if the drinks were expensive.

  "Do you like music?" Yuiko asked, pointing at a platform at the back of the bar where five musicians had appeared.

  "Yes, jazz, but maybe they don't play jazz?"

  "They do. What would you like to hear?"

  "St. Louis Blues," de Gier said. Yuiko spoke to the pianist and he bowed and smiled. One two three FOUR, the men shouted, and the blues broke loose, the theme first and variations following, some of them played by everybody, some of them only by the trumpet backed up by the drums. They played well, de Gier thought, and he clapped and asked the barkeeper to send up five beers. The musicians came to attention, bowed, raised their glasses, shouted "BANZAI" and drained the glasses in one gulp.

  "Banzai?" de Gier asked. "Shouldn't they shout 'Kampai'? I thought 'kampai' meant bottoms up. Banzai is some sort of war cry, isn't it?"

  "They should say, 'Kampai,'" Yuiko said, "but these musicians are very crazy. They never react normally to anything. I think it's because they used to play on a cruise ship, Tokyo to San Francisco, back and forth, back and forth, forever. One of them is my cousin. He said they got so bored that they had to go crazy or they would jump overboard. One of them did jump overboard; there used to be six."

  "Really?" de Gier asked, turning around to look at the musicians again. They appeared to be normal enough, five middle-aged small men. One was bald, the others had long hair.

  "They live in an old temple nearby," Yuiko said. "Sometimes I go to see them. It is very nice out there. They live with their wives and girlfriends, and the bald man has two children. The owner of this club is very fond of them; he often goes out there. They play for him and they have parties. They are quite famous, you know. They often play for the TV studios and they have a lot of records out."

  "In a temple," de Gier said dreamily. "I am sure it must be very nice to live in a temple. Do they meditate too?"

  The girl mockingly imitated the Buddha posture, pulling up her legs and twisting them into each other and straightening her back. She closed her eyes and pouted. De Gier admired her legs; he could see her thighs and tightly stretched slip. Her pubic hair shone through the nylon.

  She opened her eyes and freed her legs.

  "No," she said. "They don't meditate but they drink a lot."

  "Your English is pretty good," he said. "Why do you work in this bar? I thought E
nglish-speaking girls went to Tokyo. They can make a lot of money out there, I believe."

  She smiled and ruffled his hair. "I used to work in Tokyo, but I prefer this city. It's nice and quiet here, and we often have foreign guests, especially in autumn. Scholars mostly, who come to lecture at Kyoto University."

  "You learned your English in Tokyo?"

  "Yes," she said. "My mother teaches English. I began to learn when I was very small and I like reading. I learned a lot of words, and later I took some courses."

  The small, band had struck up again, and de Gier moved closer to the platform, putting his arm around Yuiko and taking her with him. The other girl had left them, having been summoned by an elderly man who had sat by himself at the bar, drinking steadily and humming to himself, but who had suddenly seemed in urgent want of female company and had expressed his wish loudly to the bartender, pointing to Yuiko's friend and complaining in a high nasal voice. The girl had darted off, smiling and bobbing, and started her duties by wiping the sweat off his gleaming face, using a dainty lace-lined handkerchief. She was cooing softly to him now, an older sister pacifying a naughty lost little boy.

  The band was playing a Miles Davis number. De Gier couldn't remember the title but he recognized the slow exact style which had often heightened his perception in his Amsterdam apartment, when he had been alone with the cat rolled up in a tight ball next to his feet. The alcohol opened his mind a little more, and he seemed to be able to see the music rather than hear it; the trumpet as clear rays of light, the drums and bass as a dark rolling background and the piano as short dark orange bursts of fire. He stayed another hour, with Yuiko quietly sitting next to him, her hand resting on his forearm. She looked pale and there were shadows under her eyes and her hand felt moist.

  "All right?" he asked.

  "Yoroshii," she said softly. "Just a little tired. It's nice sitting here like this."

  The bartender came to bring another bourbon, but he refused it and was served grape juice instead, and later, when the bar was more quiet, coffee in small high cups.

  She asked him to go with her to her apartment, and huddled in his arm during the short ride in a bouncing taxi. In her room she was leaning against him and he bent down to look into her face. Her eyes were closed and her lips twitched. She still insisted that she felt fine, and filled the kettle to make tea, but the kettle slipped out of her hands and she collapsed on the floor, a helpless bundle of fear and pain. He picked her up and carried her to the bathroom and held her head while she vomited. He went back to the room and squatted on the tatamis while he heard her rummaging about, washing her face and readjusting her hair, but then there was a squeak and a thud and he rushed back into the bathroom.

  She was crying, stretched out on the tiled floor. He asked her where it hurt and she pressed her stomach, but she couldn't talk anymore and whined softly as he stroked her hair.

  He left the apartment and knocked on doors and shouted until a middle-aged woman appeared. He couldn't think of any words, and he pushed the woman into the apartment and on until they reached the bathroom. The woman spoke a little English and pronounced the word "hospital."

  "A car?" he asked. "You have a car?"

  "Taxi," she said, and pointed at the telephone. "O.K.?"

  "O.K.," he said. "You tell driver to go to hospital."

  She nodded and dialed a number. The taxi appeared within minutes and delivered them at the emergency ward of a large hospital, only a few miles away. Two nurses grabbed the unconscious body and wheeled it away and de Gier sat down. He had to wait for nearly an hour before a young doctor came to answer his questions.

  "Food poisoning," the doctor said. "Did she eat anything out of the way? Something rotten or poisonous maybe?"

