Windy City Blues (30 page)

As I rounded the curve toward the promontory I could hear the man yelling in Spanish at Po, heard a gun go off, heard a loud splash in the water. Rage at him for shooting the dog gave me a last burst of speed. I rounded the end of the point. Saw his dark shape outlined against the rocks and jumped on top of him.

He was completely unprepared for me. We fell heavily, rolling down the rocks. The gun slipped from his hand, banged loudly as it bounced against the ice and fell into the water. We were a foot away from the water, fighting recklessly—the first person to lose a grip would be shoved in to die.

Our parkas weighted our arms and hampered our swings. He lunged clumsily at my throat. I pulled away, grabbed hold of his ski mask and hit his head against the rocks. He grunted and drew back, trying to kick me. As I moved away from his foot I lost my hold on him and slid backwards across the ice. He followed through quickly, giving a mighty shove which pushed me over the edge of the rock. My feet landed in the water. I swung them up with an effort, two icy lumps, and tried to back away.

As I scrabbled for a purchase, a dark shape came
out of the water and climbed onto the rock next to me. Po. Not killed after all. She shook herself, spraying water over me and over my assailant. The sudden bath took him by surprise. He stopped long enough for me to get well away and gain my breath and a better position.

The dog, shivering violently, stayed close to me. I ran a hand through her wet fur. “Soon, kid. We’ll get you home and dry soon.”

Just as the attacker launched himself at us, a searchlight went on overhead. “This is the police,” a loudspeaker boomed. “Drop your guns and come up.”

The dark shape hit me, knocked me over. Po let out a yelp and sunk her teeth into his leg. His yelling brought the police to our sides.

They carried strong flashlights. I could see a sodden mass of paper, a small manila envelope with teeth-marks in it. Po wagged her tail and picked it up again.

“Give me that!” our attacker yelled in his high voice. He fought with the police to try to reach the envelope. “I threw that in the water. How can this be? How did she get it?”

“She’s a retriever,” I said.

Later, at the police station, we looked at the negatives in the envelope Po had retrieved from the water. They showed a picture of the man in the ski mask looking on with intense, brooding eyes while Santa Claus talked to his little boy. No wonder Cinda found him worth photographing.

“He’s a cocaine dealer,” Sergeant McGonnigal explained to me. “He jumped a ten-million-dollar bail. No wonder he didn’t want any photographs of him circulating around. We’re holding him for murder this time.”

A uniformed man brought Jonathan into McGonnigal’s office. The sergeant cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Looks like your dog saved your hide, Mr. Michaels.”

Po, who had been lying at my feet, wrapped in a police horse blanket, gave a bark of pleasure. She staggered to her feet, trailing the blanket, and walked stiffly over to Jonathan, tail wagging.

I explained our adventure to him, and what a heroine the dog had been. “What about that empty film container I gave you this afternoon, Sergeant?”

Apparently Cinda had brought that with her to her rendezvous, not knowing how dangerous her customer was. When he realized it was empty, he’d flung it aside and attacked Cinda. “We got a complete confession,” McGonnigal said. “He was so rattled by the sight of the dog with the envelope full of negatives in her mouth that he completely lost his nerve. I know he’s got good lawyers—one of them’s your friend Oldham—but I hope we have enough to convince a judge not to set bail.”

Jonathan was on his knees fondling the dog and talking to her. He looked over his shoulder at McGonnigal. “I’m sure Oldham’s relieved that you
caught the right man—a murderer who can afford to jump a ten-million-dollar bail is a much better client than one who can hardly keep a retriever in dog food.” He turned back to the dog. “But we’ll blow our savings on a steak; you get the steak and I’ll eat Butcher’s Blend tonight, Miss Three-Dot Po of Blackstone, People’s Heroine, and winner of the Croix de Chien for valor.” Po panted happily and licked his face.

MR. AND MRS
. Takamoku were a quiet, hardworking couple. Although they had lived in Chicago since the 1940s, when they were relocated from an Arizona detention camp, they spoke only halting English, Occasionally I ran into Mrs. Takamoku in the foyer of the old three-flat we both lived in on Belmont, or at the corner grocery store. We would exchange a few stilted sentences. She knew I lived alone in my third-floor apartment, and she worried about it, although her manners were too perfect for her to come right out and tell me to get myself a husband.

