Tokyo Enigma (22 page)

Nozaka dragged him toward the river and pressed his hand
on the back of Yamazaki's neck.

A gray film of horror clouded Yamazaki's eyes.

"Where is Shiyoda?"

"
Ito
.
Ito no ie
." At Ito's home. Nozaka let go of
him, and he curled up like I had done. He was conscious enough to
feel the cold.

"What do you think?" Nozaka said.

"Whether she's there or not, he probably believes it. We
need to find Yuri, but be careful. There are two more."

"I don't think so. The cars are gone."

"What about the recording?"

"I left it and ran. I guess one of them got it."

It made sense. The plainclothes didn't know how many
Nozakas there were among the trees. Why take a bigger risk than
necessary? They had the key to the safe deposit box.

Yamazaki was still shivering. I wrenched his arm behind his
back. Nozaka helped me pull off his coat. This was for Yuri and
Sayoko and maybe Maho, if he'd had anything to do with that. I
threw his coat into the river. The night was cold, but not freezing.
Yamazaki was a tough guy with a lot of body mass. Maybe he'd be all
right. Maybe he wouldn't. Either way, I granted myself
absolution.

"Let's get Yuri."

A little way along the riverbank, we found Yamazaki's gun. I
picked it up for evidence. We retraced my path through the woods as
well as I could remember it. I had a good idea of the direction, but I
couldn't get a good feel for how far I'd run. After we walked three or
four minutes, I started calling Yuri's name. It wasn't long before we
heard her answer.

I hadn't expected her to giggle when she saw us. At first, I
thought she was giddy and just glad that we were safe. Then I looked
at Nozaka. He was in his shirtsleeves and rubbing his arms to keep
warm. I had on a coat two sizes too small.

"Your clothes are wet."

"I nearly drowned. I also got shot. Otherwise, I'm fine, in
case you were curious. Nozaka-san's okay too, except he's cold." I
started to take off his coat, but he told me to keep it. I didn't
argue.

Yuri apologized. In fact, she was giddy from pain and nerves.
Her ankle had gotten worse. It was swollen and stiff. She couldn't put
any weight on it at all. Nozaka lifted her across his shoulders in a
fireman's carry. We avoided the clearing, where we had been taken
earlier, in case there was anyone left who wanted revenge. I doubted
it, but better cautious. Walking slowly and carefully and making rest
stops, it took us half an hour to get to Nozaka's car. It was parked
behind trees, hidden from the gravel road.

We lay Yuri on the back seat, so she could elevate her foot.
Nozaka's coat was too tight for a comfortable ride. I gave it back to
him but kept the sweater. Nozaka fired up the engine. The blast of
heat from the car's air-control system was a blessing that I would
have paid a month's salary for.

I thought about Yamazaki curled up on the riverbank, wet
with no coat. Better him than me.

When we got to Tokyo, Nozaka took us to a hospital
emergency room. Yuri had her ankle wrapped and got some pain
medicine and a pair of crutches. I was worried about showing my leg
to a doctor. A bullet wound would be hard to explain, but he might
not recognize it for what it was. The round had torn across the
surface of skin and muscle. There could be other ways to account for
that kind of injury. I just said I fell down an embankment and didn't
know how I had cut myself.

The intern, or whatever he was, looked young enough to be
working on his First Aid merit badge. In the Japanese system, you
could become a doctor at the age of twenty-three or twenty-four. He
didn't look even that old, but he did look suspicious. Nevertheless, he
sewed me up, bandaged me and gave me pain medicine. He also told
me to come back the next day.

No thanks.

It wasn't a good idea to take Yuri to her apartment. She
shouldn't be alone, and I still had things to do before sun up. We took
her to Protect Agency and found a cot for her to sleep on. A sprained
ankle could have been luck or fate. Whichever, it was the ticket to
tame a Missouri mule like her. I kissed her goodnight, and she asked
me to promise to go to my hotel to sleep. I smiled and squeezed her
hand.

Sorry Yuri.

I had other plans.

