"Hold it a minute, Tonaka." He was hearing the music again. Music and vibrations, very faint.
"Where are we? Where in Tokyo?"
She flicked ashes on the
tatami.
"On the Ginza. Under it, rather. This is one of our few safe hideouts. We're in a sub-basement under the Electric Palace cabaret. That's the music you hear — go-go and girls. It's nearly midnight up there and the joint is jumping. Now I really must go, Nick. Anything you want..."
"Cigarettes, a bottle of good hair of the dog and to know where you got your English. I haven't heard a 'prease' now for a long time."
She could riot repress the smile. It made her lovely again. "Radcliffe. Class of '63. Father didn't want to raise his daughter to be an Eta, you see. Only I insisted. But he'll tell you about
that,
too. I'll send the things. And the
bassu
girl. See you soon, Nick."
She closed the door behind her. Nick, who was nothing if not adaptable, squatted in Oriental fashion and started thinking it out. There would, of course, be all hell to pay in Washington. Hawk would be getting the torture chamber ready. He decided to play the cards as they had fallen, at least for the time being. He could not contact Hawk at once, not tell the old man that his wandering boy had wandered to Tokyo. No. Let the boss have his apoplexy. Hawk was a tough, stringy old bird and it wouldn't kill him.
Meantime Nick would see Kunizo Matu and find out what it was all about. Pay his debt to the old fellow, get this whole infernal mess straightened out. Then would be time enough to call Hawk and try to explain.
There was a tap on the door.
"Ohari nasai."
It was fortunate, as long as he had to be' shanghaied, that he spoke the language.
She was middle-aged with a flat placid face. She wore straw getas and a gingham house dress. She carried a tray with a bottle of whisky and a package of cigarettes on it. Over her arm she carried a huge fluffy towel. She gave Nick an aluminum toothed smile.
"Konbanwa,
Carter-san. Here are things for you.
Bassu
is ready now. You come hubba-hubba?"
Nick smiled at her. "Not hubba-hubba. Drink first. Smoke first. Then maybe I won't die and can enjoy
bassu. O namae wa?"
The aluminum teeth glinted. "I Suzy."
He took the bottle of whisky from the tray and grimaced. Old White Whale! About what you could expect in a place called the Electric Palace.
"Suzy, eh? That figures. You bring a glass?"
"No grass."
"That figures, too." He twisted the top off the bottle. The stuff smelled bad. But he needed one, just one, to get him off and running on this — this whatever it was mission. He held out the bottle and bowed to Suzy. "Your health, beautiful.
Gokenko wo shuku shimasu!"
And mine, too, he muttered under his breath. He had a sudden, sure knowledge that the fun and games were about over. From now on in the game would be for keeps and the winner kept all the marbles.
Suzy giggled, then frowned.
"Bassu
ready now. Hot. You come fast or be cold." And she flapped the big towel suggestively in the air.
It was of no avail to explain to Suzy that he could scrub his own back. Suzy was boss. She popped him into the steaming tank and took over, giving him a
bassu
her way, not his. She missed nothing.
Tonaka was waiting when he got back to the little room. There was a pile of clothing on the bed mat. Nick regarded the clothes with distaste. "What am I supposed to be? A bum?"
"In a way, yes." She handed him a battered wallet. It contained a thick wad of crisp new yen and a great many cards, most of them limp and dogeared. Nick riffled hastily through them.
"Your name is Pete Fremont," Tonaka explained. "You are sort of a bum, I suppose. You're a free-lance newspaper man and writer, an alcoholic, and you've been on the beach in the Orient for years. Now and then you sell a story or an article in the States and when the check gets here you go on a binge. That's where the real Pete Fremont is now — on a binge. So you don't have to worry about that. There won't be two of you running around. Now you had better get dressed."
She handed him a pair of shorts and a light blue shirt, cheap and new, still in their cellophane packets. "I had one of the girls buy these. Pete's stuff is pretty filthy. He doesn't take very good care of himself."
Nick dropped the skimpy robe Suzy had given him and got into the shorts. Tonaka watched impassively. She had, he remembered, seen it all before. No secrets from this kid.
"So there really is a Pete Fremont, eh? And you guarantee to keep him out of circulation while I operate? That's fine — but there
is
another angle. Everybody in Tokyo must know a character like that."
She was lighting a cigarette. "Keeping him out of sight won't be any problem. He's dead drunk. He'll stay that way for days, . as long as his money holds out. He couldn't go anyplace anyway — these are his only clothes."
Nick halted his task of taking pins out of the new shirt. "You mean you stole the guy's clothes? His only clothes?"
Tonaka shrugged. "Why not? We need them. He doesn't. Pete is a sweet guy, he knows about us, about Eta girls, and he helps us now and then. But he's a hopeless lush. Anyway he's shacked up now and he doesn't need any clothes. He's got his bottle and his girl and that is all he cares about. Do hurry, Nick. I want to show you something."
"Yes, mem sahib."
Gingerly he picked up the suit. It had been a good suit once. It had been made in Hong Kong — Nick knew the tailor — a very long time ago. He got into it, noticing the very distinctive odor of sweat and age. It fitted amazingly well. "Your friend Pete is a big man."
"Fat now."
Nick put on shoes that were cracked and rundown at the heel. The tie was ragged and stained. The trenchcoat she handed him had, in the Ice Age, come from Abercrombie and Fitch. It was filthy and lacked a belt.
"This guy," Nick muttered as he shrugged into the trenchcoat, "is real type casting. Brother — how does he stand his own smell?"
Tonaka did not smile. "I know. Poor Pete. But when you've been fired by the UP, the AP, the Hong Kong Times and the Singapore Times and by Asahi, Yomiuri and the Osaka, I guess you don't much care any more. Here. The hat."
Nick regarded it with awe. It was a masterpiece. It had been new when the world was young. Filthy, dented, ragged, sweat-stained and shapeless, still it flaunted a bedraggled scarlet feather in the salt-rimed band. A last gesture of defiance, a final cocking the snook at Fate.
"I'd like to meet this Pete Fremont when this thing is over," he told the girl. "He must be a walking example of the law of survival." Something Nick was pretty good at himself.
"Maybe," she agreed curtly. "Stand over there and let me look at you. Hmmmmm — you'll pass for Pete at a distance. Not close, because you don't look anything alike. That's
not
really important. His papers are important, as your cover, and I doubt you'll meet anyone that knows Pete well. Father says you won't. This is all
his
plan, remember. I'm only carrying out my instructions."
Nick narrowed his eyes at her. "You don't like your old man very much, do you?"
Her face went as stiff as a kabuki mask. "I honor my father. I do not have to love him. Come now. There is something you must see. I have saved it until the last because — because I want you to leave this place in the proper frame of mind. And on your guard."
"I know," said Nick as he followed her out the door. "You're a great little psychologist.".
She led him down a corridor to a flight of narrow stairs. Somewhere over his head the go-go music was still dinning away. Imitation Beatles. Clyde-san and his Four Silk Worms. Nick Carter shook his head in silent disapproval as he followed Tonaka down the stairs. Mod music left him cold. He was by no means an old gent, but he wasnt
that
young. Nobody was that young!
They went down and down. It grew colder and he heard the trickle of water. Tonaka was using a small flashlight now.
"How many basements does this joint have?"
"Many. This part of Tokyo is very old. We're directly under what used to be the old silver foundry.
Gin.
They- used these dungeons to store bullion and coins."
They reached bottom, then went along a transverse corridor to a dark cubicle. The girl flicked a switch and a dim yellow bulb starred the ceiling. She pointed to the body on a plain deal table in the center of the room.
"Father wanted you to see that. First. Before you committed yourself irrevocably." She handed him the flashlight. "Here. Take a good look. It's what will happen to us if we fail."
Nick took the flashlight. "I thought I
was
committed."
"Not totally. Father says not. If, at this point, you want to back out we are to put you on the next plane back to the States."
The AXEman scowled, then grinned sourly. Old Kunizo knew what he was about. He knew that Carter might be a lot of things, but chicken wasn't one of them.
He put the glow of the flashlight on the body and examined it with an expert eye. He was familiar enough with corpses and death to know at once that the man had died in exquisite agony.
The body was that of a Japanese of middle age. Squat, powerful, graying at the temples. The eyes had been closed. Nick examined the many small wounds that covered the man from neck to ankles. There must be a thousand of them! Small, bloody, gaping little mouths in the flesh. None deep enough to kill of itself. None in a vital spot. But put them all together and a man would slowly bleed to death. It would take hours. And there would be the terror, the shock...
Tonaka was standing well back in the shadows cast by the tiny yellow bulb. The waft of her cigarette came to him, acrid and harsh in the cold death smell of the room.
She said: "You see the tattoo?"
He was looking at it. It puzzled him. A small blue figure of Buddha — with knives sticking into it. It was on the left arm, inside, above the elbow.
"I see it," Nick said. "What does it mean?"
"The Society of the Bloody Buddha. His name was Sadanaga. He was Eta,
Burakumin.
Like myself — and my father. Like millions of us. But the Chinese, the Chicoms, forced him to join the Society and work for them. But Sadanaga was a brave man — he rebelled and worked for us, too. He informed on the Chicoms."
Tonaka flipped away her glowing cigarette butt. "They found out. You see the result. And that, Mr. Carter, is what you will be up against if you help us. And that is only part of it."
Nick stepped back and ran the flashlight over the body again. The mute little wounds gaped at him. He flicked off the light and turned back to the girl. "It looks like the death of a thousand cuts — but I thought that went out with the Ronins."
"The Chinese have brought it back. Updated, in modern form. You will see. My father has a model of the machine they use to — to punish anyone who defies them. Come. It is cold down here."
They went back to the little room where Nick had awakened. The music was still banging and strumming and vibrating. He had somehow lost his wristwatch.
It was, Tonaka told him, a quarter after two.
"I don't feel like sleep," he said. "I might as well cut out right now and go see your father. Call and tell him I'm on my Way."
"He has no phone. It is not wise. But I will get a message to him in time. Perhaps you are right — it is easier to move around Tokyo in the small hours. But wait — if you are going now I must give you this. I know it is not what you are accustomed to — my father remembers — but it is all we have. Weapons are hard to come by for us Eta."
She went to a small cabinet in one corner of the room and knelt before it. The slacks tightened over a smooth line of thigh and buttock, limning the taut flesh.
She came back with a heavy pistol that glinted black with an oily sheen. She handed it to him along with two spare clips. "It is very heavy. I could not use it myself. It has been hidden away since occupation days. I think it is in good condition. I suppose some CI traded it for cigarettes and beer, or a girl."
It was an old Colt .45, 1911. Nick had not fired one for a long time but he was familiar with it. The weapon was notoriously inaccurate at over fifty yards, but within that range it would stop a bull elephant. It had, in fact, been developed to stop
amoks
in the Philippines.
He released the full clip and pumped the sleeve several times, checked the safeties, then thumbed cartridges onto the bed pad. They lay thick and blunt and deadly, the brass shimmering in the light. Nick checked the feeder springs in all the clips. They would do. Just as the old .45 would have to do — it wasn't Wilhelmina, of course, but then no other gun was. And he could have done with the stiletto, Hugo, nestling along his right arm in the chamois spring sheath, but that was out. He had to use the tools at hand. He jammed the Colt into his waistband and buttoned the trenchcoat over it. It bulged, but not too much.
Tonaka was watching him closely. He sensed her approval in her dark eyes. The girl was, in fact, feeling more optimistic about matters. She knew a professional when she saw one.
She handed him a small leather keyfold. "There is a Datsun in the parking lot behind the San-ai Department store. You know it?"
"I know it." It was a tubular building not far down the Ginza, resembling a massive rocket on its pad.
"Good. Here is the license number." She handed him a slip of paper. "The car may be watched. I don't think so, but it may be. You will just have to take that chance. You know how to get out to the Sanya district?"
"I think so. Take the Freeway to Shawa Dori, then come off and go as far as the baseball stadium. Cut right on Meiji Dori and that should get me somewhere around the Namidabashi Bridge. Right?"