Taller than the Japanese about him, Brook could look over their heads. He was almost out of the thick of the crowd when he saw four more policemen trotting in his direction. Beyond them a police car was braking; policemen began jumping out before it stopped.
No doubt about it now: he had been identified. Probably his description had been tied in to his police-station appearance the other night, the radio had sent out the alarm, and some alert officer had spotted him on the festival grounds. With the reinforcements pouring in, he was a going goose.
He reversed his field and headed back toward the river. People seemed unaware of a chase. Those he jostled gave way either with smiles or angry exchanges in Japanese. The smilers were usually older people, the angry ones youths. Old Asia hands from Foggy Bottom had grown accustomed to the anti-Americanism of Japanese youth; but then they did not venture into Japanese festival crowds.
Brook watched his step.
His backward progress brought him again to the platform with the circle of dancers in their yukata. A few yards away the several dozen half-naked young men were just preparing to lift the carrying poles of their portable shrine. Brook scanned the neighborhood. A temporary shelter of bamboo and reed matting stood nearby; to one side it cast a deep shadow. He slipped into the shadow and stripped to his shorts, shoes, and socks. Then he came out busily and squeezed his way among the young men and set his shoulder under one of the poles.
The youth ahead of him turned around, saw his Caucasoid eyes, and glowered. Brook rolled the offending eyes like a clown and nudged him and said, “Man, that’s mucho good sake!” The youth gave him a look of contempt and said something in Japanese to the grinning men around them. They all laughed. Whatever the American was saying, it had included the word sake; from the foreigner’s slurred speech he was drunker than they. And it was the summer festival, when hearts are gay. On with the shrine!
They carried it down the main street of the festival grounds. They made their little shrine sway and buck as they hauled it along, to prove that the devil-spirit inside was alive and kicking. To this demonstration they provided a chant in unison: “Wa-sheh! Wa-sheh! Wa-sheh!” Brook chanted his Wa-shehs as heartily as any.
Policemen ran past several times. Once an officer stared at him and Brook thought it was all over; but then the man moved off, proving the FACE instructors’ point. The average police mind the world over was conventionaclass="underline" if you were hunting a man of thirty, you would not look for him in a home for the aged. These policemen were hunting an American in American clothes; through this narrow lens anything else became invisible.
But he was spotted just the same.
“Peter! Pete Brook!”
The voice was familiar; Brook risked a glance. It was a fat man with the eyes of a frog and a whole series of dimpled grins. Toby Stark.
“Pete, you crazy bastard!” the manager of the Katori Spa said, squeezing in beside him. “Full of the bloody festival spirit, I see. Or is it your rotten bourbon?”
Brook decided. “Stark... Toby... I need help,” he said between Wa-shehs. “Grab hold of the pole.”
Stark inserted himself in the line, shouting “Wa-sheh!” Then he said, “I should damned well think you do. Where are your clothes?”
“The cops are after me, Toby. Swarming over the place. Something I didn’t do. I’ll explain when we have time. You’ve got to help me get away from here.”
“Righto. Hands across the sea and all that.”
“Have you a car?”
“Sure. Parked over there—” The fat man roared, “Wa-sheh!”
“You’ll have to drive me out of here.”
“Do you suppose we can get away with it?”
“We’ll have to improvise. Please.”
Stark grinned. “Well, damn it all, why not? Come along. Wa-sheh, Wa-sheh! Pretend to be drunk.”
He grasped Brook’s naked arm and yanked him out of the line, saying something in good-natured-sounding Japanese to the young men in their vicinity. Brook reeled and retched. Half dragged, half supported, he let Stark lead him through the crowds, which opened knowingly before them; in what seemed to Brook a century they reached the parking lot and Stark’s Toyopet sedan.
“Well done, O noble Yank,” the fat man said with satisfaction. “That’s fooling the bastards. What do they think you did?”
“Hold it.” Brook stopped in the act of opening the forward door of the sedan. He was studying the nearest exit from the festival area.
Toby Stark turned to look. A police vehicle was drawn up at the exit; policemen carring lanterns were stopping outgoing cars. “That looks like business. What the devil did you get yourself into?”
“Later, Toby. Look, there’s a bamboo shack behind that dancing platform. My clothes are on the ground outside there, in the shadow. Get ’em for me, Toby. I’ll wait here.”
Stark rubbed his blob of a nose. “Well, I don’t know, Peter. I thought it was a lark of some sort. I can’t afford to get mixed up in anything serious.”
Brook said, “I’m absolutely at your mercy.”
“Well.” The fat man pulled at the blob; there was no merriment in his protuberant eyes now. “I suppose I ought to have my bloody head examined.”
Brook said, “Hurry.”
He crouched in the rear of the little sedan while he waited for the Australian to get back. The minutes dragged by. Several times lights bobbed by the Toyopet: men with lanterns searching among the parked cars. He held his breath. Damn Kimiko!
Then the door opened and there was Stark.
“I thought you’d never get back.”
“Bloody fuzz all over the place.”
Brook slipped into his clothes.
“Now what, Peter?”
“I’ll get into the trunk, you drive us out. You’ll have no trouble, Toby. You’d hardly be taken for me.”
Stark grinned his multiple grin. “Always been a law-abiding bloke myself. Don’t like this one bit.”
“I’m not exactly in love with it. Oh, and thanks.”
“All right, damn it, let’s get it over with.” The fat man took his car keys from his pocket, went around to the rear of the sedan, and opened the trunk.
Chapter 10
Sometimes Brook thought about it. Usually when he had had a couple of whiskies, and he was alone, and there was no urgent matter on the agenda. At such times he permitted himself the forbidden luxury of those little finger exercises in deceit he had to perform as a matter of course. So that in time, and not so very long a time, either, deceit became another motor function and if somebody asked you the time of day you automatically calculated how you might lie about it and make the lie plausible. Deceit piled on deceit, cover story to cover cover story, and then still another to cover everything your second story didn’t quite. Like the soup cans. As a boy he had been much taken with a brand of soup that showed on its label a small picture of its label in which there was a still smaller one, and another, and another, so that he would get dizzy trying to figure out where it all ended. In this trade you also wondered where it ended. You were forbidden to, but you did. At times.