Durell did not smile. “It will be cash. Mostly for you, Madame Butterfly.”
She giggled, covered her mouth again. “Oh, no, I do not entertain myself, personally. But you may have your choice of my finest young ladies, all very talented, most agreeable companions, charming conversationalists.”
“I’d like to speak to Nishi in that case,” Durell said. “It’s very important.”
“Nishi? Oh, but I am sorry, is—is busy—”
“You have other—ah—guests?”
“No, it is a personal matter.” The woman’s manner hardened. “Nishi has been impossible today. Very naughty”
“Her friend is here, right?”
“No, no. No friend. Please, sir, I do not understand your wishes. I thought you were a patron—”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be well paid, as I said. Just take me to Nishi.”
She blocked his way adamantly. “Impossible.”
Durell took money from his pocket and began to count it. The woman’s powdered face remained hard, but her eyes counted the currency with him. From somewhere in the big, sprawling house that had once been an inn, came the sounds of soft, atonic music. There were flower-painted wall screens, a glimpse of a formal garden surrounded by the low, rambling wings of the establishment, and then a girl’s sudden but subdued laughter. To his right was a dining room in Japanese style with low stools and tables. In one comer was an American-style bar. Durell put the currency on a low cabinet and the woman’s pink tongue came out and licked her lips.
“It is possibly possible.”
“Bring Nishi here,” he said.
“No, no. Not private. This way.”
He followed in the wake of her perfume down a long corridor walled by transparent screens, which yielded more glimpses of the rocks and autumn flowers in the garden. A dwarf maple tree stood in one comer like a bonfire of flaming color. There was a comfortable lounge at the end of the corridor, a flight of stairs going up, and then a Japanese version of the traditional parlor.
“One moment, please.”
He waited, and several girls came in, looking at him shyly, chatting among themselves. He shook his head, and two others entered, seating themselves around him. Each was beautiful in her own way, and each wore the traditional varieties of costumes used for the kokeshi, except that these were living dolls in the flesh, hardly made of wood. Nothing like variety, he thought wryly. They were tall and short, fat and thin, round-faced and narrowfaced, gaudy and plain. Their kimonos and flowered wrappers were exact replicas of the kokeshi dolls he had seen in the shops, and their hair was done in an infinite variety of ways. But none looked like the youthful snapshot of Nishi that he had seen at the farm.
“No,” he said.
“She is coming,” said the woman.
He stood up when the girl came in. There was no attempt to trick him this time. “Nishi?” he asked.
The woman said, “Ah, you do know her. That is all right then. Nishi, my dear, this gentleman wishes your company for a time. I am sorry to have had to call you away from your personal business. But he is a very generous man, this American, and you will be pleased.”
The girl was slender, with a wide brow and a delicate peach complexion; but her mouth was sulky and reluctant, and she looked quickly at Durell and then looked away.
“I am truly busy, and you promised me this evening to myself.”
“One must be practical, my dear. Run along with the gentleman.”
Nishi turned abruptly and walked out of the room, and Durell saw nothing to do but to follow the sullen girl. She had long, ivory combs holding up her thick, black hair in an elaborate and formal style. Her body was full-breasted for a Japanese, and she walked with a professional, provocative roll of her hips. Durell wondered briefly about her old grandfather at the farm. Then she slid aside a screen and led him into a private dining room; beyond this there was a large Japanese bath with a stone pool, a shower, plastic chairs, and couches. There were shelves against one solidly paneled wall of the room, and on the shelves were at least three dozen kokeshi, old and new, of every shape and description.
“Are these Kamuru-san’s dolls?” Durell asked.
“Yes. My personal collection. The House has many more, if you are interested in—dolls.”
“You need not be so afraid of me, Nishi.”
“I am not.”
“Hostile, then.”
