Kamakura Inn

by Marshall Browne

  A large charcoal brazier was burning brightly. The remaining maple leaves had fallen from the display branches. As if the snow’s told them the show’s over, he thought. The situation he’d stepped into might be reactivating his investigator’s brain, but was this mountain ryokan changing his thinking in this other way? He grunted.

  The woman appeared from her office, businesslike, briskly confronting the premature termination of the fall season. The daughter! He felt certain of it. If so, one of the sisters who, according to Watanabe, had conspired with their father in their mother’s “disappearance.”

  “I’m afraid we’re snowed in, sir. Nearly six feet have fallen.” Aoki nodded. The weather forecasters, the taxi driver, the man from Osaka, the proprietor—each had foretold the situation accurately. “It’s the earliest big fall for many years. And the telephone line is down somewhere. “

  Aoki was surprised at this. He doubted cell phones would operate here, not that he’d brought his own; there was no one he’d want to call. Through the glass doors he could see how deep the snow lay; six feet would become ten if it kept up like this. He’d put on a heavy cable-stitch pullover that his wife had knitted two years before.

  He gazed at the woman. She wore a padded black kimono streaked with red and had reddened her lips with lipstick.

  Shoba sprang to his feet, bowing. Ito had hurried in. The bank chairman sharply inclined his head to acknowledge his fellow guest. “What is wrong with the phone?” he said to the woman. “I need to contact my office in Tokyo. It’s most urgent.”

  “I am afraid the line is down.”

  “What!” He hissed through his teeth. “For how long?”

  She hesitated. “A day or so.”

  Ito stared at her, consternation on his round face, his breathing audible. The air was rank with his overnight digestion. He recollected himself, gave a cursory bow, and turned on his heel to leave. She watched him go. For an instant her eyes met Aoki’s; then, with a bow, she returned to her office.

  The bodyguard sat down again, boss gone, energy deflated.

  Walking past the scrolls of calligraphy to breakfast, Aoki had a feeling that something significant was going to happen. As though a switch had been flicked on, it seemed that his pragmatic street cop’s sixth sense had been reactivated, and everything in him was jerking back into action.

  He’d found in an alcove what he’d been looking for: the framed business registration certificate with the managing proprietor’s name, Kazu Hatano. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. The proprietor-manager of the ryokan was, indeed, the daughter of the missing woman and thus this big-time banker’s stepdaughter.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Nine

  AOKI BREAKFASTED ALONE. WHEN HE came out to the anteroom, there was no one to be seen, not even a maid, and the fire was crackling away. He returned to his room, rubbing his hands against the cold, though the temperature had risen from the overnight freeze. He unpacked his Sony shortwave radio and placed it on the low table. In his old life, he’d sometimes surfed the international airwaves looking for jazz.

  He went to the window. The glass was opaque, the snow ridged against it a mere shadow line, and he reached out with his fingertips. They stuck to the glass: Everything here was as cold as his thoughts.

  Never could he have anticipated what Tokie had done. Criminal minds he knew about, but he’d been ambushed by an honest one bent on a mission springing from a naive notion of justice and, above all, from love. Had she found her inspiration in the melodrama and convoluted plots of the Kabuki plays?

  Aoki sneezed. He turned from the window and looked at the padded kimono but put on a tweed jacket that felt tight over the sweater. One of the bonsai plants looked sick, and he peered at its tiny root system. Not enough moisture, or too much? He supposed the maid would relight the kotatsu. He glanced at his watch, switched on the radio, and tuned the dial through fields of static to NHK.

  This morning shock waves hit the nation when the giant Tokyo Citizens Bank failed to open for business. Overnight government regulators moved into the bank. The head of the Diet Committee for Banking Industry Reconstruction, Yukio Tamaki, said the bank’s ability to meet its obligations had deteriorated dramatically in the past two days, and the government had no choice but to step in. On the news, the Nikkei index fell 8 percent in early trading. In an intriguing development, the bank’s chairman, Hiroshi Ito, has not been seen since Sunday afternoon, and all efforts to con tact him have failed.

