The Cloud Pavilion

26

The road to the oxcart stables led Sano, Hirata, and their entourage past poor tenements that clung to the outskirts of Edo like a dirty, ragged hem. It was twilight by the time Sano and his men arrived at the compound of wooden barns. The yard around them was muddy and trampled, pocked by hoof marks filled with rainwater. The area stank of urine and manure. The fenced and roofed enclosure for parking the carts was empty. Through the open doors of the barns Sano saw empty stalls and idle stable boys.

"I don't suppose our suspects are hanging around waiting to be caught," Sano said. "Their colleagues should be back soon, though. Maybe they can point us in the right direction."

A distant sound of clattering wheels vibrated through the dusk. It grew louder and nearer, punctuated by bellows. The streets around the stables disgorged oxen pulling carts, drivers aboard, returning home for the night. They converged on the stables like a slow, malodorous, and rackety invading legion.

"Divide and conquer," Sano told his men.

They circulated, asking the drivers if they knew the whereabouts of Jinshichi and Gombei. Drivers shook their heads. Finally, Sano's luck changed for the better.

"Jinshichi and Gombei, what a pair of good-for-nothings," said the eighth driver Sano questioned.

Naked except for a dirty loincloth, a rag tied over his head, and straw sandals on his feet, he had skin so tanned and leathery that one could have made a good saddle out of it. As he and his fellows parked their carts under the shelter, he spat on the ground in disgust.

"Why do you have such a poor opinion of Jinshichi and Gombei?" Sano asked.

"They're lazy," the driver said. "They show up late and keep everybody waiting." He unyoked his ox. Other carts racketed into their places in long rows; oxen bellowed and snorted. "Sometimes they leave before the work's done. Which means the rest of us have to haul extra loads. And for what?"

He spat again as he led his ox toward the stables and Sano followed. "No thanks from Jinshichi and Gombei. Lazy slobs!"

Sano was intrigued by this portrait of his suspects. "Where do they go when they're supposed to be at work?"

"Don't know. They keep it to themselves."

Maybe they went hunting and kidnapping women, Sano thought.

"The boss keeps threatening to fire them," the driver said.

"Why doesn't he?"

The driver pantomimed jingling a string of coins. "Where do they get the money to pay him off?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." The driver prodded his ox into a stall. "But they have more than the rest of us. They even brag about going to Yoshiwara."

The Yoshiwara pleasure quarter was too expensive for ordinary oxcart drivers. Sano began to entertain different ideas about the nature of the crimes he was investigating.

"Can you tell me where I might find them?"

"Sorry."

"Where do they live?"

"Same place as me." The driver pointed toward a street of tenements. "But I haven't seen them around there since yesterday."

Sano thanked the man. As he turned his horse to go, the driver said, "Wait, master. I just remembered something. A while back, I ran into Jinshichi and Gombei at a teahouse called the Drum. I was driving past as they were coming out. Not the kind of place I'd have expected to see them."

"Why not?"

"It's for high-class folks. I was surprised that Jinshichi and Gombei got in. I wondered what they were doing there."

So did Sano wonder.

The Drum Teahouse was located a block off the main street in the Nihonbashi merchant quarter, behind the popular dry goods store named Shirokiya. The shops around it were closed for the night, and no one was around except the watchmen guarding the gates at either end of the road. The teahouse occupied a building decorated with drum-shaped blue lanterns whose cold light reflected in the puddles and cast an eerie radiance into the darkening gloom.

Sano and Hirata left their troops and horses down the street. They entered the teahouse and found a spacious room lit by the blue light shining in through the paper windowpanes. Maids poured sake for the customers, all male, who sat on the floor. Along the walls were private enclosures with curtains drawn across the entrances. The dim light gleamed on the shaved crowns of samurai and the oiled, glossy hair of rich commoners. The blue lanterns colored the men's faces with a morbid glow. Conversation was quiet, minimal. Each man appeared to be alone.

The proprietor stepped out of the shadows. "Welcome, masters," he said with a low, obsequious bow to Sano and Hirata. His hushed voice brought to Sano's mind a lizard slithering under a rock. Dressed in a black robe, he had a narrow figure and a square-jawed head. His eyes had the feral gleam of a nocturnal animal; they didn't blink as they assessed Sano and Hirata. "Please allow me to make you comfortable."

He hustled them into an enclosure, fetched a sake decanter and cups, served Sano and Hirata, then drew the curtains. While they drank, he hovered.

Sano exchanged glances with Hirata: They both sensed something not right about the teahouse. The darkness, the quiet, the mix of samurai and commoners, and the lack of camaraderie were unusual, and there was an odd tension in the air. Sano wanted to know what was going on.

"Won't you join us?" he asked the proprietor.

