Murder at the Tokyo Lawn & Tennis Club - Robert J. Collins

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almost daily with bicultural anomalies and mysteries. In all fairness, the Japanese members were an internationalized crowd—many had lived abroad and most had traveled abroad—nevertheless, there were still surprising and unpredictable behavioral developments.

      In this case, an American was on the floor, clearly crazed, naked as the day he was born, and babbling about his foot, a headache, and "bodies underwater." What, when it comes right down to it, could be more difficult?

      Matters didn't come to a head until a fourth-generation Japanese resident named Kim—still a Korean and make no mistake about that—wandered into the bath and rediscovered Shig.

      The locker room denizens rushed to the bath area, Nat Forrest sat up and rubbed his head, and an ambulance's siren wailed in the background as all hell broke loose at the staid Tokyo Lawn Tennis Club.

      CHAPTER 3

      Captain 'Tim" Kawamura of the Azabu Police Station sat at his desk clipping his fingernails. Seniority of some twenty-odd years had earned for him the privilege of avoiding weekend work most of the time. On Saturdays in the summer, however, everyone was eligible for duty to complement rosters depleted by vacations. He was not happy about things, but it was part of the job. The nail on the little finger of his left hand had still not grown back—it having been bitten off by a prostitute from Thailand during a routine raid on a Roppongi disco a month ago.

      The call to the police station was registered at 11:42 A.M. The message was somewhat garbled—panic appeared to be in evidence—but the gist of the report indicated that a "respected Japanese" had been found very clean but very dead at the tennis club up the hill in the wealthy area of town. Kawamura put the fingernail clippers into the desk drawer, picked up the phone, and called his wife.

      "I may not be home in an hour," Kawamura explained in his best "it's not my fault" voice.

      Kawamura watched his assistant, Suzuki-san, pace back and forth with extreme agitation in front of his desk. Kawamura's wife was reminding Kawamura of his promise to take the two children to Tokyo Disneyland for the afternoon.

      "I understand all that," said Kawamura into the phone, "but developments are not clear. We may have to delay it until tomorrow."

      Kawamura's wife was lecturing on the theme of "promises made are debts unpaid" as Suzuki-san bit off the end of his pencil.

      "Let's play it by ear," counseled Kawamura as he hung up the phone. Suzuki-san was twitching, giving every indication of going into a jumping-up-and-down routine.

      "We must hurry," announced Suzuki-san, "it's a respected Japanese."

      Kawamura picked up two pencils and a ballpoint pen from his desk. He rummaged around in the top drawer of the desk and found a relatively unused notepad.

      "All Japanese," Kawamura explained to his assistant Suzuki-san, "are respected."

      The two men walked from the Azabu Police Station and joined the overkill force of twenty-five law enforcement officers en route to the Tokyo Lawn Tennis Club. As Kawamura slid into the back seat of the lead patrol car, his thoughts were less on the hastily reported details of the death—drowned in a bath—than they were on the very real possibility that his investigations would involve entering the murky world of international citizens and relationships. And this particular club had more than its share of that kind of thing.

      CHAPTER 4

      The scene outside the club was typical of normal Saturday afternoons in the exclusive residential neighborhood. A recently disgraced political leader lived across the street, and this attracted a dozen or more press vehicles which were illegally parked along the narrow road.

      Dodging and ducking members of the press were another dozen or so political leaders attempting to pay respects to their disgraced colleague and, perhaps more specifically, attempting to contain the damage potentially wrought by the disgraced one's further babbling in public. The political leaders' cars were also illegally parked.

      In addition, two separate political demonstrations were taking place—one at the Chinese Embassy around the corner from the club, and the other at the Korean Embassy down the hill from the club. Wrongs, real and imagined, were being addressed by several hundred concerned citizens driving loudspeaker trucks or marching along the street carrying placards.

      Compounding things was the presence of eight large police vans carrying national troopers assigned to the task of maintaining law and order amongst the demonstrators. The vans, camped next to the illegally parked vehicles, not only reduced normal traffic to one lane, they also contributed to the elements of chaos which would not be sorted out until well after sundown.

      Captain Kawamura sat calmly in the back seat of his car as the driver twisted and turned his way through the hordes—at one point traveling several meters down the sidewalk in front of the hospital next to the club which, as luck would have it, was in the middle of visiting hours. Police captains were expected to be driven, although walking to the club would take half as much time as the car ride. An ambulance, stuck crossways in the street, was wailing away and generally contributing to the festivities. A normal Saturday in Tokyo, Kawamura mused.

      Several club employees—the office manager, the court manager, and four female clerical staff members—stood in two columns at the entranceway as Kawamura's car bounced across the curbing and finally came to rest. Kawamura crawled out of the back seat, walked up the four broad steps, and briefly acknowledged the employees' bows with a brief nod of his head. The employees, Kawamura observed, were treating him with the kind of ingrained dignity more properly reserved for individuals in the Imperial Family—members of the club and frequent visitors. The gods, in all their wisdom, had at least contrived to arrange an Imperial absence on this particular day.

      The clubhouse proper was a scene of barely controlled hysteria. Members in tennis outfits paced back and forth looking worried, frightened, and, in a few cases, angry. But surprisingly, and it was Suzuki-san who pointed this out, at least half the courts outside the large glass doors were occupied by people pounding away at their games—seemingly unaware, or at least unconcerned, about the reported developments in the locker room.

      A dignified man, whose face looked vaguely familiar to Kawamura, walked up and introduced himself. He was the club president, he said, Tatsuo Morimoto. During the introductory bowing ceremonies, Kawamura remembered where he had seen the man. In the newspapers. Tatsuo Morimoto was a retired foreign service officer and former Japanese Ambassador to the United States. Kawamura held his last bow a beat longer than he would otherwise.

      "I'm afraid we have a very sad development here," announced Morimoto at the conclusion of the ceremonies. Morimoto had contrived to produce a business card from the interior of his tennis costume.

      'That's what I understand," said Kawamura. "Something about the bath, and apparently... ah, a member..."

      "Very sad," confirmed Morimoto without moving but managing to look diplomatically sad. "Very sad indeed."

      Kawamura repeated "very sad" and managed to duplicate the impression of sadness.

      "But perhaps it would help if I could, ah, examine the area where the sadness occurred," explained Kawamura.

      "Of course," responded Morimoto, suddenly adopting a businesslike attitude. "It's up the stairs in the locker room."

      Kawamura followed Morimoto and a half-dozen Concerned Members up the circular staircase to the bath area. "Very sad" was murmured by the accompanying entourage.

      The locker room was modern, air-conditioned, and equipped with all the niceties one expects in a first-class operation—towels, toothbrushes, spotless floors, hairdryers, and tatami flooring in the entranceway to the bath. A foreigner, naked and apparently in a traumatized state, gazed toward Kawamura with round and unfocused eyes as the entourage approached the bath.

      "Is he all right?" Kawamura asked Morimoto with

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