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.

“I see. Okay. What happened today?”

Welland scratched his beard. He had bushy, arched eyebrows which jumped up to punctuate his stronger statements kind of like Sean Connery. I found it pretty sexy. I pulled my mind back to what he was saying.

“I got here around one-thirty. I think three games were in progress. This guy”-he jerked his thumb toward the dead man-“arrived a bit later. He and I played a game. Then Mr. Hito arrived and the two of them had a game. Dr. Han showed up, and he and I were playing when the whole thing happened. Mrs. Takamoku sets out tea and snacks. We all wander around and help ourselves. About four, this guy took a swallow of tea, gave a terrible cry, and died.”

“Is there anything important about the game they were playing?”

Welland looked at the board. A handful of black-and-white stones stood on the corner points. He shook his head. “They’d just started. It looks like our dead friend was trying one of the Takamoku josekis. That’s a complicated one-I’ve never seen it used in actual play before.”

“What’s that? Anything to do with Mr. Takamoku?”

“The joseki are the beginning moves in the corners. Takamoku is this one”-he pointed at the far side-“where black plays on the five-four point-the point where the fourth and fifth lines intersect. It wasn’t named for our host. That’s just coincidence.”

III

Sergeant McGonnigal didn’t find out much more than I did. A thickset young detective, he had a lot of experience and treated his frightened audience gently. He was a little less kind to me, demanding roughly why I was there, what my connection with the dead man was, who my client was. It didn’t cheer him up any to hear I was working for the Takamokus, but he let me stay with them while he questioned them. He sent for a young Korean officer to interrogate the Koreans in the group. Welland, who spoke fluent Japanese, translated the Japanese interviews. Dr. Han, the lone Chinese, struggled along on his own.

McGonnigal learned that the dead man’s name was Peter Folger. He learned that people were milling around all the time watching each other play. He also learned that no one paid attention to anything but the game they were playing, or watching.

“The Japanese say the go player forgets his father’s funeral,” Welland explained. “It’s a game of tremendous concentration.”

No one admitted knowing Folger outside the go club. No one knew how he found out that the Takamokus hosted go every Sunday.

My clients hovered tensely in the background, convinced that McGonnigal would arrest them at any minute. But they could add nothing to the story. Anyone who wanted to play was welcome at their apartment on Sunday afternoon. Why should he show a credential? If he knew how to play, that was the proof.

McGonnigal pounced on that. Was Folger a good player? Everyone looked around and nodded. Yes, not the best-that was clearly Dr. Han or Mr. Kim, one of the Koreans-but quite good enough. Perhaps first kyu, whatever that was.

After two hours of this, McGonnigal decided he was getting nowhere. Someone in the room must have had a connection with Folger, but we weren’t going to find it by questioning the group. We’d have to dig into their backgrounds.

A uniformed man started collecting addresses while McGonnigal went to his car to radio for plainclothes reinforcements. He wanted everyone in the room tailed and wanted to phone in the command in privacy. A useless precaution, I thought: the innocent wouldn’t know they were being followed, and the guilty would expect it.

McGonnigal returned shortly, his face angry. He had a bland-faced, square-jawed man in tow, Derek Hatfield of the FBI. He did computer fraud for them. Our paths had crossed a few times on white-collar crime. I’d found him smart and knowledgeable, but also humorless and overbearing.

“Hello, Derek,” I said, without getting up from the cushion I was sitting on. “What brings you here?”

“He had the place under surveillance,” McGonnigal said, biting off the words. “He won’t tell me who he was looking for.”

Derek walked over to Folger’s body, covered now with a sheet, which he pulled back. He looked at Folger’s face and nodded. “I’m going to have to phone my office for instructions.”

“Just a minute,” McGonnigal said. “You know the guy, right? You tell me what you were watching him for.”

Derek raised his eyebrows haughtily. “I’ll have to make a call first.”

“Don’t be an ass, Hatfield,” I said. “You think you’re impressing us with how mysterious the FBI is, but you’re not, really. You know your boss will tell you to cooperate with the city if it’s murder. And we might be able to clear this thing up right now, glory for everyone. We know Folger worked for Hansen Electronic. He wasn’t one of your guys working undercover, was he?”

Hatfield glared at me. “I can’t answer that.”

“Look,” I said reasonably. “Either he worked for you and was investigating problems at Hansen, or he worked for them and you suspected he was involved in some kind of fraud. I know there’s a lot of talk about Hansen’s new Series J computer-was he passing secrets?”

Hatfield put his hands in his pockets and scowled in thought. At last he said, to McGonnigal, “Is there someplace we can go and talk?”

I asked Mrs. Takamoku if we could use her kitchen for a few minutes. Her lips moved nervously, but she took Hatfield and me down the hall. Her apartment was laid out like mine and the kitchens were similar, at least in appliances. Hers was spotless; mine had that lived-in look.

McGonnigal told the uniformed man not to let anyone leave or make any phone calls, and followed us.

Hatfield leaned against the back door. I perched on a bar stool next to a high wooden table. McGonnigal stood in the doorway leading to the hall.