Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 37, No. 13, Mid-December 1992

Fugu by William Beechcroft

Managing Editor Charlie Lovett wore a little smirk. “You got any idea what fugu is, Forrest?”

“Puffer fish,” Dan told him. All of Charlie’s two hundred forty pounds sagged in disappointment.

“Damn! Thought I had you. How about a Kaiseki ryori?”

“Got me there, Charlie.”

He grinned smugly. “It’s a Japanese formal dinner. And you’re invited.”

“What do you mean, I’m invited?” Japanese cuisine wasn’t Dan’s favorite. “I’m News-Leak’s crime reporter, not the roving food critic. Give it to Blauvelt.”

“He’s on another assignment. You’re the winner of this one.”

Charlie ran sausage fingers through his thatch of meringue hair. A signal, Dan had learned, that he wasn’t about to back down.

Having boozed his way to this bottom of the journalistic food chain, Dan was in no position to argue. Dry as he had been for the past several years, he knew he was on perpetual probation. Hell of a position to be in for a Columbia grad who had cut his professional teeth on the New York Times. Now in his mid-forties, he was a tabloid bottom-feeder.

“Charlie, what’s a Japanese dinner got to do with crime reporting — wait a minute. You said something about fugu.”

Charlie’s eyes rolled ceilingward. “Thank you, God. There’s hope, after all.” His watery blues skewered Dan. “You know that puffer fish is a Japanese delicacy? You know that if it’s not prepared by a chef who knows exactly what he’s doing, fugu can kill you? Well, they’re serving fugu at this Kaiseki rigatoni—”

“Ryori, I thought you said.”

“Whatever, Forrest. You get yourself over to the Golden Tory—”

“I think that’s Tor-ee-ee, Charlie, as in T-o-r-i-i.”

“That’s what I said; Up on 57th. It’s Hiroki Tanaka’s eightieth birthday, and you’re the lucky guy to represent me.”

“Who’s Hiroki Tanaka?”

“Guy I worked with in Japan back in ’45. The Occupation. I was a sergeant, he was civilian clerk.”

“You were friends?”

“Could say that. I nearly married his sister.”

“Nearly?”

“Yeah,” Charlie grunted. A distant look crept into his gaze. “He wasn’t exactly for it. Neither was their old man. Fact is, I had to get myself shipped out of Tokyo.”

He stood up ponderously, walked around his battered swivel, and leaned on its back. “When Tanaka moved here in the 1960’s, I talked to him on the phone a few times, then we sort of let things fade. Never could quite read how he felt about me.”

“And now he’s asked you to his birthday fugufest. To embrace you or erase you?”

“Forrest, he was a close buddy, except for the sister thing.” Charlie shrugged meaty shoulders. “I’d go myself if I didn’t—”

“—have so much to do here. Yeah, Charlie.”

“Besides, Daniel, you could get a story out of it. ‘Birthday Stuffer Is Deadly Puffer.’ ”

“You’re a born wordsmith, Charlie. Maybe I’d better put in a call to Cousin Roy to stand by.” Sometimes he suspected that his cousinship with Detective Lieutenant Roy Forrest at Manhattan Homicide was the reason Charlie kept Dan around when he occasionally hobbled a story. Couldn’t hurt NewsLeak to have a pipeline to the NYPD.

“Up to 57th tomorrow at noon, Forrest. And tell old Tanaka I wish him happy birthday. I told him you’d be there in my place.”

“I hope he doesn’t believe in killing the messenger.”

Before Dan joined the festivities up on 57th, he spent some time in the New York Public Library boning up on fugu. A swell little fish with something called tetrodotoxin in its intestines, liver, and ovaries. Nice stuff, two hundred seventy-five times more deadly than cyanide. But fugu eating was a craze in Japan. A restaurant could net two hundred dollars per puffer, but an experienced fugu chef had better prepare it. The puffer death rate in Nippon had averaged twenty a year through the past decade. Enough puffer poison killed you by shutting down the nervous system, and enough was one milligram, the amount that would cover the letter “o” in standard newspaper copy. One average-sized fugu fish carried enough toxin to do in thirty gourmets. Nice stuff, and no known antidote.

