But Harry noticed that one branch of the tree he was in reached over the embassy wall to the garden next door, a rich man’s garden banked with willows and maples, fountains of artfully worn stones and, over a pool, a haze of flickering yellow-green lights. As soon as his mother was gone, Harry climbed out on the branch and dropped into the garden.
The back of the house was a long balcony of summer screens made of threaded reeds, none lit from within that Harry could see. He slid a panel open and automatically slipped off his wet shoes before moving onto the mats of a richly spare room with a painted scroll hanging by a cedar post. Red lacquered sake cups seemed to float on a low table as black as ink.
“What are you doing here?”
Harry jumped, but it was only Roy Hooper at the open panel. Harry was surprised but turned the question around. “What are you doing here?”
“Following you.”
“Then take off your shoes.”
Harry moved from room to room. The owner had to be very rich judging by the screens of gold leaf and shelves of fine china that glowed in the shadows. Harry rummaged until he found a large glass jar with a perforated lid in the kitchen and black cotton cloth in a linen drawer.
“Are you stealing?” Roy Hooper asked.
“Don’t be stupid. Just taking what I need.”
By the time they returned to the garden, they heard the machine-gun report of firecrackers from the embassy and saw the occasional rocket zip high enough to be seen above the wall, followed by homesick renditions of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Down by the Old Mill Stream.” Meanwhile, Harry and Roy Hooper caught fireflies.
Around the pond were maples, dwarf pines and pillows of moss where fireflies swarmed in luminescent clouds. The darker the evening grew, the easier they were to see. Fireflies spread like a pulsating carpet over the damp grass, congregated under a drooping mulberry, spangled the water. Roy Hooper would hold the jar while Harry caught a firefly with both hands and gently blew it through the mouth of the jar. Brooms were another good way to carry fireflies, and a broom could look like a jeweled fan but wouldn’t serve for this instance. Caught, fireflies flashed brighter in distress. Crushed, they emitted a burning green. In half an hour the glass jar was a glowing ball of captives, at least ten yen’s worth at a geisha house, and Harry wrapped it in the black cloth to carry back over the wall.
The entertainment had just concluded when Harry and Roy Hooper returned. A couple hundred guests were still gathered on the lawn in the red, white and blue illumination of lanterns. The diplomatic corps sat in chairs that had begun to settle and list in the soft turf. Babies slept in their fathers’ arms. A whiff of sulfur hung in the air.
“The prodigal sons,” announced the clerk functioning as master of ceremonies. “Too bad they missed out on all the fun.”
“They had sparklers,” Harriet told Harry. “You know how you love sparklers.”
“What have you got there?” Roger Niles asked. In the dark, despite its black cover, a faint halo surrounded the jar.
“Nothing.”
“It’s something worth making fools of us,” his father said. “Let’s see.”
“Let’s all see,” the clerk picked up.
Roy Hooper’s knees went soft as he felt the clamp of his father’s hand.
“I’m disappointed in you,” Reverend Hooper hissed.
“Or I’ll send you home to Louisville,” Roger told Harry under his breath. “I swear it.”
“It’s for the entertainment,” Harry said.
“The entertainment is over,” Roger said.
The clerk said, “One more act, that’s fine with us. Isn’t that fine, folks? This is a very different boy here. I bet he’s got real different entertainment.”
There was scattered applause in general, a snigger from the boy with a bandage on his nose. It was getting late. Most people wanted to go home. The ambassador yawned and fell into an expression of such boredom he could have been watching from the moon.
“Turn off the lamps,” said Harry. “Just for a minute?”
When the lanterns went dark, there was a reflexive whimper from the younger children. Harry unscrewed the lid, and the jar underlit his face.
“It’s a surprise,” he said.
Harry put his mouth to the jar. As he raised his head, a light rose from his lips, flashed and took wing. He took another breath from the jar and blew a green tracer bullet in the eye of a clerk, a deeper breath and poured a glowing machine-gun fusillade at the guests. Dipped into the jar to feed himself and blew until his fingers and lips were smeared with green fire. The ambassador tried to brush the luminescence off his sleeves, spreading it instead. Children squirmed from their parents, screamed and ran into the dark. For a brief moment before Roger Niles seized him, Harry ruled, marching with the roar of fireflies.
7
HARRY DROVE for half an hour under a dazzling sun from Tokyo to Yokohama Bay only to find waiting for him the familiar shadows of Shozo and Go, the same plainclothes police that had watched his apartment at night. In the daylight Sergeant Shozo had a droll smile belied by heavy knuckles hanging from his sleeve. Corporal Go was young, with the zeal of a guard dog pulling on a chain. They were with the accountant from Long Beach Oil.
Long Beach shared a black-stained dock with Standard Oil of New York and Rising Sun, which sounded Japanese but was actually Royal Dutch-Shell. Long Beach wasn’t much more than a small warehouse of corrugated steel, while Standard and Rising Sun fronted the water with miles of pipeline and acres of ten-thousand-barrel tanks. Didn’t matter. In the most important regard they were no different, because no American or Dutch company, big or small, had delivered oil to Japan since July, six months before.
“Please.” The accountant unlocked the warehouse door.
“I’m so curious,” Shozo told Harry. “All this time I have heard about your special connections to the navy. Now we’ll find out.”
It was winter inside. Harry could see his breath by the clerkish light of green-shaded lamps that hung over a glassed-in office area. Rolltop desks crowded between file cabinets, chalkboards with lists of ships and ports, framed prices and schedules that showed the delivery of Venezuela crude at fourteen cents a barrel. Everything was spick-and-span, as if the American managers might return at any second, probably tidier without them. Harry stopped at a poster of the tanker Tampico with her ports of call-Galveston, Long Beach, Yokohama-a route that was history now. A snapshot tacked next to it showed a group of men around a racehorse. The rest of the warehouse held a truck loaded with ships’ stores of canned foods gathering dust. Tucked around the truck were the wide-mouthed hoses that were usually laid straight on a dock, each hose dedicated to a different product: marine gas, dirty diesel, sweet crude and sour. Harry felt like the Big Bad Wolf asked into a house of straw.
The accountant’s name was Kawamura. He was about sixty years of age, with a long neck and more hair in his ears than on his head. Harry knew the type, the salaryman who was first to the office, last to leave, whose identity was his work and whose sole delight was a binge at New Year’s. He was Harry’s target, but Harry had not expected the participation of Shozo and Go. Kawamura trembled and kept his eyes down, the decision of a man who didn’t know which way to look.
Sergeant Shozo showed Harry a fountain pen. “Waterman, from my wife. I want to document this case. You have made my life and the life of Corporal Go so interesting.”
Harry preferred to be ignored. The Special Higher Police countered espionage, but they were also called Thought Police, responsible for detecting deviant ideas. Harry was riddled with deviant ideas. Like, how the hell had Shozo and Go heard about this meeting? How had they found Kawamura?