Cash Cassidy Adventures: The Complete 5-Book Series (Plus Bonus Novels)

by K. T. Tomb

  It never came. As he turned around to see, he saw five motorcycles, each carrying a biker and a pillion passenger. The passengers were dismounting, and from heavy jackets they pulled a variety of cudgels and knives. One of the bikers hauled off his helmet, and pointed at Travis and Savannah. He yelled something in Japanese, and the next thing he knew Savannah was pulling his arm, and they were running as fast as they could, the bikers in pursuit on foot through the fully pedestrian market.

  Chapter Nine

  Shop fronts and small apartment tenements flew by in a blur as Travis and Savannah pushed themselves to bursting to stay ahead of their pursuers.

  It was no easy task, as while Savannah was in decent shape, Travis had not done any kind of exercise in months. His heart was about to bore a hole through his chest, and spots were exploding in negative iridescent colors in front of his eyes. Savannah dragged him by the hand to the left, and they ran down a side street, the bikers a mere forty feet or so behind, fighting their way through the crowd of busy morning shoppers. They were having significantly more trouble moving as a group, and several pedestrians found themselves flung to the floor in the commotion; the braver or more foolhardy ones rising to shout their annoyance at the thugs.

  The narrow alley was overhung by low rooftops, and almost entirely blocked with wheelbarrows and bicycles, no doubt left there by market traders who would not need them until the end of their business day. Savannah cleanly vaulted a handcart; Travis was following as best he could when he recognized a face peeking out of one of the doors that lined the tiny side street. This surprised him, as he knew fairly few faces in this country, but he was unmistakable. It was Ryo Suzuki, beckoning them towards him. Before he could shout to attract Savannah’s attention, she had seen Ryo herself and nearly barreled the boy over due to her flat out speed. Travis caught up, slipped into the doorway and Ryo shut and bolted it behind them.

  “How did you—” Savannah began, but Ryo pressed his finger to his lips, and gestured for them to follow him. They were in what looked to be a green grocer’s storeroom; sacks of onions, cases of what looked like komatsuna, daikon and what looked like some kind of long green chili pepper were neatly stacked near the doorway they had entered, and a pair of single dim bulbs illuminated the room enough for them to see that there was a shuttered door that was clearly for delivery vans to back into at one end, and a wooden stair case leading up. Ryo pointed to the stair case, and as quietly as they could, Savannah and Travis followed him. The stairs led to a long attic space, underneath the slate roofs of the buildings that formed the walls of the alleyway they had just come down. On hands and knees, although Ryo could make it through by crouching, they made their way slowly and conscious of any stray sound, although Travis was sure that the bustle outside would cover any stray steps they would make. He was still panting hard, and his shirt was slicked with sweat. He had no idea who the thugs were, but they had shouted something which had sparked Savannah’s flight.

  Ryo opened a small hatch in the floor some fifty feet away from the stairs they had come up on, quickly lowered a small wooden ladder, and disappeared down to ground floor level again. By this point, they had kicked up enough dust that their clothes were covered in it and it had congealed with their sweat to leave an unpleasant paste on their foreheads. It was in this state that they followed Ryo down the ladder, and into a well-lit house, which was clearly not the abode of a rich person, but it seemed homely. Ryo was talking fast to someone in another room.

  “Savannah, tell me please,” Travis said.” What the hell is going on, and who the hell were those guys?”

  “I don’t know. They just shouted “there they are” and “get them” and it was clear that sticking around to chat wasn’t on the agenda. Somehow I don’t think they were Mormon missionaries.”

  Despite the exertion and the sweat, Ryo came back in the room to find his two unannounced guests in fits of laughter. With him was an ancient woman, less than five feet tall. Right behind her was a man who, if anything, looked even older. The elderly lady was wearing a simple black shift, her thinning hair pulled back in a bun and held firmly in place with a pair of chopsticks. The man wore a cheap brown suit that looked at least as old as Travis, if not Travis’ father. The elderly lady sat on a small futon, and gestured for Savannah and Travis to do the same. The old man remained standing, supporting himself with a cane.