He found a dandy little ditty about this off-putting fish:

Charlie, thanks a heap.

Five aged Japanese gentlemen were seated on straw mats around the big rectangular table when Dan shucked off his shoes and stepped into the private room in the rear of the Golden Torii.

The sixth man greeted him at the sliding door with a medium bow — not overly formal, but not exactly warm, either.

“Mr. Daniel Forrest? I am Hiroki Tanaka. So pleased to meet you.”

“Mr. Lovett sends birthday congratulations,” Dan offered, trying to mask his bothersome tad of apprehension. “And he wishes you many more.”

Tanaka smiled. “So pleased.”

He looked like a Japanese Gregory Peck. Tall man, dignified, well-preserved at four score. He was dressed in a long purple robe tied in the middle with an orange sash.

The others were in coats and ties. They looked like board members of the Tokyo National Bank. As one, they rose, and each bowed pleasantly as he was introduced. Dan bowed back, feeling hugely out of place. Then they all sank together with popping knees. Dan’s place was at the foot of the table, to the host’s left. And, he noted, well below the sake. He was a guest at this exclusive nooner, but far from the guest of honor.

Using a word association gimmick, Dan had made an effort to remember all their names during the mass intro. To his immediate right was Mr. Yoho (“and a bottle of rum”), a heavyset fellow with thinning white hair. In his fifties, Dan guessed. Yoho was the youngest man there, except for Dan.

Between Yoho and their host at the head of the table sat Mr. Shoyu (“I’ll show you”). A rangy man in his seventies, Dan judged, with near-bronze skin, he was the talker of the group. In a flood of impenetrable Japanese.

No one was at the foot of the table. Directly across from Dan sat a glowering Mr. Matsui (“Mott Street suey”). He had a face of carved beige soapstone beneath a totally hairless scalp. Matsui sat wordless with an expression impossible to read.

To his left was Mr. Hojo (“Howard Johnson”), elderly like the others, but with a full head of hair, obviously dyed or a toupee, combed straight back.

The remaining guest, to Hojo’s left and in the place of honor at host Tanaka’s immediate right, was Mr. Robun (“keeps boh-boh-bohbbin along”). Dan’s word association on him was right on the mark. He was an active fellow with long strands of black hair combed from just over his right ear clear across his shiny scalp. He just couldn’t sit still, even when he wasn’t slipping in a word or two when the garrulous Mr. Shoyu paused for breath.

Their host coughed discreetly for silence, then said a few words in Japanese. Formal greeting, thanks for coming, Dan guessed when he caught a couple of arigatos. His Japanese was World War II movie rerun.

Then Tanaka clapped his hands. The paper screen door slid open, and in came two of the prettiest Japanese women he’d ever seen. Their waitresses. One was tiny with a short bob; the other was tall for a Japanese, with lustrous blueblack hair to her shoulders — and with startlingly brilliant green eyes. All around the table Dan heard sudden intakes of breath, well short of the spirited reaction these two gorgeous ladies would have generated from a group of American geezers. But the male appreciation was there, all right — from everyone except the silent Mr. Matsui across the table from Dan. He glowered.

The decorative ladies worked around the table, setting in front of each diner dishes and cups from the stacks on the table, then distributing pairs of paper-sheathed chopsticks. A fork for Dan, which, while ensuring that he would eat, seemed something of a put-down.

They poured the initial round of sake from the two porcelain pitchers on the table. Mr. Shoyu, the talker, made a toast. Dan lifted his cup but faked a sip. Even the faint bouquet was a threat.

Then came a bewildering succession of beautifully prepared and arranged appetizers. Amazing how good raw fish looked. On Dan’s right, Mr. Yoho caught his hesitation and pointed at something on the tray in front of them, something on a skewer. Dan tried it. Barbecued chicken. He gave Mr. Yoho a smile and a nod of thanks. Yoho beamed.

Next came a clear soup, a touch on the briny side but not bad at all. Then a round of raw fish without Dan’s chicken escape. He tried it. Tasted like... raw fish.

The attentive waitresses cleared the used dishes yet again and reappeared with platters of what looked like pork, rice, and cabbage. “Tonkatsu,” Mr. Yoho whispered helpfully. It was pork, rice, and cabbage. All right so far.

