"I started a search for mine," Hirata said.
"So did I," Sano said. "I sent my whole army out on the street to post notices and circulate my suspect's description."
"I hope it works." But Reiko knew how many men among Edo's million people probably fit those descriptions. Personal regret weighed upon her. "I wish there were something more I could do."
"There is," Sano said. "Talk to Chiyo again. Maybe she'll remember something else. And I want you to interview Fumiko and the nun. Maybe you can get more information from them than Hirata and I did."
17
For a brief moment when the sun ascended over the hills outside Edo, the rooftops of the city gleamed bright as gold. Then clouds rolled down from the hills, chasing and overtaking the rays of the sun. Edo was cloaked in a silvery mist.
Inside Sano's estate, Sano and Masahiro knelt opposite one another, some ten paces apart, in a shadowed courtyard. Each wore white martial arts practice clothes, his hand on the long sword at his waist. They sat perfectly still, their expressions serene yet alert.
Sano drew his sword. In one fluid motion, he whipped his blade out of its scabbard, leaped to his feet, and lunged. Masahiro followed suit. They slashed at each other; they parried and whirled, attacked, and counterattacked. Their wooden blades never touched, never made contact with their bodies. At last they retreated, sheathed their swords, and bowed.
"Your form is improving," Sano said, "but you were slower than usual."
Masahiro hung his head. "I'm sorry, Father."
Sano disliked criticizing his son. That was why he'd hired a tutor to teach Masahiro. He remembered his own childhood, when his father had taught him swordsmanship, and how much his father's constant, merciless tongue-lashings had hurt. He and Masahiro enjoyed practicing together; it was their special time to share during his busy day. But Sano couldn't ignore his son's faults.
Uncorrected, they might be the death of Masahiro someday. His own father's stern discipline was the reason Sano had fought and lived to fight again.
"You weren't paying attention," Sano said. "If this had been real combat, you'd be dead."
"Yes, Father, I know," Masahiro said, chastened.
Sano was concerned because Masahiro usually took martial arts practice very seriously. He knew better than other children how crucial good fighting skills were.
"What's the matter?" Sano said.
"Nothing," Masahiro said, with a haste that aroused Sano's suspicions.
"Is something on your mind?"
Masahiro fidgeted with the hilt of his sword. "No."
The gate opened, and Detectives Fukida and Marume appeared. "Please excuse the interruption, but there's good news," Fukida said.
"Can I go now, Father?" Masahiro said.
Sano studied his son's eager, nervous face. Masahiro was normally enthusiastic about their sessions and reluctant for them to end. His behavior today puzzled Sano.
But Sano said, "All right," and didn't press for an explanation. His own father had made him practice for long hours every single day. He'd often wished for time off to play with other children, wander the city and see the sights, or simply do nothing.
Masahiro hurried off. Sano said to the detectives, "What is it?"
"We just went back to the oxcart stables," Fukida said. "We asked the boss if any drivers fit your description of the man from the convent. He knew of one."
Hopeful excitement rose in Sano. "Good work. Where is he? Have you arrested him?"
"Not yet," Fukida said.
"He's working right near our doorstep," Marume said. "We thought you'd like to be in on the action."
Before Reiko left home, she stopped at the kitchen, where an army of cooks prepared food for the hundreds of people who lived in Sano's estate. Cooks slung vegetables and fish, grilled, stewed, and fried amid a din of cleavers chopping, pans rattling, and hearths roaring. Powerful aromas of garlic and hot oil permeated the steam from boiling pots.
Reiko packed fried dumplings stuffed with shrimp, grilled eel, raw tuna strips fastened to rice balls with seaweed, noodles with vegetables, and cakes filled with sweet chestnut paste into a lacquered wooden, compartmented lunchbox. She filled a jar with water, then carried the feast to her palanquin. She climbed inside and said to the bearers, "Take me to Zj Temple district."
