Dead Man Calling

by Gavin Black

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone who knows your mother.”

  “Oh,” he said, the surprise gone. His eyes had identified him before this.

  I wondered how much they had identified him in the life he had to live. Without Marla’s eyes he could have passed as a Japanese boy, of the Yamato type, taller than most, and a little bit swifter than his age group, though perhaps not so solid or tough. If he lived with Harry Komatsu on the Japanese side those eyes would shout his origins all day long, at his school, and in whatever home he had. His eyes could have made him a stranger.

  “Where do you live, Joe?”

  “Kyushu. It’s a long way. You go by train. And then you cross from Kobe in a boat.”

  “Which means you don’t get to Kamakura very often?”

  “I haven’t been for a year.” He stared at the sea then. What he said next was blurted out.

  “I haven’t seen Mom for a year.”

  There was pain behind that. He wanted Marla. He didn’t see her. An anger against Harry Komatsu curled in me.

  “What’s your name?” Joe asked.

  “Paul Harris.”

  “You got black hair, too.”

  He was looking at me, as though he was noticing my eyes, which are blue, but a plain standard shade. Joe was also noticing the purple marks, but was too polite for any comment.

  “You’ve got a lot of oil on you,” he said.

  “I’m toasting myself. To get back my tan. I’ve been staying in the shade so long I lost it.”

  Joe smiled. It gave me the feeling it wasn’t something he did a great deal, that he rationed his smiles from habit and experience. I was as certain then as if he’d told me that in Joe’s world there in Kyushu his smiles didn’t get him anything, and he’d found this out. The anger against Harry moved on to Joe’s mother, that she could let this happen, the slick blonde secretary who worked in Tokyo only seeing her child at set intervals, once in a year this time, and maybe only then from some kind of residual pushing of duty. At eight Joe didn’t seem to me to have a lot he could reach out and hold. Maybe Marla wasn’t up yet, and the kid was walking about waiting for her to come out on the beach.

  Every now and then you’re presented with something you just can’t turn from, and you know it at once. It doesn’t fit with anything else that is happening and can’t easily be made to, but you can’t turn away.

  I had that feeling about Joe in the hot sun, on a beach that we’d both reached in a kind of accident. I remembered my own boy and the failure that had been written for me by his death. It was scar tissue on the spirit and it didn’t fade.

  I heard Marla’s voice then, from well down the beach.

  “Joe! Joe, where are you?”

  The boy stood at once.

  “That’s Mom. I’ve got to go.”

  “Why don’t you just go on hiding here? Let her find you.”

  He looked doubtful. It wasn’t a game he’d played often, hiding from his mother, not in the little time she allowed him.

  “All right,” he said, solemnly.

  He sat down again, uneasy, leaning forward, sharp elbows on his knees, and I could see tension on the boy’s face then. It made me feel more than a fool for having suggested this little game.

  “Joe! Joe, where are you?”

  Marla’s voice was taut with fear. A mother’s terror for her son was naked in her voice, and a lot of the things I’d been thinking about her slid away right then. Whatever she was she cared about Joe.

  “Go on, kid,” I said, scarcely able to bear myself right then.

  Joe ran out from behind the dune and I heard Marla say, over and over, “But what were you doing? Why were you hiding from me, Joe?” It was as though it wasn’t a game she had time to play either, she wanted Joe with her, within sight during a ration of their hours together.

  I hoped they’d go away together, but they didn’t.

  “It was the man, he said to hide.”

  “What man?”

  “Come on over here.”

  It was too late for any withdrawal from me, but my toes curled. And in a moment Marla was standing there looking at me. She was wearing a Japanese cotton dress with a flared skirt and her hair gleamed in the sun.

  “Oh, it was you,” she said, as though she might have known, a kind of bitterness in it. I might have deliberately been playing tricks just to get at her in some way.

  “Joe and I have been having a talk,” I said.

  “Really?” She didn’t like that either, one little bit.

  “Mom,” from Joe softly. “You ask him what’s the matter with him. Why’s he got all those marks?”

