by Gavin Black
“Brake now, Clynder. Then the headlights. And it’s a nice little gun you’ve got. Nicely balanced.”
“Aw, shut up!”
But he braked and turned on that floodlighting. In the moment that it blasted down the road at the policemen I was out and jumping for a ditch.
The trouble about Japan is rice paddy. It’s everywhere, edging nearly all the roads, and half the year it is flooded. This was that half. I went down, softly enough, into a deep receptive glaur of mud, right to my knees. The mud had an acrid, unattractive smell, and the big blue car had reached the check point before I had pulled myself back out. That paddy went right up to the road, too, with only the narrowest ridges around the squares, but they weren’t big squares, and I slogged my way on in, safe in shadow if no one flashed the torch about. Clynder had only to tell them to do that, of course, but I was somehow sure he wouldn’t.
It wasn’t easy to run, either, along mud walls that were little dykes holding the water, and I was scared that Clynder would be passed through long before I could reach the point where he would slow for a second time. But they were doing a good job on the car, light glaring into it, the boot door down. I was parallel with the search when a mud bank gave way, I went down again, with a soft plop, this time up to my waist and not quite able to avoid a wallowing sound. That was picked up.
“Nanda?” came out of the Japanese night.
The wall just covered me from the light, with me bent over in a right angle, practically drinking paddy water. If the policeman came over I’d had it. But just then Clynder revved his engine as though he meant to drive off before they had finished with him. I saw the policemen turning on him in a kind of fury and decided to put a bonus on my cheque for expenses.
I came up from the ditch as Clynder slowed a hundred yards down, able to reach out for the opened door beside him and fall into the car. Robert Mitchum would have got my gun then, which was damp anyway, but Clynder just grunted.
“Shut that damn’ door, but don’t bang it.”
A light came after us, but I was in, and I kept my head down.
“Thanks,” I said, in simple gratitude. The Martini was wearing off.
“You sounded like a mud ox down there.”
“I was putting on a pretty good imitation of one, too. Bill me for a new suit.”
There was a duster in the glove compartment and when Clynder was driving fast enough to need to keep his attention on that I started to use it. I put on the car heater and directed a beam of hot air over my legs. Water squeaked in Clynder’s outsize shoes when I wiggled my toes. It was a good start for the night on the town I was expecting.
Al was beginning to drive to scare me, the needle between eighty and ninety in a country which doesn’t have many roads for this kind of thing. It made him feel good but what I said next didn’t.
“I hope you’ve got your wallet with you.”
“Eh?”
He jammed on the brakes and the car slithered on the greasy road, the back end swaying. He was the kind of man hurt by any mention of money and the speedometer needle came plunging down to a point where he might have been driving to church.
“I’ll need money. I haven’t any. Only a loan, of course. I realise that this system of billing me for everything doesn’t appeal to you much but I’ve no choice, I’m afraid. And my credit is terribly good.”
“You don’t write cheques in a jail!”
“Oh, through my lawyers easily. Throw me your wallet, will you?”
It was almost a minute before the wallet plopped on the seat. In the dash light I began to take out notes, one after the other.
“What are you going to do, buy up Tokyo?”
“I always like to carry quite a bit, Clynder. Gives me confidence. I see you do, too. I’ll leave you half. It would feed a Japanese family for two months.”
And then something made me glance back. A single eye was following us, a beam of slightly wavering light, but still menacing.
“Get moving, Clynder. There’s someone behind us.”
“If it’s the police what do you do? Jump again?”
“We’ll decide later.”
The needle crept up, but not to anything I would call fast at all, and the eye hung on. We lost it for a time but in Yokohama, skirting the outer fringes of the city, I saw it again, this time street lights showing a figure wearing a crash helmet on a scooter. I hadn’t heard about the Japanese police using scooters.
On the speedway hitching Yokohama and Tokyo overhead lighting made it as bright as day, and there was plenty of traffic. Every now and then I thought we’d lost the scooter, then I’d look back and see it.
“Clynder, surely in this thing we can get away from a putt-putt?”
“There’s a limit on this road. And they patrol it. Do you want a police car whining after us? It’s just some smart kid keeping up with the American car.”
I wondered about that. I certainly didn’t like it.
We were past Omori when it happened, the banshee wailing of a police-car siren somewhere a distance behind us. I didn’t have any doubt that we were the target.
“Forget about speed limits,” I said gently.
“If they catch us I’m for it.”
“Forget about you. Remember that alibi. I was right here with your gun making you go all out. And I am.”
“They’ll radio ahead for another patrol to intercept us.”
“Not right away. I want to see what this thing can do.”
“We’ll never get into Tokyo, I tell you,” Clynder shouted above the rising whine of the engine.
“All right. Take me to Shinagawa. I’ll get a train in from there. The station at Shinagawa. You know how to get there, don’t you?”
“Of course I know how to get there. What’s your idea, you just jump out and leave me to spend the night in jail?”
“Pity we can’t phone Susie to let her know not to wait up.”
“Damn you! Damn you and then some.”
“I’ve heard you do much better than that, Clynder. But spare your breath and watch your driving. I can see them now. Looks like they’re in a Ford. You going to allow a Ford to beat you?”
