The Ronin’s Mistress

32

Sano squinted up at the sky as he and his troops gathered outside the Hosokawa estate. The sunlight had changed color from morning’s thin silver to the brass of afternoon. Sano tightened his mouth in frustration because half the day was gone and he had little to show for it. They’d just finished interrogating the forty-seven ronin. All the men claimed they had nothing to do with the attack on Magistrate Ueda.

“We’re up against a conspiracy of silence,” he said to Marume and Fukida.

“Who’s in on it?” Fukida asked.

Sano looked toward the Hosokawa estate; the guards stationed outside gazed stonily back at him. “Oishi, Chikara, and the other fourteen ronin in there.” The men at the other estates had appeared honestly mystified by the attack on Magistrate Ueda, although some had seemed glad that it would delay the supreme court’s verdict. “Also Lord Hosokawa and all his people.”

“What do you think they’re covering up?” Fukida asked.

“Maybe the fact that one of them set up the ambush,” Sano said. “Or maybe something entirely different.”

A samurai on horseback came galloping up to Sano. It was one of Hirata’s retainers. “Hirata-san asks you to come to Edo Jail at once. He’s arrested the criminal who attacked Magistrate Ueda.”

“Well, well,” Marume said to Fukida. “It looks like Hirata has made up for going missing in action.”

* * *

Edo jail was a cold portal to hell. The canal that formed a moat in front of it was partially frozen, with dirty ice chunked up against its banks. A thick pall of smoke from the surrounding slum hung over the high stone walls, the dilapidated buildings inside them, and the guard turrets. The sentries warmed themselves at a bonfire while police officers escorted prisoners with shackled wrists and ankles through the gates. Inside the dungeon, Sano and Hirata stood in a dank, frigid corridor that echoed with the inmates’ groans. They peered through a small barred window set at eye level in an ironclad door. A man crouched inside the cell, his arms hugging his knees, the sleeves of his gray coat pulled over his hands to keep them warm. The toes of sandaled feet in dirty white socks protruded from beneath his gray trousers. His hair was disheveled, his blunt profile sullen.

“So that’s Genzo,” Sano said, filled with anger, revulsion, and disbelief.

The man seemed so ordinary, like thousands of petty criminals who roved Edo. Scratch their surfaces and you would find the reasons why they’d gone wrong-poverty, ignorance, misfortune. But no sad tale could excuse this man who had injured Magistrate Ueda so severely and murdered his guards. Sano thought of his father-in-law’s wisdom, compassion toward the defendants that appeared in the Court of Justice, and integrity. Genzo, in comparison, was too worthless to live.

Hirata unbolted the cell door. He and Sano entered. Genzo shot to his feet. His hairline receded even though he was only in his twenties. His evasive eyes glinted dimly from between flat lids. He had a thin, mean mouth.

“Why did you do it?” Sano asked.

“I didn’t.” Genzo’s voice was a toneless mutter. Slouching, he rocked his weight from one foot to the other. He said to Hirata, “You got the wrong man.”

Now that he’d had time to think, he’d decided to try to weasel out of his confession, Sano observed with disgust.

“That won’t work,” Hirata snapped. “We know it was you.”

“Speaking of getting the wrong man, that’s exactly what you did.” Already Sano had to struggle to control his temper. “You beat up Magistrate Ueda, who happens to be my father-in-law. You killed his two guards. You won’t be let off with a few months in jail and another tattoo this time. You may as well say good-bye to your head now.”

“This is the shogun’s chief investigator,” Hirata told Genzo. “It really wasn’t a smart choice of people to ambush. But then you’re stupid, aren’t you?”

Surprise registered in Genzo’s eyes, then sank into their sullen murk. “That was Magistrate Ueda?”

“Who did you think it was?” Sano asked.

“Uh.”

Hirata touched his sword. Genzo saw and seemed to understand that lying was pointless. He said, “A man named Nakae. A big judge on some court at Edo Castle.”

Astonishment hit Sano like a club to his chest. Inspector General Nakae, not Magistrate Ueda, had been the assassin’s target. “Why did you want to attack Nakae?”

Genzo shrugged. He reminded Sano of a reptile, whose few basic, primitive emotions didn’t show much on the outside.

“Fine,” Hirata said. “We’ll skip the interrogation, and the trial, too. I’ll call the executioner.” He turned, as if to leave.

