Deshi. John Donohue
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our heads no. “We had a total of two homicides here last year. Neat and tidy. No big mystery.”
“We mostly work larceny cases,” Ramirez added.
His boss glared at him. “And now I have Mr. Sakura meeting his maker in my nice, quiet community. It looks to me like a professional job.”
“Oh, definitely,” Ramirez commented.
Strakowski grimaced as if in pain, then continued. “And in the few precious moments he has left in this vale of tears, what does the victim do?”
“Scream. Cry?” Art suggested.
“Wet his pants?” said Micky. The rhetorical nature of questions is often lost on cops.
Strakowski lowered his chin and looked at the two detectives from Manhattan wearily. ‘’I’m beginning to understand your lieutenant.” He held out a hand and Ramirez put a manila envelope in it. Then Strakowski slipped out a sheet of paper encased in plastic.
“It appears that Mr. Sakura’s last action on earth was an act of calligraphy. Now what are we to make of that?”
“Pretty cool customer,” Ramirez offered.
His boss shrugged. “Maybe. And anybody that cool is gonna be doing what he does for a good reason.” It looked like Art was about to say something, so Strakowski held up a hand. “Maybe, I thought in my own feeble cop way, maybe this is a message for us. I mean, we’re no experts here in Fort Hamilton. Not like you pros from across the river. But maybe, just maybe it’s a…” he paused in sarcastic emphasis “… clue! But surely I am out of my element. Then I thought, hmmm. Calligraphy. Murder. Exotic Asian culture. Who can help me with this puzzle?” He looked pointedly from Ramirez to Micky to Art. Then he turned to me and stood there, waiting.
“Can I see the paper?” I asked.
It was Sakura’s last piece of calligraphy. A single sheet of fine paper, holding the black swirls of a dead man’s brush strokes.
“This was found on the desk?” I asked. It was a stupid question, but I often sound that way while I think.
“There was a sequence of different sheets lying on the table. This one was on top,” Ramirez answered.
“Ya think he got popped while doing this?” Art asked.
I didn’t respond. I was scanning the record of his calligraphy from his last session. Conjuring a mental image of Sakura in the Shodo hut, totally focused on his art in the last few moments he had to live. I spread the sheets out on a side table and arranged them in the sequence I thought made the most sense. I stepped back and nodded to myself. Ranged the way I had placed them, you could almost see something happen. The first warm-up exercises, the testing of ink consistency and brush conditions, reveal an artist forging a tactile link with his tools. Then Sakura had started a quote from the Platform Scripture. The characters were classic Chinese, like many of the old Zen documents, and they revealed balance and poise and a fidelity to discipline. The characters flow across the page for four lines before something happens.
There’s a break in the esthetic structure. It’s hard to describe. You need to look at a lot of this material to get a sense of the balance and rhythm. And you need to experience something of the focused concentration that facilitates it. The victim and I practiced different arts, but shared a common tradition.
I could see the cops fidgeting around me. I shook my head. “Sure,” I told them. “The murderer broke in while the victim was writing.” I pointed to different sheets as I spoke, so they could follow me. “This was a man of great focus and calm,” I told them. I sighed inwardly. The more we know of crime victims, the greater the sadness. The stronger the outrage. “The brush strokes don’t show any sign of interruption. Until the final moment.” I pointed some features out on the last page. “You can see that the balance of the calligraphy was done in one smooth motion. Even the final sheet. But there’s this slight squiggle at the tail end. If he were shot while doing it, I’m assuming it would make his hand jerk.”
“Micky rolled his eyes.” Uh, yeah, ya could say that.”
“And it would show up on the paper,” I finished, pointing at the echo of the bullet’s impact laid down in ink for us.
“What’s it say?” Strakowski asked. I hesitated. “You can read it, right?” He looked alarmed.
I shrugged. “Sure. But it’s not that simple.” Art looked pleased. Micky wagged his eyebrows at Ramirez.
Strakowski held out his hand for the paper. “How so?”
“We done in here?” I asked. “I could use some air.” It was getting a little thick in the hut. It may have been my imagination, but I thought that the smell of blood was getting stronger.
We ambled out toward the front of the house. Behind us, the technicians gleefully scurried back into the hut. Strakowski eventually turned and leaned his rump against a police cruiser, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at me, then at the younger cop.
“Look, Burke,” Ramirez began, and licked his lips. “We know what we’re looking for, but we really don’t know what we’re looking for. Know what I mean? And the fact that it’s in Japanese doesn’t help.”
“I understand, Ramirez, but look, some of this stuff is pretty obscure. There have to be people more qualified than me to do this.”
I wasn’t trying to be humble. When I started my studies years ago, I thought of myself as an academic with an interest in the martial arts. Then I met Yamashita. Now I’ve come to the awareness that I’m a martial artist with some advanced academic credentials.
“We know there are people more qualified, Burke,” the Lieutenant groused. “We even spoke to one.”
The younger cop eyed me. “You know a guy at Columbia named Cook? James Cook.”
I got a mental image of Cook: tall, with long thin hair brushed back from a wide forehead. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a bowtie. We had crossed paths in grad school. Mentally, he never really left. I went for different lessons in Yamashita’s dojo.
“The Fujitsu Professor of Asian Studies,” I answered. “Quite the expert.”
Strakowski raised his eyebrows. “So he told us. Very impressed with himself.”
“He sniffs a lot,” Ramirez added.
I thought Cook was an insufferable snob, but I feel that way about a good many academics. So I kept quiet.
“Professor Cook, and here I’m quoting,” the Lieutenant said, “had neither the time nor the inclination to assist us in our… what did he call it Ramirez?”
“Colorful.”
“… colorful little problem.”
Ramirez looked at me significantly. “The guy’s an asshole,” he murmured.
“So it was our thought, since you appear to know something about things Asian, that we bring you on as a consultant,” Strakowski concluded.
I nodded in understanding.
“You read Japanese,” Ramirez said, tallying off the points on his fingers. “You’re familiar with the history and culture. You’ve worked with a police investigation before…”
“And I’m not an asshole,” I added helpfully.
Strakowski gave me a look and pushed himself off the car with a grunt “That,” he said, “remains to be seen.”
“What’s the calligraphy say?” Ramirez persisted.
I looked at them. “There’s a Japanese tradition about leaving a poem or a piece of calligraphy behind when you’re dying. It’s supposed to be a life statement. So these things are pretty elliptical.” I could tell from the looks I was getting that my explanation was not helping any.
“OK,”