The Devouring God

by James Kendley

  Finally, Nabeshima stared without expression at the screen, as if this was what she had expected all along. Yoshida looked as if she would cry or throw up. He thought for an instant that an expression of pity had passed over her face, but he didn’t trust pity anymore. Over the previous few years, Takuda had found that fear overcame pity in most ­people’s hearts.

  Yoshida straightened and looked him in the eye.

  “It’s unbelievable you found work as a security guard. It’s unbelievable you found work at all. Does your boss know what you do in your off-­hours?”

  “If he does, he hasn’t mentioned it.”

  She moved slowly back toward her desk. Passing brought her closer to him, and she hugged the wall as she went. Takuda would have scooted forward to let her pass, but leaning forward over the desk would have spooked Nabeshima.

  And Nabeshima was ashen, her pale face lit blue by her computer monitor. “Are you dangerous?”

  Not to you, he thought, but the explanation was more complicated.

  Yoshida slid behind her desk. She seemed relieved to be closer to her telephone, and she raised her head to look him in the eye, to prove that she wasn’t afraid. “You should answer the question. It’s a reasonable question.”

  “As a detective, I used force in arrests, but no one ever accused me of abuse.”

  “That’s work. How about your off-­duty excursions?”

  “I’ve never harmed a living human being.”

  Nabeshima groaned as if that were a particularly bad joke.

  Yoshida ignored her. “Are your accomplices here? The priest and the boy?”

  “Accomplices? Reverend Suzuki lives with me and my wife. The boy, as you call him, lives with us as well.”

  “You stick together,” Yoshida said.

  “We try to work different shifts.”

  “Your poor wife.”

  Takuda bowed where he sat. “Yes, my poor wife.”

  “How long have you been working for Ota?”

  “Ota Southern Protection Ser­vices. About seven months.”

  Nabeshima was staring at the screen. “So you and your friends came just after desecrating cemeteries in Tokuyama. That was after burning down an ancient villa on Sado Island.”

  “She means destroying an irreplaceable national historical treasure,” Yoshida said.

  Nabeshima stood and edged past him. She stood in the doorway uncertainly, as if she would bolt if Takuda moved. “Did you burn yourself on Sado? When you and your friends burned that villa?”

  Takuda knew she was trying to ask about his face without Yoshida understanding. “That’s where I got some of the scars you see, from invisible fire. But we didn’t burn anything. No charges were ever filed in that case, not even misdemeanor trespassing. The fire started beneath the flooring, in a hidden chamber.”

  Yoshida crossed her arms. “You and your friends have never been arrested, even though everyone knows you are criminals. You play on the superstition and ignorance of backward country ­people.”

  Takuda frowned deeply. He couldn’t help it, even though the invisible scars probably made his face crease in unexpected directions. Nabeshima looked away.

  “Your friends are as dangerous as you are,” Yoshida said. “The local police who protect you tend to lose their jobs, don’t they?”

  He just looked ahead. He had been in this situation before, and there was no reason to speak. At least he had held this job for seven months. Sometimes he lost the job before the interview.

  Yoshida exhaled as if she had been holding her breath. “Well, this is unacceptable.” She reached for the telephone.

  That’s when it happened: a slight quickening, a tightening of his muscles, a subtle shift in his own body that told him he was in the right place. As she picked up the telephone, his heart began to slam against his ribs.

  “Please put that down,” he said.

  She hurriedly pushed buttons, pretending not to watch him. As he walked toward Yoshida’s desk, Nabeshima slid sideways toward the kitchen.

  He towered over Yoshida. She put the receiver in the cradle and sat down slowly.

  “You must think this through,” she said.

  “You are in no danger from me,” he said. His body was on fire, but his mind was at ease. “Do whatever you like after the call.”

  “The call?”

  “Yes, the call. It’s coming.” The blood coursed faster in his veins. Without thinking, he clenched his calloused fist, and the knuckles popped deep in the flesh. “That is, I think it will be a call. Something is coming, and the doors and windows are secure.”

