Dead Man Calling

by Gavin Black

  “O-hairi nasai.”

  We went in as bidden, but the restrained note of the civilised way was exploded when Clynder opened the living-room door, a waft of the party coming out with him. He was a great big booming boy in his late fifties, red-faced, and for as long as could be remembered had clearly been taking life in noisy gulps.

  “Hiya, there. Hallo, Reggie! And who’s this?”

  “I brought a friend, Al.”

  “Any friend of yours is welcome here, as the old Madam said on my first visit when I was practically a nipper.” He pursed his lips. “Wheesh’t! The wife!”

  “How’s Susie?” Reggie asked.

  “Not bad, considering. But she does think about it a lot. It gets on her mind. It would with anyone. That’s why I like people in.” He sucked me into a domestic confidence at once. “Susie’s going home for an operation. Flying over the Pole. Back to old blighty when everything’s fixed up. The trouble is we don’t know exactly when. It keeps us on the jump in a way.” He looked at me carefully and then added for effect. “London Clinic, of course.”

  The introductions by this time seemed a bit uncalled for but Reggie went through the form. Before I could avoid it Al’s arm was about my shoulder, propelling me towards the noise.

  “Listen, everyone, we’ve got somebody new tonight.”

  There was a kind of lull then for cheers, but I didn’t apparently rate them on first sight. I took a quick look round for Marla but she wasn’t there.

  It was quite a room. The Clynders were clearly in a transitional phase, moving from porcelain birds flying up the wallpaper to gesso, and fringed lampshades and buttoned Italian damask upholstery. There were still a great many things from yesterday’s taste they hadn’t thrown out as they brought in today’s, with the result that the place, though it was big enough, gave you claustrophobia at once. A record-player was producing the latest in atonal jazz, fortunately muted, and everyone in the room held not just a glass but a great big outsize joke of a glass with markers on it showing when you could expect to be saturated, super-saturated and sozzled.

  Susie Clynder took my hand. She was a little fair woman, with her hair in a half beehive recently done in Yokohama and somehow she looked like a worried canary.

  “So glad you could come Mr. Harris. Are you new to Japan?”

  I admitted this.

  “Al will get you a drink. We’re old hands out here really. Nine years now. Isn’t it awful? It dates you so. When you go home it’s just like being a visitor from another planet, even if you can get there in absolutely no time. I tell Al I never thought I’d spend the best years of my life listening to temple gongs. Kamakura’s a terrible place for those gongs. They’re going all the time. Have you seen any Japanese festivals, Mr. Harris?”

  “Not yet.”

  “They go on all the time, too. Why isn’t Al getting you that drink? Oh, well, come round and meet people.”

  There were quite a few to meet, a young American couple from next door who were in the silk trade, a German and his fat wife who were in the engineering trade, and a slim, tightly built young man, with dark hair, who was extremely handsome and certainly part Japanese, my guess was about half.

  “This is Harry Komatsu, Mr. Harris. We all love Harry, he’s wonderful fun.”

  Apparently he didn’t do anything for a living. I was conscious of Mr. Komatsu’s eyes on me, appraising, glistening black eyes. When he smiled I saw how very perfect his teeth were. In fact his overall perfection as a specimen was impressive, though it was a bit hard to assess just what he was a specimen of. Certainly not the typical Eurasian.

  The next was a neat little Japanese past middle life, with one gold tooth in front. He was compact and self-contained and looked successful. His English was almost flawless, except for a slight hesitation over some words, and I could sense a great deal of foreign travel behind him.

  “Marla!” Susie called out. “Where’s that girl got to?”

  Marla came through open doors from a terrace. She had somewhere found a dress in Japanese silk that was the tone of those lapis-lazuli plates and those eyes. The effect was really startling. She seemed to move in to us from some place on her own. She showed no surprise at seeing me, not a flicker of it.