  "Mushrooms," de Gier said. "That's all I saw her eat. I met her tonight, in a bar."

  The doctor smiled. "Mushrooms, yes, could be."

  "But I ate some too, I feel fine."

  "One mushroom is enough. Perhaps they were picked carelessly. Mushrooms look alike. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are murder. She was lucky you brought her here."

  "Would she have died otherwise?"

  The doctor shrugged. "Not likely. She is young and fairly strong, I would say, but she could have been very ill for a long time. This way we have nipped it in the bud; she'll be O.K. in a few days."

  "Can I see her?"

  "No, she is asleep now, better not disturb her. Come tomorrow."

  When de Gier came back to the inn, the commissaris and Dorin were eating breakfast, and he flopped down, helping himself to their fried eggs and bacon before the maid came in to bring his own.

  "Bad luck," Dorin said, when he had told them how he had spent his time. "I wonder what the yakusa members thought when they saw you in the lion's den. By now they will all know who you are. Maybe the girl was told to prepare a surprise for you."

  "She did," de Gier said, with his mouth full. "I thought she was going to die on me."

  "She wasn't acting, was she?" the commissaris asked.

  "No, sir," de Gier said, buttering another slice of toast. "She wasn't."

  \\ 19 /////

  "YES, SIR," ADJUTANT GRIJPSTRA SAID. "THE DRUG-brigade detectives are ready to raid the place tonight, sir. They are after the cook; he is supposed to be the boss here. And I am after Mr. Fujitani, the manager. I think I've got enough on him now to hold him for two days, and maybe he'll break if we question him."

  He listened carefully, sucking noisily on his cigar and holding the telephone gingerly. The commissaris' voice was coming through clearly, but there was a slight buzz in the background to remind him of the distance. Six thousand miles, he thought vaguely, or ten thousand miles? He would have to look it up that night in his son's atlas. If he was in the mood for it. Perhaps the raid would take a lot of time or effort. He shrugged. It shouldn't be a problem really. Twelve men to raid one rather small restaurant, at five-thirty in the afternoon. There probably wouldn't be any clients to complicate the situation.

  "Yes," he said. "I think he'll break easily. Cardozo has had a little film made. We are going to show it to the suspect on a video recorder. It's a clever little film, I think. Shots of the corpse of Nagai and a few close-ups of Joanne Andrews. Made by a professional filmer. Very nice. He is a friend of Cardozo and we took him to your niece's house. Day before yesterday. A rainy afternoon it was, very hazy. He filmed her walking through the forest behind your niece's house, sir. She never saw us. For the shots of Nagai's corpse I had to use the police black-and-white film, but it isn't too bad. There is a gruesome bit in it, when the constables are dragging the body out of the grave and the head lolls backward. Turned my stomach when I saw it, and Cardozo rushed out of the room. He was sick, I think, although he came up with some excuse afterward. Fujitani's nerves are in a bad state already. The drug-brigade detectives have been questioning him and I have been around too. At the restaurant, almost every day for the last week or so. I won't say much to him tonight, I'll just pick him up and have him put in a cell. I'll show him the movie tomorrow. Tomorrow morning early, I think. He will have had a bad night. He should break straightaway, sir."

  The commissaris spoke again, and Grijpstra listened, his head askew.

  "Yes, sir! Thank you. But the idea was Cardozo's, really."

  He rang off and grinned. He hadn't been too sure about the film, but the commissaris was in agreement. He thought he had heard some reluctance in the way the commissaris had phrased his accordance. Maybe the old man thought the method was too advanced. But it was proper police procedure, used everywhere nowadays. There had been a long article on crime-association with regard to questioning suspects in the Police Gazette, a few numbers back. Maybe the technique had its cruel side, but going fishing with a man and blowing the man's brain out with a .38 revolver... Well.

  He looked at his watch. Four o'clock. The cars would leave in an hour's time.

  "Cardozo," he said, turning toward the young man who had been scribbli
ng away at his small desk near the door.

  "Adjutant?"

  "Time for coffee, Cardozo. Got any money?"

  "No, adjutant. And the machine is out of order. I was in the canteen ten minutes ago. They have been at the mechanism again, trying to make it work for nothing."

  "Then go and borrow some money and get two cartons from the snackbar at the corner."

  "The inspector is waiting for this report, adjutant."

  Grijpstra pushed his chair back and got up. He had put a little too much force in the movement, and he hurt his knee against a drawer. He was getting red in the face.

  "Yes, adjutant," Cardozo said. "Right away, adjutant."

  It was four A.M. when Grijpstra came home, and he forgot to look up the distance between Kyoto and Amsterdam in his son's atlas. It had been a hectic night. The drug brigade had set up the raid properly. The detectives had come in through the front door, through the garden door, and through the windows of the top floor, all at the same time. But there had been complications: one detective had sprained his ankle, trying to swing his body into a window while he was hanging on to a rotten gutter which cracked. He had applied too much strength to his swing and had landed badly. And another detective had been knifed by the cook. The knife touched a lung. The cook was behind the counter, and he had got away while the detectives were taking care of their colleague, who was spitting blood. The cook reached his car, and the car got away too, in spite of a roadblock. A middle-aged lady was hurt when she jumped away as the cook's car careened over the sidewalk. The State Police stopped the car eventually, three hours later, cutting it off the road as it was trying to move in between two large trucks. One of the trucks landed up in a field, spilled a load of canned beer, and a State Police Porsche turned over. The sergeant at the wheel dislocated his shoulder. The raid had been planned well, but there wasn't much left of the plan by the time the radios finally gave the all-clear.