A tugboat pushed by towing a coal barge. A man sitting on the coal waved the orange arc of a cigarette.

Harry finally said, “A little schooling. I was remiss on my American history and the war between the states. A short spell in Bible college and then I was on my own. Pumped gas in Kentucky, set up beach chairs in Florida, water-skied.”

“Odds and ends. Mostly gambling?”

“Gambling was more steady.”

Shozo smiled as if sharing the adventure. “Then you headed for California? For a young man like you, a free spirit, that must have been a logical destination.” He flipped a couple of pages. “Hollywood.”

“Lifeguard, pool boy, record rep. Selling records and sheet music to music stores, getting the music played on radio.”

“But still mainly gambling?”

“Gambling was a way to meet people. Being a record rep, I met mostly cowboys with guitars. A lot of movie people play cards. Losing money helps them relax. I played my way into a job at Paramount in promotion.”

“You didn’t have any higher education in business?”

“No one in the movies has a higher education in anything. Education is the last thing you want.”

“Three years at Paramount?”

“Three years of taking ingenues and wonder dogs to opening nights. Then I got an offer from another studio to open a branch here. I flew the Clipper to Manila and took the first boat from there. By the time I landed at Yokohama, the studio had folded and the job was gone.”

“But you stayed,” Shozo said.

“I found employment.”

“You’ve done well.” The sergeant reflected. “I find fulfillment in my own work. Not the counterespionage, that’s largely mechanical. Detection and apprehension, any police can do that. What makes the work of the Special Higher Police-”

“The Thought Police.”

“Thought Police, yes, is that we deal in a realm apart from ordinary crimes. We anticipate crimes. Say a man is mentally ill or Communist, isn’t it better to catch him before he physically harms anyone else? Some people are not even aware of the dangerous ideas they carry. They are like innocent bearers of typhoid. Shouldn’t they be isolated for the general health?”

“Then you cure them?”

“Yes and no. A gaijin is as riddled with deviant ideas as a dog with ticks. He isn’t worth the time. Japanese are, by nature, healthier. We sit with them, talk with them, listen patiently to them. You know the saying that each man has a book? I believe that each man has a confession. It’s a purgative process, a cleansing. I don’t know why women tend to be more incorrigible, but every man has written a confession that is heartbreaking in its sincerity. I was wondering where you would fall in that range. If you were Japanese enough to be worth the effort.”

Moths spun around the lamp and landed on the businessman’s newspaper. He read, shook the paper, read. Harry’s eye was caught by an ad with a sleek black train muscling its way through the night: THE ASIA EXPRESS: TOUR MANCHUKUO IN COMFORT. Right now it sounded like a good idea to Harry.

Shozo asked, “What was the Magic Show? It comes up when your name is mentioned, but no one seems to know what it was.”

“I don’t know, either.”

“Something to do with the navy?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“The navy and magic, what would that be?”

“Sorry, I can’t help you.”

Shozo nodded. “You keep beetles, I understand.”

“Yes.” Oishi, the samurai beetle, was in Harry’s car.

“As a boy, I used to keep lizards. My favorites were the chameleons. It fascinated me how a chameleon could be so gray on a rock or green on a branch that it was practically invisible. Sometimes I’ll be following you on the street, and I lose you because you blend in so well. Then I remembered how easy it was to see the chameleons if I only changed their background. I was considering a different background for you. Have you ever been to jail?”

“Not seriously.” Harry caught the shift to a new level.

“A Japanese jail is serious. Tell me why I shouldn’t put you in.”

“Well, to start with, I haven’t broken any laws.”

Shozo smiled in an indulgent way. “Harry, you break laws all the time. Even if you didn’t, in Japan there are also crimes of thought or intent.”

“I’m an American citizen, my thoughts don’t have to be pure.”

“If all else fails, there’s paragraph eight.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Paragraph eight of the National Defense Act. Giving political or economic information to foreign agents brings a penalty of ten years in jail.”

“What information, what agents?”

“You know Tokyo too well. You know the sad situation of Japanese oil. You talk to diplomats and foreign correspondents. Some of them are certainly spies. You know members of the navy general staff.”

“Is that what this is? Giving the navy a black eye by arresting me?”

“Tell me about the Magic Show.”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“See, you don’t cooperate at all, not sincerely. I had decided after our visit to the dock in Yokohama that, considering how much you knew, it would simply be wiser to put you in a cell and forget about you. Frankly, I don’t think your embassy would raise much of a protest.”

Harry caught a hesitation. “But…”

“But today you surprised me. Generally everything you do is for profit, everything has an angle. Today, however, you went to Tokyo Station to see an ordinary army man, a sergeant, board his train. I can’t think of any advantage you gained by seeing him off. So I decided to treat you as a Japanese and give you one more opportunity to cooperate.”

“He was an old friend.”

“Apparently.”

The tone of the engine changed as the river bus slowed and swung toward the strung lights of a dock. Harry scanned the waiting faces for the eager grin of Corporal Go. The corporal wasn’t there.

Harry asked, “How is the accountant from Long Beach Oil?”

Shozo closed his briefcase. “Kawamura? We still have a few questions for him. Now he claims that he and the American manager are innocent, that someone must have altered the books recently. Can you believe that? What we have discovered is that for any Japanese with the simplest training in calligraphy, the forgery of a Western handwriting is child’s play.”

“Then I suppose you should look for a Japanese.”

“Maybe so. Some kind of Japanese.”

The businessman with the newspaper took the boy by the hand and slipped by to join the line forming in the cabin. He had left his newspaper on the bench, and Shozo pointed to a front-page photo of the special December Kabuki performance when actors performed without makeup. Their real faces looked sketched and unfinished compared to the richness of their kimonos and wigs.

Shozo said, “How interesting it would be to see the real Harry Niles.”

Harry was working on a rejoinder when the boat touched and tied up. Shozo joined the line and, along with every other passenger but Harry, made a quick hop-step onto the dock, where he turned to wave a friendly good-bye. In a second he was gone, replaced by boarding passengers.

It was unclear to Harry when Shozo intended to carry through with his threat of arrest. The various police agencies were like different companies, competing one minute and cooperating the next. Shozo could trade Harry to the army for advantages down the line. The navy could protect him as long as he was on the outside. In prison, though, nothing but bad things happened.

In the meantime, there was still the gun to be disposed of. Harry had the open area of the boat to himself, until the last second when a young policeman in smart brass buttons and billed cap claimed the seat opposite. He opened a book and squeezed by the bow lamp, lifting his eyes from time to time to fix Harry with a glittering hostility. Whether Shozo had ordered the policeman on board or not, it wasn’t a situation conducive to the drowning of a gun. Harry picked up the newspaper the businessman had left on the bench.