Death in Little Tokyo (Ken Tanaka Mysteries Book 1)

  DEATH

  IN LITTLE

  TOKYO

  A KEN TANAKA MYSTERY

  Dale Furutani

  © 1996, 2011 Dale Furutani Flanagan. All rights reserved.

  To Sharon for her love.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Kafuku wa azanaeru nawa no gotoshi.

  Bad and good are intertwined like rope.

  —JAPANESE FOLK SAYING

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Kayko Matsumoto Sonoda for sharing her camp records with me. Also thanks to Neeti Madan and M.N. for their advice and patience.

  DEATH

  IN LITTLE

  TOKYO

  1

  The murder was calculated, cruel, and callous. Horace Peavy was brutally slain and two million dollars in negotiable bonds was stolen. Peavy was first hit on the head with the type of sledgehammer used to stun cows, then his body was taken and fed through a sausage grinder, turning him into breakfast sausage that was sold to a big restaurant chain. It was an effective way to get rid of the corpse, but I may never eat a Grand Slam breakfast again!”

  The laughter echoed in the old “Farmer Bob’s” meat packing plant. The gaunt rafters of the plant formed a Gothic backdrop to the grisly tale I had to tell. The twelve people sitting before me on folding chairs looked more like an audience than a jury. I looked at their faces and scowled.

  “Yes, I know it has its macabre and amusing aspects, especially since Mr. Peavy was, by all accounts, known as a pig.” More snickers. “But, ladies and gentlemen, this is hardly an amusing matter, even though one of you has suggested that Mr. Peavy should have been marketed as turkey sausage instead of pork sausage.” More laughter.

  “In my experience a murder as brutal as this one can only have two causes. The first is the killer is mentally deranged; a psychopath or sociopath with little or no regard for human suffering or human life. Unfortunately, the front pages of our newspapers present us with increasing evidence that this type of killer is active in our society.

  “The other type of killer is someone who has nursed a grudge for years or even decades. To motivate an otherwise normal person to kill in a frenzied and brutal manner requires an overwhelmingly powerful motivation. A motivation built up over time and tied to deep feelings of self-worth and being wronged. A motivation that requires more than the simple act of murder when the deed is finally done. A motivation that requires slaughter.

  “In this group there is no evidence that anyone fits the profile of a casual killer, so I knew I was searching for someone who had quelled his or her rage for years, until that rage could only be quenched by feeding Peavy, piece by piece, into the sausage grinder. The bizarre demise of Mr. Peavy and the disposal of his body provided the first clue that allowed me to unravel this case. It started me on the trail of evidence that allows me to prove conclusively which of you killed him.” I swept my finger in a grand arc, pointing at all the people gathered before me. Some of the faces showed anticipation. A few, including Mary Maloney, who knew the murderer, showed a knowing smirk.

  “I think it’s appropriate that we’re meeting in this old meat packing plant for the conclusion of this mystery. You see, not only was the murder perpetrated in this plant, but it was in this plant that the motivation for murder was born.” I gave each of the people on the panel a hard stare. Mary Maloney was now grinning openly at my theatrics.

  “Mr. Peavy was not the best example of enlightened manhood, and several of you suffered from his cruel taunts and crude sexual advances. His long-suffering wife, Agnes, could have killed him for his many infidelities. But she had no opportunity to know about the two million dollars in negotiable bonds that were stolen when Peavy was killed because Mr. Peavy kept her isolated from his business affairs.” I looked at a woman wearing a dowdy dress and a mousy brown wig.

  “His business partner, Harvey Goodfellow, has been acting suspiciously recently. But Goodfellow is known as a man of infinite patience and legendary goodwill. That’s the only way he could continue with Peavy as a business partner for all these years. It seemed strange that some recent change could result in a murder as brutal as this one, and in fact his furtiveness was simply an attempt to cover up an affair between him and the head bookkeeper of the plant, Penny Inkcolumns.” The two star-crossed lovers looked at each other from where they sat at opposite ends of the twelve-person panel.

  “All of the rest of you had good reason to kill Mr. Peavy, but only one of you had to endure his crude advances eight hours a day, five days a week, for almost five years. Only one of you knew when the bonds would be in Mr. Peavy’s office, and when they would be out of the safe. Only one of you had the ability to lure Mr. Peavy into staying late on that fateful night, on the promise of a long hoped for romantic tryst. Only one of you has the unusual distinction of having graduated from both a secretarial school and a meat cutting school. And only one of you could assure herself that she would never eat the Peavy-tainted sausage, because only one of you is a vegetarian!” Pointing dramatically at a pretty woman in a tight red dress and blond wig, I said, “And that person is Clarissa Shorthand, Mr. Peavy’s secretary!”

  Clarissa jumped to her feet and shouted, “Yes! Yes, I did it! And you know what? I’m glad! I’m glad I tell you, glad!”

  The panel dissolved into laughter.