“They hot those things up specially. Those Fords are … ”
“Just drive, Clynder, just drive!”
He drove all right, and not badly, as though some personal fear transcending his pretty alibi was sitting breathing on his neck. On a long bend we swayed out over the central lane and an approaching truck took evasive action, hooting in fury. The wail was creeping up behind us.
The police knew how to drive, too. Before World War II there was a theory out that the Japanese weren’t good at handling machines, and the pukka sahibs all sat around in Singapore with gin slings saying that their Zeros would be out flown by our Buffalos. I don’t suppose there was a plane ever better named than that Buffalo. Those incompetent Jap pilots just moved in and stung the lumbering things to death.
Clynder was passing a Japanese economy model with wobbling wheels when we went into a skid on the greasy surface. He took the right correcting action at just the right time, but it still wasn’t pleasant, a screaming of tyres, and that feeling of the car playing a nasty game of its own. We missed the little job in front, just, but panicked the driver, and he swung out behind us, right into the track of the black, moaning Ford. Clynder wouldn’t have got the Ford out of that one, but the police driver did, glancing off straight across the road, through a gap in oncoming traffic, mounting the curb and running for a time with two wheels on the pavement, but not turning over.
I saw the resultant chaos, the police car stopped, the other traffic milling about it. The economy model was stopped, too, the driver out in the road, waving his arms. We were clear away.
“Neat,” I said.
Clynder was sweating, it was standing out on his face. My stomach took time to settle back into its assigned place. After a minute I said:
“You should have your springs tightened up. All this sof
t springing is no use for real driving.”
“Shut up you!” He sounded near to tears. “They’ll be on their buzzer now!”
“And here’s Shinagawa. Slow down. Why do you have to have a coloured car, Clynder? Sky-blue. Only fit for an honest man.”
“Well, I am one!”
“My Bristol’s black.”
“To hell with you and your Bristol! Look!”
I saw what was troubling him. Coming towards us, from Tokyo, was another black Ford, the extended radio aerial on its roof vibrating, giving it the look of an angry beetle. And then, spotting us, they switched on that banshee siren.
“Left!” I howled.
Clynder had some feeling for this game, he was already turning. With a little training he could drive for bank bandits all right. The police car overshot the opening and above its siren was the screaming of brakes on a wet surface. We had a clear start into the side road.
“I don’t know where we are,” Clynder moaned. “I dunno …!”
“Keep right now. There’s the railway up there. There should be something parallel to it.”
There was, fortunately, and we ran down a road with trains rumbling above us; I was delighted to hear them rumbling to a stop. We passed a goods entrance and then shot into a wider thoroughfare. Down it was coming a black Ford, and there was another back in the road we had used.
“Brake!”
Clynder did. The sweat was trickling down his face.
“No need to wait for me,” I said. “Go home and get a good night’s sleep.”
“You swine, you swine …”
The somewhat archaic imprecations were still going on as I slammed the door and ran into the station. I looked back once to see those Fords swooping to a stop and police in white, nicely pressed uniforms just falling out of doors. There was one glimpse of Clynder half out of his great soggy car, a policeman holding one arm, while he pointed vaguely in my direction with the other.
Shinagawa station is biggish, with more than one entrance and I ran through it, stared at by Japanese crowds, out into the street on the other side. A bus was just taking on its last three passengers, emptyish for a Japanese bus, but it wasn’t any peak hour.
“Please go into the middle,” the conductress said with a strained mimicry of traditional Japanese politeness.
I sat down as we moved off, trying to make myself small and neat and tidy. Almost at once I was again aware of how impossible it is for the European to be inconspicuous. People were already staring at me with the vacant, flat interest of travellers in public conveyances, ready to do anything to pass the time. A pudding-faced woman whose hairdo was in danger of collapse let her mouth go slack in a kind of amiable surprise at the oddness of the foreigner.
Anyone who has lived in Japan for long must develop a deep sympathy for film stars. You have no privacy once you step outside your own gate, there are eyes waiting for you, millions of potential viewers. And for a people who have made an international selling line out of their racial courtesy it is my view that there are still considerable areas in which this could be improved.
I had to give a note for my fare and the conductress stood in front of me, sniffling from a cold, delving into her leather bag to unload all of her copper. Pudding-face, impatient, peered around the obstacle, her hair sagging to one side.
To escape her I looked back, out of the rear windows of the bus, just in time to see a scooter pull out from behind a following car. This time the man on it was quite near, the crash helmet like a polished half egg, but his face was masked by a large pair of goggles. I couldn’t even see whether or not he was a Japanese.
The man’s tenacity was unnerving. I believed I had momentarily shaken off the police who were, I hoped, pounding up and down the platforms of Shinagawa station, but this man hung on, almost as though he had guessed what I would do when I left the blue car. I felt a pricking on my skin then which was unpleasant and I had to accept the fact that whoever was steering that unreliable little mechanical device knew a lot about me. I began to regret that I hadn’t taken over the driving of Clynder’s car to shake off that pursuit, but I never feel comfortable at the wheel of these great saloons designed to take out all the family in what passes for luxury. To my mind they have no performance at all, big enough engines, but bodies which slop about at real speeds. At eighty in one of them there is a drumming from chromiumed grilles and decorative projections which is like a warning of imminent disaster.