  The first words struck Aoki like a punch in the chest. Normally he would have passed over such news with a shrug. Not now! He switched off the radio, lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply. No wonder Ito had been agitated; he must’ve heard an earlier broadcast.

  The Fatman, head of the Diet banking committee! Another pie the ex-governor had gotten his fingers into. And the bank’s chairman and a key MOF official locked away in the mountains at the other end of the nation!

  Aoki paced the room, drawing on the cigarette. He pulled up and shook his head in amazement. It must’ve hit those two like a sledgehammer—but the catastrophe had to’ve been in the wind. They must’ve been walking a tightrope, so why in hell had they taken the terrific risk of absenting themselves from the center of power? Unbelievable—that no one in Tokyo knew their whereabouts. “What is going on?” he asked himself.

  What he’d read in the newspaper clipping came back. Perhaps they’d planned to be away only a few nights—for the seventh anniversary. Whatever, with Tamaki heading that committee, they’d been playing with fire, because, for sure, the Fatman would have an agenda. With the bank’s chairman incommunicado for whatever reason, Tamaki had grabbed the opportunity. Time and time again, he’d shown himself to be a fast mover when it suited his interests. It was the kind of scenario that fit the Fatman like a glove.

  Aoki, his brow creased, was wearing out the tatami mat. He stubbed out his cigarette, left his room, slid the door shut, and walked the breezy corridors. Yeah, alert like the old days, yet cut off, powerless, and trapped in this missing-woman mystery—and in Watanabe’s hidden agenda.

  However, as if granted to him as compensation, his personal misery and despair had receded in his mind.

  ~ * ~

  In the anteroom, a maid had just fed extra logs onto the fire, and it burned with new energy. Saito was gazing down at the Go board. Aoki cleared his throat. “Your weather forecast was accurate.”

  The big man looked up sharply. “I’ve an instinct for weather. Also a shortwave radio.”

  His dark face, the color of mahogany, showed cynical amusement. A bit more evident than yesterday’s, Aoki decided. Despite his age, his shoulders were powerful. He wore a dark blue suit, with hand-stitched lapels, and a luxurious silk tie. The change of clothing puzzled Aoki—overdressed for the mountains and underdressed for the weather. There wasn’t anywhere the man could go, but what was going on in his head? What was his game apart from this boring Go?

  Saito’s large, brown-mottled hand motioned Aoki to sit down. “Even our powerful co-guests are locked in with us, away from their power bases. Their cell phones aren’t effective here.” He nodded at the board. “And this game is also at a crucial stage. The Master’s health was bad, and it was making the conduct of the match difficult.” He grimaced. “OnJuly31, the challenger, Minoru, deliberated for an hour and forty-eight minutes on a move—Black 83.” Aoki stared at the board. Saito had heard the broadcast. The policeman turned his head toward the window. The snow was up to the sill, and, silent and thick, still it fell. With a rustle of kimono another maid passed through the anteroom, and the rough Osaka voice cut in. “They’re not men who have a true feeling for the Japanese spirit. They make a point of going to view cherry blossoms, colored leaves in fall, to hear the New Year bells in Kyoto, but it’s not in their souls.”

  The Go-player sat back and fixed his gaze on Aoki. He’d spoken with a tough formality, yet again Aoki detected the mocking humor. Against them—or him? Frowning, he stared back. W
hat gave the fellow this special insight into the psyche of the Tokyo finance leaders?

  Saito said, “Their true feeling is for the yen, the dollar, political intrigue, for high office, power, and for expensive possessions. Madam Ito was of that nature to Ito. She was beautiful, and her mountain background added something special. “

  He interlaced his big hands and cracked his knuckles, startling Aoki. “But even with the yen and the dollar, their touch has been stupendously incompetent! The chaotic condition of the Citizens Bank bears this out.” A log exploded, spitting cinders. “Have you heard that news?” Aoki gave a terse nod. The man’s eyes were boring into him. “You have your own special experience of such men.”