  Marla noticed them then. They didn’t need an awful lot of pointing out under the glistening oil. I grinned at her.

  “I got in a scrap last night. Rowdy type, me.”

  I looked straight into her eyes and saw fear in them again, coming up naked before she could put any cover on it.

  “What happened to you?” she said, after a moment.

  “A Japanese thug. Only I survived. It turned out I wasn’t quite as aged as I look. Somebody miscalculated.”

  “Mom, what’s he talking about?”

  “Be quiet, Joe.” She went on looking at me. “Where?”

  “Up by the Daibutsu. Quite a setting for murder. Picturesque.”

  Marla had a fine tan, but her colour changed under it in some way. She was holding Joe’s hand tight, like she’d held a gun once, as though she needed something to hang on to.

  Joe had given us up. He wasn’t going to get an answer to his question and accepted that. He couldn’t follow our riddles and didn’t try. He tugged at his mother’s hand, suddenly getting free.

  “Mom, it’s warm enough now. I want to go in swimming. I won’t be long. Then I’ll come back to you.”

  It was a funny thing for a kid to say, putting a time limit on his absence, as though he knew he had to do that for both of them. Marla didn’t say anything and Joe ran across the sand, hurrying. We heard him splashing as he waded in, and the girl turned to watch him.

  “Nice boy,” I said.

  Suddenly Marla raised both hands to her face, and began to cry, with great gulping sobs, as though she couldn’t stop herself. I stood beside her.

  “Sit down. Come on.”

  She let me take her arm, and sat on a little hummock, still with her hands up.

  “Sorry. I guess I was a bit scared. When he didn’t come when I called. Silly. But I get too … I mean, it isn’t as if I had him all the time. I wouldn’t hang over him then.”

  “How long do you have him for, Marla?”

  “Only today.”

  “Then he goes back to Kyushu?”

  She nodded, still turned away from me. Her head came up suddenly.

  “How did you know?”

  “Joe told me about Kyushu. Why do you have to let things go on this way?”

  “Oh, God! Do you think I want to? Don’t you know anything about Japanese law? They have Joe. Harry and his father. Just as tight as they want. I’m a woman, I’m nothing. And being an American woman doesn’t help, not one little bit, not any more. I’ve had this thing to the Courts. But as a case it scarcely got through the door. I’ve no rights at all. None.”

  It hit me hard, seeing her suddenly broken, bent over like that, her fists pressed into the sides of her cheeks under the long pale hair. This was no acting, it had just come pouring out, because she couldn’t stop it. Out there in the sea, Joe, splashing, raised an arm to us. Slowly Marla put hers up, too.

  “I’m scared to even let him swim,” she said.

  “Couldn’t you get a job in Kobe? To be nearer?”

  She watched her son.

  “I wanted to do that. But they wouldn’t let me.”

  “The Komatsus?”

  She nodded. For a moment she sat still, very, and then she turned.

  “Who was it last night, Paul? The man who attacked you?”

  “He was playing Ku-Kl
ux Klan. With a black mask.”

  “You’ve no idea?”

  “None. Just guesses. Have you any guesses?”

  “No! Why do you say that?”

  “I’m not usually the intuitive type. But I have the oddest feeling that the killer of Mikos knows now that I was there in the suite almost at the time it happened.”

  Her eyes were wide.

  “And you only told me?”

  “That’s right.”

  She stood up quickly. I jumped up and caught her arm.

  “Marla, listen, I had to say that …!”

  “Don’t touch me! Let me go!”

  I let her go. She didn’t even look back. She walked down towards the sea and I saw Joe come out of the water. They walked together along the hard sand, Marla bending down once or twice to pick up something, a shell maybe, and hand it to the boy. He took whatever she gave him and kept it carefully. I had the feeling that he would keep everything she gave him as long as he could.

  And then I couldn’t pry on them any more, I shut my eyes and lay back, in the warm sun, letting it suck any lingering soreness from my bones and muscles.