  Before Ryo could make introductions, Travis wanted some answers. He wasn’t sure if he was being rude or not according to the local custom, but he did not care.

  “Ryo, where in hell are we? Who were those men?”

  Ryo held his hands up in a placating gesture, Travis noticed his hands were still bunched, adrenaline still pumping through his system. He unclenched his fists.

  “Mr. Travis, you are in the home of my grandparents, Megumi Iwate,” he gestured to the old woman, “and Masahiko Iwate. You will be safe here.”

  The old man seemed to not be fully aware of the strangers in his house.

  Ryo continued, “My mother is working in her vegetable stall. I was getting some supplies from the storerooms for her, when I saw the yakuza chasing you. They’re not really yakuza though, that’s just what they call themselves.”

  Ryo shook his head, a sad smile on his face. His eyes were partly shielded by his baseball cap sitting low on his brow.

  “So what did they want with us?” Savannah said, “I wouldn’t think we’d be prime targets for a mugging in broad daylight.”

  Ryo actually laughed.

  “Don’t you remember what I said? I told you not to go and pull the tail of the Himiko people. The gang works for them, putting pressure on the independent shop keepers to sell their property to Himiko, beating up those that refuse, that kind of thing. The police are paid to leave them alone so long as they don’t get too crazy. Looks like you asked the wrong questions.”

  The boy removed his baseball cap and shook out his hair, which was surprisingly long and unkempt for a boy of his age. Dusting himself down a little, trying not to get too much on the futon, Travis looked at the elderly couple, then back to Ryo.

  “Well, all that tells me is this; the mine is real. Kinagawa made a grave mistake. If there was no mine, and he doesn’t have the deed in his possession, then why would his goons come after us? It would have been a smarter move to just let us fumble around in the dark, but now we know that we’re on to something.” He looked back at the Iwate couple. “Do they speak English? Do they know anything about the amethyst mine?”

  Ryo shook his head.

  “My grandfather doesn’t speak much at all even in Japanese, and it’s usually not very clear what he says. Grandmother has dementia, but she’s happy enough. I can ask them about the mine, but don’t be hopeful.”

  Ryo turned to his grandfather, and spoke slowly to him. Savannah and Travis took the opportunity to have a hushed conversation of their own.

  “I don’t like how quick Kinagawa was to sanction the use of force,” Savannah said, “It betrays a certain sense of megalomania; crush your enemies swiftly, and so on. We have to be more cautious.”

  “We have to get the hell out of Tochigi, you mean.” Travis said.

  Ryo had turned back to them. The boy looked confused, and a little sad.

  “Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru go to meet Izanami with glad hearts, he says. I don’t know what he means by that, I told you he doesn’t speak much. He’s been like this for as long as I can remember.”

  “Who are Mizaru, Kikazaru and… who?” Travis said.

  This was futile, he felt, talking to a senile green grocer while armed thugs stalked the streets looking for them.

  “Izanami! Nikko! Izanami! Nikko!” The old man chanted, waving his wizened paws like scales in the air.

  “Nikko? The Amethyst Temple?” Savannah said.

  Travis was struck by an idea.

  “Ryo, we need to get out of Tochigi. We can’t stay here while these men are looking for us. Do you have a car we can use?”
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  If they could get out to Nikko, the thugs may well assume that he and Savannah had been scared off completely.

  “We have an old delivery van, it’s slow but it should get us there,” Ryo said. “If you’re going to Nikko, you’ll need my help, right?”

  Savannah and Travis looked at each other, unable to think of a reason to leave Ryo behind.

  “Good. I can’t drive, so I’ll read the map, ok?”

  The boy grinned broadly. It was an adventure for him, Travis thought. Considering adventure is what he signed up for, he didn’t feel like this one was turning out in any way that he had expected.

