The Moving Blade

by Michael Pronko

  “I’m Detective Hiroshi Shimizu.”

  Pamela reached out to shake his hand. “Have you found out anything new about the case?”

  “There was a break-in during the funeral.”

  Pamela drew back, startled.

  They followed Hiroshi into the living room and stood looking at each other in polite hesitation before he turned away and pulled on his socks.

  “Jamie’s in the shower,” Hiroshi said.

  “Ah,” they both said and looked around for a place to sit.

  “Someone was here all night. On the sofa.” Hiroshi pointed where Ueno had slept. They looked at the jumbled room, everything in the wrong place, and waited quietly.

  “Visitors?” Jamie came in to the living room in her father’s bathrobe, several sizes too large for her, with her long hair spread out to dry on a towel over her shoulders.

  “I’m Pamela Carica. From the embassy. We talked by phone? Before the funeral?”

  “Oh, yes, of course, I’m sorry,” Jamie said. “I forgot you were coming.”

  “Are you OK?” Pamela asked. “Was anything taken?”

  “I haven’t been here in twenty years. It took me half the morning to find a towel.”

  Jamie looked at Trey. Pamela introduced him. “This is a friend of your father’s.”

  Trey leaned forward and took her hand in both of his. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am. Recently, your father only talked about two things—his project and you. I couldn’t make the funeral, just back from Korea. But I wanted to offer my condolences in person.”

  “I’m happy to meet people who knew him. It’s all I can do now.”

  Pamela said, “I have a few things for you, but is now a good time?”

  “After I change, it will be.” Jamie excused herself and went upstairs, rubbing her hair with the towel. When she came back, she was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt under one of her father’s wool jackets, the sleeves rolled up and a fresh towel under her long hair.

  They pulled up some stray chairs and arranged them around the only piece of furniture in the room other than the sofa that wasn’t out of place: a dining table against the wall.

  “Your father was so well known in Japan.” Pamela opened her briefcase. “I can’t tell you how many times I read his columns and heard him on TV. He often came to the embassy. It made me proud to know someone could know another culture so deeply and could do so much good work. You’ll be giving his speech for him next week, I guess.”

  Jamie, not really listening, nodded her head yes, but when the last sentence clicked, she said, “I’m not giving any speeches. I just want to get his affairs in order.”

  “I understand.” Pamela set a small stack of papers on the table. “I’m sorry to hand you a batch of forms, but if you want to send the ashes to America, you will need these. I have everything in Japanese and English. For accessing his bank accounts, it’s these. Did he have a will?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that.” Jamie looked confused and ran the towel over her wet hair.

  Trey cleared his throat, leaning forward with his hands together. “I’d like to help your father’s project move forward if I can. A significant work from him would influence Pacific Rim politics and knowing Bernie, it would be masterful.” Trey leaned forward and smiled, dimples crinkling on either side of his white teeth. “I just want to be sure Bernie’s legacy is handled right. I’d also like to show my respects by taking his daughter out to dinner one evening?”

  Jamie looked into his faraway blue eyes. “I’ve never been asked out in honor of my father before. That’s a first.”

  “There’s another friend of your father’s I want you to meet. I’ll call you tomorrow morning, if that’s all right?”

  Jamie nodded OK.

  “Great,” Trey said.

  The front door bell rang and Hiroshi turned towards it, thinking that Americans smiled too much and always said things like “great” and “fantastic” and “wonderful,” exaggerated words they didn’t really mean.

  Pamela stood up and zipped her briefcase closed. “Sounds like someone else is here. And I’ve got to run. Another American citizen’s death.”

  “Another one?” A wave of concern passed over Jamie’s face.

  “Well, yes, sadly. There are a lot of Americans in Japan. The military takes care of service members, so that’s a little less for me. But still. I used to work with the Chamber of Commerce and never got out of the office. Now I’m out almost everyday.”

  Americans also always talked about themselves without being asked, a habit Hiroshi had never been able to understand. They also touched each other a lot, even strangers.

  Pamela took Jamie’s hands in hers. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

  Trey confirmed, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Americans always expected yes for an answer, didn’t even wait for it. Hiroshi eyed Trey’s big loping American stride as Jamie walked them to the front door.

