Jade Rooster

by R. L. Crossland

  “…And the meal? Lieutenant…er captain?”

  “ Major Koizumi. Western cuisine, I assume. There is an Italian restaurant where I am well known.”

  Sabatclli brightened, “The Venetian?”

  “The same.”

  Hobson observed that the ginricksha coolies had caught their breath, but were standing motionless with their eyes riveted on the major.

  Hobson seemed thoughtful. “Sir, you’re an Army officer, a major. Why the interest in a barque, a civilian vessel? Isn’t the Navy filing the report?”

  “Things are never that simple. I am with the military police. Paperwork, bureaucracy, we must be correct in all matters. We are an emerging country and must always strive to do our best. We must be correct in all matters. There is an Imperial Rescript, I believe, on the matter.”

  “We’ll meet you there.”

  “You know we never asked the Kims about Sato.” Hobson said thoughtfully. “We ought to go back.”

  “Tomorrow, tomorrow’s another day. Let’s get supper out of the Japanese major. So far Sato doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything.”

  “Well at this point he’s Japanese and that may be reason enough to attempt to find out where he fits in all this. Perhaps we should keep the fact that I speak passable Japanese to ourselves. At least, let’s not tell this major.”

  “Why? Is this really necessary?”

  “Who knows? Might give us a negotiating edge at some point. He seems to be coming on a scrid strong. Maybe I just don’t like the Army. One of the worst insults on Pluto is to suggest someone’s guilty of ‘soldiering.’”

  As a shipping agent, Sabatelli had spent long hours learning the fine points of negotiation. Partial disclosure was a tactic he understood.

  A Japanese staff worked the restaurant dressed like gondoliers, but a beached Italian sailor ran the pasta-oriented establishment. Sabatelli’s ancestors would have approved the fare.

  “Did you find the Kims? I would be most interested in talking to them.” Koizumi brushed his cuff, then tilted his head from side to side like an old wrestler cracking his neck. Hobson noted that his neck, arms, and shoulders were well developed.

  Sabatelli nodded. “Hobson found them in the Korean section of Chinatown. You should be able to find them, too.”

  Koizumi smiled, “No, I am Japanese and represent authority. I doubt the inhabitants of the Chosungai will be very forthcoming, but I will try. You see we act as a sempai, as a helpful older brother, to our little brother, Korea. We watch out for the Russians—ah, the worst kind of decadent empire—but not all look upon our help with favor.”

  Hobson had adopted a distant look.

  “What was the nature of the naval supplies aboard Jade Rooster?”

  “Sugar from Hawaii, condensed milk, nutmeg, and alcohol,” listed Sabatelli.

  “Anything else?”

  “Sundries, shoes, shoe polish, brass polish, and chemicals for paint.”

  “Ah, little to inspire intrigue.” Koizumi observed and smiled. “A very boring cargo.”

  “Intrigue? Has there been any mention of intrigue?”

  “No,” Koizumi said grasping Sabatelli’s forearm with a mollifying gesture. “No, I am making a small joke. Was the cargo all naval stores?”

  Koizumi’s glasses rested low on his nose. Hobson noticed he never looked through them.

  “No, but the naval stores were the insured portion of the cargo and I have the paperwork for that portion of the cargo.”

  The meal was consumed without further discussion of Jade Rooster.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Sabatelli and Hobson met at the Grand Hotel for breakfast, Hobson again insisted that they ask the Kims about Mr. Sato. Sabatelli agreed, but with little enthusiasm. He could think of no immediate reason why Sato was important.

  The door to the hotel dining room opened and Koizumi entered with his bright even smile.

  “They have disappeared,” Koizumi said shaking his head. “I was afraid this might happen.” In this country, when Koreans choose to blend in, they can make themselves impossible to find. The Kims have disappeared. They haven’t been in touch with you?”

  Hobson looked at Koizumi, and Sabatelli thought he detected skepticism in Hobson’s look. Major Koizumi seemed to struggle with what he had to say next.

  “Now, my interest is a good deal more…official. Something has happened to Mr. Reeves, from Jade Rooster, the financial official…the treasurer…”

  “The supercargo?”

