A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set Read online

  He watched them on a DVD player in an apartment in Oakland, California, with bare wood floors, a thin mattress for a bed, and nothing else. Each morning he rose at five, ate a breakfast of tea and fish, then went for a six-mile run. He came back, watched a movie; then he read for an hour, on swords, on history, on culture, books he understood, books that seemed bullshit, books even on calligraphy. Then he ate lunch in one of a dozen Japanese restaurants nearby, because he wanted to be used to them, to their smell, their language, their movements, their faces; then he returned home at two, rested, watched another movie; then he went out to dinner, sushi usually, sometimes noodles, occasionally Kobe beef; after nightfall, another two hours of reading, then another movie.

  There had to be answers in there somewhere.

  Bob had never seen such grace. Their bodies were liquid, so malleable, so changeable, so flexible in subtle, athletic ways that defied belief. They could run and dodge and dip, pivot, feint, stop, change direction fast, all in wooden clogs. They carried the swords edge up in scabbards that weren’t even secured to the belt; in fact, indoors they took the long sword off and carried it around like an umbrella. Yet he noticed: no matter the movie, when they sat on the hard floor, they put the sword in the same place, to the left of the knee, blade outward, hilt just at the knee, grip angled at 45 degrees before them. They never deviated. That was the thing, the core of it: no deviation.

  And they were fast. He’d never seen such speed. It was like they were oiled, and when they moved, they passed through air and time at a rate other mortals could barely comprehend. It began with some kind of draw, an uncoiling with blade, so that the sword came out and began to cut in an economy of movement. Sometimes you couldn’t even see the cut it was so fluid; sometimes it was a thrust, but more usually it was a cut, conceived from a dozen different angles, the cut hidden in a turn or a pivot, dancelike but never effeminate, always athletic. And always the conventions: the samurai usually fought against three or four at a time, and often when he would cut, the cut man, feeling himself mortally wounded, would simply freeze, as if to deny the end of life and stretch the final second out over minutes. The samurai would resheathe with some kind of graceful mojo, the sword disappearing with a piston’s certainty into the scabbard, then he’d turn and strut away, leaving behind a collection of statuary. Then they’d topple, one after another.

  Was that, somehow, samurai?

  In one movie, a guy fought three hundred men and beat them all. It was funny and yet somehow just barely believable. Was that samurai?

  In another, seven men stood against a hundred. It was like a Green Beret A-team in Indian country in a war he knew too much about, and these guys were as good as special forces. They stood, they died, they never cried. Was that samurai?

  In another, an evil swordsman became possessed of the sword; he couldn’t stop killing, until finally he perished in a blazing brothel as his enemies closed in, but not before he cut down fifty of them. Was that samurai?

  In still another, a father avenged himself upon a noble house that had urged his son-in-law to commit suicide with a bamboo sword. The father was swift and sure and without fear; he welcomed death and greeted it like an old friend. Was that samurai?

  In still another, a brother, mired in guilt, returned home to face his sister’s husband, who had advised him in aiding the clan and ultimately massacring a peasant village. The hero paid out in justice, finally. Was that samurai?

  In another, a man said, “Sire, I beg you. Execute us at once!”

  Was that samurai?

  In still another, a man said, “I am so lucky it was you that killed me!” and died with a smile on his face.

  Was that samurai?

  In most of them, the brave young men were drawn to death; they would die for anything, at the drop of a hat.

  How the Japanese loved death! They feared shame, they loved death. They yearned to die; they dreamed of dying, possibly they masturbated to the idea of their own death. What a race of men they were, so different, so opaque, so unknowable…yet so human. Samurai?

  Sometimes the westerner in him got it. At the end of The Seven Samurai, the three survivors head out of town, the battle over; they turn and look back to a hill and on the hill are four swords, points down, thrust in the ground, next to four rough burial mounds. A wind whistles and blows the dust across the hill.