After hastily changing his martial arts clothes for his regular garments, Sano donned his swords, mounted his horse, and left his estate with his detectives. They stopped to fetch Hirata on their way out of the castle. Marume and Fukida led the way through the northwestern gate. They brought their horses to a stop on the avenue that circled the castle. The avenue separated Edo Castle from the daimyo district, where the feudal lords and their thousands of retainers lived in vast compounds. Traffic that consisted mainly of samurai on horse back avoided the roadside by the castle, where piles of rocks, scrap lumber, and dirt overflowed into the street. Sano looked up at the construction site.
It was a dilapidated guard turret atop the wall, partially demolished, its upper story gone. Laborers hacked at the remains with pickaxes. They dropped the debris onto the pile on the roadside below, where two pairs of oxen, each yoked to a cart, stood patiently, tails swishing off flies. The two drivers-men dressed in short indigo kimonos and frayed sandals-loaded the debris on their carts.
One man was big, muscular, in his thirties. He wore his hair shorn down to a black fuzz on his scalp. His face sported several days' growth of whiskers. As Sano rode closer, he saw the large, pale scar on the man's right cheekbone.
"It looks like the man that the novice at the convent saw," Sano said.
The man spoke to his fellow driver, who grinned.
Hirata, riding beside Sano, said, "Look at the other fellow. He's younger and has two teeth missing from the right side of his mouth. That's my suspect."
"That's why a different man was at the scenes of two different kidnappings," Sano said. "We haven't got two separate criminals. They're a team."
"What a piece of good luck, finding them together," Marume said as he followed with Fukida.
When Sano and his men approached the oxcarts, the drivers spied them. The humor on their faces turned to caution, then the fear of guilty men cornered by the law. They dropped the timbers they'd lifted. They both jumped in one oxcart, and the big man snatched up a whip.
"Go!" he shouted, flailing the oxen.
The oxen clopped down the avenue, dragging the cart filled with debris. Workers on the turret yelled, "Hey! We're not done. Wait!" Sano and his men surged forward in pursuit. The driver with the missing teeth shouted, "Faster! Faster!"
But the heavy cart was no match for horsemen. Sano's party quickly caught up with it. The drivers jumped off the cart and ran.
"Don't let them get away!" Sano shouted as the drivers fled through the crowd and people swerved to avoid them.
Hirata leaped from his horse, flew through the air, landed on the younger man's back, and quickly subdued him. Marume and Fukida rode down the other man. When they caught him, he punched, kicked, and thrashed. By the time they'd wrestled him to the ground, they were panting and sweating.
From astride his horse, Sano surveyed his captives. "You're under arrest," he said.
"Didn't do anything wrong," the big man protested, his scarred cheek pressed into the mud.
"Neither did I," said his friend, pinned under Hirata.
"Then why did you run?" Sano asked.
That question stumped them into silence.
"Well, well," Marume said, "our new friends don't seem to have a good excuse."
Reiko rode in her palanquin, accompanied by Lieutenant Tanuma and her other guards, along the misty streets of the city. Peasants on their way to work avoided soldiers on patrol. Peddlers selling water, tea, baskets, and other merchandise hawked their wares. Neighborhood gates slowed the crush of traffic. Shopkeepers arranged their goods on the roadside to catch customers' eyes. At the approach to Zj district, pilgrims streamed toward the temp
le, while priests, monks, and nuns headed out to the city to beg. Reiko found the marketplace already crowded, with the children out in full force.
They'd emerged from the alleys where they slept at night. Ravenous, they begged at the food-stalls. Reiko was sad for the ragged, dirty boys and girls. She wished she could adopt them all. In fact, she had once adopted an orphan, the son of a woman who'd been murdered, but it hadn't been entirely successful. The boy's nature had been so affected by painful experiences that he'd not warmed to Reiko, despite her attempts to give him a good home. He shunned people, preferring to work in the stables with the horses. He would be an excellent groom someday, able to earn his living, if not overcome his past. Now Reiko watched for a twelve-year-old girl in a green and white kimono. Maybe today she could help another child in trouble.
Dogs barked. Reiko put her head out the window and saw, up the road, a pack of big, mangy black and brown hounds. They growled and lunged at something in their midst.