  Mary stood up and said, “Very good. Also very hammy, but since we’re in an old meat packing plant, that’s probably appropriate.” She looked at the rest of the panel. “I think Mr. Tanaka has proven that he has completely unraveled this particular mystery. This was one of the most competitive mysteries we’ve had in a long time. Both Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Duncan Hathaway submitted their written solutions to the mystery within a few minutes of each other. As you know, our by-laws call for a verbal exposition by all those who solve the mystery at the same time. Mr. Hathaway unraveled who had done the murder and the details of the two million dollars in bonds, but he didn’t uncover the nice fact that Ms. Shorthand is a vegetarian, so unless there’s an objection from the panel, I’d like to declare Mr. Ken Tanaka the grand prize winner for this month’s mystery. All in favor?”

  Panel members raised their hands or said “aye.” Ezekial Stein, the president of the Los Angeles Mystery Club, just grunted his assent, but that was just Ezekial’s way and I took no offense.

  “All right,” Mary said, “At tonight’s banquet at Nicola’s restaurant, Ezekial will announce that Ken is the grand prize winner. By the way, if all of you don’t know it yet, Ken will also be setting up next month’s mystery, and since we’ve got him here maybe we can coax him into giving us a little preview of what we have in store next month.”

  “Shouldn’t I save it for the banquet?” I asked.

  “After the shameless performance we’ve seen here this afternoon, I don’t think there will be any problems with getting you to repeat wha
t you tell us for a much larger audience at the banquet,” Mary said grinning.

  “Well, first let me thank you for awarding me the grand prize. It’s my first, and that Silver Dagger will mean a lot to me when I finally get my hands on it this evening.” The panel applauded and I actually felt myself blushing. After two years of trying, this was the first time I had beaten the other players at solving the mystery. Of course, it helped that Mary Maloney was involved in running this month’s mystery and thus was unable to compete for the top prize. Mary had won more than her share of prizes for being the one to unravel the club’s monthly mysteries. But regardless of that, it still felt awfully good.

  “Next, I want to thank Mary and Bob LaBossiere for organizing this weekend’s mystery.” I gave Mary and Bob, who had played Harvey Goodfellow, a round of applause, and the rest of the panel joined in.

  “Finally, I want to tell you that if you loved the Maltese Falcon, you will love the mystery I intend to put together. It will be set in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo district, which isn’t too far from here, and it will involve the rare and fabled Jade Penguin. You will learn about the exotic history of this fabulous statue and make your way through some of the locations in Little Tokyo as you try to uncover the secret of this priceless artifact. I won’t be able to wrangle as impressive a setting as this meat plant,” I waved a hand around me, “but I think you’ll have fun. Next month’s mystery will be the first time I’ve put together a whole club mystery on my own so I hope my winning the grand prize this time out is a good omen for next month!”

  I sat down with what I hoped was a suitably modest expression on my face and Mary concluded the meeting. Several members of the panel came over to congratulate me on my win as Mary left the room to inform Duncan that he came in second.

  After thanking the panel members I left and saw Mariko waiting in the meat plant’s lobby, sitting on a folding chair. When she saw me she raised an eyebrow and I gave her a thumb’s up.

  “So you did it,” she said.

  “Yep, they’ll announce it at the banquet tonight. They had to have a tie-breaking session because Duncan Hathaway turned in his written solution within fifteen minutes of me, but I found more of the clues than him and they gave me the grand prize.”

  “Isn’t Duncan the weird guy who runs around in the Sherlock Holmes outfit?”

  I laughed. “There’re actually a couple of members who dress up like their favorite fictional detectives. But yes, Duncan is one who dresses up for the mysteries.”

  Mariko shook her head. “You guys take this mystery stuff too seriously.”

  “It’s just good fun. Besides, you must take it pretty seriously yourself, because you’re going to help me with next month’s mystery.”

  “Hey, I’ve got to support you in your endeavors no matter how nutty they get.”

  I’ve never thought of the activities of the Los Angeles Mystery Club as exactly nutty, but maybe that was because I was caught up in the nuttiness. Every month the club members pool their money and talents and create a type of living theater: a murder mystery acted out during the course of a Saturday. The club members either try to solve the mystery or play parts in the drama. The idea is to figure out ‘who dunnit’ before the awards banquet that night. Everyone writes down their theory of the crime and the name of the murderer, and the first one with the correct answer gets a trophy. Everyone who solves the mystery, no matter if they were first or not, also gets a certificate. It’s a silly pastime for adults, but fun.

  I actually met Mariko through the club. As an aspiring actress, she had been hired to play an exotic femme fatale for one of the mysteries. I found her both femme enough and fatale enough to do something completely uncharacteristic for me: I pursued her. To my surprise, we hit it off and we had been an item for about six months, long enough for us to drop most of our pretenses and to start acting like ourselves. That’s when things get both serious and dangerous.

  But at this moment I wasn’t thinking serious or dangerous thoughts. I was trying to decide where I was going to display my Silver Dagger trophy in my apartment.

  2

  A couple of weeks later I was involved in another murder. Well, I guess to be accurate, I should say I was planning a murder.

