The Japanese Corpse

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"Aha," the Commissaris said, and readjusted the sash of his striped kimono. "That was an excellent meal, sergeant, and it was an excellent day too." He grinned delightedly and got up. They had been eating in their room and the two maids had just cleared the table. They had left a full coffeepot and two cups and cleaned the ashtray. The room was spotless as usual, and the soft colors of the tatamis blended with the evening light coming in through the open balcony doors.

"I am glad you feel well, sir. I thought the day on the water would have affected your legs." The sergeant was lying flat on his back, his head resting on his clasped hands. He had found the commissaris in the bathroom when he came back, after having dropped Yuiko off at her apartment. She had asked him in but he had excused himself, promising to phone the next day to make arrangements for picking her up for the daimyo's party. He had been sure that the commissaris would be in pain, but the old man had been singing in the wooden bathtub, only pausing long enough to ask de Gier to light a cigar for him.

"No. I feel fine," the commissaris said. He had opened the door of the cupboard and rolled out his matress. "These hard little pillows are really very comfortable once you get used to them." He knocked the pillow into shape and lay down. "You pour the coffee, sergeant, I am not going to do anything anymore. How did you like me waving that machine pistol? Did I look dangerous?"

De Gier grinned. "You looked deadly, sir."

"Yes," the commissaris said, sitting up to accept the cup. "I always wanted to say, 'I'll pump you full of lead.' It's such an idiotic statement to make. Why don't you ask Dorin to come over, maybe we can cheer him up. He didn't say a word on the way back; not that I minded, I think I was asleep most of the time."

It took de Gier a little while to locate Dorin. He wasn't in his room and the sergeant had to go down to the inn's office. One of the maids said that he might have gone to a little bar close by, and offered to go and fetch him. De Gier said he would go himself but the maids covered their mouths and tittered. He shouldn't go into the street in his kimono. The sergeant didn't understand. Surely a kimono is the right thing to wear in Japan. But it wasn't. The innkeeper was summoned from his private quarters to explain. The kimono de Gier was wearing was a bath kimono, not to be worn outdoors. He protested that he had seen Japanese gentlemen in the train, dressed only in their underwear, and in the middle of the day. Yes, but that was different. He gave up and went back to his room. The maid ran off to fetch Dorin.

Dorin came in exhaling a strong sweet smell of alcohol. His eyes were bloodshot. He was smiling but the smile only touched his face. The commissaris fetched a cushion from the cupboard and placed it near the toko-noma in which the maids had placed fresh flowers, two wild roses, bending down gracefully from lone stems.

"I am sorry," the commissaris said. "I didn't want to disturb you, but the sergeant and I thought that you might like to have coffee with us. You haven't had your bath yet?"

Dorin was still wearing the clothes he had worn on the launch, a Windbreaker and a pair of jeans, and his hair stood up.

"Well," the commissaris said when Dorin had been given his coffee by the sergeant. "How do you feel about our quest now? Do you think we have made some headway?"

Dorin nodded once and raised the cup to his lips.

"You don't?" the commissaris asked, and looked at the scroll which formed the background of the two wild roses in the tokonoma. The scroll showed a single character, drawn with a thick brush. The innkeeper had told him that the character stood for "dreams" and had been given to his father by the former abbot of Daidharmaji. It had been drawn by the abbot just before he died. He had made a number of scrolls, all with the same character, and had given them to the people he had known well, explaining that the word summed up his total experience of the life he was about to finish.

"Dreams," the commissaris muttered.

"Pardon?" Dorin asked.

The commissaris pointed at the scroll. Dorin turned to look at the character. "Yes," he said. "Dreams. Nightmares. I had one today. I saw the face of a pig." He turned back and stared at his hands which were lying motionless on his thighs. "Pig!" he said again, spitting out the word.

"Whom did you see?" de Gier asked. "You are not referring to the daimyo, are you?"

"I am," Dorin said, spilling coffee on his jeans and absentmindedly wiping the drops. "We know what the animal looks like now. Daimyo! You know what the word means?"

"Lord," the commissaris said.

"Right. Lord. In the old days the daimyos ruled parts of the country in the name of the emperor. They were dukes and counts and marquises, hand-picked for their valor and intelligence and insight. They weren't brothel-keepers and dealers in drugs and restaurant owners and buyers of stolen goods. Our little pig is nothing but a businessman gone wrong. A businessman is a merchant and merchants have never counted for much in our country. They are greedy small-minded individuals, hardly human, concerned with profit only. Their duty is the distribution of goods, but they are too stupid to know that they have a duty. If the daimyos needed the services of a merchant they would stroll into his store and take what they wanted and they wouldn't bother about asking a price. The merchant could collect his bill afterward, at the back-entrance of the palace, if he could find a clerk who had a few minutes available. The merchant would grovel in the dust at the side of the street as the daimyo rode past. And if the merchant turned out to be a crook he would be clubbed to death, quickly and in a quiet place so that he wouldn't disturb anyone with his screams."