“Wait,” Genzo said in that same flat mutter. “If I tell you, will you spare me?”

He wasn’t the brightest criminal Sano had ever seen, but he realized that Sano and Hirata wanted the information he had and he could use it to bargain for his life.

“Forget it,” Hirata said. “This is your third offense. You’re finished.”

“Let’s listen to what he has to say first.” Sano told Genzo, “If it’s good enough, I can save you.”

Sano and Hirata had often played this game, one badgering and threatening their subject, the other acting kind and conciliatory, working as a team to extract his cooperation. But never had Sano enjoyed the latter role less. Still, in a case as personal to him as this, it was best that Hirata took the former role. Sano wasn’t sure he could play it and resist the urge to kill Genzo before they got the information they needed.

Hirata pretended to be put out by Sano’s leniency. “All right,” he said to Genzo. “Talk.”

A brief smile flexed Genzo’s mean mouth. “I was hired to kill Nakae.”

“Who hired you?” Sano asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Hirata jeered. “Or I’ll kill you and put you out of your stupidity.”

“I never saw him.” Genzo explained, “I was coming out of a teahouse in Nihonbashi. He was sitting in a palanquin, with the windows closed. He hissed at me and asked, did I want to make some money. I said, what do I have to do? He said, kill Nakae.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Hirata said. “People don’t ask strangers on the street to kill people for them.”

Genzo seemed as indifferent to Hirata’s disbelief as he’d been unsurprised by the offer from the man in the palanquin. “This fellow did.”

Odder things had been known to happen. Sano said, “Did he say why he wanted you to kill Nakae?”

“No,” Genzo said, “and I didn’t ask.”

Sano wondered if hired assassins thought they were better off not knowing their employers’ motives. Or maybe curiosity had been left out of Genzo’s personality. “Go on.”

“I told him a thousand koban. He said five hundred. I said-”

“So you haggled over the price,” Hirata said. “Then what?”

“He described Nakae. Big older man, big dark spot on his face. He said to wait for Nakae outside Edo Castle, follow him, and do it. He warned me that Nakae would have bodyguards and I would probably have to kill them, too.”

“All that went on and you never saw who hired you?” Sano said skeptically.

“He stayed inside the palanquin. He opened the window just enough to pass me half the money. We agreed he would leave the rest behind my house after Nakae was dead.” Genzo added with dull rancor, “He never did, the bastard.”

“Because you ambushed the wrong man, you idiot,” Hirata said. “How did that happen?”

Genzo glowered at the insult. “Nakae came out of the castle with another samurai who looked like him. I followed them. They split up.”

Sano recalled the inspector general saying that he and Magistrate Ueda had ridden part of the way home together.

“It was dark,” Genzo said. “I couldn’t see which was Nakae. So I went after the one I thought was him.” He shrugged. “I guessed wrong.”

Sano was so infuriated by Genzo’s mistake, and Genzo’s indifferent attitude, that he couldn’t restrain himself much longer. He had to force himself to speak calmly. “The man who hired you-can you describe his voice?”

“High-class,” Genzo said.

“What about his palanquin?”

“It was black.”

That narrowed the field down to the entire upper samurai society. “Were there any identifying crests on it?”

“Not that I saw.”

Sano marveled that anyone would agree to commit a murder for a person unknown, unseen, and of dubious trustworthiness. But of course the money had been a big incentive. “What did his bearers look like?”

“I don’t remember,” Genzo said, bored. “Who notices bearers?”

“Can you think of anything you did notice that might help us identify the man in the palanquin?”

“No.”

Not even to save his life, Sano thought. In addition to his other sins, Genzo was a deplorably bad witness. Sano turned to Hirata. “We’re finished here.”

“I agree.” Hirata looked as fed up with Genzo as Sano was. He opened the door of the cell. He and Sano started to walk out.

“Hey,” Genzo called in a voice louder than his usual mutter. “Do I get to stay alive?”

“No,” Sano said.

Disbelief pricked up Genzo’s flat eyelids. “But you promised.”

“No, I didn’t,” Sano said. “Next time, you should be more careful about who you do business with. Except there isn’t going to be a next time.”

“That’s not fair!” It was as if the reptile had basked in the sun long enough to bring its cold blood to a boil. Temper animated his eyes, clenched his fists, and revealed the brute who’d savaged Magistrate Ueda for a few pieces of gold.