“You have interrupted a personal matter. I am not in a mood to entertain you or anyone. But if you would like music, I can play for you. Food, perhaps? We have all the specialties of Tohoku. You may have kani salad, Akita saki, teba shioyaki—that is chicken—or you can have Western food, all sorts of fish delicacies, fugu, hot noodles, shiitaki ryori” She looked at his blank, hard face. “A bath, perhaps! You know Japanese-style bath? A massage, afterward. We will make love, and you can sleep with me; I am expert, and I will make love to you as you have never been loved before. I have learned a thousand ways to please a man.” Her tongue touched her full, ripe lips, and she opened her kimono a little. Her breasts were plump, her waist narrow, her hips swelling. But her face was a resentful mask. “What do you want, sir?”
“I want to see Yoko,” he said.
She answered too quickly. “There is no Yoko working in this house.”
“I am speaking of your old friend, Yoko Kamuru.”
“I do not know such a woman.”
“She came to you just an hour ago, didn’t she? She’s somewhere here in the House of Dolls. Hiding, I suppose. But she has nothing to fear from me. Tell her I am here to help her. Tell her that Bill Churchill sent me.”
She looked angry. “Who sent you here?”
“Your grandfather at Kamuru’s farm.”
She made a spitting sound. “A dirty, vile old man. He drove my mother from his house to this place. I was bom here. I have always lived here.” She smiled artificially. “So you see, I have been trained to entertain men since childhood. An expert. You will agree; I will please you.”
“Just give my message to Yoko, will you?”
“She is not here.”
“But you have seen her?”
“No.”
“Heard from her?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
She laughed, shrugged out of her kimono entirely, and stood naked and provocative before him. “Come, bathe with me, and I will tell you what I know.”
“A hundred dollars,” Durell offered.
“No.”
“Two hundred,” he said.
“No.”
“Five.”
Her eyes gleamed. She had the true heart of a whore. Yoko might be her friend in distress, but money spoke louder than an appeal for help.
“Five hundred American dollars?”
“Count them.” Durell put the money down. “Take me to Yoko. She will be glad that you did.”
“I cannot do that. But I shall send for her. She will come in twenty minutes. If I may, until then, I shall please you very much in extraordinary ways.”
“Remember the name—Bill Churchill. She will come.”
“Yes.”
Nishi clapped her hands softly, and a small boy appeared as if by magic, and she spoke to him rapidly. The boy bobbed his head and shifted round eyes to Durell’s height and vanished. Nishi smiled. “In twenty minutes. You look weary, sir. A bath will refresh you. I am an excellent masseuse. There is time. It will do you good. You will insult my professional pride if you refuse. Would you make an enemy of me?”
It was quiet in the room. The steaming pool beyond the sliding screens looked inviting. Nishi came close to him and, smiling now, unbuttoned his coat and shirt, gently pressed him down, and knelt before him and took off his shoes. He knew better than to antagonize her further. He did not think she had been lying to him at the last. She clapped her hands and another little boy brought a tray of exquisite china, a pot of tea and cakes, and a porcelain container of hot saki. The sound of the
rain on the tiled roof and the splashing from the dragon-headed spouts was soothing. He was aware again of not having slept the night before, of a bone-weariness that seemed to permeate his whole body. He was near the end of his goal. Yoko would surely respond to Bill Churchill’s name and come from wherever Nishi had hidden her. Twenty minutes. He might as well relax.
The tea and the saki warmed his belly. Nishi had changed her manner, once she made her decision to betray Yoko. She took his hand, smiling, and led him to the bathing pool.
“Come.”
He went through the traditional ritual of showering first, scrubbing vigorously, aided by Nishi. Her expertise was astounding. Music came from somewhere in the house, soft and lulling. Beyond the screens he saw the dusk of late afternoon fall over the pleasant rock garden and autumnal trees. But he did not expect company when he stepped into the pool.
The girls came suddenly, laughing and giggling, apparently as a gesture of appreciation from the proprietress for his generosity. One moment he was alone with Nishi, letting her minister to his aching body, and the next he was surrounded by the bodies of half a dozen girls, splashing and jumping with abandon into the bathing pool with him. He felt smothered by all the wild, free, silken flesh around him.
“Now, wait—”
“It is all right, sir,” Nishi said soothingly. “It is a little extra play; it is not important, if you do not object. Are they not lovely, my friends here, these beautiful, beautiful girls?”