"It would be an honor." The proprietor knelt beside Sano. As he refilled the cups, he murmured, "Might there be something else I can do for you?"

"There might," Sano said. "What have you to offer?"

"It depends."

"On what?" Hirata asked.

"On your particular situation."

The proprietor paused, waiting for Sano and Hirata to answer. They waited for a cue from him. His greed for their business triumphed over caution. He whispered, "Is there somebody who's making trouble for you? I can put you in contact with people who can teach him a lesson."

"What if there is somebody?" Sano said. "What would your people do?"

"It depends on what terms you're willing to meet," the proprietor said.

"How much to have him beaten up?" Hirata said.

"Fifty momme."

That was quite a bit of silver. Sano began to understand how Jinshichi and Gombei might have come by their extra cash. They were apparently among the proprietor's "people," which would explain their presence at a teahouse whose clientele normally didn't associate with low-class men like them.

"How much to eliminate somebody?" Sano asked.

"That would depend on who it was and how difficult it would be. But the price starts at a hundred koban."

It appeared that wealthy folks who didn't want to risk killing their own enemies somehow found their way to the Drum Teahouse, probably by discreet word of mouth. Samurai could kill commoners without punishment, but not one another; for merchants and other citizens, the penalty for any murder was death. The Drum offered a solution to their problems and kept the blood off their hands.

"I'm impressed with your ingenuity," Sano said.

"My humble thanks," the proprietor simpered.

"But you should be more careful whom you do business with," Sano said.

"Allow me to introduce the honorable Chamberlain Sano," said Hirata.

"Allow me to introduce my chief retainer, Hirata-san, the shogun's principal investigator," Sano said.

The proprietor blinked.

"Murder for hire is a crime," Sano said. "We're going to arrest you and put you in jail."

The proprietor lunged out of the enclosure as fast as a snake plunging down a hole. But Hirata was faster. He grabbed the man's arm. Yanked back into place, the man struggled until Hirata squeezed a tender spot between his muscles. He let out a bleat of pain and sank to his knees.

"I didn't mean it," he said with an anxious grin. "We don't really kill anybody. It was just a joke. Hah, hah."

"We'll see about that," Hirata said.

His fingers dug into the man's wrist. The proprietor stopped straining to break free. "I can't feel my arm. I can't move." He beheld Hirata with fright and shock. "What have you done to me?"

Hirata had pressed against nerves that controlled sensations and motion in the human body, Sano knew. Hirata said, "It's just a little trick I learned while walking in the woods one day. You run a murder-for-hire business, don't you?"

The proprietor's body sat as still as a corpse propped upright. Only his face was animated, by terror. "No!"

His gleaming eyes darted in search of help. But his soft voice didn't carry outside the enclosure, and nobody opened the curtain to see what was wrong.

"How do you like this?" Hirata changed his grip slightly.

Now the proprietor's eyes and mouth flared wide as Hirata constricted his lungs. "All right," he choked out. "It's true!"

"Kill him," Sano said, "and spare the bother of an execution."

"No! Please, don't!" The proprietor wheezed; his face turned bluer in the blue light. "Let me live, and I'll do anything you want!"

"Let's see if there's something we want that you can give us," Sano said. He usually pitied helpless people and disapproved of physical coercion, but not this time. "We're looking for two men, named Jinshichi and Gombei. Do they work for you?"

The proprietor's face twisted from side to side as he tried to shake his head and failed. Hirata pressed harder on his wrist, and his voice emerged in a strangled croak. "Yes."

"What do they do?" Sano asked.

Hirata eased his grip long enough for the proprietor to gulp a breath and say, "They get women. For men who want special things."

Now Sano understood Jinshichi and Gombei's sideline occupation and role in the kidnappings. Neither of the oxcart drivers had raped Chiyo, Fumiko, or Tengu-in; they'd procured the women for someone else. Someone who had sexual tastes that couldn't be satisfied in Edo's brothels.

"Was one of these women a nursing mother and another a nun?"

"I don't know who the women were," the proprietor said, then gasped because Hirata had compressed his nerves again. "No, I really don't, honest! All I did was set Jinshichi and Gombei up with my clients and take my share of the money. What they did after that was between them and the clients."

"Tell me the names of your clients," Sano said.

Fresh terror blazed in the proprietor's eyes. Sano could feel his body shaking inside, vibrating the floor, even though he was paralyzed. "I can't tell you. They'll kill me."

"If you don't tell us, I'll kill you," Hirata said.

The proprietor crumpled into a heap as if his bones had dissolved. Sano couldn't begin to imagine what spell Hirata had wrought. The proprietor lay limp, gasping with panic. From outside the enclosure came the voices of the maids, chatting among themselves, unaware that anything untoward was happening.

"All right," the proprietor said. "If you'll just let me go, I'll talk."