  Chapter Ten

  Try as they might, Mr. Iwate would not expound on what he meant by ‘Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru go to meet Izanami with glad hearts’, but only muttered the name of the town of Nikko a few more times, before shuffling off to make some tea. More confused than ever, Savannah and Travis cleaned themselves up as best they could, and returned to find Ryo dressed for winter in thick coat, gloves and instead of his familiar red baseball cap he had put on a warm looking winter hat. He held in his hands two old but serviceable padded jackets, which on trying fitted Savannah and Travis reasonably well.

  “Nikko is quite high in the mountains; it is not uncommon for snow to come at this time of year,” Ryo said.

  Bidding farewell to Ryo’s grandparents; Mrs. Iwate still completely silent and the senile Mr. Iwate trying to hold on to Ryo to tell him something that seemed important, yet only succeeding in flustering himself a little more, the unlikely team made their way cautiously the short distance to the delivery van Ryo had promised. Something was tickling in Travis’ mind alongside the paranoid fear that he could hear approaching motorcycle engines. The van was an ancient Toyota, rusted and well-worn, but it started the first time Savannah turned the key. The front seats were big enough for the three of them to fit on, which was fortunate as there were no back seats at all, just a flatbed with sidings which still had a couple of wooden pallets on it. Travis pushed a toy monkey on a loop of elastic from its position where it slightly obscured the rear view mirror.

  “Did you get this in Nikko?” he said, absentmindedly fingering the doll as Savannah pulled the truck out of the street where it was parked and onto the main road.

  “Go right,” Ryo said to Savannah, and then to Travis, he said, “Yes, I think I told you about the monkeys yesterday, right? There are lots of them in Nikko, you’ll see them. “They’ll rob you though, if you let them.”

  Travis couldn’t quite place what was on his mind; an elusive memory of something. His mental filing cabinet was usually so well organized, but of late he had been misplacing information, simple stuff that he had known for years. The monkey was familiar; something to do with his studies of anthropology, which was strange, as usually he was concerned with the study of human kind and not the animal kingdom. Fiona was the teams’ environmentalist; she should be the one thinking about chimps, locked in her cell in England. Monkeys were still scampering through his mind as the truck pulled onto the Tochigi Expressway, purple grey mountains topped with snow slowly made themselves known as the conurbation ended and the skies lightened to allow the sun through for the first time that day.

  The sunshine had a positive effect on Savannah in particular, and she fell back into her usual habit of singing along to Motown songs on the radio as she drove, which Travis took as a sign that she was having a good time. It was the first time he had heard her do that in a while. It was almost like they weren’t looking for a needle in a haystack with people looking for them to visit violence upon their heads. Ryo had taken to singing along just as badly as Savannah. It sounded to Travis like they had moved on from Curtis Mayfield and were now butchering Marvin Gaye, although with Ryo clearly not knowing many of the words.

  Within half an hour, it was clear that Ryo was entirely superfluous to requirements as a map reader. The road signs, which were helpfully written in English underneath the Japanese lettering, showed that Nikko would only take another thirty minutes or so provided the antique van didn’t give up the ghost. Ryo had clearly come along for the excitement, which Travis reasoned was fair enough seeing the conversation at home was clearly limited. He got as comfortable as he could on the cracked faux leather seat without pushing Ryo into the gearstick, and let his eyes slide over the scenery outside.

  The next thing he knew, Travis was being shaken awake by Ryo. The van had come to a stop, and his mind immediately assumed that it had broken down. As he woke fully from his doze, he saw that in fact the little delivery vehicle had performed its duties well and delivered them safely to what he assumed was Nikko. It was a peculiar place. Travis yawned, stretched and felt the vertebrae in his neck pop in their familiar, satisfactory manner. Savannah had already exited the cab, but Travis was blocking Ryo’s exit.

  “Come on, sleepy! Time to go!”

  Ryo was unreasonably excited, Travis felt, but he unclipped his seat belt and got out of the van. Nikko seemed sparse and grey in the afternoon gloom. Low buildings, three stories at the tallest, lined the street. His eye was naturally drawn to the imposing snow-capped mountain. It was unavoidable, seeing as it was the skyline, so close was Nikko situated to it. It gave Travis a slight sense of vertigo, as if he were an ant crawling up the face of a god.

  “So now what?”