  He got that one: he’d seen enough M-16s bayonet-down in the dirt, as the squad moved on, and the weight of melancholy of young men lost forever, of heroes unremembered, of comrades who died for the whole, was an ache that never went away.

  But some of the stuff was so strange.

  In one, the hero, a dour samurai who wanders the landscape with his kid in a baby carriage, kills a guy and the dying man says happily, “At last I got to see the Soruya Horse-Slaying Technique.”

  He had really wanted to see the hero’s sword-fighting skill; it was worth his life to see it, and he felt privileged even as he bled out!

  One day there was a knock on the door. He answered it and discovered a beautiful young woman, serene, poised, possibly a little annoyed. It was his daughter.

  “Hi, sweetie. What are you doing here?”

  “The question is, what are you doing here?” Nikki said.

  “I guess Mommy gave you the address. How is she?”

  “She’s fine, she contends. That’s her talent.”

  “Right.”

  Nikki walked in as if she owned the place. She was wearing jeans and a ponytail and cowboy boots. She was twenty-three and in graduate school in New York to be a writer.

  “You were going to come visit, remember?”

  “Yeah, well, you know Pop, sometimes the old goat forgets.”

  “You never forgot a thing in your life. Daddy, what on earth? I mean, really? This Japanese thing? What on earth?”

  She looked around: the kanji composition that he had received from Philip Yano hung on one wall and on the other was a brush painting of a bird called a shrike sitting on a twisted piece of limb. There were piles of books, a huge TV and DVD player, and a hundred-odd DVDs, most with kanji lettering and pictures of lurid men in ponytails on them.

  “Do you want a Coke or anything?”

  “How about some sake? Wouldn’t that be the beverage of choice?”

  “I’m not drinking again.”

  “Well then, you’ve apparently managed to go insane without the booze.”

  “Opinions vary on that issue.”

  She sat down next to the wall.

  He sat down across from her.

  “What’s with the bird?”

  “It was painted in the year sixteen forty by a man named Miyamoto Musashi.”

  “And who was he?”

  “A samurai. The greatest, many say. He fought sixty times and won them all. I like to look at it and think about it. I like to try to understand the flow of the strokes. He also wrote the kanji over there. Do you see it?”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means ‘Steel cuts flesh / steel cuts bone / steel does not cut steel.’ It was given to me by Mr. Yano the night he and his family died.”

  “God. Do you understand how nuts you sound? Do you understand how upset Mommy is?”

  “There’s plenty of money for her. She shouldn’t have any problems.”

  “She has one huge problem. A husband who’s gone crazy.”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “Tell me. Tell me as if it makes any sense at all. What is going on here?”

  “Sure, okay. You’ll see, it’s not so nuts. It’s all about swords.”

  “Swords.”

  “Japanese swords. ‘The soul of the samurai,’ or so they say.”

  “It sounds like you’ve started to believe all those screwball movies you have lying around.”

  “Just listen, all right? Hear me out.”

  He narrated, as plainly as possible, the events of the last few months, beginning with the arrival of the letter from the supe
rintendent of the Marine Historical Division and ending, essentially, the minute before she knocked on the door.

  “And so you never returned to Idaho? You came here instead, and took up this life.”

  “I have principles for a hard job. One, start now. Two, work every day. Three, finish. That’s the only way you get it done and any other way is a lie. So when I got off that plane, I thought, Start now. Now. So I started.”

  “What on earth are you planning next?”

  “Well, there’ll come a time when I feel I’m ready. When I’ve learned enough to go back. Then, somehow, I’ve got to look into things, I have to make sure that some kind of justice is done.”

  “But—correct me if I’m wrong—you have no evidence whatsoever there was some foul play in the case of these poor people. I mean, fires do happen, families do die in them. It happens every week.”

  “I understand that. However, Philip Yano had an idea that the blade I brought him had some historical significance. Now, reading about this stuff, seeing how important swords still are to the Japanese, how they still dream about the damned things, how they study and practice with them, it gets damned interesting.”