“Yes, they’re beautiful,” Durell murmured.
The girls seemed to be all over him, laughing and chattering like a flock of brown and peach-colored birds, splashing him with the water, diving and swimming into the tiny pool all around him. He felt his ankles caught and was upended, and the girls came over him as he stood up, sputtering. Their fun seemed genuine. The alarm bell that had rung briefly in the back of his mind stopped clamoring.
Saki was pressed on him with willing hands, cakes were urged into his mouth, lips kissed him here and there, and he was hugged and petted like a giant doll, fussed over and titillated with an amazing expertness.
For a moment he wondered if Nishi had arranged to put something in his saki. His assignment was almost forgotten, and Yoko seemed of less importance than before.
Then he heard the rush of footsteps.
They were hard and heavy, determined and ruthless, pounding over the paving tiles in the corridor to the bathing room. The fog of pleasure that had dulled his senses lifted abruptly. He saw Nishi turn her head and look in surprise at the sliding screen doorway. One of the girls beside him gave a little cry of alarm. And then there was an explosion of movement as the girls tried to scramble out of the pool in time.
The lights went out.
There was only a dull gray gloom from beyond the screens to the rain-drenched garden. One of the girls screamed loudly. And another. Nishi clung to Durell and he shoved her roughly aside, trying to lift himself from the pool.
He was too late.
Two dark figures suddenly loomed over the shining, pearly bodies of the girls. Nishi screamed in a high-pitched, ululating voice. Metal gleamed and arced through the air. Durell fell back into the pool and let the surface of the water break the force of the blow. He was appalled by his defenseless, naked position. He had no weapons. He did not want the girls hurt, but they were in his way.
Another blow smashed the surface of the pool. He kicked against the sidewall tiles and shot across the basin to the other side. Again the dark figures loomed high over him. Chinese faces. Not Colonel Po or the other fat one. Hired hands. Maybe—
He came up out of the pool with a great surge, using all his strength, and grabbed at the nearest Chinese, caught a stout ankle, and yanked hard. The man yelled and slipped on the wet tiles and fell forward into the water. The metal pipe in his hand fell too, and Durell lunged for it and grabbed it. Something struck the back of his shoulder, and he almost lost the tentative weapon. The man in the pool locked an arm around his throat and yanked him backward with savage strength. His head went under the water as he heard Nishi scream again. He did not let go of the metal pipe. Twisting, he stabbed it into the man’s belly under the water, and the grip on his throat loosened and he broke free and surfaced to fill his straining lungs.
The second man was cautiously circling the pool, a gun in his hand. As Durell came up, the gun went off with an explosive, ear-splitting roar in the narrow, tiled bath chamber. Durell glimpsed Nishi’s startled face, her painted mouth open, her eyes suddenly wide with the astonishment of death. The single shot had drilled a neat hole in the middle of her forehead. Her nude body melted, boneless and dead, and tumbled and slid into the pool. Durell threw the metal pipe at the man with the gun. Desperation lent him accuracy. He knew he was not supposed to leave this place alive. Most of the girls had managed to scamper to safety, and he heard screams and shouts all through the House of Dolls. The police would certainly be here soon enough. If he were caught and detained—
The man with the gun had fallen, dazed, holding his bleeding head. Durell climbed up out of the pool and grabbed at the revolver. As he did so, the second man in the pool came after him. Durell did not hesitate. He fired once, then again, and the strangler fell back with a worse pain in his belly than the pipe had given him. The second man, dazed, tried to crawl away, and Durell clubbed him, anger rising in him as he stepped over the blood from Nishi’s body. The second Chinese collapsed quietly.
He straightened, breathing hard, and looked slowly around the pool chamber. He was the only one left alive.
Nishi and the two Chinese looked grotesque in the rainy, gray light that came through the screens from the wet garden. A trickle of blood spread across the surging water of the pool.
He found his clothes where Nishi had neatly folded them. His hands were shaking. His whole body trembled. He dried himself with huge, fluffy towels, listening to the confused screams from other areas of the house. The sound of men’s feet hurrying to leave—patrons unwilling to be found here in the center of scandalous calamity— passed his door. He was dressed and ready to leave in a matter of seconds. As he thrust his gun in his waistband, he paused.
