Then ex-governor Tamaki, in his moonlit garden, stepped forward. Aoki dropped his head back on the pillow. By now, they’d have checked out the DNA from the Fatman’s garden; he guessed there would’ve been enough of his blood on the floor of the station urinal to run a hundred tests. He gazed across the room at a picture that resembled the one at the mental clinic.
Aoki slept till evening, when he was awakened by a nurse who was taking his blood pressure. “You’ve got colleagues coming to see you tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “Perhaps they’re coming to give you a medal?”
Aoki was puzzled, wondering what she knew, but he kept silent. They’ll be coming to read me my rights, he thought. He didn’t sleep that night until they brought him a pill; then he went under.
The next day he was fatalistic yet nervous. At 3:00 P.M. Superintendent Shimazu put his head in the door. “Ah,” he said, and stood aside. Director General Omori walked in and strode to the bedside. Superintendent Motono followed him in.
“How are you feeling, Inspector?” the DG asked.
Aoki tried to sit up. “Much better.”
“Much better than some others we know about,” Shimazu said with a touch of humor, pulling up a chair for the DG.
Aoki looked nonplussed.
The DG sat down. “You don’t know?” he said, frowning.
“He’s been in the ICU, unconscious, sir,” Shimazu said, in case it had slipped the CIB chief’s memory.
“Hmmm . . . The daimyo, Oto, alias Saito, et cetera, and two of his men were shot dead on Tuesday night when we attempted to arrest them at Aoyama.”
“One of my men was wounded,” Shimazu said. “Not serious.”
Aoki blinked a few times at the news. He’d need time to think about this.
The DG cleared his throat. “It was extremely irregular to send that disk to the newspaperman Minami.” His voice held a condemnatory tone, though in recent days, since the situation had unfolded, he’d quieted down and his blood pressure had improved. In the uneasy silence, the DG gazed at some mystery in his mind. They all understood that Aoki had not intended to survive that night.
What are they waiting for? Aoki wondered.
The DG placed his hairy hands, palms down, on the bed’s white cover. “The daimyo’s death and the information from Hatano have cleared up the ryokan murders case—and Hatano’s. We’re assembling the evidence. Also the Osaka journalist’s—linked to the body-parts case. That prosecutor has tied it up nicely.”
Shimazu said, “Doubtless the reporter Kimura’s death is connected, but unfortunately there are no real leads on that.” Superintendent Motono hadn’t said a word.
Aoki moved his eyes over the three policemen, waiting.
The DG cleared his throat again. “Governor Tamaki’s murderer is still at large,” he said, as if it were totally unrelated to anything else that had been said. Aoki had put nothing about the Fatman’s death in his report on the disk. Omori shook his head. “Superintendent Watanabe’s tragic accident has shocked us all.” He got up suddenly. “All right, we’ll expect you back on duty as soon as possible.” He nodded at Aoki. At the door he halted and turned his head, but not his solid torso. “For once, I can feel happy about monks,” he said to them all, then left.
Shimazu frowned at the picture on the wall and rubbed his chin, as though he were carefully assembling phrases in his mind. He turned to the man in the bed. “Inspector, certain parties were quite happy to see Governor Tamaki exit the scene. Those parties don’t see any advantage in raking over his past activities.” He shrugged. “Of course, his murder will be fully investigated, but I have to say that we don’t have any promising leads.”
Amazement was sweeping through Aoki. He glanced at Superintendent Motono, who didn’t look happy. Aoki could see on his face his dislike of solutions based on expediency and lies, which flushed questions of morality down the toilet. Obviously the DG hadn’t wanted to be present for this part of the visit.
Then they were gone, too.
The next afternoon most of his old team came out as a group. Assistant Inspector Nishi made a short speech. “Someone finished the job for us with Tamaki,” he said. “Good luck to the guy.” They’d brought out issues of the Tokyo Shimbun in which Minami had broken the story of the ryokan murders and the Osaka case. Aoki’s photograph and Saito’s were together on the front page. The DG was prominently mentioned for his personal involvement in the cases.
Aoki was thinking better now. The government didn’t want the kind of anarchy exposed that saw a police officer taking out a prominent politician. But there’d be a price to pay. Lying there in the long healing nights, he knew that. Shimazu had been careful not to say it, but from now on a number of people would have their eye on him. He’d be a marked man, and you could never know when the politicians might come knocking on his door, with some little commission in mind.
Five days later, Inspector Aoki went home. He was to return to duty shortly, and in the meantime he took his father’s short walks to the temple and spent some time at the bar. He read a headline saying that the Tokyo Citizens Bank had been merged with another city bank. Day by day, the aching of the wound near his heart was fading.
He’d thought a great deal about that last night when he was heading for the slopes of Mount Fuji. Providence, or fate, had intervened in the form of the yakuza and the red-robed monk. The monk had come to see him at the hospital. From behind his steelrimmed glasses he’d looked Aoki over, as though he owned him. He stayed only a short while and hardly spoke; a Zen karate instructor, Aoki had found out from a police colleague.
Tokie’s bonsai plants had survived. His old uncle had reappeared, like the semi-ghost he was, to serve him in another emergency. The small clipped plants were healthy, although, in tune with their bigger brothers and sisters, they’d dropped their leaves.
One morning the doorbell rang. It was a messenger with a wicker basket. “What is this?” Aoki asked the man.
“It’s a cat, sir.”
To Aoki’s astonishment, it was.
The tabby cat walked calmly out of the container and rubbed against his legs. Aoki bent down to stroke her. Here was a flesh-and-blood message from the ryokan. From Kazu Hatano, he knew instantly, but how to interpret it? “Well, you’re a detective, aren’t you?” he muttered. Even as he said that, he remembered that each day she’d been at his bedside in the ICU while he was unconscious—hadn’t the nurse said?
Aoki felt a spreading lightness in his heart.
“Okay, Cat,” he said, “let’s take a look around. I don’t think there are any mice here, but in summer there are nice fat frogs in the pond.”
Author’s Note
My grateful acknowledgment to Yasunari Kawabata’s The Master of Go, from which I have drawn some facts and information on the famous Go match played in 1938.
Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn Page 25