I wanted to half rise in my seat to see where the scooter was now, but I didn’t. And opposite me pudding-face seemed suddenly to be suffering, her lips moving and agitation in her eyes, as though for some reason she was about to project herself out from the passive role of spectating into active living. Suddenly her hand came up, pointing at what seemed to be my trousers, and a deep flush came up from her neck.
“Mushi!” she said explosively.
Now mushi is a Japanese generic term which covers a lot of things, and when I looked down I decided that it covered what I saw, too. Clynder’s suit was made of Scotch tweed, practically designed for immersion in bogs, and it had recovered remarkably from mud and paddy water. But above one of the cuffs, and moving purposefully upwards, was a large, if emaciated, creature which looked very like a Malayan leech out hunting for its blood supper. I picked the thing off and stepped on it with one of Clynder’s damp shoes while the woman’s face expressed ill-controlled horror. A lot of other faces on her side were showing similar reactions. With these foreigners one just didn’t know what might appear. It was said they didn’t wash much.
The bus had served me long enough, elephantine in its deliberations. The black Fords might well be on the move again. I stood, conscious of my absurd height in this country designed for moderate physical dimensions, and went to the exit door.
“Have a care when descending,” the conductress warned me.
I took her advice, and the moment I was on the pavement looked for the scooter, but the traffic had thickened, a stream of it flowing by the bus. The pavements, too, were crowded now the rain had stopped, people strolling for the cheapest form of evening entertainment. The foreigner was at once an interesting object, and I began to walk, under neon signs which were putting continually changing colour on the faces about me and on mine. All the man on the scooter had to do to follow me in that crowd was to leave off his helmet and goggles. It gave me an exposed feeling, and I began to look for a taxi.
I had to go out into the roadway to stop one, risking traffic for a moment, and then jumping in quickly. I told the driver to take me to an international cable office near the Ginza which I knew stayed open all night, and we went by Hibiya, through the theatre traffic. I kept looking out of the back window but this didn’t tell me much; on that journey I saw at least forty scooters. It is a popular form of transport. And the crash helmet is part of the uniform.
The cable office was one of those glass and chromium affairs in which at night the clients are like fish in an illuminated tank. Even the phone box I used left you exposed right down to the ground, and I wanted to get out of there. I found the number of the Asubira Hotel in Surugadai and dialled. The clerk who answered was sprightly, with one of those alertly efficient voices coated over with servile honey.
“Asubira Hotel here. How may I serve you?”
I told him. There was no Mrs. Komatsu resident in the hotel, but it turned out that he knew Marla Haines all right. I asked if there was a phone in Miss Haines’s room and he sounded insulted. There were phones in all the Asubira bedrooms, it was that kind of hotel, but at the same time it was no use ringing her bell, because her key was hanging on the hook behind him. Miss Haines hadn’t been in all evening. In fact she was away, he believed in Kamakura.
“She’s come back to Tokyo. Are you quite sure she’s not in?”
“I’ll try her room, sir,” he said, huffed. And then he held his receiver so that I could hear the unanswered buzzing which went on for a long time. “Would you like me to send a pag
e, sir?”
They had pages, too. Probably the cook’s illegitimate offspring.
“No thanks.”
There was only one other lead to Marla, an indirect one via Harry’s girl friend at the “Happy Days.” I was grateful to Susie for that little tip; without it I wouldn’t have had anywhere to go in Tokyo that night. I went out of the cable office to look for a taxi and for any sign of loitering skid lids.
CHAPTER X
THE BEST WAY to get into a strip joint, even on business, is to pay down your money as a customer. “Happy Days” ran as a licensed entertainment hall, with food and drink to sustain you on the side. I was led through comforting gloom with nothing much visible except a skiffle group of long-haired youths under a spot. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them, but the noise of twanging guitars and nasal voices on turned-up amplifiers was deafening.
Someone pushed me into a chair against a pillar and tucked a tiny table into my stomach. Then a kind of nuzzling began against my shoulder and I looked up into a round, cheerful girl’s face. She had a piled up hairdo and a little decorative cap on top.
“You want drink, baby?”
“Yes, a beer.”
“You want eat, baby?”
“What have you got?”
“Ham sandwich.”
“That’ll be very nice.”
She still didn’t go away.
“You not ask what I want!”
They didn’t have waitresses, just hostesses. It stepped up the bar trade.
“Order what you like.”
“Thanks. Whisky.”
I was pretty certain her whisky would be cold tea, but I didn’t mind paying the price, I wanted company right then. The Japanese night girl of all groups is good at providing company and throughout Tokyo after ten o’clock there are more of them offering comfort than sin. They understand about the male, they’ve been working at it all their lives, and very little else.
My girl was plump and when she leaned on the table it almost disappeared. She wasn’t pretty, she might have come straight from some country farmhouse to “Happy Days” and there was a kind of peasant freshness about her, even through her routine.