Following the next table clearance came what Dan realized was a dramatic pause. Then the papered doorway slid wide and in came the taller of the attendants, carrying a large blue lacquered platter. When she lowered it to the table, Dan was taken aback by the beauty of what was on it: a large crane in full flight, all of it made of delicate slices of something translucent. Surely they weren’t intended to eat this work of art.

Mr. Tanaka cleared his throat. He said something in a reverent singsong that brought understanding nods from everyone but Dan.

“It is a traditional verse, Mr. Forrest,” Tanaka explained. “ ‘Those who eat fugu are stupid. But,’ ” he raised a forefinger, “ ‘those who do not eat fugu are also stupid.’ ”

So this exquisitely sculptured crane was the fugu.

It looked benign enough. The platter was passed to the guest of honor. Skillfully, Mr. Robun flicked several slices onto his plate. Next, Mr. Hojo took his serving. And Mr. Matsui. Then Matsui thrust the platter toward Dan. There was no way out of this. Using his alien fork, he extracted a couple of innocent-looking slices from the crane’s outstretched right wing, and he passed the platter to Mr. Yoho.

Dan suppressed a shiver. Today I help carry his coffin... Had to read all about it, didn’t you, Forrest?

Six pairs of eyes were focused on him. He offered a weak smile. And he nibbled a slice.

Crow, Dan had read, tasted like chicken. Rattlesnake tasted like chicken.

Damned if fugu didn’t taste like fishy chicken. Smooth, and rich, but no body to it. More like chicken Jell-O. He’d rather have had chicken. But there was a certain weird thrill at eating something with such a horrendous reputation.

What the hell. He ate the second slice. All around the table he saw approving nods. Especially from the hyperactive Mr. Robun. He was boh-boh-bohbin along, all right.

Then he wasn’t. He froze in mid-bohb. His eyes fixed on the wall over Mr. Shoyu’s bronze stare. Then all eyes riveted on Mr. Robun.

Dan had read that a fugu victim’s arms and legs turn numb. The vocal cords are paralyzed. The brain stays clear, then breathing stops.

Mr. Robun seemed to be working on that scenario. His mouth dropped open. His breath came faster and faster. Then stopped. His eyes rolled high.

And he toppled over backward.

Dan’s first reaction was a cynical one. Oh, come on, gents. All this for my benefit? He waited for Mr. Robun to bob up again while the room dissolved in laughter at this elaborate Nipponese practical joke on the naive Westerner.

Mr. Robun stayed put on the tatami matting.

Dan’s next thought, crass tabloid reporter that he was, centered on what a great NewsLeak story this was going to be.

The restaurant manager called an ambulance. Dan called Cousin Roy. Both arrived at the same time. The late Mr. Robun (“Dead all right,” Roy astutely observed) was micro-checked by the next-arriving medical examiner, photographed, then toted out in a zippered body pouch. Roy brought the luncheon guests back to their secluded dining alcove one at a time, Tanaka first, Dan last.

When Tanaka emerged and strode past Dan with a grim “So very sorry,” Roy stuck his head through the sliding door and bawled, “Anybody here who can interpret?”

A busboy in the middle of the restaurant confusion shouted, “Okay, I do it,” and trotted to the private room.

In went, at ten minute intervals, Yoho, Shoyu, Matsui, and Hojo, each stepping out and back into his shoes stonefaced. Then it was Dan’s turn. He shucked off his Thom McAns and went in. Crosslegging it on the tatami again was more than he could hack, and he was sure Roy hadn’t even considered it, so they both stood and kind of ambled around. With his brogans still on his feet, Roy noisily crunched the matting. He was built like a Rottweiler, big-boned, a touch squatty, but agile enough. Dan had him in the height department by four inches.

“So,” Roy said, “how’ve you been?”

“Getting along, cousin. Getting along.”

“No, uh, problems with...” Roy left that hanging.

“Dry as the proverbial bone.” Dan gestured around the table, which had been cleared. “What’s happened to the evidence?”

“I’ve had every dish and bowl and all utensils impounded for forensics. What do you make of all this?”