  It wasn’t the sound of voices which made me open my eyes again, but a plop on the sand, like a pebble falling. Three men were closing in on me. One of them was Reggie Spratt. The other two were policemen, in nice clean white uniforms that made them look a little like something out of the chorus of a musical comedy. But they didn’t have chorus-boy faces at all.

  The biggest policeman had something in his hand, holding it with a handkerchief wrapped around. I could only see a bit of metal shining in the sun, but I knew it was the bean curd seller’s knife.

  CHAPTER VII

  REGGIE MIGHT as well have brought those two policemen to me by the hand. His face was expressionless. I couldn’t see his eyes, he was squinting against the hard sunshine. The policemen didn’t look like locals at all, they both had a kind of authority which went with their short official swords in decorated scabbards. And there was no uncertainty about the way they were closing in, they knew what they were doing, and why.

  From Tokyo? I was sure of it then. And probably summoned here, travelling fast in a black car. They meant to take me back in that car. Somehow I didn’t have any doubts at all, as though the situation and the stage things had reached for me was quite plain. I’ve been in this sort of situation before; there is no use fooling yourself about it.

  That knife in the taller policeman’s hands … they could have come on it during a search of my room. But more likely Reggie had told them where to look. I had turned from hiding it and found him in my bedroom. He hadn’t knocked. He could have been standing there watching me. I was quite certain he had been.

  It didn’t pay to take a morning off for sunbathing when others were busy. I’d been a fool before and found it expensive.

  They were circling me now, purposefully, the three of them closing in on a practically naked man still propped up on the sand. Reggie, with his back to the sun, was still avoiding my eyes.

  “You’ll probably get the fourteenth order of the cherry blossom for doing your duty as a resident,” I said.

  Nothing changed in his face. The taller of the policemen, with the knife, cleared his throat.

  “You are Mr. Paul Harris?”

  The way he used English confirmed that he was no local bobby. They only polished them up this way at headquarters.

  “That’s my name.”

  The knife was unwrapped, but the policeman’s eyes never left my face as he did it.

  “You know this knife, Mr. Harris?”

  “I do.”

  “Is it your knife?”

  “No.”

  “You lie!”

  He spat that out. There were going to be none of those preliminaries fringing on politeness this morning. That would have let me see exactly where I was if I hadn’t already known. But I sat up straighter, trying to look like a man startled by sudden discourtesy. I don’t know whether it was a good performance or not. It was certainly difficult to look dignified the way I was, with the other parties all so impeccably clothed. Reggie even had a pretty paisley scarf tied around his neck and tucked down the front of his open shirt.

  “Mr. Harris, have you had other knives like this in your possession?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  His voice was really rough now. I had the feeling then, which I’d known years before, that some of them, perhaps even a goodly number, enjoy this kind of thing. Cat and mouse is fun. If you have big sharp teeth why not use them? The squeaks of your victims can be allowed to go on for quite a time. Things had reached a point where I had better appear more than just irritated.

  “What is all this?” I asked loudly.

  “Stay quiet!”

  That was an order.

  “Look, I’m a British subject in Japan on legitimate business.”

  “You lie!”

  He was fond of that phrase.

  “May I know what’s happened?”

  “You know. You know very well. You came to Kamakura to hide.”

  “Rather a silly place to come for that, I should say. I think I can demand to know what this is about?”

  “Murder!”

  “Really? And how does that involve me?”

  “Very closely, Mr. Harris. Very closely. You will now stand.”

  “This sounds almost as though I was under arrest, or something.”

  “You are!”

  “For what, in heaven’s name?”

  “You know. You can make statement later.”

  He gestured towards his assistant. From a pocket came a neatly made pair of brightly chromiumed handcuffs.

  I had been tied up by the Japanese before, but that time with ropes and for a flogging. The sight of those handcuffs brought back old fear, but it brought something else, too. Anger at Reggie. This was more stimulating. Anger pumps adrenalin into your system. I would have enjoyed punching him in the nose, but I didn’t waste the stimulus.