  “You are truly out of your mind,” she said. Anger blazed in her eyes. “Nabeshima, use your cell phone.”

  “I lost it,” Nabeshima wailed from the kitchen.

  Yoshida put her hand on the telephone. She was half his size, and she was terrified, but she would fight if she had to. “This is a prefectural office, and you will not stop me from calling for help.”

  He was dizzy, as if the blood had drained from his head. The power washed in more quickly and completely every time, and now it left him reeling. “You’ll never understand it, but right now, I’m the only help you’ve got.”

  Her hand tightened on the receiver. “You don’t have to live like this. When the manager gets here, we will all sit down and talk. I know ­people who could help you.”

  He laughed aloud. It was probably not a pretty sight, but he was beyond caring. Nabeshima peered around the doorjamb to see what was happening.

  Both women jumped when the phone rang.

  “There it is,” Takuda said.

  Nabeshima and Yoshida stared at him while he fished out his cell phone with trembling fingers.

  “Didn’t you want to record it?”

  Nabeshima and Yoshida scrambled to turn on the tape recorder. The section chief had provided them with a microphone that attached to the back of the receiver with a rubber suction cup. Takuda doubted such an old-­fashioned contraption would work with a modern phone, but they hadn’t asked him. He dialed his partner.

  Mori answered on the first ring. “I started the trace just before the call. I’ve already got him.”

  “Okay, you knew it was coming, too.”

  “Yes. I lost my balance, and I had to crawl to my desk, but I got it in time.”

  “Good. They have an old fax machine on the second line here.” Takuda reeled off the number. “Just send whatever you get, please.”

  “Another minute or so. Ah . . . did the surge come to you, about ten minutes ago?”

  Takuda rubbed his forehead. It was beginning to ache. “Ten? It just got to me about two minutes ago, and it almost knocked me out.”

  “Yes, it’s strong this time. I saw shapes and colors I don’t have names for.”

  “Well, call Suzuki. Ask him how long ago it hit.”

  Mori snorted. “Suzuki won’t know. He doesn’t feel it, and he has no sense of time. I still don’t think he’s one of us.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ve got to go. Fax it when you’ve got it.”

  Mori hesitated, and then he said, “Did you expect this? Did you know this was coming?”

  “I thought something was coming. The way was cleared for me,” Takuda said. “But tonight, I thought we were just going to trace a nuisance call and help make our friend Ota richer.”

  Mori didn’t respond to jokes like that anymore. He hung up.

  Yoshida and Nabeshima were cheek-­to-­cheek trying to share the telephone earpiece. Nabeshima’s retro hoop earring had gotten tangled in the makeshift wiretap cord, but she didn’t even seem to feel it.

  Yoshida pleaded: “Who . . . wait, calm down . . . who stole what? Kurodama? What is it you’re missing?” Yoshida looked annoyed, but she was obviously not terrified, and Nabeshima just looked confused. Maybe it wa
s not the foreigner.

  Was I wrong? Was the surge wrong?

  As Yoshida tried to get answers from the caller, both she and Nabeshima glanced up at him. They were no longer quite so afraid. They were curious. They wondered how he knew.

  Then we’re in the right place. His heart sank. Every time, he hoped it was a false alarm, but the surge was always right. We’ve got work to do.

  “Well, I can’t . . . if you don’t tell me who . . . no, no, don’t hurt anyone. You’re not . . .” Yoshida and Nabeshima both went limp. The caller had hung up.

  Nabeshima blinked as if waking. “I know that voice,” she said.

  Yoshida concentrated on the little handheld recorder as she rewound the tape, so Takuda asked Nabeshima: “Was that the foreigner?”

  She nodded. “He was very upset. It’s hard to tell, but I think I know his voice . . .”

  Yoshida’s tape recorder gave a loud snap as it finished rewinding, and she pushed the play button. The three of them crowded in to hear. The caller’s voice was unintelligible. Even Yoshida’s shouting was muted and indistinct.