“The obvious conclusion is that the fugu—” He looked at Roy questioningly.

“Got the fugu background from Tanaka. Go ahead.”

“Looks like the chef wasn’t as qualified as our host assumed. The platter went around, and the unlucky gourmet snared the poisoned fillet.”

“Writers,” Roy muttered. “So that’s what you think? Botched preparation and an accident?”

“That might be what we’re supposed to think.”

Roy stuffed his hands in the pockets of his baggy trousers. The matting crackled protestingly as he paced one side of the small room. “Supposed to think?”

“The setup seems too pat,” Dan told him. “Tanaka invites a newspaper editor to his eightieth birthday party after being out of touch for years, then—”

“Editor? You got a promotion?”

“I was a stand-in for Charlie. Tanaka was a buddy of his back in MacArthur’s Tokyo.”

“You think he wanted Charlie here to witness an ‘accident’ that was really a murder?”

“Charlie thought Tanaka wanted him here maybe to get even with him for dishonoring Tanaka’s sister back in the forties.”

“You said they were buddies.”

“Aside from the sister thing.” Dan began to do some pacing of his own on the opposite side of the shin-high table. “If that was the case, though, and I showed up instead of Charlie, I’d expect Tanaka to call off anything unsavory he’d planned for Charlie. Doing me in wouldn’t be quite the same thing.”

“Sure would have focused Charlie’s attention, though. Insulted Colombians have been known to wipe out entire families. The Oriental idea of revenge might be a lot trickier than a simple punch in the jaw. Say the poisoned fish got past you somehow, and Robun took it by mistake.”

“Won’t wash, Roy. The waitresses didn’t serve the stuff individually. We passed the platter ourselves, and it went to Robun first.”

Roy started to lean against the partition beside the door, realized it was paper, and resumed his pacing.

“What did you get out of the other four guests?” Dan asked him.

Roy shrugged. “Whatever the busboy wanted to tell me. I’ll have to interview them all again with a department interpreter. All four either spoke no English at all, or they decided they wouldn’t speak it to a homicide cop.”

He stopped at the head of the table. “Let’s reconstruct the setup here. Tanaka, the host, sat where I’m standing. You were down there at the end on the left. In between us...” He flipped open a pocket notebook. “Yoho on your right, then Shoyu. Along the other side were Matsui across from you, then Hojo, then the deceased between him and Tanaka, the host.”

Roy slapped the notebook shut. “Can’t make much out of that except that Robun was sitting in a handy spot for Tanaka to slip him a fugu mickey, if that’s what he had in mind.”

“What about Robun’s relationship with Tanaka?”

“According to Tanaka, Robun was the old boy’s investment advisor.”

“Interesting possibilities there,” Dan suggested.

“Except that Tanaka’s a multimillionaire and doing very well, according to the busboy’s translation of what Yoho told me. Yoho said he’s Tanaka’s trust officer at Mercantile.”

“You find out what the rest of them do?”

Roy consulted his notebook again. “Shoyu is an old friend of Tanaka’s from Tokyo days. He’s a metallurgist at Garden State Steel over in Newark. The guy who sat next to Robun — Minoru Hojo, the one with the dyed hair — he’s Tanaka’s insurance advisor. And the fella who sat across from you, Shiga Matsui, he’s a cabinetmaker.”

“A cabinetmaker? Kind of out of his depth in that group, wasn’t he?”

“Thought so myself,” Roy agreed, “but it turns out he’s not your run-of-the-mill saw-and-sand man. He’s a master cabinetmaker, a high respect category in Japan. Tanaka just finished doing over his Fifth Avenue condo, and Matsui had a big piece of the decorating contract.”

“What’s Tanaka’s line?”

“Damn, cousin, I’m supposed to be questioning you. He made his pile importing Oriental art for retailers all over the U.S.” Roy paused. “You see the problem? Nothing about Tanaka points to a motive.”

“Unless Robun was done in by mistake. By Tanaka trying for somebody else and nailing Robun as an unlucky bysitter.”

Roy frowned. “I hope not. It’s murky enough with Robun as the intended victim. Hey, maybe I’ll luck out and it’ll turn out to be a heart attack.”