  Savannah had walked around the rear of the van, and her voice felt so close Travis imagined he felt her breath on his ear.

  “We’re here, on the basis of some old man saying the name of the town. What next?”

  “We need to find Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru and Izanami. Or what was it? ‘Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru go to meet Izanami with glad hearts’, right? So if we find the first three, we can ask them to take us to Izanami. Maybe she knows where this mine is.”

  Travis knew he was stretching here. There was only the word of a senile old man to suggest that these people even existed.

  “Ryo, you know this place, right? Who can we talk to? Think of someone who knows a lot of people.”

  Ryo was adjusting his woolen hat. The boy had been right to dress for the tundra, it was late afternoon and the temperature up here was beginning to drop.

  “I don’t know many people, but there are lots of monks who tend the temples here. I met one the last time I was here. He might remember me; he bandaged me up when I was bitten by the monkey.”

  Travis looked around. The temples Ryo was referring to were clearly visible. Despite their age, no buildings in Nikko had yet overshadowed them in terms of height or grandeur. One looked to be at least ten stories tall, off in the distance to the west. He couldn’t see any monkeys; however there were several signs on the street displaying pictograms instructing visitors not to feed the primates. Savannah scooped her long blonde hair into a rough bun at the back of her head and settled a beanie over the top— Travis checked the pockets of his borrowed coat, but found no hat to wear.

  “Ok, Ryo. That sounds like the best option now. Which temple are the monks in? There seems to be a lot of temples here—wait a minute, wasn’t there an ‘amethyst’ temple?”

  Ryo stroked his chin, “I think that means the Nikkō Tōshō-gū, it’s very highly decorated, very old, too. Like five hundred years old, or something like that. Hando—that’s the priest who helped me—he might be there. We’re not in tourist season but people still come to see it, so most of the priests are there too.”

  Savannah clapped her hands, a gesture that meant an end to discussion and Ryo led them towards the temples through the modern streets. Nikko as a modern settlement was only a small town, Travis realized as they walked. If the Namarisawa family really had lived here, they must have been quite well known. Unfortunately it was unlikely that anyone was old enough to remember them now.

  As he pondered the problem of locating the next clue, he was brought back to the present by a laugh from Savannah.

  “Travis, Look!” she said, pointing across the street.

  Following her ex
tended arm with his eyes, he saw an irate shopkeeper, and what looked like several grey dogs about the size of Alsatians. Not dogs, he realized. Monkeys. Pink faced, and clutching a variety of stolen goods from the shop they had just raided. The shopkeeper did not get too close to the animals, but yelled at them from a safe distance. Both sides of the argument were keeping a wary distance, with good reason, Travis thought. He had been expecting something like capuchins, marmosets or something, but these were serious animals.

  “Ryo, one of these things bit you? I’m surprised it didn’t take your arm off,” Savannah said.

  “It was only a little one. The big ones are strong; they can easily gang up on people and beat them. Most of the shopkeepers put bananas out for them, to try and stop them from stealing valuable things, which has made many more monkeys, which makes them steal more… I guess this guy ran out of bananas.”

  The monkeys who had raided the shop scampered away, carrying a variety of fruit and vegetables. One smaller one was struggling under the weight of a huge watermelon. Travis made a personal note to avoid the beasts at all costs, as the animals disappeared around the back of the shops, and the three humans passed under a Torii marking the beginning of the temple district.

  Chapter Eleven

  Under different circumstances Savannah and Travis could have happily spent a lifetime investigating the Shinto temples of Nikko.

  By any standards they were ornate; some verging on gaudy to the western eye, brightly painted carvings covered nearly every external and internal wall, telling stories of Japanese legends and myths. Despite their pressing business, they couldn’t prevent themselves from discussing the historical and anthropological meanings of the carvings as only lecturers are able to do; which is to say, it was highly tedious for Ryo to listen to. He politely put up with it as long as he could, but eventually interrupted Travis as he was for the fifth time thinking out loud about a particular pictogram of the creation of the earth and insisted they move on to the Nikkō Tōshō-gū itself.