* * * *

I gave Nozaka all the information I had on Ito's residence.
When he got us there, I recognized the place. He parked some
distance away. We walked back to the house and checked the
security equipment. The only cameras we could see were focused on
the front gate and front door. The gate was probably wired. We
couldn't get to the rear of the house without going through it or
breaking into her backdoor neighbor's yard. The wall was topped by
rounded tiles, which would be hard, but not impossible, to grab onto.
I boosted Nozaka up, so he could get a look at each side of the house.
He found a gable on the second story that looked accessible. We'd
have to climb from the wall to a tree, but he said that it looked like
the best route. Windows on the first level were secured with metal
storm shutters.

So the gable it was. "We smash through a window?"

"No."

We went back to his car. He had an impressive
break-and-enter kit, including a bolt cutter and a hacksaw. We wouldn't need
those. He put a set of picks, an industrial grade glasscutter and a
rubber suction cup into a knapsack. Said he was ready.

Me too.

Nozaka braced his back to the wall and cupped his hands. I
stepped into them with one foot, planted the other on his shoulder
and clambered up to straddle the wall. He reached for my hand. I
grabbed him like John Wayne rescuing a stranded compadre from a
galloping horse, but without the momentum. He scraped his knees
getting traction.

We inched along the top of the wall, reached out to a big
limb and let ourselves down onto the gable's small ledge. Not much
room to work.

I felt like an arthritic contortionist holding the suction cup
stuck to one pane, while Nozaka carved along the edges. The screech
of cutter on glass sounded loud enough to wake Van Winkle, but we
were in the magic hour between the last reveler to return home and
the first paperboy to hit the streets. Groggiest time for sleepers.

Nozaka popped out the pane, reached in to unlock the
window and eased it open.

The gable was above a bathtub. Nozaka dropped in first, as
quiet as mist in his rubber-soled shoes, and clicked on his flashlight. I
removed my leather loafers and left them on the ledge. When I
squeezed, feet first, through the window, my foot touched a faucet
that swiveled. I pushed it away and stepped into Madam Ito's lair.
From the bath, a beveled glass door opened into a room that had an
over-and-under washer-dryer, a sink, a medicine cabinet and a towel
closet. There was a film of soap and strands of hair in the sink.

Flashlight off, Nozaka opened the door into a hallway.

Flashlight on. We counted doors: three on one side, two on
the other and one at the end.

Flashlight off. We tried the door next to the bath. It was the
toilet.

The second door opened into a workroom or library. The
third room was a mess of junk. The fourth door was locked.

I held the flashlight, while Nozaka shimmied a rake into the
keyhole and eased the door open. He was fast and quiet. The door
opened into a bedroom where a woman with long hair was
asleep.

Sayoko.

Nozaka kneeled close to her ear and whispered her name.
She mumbled to herself and flung the sheet back. She had on a satin
gown with thin straps and lace across the neckline. Sexy but
matronly. It must have been Ito's.

I don't know what Nozaka was saying after she started
blinking her eyes open, but he brought her around gently. She
recognized us and didn't cry out. Nozaka pantomimed orders for
Sayoko to come with us quickly. She pantomimed back that she
wanted to pack. I pulled the cover off a pillow, found her purse and
some clothes and stuffed them into it. The last of the mimes, I
grabbed her shoulders and marched her out the door and to the
bath.

I put my shoes on while Nozaka helped Sayoko out the
window. After they were both clear of the ledge, I started to climb
up. My shoe slipped on the edge of the bath. When I stepped back I
hit the top of the swiveling faucet. Big noise, but it got me up to the
window. By the time I had climbed from the tree limb to the fence,
lights were going on in the house. Nozaka and Sayoko jumped to the
street. I followed like a two-hundred-pound spider monkey and had
nearly caught up with them by the time they reached the car. Nozaka
backed down the street with his lights off and turned onto the first
cross street we came to. I heard a gate crash open.

See you in court, Ito-san.

We took Sayoko to Protect Agency, woke up Yuri and had a
brief and happy reunion. The sun was just up by the time I got back
to the hotel. I looked like a homeless water rat, but there were only a
couple of people on duty. They ignored me, or at least appeared to.
Some things were best left for the day crew.

The adrenalin charge of fright, flight and fight that had
masked my pain had drained away, replaced by the gentle nurse of
fatigue. I undressed and saw that my leg was bleeding again. I
wrapped a towel around the bloodstained bandage, took pills to kill
pain and to beckon sleep and went to bed.