  Waiting at the front door was Setsuko, Mattson’s first wife. Setsuko bowed politely to the two Americans as they walked out. Setsuko turned to give Jamie a hug. Hiroshi wondered who she could be. Everyone was hugging or touching Jamie. Hiroshi stood back as Jamie walked Setsuko in to the living room. Setsuko set down several bags on the table. “I realized Bernie probably had nothing to eat in the house. He said not eating out in Tokyo was a crime.”

  “There was zero in the fridge. But I’m the same in New York.”

  “So, you’re the detective in charge?” Setsuko said to Hiroshi, brushing her grey hair behind her ears and straightening her blue jacket. “I’m Bernie’s first wife.”

  Hiroshi handed her his meishi. She nodded and tucked it in her pocket. From one of the bags she set down, Setsuko pulled out onigiri rice balls, handmade from brown rice with a thick wrap of nori seaweed, sprinkled with sesame seeds and dried fish flakes.

  “I really miss these,” Jamie said.

  Setsuko went into the kitchen. “He’s got tea at least. For when he didn’t go out for coffee.”

  Setsuko came back out with a pot of tea and three handmade cups. She seemed to know where everything was. She motioned for Hiroshi and Jamie to eat and drink. Hiroshi took one, opened the wrap and realized how hungry he was.

  Not waiting to be asked, Setsuko looked straight in Hiroshi’s eyes. “He wasn’t robbed for his art treasures. Bernie was finishing an important study about the origins of SOFA and what it meant. He had been going to the national archives every day for the past two years. He was almost done, right before—”

  Hiroshi swallowed a mouthful of rice. “When did you see him last?”

  “The day before he was killed.”

  Setsuko poured for each of them. The scent of fresh green tea filled the room.

  “You saw him every day?” Jamie asked.

  Setsuko smiled at her. “Almost every day. You know, or maybe you don’t, but you need to know, that he left me for your mother, Sachi, all those years ago. She was so sexy and wild and half my age. He was drinking constantly then. He’d black out and I’d have to go pick him up. Or the police would drag him home. I was sick of it. I guess you have to let people hit bottom before they come back up on their own. So, that’s what I did, and he did come back to me, when he finally sobered up.”

  “He was drinking that much?” Jamie asked. “I didn’t know. I don’t remember that at all.”

  “It came and went. He got worse after you left for America. Finally, he dried out at a hospital. Half a year. And then he went to a Zen monastery, the same one where we first met. After meditating, he was like he used to be, in the 50s and 60s.” Setsuko shook her head and took the hot cup of tea in two hands.

  Jamie blew on her tea and Hiroshi finished his onigiri.

  “After I was sure he sobered up, I pushed him to get in touch with you.” Setsuko smiled at the memory. “It took him a year or two, but he finally wrote you after I found where you were working.”

/>   Jamie looked down at her tea cup.

  Setsuko seemed lost, then came back and turned to Hiroshi. “He kept delaying handing the book to the publishers. He wanted one more…something, he never said what, but something he had to have for the book to work. He insisted it was there.”

  “What was where?” Jamie asked.

  Setsuko shrugged and held her palms up. “He wanted it to be a surprise when he gave the plenary address at the conference. I thought he was joking, but he was serious. I don’t even know where he kept the speech. Every day he was rewriting, rethinking, never telling me a word.”

  Setsuko put her hand to her cheek, remembering, and then got up to clear the dishes.

  Hiroshi stood up, wondering about the speech. He could hear Setsuko doing a quick cleanup in the kitchen. From the corner of his eyes, Hiroshi watched Jamie fiddling quietly with the bag that had held the onigiri.

  When Setsuko came back, she took Jamie’s hand and walked her into the tatami room. The two women knelt in seiza style on the mats in front of Mattson’s ashes. The urn seemed to fit the shelf as if it had always been there.

  “You need a photo and some incense.” Setsuko patted Jamie on the leg. “And a bell.”

  Jamie nodded her head. “I’ll get those.”

