The Japanese Corpse

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The Chief Maid brought the visiting card, lying in the exact center of a rectangular bamboo tray. The commissaris had dozed off, and de Gier reached out and read the card, woo SHAN, the card said, MERCHANT, and, underneath, an address in Hong Kong, in microscopic script.

"I'll go and see," de Gier said, and followed the maid. He found the visitor in the inn's front room. A tall elderly Chinese, standing awkwardly on the tatami in his stockinged feet, holding a flat shiny attache case. De Gier bowed, but the Chinese shook the sergeant's hand solemnly and inquired in good English whether the old Dutch gentleman with the unpronounceable name happened to be in. De Gier said he was.

"And you are the gentleman's assistant?"

"I am."

"I have important business to discuss," Mr. Woo said sadly, and de Gier asked him to wait and rushed upstairs. The commissaris woke up, but he hadn't shaved yet, so Mr. Woo was asked to wait a few minutes and de Gier made polite conversation. And finally Mr. Woo was asked to proceed upstairs and given tea and a small cigar while the commissaris sat quietly on his cushion and rubbed his legs. Mr. Woo didn't take long to come to the point. More art had been delivered and was stacked in a corner of the room, waiting to be transferred to a vault in a nearby bank, where the Daidharmaji treasures had already been stored. Dorin had suggested that they should keep up the farce, and brought in more priests from several temples who were willing, at the Daidharmaji high priest's command, to lend them valuable objects. In order to make the show even more realistic, priests from other temple complexes in different parts of Kyoto had been persuaded to join the game, and they had even managed to find a really corrupt guardian who had sold them a small wooden statue of Buddha, fairly precious, for a small amount in cash, enough to keep the man in liquor and women for a few weeks. The guardian had been easy to find. He had appeared in the inn one day, asking the maid to be allowed to see the foreigners who might be interested in buying antiques.

"I have been told that you gentlemen are setting up a direct link in the art business," Mr. Woo said, smiling politely without changing the expression of his large dark eyes, "and have found a way to stall the organization which, so far, had the monopoly." Mr. Woo stressed the word "had" and repeated the last part of his message to make sure that it would get across.

The commissaris nodded sleepily.

"I am referring to the yakusa," Mr. Woo said, biting off the word.

"Yes," the commissaris said, "the yakusa. Competition is part of the free world. We live in the free world."

"Indeed?" Mr. Woo asked.

The commissaris yawned.

"Are you in the art business too?" de Gier asked, after a quarter of a minute had slowly ebbed away.

"No. I have other merchandise for sale, merchandise the yakusa used to buy through me, but I don't think they will want to buy now. Their business went through Amsterdam, but something has happened and the channel is blocked, temporarily perhaps, for a long time maybe."

"Really?" the commissaris asked.

"Yes. I am well informed. And so are you, I think."

"Something has happened," the commissaris agreed. "A friend told me about it on the telephone. It is very easy to telephone these days. News travels quickly."

Mr. Woo had been resting on his knees and he shifted his position, but he still wasn't comfortable. He smiled painfully. "Living on the floor is a custom I am not used to," he explained slowly. "In China we have chairs."

"I am sorry," de Gier said, "this is a Japanese inn. No chairs. But sit down any way you like. Perhaps you can rest your back against the wall. I do that all the time. It's not very polite, I believe, but foreigners are easily forgiven."

Mr. Woo thanked him, took the offered cushion and found an easier way to sit. He opened his case and held up two little plastic bags filled with white powder.

"Heroin?" the commissaris asked.

"Heroin, best quality, samples, free samples for you gentlemen. I have ten kilos ready for shipment in Hong Kong. I am asking a reasonable price. If you pay me here I will telephone my agent who can deliver to your agent. But the delivery will be in Hong Kong, and once the goods are in your hands they travel at your risk."

"I see," the commissaris said, and picked up one of the bags, holding it against the light. "And the price?"

"In Germany American soldiers will pay thirty dollars for a small teaspoon filled with these pure crystals. I will charge you a price which will allow for an unheard-of profit. You will be very rich, your organization will be very powerful. The supply is plentiful and the origin is the most reliable country in the world."

"Communist China?" the commissaris asked softly.