  “Looking at the moon, dear?” Susie said. “All by yourself? This is Marla Komatsu, Mr. Harris.”

  Komatsu …? That winded me.

  “I’ve met Mr. Harris,” Marla said, smiling for the first time. “Quite often, in fact.”

  “Oh, dear,” Susie sounded really disappointed, “There are no surprises out here. It’s just a village, isn’t it? One might as well be in the Cotswolds. Where we’ll end up, I suppose.”

  I could just see the cottage in the Cotswolds, twelve rooms, 1936 Tudor, with a straw roof which was a bit of a snag because the last thatcher in the district had died two years before. A really tasty bit of old England that they can never do quite so well on Long Island.

  Al came up then with my glass, which was filled to the saturated level with what looked and smelled like raw branded whisky of the kind that Reggie would sell anywhere but be unlikely to lay in for himself.

  “I assumed you’d want a man’s drink,” Al said, his arm on my shoulder again, tugging me into the Clynder world.

  “Come along, Mr. Harris,” Susie said. “There’s still half a roomful to meet.”

  “Oh, leave him alone, Susie. Can’t you see Harris is right where he wants to be. He can mix later.”

  Marla and I were left alone. She picked up her beaker from a table. She was smiling.

  “I felt so sorry for you this afternoon. Every time I saw you I wanted to stop and let you have a look in my handbag. Because, you see, I wasn’t carrying the diesel plans.”

  CHAPTER IV

  I STOOD looking down into those eyes that were violet and something more, too. Marla’s eyes were warm now … with laughter. When a man is past his mid-thirties he knows all the signs of an emotional situation likely to get out of hand, and soon, but there still isn’t much he can do about it.

  “Where did you learn your tracking?” she asked. “As a rover scout?”

  “When did you first see me?”

  She lifted her glass, sipped and looked at me over the brim, in an elaborate burlesque of coyness. Then the glass went down again.

  “Well, actually, Mr. Harris, the first time was in the lobby of the Benten Building. Then crossing the plaza. Then in the station. Then from the platform. I watched you getting on the train; that was rather deft. Then there seemed to be a long time when you were totally quiescent.”

  “Immobile is the word.”

  “Thanks. The last time was outside Kamakura station. I started this evening with the strongest conviction that before it was over we would meet again. It seemed almost inevitable. Though I admit I wasn’t expecting you to wangle an invitation to this party. You surprised me there. I was out on the terrace before you arrived trying to see if I could spot you disguised as a sand dune.”

  I was quite pleased to have that rumpus room ration of whisky available. It did little for the palate, but it helped to numb away a feeling of nakedness.

  “Did you think I was going to follow you?”

  “Yes, Mr. Harris.”

  “Why?”

  “Because while we had our little chat in the office it suddenly came to me in a flash that you had almost certainly listened in to what Mr. Mikos said to me on the phone. I remembered about the extension in the living-room. I looked at you and asked myself if you were the kind of gent who would listen in on an extension. The answer to that was yes.”

  “Where are the diesel plans?”

  “In that safe deposit box I told you about.”

  “In that case why did Mikos tell you to get them and take them to Mishimando at Shompei Shoten?”

  “Because I have access to that box, and a key, jointly with Mr. Mikos.”

  “That’s trusting a secretary a long way, isn’t it?”

  Her
eyes weren’t smiling any more.

  “As a matter of fact he did trust me. But there are those checks I told you about. I couldn’t just slip into the vault unnoticed.”

  “Why didn’t you go straight to the Dai Nippon Ginko for those plans?”

  “Aren’t you being stupid?” She was sharp. “I believed you didn’t kill Mikos. The real killer might have been watching us. That’s why I came here.”

  “You had a bag waiting.”

  “I was coming anyway.”

  “Have you told anyone here about Mikos?”

  “Of course not. Look, if you want to talk to me, do it later. In about three-quarters of an hour. I’ll meet you on the beach.”