  Both women faced the offset shelves holding the urn, statue and scroll. Jamie put her arm around Setsuko, their hair falling around them as they lowered their heads without moving or speaking.

  Hiroshi watched them from where he stood in the next room, a distance that felt very far away.

  Chapter 10

  The narrow alleys of Golden Gai doglegged in all directions. At the funeral, Jamie had promised Shibata she’d stop by his club. She brought Hiroshi to be sure she could find it. Hiroshi had put up no resistance. The arm’s-width bars were still closed, but it was hard to tell because most had no windows, just doorways.

  “Let’s try this lane.” Hiroshi walked down another alley, studying the names, each on a different variety of sign hanging on the front walls.

  “Didn’t we go down there already?” Jamie waved the meishi shop card in the air. “I’m sorry to have asked you all the way over here. You must be busy.”

  Hiroshi didn’t want to admit that, so he walked over to a hand-painted map of the area bolted onto two rusted poles, but the layout on the map was sideways from the streets.

  Hiroshi heard something fall and Jamie shouting and turned to see her picking herself up from a jumble of empty Styrofoam boxes.

  “Yuck. These stink!” She pulled herself up, then stood holding her arms to the side, shaking off whatever was on her hands.

  Hiroshi dashed over and handed her his handkerchief. “You have to pay attention in Tokyo. The concrete’s uneven.”

  As Jamie wiped her hands, Hiroshi saw behind her, and the Styrofoam fish boxes, the sign for “Pan-Pan,” Shibata’s bar.

  Jamie turned and shouted, “There it is!”

  Hiroshi realized, suddenly, horribly, the alley was where the dead man had been killed. Though the blood was washed off, he could picture the body split open on the pavement. The slashed-open door had crime scene and duct tape over the opening. A bouquet of flowers was propped on the curb across from Shibata’s place, where the dead man had lain, an offering for his departed spirit.

  Jamie knocked on the door and Shibata’s round head poked around the weathered door, one eye through the crack. When he saw Jamie, he pulled back the door. His face’s plump features filled out and his eyes opened wide.

  “Little Jamie-chan! I thought it might be police. Come in, come in,” he pulled her inside and gave her an American-style hug.

  “We had a hard time finding the place. This is Detective Hiroshi. He’s been helping me,” Jamie said. Hiroshi stood behind her, wondering how Bernard Mattson knew this bar owner, and from how long ago.

  Shibata pulled Jamie inside, and Hiroshi turned sideways to squeeze in behind the six tall stools along the bar. Light came from a small back room behind a noren shop curtain. A sink, microwave and glass cooler took up the rest of the space.

  Hiroshi leaned against the velvet wallpaper, his head bumping Mardi Gras beads and retro photos in silver frames. Crinkled, colored streamers and white mesh fabric soared up and over the ceiling rafters, leftover from a party, or ready for one.

  “Last time I see you, you were little, little girl. Sit, sit, sit.” Shibata sat Jamie down on a stool.

  “I sort of remember this place,” Jamie said, unbuttoning her coat.

  “That different place. Burned down. But inside is look same. You remember?”

  “I sat on the bar and chewed gum.”

  “You only six or seven then. So cute! People stop you on the street take your picture.”

  Shibata glided around the bar and fished inside the under-bar ice chest. With a flourish, he pulled up a bottle of champagne and fingered three champagne flutes from a rack above the counter and set them upright onto the polished wood counter. In a flash, he ripped off the foil and wire and popped the cork. He poured out the champagne and let it bubble over the top. “Bernie saying you come back. And here you are!”

  Jamie said, “Too late to…”

  “Hush now,” Shibata said, wiping the spill and sliding the flutes towards them. “Never too late. Kanpai! Cheers!”

  “So, tell me Mr. Hiroshi, why you helping this gorgeous creature? That one of your dad’s favorite phrase, gorgeous creature.”

  Hiroshi set his champagne down on the bar top and handed Shibata his card. “I’m helping with the break-in at her house.”

  “Break-in?” Shibata froze and squinted at Hiroshi. “When?”

  “During the funeral,” Jamie said. “I hadn’t been in the house in twenty years. I get there and it’s ransacked.”

