I went back inside. Japanese bathing etiquette always involves extensive, even elaborate soaping and scrubbing and rinsing before entering the tub, but I went at it even beyond the already strict requirements, wanting to extend my stay as long as I could without becoming conspicuous. While I painstakingly went over every inch of my body with the soapy washcloth, I considered. I thought there was at least a decent chance I could acquire Ozawa here. If so, it wouldn’t be hard to head out shortly before he did, and come up from behind as he headed home. But how was I going to make something like that look natural? I considered a judo strangle, but immediately rejected it. My strangles were pretty good, but I knew I had nowhere near the finesse to put in a fatal one and leave no visible damage to the throat.
I scrubbed a second time, then sluiced the water off myself with a bucket, refilling the bucket with increasingly scalding water each time. My father had taught me the trick to easing into the molten waters of the sentō that very first time he’d taken me, and I’d never forgotten. You can’t wash with tepid water and then get right into the bath, he’d explained — the trick is to increase the temperature of the wash water until you can barely stand it. At that point, your body is acclimated, and you can get right into the bath. I did as he had taught me, and when I was done, my skin sunburn-red, I stood, walked over, and eased into the steaming waters of the large hot bath.
Within minutes, my muscles had been reduced to jelly by the pulverizing heat. As the tension flowed out of my body, I felt the anxiety about how to handle Ozawa dissipating from my mind. I’ve always loved the sentō, and this one was beautiful. I forgot about Ozawa for the moment and let myself be mindful, as Miyamoto had advised with regard to the drinking of tea. This was an old and noble building, used for a ritual that went back millennia, and I was here and I was connected to all of it, and that was good. That was enough.
A wrinkled oyaji walked slowly over, gripped the railing with fingers gnarled from arthritis, and eased himself into one of the mineral baths. I figured the minerals must help with the arthritis. I thought if I were lucky, I might get that old someday. But I didn’t really expect it. I watched as a few clusters of people arrived and departed. No Ozawa.
When I had soaked for as long as I could stand and was about to hit the plunge pool to cool down, a man came in. I squinted through the steam. Ozawa? He’d been clothed in all the file photos, obviously, and it was throwing me to try to make the match with him naked. But there — the limp from that war injury. He came closer, pulled up a stool, and sat in front of one of the spigots. His back was to me but I could see him clearly in the mirror he was facing. It was him.
I hit the plunge pool, the shock of cold finishing off what the sight of Ozawa had already done to my reverie. Then I sat on the side for a few moments, cooling down, watching unobtrusively. A few people greeted Ozawa, and he exchanged brief pleasantries here and there, but this area was for serious bathing. Most real conversation would take place on the couches in the waiting area outside.
When he was done washing, Ozawa stood with some effort and headed over to the baths. The limp was quite pronounced. I watched as, eschewing the main bath, he eased himself into the available mineral tub. I supposed that, like the arthritic oyaji, Ozawa found the superheated mineral water eased the discomfort of his wartime injury.
I paused, that phrase mineral water repeating itself in my mind for no good reason. Unlike the other two baths, the mineral baths were one-person affairs, each not much more than a large tub. They were enclosed. They were small. And of course, they were filled with minerals. Salt, mostly. So salt water.
Salt water, which is especially conductive of electricity.
I was suddenly excited, and had to concentrate on maintaining my casual posture. Could I do this? Would it work?
The oyaji pulled himself up and went to rinse off. I got back into the hot bath. This time, I barely felt it. I waited and watched unobtrusively. After about ten minutes, Ozawa leaned forward, gripped the faucet of the tub, and pulled himself out.
The way he’d gripped that faucet…was that a habit? Things were more primitive in those days, ergonomics not yet a science, and the baths at Daikoku-yu were devoid of railings and handholds and steps. For anyone physically challenged — like the oyaji, like Ozawa — the most natural handhold to use when it was time to leave the bath was the faucet.
The metal faucet. The grounded metal faucet.
I got out of the bath again, letting one hand dip unobtrusively into the mineral bath on the way. I tasted a finger. Salty, as I had hoped. In the corner of the room, immediately to the left of the mineral-water baths and sharing a common wall with them, there was a door marked SERVICE. To its left, along the adjoining wall, was a spigot and stool — the last washing station along a row of ten. If I could get that station, I’d be not much more than an arm’s length from the closer of the two mineral baths. Unless someone was at the station right next to me, I thought I might have the necessary freedom of movement to carry out what I was beginning to see in my imagination.
The problem was, I saw no electrical outlets. This wasn’t completely surprising. Electrical codes were a lot less stringent in those days, and items such as ground fault circuit interrupters were not at all widespread. It would be dangerous to have an outlet in close proximity to the baths — it might encourage an idiot to use a radio, or a hair dryer, or whatever — something electrical that could accidentally wind up in the water. But there would be an outlet somewhere, and I had a feeling that service closet would be the place. I’d have to check a fuse box, too, of course, and ensure one way or another that any overcurrent protection would be inadequate. But that was a distinctly minor challenge. The main thing was, if I did things right, there would be no marks, no evidence, no signs of foul play. Just a man who, whether from the heat or from exhaustion or from some other nebulous thing, had lost consciousness and slipped peacefully beneath the water. An arrhythmia, maybe. Maybe an embolism. Maybe the random act of a cruel and capricious God. No way to know, really, and so there would be no investigation, only sympathy and sadness and speculation, and even these, I expected, would be short-lived.
The most immediate thing I needed was a way to look the place over, set things up, and do a dry run. It wouldn’t do to drop something in the tub only to have—oops—a circuit breaker kick in and kill all the lights. I had to come back, when everyone else was gone.
I rinsed off, dried myself, changed in the locker room, and headed out. Ozawa was already gone. That was all right. The way he’d made a beeline for that mineral tub, I knew he was a regular. He’d be back. And I’d be ready for him.
I headed out, pausing while I knelt and tied my shoes to examine the lock on the front door. It didn’t look like much — this was a bathhouse, not a bank, after all — but it didn’t look like the toy locks they had on the clothes lockers, either. I could force the door, I was sure, but that would be noticed. I realized I didn’t know anything about picking locks. And that I was going to have to learn. Fast.