A day later, back in his little plywood cell in NewsLeak’s gritty fourth floor offices on Seventh Avenue, Dan pondered the imponderable. There had been no way a murderer could have delivered a lethal dose of tetrodotoxin to a selected victim via the edible crane on its lacquered platter. So if it hadn’t been a heart attack, it was a tragic accident.

Had to be. Except for Robun’s dropping dead, had there been anything remarkably remarkable at that extraordinary get-together?

Accidental poisoning. Or maybe, after all, it was what was laughingly termed “natural causes.” Heart attack, as Roy hoped.

That idea was scotched when Roy called around four thirty. “Prelim report from the M.E., cuz. It was no heart attack.”

“The forensics people are pretty fast down there on 30th Street.”

“Slow week, plus computer analysis. Looks like fish poison, all right. Lucky more of you didn’t get hit.”

“You’re saying it was accidental poisoning, Roy?”

“I’m saying I filed my DD-5, and that’s what I was told to put on it. Case closed, if you know what I mean. Helps with the caseload mountain here.” He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “But, cuz, you’re a free agent.”

“Got you, Roy.” They had an understanding; used each other now and then to get around certain obstacles. Roy’s unstated message: I’m not sold on the accident theory, but I’m stymied by departmental bureaucracy.

He hung up, and Dan went back to musing about aberrations at that now-infamous party... and Shiga Matsui’s glower during the moment of otherwise universal appreciation for the two striking attendants. Was he only an aging grouch, or had that sourball grimace meant something?

On impulse, Dan picked up the phone again and dialed Hiroki Tanaka’s residence. The old man’s personal assistant, who had a youthful, polite I voice, left the line to consult his employer. And told Dan that Tanaka would be glad to “receive” him tomorrow at two P.M.

Grabbing a quick, portable lunch at Nedick’s — this job had turned out to be hell stomachwise — Dan walked the three long blocks east to the IRT and subwayed up to the East Seventies. The Gold Coast. Three shorter blocks westward, he found the building. Brick with concrete trim, and a number in gold. No name.

After an I.D. check and a verifying call, Security let him take one of the mahogany-lined elevators to the fourteenth floor. The entrance to Tanaka’s unit was just a few strides down the plush hallway runner.

The houseman, in pinstriped vest and trousers, ushered Dan in with a precisely correct bow. The word “unit” was an insult to this spread. It was right out of the Japanese version of Architectural Digest, all brocade hangings and lustrous, hand-rubbed woodwork. Master cabinetmaker Matsui’s work, no doubt.

The assistant cleared his throat discreetly and nodded at Dan’s shoes. He pulled them off and followed the trim little man across a half-acre of ivory carpeting lush as lamb’s wool.

Tanaka rose from a low sofa that faced an immense floor-to-ceiling picture window overlooking Central Park. A real breathtaker, that Cineramic view. As if they were floating in mid-air nearly two hundred feet above one of America’s most beautiful stretches of urban acreage.

Incongruously, the old man wore bright green plaid golf slacks and an eyedazzling saffron cardigan.

“So pleasant to see you again, Mr. Forrest.” He offered a dry claw of a hand. “My deep apologies for the terrible incident day before yesterday. Most regrettable. Most regrettable, indeed.”

“Mr. Lovett was... surprised at your invitation,” Dan told him. “He wasn’t sure about your intentions.”

“Honorable intentions,” the old man said. “After a long life in America, I have come to realize that what happened between Charles and me was simply a clash of cultures. Not an insult. But apology does not come easily in Japan. There has not yet been an apology for Nanking. Not even for Pearl Harbor. It has taken me decades to realize I should apologize to Charles.”

“That’s why he was invited?”

“Yes. And when he could not accept, it would have been a true insult not to welcome his representative.”

“You were very gracious, Mr. Tanaka.” Dan paused. “The unfortunate poisoning of Mr. Robun, of course, is what I’m here about.” After a call from Roy three hours ago, Dan felt he was already one up on Hiroki Tanaka. He pulled out his notebook.

Tanaka eyed it. “I am now speaking, I assume, ‘on the record,’ Mr. Forrest?”

For a tabloid reporter, nothing was ever off the record.