  Shibata looked away. “Things stolen?”

  “I don’t even know what was there.”

  “Print, statue, carving, pottery, all very, very valuable.” Shibata swallowed a long, slow mouthful of champagne. From the curtained-off back area stepped Ken, the younger man who had come with Shibata to the funeral. Ken’s tall, buffed, tanned figure made the place feel smaller. Shibata held up his glass, but Ken shook his head and ducked under the curtain to the small back kitchen and storage area.

  “I know Bernie so long time. Since 1950s,” Shibata gulped his champagne. “Tokyo not so big those days. Your father knew everyone. He speak Japanese, Korean, good Chinese, too.” Shibata poured more champagne for them.

  “I didn’t know that.” Jamie sipped her refilled glass.

  “More you don’t need to know,” Shibata laughed. “Occupation, soldiers, yakuza, black market, buying, selling. My bars, open, close. Crazy time, but fun.” Shibata turned serious. “You must get his thing from archive. Bernie going there everyday translating, writing. He leave important thing there.”

  Jamie shrugged and smiled.

  “I have other important thing but not have now,” Shibata said. “I give you tomorrow when I send you airport.”

  “I’m not leaving tomorrow.”

  “I get you very cheap ticket New York.” Shibata pointed at Hiroshi. “Let this man do his work, then come back.”

  “I want to stay and get things sorted out,” Jamie insisted.

  Shibata rubbed the dome of his head. “You got bodyguard here, but go back is better. You like yakitori?” He took a napkin from the stack and started sketching a map.

  “Another map?” Jamie said. “We could barely find this place.”

  “I call tell them you coming. Your father favorite place,” Shibata handed the hand-drawn map to Hiroshi and explained how to get there, then pushed them towards the door.

  Outside, Shibata gave Jamie a big hug while Hiroshi stood politely to the side with the napkin map. Shibata took both of Jamie’s hands in his. “Listen, I know you stubborn. You Bernie’s daughter. But best you go back New York, come back later.”

  “I’ll think about that,” Jamie promised.

  Whe
n they got to the corner of the narrow alley, Hiroshi looked back and saw Shibata standing over the flowers on the curb for the dead man.

  Hiroshi would need to talk with him again, in Japanese, alone. But for now, with Jamie, Hiroshi twisted the napkin map like a compass to steer them out of Golden Gai towards the nearby area of Korean barbecue joints, Thai restaurants, coffee shops and dark doorways. Jamie followed, the sights and smells stirring memories of the long walks with her father around Tokyo. She recalled nothing specifically, but everything intensely.

  Hiroshi stopped in front of an exhaust fan gushing the aroma of charcoal-grilled chicken. From a plain sliding glass door, more divider than door, a young man hurried out to welcome them.

  Inside, the employees shouted, “Irrashaimase, Welcome.” A long wood counter stretched around the glassed-in grill area. The room was smoky-steamy and Jamie’s shoe soles stuck on the rough, oily concrete floor. Jamie and Hiroshi sat down in the last two open seats at the counter. A waiter handed them hot face towels.

  “What do you want to drink?” Hiroshi asked.

  Jamie smiled. “I drink everything.”

  “That’s your American side. Anything you don’t eat?”

  Jamie smiled again. “I eat everything.”

  “That’s your Japanese side.” Hiroshi ordered beer.

  The menu hung along the top of the wall, each dish on a wooden plaque darkened by oily smoke, one or two were turned around, sold out for the day. The waiter listened while Hiroshi reeled off orders as his eyes roamed the walls.

  The waiter then hurried behind the grill pit and slapped the orders onto an overhead rack. The grill chef worked steadily over the glowing coals on a rig of grates and bricks. Catching Jamie watching, he gave her a serious nod of the head. The beer arrived in frosted glasses and they clinked them together and drank.

  Jamie twisted around to see the whole place, beer glass at her lips. “I love this place!” Jamie turned towards Hiroshi, “Why does Shibata want to get me out of Tokyo?”

  “It’s not a bad idea, actually,” Hiroshi said. Having Jamie safely back in New York would make the investigation easier and free up detectives. At least they would not have to have someone spend the night there.