The little suburban station was dark and deserted in the rain-whimpering night. There was one car in the lot, an old jalopy without tires. Nick locked the Datsun, checked the .45 again and thrust it into his belt. He pulled down the beat-up hat, turned up his collar and started trudging into the dark rain. Somewhere a dog howled wearily, a cry of loneliness and despair in that desolate hour before morning. Nick trudged on. Tonaka had given him the flashlight and now and again he used it. Street signs were haphazard, often missing, but he had a general idea of where he was. going and his sense of direction was keen.
Once across the Namidabashi Bridge he was in Sanya proper. A faint breeze off the Sumida River bore the industrial stench of the factories lining it. Another smell hung heavy and pungent on the dank air — the odor of old dried blood and rotting guts. Slaughter houses. There were a lot of them in Sanya and he recalled that a great many of the Eta, the Burakumin, were employed in killing animals and skinning them. One of the few nasty jobs open to them as a class.
He came to a corner. He must be close now. There was a row of flophouses here. A paper sign, shielded from the weather and lit by an oil lantern, offered a bed for 20 yen. Five cents.
He was the only man awake in this desolation. Gray rain hissed and spattered gently on the ancient trenchcoat. Nick figured that he must be within a block or so of his destination. It didn't mean much because now he had to admit that he was lost. Unless Tonaka had set up the contact, the lead-in man, as she had promised.
"Carter-san?"
A sigh, a whisper, an imagined sound above the weeping of the rain? Nick tensed, put his hand on the cold butt of the .45 and looked around. Nothing. No one.
"Carter-san?"
The voice higher now, reedy, one with the wind. Nick spoke into the night. "Yes. I am Carter-san. Where are you?"
"Over here, Carter-san, between the buildings. Come to the one with the lamp."
Nick eased the Colt out of his belt and slipped it off safety. He walked to where the oil lamp guttered behind the paper sign.
"Here, Carter-san. Look down. Below you."
There was a narrow space between the buildings with three steps leading down. At the foot of the steps a man was crouching beneath a straw rain mat.
Nick halted at the top of the steps. "Can I use a light?"
"For one second only, Carter-san. It is dangerous."
"How do you know I am Carter-san?" Nick whispered.
He could not see the old shoulders shrug beneath the mat, but he guessed at it. "It is a chance I take — but she said you would come. And, if you are Carter-san, I am to direct you to Kunizo Matu. If you are not Carter-san, then you are one of them and you will kill me."
"I am Carter-san. Where is Kunizo Matu?"
He flashed the light down the stairs for an instant. Bright beady eyes reflected the gleam. A wisp of gray hairs, an ancient face seared by time and trouble. He squatted beneath his mat like Time itself. He did not have twenty yen for a bed. Yet he lived, he talked, he helped his people.
Nick doused the light. "Where?"
"Down the stairs, past me, and straight back along the passage. As far as it goes. Be careful of dogs. They sleep here and they are wild and hungry. At the end of this passage there is another passage. Take it to the right — go again as far as you can. It is a large house, larger than you would think, and a red light burns behind the door. Go, Carter-san."
Nick fumbled a crisp bill from Pete Fremont's crummy wallet. He dropped it beneath the mat as he passed. "Thank you, Papa-san. Here is money. Your old bones will lie easier in a bed."
"Arigato, Carter-san."
"Itashimashite!"
Nick went cautiously along the passage, brushing his fingers against the ramshackle houses on either side. The smell was terrible and he stepped into sticky filth. He accidentally kicked a dog, but the creature only whined and crept away.
He made the turn and kept going for what he reckoned was half a block. The shacks closed in on either side, jumbles of tin and paper and old packing crates — anything that could be salvaged or stolen and used to make a home. Now and then he saw a dim light or heard a baby crying. The rain wept for the inhabitants, the batayu buraku, the rag and bone pickers of life. A lean cat spat at Nick and fled into the night.
He saw it then. A dim red glow behind a paper door. Visible only if you were looking for it. He smiled sourly and thought fleetingly of his youth in a midwestern town, where the girls around the Real Silk factory had actually kept red bulbs glowing in the windows.
The rain, caught suddenly by wind, beat a tattoo on the paper door. Nick rapped lightly. He stepped back a pace, a pace to the right, the Colt alert to slam lead into the night. The odd sense of fantasy, of unreality, that had been dogging him since he had been drugged, had gone now. He was all AXEman now. He was Killmaster. And he was working.
The paper door slid back with a little sigh, to be filled by a vast bulk in dim silhouette.
"Nick?"
It was the voice of Kunizo Matu and yet it was not. Not the voice as Nick remembered it from the years. It was an old voice, a sick voice, and it repeated: "Nick?"
"Yes, Kunizo. Nick Carter. I understand that you wanted to see me."
Everything considered, Nick thought, it was probably the understatement of the century.
Chapter 6
The house was dimly lit by paper lanterns. "It is not so much that I follow the old customs," said Kunizo Matu as he led the AXEman into an inner room. "Bad lighting is an asset in this neighborhood. Especially now that I have declared my own private little war on the Chinese Commies. My daughter told you of this?"
"A little," said Nick. "Not too much. She said you would clear up everything. I wish you would. There is a lot that puzzles me."
The room was well proportioned, the furnishings in the Japanese style. Straw mats, a low table on the tatami, flowers on the rice paper wall, soft cushions around the table. On the table were small cups and a bottle of saki.
Matu pointed to a cushion. "You will have to sit on the floor, my old friend. But first — did you bring my medallion? I value it highly and I want it with me when I die." It was a simple statement of fact without sentimentality.
Nick fished the medallion out of a pocket and handed it to him. But for Tonaka he would have forgotten it. She had told him: "The old man will 3sk for it."
Matu took the gold and jade disc and put it away in a table drawer. He sank down across the table from Nick and reached for the saki bottle. "We will not stand on ceremony, my old friend, but there is time for a little drink to remember all the yesterdays. It was good of you to come."
Nick smiled. "I had very little choice, Kunizo. Did she tell you how she and her Girl Scout friends got me here?"
"She told me. She is a most obedient daughter — yet I had not really meant for her to go to such extremes. It may be that I was a little overenthusiastic in my instructions. I merely hoped that she could convince you." He poured saki into the eggshell cups.
Nick Carter shrugged. "She convinced me. Forget it. Kunizo. I would have come anyway, once I understood the seriousness of the matter. It is just that I may have a little trouble explaining things to my boss."
"David Hawk?" Matu handed him a cup of saki.
"You know that?"
Matu nodded and drank saki. He was still built like a sumo wrestler, but now the fat draped him in robes of flabbiness and his features were too sharp. His eyes were deep set, with huge pouches under them, and they burned with fever and with something else that was consuming him.