  “How much are they worth? Top end?”

  “It’s not money. There would be a lot of money, yes. But to the Japanese the sword ain’t about money.”

  “Don’t say ain’t.”

  “I’m trying. It keeps creeping in. Okay, the sword isn’t about money. It’s more important than money. They have some peculiar beliefs that you would find very strange. I found them strange too. But as I learn about them, they begin to make a kind of sense. You can’t think about this as an American would. It’s a Japanese thing. It has to do with the meaning and the value of the sword, and the prestige a certain sword would have.”

  “Now here’s what someone else would say. A clinical psychologist, for example. He’d say, There was a man who was vigorous, heroic, and extraordinary, but also stubborn, obsessive, and somewhat self-indulgent. Even narcissistic. He loved the warrior reflection he saw in the mirror. He never talked about it, but he loved it. He loved the silent respect he got everywhere in life, and the way his presence could quiet the crowd with a single harsh glance. But then he got old, like all men. Suddenly, he’s facing retirement. He secretly doesn’t want to sit on that porch. And watch the seasons change and count his money. He wants a mission. He wants something to define his warrior life. He’s not the sort to go fishing. So something comes along, and using his considerable cunning and intelligence, he insists on seeing reasons, patterns, clues, hints, all kinds of things that he fancies only he, in all the world, not the professional investigators, not the fire department arson squad, none of them, can see. And it adds up to conspiracy, plots, murder, exactly the sort of thing that demands forceful action from a forceful man, a warrior. And he happens to be that forceful man. He happens to be that warrior. Do you see where this is going?”

  “I’m sorry you see it that way.”

  “There’s no other way to see it. Oh, Daddy. You’re too old. You’re slow, you’re old, it’s over. You were a great man; you can be a great old man. But don’t be the man about whom they say, No fool like an old fool.”

  “Sweetie…let’s go get some dinner or something, okay?”

  “Yes, in Idaho.”

  “No, here. We’ll get sushi.”

  “Ugh. Raw fish. Please, anything but that.”

  “I have to tell you this. There are obligations here you don’t know anything about. Deep, family obligations. Long story, no one would care, except me. But…obligations. This goes a long way back, and my father in the war, and the Japanese he fought.”

  “I wish your father had never won that medal. It has haunted you your whole life. You don’t owe the Japanese he killed a thing. It wasn’t your war.”

  “Honey, it was.”

  “You’ve seen too many of these silly movies where guys in bathrobes, flip-flops, and ponytails cut each other’s heads off.”

  “Maybe so. But to me, it feels like I’m going home.”

  “Just promise me one thing: you won’t grow a ponytail.”

  After that, it was pleasant, but Nikki felt her father’s need to return to his obsessive course, and so after dinner—she got through the sushi, somehow—she left, leaving him to his self-decreed mission.

  His days were the same. The next development was the arrival of a package with a blue label, marked SAL, from Japan, wrapped in that perfect Japanese way.

  Had he ordered something? Some book, some pamphlet? He’d bought a lot of weird stuff off the Internet, out-of-print books, Japanese sword exhibition catalogues, guides to sword fighting. But no: it was a thin package of copied documents, official in nature, no source given; they were typed in kanji with utmost precision, and included hand-drawn diagrams, badly Xeroxed and difficult to read. The whole thing had a spy quality to it; it seemed somehow illicit, the product of a penetration.

  He’d have to have someone read it to him but he knew well enough what his anonymous donor from a Tokyo post office had sent him: it was the Yanos’ autopsy report.

  16

  KIRISUTE GOMEN

  Nii handled the negotiations because, even among the most trusted, most senior of the 8-9-3 Brotherhood, Kondo Isami would not show his face.