“You may not think it’s fair,” Sano said, “but it’s justice.”

* * *

“Do you think Genzo was telling the truth?” Hirata asked Sano as they rode across the bridge that spanned the canal outside Edo Jail.

“Yes,” Sano said. “He hasn’t the imagination to make up that story.”

“So do I. How should we go about identifying the man in the palanquin?”

“We could start at the teahouse where Genzo met him. Maybe someone there saw him even though Genzo didn’t. Or saw where he went after he and Genzo made their deal.”

“Or can give us a better description of the palanquin and the bearers.” Hirata glanced around at the shacks that lined the road through the slums as he said, “If the Hosokawa people wanted to kill Inspector General Nakae, wouldn’t they handle it themselves? Why take a chance on hiring a stranger who could and did botch the job?”

“Whoever hired Genzo didn’t want the blood on their own hands. But you’re right, the whole assassination attempt smacks of incompetence.”

“That would exonerate Yanagisawa,” Hirata pointed out.

“That and the fact that he wouldn’t have wanted Nakae killed. Nakae is his crony.”

“There’s still the question of how anyone besides Yanagisawa and the judges and you could have known Nakae’s position on the vendetta,” Hirata said. “But maybe Nakae let his opinion be known before he was appointed to the court. Or maybe it was a personal enemy of his who wanted him dead, and the attack had nothing to do with the case.”

The inspector general had plenty of enemies, but Sano still believed that the attack and the case were connected. Sano followed Hirata’s gaze to a group of men huddled around a bonfire. Hirata was looking for his stalkers, Sano thought.

“Well, there are still other suspects besides the forty-seven ronin and the Hosokawa clan,” Sano said. “Before we try to pick up the palanquin man’s trail, let’s hear what my wife has to say about Ukihashi, Lady Asano, and Okaru. She was supposed to talk to them today.”

* * *

When Sano and Hirata arrived at home, Reiko hurried to meet them while they were hanging their swords in the entryway. “I’m so glad you’re back!” She sparkled with excitement. “I must tell you what I’ve learned!”

While she helped Sano remove his coat, while she served him and Hirata hot tea in the private quarters, Reiko related the story she’d heard from Ukihashi and Lady Asano. She was breathless by the time she finished. Sano and Hirata were thunderstruck.

“So that’s why Lord Asano attacked Kira,” Sano said. The story revealed what Kira’s subordinates must have known about Kira but had kept hidden, the whale Sano had sensed beneath the water.

“I knew it had to be more than just because Kira harassed him,” Hirata said, “but I never imagined this.”

Sano shook his head in disgust as he envisioned the scene that Reiko had described-the forced sex between Lord Asano and Ukihashi, with Kira watching in ugly, perverted pleasure and Lady Asano in agony. “Kira made victims of them all.”

“Do you think this will save the forty-seven ronin?” Reiko asked, her voice colored by doubt as to whether they should be saved.

“I think Lord Asano had a valid reason for attacking Kira,” Sano said. “I also think Kira should have been punished for his role in their feud and that since the government didn’t punish him, it’s good that someone else did. But it’s not up to me. The supreme court will decide whether Kira’s behavior justified forty-seven ronin breaking the law and murdering Kira.”

Reiko’s sparkle dimmed. “Then even though we know the truth behind the incident in the Corridor of Pines, it might not change anything.”

“It might. It’s an extenuating circumstance,” Sano pointed out. “And there may be others we haven’t discovered yet.”

“Such as the real reason why the forty-seven ronin took so long to take revenge on Kira,” Hirata said, “and why they ‘waited for orders’ afterward.”

“But we’ve made progress on one front,” Sano said. “Hirata-san caught the man who attacked your father.”

Reiko exclaimed, “Who is it? Why did he do it? I want to see him!”

If he let her at Genzo, they wouldn’t need an executioner, Sano thought. “Maybe later.” He told Reiko about his and Hirata’s interview with Genzo.

“But who was the man in the palanquin?” Reiko asked, so agitated she couldn’t sit still. “Why did he want to kill Inspector General Nakae?”

“I have a hunch that once we have the answers to those questions, they’ll help us bring your father’s attacker to justice,” Sano said, “and they’ll put the vendetta in a different light.”

“But how do we find them?” Reiko asked.

“You’ve discovered a new lead,” Sano said. “Let’s follow it and see where it goes.”