“I’m afraid so, sir, but I’m not here to build a sensational plot around what may have been an unfortunate mistake.” (Forgive me, Charlie.)

“Ah,” Tanaka said softly, “but it was not a mistake.”

That was the last thing Dan had expected him to say.

“You aren’t actually admitting—”

He held up a frail hand. “It was not a mistake because Mr. Kanagawa does not make mistakes.”

“Mr. Kanagawa?”

“The fugu chef I had flown in from San Francisco for the occasion. He does not make mistakes.”

“But the lab tests. I got the report this morning directly from the police. Mr. Robun’s death was from fugu poisoning.”

“Obviously,” said Tanaka, totally unruffled. “I do not need tests to tell me that. I have seen death from fugu.”

“What are you telling me, Mr. Tanaka?” This interview wasn’t going at all as Dan had expected.

“I offer no conclusions. A friend whom I valued is dead of fugu poisoning. Such an event cannot be the fault of Mr. Kanagawa.”

“Any chef can make a mistake.”

The old man’s chin came up, and in the crackly parchment of his face, his mouth tightened. “Not,” he said sharply, “Master Chef Yukichi Kanagawa.”

Dan tried another tack. “When the waitresses first entered the room, there was a general appreciation. Except for Mr. Matsui. I couldn’t help notice his, well, apparent resentment.”

“You are very observant, Mr. Forrest.” Tanaka smiled thinly, showing the edges of ivory-tinted teeth. “But that incident is not difficult to understand. The taller of the two women, the one with the long hair, is Mr. Matsui’s niece.”

Well, well.

“He is very protective of her since her Caucasian mother died and her father — Mr. Matsui’s brother — returned to Japan, leaving Nikko in her uncle’s care.”

Ah-ah! A Caucasian mother, eh? Hence the green eyes. And Matsui was her uncle. But then, so what? Perhaps that was no more than an interesting sidelight to that strange luncheon.

“Assuming you are right about Chef Kanagawa’s abilities, Mr. Tanaka, might you have any idea how Mr. Robun could have eaten a piece of poisoned fugu?”

Tanaka shook his head. “No, Mr. Forrest, I have not.”

“He was sitting between you and Mr...” Dan checked his notes. Howard Johnson. “Mr. Hojo.”

“So Detective Forrest—” Tanaka frowned. “Curious. Two Misters Forrest.”

“He’s my cousin.”

“Ah. Convenient.”

“Sometimes.”

Beneath the wispy eyebrows, Tanaka’s sharp little eyes held Dan’s.

“Yes, Mr. Hojo and I were in arm’s reach of Mr. Robun’s plate. But do you seriously believe that if either of us wished to do away with Mr. Robun, we would have chosen such an obvious opportunity?” He crossed his stiff legs in their dazzling golfer’s plaid. “And the opportunity was not as great as you may believe. You will recall that there were no individual servings.”

He plucked absently at an invisible something on his knee. “The Western mind often leaps to the apparent obvious. Do I assume that your cousin, the police lieutenant, has made such a leap?”

“Not at all, Mr. Tanaka.” Dan decided there was no need to tell him that Roy’s superior had made a leap to another apparently obvious conclusion, that the poisoning had been an accident. Dan also didn’t tell Tanaka that he had just decided to pay a visit to Mr. Matsui.

“Tea, gentlemen?” asked Tanaka’s natty aide from the distant entrance to this palatial sitting area. And the rest of Dan’s time high over Central Park’s hazy green splendor was spent in listening to quite a touching reminiscence of a far younger Hiroki Tanaka’s friendship with youthful (had Charlie ever been young?) Sergeant Charles Lovett in post V-J Day Tokyo.

Back on the IRT, Dan barreled beneath Park Avenue, then under Lafayette, to the Spring Street station. Manhattan was not as pretty way down here as it had been from Tanaka’s cloud tower. He found Matsui’s Cabinetry a couple of short blocks east in one of New York’s gritty pockets.

On the rattling ride south, he’d had time to do some constructive thinking. As old Tanaka had pointed out, everything served at the deadly luncheon had been “family style.” All the platters had been placed on the table, then the guests had helped themselves in rotation. It had been impossible to poison just one diner out of seven that way. Then Dan had sat straight up on the hard subway seat. Except for — but where was the motive?