  Nii met with Boss Otani in the latter’s office suite, a corner of a tall building in West Shinjuku, the fifty-fifth floor. The office was luxuriously appointed as befitted a man of Boss Otani’s accomplishment: he controlled much of the action in Kabukicho, more than a hundred clubs. He employed in his main group and in several subgroups one hundred of the fiercest yaks in all of Tokyo, men who would die for him instantly. He owned a controlling interest in three gambling syndicates, the north and west sides of the Tokyo amphetamine franchise, and more than a thousand prostitutes. He himself had killed many times on the way to his current lofty position.

  It helped, of course, that at one time his ascent had been blocked by a certain ambitious boss in another organization, who could not be reached and who waged a terrifying war on Boss Otani. This man’s gang of killers had left Boss with the hundred-stitch scar that ran from his nipple to his hip. It was then that the boss made the acquaintance, anonymously, of Kondo Isami of Shinsengumi. In a week, the boss’s rival dropped by for a tête-à-tête. Boss Otani did most of the talking, for of the two têtes, his was the one still attached to a neck.

  In black suit and somber mien, young Nii tried not to pay attention to the Tokyo skyline, which stretched to the horizon outside the fifty-fifth-floor window. It was, nevertheless, truly magnificent, the double towers of the Tokyo municipal government buildings, the fabled Hyatt hotel made famous in a movie, the cheesy Washington Hotel, which Boss Otani partially owned.

  “Man or woman?” said the boss.

  “It doesn’t matter, Oyabun,” said Nii, careful to use the term of respect.

  “What does matter?”

  “Corpulence. He wants a tubby one. He likes a certain density of flesh.”

  “What happened to your head, young man?”

  Nii’s left eye was still swollen shut. It looked like someone had puttied a large grapefruit to the left side of his face and the grapefruit had begun to rot and turn weird tones of purple that were shot with veins of red and smears of green-blue.

  “It was unfortunate,” said Nii. “I forgot to duck.”

  “I hope whoever had the temerity to strike such an important man paid for it.”

  “He did. Most quickly, Oyabun.”

  “Were you the author of this justice?”

  “No sir. Kondo-san himself was. It was magnificent. I have never seen such speed.”

  “Did you learn from Kondo-san?”

  “I believe so.”

  “You are quite lucky to have encountered such a wakagashira, a young boss, so early in your life. Study hard, kobun. Acquire knowledge and experience and give yourself over. You will prosper, or die gloriously.”

  �
��Thank you, sir.”

  “Anyway, a fat one?”

  “A jelly-belly. You can see why.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The older man, whose face looked like a Kabuki mask shaped to express decadent rage, punched an intercom button, and another man in an exquisitely tailored black silk suit, came in. He wore horn-rims and had neat hair. He bowed deeply before his employer and spiritual leader.

  “Yes, Otani-san?”

  “I require a woman.”

  “Certainly, Otani-san.”

  “She needn’t be a beauty. She needn’t be a top producer. In fact, it’s probably best if she’s not. She should, of course, be a guest worker. She should have no family in this country. She should have no reputation, no charisma, so that when her circumstances alter, her absence does not cause comment. She must live alone, she must work a very late shift. She must have no bad habits or infections of any kind.”

  “There are dozens of such candidates. Alas, none of them live alone. At the rate they are paid, none can afford to live alone. Plus, one of every group, sometimes two, must report secretly to their bosses.”

  “I understand. So be it,” said Nii. “He would consider it an acceptable risk.”

  “Yes, and if there’s fuss, the remaining hens can be plucked too.”

  “At the Club Marvelous, the guest workers are Korean ladies. They tend to corpulence and keep to themselves when not in the club. One of them should suffice. What is the timing to be, sir?”

  “Nii?”

  “Oh, sooner rather than later. He wants this cutting test done, and then the restoration must begin and that will take some time. We must be ready by December.”

  “Did you hear?”

  “I did,” said the factotum. “I will supply name, time, route home. I assume Kondo-san prefers his pleasure at night? Things are much easier to arrange at night. We own the night.”

  “He would prefer daylight, of course,” said Nii, “for more exact details are revealed. But he understands the impossible cannot be done. Night is acceptable.”