It was dark when I awoke. My throat was dry and sore. I
cupped my hands under the faucet and drank the water running
through them until my stomach grew taut. An ache in my bones
described a fever. Maybe infection from the river, but I was too tired
to tend to it. I had gone to sleep not long after dawn and slept
through the day. It was dark out, and I went back to bed.

Rap, knock, rap, knock. The sounds came in twos,
syncopated, light then hard. I saw a crow, heard a caw. A raven
rapping, tapping at my hotel door. A furnace burned in my head, but
my skin felt chilled when I pulled back the bed covers. I limped to the
door. It was Yuri.

"I brought goodies." She grinned and hobbled in on crutches.
A big shopping bag dangled from one hand along the shaft of a
crutch. "Get back in bed."

I did.

"You look better," she said.

"Better than what?"

"Yesterday. I was here yesterday. You don't
remember?"

I shook my head.

"You were pretty groggy. I didn't stay long, but I was able to
figure out you needed these." She sat on the bed and pulled a
package of bubble-wrapped pills out of the shopping bag. "These are
for pain and fever. These are sleeping pills. They're stingy with those.
These are antibiotics."

"How'd you snare that?"

"I went back to the emergency room and talked them out of
the pain and fever drugs, sleeping pill and one set of antibiotics." She
held up three pills wrapped in blue. "I said you were in a bad way
and couldn't come in. That's it though. Next time you gotta go
yourself."

I reached for a set of pills wrapped in yellow that she hadn't
touched. There were about twenty pills.

"Those are more antibiotics," she said. "The hospital only
gave me three, one day's worth."

"Where'd you get the other set?"

"From a VD clinic. I figured you'd need more, so I asked
Ota-san to help. You remember Mai, your traveling companion?"

"Yeah, I'm not her type."

"Nah, she said you were okay for an old guy. Anyway, she
went to a VD clinic and gave them the right symptoms, but refused to
be examined. I guess they didn't want an infected lass wandering the
streets, so they gave her the cure. Might work for water germs."

"That's public health. Won't they..."

"She used Maho-san's alias ID. Let's see that leg." Yuri took
off the bandage, applied antiseptic and put on a new dressing. "Does
it hurt?"

"Not now. How's your ankle?"

"A nuisance. I had it X-rayed. Nothing's broken, but a sprain
can seem worse than a break at first. I got a cortisone shot. Should be
off the crutches in a week or so."

"You need to elevate it whenever possible." I put a pillow
down for her foot, and she lay with her head on my chest. I nuzzled
my cheek against her hair and combed my fingers through it. It
smelled of winter, clean and stark. Her breast rose against me as our
breathing flowed in and out of sync. Maybe our thoughts did too. We
talked only a little about mundane things. She'd brought fruit and
snacks as well as medicine. Driving with a sprained foot was tough.
It'd be nice to spend the winter in Kyushu, or Australia, or Truk.

After a while, she lifted her head and looked up at me. I
sensed the words before she spoke.

"It's time I should go."

I wanted to tell Time to take the day off, take a year. Right
then, I wouldn't have minded firing the bum and kicking his sorry
self into eternity.

"You ought not get out of bed today, but if you're up to it,
how about we have a meeting here this evening, Sayoko, Nozaka and
Morimoto? I've been out of touch, myself. We can't leave it hanging
too long."

I looked in the shopping bag. "Bananas, almonds and four
kinds of pills. I'll be fine."

"Just don't take the sleepy stuff, until night time."

"Everything but. Goodbye Yuri."

I ate half a banana and chased it with a packet of powder to
protect my stomach from the medicine I was about to take. In
Vietnam, twenty-year-old medics and corpsmen invented cures to
ailments that American doctors had never encountered. I knew one
who brewed a yellow salve to kill a fungus that ate white blotches
across skin. Another concoction of antibiotics cured a fever. The
medic said the key was one massive dose. Otherwise, the bug
seemed to gain resistance. It was worth a try. I took a palm full of
antibiotic pills and two fever pills. Three hours later, I was sopping
wet with sweat but cool as a beat-poet iceman. I rubbed myself down
with a damp towel, shaved, drank about a gallon of water and ate a
little.
Bring 'em on Yuri.