Harry thought Japan really was different.

Willie’s voice was fainter, farther down the hall. “We had to look.”

“We looked enough.” Iris was sounding like a wife. “We’ll come back tomorrow.”

“I just worry about DeGeorge.”

Don’t worry about DeGeorge, Harry thought. There was a second stumbling into shoes, discreet sounds of retreat along the path and the backfire of a car starting while the three in the back room sat like a family tied in an intimate dispute, waiting for the complete departure of intruders. Harry was still pinned to the sliding screen. At the same time, Ishigami was snug in Michiko’s grip, and Harry knew how fierce that could be. The situation reminded Harry of the church parable about people with short arms and long spoons who couldn’t feed themselves, only others, but with swords and a different moral: he needed a gun.

Some of Michiko’s lipstick rubbed off on the colonel’s ear as she said, “Please be so kind as to put down your sword.”

Ishigami said, “If nothing else, we have clarified relations between you and Harry. You lied. That’s all right, I thought you had.”

She lifted his chin with the knife. Philosophically enough, Ishigami laid the sword on the floor, and Harry slid it to the far wall, then relieved Ishigami of his short sword, a beauty of nearly black steel, and did the same with it. Even without his swords, Ishigami didn’t appear disarmed enough. He was checked by Michiko’s knife but only slightly.

Michiko said, “Run, Harry. Go.”

“That’s right,” Ishigami said. “Run.”

All Harry could think of was the gun under the floorboards across the street. No one could hold Ishigami with a knife or sword; that was like trying to hold him down with a paper clip.

“Give me the knife,” Harry said to Michiko.

“No, Harry. Go!”

“I’ll go,” said Ishigami.

With a deep inhale, he slowly rose, lifting Michiko to tiptoe. As she lost her balance, he shifted toward her and then out of her grip. Harry moved to block the way to the door. Instead, Ishigami ran at the side wall and burst through panels of wood and paper. One moment there was a wall, and then a garden Buddha looking in. Too late, Harry remembered the swords. A fist punched through the back wall, gathered the swords and disappeared. Harry folded the gilded screen as the tip of a sword appeared at the top of the last remaining wall and sliced the paper open. As Ishigami stepped through the flaps, Harry launched the screen, wisely not at the colonel’s head but at his feet.

Without bothering with shoes, Harry and Michiko raced into the street. The Happy Paris was dark, the jukebox a moon among tables. Michiko locked the door while Harry got on his knees in the kitchen and slapped aside loose floorboards to root through pickle jars for the gun. “Camptown Races,” what a stupid song. A police investigation would really nix his travel plans. Was there room under the floorboards for DeGeorge? A jar slipped from Harry’s hands and broke. Bits of glass and brine swam around his knees as he dug out the cookie tin. Money spilled as he pried up the lid, found the Nambu, cocked a round into the breech and aimed at the door, at shutters, back to the door as if they were paper for Ishigami to step through.

19

HARRY WATCHED the street from his apartment while Michiko knelt by a mirror and candle to wipe her white face off. She had set the wig aside, and her own short hair was wrapped in gauze, exposing her ear, pink as a shell. Harry remembered Oharu awash in creams and tissues backstage at the Folies. As a kid he’d liked the way performers stripped themselves of one character and painted on another, one deception followed by the next. He wasn’t so sure how he felt about it now. Harry was always Harry Niles, blood washed off his knees, shaved now and dressed in a fresh suit, but essentially Harry, while Michiko was revealed in layers.

Harry asked, “Did you know what the colonel wanted?”

“He said he wanted to surprise you.”

“Surprise me? You didn’t know he wanted to kill me?”

“I thought there was a chance. I think a lot of people would kill you if they had the chance.” She said it flatly, as if stating a fact.

“Did he say where he was staying?”

“At the willow house. He’s rich. He rented the whole house for a week.”

“So he could be there, he could be anywhere.”

They had pulled up and tied the ladder stairs from the club, although Harry could still imagine the colonel climbing up a gutter or down from the roof, maybe squeezing through a tap. Harry had thought that lighting the Eiffel Tower might attract a late-night customer or two and provide some security in numbers. A stone knocked out the sign; it shorted amid a rain of glass. Harry had tried the phone; the line was dead. All he had was the gun, but with daylight he could go for the car.

There was, of course, the option of sending up enough hue and cry to draw the police. Except that it was no option at all. Nothing like involvement in a homicide to upset travel plans. Know what a mark is? Harry asked himself. A mark is a guy who can’t report a murder. He was a mark.

“Are you going to leave me?” Michiko asked.

Harry didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth, and he didn’t have the heart to lie. He kept his eyes on the street. “I don’t know. I don’t know how much future I have in Tokyo. Except for you. I have the feeling I’m not wanted.”

“Are you going with her?”

“Her?” Alice, of course. Harry dropped at least some deceit. “She doesn’t have any future here, either. No whites do.”

“But you’re from Asakusa.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll hate it anywhere else.”

“Yes.”

Harry didn’t ask why Michiko had saved his life. This was no fair-weather American girl, he thought, and no sweet all-day-sucker American-style love. Michiko’s was more of the pathological jump-into-a-volcano-together type. That didn’t change things. When Nippon Air rolled the DC-3 from its hangar, Harry intended to be the first man aboard, and expected to have Alice Beechum in the seat beside him.

“You do a good imitation of a geisha.” Harry couldn’t help himself.

“Did you consider the possibility that we both might lose our heads?”

“No.”

“You like being trapped here?”

“No. Yes.”

Figure that out, Harry thought. Since whiteface covered Michiko halfway to her shoulders, she dropped the kimono to her waist. She looked divided, warm breasts in contrast to a plaster face. Ishigami had done an expert job, adding the highlights of Chinese red to her cheeks, subtle shades of green and blue around her eyes. Ishigami, the Renaissance man. Of course, Japanese girls seemed boyish, boys like girls. What did Ishigami crave? Love, of course. Harry had cheated him of that not once but twice.

Across the street, the lantern at the willow house had flickered and gone out. No matter, DeGeorge would draw attention soon enough. In cool weather, two days, maybe three. Ishigami didn’t hide his work. Ishigami didn’t care. After four years of slaughter on the China front, one more truncated body wouldn’t make a big impression. All the colonel wanted was four more heads. He had a Zenlike equanimity about his goal. Even with Michiko’s knife to his throat, he wore a triumphant expression, as if he had finally solved the question of her true allegiance. Harry had figured out the answer at the same moment. Well, it was a matter of gratitude, wasn’t it? Harry had taken this skinny kid, this Red on the run, a geisha of all things, planted her by a jukebox and called her the Record Girl. Made her a hit. Well, you could do anything with Michiko. She was like chopsticks. With someone that smooth and slim, the limbs were almost interchangeable. Variable. Inexhaustible. An American girl would have cried, “Save me, Harry, save me!” Michiko had said, “Go.” So, the matter of loyalty was settled. At the same time, that was no real obligation on him. If she wanted him to survive, so did he. Harry appreciated what she had done, but he couldn’t drive from his mind the image of Ishigami painting her. She still hadn’t taken off the whiteface, as if it afforded protection.