"The very best," Mr. Woo agreed. "Steady prices, prompt delivery and never a broken promise."

He took out his pocketbook and peeled a hundred-dollar bill out of its back compartment, tearing it in half. "Here. You take one half, I keep one half. You send your half to your agent, I send my half to my agent. They will meet in Hong Kong. As soon as you pay me I will telephone my agent in your presence. He will be in the company of your agent, and you can speak to your agent. Delivery will be made at once. But only ten kilos the first time. It will be a trial for you and a trial for us. Then, when the connection has been proved and you want more merchandise, I will be on your path, wherever you want to find me. I travel quickly."

The commissaris puffed on his cigar and checked its burning end, peering at it with one eye. "I am an art dealer," he said, and looked at the white wall opposite him, "and the drug is not my article. However, it can be tried. Perhaps the drug can use some of the channels we have established for other purposes. And I know many Americans, most of them stationed in Europe. I might give it a try, if my associate is willing."

De Gier took his cue. There was greed in his large brown eyes when he turned to offer his smile to Mr. Woo.

"I have some friends too," de Gier said, "in Amsterdam itself. There is some demand for the drug in our city. I could take care of that market while the chief (he bowed into the commissaris' direction) goes for Mr. Big and Mr. Super."

"Good," Mr. Woo said. "So we make a try. I will come back in four days' time. You give me money and I will telephone."

The commissaris took the half note and the little piece of paper on which Mr. Woo had written the amount involved in the transaction. He read the numbers and nodded.

"Right. But I won't be ready in four days' time. We have other appointments to keep. Next week, same day, same time."

Mr. Woo was on his feet and on his way to the door. De Gier jumped up and saw him out of the room and walked down to the hall with him.

"Next week, same day, same time," Mr. Woo said, as he laced his shoes. "And perhaps there should be no tricks. Tricks work once but then death follows. Always. I have seen it several times. Death has a bad face."

"I have met the power myself," de Gier said, and grinned. "Death has no favorites, it has worked for us too. Have a good day, Mr. Woo."

But Mr. Woo wasn't listening. He had knocked his head against the low beam at the entrance and was rubbing his bald crown, muttering something in Chinese.

De Gier grinned again. He had knocked his head against the beam too. Almost every day so far, and they had been staying at the inn for more than two weeks.

When the sergeant came back to the large quiet room, he stopped with surprise. The commissaris was capering around the low table, waving his arms and singing the end line of a nonsense rhyme which had been a hit on the Dutch TV and had caused a lot of comment in the conservative newspapers of Holland, although the song had contained no dirty words or sly allusions. It was pure idiocy and its last line was Mother there walks an eagle.

"Sir?" de Gier asked.

'"Mother, there walks an eagle,'" the commissaris sang, and stopped and stared and pulled up his eyelids so that his eyes became round and large.

"Sir?"

"You know what this means, sergeant?" the commissaris whispered, putting his finger on de Gier's nose and pressing it. "You know what this means? This means we don't have to go to Kobe to rush about and find the drug supply. We can sit here and work it all out, the way we want to work it out. It's all coming our way. Just for once, just for the hell of it. Things are tricky and awkward and the other way round and upside down for eight hundred seventy-six times, and then, suddenly, just one time, things are right. RIGHT. You hear? Hehehe."

De Gier stepped back and rubbed his nose.

"'Mother, there walks an eagle,'" the commissaris said. "I always knew what that line meant. A little boy looks out of the window of an apartment of the ninth floor somewhere in Amsterdam North, one of those big gray buildings made of leaky concrete, and he sees the eagle walking about on the balcony. A big eagle (the commissaris gestured wildly). Crest of feathers on the noble head. (The commissaris spread the fingers of his right hand and held it on his head.) Polished golden beak. (The hand changed shape, fingers tight together and bent down, the back of the hand rested against his nose.) Wings spread. Strutting about. Like this. (The commissaris walked up and down, arms spread, body hunched, head erect.) The boy always knew it would happen one day. There is no need to tell his mother. She doesn't know anything, but he teUs her all the same. She is his mother after all, and she is in the apartment with him. But she just nods and won't even get off the couch. It doesn't matter. The eagle is there, on the balcony. The little boy's dream is there. A big eagle, life-size. Walking around. On the balcony. Hehehe."

