‘Where can I find him?’
She stroked his cheek. ‘Why bother with him?’ she cooed and pressed her body against his. This brought more shouts of obscenities and laughter from the audience. ‘Sit down,’ she said, pushing him. Tora sat. She blew him a kiss. ‘We’ll talk about it over a cup of wine.’ She walked away slowly, moving her hips to the hoots and whistles of the men.
So much for Jirokichi’s romance. Tora almost felt sorry for the little rat – almost, but not quite, seeing that the encounter was proving more embarrassing by the moment. Hoshina returned to more applause, with wine and freshly painted lips. She bowed to her audience, then sat down so close to Tora that their thighs touched. The other customers watched avidly.
Tora moved away a little, but she wiggled closer and whispered in his ear, ‘Bet I can make you much happier than that wife of yours.’
‘Then Jirokichi must be a lucky man,’ Tora said hoarsely and gulped some wine.
She put a hand on his thigh and let it wander higher to whistles and a bawdy request that she offer such service to all the guests. Tora had had enough. He removed her hand from his thigh, put some coppers down, and left, his face flaming. More shouts and laughter followed him out.
His failure grated. He had got nothing from the disgusting woman, and that was not like him. Perhaps marriage had ruined his style. In the old days, he would have made up to her and taken her to bed. She was crude, but that large body was voluptuous and promised a good lay, and she would have ended up telling him whatever he wanted to know.
A sudden suspicion gave him pause. Had she performed that flagrant and very public bit of seduction to drive him away because she did not want to answer questions about Jirokichi?
Tora glowered and clenched his fists. He had expected to find Jirokichi quite easily and was wearing his ordinary clothes. The trouble was that they marked him as a retainer belonging to the household of an official. And that meant he would get no information on the whereabouts of a thief.
He wandered aimlessly around the Western Market in hopes of seeing Jirokichi on his way to Hoshina. It was a waste of time, but when he passed the vegetable sellers, he encountered the handsome youth he had seen outside Hoshina’s wine shop the day before. The boy was haggling over a daikon radish and a small cabbage.
Tora gave him a nod and a grin. Being caught by another male at such an embarrassingly feminine activity made the boy flush and turn his head away.
THE DUMPLING MAN
A little cheered by the fact that others had their troubles, too, Tora decided to have a look at the Kiyowara residence before going home. He would not be admitted, but outside the houses of great nobles there were always people who knew all about the inhabitants. Street vendors and beggars quickly assembled where the wealthy lived. The common people, largely invisible to the powerful nobles, kept themselves extremely well informed about their betters. When you are poor, you spend a good part of your life watching the wealthy.
As he had expected, there was a dumpling seller at one corner of the property, and a woman selling fans at the other. Some ragged children hung about in hopes of holding horses, running errands, or begging for a copper coin.
For a house in mourning that had all the attendant taboo signs posted to warn visitors of contamination in case they intended to worship at a shrine or make a pilgrimage, the Kiyowara mansion’s gates not only stood invitingly open, but people were also going in and out.
Two of those leaving were police officers; the others looked like merchants making deliveries or looking for business. Tora gauged his chances between the dumpling seller, a thin man of middle age with a hungry look about him, and the fan woman, who looked senile, and approached the dumpling man.
He spent a copper on a stuffed dumpling and remained to chat while he was eating. The dumpling man was not busy and welcomed the company.
‘Good dumpling,’ Tora commented. ‘You’ll be busy when it’s time for the midday rice.’
The man looked depressed. ‘Thanks, but it’s been slow since the murder.’
Tora pretended surprise. ‘Murder? Here in the street?’
‘No. Inside. Lord Kiyowara.’
Tora gaped at the open gate and the rooflines beyond the tall wall. ‘A great lord! Karma is in the turning of a wheel,’ he said piously.
‘Makes you think,’ said the dumpling seller, waving away a wasp attracted by his sweet bean paste. ‘They say it’s all decided when you’re born. So does that mean the murder’s also planned before the killer’s even suckled at his mother’s breast? If that’s so, then he can’t help himself when the time comes. He has to kill the man he’s ordained to kill.’
Tora stared at him. Dumpling sellers were not, as a rule, philosophical. ‘My master doesn’t believe that,’ he said after a moment. ‘Murderers are selfish bastards who please no one but themselves. That’s what we have the devils in hell for. To punish them for taking another person’s life.’
The dumpling seller smirked. ‘Lord Kiyowara needed killing. He was an evil man. What about that? Does the murderer still deserve to go to hell?’
Tora frowned. He did not want to engage in a pointless argument about karma, but it was an opening. ‘How was he evil?’ he asked.
The dumpling man barked a nasty laugh. ‘Stupid question. All the great lords do evil things. They wouldn’t be great otherwise. This one took what he wanted and never cared what happened to others.’
‘What did he take?’
‘Anything he wanted. Land, money, women.’ ‘Women? He chased women?’ The man rolled his eyes.
Tora finished his dumpling and wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘All real men chase women. What did he do? Rape a nun?’
But the dumpling man shook his head. Perhaps he thought he had said too much already. ‘There’s talk,’ he said vaguely. ‘Don’t quote me.’
Tora changed the subject. ‘Were you here the day he was killed?’
The man looked at him a moment. ‘You want another dumpling while you’re wasting my time?’
Tora laughed at this – the dumpling man had not had any other customer and nobody had stopped at his stand – but he shelled out another copper. ‘Well?’ he asked, biting into the dumpling.
‘I was here.’
‘So maybe you saw the fellow that did everyone such a big favor. Anybody in particular?’
The man gestured at the street. ‘People come and go here all the time. How should I know what their business is?’
That might be true, but having been conned out of another copper, Tora was not giving up so easily. ‘Come, you’re a man of experience, a man who thinks. I bet you noticed something out of the ordinary.’
‘Nothing to do with the murder.’
‘Ah! Something did happen. Let’s hear it.’ Tora swallowed the last of the dumpling and adjusted his sash, causing his string of coppers to clink.
‘Well,’ the dumpling man said, eyeing the sash, ‘not that it means anything, I’m sure, but the young lord rode down the fan seller.’
‘Rode down the fan seller?’ Tora glanced at the old woman in the distance. ‘Why?’
The vendor shook his head. ‘He’s a good rider as a rule and well-behaved for one of them. He even threw me a piece of silver once. But that day, the kid came galloping out of the gate as if demons were after him. He whipped his horse mercilessly and had a face as black as the thunder god. The old woman was standing down there, at the street corner, selling her fans – it was hot as blazes and business was good. He took the corner too fast and the horse knocked her down. You could hear the crack it made up and down the street. Her stuff went flying everywhere. She screamed and fell into a fit. One of the boys ran to get the constables and they carried her away like a dead woman. It’s a miracle she didn’t die from it.’
‘His face was black? You mean he painted his face black?’ Tora asked, astonished.