Feral dogs were plentiful in Edo. They came from the daimyo estates, where in the past they'd been bred for hunting. But the shogun, a devout Buddhist, had enacted laws that protected animals, forbade hunting, and prohibited killing or hurting dogs. He'd been born in the Year of the Dog, and he believed that if he protected dogs, the gods would grant him an heir. The result was that dogs proliferated unchecked. The daimyo still kept them as watchdogs, and when too many litters were born, they couldn't drown the puppies because the penalty for killing a dog was death. Samurai could no longer use dogs to test a sword. Unwanted dogs were simply turned out to fend for themselves. They roved in packs, foraging and competing for food. They befouled the city and posed a danger to all, and too often their victims were the helpless children.
Among the dogs now gathered in the marketplace, Reiko spied a flash of green, from a kimono worn by a girl who'd fallen on the ground. She cringed as the dogs snapped at her.
"Stop!" Reiko cried to her bearers. The moment they set down her palanquin, she was out the door. She called, "Lieutenant Tanuma! Save that girl!"
He and two other guards jumped off their horses. Shouting and waving their swords, they chased the dogs away. People nearby paid scant notice; the public had learned not to get involved in dog attacks. Nobody wanted to hurt a dog and be arrested and executed. Reiko hurried over to the girl, who scrambled to her feet. Near her lay a half-eaten fish that she and the dogs had been fighting over.
"Fumiko-san, are you all right?" Reiko said.
The girl started at the sound of her name. The fright on her dirty face turned to scowling distrust. "Who are you?"
"My name is Reiko. I'm the wife of Chamberlain Sano." Reiko extended her hand. "I want to help you."
Fumiko recoiled. "Don't touch me!" Her voice was gruff, boyish. "Leave me alone!" She turned to run.
"Don't let her get away," Reiko ordered her guards.
Lieutenant Tanuma put out his hand to grab the girl; the other men surrounded her. Reiko warned, "Look out-she's got a knife!" just as Fumiko slashed it at Tanuma. He jerked his hand back. Fumiko cowered within the circle formed by the guards and Reiko, as terrified of them as she'd been of the dogs.
"Shall I take the knife away from her?" Tanuma asked.
"No. Wait." Reiko ran to the palanquin and fetched the lunchbox. She opened the lid and showed the contents to Fumiko. "I brought this for you," she said. "Do you want it?"
Her eyes glazed with hunger, Fumiko breathed through her open mouth as she stared at the food.
"Put your knife away and come sit with me inside my palanquin," Reiko said, "and I'll give it all to you."
Fumiko hesitated. Reiko read in her gaze the fear of what might happen if she put herself in the hands of a stranger. "What do you want?" she asked.
"Just to talk," Reiko said.
18
Fumiko tucked her knife under her sash, climbed into the palanquin with Reiko, and fell upon the food. She crammed fish, rice, dumplings, noodles, and cakes into her mouth. She gulped and slurped, hardly bothering to chew. It was like watching a wild animal feed.
In the close confines of the palanquin, Reiko could smell Fumiko's stench of urine and unwashed hair and body. Fumiko ate and ate until the lunchbox was empty. She washed the food down with water from the jar Reiko had brought. Then she lunged for the door.
Reiko held it closed. "We'll talk first."
"Let me out, or I'll kill you." Fumiko reached for the knife.
Reiko grabbed Fumiko's wrist. It was skin and bone, thin and fragile.
"Let me go!" Fumiko cried.
As she struggled to pull free, their gazes met, and something unspoken passed between them. Maybe it was a sudden realization that they were both women in unusual circumstances-Fumiko the gangster's daughter who'd become a wild, starving street child; Reiko the samurai lady who'd ventured outside her own society to befriend an outcast. Maybe they had more in common than both of them recognized. Fumiko stopped fighting. When Reiko let go of her wrist, she scowled, but she stayed.
"Talk about what?" Fumiko said.
"Your kidnapping," Reiko said.
Now Fumiko looked surprised. "How do you know about that?"
"A friend of mine heard it from the police."
"The police?" Fumiko glanced out the window in sudden fright, as if she suspected a trap. "We don't want them in our business."
"We" meant her father's gangster clan, Reiko supposed. Not all the police were in cahoots with Jirocho, and he undoubtedly steered clear of those who tried to enforce the law.
