'I say you did. You kidnapped that girl, put her in a cage, and raped her.'
'I didn't!' Gombei bristled with indignation.
He had a combative streak beneath his charm, Hirata observed. He wasn't as harmless as he took pains to appear. But Hirata couldn't discern more about the man. Preoccupation had weakened his mental energy.
'If I want a good time, I don't need to kidnap and force anybody, and besides, I don't go for children. I like women.' Gombei's grin turned lecherous. 'And they like me. I've got a wife, a mistress, and ladies all over town.'
'Not even a big ladies' man like you can have whoever he wants,' Hirata said. He couldn't summon the power to see through lies or manipulate Gombei into confessing. He must rely on verbal tactics. 'What if you want somebody you can't get?'
'Pardon me, but I can't imagine who that might be.'
'How about the chamberlain's cousin? She's a high-ranking samurai woman with a new baby. She was kidnapped, too.' Hirata asked, 'Do you like to drink mother's milk straight from the breast while you have sex?'
'What?' Disbelief and outrage lifted the pitch of Gombei's voice. 'No, indeed.'
'How about a sixty-year-old nun? Do you get a thrill out of raping holy women?'
Gombei sputtered. 'With all due respect, only a man who's sick in the head would do such things.'
'Like your friend?'
'You could save yourself a lot of trouble if you would just confess,' Fukida told Jinshichi.
'And save us the trouble of torturing you,' Marume said.
They both knew that Sano didn't approve of torture because it often produced false confessions.
'Go ahead,' Jinshichi said, his eyes glittering with bravado. 'Tell you right now, I say what you want, it's not true.'
Today Sano would have been glad to make an exception for Jinshichi, but he had at least one other ploy to try. 'Maybe you're right,' he said, in such a quick about-face that Marume and Fukida looked at him in surprise. 'Maybe you're not the culprit.'
'Been telling you all along,' Jinshichi said, half relieved, half wary of a trick.
'Maybe it's your friend,' Sano said. 'What's his name?'
'Gombei.' The man sneered. 'He didn't do it, either.'
'Somebody did,' Sano said. 'Somebody's going to be punished. Right now my choice is him or you. Which is it going to be?'
'Not him. Not me,' Jinshichi insisted. 'Like I said, you got the wrong folks.'
'Your friend is under interrogation as we speak,' Sano said. 'My chief retainer is asking him the same kind of questions that I've been asking you. What do you think he's saying?'
Jinshichi shrugged. 'That we're both innocent.'
'Don't be too sure about that,' Sano said. 'He puts the blame on you, he goes free.'
'He wouldn't,' Jinshichi said staunchly.
'Of course he would, if it means he lives and you die.'
'You're trying to pit us against each other,' Jinshichi said. 'Won't work.'
'I'm trying to help you see reason,' Sano said. 'Any moment, my chief retainer is going to walk in here and say that your friend turned on you. Then it will be too late for you to take advantage of the deal I'm offering.'
Suspicion lowered Jinshichi's heavy brow. 'What deal?'
'Be the first to turn. If your friend kidnapped and raped those women, you tell me everything you know about it, and I'll let you go.'
Sano hoped this deal would induce Jinshichi to provide details about the crimes that would help him figure out which, if either, man had committed them. But Jinshichi squared his muscular shoulders and set his jaw.
'Forget it,' he said. 'Gombei didn't do it, and neither did I. That's the truth, no matter what you do to us.'
'What about my friend?' Gombei asked Hirata.
'Maybe he likes little girls, nursing mothers, and old nuns,' Hirata suggested.
Gombei chortled. 'Oh, now that's ridiculous, if you'll pardon my saying so.'
'What makes you so sure?'
'I've known Jinshichi forever. We're from the same neighborhood. He's not sick or crazy.'
'People keep secrets even from their closest friends,' Hirata said. 'How do you know what goes on in Jinshichi's mind-or what he does in private?'
'I know he couldn't have kidnapped the girl or the nun. Because he was with me on the days they were taken.' Gombei's grin broadened. The gaps where his teeth had rotted out were black holes.
Hirata had expected Gombei to trot out a double alibi. 'Which days were those?' He hadn't said. If Gombei knew, that would mark him as the culprit.
'Every day,' Gombei said. 'We work together.'
'There must have been times when you were out of each other's sight. I can ask your boss if he ever sent you to different jobs.'
'Ask him, if you want,' Gombei said with brazen nonchalance.
'Then again,' Hirata said, 'why should I bother? I can just ask Jinshichi. He's right down the hall.'
'Go ahead. He'll tell you the same thing: We were together.'
Hirata spied a new twist in the case. 'Maybe you were in on the kidnapping together, too. That would have made it easier to grab the women and get them into the oxcart.' But Sano's cousin Chiyo seemed to think she'd been raped by one man alone. 'Did you take turns? He raped the little girl, you raped the nun?'
Anger erased the good cheer from Gombei's expression. 'We didn't do it. I'll vouch for him. He'll vouch for me.'
'You're pretty loyal to Jinshichi,' Hirata observed.
'Yes, indeed,' Gombei said. 'Because I owe him my life. We were in the mountains, hauling wood, and my cart ran off the road. I was caught hanging by one hand over a cliff. Jinshichi pulled me up. He saved me.'
'That explains why you would want to protect him. Why should he care about protecting you?' Hirata added, 'He can say that you kidnapped and raped those women, and walk out of here a free man, while you go to the execution ground.'
'He won't. Because he owes me, too. A while back, we went swimming in the river. He got swept away by a current. I saved him.' So there, Gombei's expression said.
'Old obligations can be easily put aside when new circumstances arise,' Hirata said. 'You and Jinshichi each have a chance to tell tales on the other and save your own life. Who'll be the smart one?'
Gombei shook his head. 'Jinshichi and I always stick together. We always will.'
Hirata saw that they had a bond of loyalty as strong as that between a samurai and his master. What threat might change Gombei's story? 'I give up, then. I'll let Jirocho decide which one of you is guilty or if both of you are.'
Gombei's wary expression showed that he knew of the gangster boss. 'What's Jirocho got to do with this?'
'The little girl who was kidnapped is his daughter.'
'Well, I'll be,' Gombei said, astonished. 'Anybody who would touch anything that belonged to him is a fool.'
'Indeed. He's looking to get revenge,' Hirata said. 'Maybe I'll turn you and your friend over to Jirocho. He'll get the truth out of you. Then he'll kill you both, no matter which of you actually raped his daughter and which of you was the accomplice.'
Gombei's eyes sparkled with fear of what a gangster out for blood would do. But he shrugged, grinned, and said, 'Whatever you want. We all have to die sometime.'
Sano, Marume, and Fukida met Hirata outside the dungeon. Jailers escorted new prisoners into the building and led inmates out to go to the court of justice or the execution ground. No one looked happy-not the jailers, prisoners, or Sano's party.
'What did you get out of your suspect?' Sano asked Hirata.
'Gombei claims he's innocent,' Hirata replied. 'He also says he and Jinshichi are each other's alibi.'
'Let me guess,' Sano said. 'He refused to turn on his friend.'