  I went on to talk to a young man from Lucerne who was busy trying to sell Swiss watches to the Japanese, and it had given him a jaundiced view on the Far East. The party was really beginning to get going. Across the room Reggie was accelerating the consumption of one of his imports. He was doing it quietly enough but you could see why he had long ago decided to be driven by a chauffeur. Al bounded about his own room like an amiable Great Dane who wants to be loved.

  When I got out on to the terrace there was a moon. Japanese moons aren’t tropic, nothing gaudy, but they go with the precision of the scene, the delicate detail, as much a part of the print as the red seal of the artist stamped on where he feels it will be most effective. This was a night scene by Hokkusai, the brightly lit town to one side, but the main emphasis on the Pacific Ocean, the silver beach, the bulk of shadowed cliffs. Only the Brueghel figures of the master’s peasants were missing.

  A cigarette glowed in a corner and a metal chair creaked.

  “Quite a night,” Harry Komatsu said, in his Americanised voice.

  He got up and came and leaned on the stone balustrade. The house was built about twenty feet above the sand, on what appeared to be a concrete retaining wall. The thought came to me that it wouldn’t be much of a wall to keep out a tidal wave. It is the kind of thought that comes pretty frequently in Japan.

  “It’s a wonderful beach,” I said.

  Komatsu gave me the benefit of his profile, against the lights from Kamakura.

  “Yes. Now. It didn’t used to be so hot, not till the twenty-three ‘quake. During that the sea bottom rose, and suddenly we had the makings of a resort. Beach houses and all. I wonder how long it’ll last?” He laughed. “It gets you sometimes, the way these people just won’t see the obvious.”

  These people? Something stiffened in me at that. He was rejecting half his life.

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “Meaning that they go on repeating patterns. Even when they know what’s waiting. This town shouldn’t be here at all. For that matter Tokyo and Yokohama shouldn’t be there, either. One day, wham. We’ve got rubble again.”

  Anger was quite real in his voice, pressing to the surface.

  “I suppose if you have earthquakes you must learn to live with them,” I said.

  “You don’t have to rebuild on a fault … deliberately. On the very spot. That’s what they do. They always go back.”

  He flicked his cigarette away and the arc of its red fall to the beach was surprisingly long. The little flight of fire seemed to go on and on. Then Komatsu turned and went in to the party.

  I went down on to the sand, by a flight of steps at the end of the terrace, to walk at first where it was soft and yielding, then farther out where the sea moulded it into damp solidity. I thought about Marla married to this man. I was still thinking about that when I turned and saw her coming towards me.

  She was wearing a dark evening-coat of some stiff material that might have been heavy Japanese silk or taffeta. It rustled a little to her movement. The moonlight made her face seem pale and whitened her hair, but she looked composed enough. Indeed, I’d had the feeling since meeting her here that she had somehow got rid of that earlier terror which had shown so plainly. She was now like someone who is quite certain again that she is on the winning team.

  “It’s a relief to get out of there,” I said. “Do the Clynders go in for this sort of thing a lot?”

  “Too much. It’s Al. He’s afraid if he stops he’ll hear the ticking. I get sorry for Susie. I don’t think noise is what she needs to take her mind off herself at all.”

  “A serious operation?”

  “Yes.” Marla made that final.

  We walked on a short way. I was conscious of Marla looking at the side of my head. I was glad it was my better profile, the other is a bit battered.

  “Everyone is calling you Paul. It would be silly of me to stay formal. When do you expect the police knocking at your door?”

  “They might reach you first.”

  “It’s possible. On the other hand they know where to get me. That makes me less interesting. My hotel knew I was coming here. I do quite often. Your sudden trip to Kamakura mayn’t be so easy to explain.”

  “I’m saying I got hot in Tokyo.”

  “The police will love that. I take it you’re still counting on me not saying anything about your little visit to the office?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s asking a lot of a girl. Especially if things warm up. You might have been seen in the Benten Building.”