  That hit home, but Aoki remained silent. Most of what Saito had said about the old case could’ve been gleaned from the papers, but had it been? And this man from Osaka knew who he was— again the papers! What was his profession? He talked about the business world like a damned television guru, but none of it seemed on the level. A tricky joker? After its hibernation, Aoki’s brain wouldn’t stop working.

  Saito weighed a white stone in his right hand. “Their talk last night? What’s your deduction—a reconciliation? A reconstruction of her disappearance, seeking the truth, or did they discuss only the bank’s situation?”

  Ah! Aoki ran his tongue over his teeth. While the dishes of last night’s banquet had come and gone, they’d certainly been absorbed in their talk. Did Saito know that tomorrow night was the anniversary of Madam Ito’s disappearance?

  Saito frowned and murmured, “You don’t answer.” He placed Black 89 and looked up. “My guess is that each believes the other murdered her, each seeks to know the truth. It’s like a fine splinter of steel in their brains, and they’re going over it, sparring with each other, trying to fill in the blanks of that fatal night.”

  Aoki nodded slowly. “That’s an interesting theory. It implies—”

  “That neither murdered her, perhaps that she wasn’t murdered at all. As I said.”

  Aoki’s finger found the mole.

  Saito gave a faint smile. “This was the Master’s retirement match.” Aoki frowned. The conversation about Ito and Yamazaki was a parallel shadow game to the Go match—though which game was the shadow, which the substance? Crazy thinking. Succinctly, he said, “It seems the Citizens Bank’s troubles have been well hidden until now.”

  Saito laughed roughly. “Doubtless there’s been a conspiracy with the government to keep it under wraps, but suddenly—crisis point. Chairman Ito must be driven half mad, a prisoner here, while his enemies cut loose, his world implodes! Well, he shouldn’t have rushed off, should he? A general lost on the battlefield is no good to anyone except the enemy. Yamazaki will have his worries, too. Will it come out he’s been covering up the bank’s desperate situation at the ministry?”

  This man was releasing his startling surmises into the dark old ryokan, the way the fishermen sent their cormorants diving into the Nagara River’s night waters. Startling, but with a certain logic. The last one was a note to depart on. Brusquely, Aoki excused himself.

  ~ * ~

  In the hall, Ito and Yamazaki, heads close, voices confidential, paced back and forth. From his bench, Shoba was watching them as if following a rally in a tennis match. The banker appeared even more rotund in a padded kimono, Aoki thought, and his soft body trembled as he walked, though his brain was certainly not soft. The heavy-lidded eyes gave him a somnolent appearance, a mask for his ruthless spirit.

  Yet Ito must’ve been asleep during the years when his vast city bank had embarked on its reckless lending spree, the years when Yamazaki had swept his wife off to their passionate trysts. A well-fed gentleman, but not rancid fat, perfumed fat. “Quiet and fast as a cobra,” a journalist had written, using the banker’s nickname: Buddha.

  Yamazaki, tall, less voluble, wore his bureaucratic power with a kind of sinister urbanity.

  Unnoticed, Aoki passed behind them, unable to glean anything from their lowered voices. A moment later he came upon Mori in the corridor and asked her to bring tea to his room. The kotatsu was alight again, and he warmed his hands, wondering if Saito made mistakes as he replayed that match from memory. Fellows like him, committed to a way of life involving annual repetitions of pieces of traditional culture, weren’t that rare in Japan. Take his father. Both were a light-year away from Aoki’s mind-set.

  His father had occasionally stayed at a ryokan. Aoki remembered one in Kyoto that the old man had regarded going to as a pilgrimage. He screwed up his eyes, trying to remember more. The old man had chosen moments to impart information on matters that interested him. A scrap surfaced ... In the early seventeenth century, five highways had been built linking the provinces with Edo, the old name for Tokyo. Road travelers had needed places to stay overnight. . . Such places were linked to the top brass of the day. The shogun had forced the feudal lords—daimyos—to travel these roads and spend alternate years at Edo, under his watchful eye.