He cupped his hands against Matsui Cabinetry’s clouded plate glass. The interior was murky except for a hint of light far in the back. There was no bell button. He rapped on the glass in the upper part of the door.

“Matsui not hear that,” said a quavery voice behind Dan. An aged Oriental stood on the sidewalk, hands on his hips, chin jutting forward. “You a friend of Matsui?”

“No, I’m a reporter.”

“Reporter? You write story ’bout that son bitch, you write he killed my cat.”

“Your cat?” What was going on here?

“I am Tenno. I own wholesale place next door. There.” Mr. Tenno pointed. “I sell good line of Ukiyo-ye copies.”

Dan’s blank look distressed him. “Wood block, wood block prints. Copies of Harunobu, Sharaku, Kiyonaga — old masters. You interested?”

“Sorry, no. What’s this about your cat?”

“Matsui put out garbage, cat eat garbage. Dead cat. Son bitch Matsui. You write that.”

Dan peered back through the dirty glass storefront. “I don’t think he’s in there.”

“In there all right.” Tenno stepped up to the door and flailed it with both fists. Dan was sure that barrage could be heard over on the Bowery, a block away.

He detected motion way back in the cabinet shop. So did Tenno.

“I go now,” he muttered. “I do not talk to Matsui until he apologize for death of cat.”

When Shiga Matsui unshackled his door and peered up at Dan with all the warmth of a pit bull, Mr. Tenno had silently evaporated. It was at that point that Dan realized Matsui had not spoken a word of English at the ill-fated birthday party. Here Dan stood armed with a three-word Japanese vocabulary.

“Ohayo,” he said.

“I’m busy,” muttered the glowering Mr. Matsui in accentless English. “Whatever you want, get it out, then get lost.”

Dan groped for English of his own. “I, uh, want to ask a couple of questions about the birthday party.”

“Most unfortunate,” Matsui said without a trace of regret in his hard soapstone expression. “But ‘those who eat fugu—’ ”

“ ‘Are stupid,’ ” Dan finished for him. “May I come in?”

“No, thank you,” said Matsui coldly. “You are not police. As I recall, you are a reporter for a disreputable newspaper.”

He was a foot shorter than Dan, but his Telly Savalas coiffure and his Mr. Five-by-Five stature had real presence.

“Okay,” Dan said. “I’ll get right to the point. Did you know Mr. Robun?”

“Hai, I knew him.” There seemed a touch of bitterness in his from-the-belly tone.

“He was a friend?”

Matsui said nothing.

Dan took a long, long shot. “I just left Mr. Tanaka. He spoke very warmly of Mr. Robun.”

Matsui’s eyes narrowed, and his voice took on a flinty edge. “Robun is not worthy of discussion.”

Oho. “Why do you say that, Mr. Matsui?”

“It is personal. Do not quote me in what you write, but in my opinion, the gods justly sentenced him.”

Not a bad line.

“I’m not sure I follow that,” Dan said. “You mean it was a fatal accident Mr. Robun deserved?”

Matsui bowed, just slightly, an ironic little gesture. “ ‘Today, we carry his coffin.’ ”

“You’re going to his funeral?”

“A figure of speech. I will have nothing to do with his funeral.”

“Somehow that seems, well, not in keeping with—”

“Japanese custom? What can you know of Japanese custom?”

“An assumption.” Dan decided to throw him a curve. “Do you eat in your shop, Mr. Matsui?”

He frowned. “No, I walk down to Little Italy. Why do you ask?”

Now Dan tried a change-up. “You don’t show much regret at the death of a respected countryman?”

“Respected!” Matsui’s voice was a near-squeak. His saffron complexion turned purple. That had apparently hit him where he lived. “Respected! He was an animal!”

“How so?”

“Nikko—” Then he shut up.

“What about Nikko, Mr. Matsui?”

“Good day, sir.” It was name, rank, and serial number time.

“About Mr. Tenno’s cat, Mr. Matsui?”

But Matsui was already through the door. It slammed shut in Dan’s face.

