“How much for the golf clubs?” Harry nodded back toward the shop. “Keeping in mind that the army’s taking over all the courses and there’s no place to play.”
“A hundred.”
“Twenty.”
“Fifty.”
“Forty.”
“Done.” Agawa spread the bills like playing cards to count them. “Always good to do business with you. Very professional. As long as you let me count the money, not you. Just joking. You know the first time I saw you, Harry, you were running errands for the girls backstage at the Folies. I was interested in a dancer named Oharu, remember her? I wasn’t so old. I was married, but I was still interested. But I could never get her away from that artist. I think she posed for him. Now, there’s a job, painting someone like Oharu. Anyway, I heard that the artist was going to an exhibition out of town, and at once I got over to the Folies in time to catch Oharu and ask her to meet me after the show. She said she had a date. I got the drift, I didn’t have a chance, not with her. I went out and tried to drown my sorrows in drink. Then I went to the movies. I don’t think I ever looked at the screen, because three rows ahead of me was Oharu with you. You were her date. A boy, not even Japanese. I fought a powerful impulse to strangle you. I could feel my fingers closing around your throat. I could feel your breath rattle. You were so friendly with her, so easygoing. I wanted to beat your head against the steps and crush it under my heel.” Agawa rocked with excitement and slowly settled back. “I didn’t, of course. I controlled myself and left the movie theater. I went to a red lantern and got drunk again and calmed down. Although, I have to say, when the earthquake hit soon after and I heard that Oharu didn’t survive, my first reaction was Good, I hope the little gaijin died, too. I didn’t know you had already gone home.”
Harry carefully wrapped the bars in velvet so they wouldn’t click together. He looked up. “I guess those were the good old days.”
“History. Like Noah’s ark. That what you need now, Harry. Noah’s ark.”
HARRY BOUGHT A newspaper and met Goro at a Ginza pastry shop where the reformed pickpocket was squinting through a display case, trying to decide between napoleon or eclair, meringue or tarte citron.
Everyone had expected Goro to become a yakuza like Tetsu. He had the supple fingers of a born dip, but he also had the exquisite mole of an actor. Goro distracted shopgirls while Tetsu lifted the goods, and the two boys were successful thieves until they wandered into a stationery store they had robbed before. The owner at once recognized the mole. She chased Tetsu, locked the door before Goro could escape and could have turned him in to the police. However, she was a widow only ten years older than he, and the more he wept, the more she sympathized. Within a month they married. Goro took her family name as his and never had to steal again, though he still flirted with salesgirls. To get him out of the shop, his wife found him a position at the government printing office, where all he had to do was sort stationery to different ministries. That was still all he did ten years later, except for card games at the ballroom and occasional business with Harry.
“You’re fogging the glass,” Harry said.
“It’s hard to choose between the meringue and the eclair, each has its merits.”
“Then one of each.”
“Excellent. Harry, that’s why we’re still friends.”
Goro had his sweets with coffee, Harry had tea and they took a booth under a mural of cancan dancers kicking on the Champs-Élysées. Harry had met the wife once, and she had used the word “chic” in every other sentence. Goro had padded at her side, to all appearances a well-dressed consort, a neutered cat.
Harry opened the newspaper to the movie times. “I was thinking of taking in an early show. Want to come? You can pick.”
A tael bar sat in the paper’s crease. As Goro pointed to a theater, he incidentally palmed the bar. A moment later he rested his hand in his jacket pocket and let the bar slide down, every move natural and unhurried.
Goro read, “Stanley and Livingstone, what’s that about?”
“Missionary gets lost. Nothing new there.”
“I’m supposed to meet the wife for lunch. She’s very Western, strong-willed. She has me on a diet.”
“I can see.”
“A wonderful woman.”
“Absolutely.” Harry watched Goro stuff his face. “Marriage suits you.”
“She watches every move.” Goro’s tongue searched the corners of his mouth for crumbs, and only after could he bother with chat. “Are you in trouble, Harry?”
“Me? Furthest from it.”
“This request was a little unusual.”
“Was it scary at your end?” Harry asked. “Did you have to get into some offices? Get past a guard? Was it fun?”
Goro permitted himself a grunt of satisfaction. He drank the dregs of his coffee and sat for a moment with his eyes closed, breathing deeply the scent of cream and powdered sugar before rising from the table. “The wife.”
Harry left a minute later. He waited until he got to his car to unfold the newspaper to an envelope that Goro had slipped in so smoothly that even Harry hadn’t noticed. The envelope was government issue, with a twine closure he unwound to draw out two sheets of paper that were blank except for the letterhead of the Department of the Military Police, Defense Section, Ministry of War. A third piece of paper as fine as tissue bore the red imprint of a ministry stamp. The government printing office was also responsible for rubber stamps. A forged document wasn’t quite as good for Willie and Iris as a call from Saburo, which would have swept all objections aside. However, it was heartening to see that a son of Asakusa like Goro still had, despite all efforts at reformation, an itch that had to be scratched.
Harry felt better, more the captain of his fate. He didn’t have to go to the ballroom right away. Knowing what he did about Hawaii was like standing by a burning fuse and doing nothing. It was just too…annoying. He didn’t have to go through Hooper, he could go direct.
Michiko would have to wait. He knew she had made it to Haruko’s long enough to swipe a dress and she had a gun. At the ballroom card game, she would be protected by the yakuza. Harry couldn’t wait to get his hands around Tetsu’s throat for the rebuff at Saburo’s gate, but Tetsu wouldn’t let anyone harm a woman at his game. She was safe.
WEST TOKYO petered out into dry fields, sun-warped wooden houses and small children with bare bottoms who waved as Harry drove by. If the Japanese fleet really was headed to Hawaii, he felt he had to do something. He wasn’t a patriot, but the con he had run on Gen and the navy about phony oil tanks on Oahu was the shell game of a lifetime, his masterpiece, and he refused to see it come to such a miserable end. He refused to lose.
When he thought about Iris, he wondered if he really had helped her. Assuming that the Orinoco made it through the blockade, racist Germany was going to be no bed of roses for a Chinese bride. That was the problem with good deeds, they rarely stood up to scrutiny. Besides, mixed marriages always seemed to bring grief. He could just imagine Michiko meeting California girls, like a panther among tabbies. When he did tell her that he was leaving, he had to remember to take the gun away from her first. His back began to throb again, and he chewed aspirin as he drove.
Ten miles out, he reached an oasis ringed by pines that separated the manicured fairways of a golf course from the muck of fallow paddy fields. Everything about the rice paddies suggested a desperate, crowded, exhausting struggle for life, and next to them the course hovered like a green and spacious heaven. The entrance to this paradise was a clubhouse reminiscent of a Spanish hacienda and a circular driveway with limousines and idle bodyguards.