"Don't worry, I didn't bring the police," Reiko said. "They only knew about the kidnapping because your father reported it to them."
"My father?" Hope appeared on Fumiko's face, breaking through her distrust like the sun through clouds. "Did he send you?" She sounded puzzled but eager.
Reiko realized that Fumiko thought Jirocho had sent the chamberlain's wife to rescue her, as improbable as that would be. Hating to disappoint the girl, she said, "No, I'm sorry," and watched Fumiko's expression turn woeful. "My husband sent me. He and I want to catch the person who kidnapped you."
Fumiko frowned, her suspicion renewed. "Why?"
"Because he hurt you," Reiko said. She didn't mention Sano's cousin and the nun who'd also been kidnapped; she didn't want Fumiko to think she cared only about them. She felt an affection for this savage little girl. "He should be punished."
"If I ever see him again, I'll kill him myself," Fumiko said. "That's the way we do things. We don't wait for other people to get revenge for us."
Reiko began to wonder what kind of life Fumiko had led within the gangster clan. Maybe she'd been wild and violent even before she'd been disowned. "Still, I want to help you," Reiko said. "Tell me about the man who kidnapped you. What did he look like?"
Confusion shadowed Fumiko's face. She pressed her lips together.
"You don't remember, do you?" Reiko said gently. When Fumiko remained silent, Reiko said, "Tell me what happened."
Fumiko bowed her head and mumbled through the tangled hair that fell over her face: "I was at Shinobazu Pond, feeding the fish. After that, it's all mixed up in my head. There was a little monkey…"
Confused, Reiko said, "A monkey? Where?"
"A man had it on a leash. He said that if I came with him, he would let me play with it."
"Who was he?"
"I don't remember." Fumiko sighed.
The kidnapper had used the monkey as bait for the girl, Reiko de-110 110 duced. Fumiko must have gone with him, perhaps to an oxcart in which he'd carried her away. This was a different ploy than Chiyo's kidnapper had used. Reiko considered the disturbing idea that there were two rapists, possibly three.
"I was playing ball with the monkey," Fumiko said. "Then I woke up and it was gone. Everything was gone." The puzzlement she must have felt sounded in her voice. "I was someplace that was filled with clouds."
That did match Chiyo's story. "Was the man there?" Reiko asked.
Fumiko nodded.
"But you didn't see him?"
"No. Because of the clouds."
"What did he do?" Reiko asked.
She expected Fumiko to be so overcome with shame that she couldn't bear to tell the tale. But Fumiko spoke with startling matter-of-factness. "He pawed me all over. He put his thing in my mouth for me to suck."
Reiko remembered that Jirocho ran illegal brothels. Perhaps Fumiko had seen sex there, between the male customers and girls as young as herself.
"I tried to fight him off, but I couldn't move," Fumiko said. "I screamed and cursed at him. He called me a naughty girl. He spanked my behind until I cried. Then he shoved himself into me and did it."
Reiko was disturbed, and not only by what Fumiko had suffered. The man in Fumiko's case seemed to have different tastes in women and sexual practices than the one in Chiyo's. Still, Reiko believed that Chiyo and Fumiko had both been drugged; maybe their minds had been affected, and that explained the discrepancies. But despite the similarities in the stories, Reiko couldn't dismiss the possibility that there was more than one rapist.
"That's all I remember," Fumiko said. "The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground beside Shinobazu Pond."
"The man hit your face, didn't he?" Reiko said. Although loath to make Fumiko dwell on bad experiences, she must probe the girl's memory for information about the criminal.
Fumiko touched her bruised eye. "No. My father did. He said I led the man on. He said I disgraced myself and our clan."
Here was the most tragic similarity between her story and Chiyo's. Both women had suffered insult heaped upon injury.
"I begged him to forgive me," Fumiko said. Tears trembled beneath her gruff, sullen manner. "I offered to cut off my finger." She added, "That's how we make it up to my father when we've done something wrong."
Reiko had known about the gangsters' rule, but the idea that a little girl should take it for granted was shocking.
"But my father wouldn't listen," Fumiko said. "He threw me out."
The Cloud Pavilion si-14 Page 11