As time passed, I learned about her son, Akira, and her daughter, Yoshio, both professionals living on the
West Coast. I always inquired after them, which pleased her.

With great difficulty I got her to understand that I was a private detective. This troubled her; she often wanted to know if I was doing something dangerous, and would shake her head and frown as she asked. I didn’t see Mr. Takamoku often. He worked for a printer and usually left long before me in the morning.

Unlike the De Paul students who formed an ever-changing collage on the second floor, the Takamokus did little entertaining, or at least little noisy entertaining. Every Sunday afternoon a procession of Asians came to their apartment, spent a quiet afternoon, and left. One or more Caucasians would join them, incongruous by their height and color. After a while, I recognized the regulars: a tall, bearded white man, and six or seven Japanese and Koreans.

One Sunday evening in late November I was eating sushi and drinking sake in a storefront restaurant on Halsted. The Takamokus came in as I was finishing my first little pot of sake. I smiled and waved at them, and watched with idle amusement as they conferred earnestly, darting glances at me. While they argued, a waitress brought them bowls of noodles and a plate of sushi; they were clearly regular customers with regular tastes.

At last, Mr. Takamoku came over to my table. I invited him and his wife to join me.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said in an agony of embarrassment. “We only have question for you, not to disturb you.”

“You’re not disturbing me. What do you want to know?”

“You are familiar with American customs.” That was a statement, not a question. I nodded, wondering what was coming.

“When a guest behaves badly in the house, what does an American do?”

I gave him my full attention. I had no idea what he was asking, but he would never have brought it up just to be frivolous.

“It depends,” I said carefully. “Did they break up your sofa or spill tea?”

Mr. Takamoku looked at me steadily, fishing for a cigarette. Then he shook his head, slowly. “Not as much as breaking furniture. Not as little as tea on sofa. In between.”

“I’d give him a second chance.”

A slight crease erased itself from Mr. Takamoku’s forehead. “A second chance. A very good idea. A second chance.”

He went back to his wife and ate his noodles with the noisy appreciation that showed good Japanese manners. I had another pot of sake and finished about the same time as the Takamokus; we left the restaurant together. I topped them by a good five inches
and perhaps twenty pounds, so I slowed my pace to a crawl to keep step with them.

Mrs. Takamoku smiled. “You are familiar with go?” she asked, giggling nervously.

“I’m not sure,” I said cautiously, wondering if they wanted me to conjugate an intransitive irregular verb.

“It’s a game. You have time to stop and see?”

“Sure,” I agreed, just as Mr. Takamoku broke in with vigorous objections.

I couldn’t tell whether he didn’t want to inconvenience me or didn’t want me intruding. However, Mrs. Takamoku insisted, so I stopped at the first floor and went into the apartment with her.

The living room was almost bare. The lack of furniture drew the eye to a beautiful Japanese doll on a stand in one corner, with a bowl of dried flowers in front of her. The only other furnishings were six little tables in a row. They were quite thick and stood low on carved wooden legs. Their tops, about eighteen inches square, were crisscrossed with black lines which formed dozens of little squares. Two covered wooden bowls stood on each table.

“Go-ban,” Mrs. Takamoku said, pointing to one of the tables.

I shook my head in incomprehension.

Mr. Takamoku picked up a covered bowl. It was filled with smooth white disks, the size of nickels but much thicker. I held one up and saw beautiful shades and shadows in it.

“Clamshell,” Mr. Takamoku said. “They cut, then polish.” He picked up a second bowl, filled with black disks. “Slate.”

He knelt on a cushion in front of one of the tables and rapidly placed black and white disks on intersections of the lines. A pattern emerged.

“This is go. Black play, then white, then black, then white. Each try to make territory, to make eyes.” He showed me an “eye”—a clear space surrounded by black stones. “White cannot play here. Black safe. Now white must play someplace else.”

“I see.” I didn’t really, but I didn’t think it mattered.

“This afternoon, someone knock stones from table, turn upside down, and scrape with knife.”

“This table?” I asked, tapping the one he was playing on.