Back up to midtown on the good old IRT. Dan was beginning to feel like the Phantom of the Subway. Off at the 59th Street station, he backtracked to 57th and found Nikko Matsui on duty at the Golden Torii setting tables for the early supper crowd.

“Dan Forrest from NewsLeak, Ms. Matsui. A word with you, please?” He saw her blanch a bit beneath the soft ivory of her cheeks. My God, he realized all over again, she was one beautiful woman.

She glanced around nervously. For the manager who might object to this interruption, or because a NewsLeak interview wasn’t exactly a soothing prospect under the circumstances? Said circumstances were beginning to point in an interesting direction.

“I just left your uncle,” he told Nikko, “and I got the impression that you and Mr. Robun were not exactly buddies.”

Her startling emerald-green eyes flashed. “He was a... no, we were not friends.”

“You are not sorry he served himself the poisoned part of the fugu?”

She was visibly relieved at that. “To be honest, Mr. ... Forrest, is it? No, I am not mourning Mr. Robun. He was... he was...” Her voice trailed off.

“He was a financial advisor. Did you have dealings with him?”

“He was my uncle’s investment counselor.”

“And he stole money from him?” That seemed a distinct possibility.

“No, no. He was very honest. Uncle Shiga made money through his advice.”

“Then what—”

Her lovely face suddenly glowed crimson. Shame?

“It was between Robun and you, wasn’t it?” Dan said. “Something personal.”

She stood very straight, and her mouth compressed to a thin line. Then she said almost in a whisper, “One day last month, Mr. Robun came when my uncle was not at home. He would not leave. Then he—” The green eyes flared. “You cannot put this in your paper, Mr. Forrest. Rape is extremely personal.” She shut up and turned away, a Matsui family trait. Dan found a pay phone back near the restrooms and put in a call to Roy.

They met at the Golden Torii at eleven the next morning, the time the manager had told Dan that Nikko Matsui came on duty. Conscientious woman that she was, she showed up right on time. Not showing would have been futile anyway. Roy had put a couple of men on watch all night at her apartment building.

He and Nikko and Dan sat at a table in a secluded corner. Roy gave Dan a nod, and Dan ran with it.

“There was no way the food or the tea or the sake could have been tampered with so that only Mr. Robun was poisoned. It had to be delivered just to him. Even the plates and cups were set out from stacks on the table. It finally hit me that there had been one exception.”

Nikko lowered her head. Her long blueblack hair fell forward to frame her delicate face.

“Then there was Mr. Tenno’s cat. It died from eating food in your uncle’s cabinetry trash. But he told me he always ate out. What was food doing in his cabinetry shop? Roy?”

“Tenno just couldn’t get himself to put his pet cat’s body in the trash. He still had it. We picked it up after your call yesterday, Dan. Had it tested. Fugu killed the cat.” Roy turned to Nikko. “Your uncle had bought his own puffer.”

“And he’d bought it,” Dan put in, “to do a little fancy woodworking.”

Nikko Matsui stared at the tablecloth.

“Roy?”

“You were there, Dan,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“The only items delivered individually at that lunch were the chopsticks. I watched you set them around the table, Nikko. I watched you give Mr. Robun his pair. Chopsticks specially treated by your uncle the day before.”

Roy sat back and folded his bulky arms. “We’d bagged and tagged all the dishes and sticks by individual users. When Dan called me yesterday, it wasn’t any trick to find Robun’s sticks. This morning, forensics reported tetrodotoxin in a slow-dissolving gelatin base. It had been worked into microscopic grooves at the ends of Robun’s chopsticks. By the time the fugu was passed around, whappo! Down he goes. Obvious goof-up by the chef. An accident.”

“And only you and Uncle Shiga knew,” Dan added. “Or did you know, Nikko? You took a set of sticks from here, gave them to your uncle. Then he returned them and told you to give them to Robun. But did you know what was on them?”

At that instant, Roy stepped in with what Dan thought was either ultimate technical correctness — or surprising chivalry.

“ ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ ” he boomed. “ ‘You are not required to say anything to us at any time or to answer any questions.’ ”

As he went on with the rest of the Miranda warning, Nikko Matsui looked up at Roy. A slow smile spread across her elegant face.