  “Lissen, sweetheart,” I said in a passable Bogart imitation. “If you want anything, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your two lips together and blow.” Wait a minute. That was Lauren Bacall’s line.

  I sighed because I couldn’t recall what Bogart’s line was. It didn’t matter anyway. Let’s face it, physically I couldn’t muster the mass to imitate Bogart’s tough presence. I preferred Alan Ladd when playing a detective. The compact Ladd was much more my size.

  I looked at myself in the large mirror I had propped up against the wall and decided I still cut a pretty dashing figure. I figured I looked like a worthy recipient of the Silver Dagger trophy for unraveling the L.A. Mystery Club’s phony murder.

  I was dressed in a tan trench coat and a gray hat. The props helped to compensate for my small frame and delicate features . . . two curses for someone who secretly aspired to be a 1930s hardboiled detective. Of course, my being a Japanese-American from Hawaii is also an impediment to this aspiration. The only Asian detectives I remember from old movies were Warner Olan doing his Charlie Chan bit or Peter Lorre doing an incredibly campy Mister Moto. At least Charlie Chan was from Honolulu, although no body I’ve ever met from Hawaii actually looked and talked like Warner Olan did.

  My face is round with a slightly squared jaw. My eyes are more deeply set than the Asian stereotype, but many Asians, particularly in Japan or Southeast Asia, have deep set eyes. I have the epicanthic fold that characterizes Asians everywhere, and of course my eye color is deep brown and I have black hair.

  The tan Burberry trench coat was a good fit, but somehow the felt fedora just didn’t look right. I pulled it low over my eyes, but that just blocked my vision. I pulled it off and tried placing it on my head at a rakish angle, but a shock of black hair peeked out and the effect was just goofy. I put it squarely on my head and tried bending down the brim a little. Then I sighed. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best of all the variations I had tried. I guess I just wasn’t used to seeing myself in a hat.

  I walked over and took off the trench coat. It was a hot August in Los Angeles, and hats and trench coats were definitely not the attire that suited the weather, especially in an old office building with marginal air-conditioning. I hung the trench coat on the old clothes rack that stood in the corner of the office and surveyed my temporary kingdom.

  A large wooden desk with many dings and dents dominated the room. Old oak file cabinets stood against the wall next to the propped-up mirror. Four pictures were hung on the walls: photos of Bogart, Alan Ladd, and Cagney, plus a poster for The Maltese Falcon. The next wall had two windows that looked down on Second Street. In reverse order, I could see the back of gilt letters that said KENDO DETECTIVE AGENCY—KEN TANAKA, DET. On both windows. The letters were the most expensive things in the room.

  The furniture was all borrowed or rented. My girlfriend Mariko Kosaka had supplied most of it through one of the little theater groups she belonged to. Theater props were most appropriate because I was setting up a murder as theater.

  I’d gone all out for the mystery I was creating. Besides renting a cheap office in Little Tokyo, I had business cards printed up, installed a phone, and had the proper signs put up in the lobby and on the windows.

  My plan was to have the members of the mystery club come to the office to kick off the mystery. The office would act as sort of a hub to the action, and members of the club would have to go to various parts of Little Tokyo to unearth clues.

  I had bought several props with a Japanese motif, and was in the midst of evolving a complicated mystery involving a stolen jade statue of supposedly priceless value (the Jade Penguin), a variety of cryptic clues scattered around Little Tokyo, and (of course) a couple of murders
. Some members of the club would play the parts of villains or stooges, and the other members of the club would be expected to follow the trail of clues to unravel the puzzle and solve the “crime.”

  Usually these things were put together by a committee, but except for Mariko’s help I had put this one together pretty much on my own. I’d noticed that the mysteries put together by committees were prone to leaks as members of the committee couldn’t resist dropping cryptic hints to friends. It was as bad as Congress or some other notorious gathering of blabbermouths.

  Doing things on my own precluded the chance for leaks, but it meant endless hours putting things together for the mystery to come off right. That meant either a compulsive personality or a lot of time on my hands. I confess to being doubly guilty.

  Like many in America, I found myself starting over while on the other side of forty. A failed marriage, a frustrating job and a pink slip as part of the process euphemistically known as “corporate downsizing” had all added up to plenty of time to plan fake murder mysteries. Mariko had given me as much help as possible, but between work, little theater, and AA meetings, she really didn’t have much time to put into the effort.

  I stepped away from the clothes rack and took the hat off. With the flick of a wrist, I sent it sailing toward the hat rack. At the last second the unruly swatch of felt veered to one side and fell to the floor, refusing to hang itself on the coat rack peg I was aiming for. Thinking the hat was an apt metaphor for the way my life was going, I walked over and hung it on the rack.

  I sat down behind the desk and placed a paper sack before me. I reached in, took out a pair of disposable chopsticks, and split them in two with a practiced hand. In good Japanese restaurants they give you polished disposable chopsticks, and you don’t have to rub them together to get rid of the small splinters. You’re supposed to know the difference, and not automatically rub chopsticks together. After glancing at these chopsticks, I rubbed them together vigorously.