"Really?" the commissaris asked. Dorin's furious face, each facial muscle working, the gleaming teeth and the wildly gesticulating hands had reminded him of a prewar cartoon, showing a Japanese soldier and warning against the Yellow Peril that was about to attack the world. The soldier had been grinning evilly and had pointed his bayonetted rifle.

"So now we know what our perverted grocer looks like," Dorin said, jumping up suddenly and nearly upsetting the low table so that de Gier had to reach out to steady it. "Our mighty fellow who can speak into a microphone and summon an airplane from the sky and a boat full of bad men from the waves of Lake Biwa. I could have blasted that plane right into the clouds and exploded his nutshell. I also had a radio in the launch."

"Are your troops in the area now?" de Gier asked.

"Yes. They arrived two days ago. I have them quartered in an old army barracks east of the city. There is an air strip close to it. A hundred Snow Monkeys, four helicopters and two air force jet-fighters, all ready to take off at any moment. The man I had in the launch today is one of my officers."

"So why didn't you alert them?" the commissaris asked.

"Too soon," Dorin said. "I want to burn the pigpen with all the pigs in it. I was tempted this afternoon. We could have got the boat and the plane and the chief pig was sitting right in the palm of our hand, but he has got others in his so-called castle. When he invited us to the party I changed my mind. I would much rather blast them in the Rokko Mountains. Out there they are completely isolated, by their own stupidity. A mountain fort surrounded by private roads. We can slaughter them and nobody will hear them squeal. On the lake we might have had some publicity and I don't want Secret Service activities splashed all over the newspapers."

Dorin was getting more worked up and his words came out in a sharp whisper. The J'S of the Secret Service shot through the room like two cold little knives, and the commissaris closed his eyes for a moment.

"But can't we just have them arrested by the local police?" de Gier asked. "The daimyo revealed his identity today in the presence of three witnesses. If we make up a statement we can convince a judge and…"

"No," Dorin said sharply. "The police know who the daimyo is. When I attack the castle the police will be there, but I will have warned them at the very last moment and the castle will be burning as their cars approach. They will be there because I don't want them to lose face. They can pick through the ruins and find the bodies and afterward they can write reports which somebody can file."

"You don't trust the police?" de Gier asked.

"I trust the Snow Monkeys," Dorin said. "My own men, trained properly, tested in many ways. They are warriors who aren't interested in playing golf with gangsters. Golf is a great game in this country. If one man wants another to do him a favor he invites him to a game of golf. They bet with each other. High stakes, a few thousand dollars or more, whatever the favor is worth. And the man who wants the favor loses the game. I have met some high police officers who love to play golf. My men like other games."

"Yes," the commissaris said sleepily, and yawned. "I am sure they do. Your lieutenant looked most ferocious to me. He handled that machine pistol as if it was his favorite toy."

Dorin smiled mirthlessly. "The Uzzi is one of the lieutenant's favorite toys. He can also fight with a sword and he can pull and throw a knife in one movement, and I have never seen him miss. But he has other accomplishments too. Some weeks ago he talked to a corrupt official, in a bar in downtown Tokyo. It was a very pleasant conversation which contained nothing specific, but the official got very drunk that night and smashed up his car against a concrete pillar and died before the ambulance arrived."

"We wouldn't know about that sort of thing," the commissaris said. "We are only police officers."

"The police catch thieves and drunks and crooks and the man who forgets himself and manages to kill another citizen," Dorin said in his normal voice, "but there are other criminals who know how to hide and how to wear masks and who pull strings and who have friends who can say a word here and there. A police officer may start an investigation and come up with something, but he gets a note or somebody telephones him and he suddenly starts doing something else and forgets his case."

The commissaris yawned again and excused himself.

"Good night," Dorin said. "Tomorrow Mr. Woo comes to collect his pennies and he will telephone Hong Kong. Mr. Johnson tells me that he has arranged the matter with you and I believe the merchandise will be delivered to a Dutch vessel and taken to Amsterdam."

"Yes," the commissaris said happily. "That heroin should give us some interesting contacts in Europe. Mr. Woo is being very helpful."

"The Dutch police will take care of the connection?" Dorin asked.

"Certainly," the commissaris said, "and Mr. Johnson will assist us, I believe."