He did not know if Yoko Kamuru were here, or if she had ever been here, and there was no way now of ever finding out, since Nishi was dead. The odds were that Yoko had stopped at the House of Dolls and then gone on to her grandfather’s cottage and workshop in the mountains.
And Liz Pruett had already started for that area.
Somehow, the thought made his stomach queasy with alarm.
20
DUSK came early to the mountains near Sendai. The rain had changed to a light mist, and fog curled through the autumn trees and hung low in the steep walls of the wooded valleys. Durell had rented a car and followed Liz’ directions to Kamuru’s cottage, isolated on a spur of the mountains above the tiny village of Ningyo, which was devoted to sulphur baths, food, and resort inns. There was not too much traffic, but now and then headlights loomed at him on the narrow road, which was not in the best repair. The lights were exaggerated by the fog, glowing enormously. Ningyo was busy with bars and restaurants, whose neon signs made spectral patterns in the misty rain. He stopped at a sushi restaurant for further detailed directions. The old man, Kamuru, was well known. The route he was given was explicit. He was hungry and could have eaten, but a sense of urgency made him go on.
The car rumbled over a small wooden bridge, and then the road turned sharply right, branching as he had been warned it would. He passed two large, modern cottages overlooking a tiny lake cupped between two arms of the mountain. Here and there a lighted window shone through the fog, but presently there was nothing but the mist and the thickening gloom of early evening. The trees grew thicker and taller. He passed a ski lift, not operating now, and was aware of the piney smell of the woods and the sharp freshness of the altitude. He could not shake off his sense of worry.
There was one more turn, a glimpse of a rushing white brook, the sound of wate
r tumbling over rocks, and then the road ended in a little parking area beside a Japanese-style house perched precariously above a steep drop into the valley below. In the daylight, the view would be exquisite from this aerie. Just now, the fog wrapped everything in a chill and portentous gloom.
Metallic reflections shimmered from among the leafy brush beside the road, just before he turned into the little parking area. The house stood above, and he bent his neck to stare up at the blank windows. No lights shone up there. He frowned, got out of his car, and stared at the two parked sedans in the rock-fenced area. One was the hired car from Sendai—it would be Liz Pruett’s. The other might be Yoko’s—but he couldn’t be certain of that. In a shed under the house was a battered Toyota truck. The old man’s? Durell still frowned. He listened to the drip of water from the pungent pines, the more distant rush of the brook tumbling down the mountain, and the croaking of frogs somewhere. It was almost dark. He thought about the metal reflecting from the bush on the other side of the little bridge, and before he went up to the house, he walked back down the steep incline of the road and crossed the bridge on foot and looked.
Another car was parked there, partly hidden by the foliage. An American Ford that looked as if it had been driven carelessly and in haste. There were new scratches and dents on the left front fender and door.
Durell drew a deep breath and walked back to the doll maker’s cottage. He kept off the gravel of the driveway and made a soundless approach.
Fog moved through the big, towering pines. An owl hooted, and he halted for a moment and took his gun and held it ready in his hand. Nothing happened. The doll maker’s cottage remained dark and silent. Water dripped from its tiled eaves. The sliding screens and doors were blank.
He went around to the back, walking on a bed of soft, wet pine needles. Nobody challenged him. As at the farm near Sendai, there was a separate woodworking shop behind the house, a long, low shed under overhanging pine branches with a wide double door that was tightly shut and padlocked. He tried to look in through the side windows, but the interior was dark with shadow; he made out lathes and drills, and a rack of wood-carving chisels gleamed dully in the fast-fading light. The sweet smell of wood shavings from a pile raked under the next window drew him that way, and he stepped up on the spongy mass and looked inside from there. Something else gleamed, round and still, faintly pinkish in the dusk beyond the glass pane. Durell stared at the small, globular mass, trying to define it, forcing his mind to delineate its meaning.
Assignment Tokyo Page 12