  “Yes, the supercargo. Have you any thoughts on where the Kims might be? I don’t know what has transpired, but I am on my way over to the Four Sisters ryokan. You know the word ryokan? It is a Japanese inn very much like your boarding houses. The runner from the ryokan was so uninformative that I must conclude that something has happened to Mr. Reeves and that it involves a crime. One committed on Japanese soil.”

  Koizumi had difficulty pronouncing “Reeves” and showed the briefest lapse in composure.

  “May we come along?” Hobson said breaking his silence. “He had shipping records that will need interpreting and concern Jade Rooster.”

  Koizumi nodded absently and raised one hand and fluttered it as if symbolizing something with little weight.

  Reeves’ throat had been cut.

  He had died soundlessly during the night. A familiar carpetbag lay open on one side of the room. A middle-aged woman, presumably one of the Four Sisters, appeared very upset. Deaths were bad business, the deaths of Westerners were worse business, and violent deaths were the worst business. If this had been a normal ryokan in any other part of Japan, she might have had to close. Fortunately, Yokohama still maintained the style of a foreign settlement and the Japanese were quick to write off foreign improprieties. Barbarians were barbarians. And everyone knew that barbarians were virtually unteachable.

  There was another Japanese man present in uniform that spoke to Koizumi and reported stiffly.

  “Deuce, the carpetbag’s empty. No logs now,” Sabatelli exclaimed.

  Koizumi looked at Sabatelli.

  “With Jade Rooster’s chart and log, we might have been able to work from the master’s last fix.” Sabatelli proceeded to describe navigational records aboard ship. With records they would have had a more detailed place to start.

  The ryokan was seedy compared to Hobson’s. The tatami mats were stained by the shoe marks of careless sailors. It catered exclusively to foreign seamen, so its standards of cleanliness and shoelessness had dropped accordingly. Hobson grinned as he thought of the Sisters’ possible attempts to enforce the rules of ofuro—hot tub—etiquette on her Western guests. One was supposed to wash before entering the tub and the water was not changed after each guest. He guessed that the rules were hard to enforce.

  Koizumi looked at the wound. “Was nicely cut. A clean cut, no sawing, and deep almost to the neck bone. A very sharp knife.”

  Hobson’s eyebrows raised at the word “nicely.”

  Hobson recalled Sabatelli’s photograph. It hadn’t occurred to him that those heads had also been severed “nicely.” No sawing or hacking there, a single stroke per victim, no more.

  “The police officer says there is a bag for luggage or documents, but it is empty. Some one with experience did this. Someone who uses a knife the way others use a tool. Perhaps a sailor or perhaps one of our own people. The use of blades of different kinds has significance in our culture. A short knife, I think, not a katana, a sword.”

  Koizumi wiped his glasses on his sleeve.

  “But not beheaded.” Hobson added thoughtfully. “Not beheaded. No high drama this time. Really hardly a matter for the military police I’d think. But for us, the log and ship’s documents were very important.”

  “Oh, we assist the police from time to time. You see, I speak English and there are so f
ew who do. So the different police organizations share…what is the word, ‘resources.’” Koizumi responded.

  For a brief moment, Sabatelli thought he saw Koizumi’s smile slip.

  The policeman spoke up suddenly in Japanese and the woman nodded.

  “Ah, Mr. Reeves brought a bar girl home with him, but the proprietress never saw her, she only heard her. Paper walls. The bar girl spoke with an accent.”

  Koizumi looked from one to the other, “Whatever the story with Jade Rooster, it involves more than piracy.”

  Koizumi smiled and turned Reeves’ lifeless head to one side. “I should know a bar girl like this.”

  Once they had left and were out of Koizumi’s hearing, Hobson added, “I figure he’s right, you know.”

  “How so?”

  Hobson hesitated, “There’s a good deal more to this than random piracy. When he introduced himself to that police officer in Japanese, he said he was a major in the Kempeitai.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Imperial Japanese Secret Service. They are some truly bad actors. Poison, drugs, blackmail, sex, and assassination. The Japanese are out to build an empire with the very newest western technology and a very old-fashioned sense of skullduggery. He’s a member of their intelligence service. No country’s intelligence service plays by the Queensbury Rules. He’s not out to find a crate of cans of shoe polish and dried milk.