  She grabbed her pencil. “Okay, let’s get what he said. I think he said the Kurodama was gone, and he asked if it was here.”

  Takuda ran his palm over his scalp. Kurodama, black jewel, could refer to a brand of large table grapes, a brand of candies, or anthracite.

  Nabeshima shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. He was speaking in English half the time. It was really tough to understand.”

  Yoshida hissed, “Then tell me what you understood. Help me get this on paper!”

  Nabeshima gave Takuda a helpless look, as if he could do something for her. The fax machine buzzed and whirred. Mori had isolated the source. He left them to reconstruct the foreigner’s call.

  As the paper edged out of the fax machine, Takuda began to understand why he had been brought to the satellite office.

  “Ms. Yoshida, I need your help in here,” he said.

  She peered suspiciously into the back office.

  He held up the fax from Mori. “Please come look at this fax from my associate, the one you call ‘the boy.’ We both work for Ota Southern Protection Ser­vices.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “We were ready for this call,” Takuda said. “Tracing calls from an unknown cell phone is well within our reach, with the consent of the landline owner.”

  Her eyes widened. She approached, but she kept Nabeshima’s little desk between them. “So you know who the caller is?”

  “Not exactly. The cell phone owner has caller ID switched on. Your telephone is just too old to display it. Otherwise, you would have recognized the name.” He handed her the sheet.

  She read it, blinked, and then read it again. “Kaori Nabeshima?” she whispered. “Our Nabeshima?”

  They both looked at Nabeshima perched on Yoshida’s chair, trying to fill in the details of the foreigner’s frenetic call.

  Yoshida turned back to Takuda. “If this is some kind of game . . .”

  “There’s no game and there’s no mistake. The call came from a cell phone account in her name.”

  Yoshida stepped away, watching him over her shoulder for the first few steps, and then she turned toward the front office with the fax sheet clutched behind her back. She approached Nabeshima slowly and carefully with her hand outstretched as if she were approaching a small animal.

  CHAPTER 7

  Wednesday Morning

  His shift over, Takuda went home with the dawn. At his apartment block, his neighbor met him with a bow. “Thank you again. Your family is very generous.”

  Takuda had his helmet and uniform tied in a bundle on the end of his staff, like an old-­fashioned deliveryman. He didn’t bother to lower it as he spoke to this neighbor. He always forgot the man’s name. “Good morning. You’re up early.”

  “Yes, well, it’s off to the market, thanks to your brother.”

  Off to the pachinko parlors and the speedboat races, more likely. “My brother, the tall one, he gave you money again?”

  “Yes, he did. He’s very kind. Now we can afford the basics, even if we can’t afford any of the little luxuries that make life so nice.”

  Takuda didn’t have any cash at all, even if he were willing to give it up. He sighed and bowed before starting up the stairs.

  Suzuki and Yumi hadn’t left the apartment.

  “Welcome home,” Suzuki said. He bent over the breakfast table to shovel more rice into his mouth.

  Takuda slipped off his shoes and stepped up into the apartment. The apartment was the 2LDK style, the same size as the mental health satellite office: two bedrooms, a living-­and-­dining room, a kitchenette, and a tiny bath. It would have been adequate for three adults of normal size, but Takuda’s width and Suzuki’s height left little space for Yumi and Mori.

  “You gave the gambler next door more money for his vices,” Takuda said.

  “Perhaps he will learn from the virtue of generosity, which will outweigh and overcome his vices.”

  Takuda sat sideways so he didn’t rub knees with Suzuki. “And there you were begging yesterday. You spent the money my employer dropped in your bowl on the neighbor’s vices. Unbelievable.”

  Suzuki grinned. “I brought in enough for a week’s groceries. Yumi and I are going shopping before work.”

  Yumi bumped Takuda’s tailbone as she opened the bathroom door. He stood so she could get out.

  Her greeting was warm enough, but she didn’t quite meet his eyes. Something was wrong. It could be anything. The apartment? Suzuki? Her two jobs? What isn’t wrong?