  “I’ll simply say that I went to the office and found the door locked. That lets you out.”

  “Yes,” Marla said quietly. “I’ll help you, Paul.”

  “Thanks. That leaves only the hotel maid. And Reggie Spratt.”

  “Reggie?” Something had stiffened in her voice, “You didn’t tell me.”

  “It didn’t seem important. I just met him there, the way you’re bound to see someone you know in the place. Don’t you react well to Reggie?”

  “I … I hadn’t thought about it. I’ve only met him here.”

  “Never in Mikos’s office?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He tells me he was after the plans, too.”

  “He … told you that!”

  “Is it a surprise, or did you know?”

  “I hadn’t an idea!”

  “Confidential secretary with a key to the deposit box and you didn’t even know all the bidders for the diesel?”

  “Are you saying I’m lying? I tell you I didn’t know!”

  “All right.”

  She wasn’t so sure of herself now, quite a long way from that.

  “How did you get that job with Mikos?”

  “Is this an interrogation?”

  “You said you’d answer my questions.”

  “Very well. I got it the way most girls get a job. By answering an ad in the papers.”

  “You hadn’t heard of Mikos before you did that?”

  “Of course I hadn’t. What are you getting at?”

  “I’m just trying to see every side of the picture, and it’s not easy.”

  I had the curious feeling then that this talk between us had been arranged, and perhaps not by Marla herself, that she might be playing a part, even to orders. At the moment she was a bit rattled.

  I turned and looked down at her.

  “Look, Marla, I’m not just keeping out of this thing, trying to avoid the police. It may have seemed like that. But I’ve another purpose. I’m going to find the man who killed Mikos.”

  The fear came into her eyes then, the same fear that had come to her when she first heard Mikos was dead. It did the same thing for her face, terror somehow changing her, slackening her control. She fought not to let it show, but wasn’t successful.

  “Isn’t that something for the police?” she said finally.

  “When they catch up with me I want to be in a stronger position to fight a murder rap.”

  “But Paul … you’ll be all right if I don’t say anything. They can’t prove you were in the suite!”

  “No. But they can prove I was near it. And at the time. At best my position isn’t healthy.”

  “If you think a foreigner in Japan can carry on a solitary man-hunt
… why, you’re crazy!”

  “It’s not easy. But while I’m free I’m going to keep trying.”

  “Then they will put a noose round your neck!”

  The way she said that, quickly, without thinking, shook me. It was as though she didn’t mean the police at all.

  “What’s your alternative to trying to find the real killer?” I asked quietly.

  Marla bit her lower lip.

  “Paul, I should have thought the thing for you to be doing now was to try and make your alibis as watertight as possible. I’m not going to tell about you coming to the office. And if Reggie Spratt didn’t say anything about seeing you …”

  “Oh, I’m to throw myself on Reggie’s mercy?”

  “Foreigners in this country have to stick together. It’s the only way. If Reggie believes you didn’t do it, of course he’ll help.”

  “And what about the hotel maid? Do we track her down and offer her a life pension in dollars for not having seen me?”

  “Is it so impossible?”

  “It’s looney, Marla. You know, if you stopped to think about it, this could look almost as though you were working for the real killer.”

  She took a step towards me.

  “What the devil do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s probably just coincidence. But let’s look at things from the killer’s angle. Wouldn’t it suit his books to have me arrested for the murder? And quickly? You bet it would. I should think he would be most anxious to help me to accept the inevitable without making a fuss. Because the moment I was arrested the white glare of police interest would be on me. That would leave the killer the convenient shadows in which to get on with the business of selling stolen plans.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something? The plans haven’t been stolen!”

  “I’ve got a hunch, Marla, that they are no longer safely in the vaults of the Dai Nippon Ginko. And now I think I’ll go in to the party.”

  From the terrace I looked back and saw her still standing there on the beach. She hadn’t moved.