"I don't think the commissaris plays golf," de Gier said slowly.

"What would have caused such an outburst?" the commissaris asked after Dorin had left and de Gier had put down his mattress and bedding in the other corner of the room and switched off the light. "It seems that our associate has a personal interest in the case, don't you think? So far he hasn't shown much emotion although he is a high-strung man. It's really most extraordinary that he would lose his self-control."

"His brother," de Gier said. "He told me about his younger brother some time ago. His brother is a junkie. A dropped-out student, hooked on the heroin. One of these young men we saw in the back alleys of Tokyo, staring at their shoes for hours on end until the drug wears off and they have to start robbing again. Mr. Woo's merchandise is rather expensive."

The commissaris sighed.

"What do you think about our adventure, sir?" de Gier asked a few minutes later.

"I am not thinking much, sergeant," the commissaris said softly. "I might be upset about its unlawful procedure and I might be thrilled because it seems that we are mixed up in a fairy tale. And there may be some truth in what Dorin has told us. Maybe organized crime should be wiped out by trained warriors, although it would seem to me that too much power will be held by the men directing the warriors. What do you think yourself?"

"I am afraid I don't care much either way, sir," de Gier said, shifting his head so that he could see the vague outline of the commissaris' body. The blanket had slipped and a streetlight's ray lit up the commissaris' knee, a white circle in the dark room. "But then I haven't cared much about anything since I shot my cat. I feel very light and nothing touches me. Almost nothing. If I think about today I see a haze. All I really saw today were some ferns, waving in the breeze, I could see the lake's waves through them. And the daimyo's eyebrows."

"The daimyo," the commissaris said. "He hasn't got much chance of living through the week, not with that bunch of cutthroats camped near their helicopters."

"Jin-gi," de Gier said. "Friendship. I didn't ask Dorin about it, but the innkeeper explained it to me a little. He drew the two characters for me. The first stands for Two Men, and the second has to do with justice. Two men relating to each other and together they form something superior."

"Very nice," the commissaris said. "Very praiseworthy. But the result is perverted. As you said just now, young men are staring at their shoes for hours on end, in the gutters of the big cities. But if the yakusa didn't deal in drugs I would be tempted to drop a warning to the castle in the Rokko Mountains."

"It would cancel the party," de Gier said. "Good night, sir."

"Yes," the commissaris said, "and I am looking forward to that party. Good night, sergeant." But a few minutes later he was up again and de Gier stirred and reached for his gun.

"Anything wrong, sir?"

"No," the commissaris said brightly, "only that I can't find my slippers. I forgot all about the ambassador. I have to phone him from time to time, you know, and report. I am sure he is getting all upset about our fate."

"Yes," de Gier said. "How was it again, sir? Our mission here, I mean. The whole thing is beyond me sometimes."

The commissaris was sitting on the floor, struggling with his right slipper. "Easy," he said. "Don't you remember? In the year sixteen hundred and something the Japanese government granted us the right to live on a very small island just off the coast of Nagasaki, a port in the South."

"Us?" de Gier asked.

"Us. The Dutch. Merchants. We were allowed to buy things from them and they learned things from us. Medicine and how to make guns."

"Yes," de Gier said sleepily, "so the one favor equals the other, but I seem to remember that we ought to be grateful for something and that we are repaying a favor, us, I mean, you and I, running about like dumb rabbits so that the yakusa can shoot at us."

"Yes, that part was never clear to me either. The ambassador seemed very clear however. We are repaying a favor. The Japanese government is upset about their art being stolen and exported to the West and we are here to pose as buyers, to draw out the yakusa so that they can be arrested and tried in court. Maybe the ambassador was impressed by the point that only we, the Dutch, were allowed to trade with the Japanese."

"In the year sixteen hundred something," de Gier said.

"And during the three hundred and something years following that year. And apparently they kept us in food and wine and women when the French conquered Holland. Maybe that was the favor."

"You aren't really going for that sort of stuff, are you, sir?" de Gier asked, and sat up. The commissaris had finally managed to get his slippers on and was standing in the open door.

"It's a free trip to a foreign country, isn't it?" the commissaris asked, and smiled pleasantly.

"Maybe a free trip to death."

"To die is to travel," the commissaris said. "It should be the most interesting journey of all the journeys a man can make."

The sliding door closed and de Gier could hear the old man's slippers rustling down the stairs. He grinned and lay back, trying to stay awake. He was still awake when the commissaris came back half an hour later.

"That was a long telephone call, sir."

"The ambassador was a little slow tonight," the commissaris said, and rubbed his hands, "but he did manage to understand me in the end."