  She dished up his breakfast as he returned his attention to Suzuki.

  “So, out begging again. What happened to the tutoring job?”

  “Oh, they didn’t like my teaching style.” Suzuki looked slightly guilty.

  “Your teaching style? It’s a cram school. They don’t do anything but test preparation. How can your teaching style have anything to do with it?”

  “Well, maybe the disagreement was more about educational philosophy than style.”

  Takuda tried to control his expression. “You didn’t stick to their lessons.”

  “The testing system is stunting the minds of a whole generation.” Suzuki awkwardly lit a cigarette. He had accidentally severed the nerve in the forefinger of his left hand with his own sword, and some everyday activities were still difficult.

  “If the police catch you begging without papers, we can’t pay the fine,” Takuda said.

  “The last time a patrolman stopped me, he ended up dropping five hundred yen in my bowl.”

  Yumi bent over the rice maker. “And what happens now that the rainy season is over? What will you do now?”

  “True, the rainy season is the best,” he called to her over his shoulder. “Everybody’s under cover. I catch them at the bus stops, and they can’t ignore me.” He seemed to mull the question over. “Still, they were generous enough this weekend.”

  That was enough for Takuda. “This isn’t a game anymore. You don’t . . .”

  “Please stop. You’re wasting your breath on him. He’s like a child,” Yumi said. “You and Suzuki have bigger problems. No one will be working a week from now. Not Suzuki, not you, not me, not even young Mori. And if it’s like what happened in Hagi or Sado Island, we’ll have to move. Again. In two weeks, we’ll all be begging in the streets.” She put Takuda’s breakfast on the table, and then she went into their bedroom and slid the door closed behind her.

  Suzuki studied his cigarette with a half-­smile that signified nothing at all.

  It’s easy to be happy when you are a complete fool.

  “You all talk about me as if I’m not here,” Suzuki said.

  “You are barely here, Priest. You swim in a sea of your own silliness and we just see you when you surfac
e for air.”

  Suzuki’s brow furrowed, but he still smiled. “It must be painful to be bound by fate to someone for whom you have so little respect.”

  “Fate? Fate has nothing to do with it. You could walk away right now. So could I. So could Mori. We could all go our separate ways and go build normal lives. Eventually, everyone would forget about us.”

  “We tried that once, and the three of us showed up at the villa. All of us showed up at the same place at the same time. And we did battle, and we won.”

  Takuda sat forward. “We decided to stay together. That makes life tough. But it doesn’t have to be this tough.” He pointed at Suzuki. “You make life tougher.” He sat back. “Quit begging. Get rid of your ragged robes. Get a steady job and keep at it, and quit giving money to lazy, drunken gamblers like that fellow next door. Help save up for the next move. You know it’s coming.”

  The smile never left. “But no matter what, I’m still a priest. That’s my calling and my inheritance.”

  “Yes, you’re a priest, but you’re officially discredited, your temple is gone, and you have no followers. You’re a one-­man sect. Every time you pick up a stray dog who wants to hear your message, the police get involved because you’re still posing as a priest.”

  “I’m not posing,” Suzuki said.

  Takuda picked up his chopsticks and prepared to tuck in. “Then find us a temple so we can all stay off the streets. I’m just about out of ideas here.”

  Suzuki looked at his hands. His little smile was so tight it was almost a frown.

  Takuda ate. There was rice, fermented soybeans, egg, and strips of dried laver. They had breakfast on the table, and they had a clean, dry place to sleep. Maybe he was being too hard on Suzuki. They were living one paycheck ahead of disaster, but that was no surprise. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

  Still, the brooding priest filled half his vision, and he wished there were something else to look at while he ate breakfast. There was no TV, and no one had yet picked up an abandoned newspaper. Takuda just put his head down and ate.

  Finally, Suzuki carefully unfolded his lanky limbs and pulled himself out from under the table. He moved to the middle of the floor and called to Yumi.