Saburo did not remind him that he, too, was people. He nodded and left. During the rest of the day, he visited several other public offices with no better results. Eventually, exhaustion drove him back to Mrs. Komiya’s to sleep.
The next morning, he started the process all over again. Again he was turned away. His money was almost gone, and he skipped both his morning and midday meals. He was beginning to feel quite faint when it was getting dark and turned toward the merchant quarter, thinking to buy a cheap bowl of noodles in the market before returning to his new home.
When he took a shortcut down an alley between two streets of merchants’ houses, he passed the back of a rice dealer’s business. Loud curses and a crash reached his ears, and he stopped, stepped on a barrel, and peered over the wall. He could see across a courtyard piled high with equipment, past open shutters into a room lit by an oil lamp. A middle-aged man was hopping about holding his foot and damning all the devils of hell. Saburo grinned. Apparently he had kicked his desk out the open doors.
He guessed the man must be the owner of the business. No employee would dare treat his master’s furniture in this fashion. The merchant was portly and well dressed, and he had probably been working at the desk that now lay broken outside. Papers, a large account book, writing utensils, and an abacus also lay strewn about. Saburo took a chance.
“What seems to be your problem, friend?” he asked.
The man stopped hopping and peered into the darkness. With a scowl he asked, “What’s it to you?”
“I was passing on my way to the market and heard you. If it’s bookkeeping that makes you angry, I’m a bookkeeper. Maybe I can help.”
The man squinted, and Saburo realized he had weak eyes. “My advice is free, if you don’t mind my face,” he added.
“Why should I care what you look like?” the merchant said ungraciously. “There’s a gate at the corner. Mind you, I’m not paying you.”
“I said it’s free.” The gate was low and only latched from the inside. Anyone with a long enough arm could get in. Saburo’s arms were quite long enough. He crossed the yard and stopped to pick up the desk and the broken leg.
In the room, the merchant gaped at him. “Dear heaven,” he gasped. “You weren’t kidding about your face. What happened to you?”
Saburo gave him one of the abbreviated versions. In this one, he had been tortured by a group of robbers who had hoped to find the hiding place of his master’s gold.”
“Did you tell them?”
“No. I sent them off to another place. I knew the constables would catch them there.”
“You escaped? You must’ve been barely alive.” Fascinated, the merchant studied the disfiguring scars.
“Yes.” Saburo set down the desk and propped up the edge missing the leg with a couple of ledgers. “Let me have a look at your accounts. What was wrong with them?”
“I caught my clerk, the young demon, in bed with my daughter and threw him out. Now I can’t make heads or tails of my books.”
Saburo nodded and picked up the account book. Gathering the writing utensils and placing everything on the desk, he said, “Could you bring some water, please?”
The merchant padded off.
Saburo frowned over the scribbling of his predecessor. When the merchant came back with the water, Saburo mixed fresh ink and said, “Your clerk’s been stealing more from you than your daughter.”
The fat merchant’s jaw dropped. “How?”
Saburo showed him in entries. “Here and here.” He reached for the abacus and started adding sums. “My guess is he took about twenty pieces of silver last month.”
The merchant gasped. “I’ll kill him.”
Saburo grunted. “Where are the new figures?”
The man gathered some of the fallen papers and sorted them. He had to dictate the figures to Saburo, who entered the new information neatly, added, subtracted, and showed the result. “I might take the job,” he said.
The merchant looked at the neat handwriting and nodded. Then he looked at Saburo’s face and nodded again. “Why not,” he said. “My daughter won’t give you a second glance, and if you work out, I’ll pay you a silver piece every other week.”
It wasn’t much, but Saburo agreed. “I’ll be here tomorrow to record the new transactions.”
“That will take only a few hours’ work,” the merchant protested.
“Take it or leave it,” Saburo said, getting to his feet. “And I expect to eat here.”
The man hesitated. “We can try it,” he finally said grudgingly.
“Good. I’m Saburo, and you?”
“Sosuke. You’ll be back tomorrow?”
Saburo nodded and left quickly by the alley gate.
Greatly cheered at having thus settled the problem of his lodging and income, Saburo continued to the market where he splurged on a meal of fried sea bream and vegetables accompanied by wine. Even the fact that the waiter seated him in a dark corner did not affect his contentment.
As he ate and drank, slowly and with enjoyment, he considered his options. The shock of being dismissed so quickly and bluntly after four years of service had not lasted long. He had been afraid it would happen. In fact, it might have happened much earlier. Saburo had always known that Sugawara Akitada, for all his generous and fair demeanor, had an absolutely rigid interpretation of the law. He had accepted it as part of his lordship’s profession-much in the way in which breaking into people’s homes and spying on them was part of his.
What had hurt was the fact that Saburo had tried to help Genba, and his erstwhile master had not acknowledged that. If he was to serve a man like Lord Sugawara, he should be able to use the skills that were available to him to protect the members of his family.
But here he was, and Genba and his girlfriend were still in jail. And Lord Sugawara was still at odds with Superintendent Kobe of the police. These problems must be corrected.
Saburo swallowed his last bite of fish (it had been a most delicious sea bream) and finished the last of the rice, moistened with the rest of the wine, then smacked his lips. He would not be able to live like this again for a long time. What the merchant paid him would just cover his rent and a few meals bought from noodle sellers and dumpling bakers. He needed his spare time to look for the mysterious man who had attacked him and taken the contracts.
This stranger was someone like himself, though much more dangerous. The long needle he had carried meant he was not just a spy. Saburo had never been asked to kill anyone, but he and the stranger had probably received similar training. The fact that this man had dropped the needle when he had tangled with Genba in the alley near Tokuzo’s brothel suggested he was there because someone had hired him to kill Tokuzo. He had carried out his assignment but, having lost the needle, he had used cruder methods. A needle inserted through a man’s ear or nostril into his brain would have caused an undetectable wound or something like a nosebleed. The death would have been blamed on an accident or some mysterious illness. Instead, the assassin had provoked a murder investigation by the police.
Why, then, had he returned to the scene of his crime to get the contracts? It made no sense.
Saburo paid the waiter, who was barely civil, conveying the message that he was not welcome in the future. Saburo refrained from giving the man a tip, and left, hearing “Hope you rot, you ugly devil!” behind his back.
It was night, but he felt strengthened by his meal and thought the time right for a visit to the beggars’ guild. He returned to his lodging where he took off his new clothes, hanging them again carefully over an exposed rafter. Then he undid his bundle and took out his black pants and shirt. He missed the old brown jacket he had left outside the brothel that night, but there was no point in going back for it. Someone had long since picked it up.