  “Hold out your hands!”

  The junior policeman stepped in then. And it was he who saw that slight tensing of my body, and lunged at me. His grip would have held all right if it hadn’t been for the oil so thick on every bit of exposed skin. He shouted as I yanked my greased arm free.

  Then I turned and ran, up the dune, and over the hard grass beyond it.

  They weren’t far behind, bellowing in a furious surprise. They lost a little wind on that, and they were also wearing neat uniforms buttoned right up to the neck. I was running as free as any man could.

  I ran, cursing Reggie without words, the adrenalin still pumping. In my mind a voice said, over and over, “He killed Mikos.” But I didn’t waste my breath bringing that out. It was just in my mind, held there.

  The fear was there, too. I didn’t know where I was going, or could go. And I began to realise how this would count against me when I was finally nabbed. Reggie really couldn’t have planned it better, the flight of guilt from policemen.

  The breath was beginning to whimper in my throat. I went through the pines that fringed the shore, hard over soundless needles, then on to the road that led to houses. The policemen weren’t shouting any more. On the road their boots pounded. I didn’t turn to see if Reggie was with them. Probably not. Why should he exert himself in the hot sun? The murdering bastard!

  Ahead were Japanese houses, grey-tiled roofs, and high wooden fences that screened the garden from the public gaze.

  Reggie probably had those plans now, ready to sell them to his crook bidders as soon as the police had their murder suspect under lock and key. He would make a good thing out of the deal, plenty of money to run his damn’ Armstrong-Siddeley.

  I was in the street, my feet silent in it. A Japanese woman, wearing flowered pants, with her baby strapped on her back, turned at the sound of my breathing, her narrow eyes going as wide as they could. She said ara, softly, in astonishment.

  There was a handcart
ahead, two-wheeled, and pulled by a man in a sweatshirt and khaki shorts. The police began to bellow orders which I didn’t catch, but the man did. He was quick. He swung his cart around so that it practically blocked the narrow road. Then he dropped the handles and came at me, with no hesitation at all. I hit him with a right that had the momentum of my running behind it, a wild blow, but effective enough. He grunted and sagged back, lurching a little. I jumped over the cart, my bare feet only hitting its boards once.

  A madman running, and near the end of the run, too, my breath hard to get now, coming as a wheezing. There was only one point in what I was doing and even through agonising effort it was there, a hard little core of purpose. I was getting away from Reggie’s nicely sprung little trap.

  I was suddenly conscious of the noise from the main street ahead. It was loud, and must have been about me for some time, but it reached me suddenly above the pounding in my ears as a kind of explosion of sound, a clashing of drums, gongs, and human voices. There was a mob ahead, and that was a stimulus. You could lose yourself in a mob.

  It was only when I saw that crowd that I really had any hope of getting away, at least for a time. There it was, Ohashi’s festival, hundreds of men milling about two portable shrines. The men filled the road, and all of them were as naked as I was. That was what I saw then, a sea of human torsos, black heads, some with towels wrapped round, some not. The young men were wearing loin cloths and nothing else.

  My running caused no interest. The focal point wasn’t me, it was those two tossing shrines. All the traffic was out of the street, squeezed into the side of it, the cars immobile, the moving thing a packed, heaving body of men. The noise was thunder and I knew the policemen could shout themselves hoarse without a hope of being heard.

  I fought my way into that mob, through the rearguard of slackers who weren’t getting involved in the actual rough stuff. They were tidily naked these ones, and not sweating much. Then I smelled the sweat, coming strong.

  Both of the shrines were in movement, heaving about like little arks above the black heads, but one of them was now being tossed in the air, its gilt ornaments jingling. Both the shrines were the same size, about eight feet high, elaborately carved, shining with new paint and mounted on a kind of raft of poles. The packed young men underneath were like a sea holding up the rafts, a rough sea, tossing them. Up on the shrines, hanging on to the roofs, were figures brandishing staves with paper streamers tied on to them. From hundreds of voices came the bellowed roar: