The proprietor scrutinized them, then waved them inside. Sano and Hirata ducked under the faded blue curtain and entered the empty room. Hirata led the way through a doorway at its rear, from which muffled voices and laughter issued. Then Sano understood the real purpose of the deserted stores and teahouses.
Kneeling men jammed the dim back room. Their pipes added more smoke to the already thick air. Spread on the floor before them lay tobacco boxes, metal baskets of burning coals, cups and decanters of sake, playing cards and stacked coins. Intent on their games, the men ignored Sano and Hirata as they muttered their plays and bets, hands moving cards and coins with expert rapidity. This, like its neighboring establishments, was one of Edo ’s illegal gambling dens: domain of the city’s burgeoning underclass of thieves, con men, gangsters, and other outlaws. The “proprietors” outside were lookouts, on the watch for police or rival gangsters.
Hirata eased past the gamblers, motioning Sano to follow him through another curtained doorway. This led to a dank, urine-smelling passage. Shouts, laughter, and clanking noises echoed from its other end.
“Sōsakan-sama, I want you to know that this isn’t my district,” Hirata whispered, obviously shamed by this lapse in police control. “I don’t like the practice of taking bribes to let these places operate. But they do have their uses!”
They entered a hot, stifling room, whose shuttered windows and flaring oil lamps gave it a sinister, nighttime look. The reek of vomit, smoke, sweat, and liquor assailed Sano. At the center of the large, low-ceilinged space, rough wooden railings denned a combat ring where two young men, clad only in loincloths and cotton headbands, circled each other, gazes locked in fierce concentration. Both held kusari-gama-short, sharp-bladed scythes with weighted chains attached to the ends of wooden handles. This was a weapon normally used by peasants to disarm maurauding swordsmen, but here employed in a perverted and dangerous form of combat. Each fighter gripped his weapon’s handle in his left hand; with his right, he spun the deadly chain in accelerating circles. Sweat glistened upon the fighters’ tensed muscles; their savage grimaces bared broken teeth. Old scars and fresh wounds crisscrossed their skin.
Cheering, hooting samurai and peasants crowded around the ring. Many of the latter had elaborate tattoos on their arms and torsos-a mark of the organized gangster clans. Sano had seen men like these before, but never in such numbers. Here must be where they hid out while honest men were at work. Hirata was right: What better source of information about illicit activities could there be than this?
Hirata led Sano to the ring’s far side, where a short, bald, muscular man was taking coins from eager customers-bets on the fight, judging from their shouts:
“Ten coppers on Yoshi!”
“Twenty on Gorō!”
On closer inspection, Sano saw that the banker wasn’t much older than himself, and not really bald. His hair was cut so close to his domed head that in the dim light he’d at first appeared to have none. He had a crooked, flattened nose, puffy eyes and mouth. His kimono hung open to reveal a spectacular tattoo: a beautiful naked woman with winged demons suckling at her breasts.
Hirata approached the banker, who was apparently the informant, Wild Boar. “I’ve come for the goods I ordered,” he shouted over the audience’s cheers.
All traces of his usual deference had disappeared; he sounded brusque and rough, befitting his disguise, and confident like a man who expects satisfaction. Sano felt a touch of admiration for his assistant, who’d already demonstrated his talent for detection. Once again, he regretted the probable short tenure of their partnership.
Wild Boar jerked his head at Sano. “Who’s your friend?” He spoke out of one corner of his mouth. His half-closed eyes showed no whites; the dark irises watched the fighters.
“The goods are for him,” Hirata said. “Before you get the other half of your money, they have to meet his approval.”
In the ring, the tall fighter launched an assault on his opponent. The other man didn’t parry soon enough. The chain slammed across his chest. Shouts erupted from the audience. Wild Boar’s eyes followed the action as he retorted, “You said nothing about this when we made our deal. Who is he? Why should I trust him?”
Hirata shrugged and started to walk away. Sano, fighting the urge to protest, followed his bluff.
“Wait.” The informant’s hand shot out and grabbed Hirata’s sleeve. “You win.” Rancor closed his eyes still more as he positioned himself between Sano and Hirata. Keeping his gaze on the ring, where the second fighter flailed his chain and thrust his scythe in a series of counterattacks, he began to speak.
“The man of the melon seeds and the fox’s face was a rōnin named Nango Junnosuke. A stranger to Edo, as snow is to summer.” Wild Boar’s speech had a poetic quality that contrasted sharply with his gruff voice. “He came here four nights ago. He said he was just arrived from the Kantō.”
Because the overlapping of shogun’s and daimyo’s authority had undermined police power in the eight agricultural provinces outside Edo, they’d become a center of criminal activity. Sano wasn’t surprised to learn that the assassin had come from there. And “Junnosuke” was the name on the torn note in his pouch.
“Daikoku, great god of fortune, didn’t bless Nango,” Wild Boar went on. “He lost much money on cards and fights, then begged for credit, saying he would soon have enough money to cover his debts.”
“How much money, and how soon?” Sano interrupted.
“Ten koban, the next night.”
The exact sum found on the assassin’s body, at the designated time. Sano’s excitement grew with the certainty that Nango was his man. “Did he say how he planned to get it?”
“Said he’d been hired by someone important to kill a high-ranking citizen. But the gang didn’t trust him. He had eyes that darted like minnows in a stream. So they made him leave. Afterward, they thought he might have been telling the truth. Because he was good with his sword, he was. Took five men to throw the ugly little fox out. And he cut them all.”
Wild Boar’s description of Nango’s behavior fit the assassin: a good fighter whose rashness had gotten him in trouble during his life, and, in the end, destroyed him.
“Did he say who hired him, or who his target was?” Sano asked.
The informant laughed in derision: a grunt not unlike his namesake’s. “If it was true, he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. But I’ll tell you this. I’ve seen his kind before. They blow into town like a typhoon, do their evil, and blow out to sea again. And their master is the man up there on the hill.”
A typhoon of foreboding swirled around Sano’s heart. “Which man?”
“People come to me for facts, not opinions. But if you want, I’ll tell you what I think.” Wild Boar paused, then leaned closer to Sano. His sour, liquor-scented whisper rasped against Sano’s face. “It’s the Second Dog.”
The shogun, Chamberlain Yanagisawa, and Senior Elder Makino were nicknamed “The Three Dogs”-all born in the year of the dog; all associated with Tsunayoshi’s Dog Protection Edicts. The shogun was First Dog by right of rank. Yanagisawa, the Second Dog, led the pack. The typhoon over Sano’s heart sent its fierce winds gusting into his throat.
“The Second Dog hired Nango?” he asked, resisting belief.
“I’d lay odds on it, friend.”
“Why?” Sano pressed.
The informant’s ripe breath blew the answer into Sano’s face. “Miyagi Kojirō. Attacked and killed by an unknown swordsman three years ago while traveling along the Tōkaidō. The killer was never found. But I’ve got friends at highway post stations who saw a seed-eating, fox-faced man tailing Miyagi. A man not unlike the one we speak of now.”