  “Yes, Koizumi would like to know a bar girl like this.”

  They searched in vain for the Kims. Hobson took the opportunity to provide a cultural tour, gardens, temples, shops, even taking Sabatelli to a judo hall. Their students practiced a new sport with ancient self-defense origins developed by a Japanese educator. It was part of the national curriculum and Hobson had become acquainted with the sport as a student growing up in Japan. The Japanese educator bore a temperamental resemblance to TR, spindly in youth, who had grown to be a physical tiger and an irresistible organizational dynamo.

  Sabatelli decided they needed to know more about the Royster Lines, so they backtracked to the waterfront.

  Sabatelli guided Hobson to a small chandlery on the waterfront adjacent to a long brick ropewalk.

  Upstairs, in what he assumed were the living quarters, Hobson could hear a terrible argument being conducted in Japanese, but the exchanges did not approach the customary Western volume and intensity. An adolescent in flashy Western dress brushed the sliding door aside and stormed by them. Hobson could not tell if the youth was Western or Asian, but he was tall by either standard. A cigarette dangled from his lips and his shoes were two-one leather. Behind, appeared a middle-aged man equally tall, with grizzled muttonchops. He came toward them with a stern look of almost Biblical gravity, walking with a pronounced limp, and dressed severely in a dark business suit with a hard celluloid collar. The jacket was double breasted and came nearly to his knees. He was nimbly working a short splice onto a brass shackle. Hobson noticed his eye movements were very quick in a way that Hobson associated with nervous intelligence.

  The man regarded Hobson with interest. “Wondered when the U. S. Navy might need a little rigging work. That’s what you’re here for I reckon.”

  “Er, no sir. I’m the man who replaced you as a shipping agent” Sabatelli interjected.

  “Ha, so you’re the new wonder from back home. Well, luck to you. Got darn tired of getting squeezed between cheap owners and skinflint captains. Better ship a cargo sometime for your own account before they break you. Had enough of it anyway, looking for something different. Captained for a bit ’til I broke my leg and couldn’t get it set right, not in the middle of the Pacific. It was about time I came ashore, rounded both Capes twice. Shipwrecked once. Then shipping agented a bit. Sail, steam, Yankees, Limeys, but got caught in the middle maybe once too often. Well, now I got this chandlery and manage this ropewalk and I’ll hold to them ’til they bores me, I reckon. Good thing the wife speaks the language better than I do. Don’t think I was meant to do one thing for long.”

  Hobson could make out the silhouettes of the spinners twisting rope through the window of the longest brick building he had ever seen.

  “I’ve applied for a patent on a set of boat davits. Got the drawing back in the house if’n you want to see them. Name’s Aegir Talmadge.”

  His eyes darted from Hobson to Sabatelli and back several times a sentence.

  “That was my son. Heck, he’ll be the death of me. Married one of the gals out here. Fine enough woman, but maybe that boy’s some sort of punishment for my shiftless ways. Well, if this isn’t Navy business, what are you here for and when did naval petty officers begin marching escort for a shipping agent?”

  Sabatelli told him.

  “Well, the Royster Lines is the tightest of the lot. Don’t let that play of words…rooster-Royster make you think they had much of a sense of humor, or a sense of business either. Jade Rooster’s a sailing barque, but the owners of the line fell in love with steam afore it was really practical and they been payin’ ever since. They been a hard luck line. Those steamers are always runnin’ into somethin’ or disappearin’. Some of them are wood hulled and not efficient. Lost a mail packet contract recently. I think it’s ’cause the owners are tough, too tough on their skippers. Each skipper had better turn a profit if’n he knows what’s a good for ’im. It seems every ship they lose, they increase the profit they want their skippers to haul in each cruise. More pressure on the sailing ship captains to cover the steamers. They’re the ones that can take cargo across the Pacific. Steamers need so much coal; they can only carry passengers. Hull design, hull design, don’t think people pay enough attention to hull design.”

  A Japanese woman not much bigger than a doll came to the door and gave Talmadge a dressing down in gentle Japanese. Hobson understood every word, but she did not realize it.