  But this ryokan was on no highway.

  Aoki tried to remember more ... no use. He switched on the radio and found dance music in a former republic of the USSR. Thinking of the sound traveling across the Siberian wastes to this snowbound ryokan high in these mountains made him feel more alone.

  When the maid brought his tea, he asked if there were any women available for companionship. Averting her eyes, she said there was one. Men’s business, which she gave a helping hand to. Would he like her to come this evening?

  Aoki nodded his assent. The woman must already be under the roof. He’d heard that these places usually had a local geisha on call, or one or two complaisant maids available for male guests. Like many of his colleagues, most of his adult life Aoki had engaged in casual sex—sometimes when he was nervous or morose, or when he was drunk. He had only done it a few times since his marriage, times when he’d felt an even greater distance from Tokie than usual. He’d felt bad about it afterward. Now he was at the greatest distance of all.

  ~ * ~

  After lunch, Aoki slept. When he awoke he took a walk through the corridors and dusky rooms, trying to fit the plan of the place into his head. Ito and Yamazaki hadn’t reappeared, nor was Saito at the Go table. At four, when he went to take a bath, it was still snowing. Outside, the mountains had frozen over; inside, it felt as cloistered as a monastery, and as bone-chilling. To get out of the building they’d have to dig a tunnel from the front door, but where could one go to? Snowplows wouldn’t be operating on the road yet, they said.

  The ryokan had two baths, each of a size adequate to take several people, each fed by water from a hot spring. One was hollowed out of stone, the other made of fragrant old cypress wood. Up to his neck in the cypress one, he lay in the water and slowly soaked in the heat, just over a hundred degrees, he estimated. For him, this kind of bathing was a luxury. His mind drifted . . .

  On the night she disappeared, Ito had dined with his wife at a restaurant in the Ginza. At nine, after putting her in a taxi to return home, the banker had gone to a well-known businessmen’s club. He’d left the club at ten-thirty and arrived home after eleven. She had not returned. In fact, she’d gone to see Yamazaki. The MOF official had met her at nine-thirty at an apartment he kept in Shimbashi. He’d filed a sworn statement that she left by taxi before eleven, to go home. Though his wife wasn’t back yet, in the circumstances of his marriage, Ito had gone to bed. The next morning he’d phoned Yamazaki—doubtless an interesting conversation—then, after some deliberation, a high police official whom he knew. The police had found the taxi driver who’d brought Ito home, and also the driver who’d taken Madam Ito to Yamazaki’s apartment, but not the one who’d taken her from there. For a while, the investigation centered on Yamazaki, but he was unshakable in his story. The police, aided by the media, had scoured the city for other witnesses. They’d found none.

  That October night, Madam Ito had vanished from the face of the earth. Then, a week later, her bloodstained clothes had been di
scovered at Central station and identified by both men. After that, apart from matching the blood on the clothing with the missing woman’s rare group, and a few minor details, the investigation had stalled. Months passed. Aoki and his fifty colleagues had been reassigned to a new batch of crimes. By that time Superintendent Watanabe was off the case. Aoki had only known him by sight in those days.

  His face steaming with heat and moisture, frowning with the effort to remember more details, Aoki found himself wishing he had the case dossier.

  A man came into the bathhouse. Aoki peered through the rising steam and saw Yamazaki. The Ministry of Finance man completed his wash and rinse, then stepped into the bath, moving back to rest his head in a corner angle and floating his legs out—long, thin, wellshaped legs, absolutely hairless. He closed his eyes, ignoring Aoki’s presence. His face was saturnine, his chin prominent, yet the overall impression was harmonious. He was in good shape for a man in his middle fifties, his stomach flat and muscled.