The commissaris was capering around again and getting close to de Gier, who stepped back, protecting his nose with his hand.

"So? Do we rush out to the balcony and catch him? No. We don't collect birds. We watch birds. Other people may want to watch them too. Our friend Mr. Johnson, for instance. Right now he is in a hotel room in Tokyo and I have his number. I'll call him. We have to speak to him anyway. Your innocent gangsters are still in Amstelveen jail, reading Japanese newspapers, smoking Shinsei cigarettes and drinking the best quality powder tea from enamel mugs. And they never committed the smallest crime on Dutch soil, not even an offense, and there they sit, behind bars. And if we let them go they'll get on the first plane and fly to Kobe, and Kobe is only an hour away by train from us, two suckers set up by our own ambassador who wants to repay a favor nobody remembers, except perhaps some obscure historian. If those two yakusa see us they will know what we are. And you know what we are. We are two nasty Dutch police officers pretending to be two nasty Dutch buyers of stolen art, and drugs too. We'll buy anything that is bad. And our bumbling efforts are interfering with yakusa ways, right here in Japan, while the yakusa are having such a difficult time in Holland. The big boss in his castle in the mountains behind Kobe will catch on. And he'll try again. But this time we may lose and if we do they will make us pull our own teeth and see if we can hang ourselves by our own toes.

"So Mr. Takemoto and Mr. Nakamura will have to stay right where they are, in jail in Holland. But it takes the CIA to keep innocent people in jail. Good old Mr. Johnson, and while he is at it he'll have to find us an associate in Hong Kong to meet Mr. Woo's agent, so that they can wave the two halves of the hundred dollar bill. And he will give us the money to pay Mr. Woo, sad Mr. Woo, sad silly Mr. Woo who can't sell his heaven powder to the yakusa in Amsterdam because the yakusa got tripped up by Mr. Fujitani's love life."

"Yes," de Gier said. "Do you know that Mr. Woo bumped his head against the beam in the entrance hall downstairs?"

"He did?" the commissaris asked. "Poor fellow. The Japanese will be bumping their heads too, soon. They are getting taller with every new generation, Dorin says."

"Good," de Gier said. "They giggle when I bump my head. It'll serve them right."

"Right," the commissaris said, remembering the eagle and flapping his arms again, "and Mr. Johnson can arrange to have the ten kilos of heroin picked up in Hong Kong and shipped to Holland and taken to Germany, and then he can arrest everybody in sight, and we'll help him. Mr. Johnson will be busy. He likes to be busy. He told me so in Amsterdam."

There was a knock on the door, and Dorin came in. The commissaris dropped his arm. "You explain it all to Dorin, sergeant. I am going to telephone. And while I am at it, I'll ask Mr. Johnson to get Miss Andrews her passport, so that she can leave my niece's house and go to the States. We are getting to the end of it all. Pity. I liked it here."

While the commissaris was telephoning, Dorin came in and de Gier ordered coffee. Dorin had seen Mr. Woo leave the inn.

"A Chinese," Dorin said. "Now what would a Chinese want of us? A Communist Chinese?"

"Why Communist?"

"He looked sad, didn't he?" Dorin said. "Communists always look sad, except in the movies. I have seen then-propaganda films, and they sing and dance while they are picking carrots or cabbages, or starting up a water pump or building a schoolhouse. But when I see them here they look sad, in and out of uniform."

"Maybe he looked sad because he was selling heroin," de Gier said. "Heroin is dangerous to the health."

"Yes. It knocks the shit out of the addicts."

"No, it blocks it. The addicts I have come across always had constipation. Selling heroin is a sad business."

Dorin shrugged. "They enjoy selling it. It gives them hard currency and they think it will destroy us. Maybe it will. My little brother is hooked on it, in Tokyo. He has to steal fifty dollars' worth a day, maybe more. He is in and out of jail and his teeth are falling out and he isn't nineteen yet. Good Chinese heroin, pure, grade A. I got him some once, thinking it might give him a break from jail, but his friends robbed him and knocked him around so badly that he had to go to the hospital to get stitched up. I think I'll catch Mr. Woo myself, when the game is up."

"You believe in revenge?" de Gier asked, but Dorin was leaving the room, his face set and his arms swinging.