“Yes.” He swept the stones off swiftly but carefully, and put them in their little pots. He turned the board over. In the middle was a hole, carved and sanded. The wood was very thick—I suppose the hole gave it resonance.

I knelt beside him and looked. I was probably thirty years younger, but I couldn’t tuck my knees under me with his grace and ease: I sat cross-legged. A faint scratch marred the sanded bottom.

“Was he American?”

Mr. and Mrs. Takamoku exchanged a look. “Japanese,
but born in America,” she said. “Like Akira and Yoshio.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. It’s not an American custom.” I climbed awkwardly back to my feet. Mr. Takamoku stood with one easy movement. He and Mrs. Takamoku thanked me profusely. I assured them it was nothing and went to bed.

The next Sunday was a cold, gray day with a hint of snow. I sat in front of the television, in my living room, drinking coffee, dividing my attention between November’s income and watching the Bears. Both were equally feeble. I was trying to decide on something friendlier to do when a knock sounded on my door. The outside buzzer hadn’t rung. I got up, stacking loose papers on one arm of the chair and balancing the coffee cup on the other.

Through the peephole I could see Mrs. Takamoku. I opened the door. Her wrinkled ivory face was agitated, her eyes dilated. “Oh, good, good, you here. You must come.” She tugged at my hand.

I pulled her gently into the apartment. “What’s wrong? Let me get you a drink.”

“No, no.” She wrung her hands in agitation, repeating that I must come, I must come.

I collected my keys and went down the worn, uncarpeted stairs with her. Her living room was filled
with cigarette smoke and a crowd of anxious men. Mr. Takamoku detached himself from the group and hurried over to his wife and me. He clasped my hand and pumped it up and down.

“Good. Good you come. You are a detective, yes? You will see the police do not arrest Naoe and me.”

“What’s wrong, Mr. Takamoku?”

“He’s dead. He’s killed. Naoe and I were in camp during World War. They will arrest us.”

“Who’s dead?”

He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know name.”

I pushed through the group. A white man lay sprawled on the floor. His face had contorted in dreadful pain as he died, so it was hard to guess his age. His fair hair was thick and unmarked with gray; he must have been relatively young.

A small dribble of vomit trailed from his clenched teeth. I sniffed at it cautiously. Probably hydrocyanic acid. Not far from his body lay a teacup, a Japanese cup without handles. The contents sprayed out from it like a Rorschach. Without touching it, I sniffed again. The fumes were still discernible.

I got up. “Has anyone left since this happened?”

The tall, bearded Caucasian I’d noticed on previous Sundays looked around and said “No” in an authoritative voice.

“And have you called the police?”

Mrs. Takamoku gave an agitated cry. “No police. No. You are detective. You find murderer yourself.”

I shook my head and took her gently by the hand. “If we don’t call the police, they will put us all in jail for concealing a murder. You must tell them.”

The bearded man said, “I’ll do that.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Charles Welland. I’m a physicist at the University of Chicago, but on Sundays I’m a go player.”

“I see … I’m V. I. Warshawski. I live upstairs. I’m a private investigator. The police look very dimly on all citizens who don’t report murders, but especially on P.I.’s.”

Welland went into the dining room, where the Takamokus kept their phone. I told the Takamokus and their guests that no one could leave before the police gave them permission, then followed Welland to make sure he didn’t call anyone besides the police, or take the opportunity to get rid of a vial of poison.

The go players seemed resigned, albeit very nervous. All of them smoked ferociously; the thick air grew bluer. Four of them stood apart arguing in Korean. A lone man fiddled with the stones on one of the go-bans.

None of them spoke English well enough to give a clear account of how the young man died. When Welland came back, I asked him for a detailed report.

The physicist claimed not to know his name. The dead man had only been coming to the go club the last month or two.

“Did someone bring him? Or did he just show up one day?”

Welland shrugged. “He just showed up. Word gets around among go players. I’m sure he told me his name—it just didn’t stick. I think he worked for Hansen Electronic, the big computer firm.”

I asked if everyone there was a regular player. Welland knew all of them by sight, if not by name. They didn’t all come every Sunday, but none of the others was a newcomer.