  Apparently, the boy was difficult. His mixed heritage did not sit easily in a strictly ordered society, even in westward-leaning Yokohama. Probably his father’s professional instability did not help, but his father was too intelligent to settle into just one challenge.

  Hobson watched his eyes dart about their attire and sensed him weigh a series of conclusions. Hobson suspected his observations would be fairly accurate and based on broad experience.

  “That all I know. Can’t say I can give you any answers right now, probably because you fellows don’t know enough yet,” the ropewalk man concluded.

  “Say, either of you ever sailed the Southern Seas? Some people say a penguin is a bird. “’Cept it doesn’t fly. I’m of a mind to challenge that categorization. I’ve been doing some thinking on it. Seems I should write to one of those scientific societies.”

  Sabatelli eventually decided their investigation had reached an impasse. Hobson headed to Tokio before returning to Yokosuka and Pluto.

  Draper gave Hobson only half his attention. As they sat down Hobson noted he was a head shorter than he was and appeared to have slept in his uniform. He was poring over reports and gave polite indications of concern as Hobson recounted his visits and interviews. Then his aura of distraction fell away.

  “What was the name of that high-rolling businessman again? You say he’s got businesses in two major manufacturing towns in Connecticut and doesn’t know anything about guns? That’s pretty much all they do in that state, make guns. Like some hillbilly from the Ozarks ‘not knowin’ nothin’ bout no ‘stills.’”

  “That’s what I thought. Not a name that can be confused with any other, I expect. Now where did I see that name?” He riffled through several mounds of written reports. Most were handwritten, but some used the peculiar appearance left by a new machine called a typewriter. He reached behind him and opened an oak filing cabinet drawer. Hobson noticed a revolver nestled in one folder. Hobson always viewed officers as a singular and distinctly separate species. He wondered if the revolver was filed under “Small Arms” or “New Na
vy Colt” or perhaps, “Tack hammer, expedient, one.”

  “There, Everett Atticaris. You say he was here in Japan? Well, I will have to go visit the man if he is still around—which I expect he is not. Probably gave him heart palpitations seeing you. I expect it did, “ Mr. Draper grinned removing his glasses.

  “He never showed so much as a tremor, though now that you mention it, he was out of that naval hospital pretty quick.”

  “Manufactures sewing machines and typewriters and doesn’t know anything much about guns? He admitted to being from two of the three biggest arms cities in the U.S., Bridgeport, New Haven, the only one he didn’t mention was Hartford and they’re each a dogcart trip away from each other. You want to know who makes sewing machines and typewriters? The big gun companies. Can’t live in those places without eating, drinking, and breathing the virtues of small and not-so-small arms. Mr. Atticaris is in the gun business in a big way, Hobson. A big way. Now the United States government doesn’t mind arms sales one little bit. No, not one little bit.”

  Draper’s head tilted as if he was viewing a picture from a different angle.

  “Except to certain places, like the Philippines. He can sell anything he wants here in Japan, in China, even in Korea, but the only people he’s going to sell to in the Philippines is the United States Army or the United States Navy. I think I’ll get a message off to my counterpart in Manila. You didn’t get any sense he’s behind any filibustering? There’s been a bit of that in the past years and it is hard to keep under control and can be embarrassing.”

  Draper looked over the papers a second time.

  “You know what a Gatling gun is?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I suppose you do. Probably carry one or two in Pluto’s armory, those or Hotchkiss guns or Maxims. Well, he’s got about two dozen to sell. How about a pneumatic dynamite gun?”

  “Well wasn’t Vesuvius…?”

  “Yes, Vesuvius was built expressly as a pneumatic dynamite gun cruiser. Used the Sims-Dudley gun. A little compressed air, a dynamite projectile, and baro-o-o-om. At best, that troublesome shore battery isn’t there anymore or at worst, neurasthenia in epidemic proportions. The army bought a handful of them mounted on wheels…rolled them around like field guns. Then, after our little set-to with the Spaniards, the Army sold a few as surplus. They’re a little short on effective range, but a splendid weapon otherwise. The Navy screwed up the pneumatic gun when it put it on Vesuvius, had to aim the whole ship at the target to fire it. The Army’s weapon is on wheels. You just adjust the barrel. Fantastic demoralizer.”