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

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of lockers happened to be looking in that direction. Getting from the toilet area into the bath, however, would involve a dash through open space. Unless the locker room was deserted, that would be impossible.

      "Are we certain that there was lipstick on that cigarette butt?" asked Kawamura.

      "Certain," replied Suzuki-san. "Estée Lauder Burnt Orange Flame, in fact. And the cigarette was a Mild Seven—the most popular brand in Japan."

      "Wonderful," said Kawamura after a moment.

      Kawamura and Suzuki-san stood at the top of the stairs. An enormous, stuffed elk head was inexplicably mounted on the wall near the locker room entrances.

      "It would be nice if that creature could talk," said Suzuki-san, looking at the elk head.

      "It would probably only complicate things," said Kawamura. "Anyway, tomorrow we should pay a visit to Mr. Theodore Bitman and find out why Manabe sued him. And we should pay a call on your friend in the fruit-salad shirt, Kimura-san. If he used to work for Manabe, their fight on the courts might have had something to do with that."

      "What about Sakai?"

      "I guess we should talk to him again, too," said Kawamura. "It seems that Morimoto thinks he's a likely suspect. A fight over the damn game, or something like that."

      Kawamura and Suzuki-san began to walk slowly down the circular staircase. Halfway down, they met the foreigner with the heavy French accent who was climbing the steps in his street clothes.

      "Ah, mon capitaine," said the Frenchman, "the situation has some new difficulties, no?"

      "The situation is the same for Manabe-san. The situation for the rest of us is that we know now he was murdered."

      "We have the saying in my country, mon capitaine. It is cherchez lafemme."

      "Thank you," said Kawamura.

      The Frenchman continued up the stairs.

      "What did he say?" asked Suzuki-san.

      "I have no idea," answered Kawamura. "Well look it up when we get back to the station."

      CHAPTER 11

      On the Saturday night his partner died, the remaining Silver Fox got very drunk. Deciding against changing in the locker room, and after going through the ordeal of the interview with the policeman, Sakai walked out of the club in his tennis clothes and took a subway to his apartment in the Ueno section of Tokyo.

      Sakai had purchased smaller quarters after his wife died, and he was perfectly content with the one large dining-living-sleeping room and the kitchenette. He drank the remaining third of a sake bottle as he took a shower.

      He dressed and decided that a yakitori meal would be just right. Across the narrow street from his apartment, and down past the pachinko parlor, was a place he visited two or three times a month.

      Sakai had two beers quickly before the first pieces of roasted chicken were presented. Sakai maintained the pace. By the time the meal was finished—finished as far as the proprietors were concerned—he had driven away a young couple seated next to him, sent a waitress to the back room in tears, and lectured an elderly man on the stupidity of trying to eat gizzards without teeth.

      Sakai reluctantly left the restaurant before the dessert course, and lurched around the corner to a small snack shop were he kept a bottle of Suntory whiskey. He sat on his favorite stool in the corner and took off his shoes. Other patrons amiably chatted, read comic books, or watched television. Had anyone been paying particular attention, they would have noticed that Sakai was talking to himself more than usual as he worked his way through his bottle.

      The televised tennis match from Wimbledon sent Sakai over the edge. His shouts did not result in a change in channels, but they did result in the wife of the snack shop owner agreeing to walk Sakai home.

      Sakai remembered pouring himself a drink when he got home, and he remembered turning on the television to watch the same tennis match, but he only vaguely recalled thinking about Shig—and again breaking into tears. Twice in one day.

      Sakai woke up fully dressed sometime late Sunday morning, collected the morning paper outside his front door, scanned the paper for news of what happened at the tennis club, had another drink, took off his clothes, and went back to sleep.

      The pounding, at first, reminded Sakai of drums. He rolled over, but the pounding would not go away. For a moment, he thought the sound had something to do with the thumping in his head.

      He opened his eyes, and noticed that the light coming from the one window in the room was very faint. It was either early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

      The pounding continued. Sakai sat up and looked at his watch. Late in the afternoon.

      "Just a minute," Sakai yelled. Clearly someone was at the door.

      Getting up and moving about for the first moment or so is probably more difficult for active athletes than for more retiring folks. Bumps, minor sprains, inflamed tendons, and bruised muscles scream in protest. Sunday, almost dark, Sakai now realized, and who the hell would be visiting me now?

      Sakai limped to the door and opened it. Two blue-suited, official-looking men with serious expressions stared at him.

      "Police?" asked Sakai without thinking.

      The man with the shortest hair grunted something in reply, and the two men pushed their way into the room.

      Something was wrong. One man picked up Sakai's trousers from the floor and removed the belt. These guys are past retirement age for policemen, Sakai suddenly thought.

      "Who are you?" Sakai asked, recognizing panic in his own voice.

      The man with the shortest hair grabbed Sakai by the arm, twisted it behind him, and clamped a very dry and rough hand over his mouth. He began to drag Sakai to the kitchenette. Sakai's tennis activities had kept him in reasonably good shape, and the struggle was fairly even for a few moments. But the other man walked up and calmly punched Sakai in the stomach. Sakai felt his insides tear apart.

      Through a fog, Sakai saw the other man drag a chair into the kitchenette.

      'This should do," said the other main. The other man then punched Sakai in the stomach one more time.

      The man with the shortest hair tossed the end of the belt over a water pipe running across the ceiling in the kitchenette.

      To give him credit, Sakai put up a decent struggle. But there were two of them. And they knew what they were doing. Sakai tried to yell "No!" but it all happened so quickly. The man with the shortest hair let go of him, and before the choking red curtain overwhelmed Sakai, his last conscious thought was that the chair had tipped over down on the floor.

      The two men watched Sakai's body slowly swing back and forth for a moment, then walked quietly to the door of the apartment. The man with the shortest hair reached a gloved hand inside the door and onto the doorknob lock button before gently closing the door.

      CHAPTER 12

      Kawamura and his wife sat on the floor around the low table in their living room. The two children, a boy and a girl, each occupied one of the two bedrooms in the apartment. Rock music, separate and competing, boomed from each room.

      "Of course they were disappointed," said Noriko Kawamura. "We've been promising them a trip to Disneyland for months."

      "I apologize, but this, ah, new case, requires immediate attention."

      "Remember, their school summer vacation is only a few weeks, and..."

      "I know, I know," said Kawamura, holding up his glass as his wife poured beer from the bottle, "a promise made is a debt unpaid. When this is over, I'll be able to take a few days off."

      "Is

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