Brett Halliday - Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

Mr. Porter, wondering where the catch was, sat down at a desk and eyed Morita with wary speculation. God knew, he’d had little enough stomach for this foreign venture. And so much less, now, with John dead. He rubbed his neck. Funny how it ached at the mere thought of that sinister warning. Reaching for pad and pen, he jotted some figures. For a moment he studied them, then turned back to Morita.

“What d’ya offer?”

Mr. Morita had left off smiling. His heavy lids half-veiled his eyes. “We sink, yes-s-s, two million yen, ne?” As long as he lived, Peter would never forget Henry Porter’s reaction. Slowly the blood rose in the veins of his thick neck, then spread out to suffuse his entire face. His mouth worked, his eyes bulged. Until finally, a human missile fueled by all of his recent troubles, he shot to his feet.

“Two million yen!” he exploded incredulously. “Two million lousy yen for a brand-new plant that cost eighty? Hell, that’s not even six thousand dollars!” He stepped forward and thrust a pugnacious chin into Mr. Morita’s face. “So that’s your game? A slowdown to soften the old boy up! Blackmail! Two million yen! Get out! Get out of my factory! You hear me? Get the hell out of here! And if I see you around again, I’ll tear you limb from limb!”

And — not too curiously, perhaps, because never before had they seen a rugged American businessman in action — Mr. Morita and his henchmen decamped.

For a moment Mr. Porter glared at the door. Then, turning to the admiring Peter, he said glumly: “Well! I guess we close down for good now.”

Peter Ragland paid two calls that evening: to a toy shop near the inn, and to the home of Tanizaki Hajime. With Mr. Porter, he then dined at the inn on octopus, eels, rice and bean cakes. But, though they are the greatest of delicacies, Mr. Porter firmly rejected the fish eyes. Their accusing stare as they approached his mouth, that adamantine gentleman swore, reminded him too much of Mr. Ko.

At midnight, alone, Peter returned to the factory. Admitting himself with Mr. Porter’s key, he made his way through the darkened store room. He moved quietly to avoid awakening the night watchman. And if this sounds odd, it must be recorded that such are the happy relations between labor and capital in the Land of the Rising Sun that watchmen are provided with beds instead of watch clocks.

Reaching the gloom-shrouded assembly shop, Peter was not too surprised to find a rectangle of light falling through the doorway — it was surmounted by the rolling fire door — from the shipping room. Approaching cautiously, he peeked into the room and saw—

Mr. Ko, busy as a little beaver at a bench populated with dozens of Ko-headed dolls.

Fascinated at the soundness of his own reasoning, Peter watched for several moments. Then, hearing no other sound, he advanced.

“Tachi!” he ordered.

And Ko stood. He stood in an attitude of rigid fright, his queer head slowly turning.

Peter’s mistake, without doubt, was the same that had doomed John Porter: he stepped into the room for a closer view of the operation. Instantly the rolling door crashed down behind him, blocking retreat. But where John Porter perhaps failed to fix his attention on Ko, Peter did not compound the error. Though tempted to glance back, he kept his gaze on the dwarf’s peculiar eyes.

They seemed, but only seemed, to stare directly at him. Wheeling to follow their true drift, Peter found — creeping quietly toward him from out of the shadows — the immensity of Morita Ton. He had only time, as Morita sprang in his famous flash attack, to dodge aside.

Skilled in the art of fall and tumble, Morita scarcely had touched the floor than he bounced, pivoted lightly and, again on all fours, watched warily for a second opening. Peter, orthodox stand-up boxer, wondered how in the devil you countered an attack like that.

Nor was Morita his only peril. Dancing about him, the pint-sized Ko pulled at his clothes, pushed, scratched, tried to trip him. And always Morita was moving in, teeth bared in a fiend’s grin, ready again to spring and grapple; and Peter, carefully side-stepping, well knowing that once those powerful hands gripped him they would never let go.

His one hope was to get the man to his feet. Not for a good three years had Morita Ton wrestled professionally; and there was just the chance his great stomach had softened.

Again Ko rushed at his legs, biting, clawing. As one brushes away a gnat, Peter reached down and fetched the dwarf a cuff that sent him sprawling against the bench. The bench toppled. Dolls cascaded to the floor. A cloud of obscuring yellow dust exploded in Peter’s face.

Pain whipped at his eyes. In transient blindness, he strove to keep his balance. The dust was stifling, tormenting. He fought to suppress a betraying sneeze, failed, and was aware from somewhere close of an answering curse.

The dust settled. Swimming, tear-blurred vision revealed that the table had fallen athwart the crouching Morita. Belching, red-eyed, Morita half-rose to thrust the barrier aside. And his ballooning belly formed a perfect target for Peter’s looping right.

“Umph!” grunted Mr. Morita.

It was Peter’s solid left that finished him.

Morita and Ko were in jail, and Tanizaki was free. But urgent messages were still flashing between Tokyo and Washington when a small group gathered next morning about the tired Peter.

“A lot of things,” he was saying, “didn’t quite add up. John Porter was dead, Tanizaki in jail. So if there’d been a mere personal grudge, as the police seemed to think, everything should have been fine at the plant. Which it wasn’t.”

Inspector Watanabe of the National Rural Police put his hand to his mouth to suppress an embarrassed giggle. But Peter was addressing Garner, the American undercover agent from Yokohama.

“There was the slowdown, the warning to Porter to go home. And yet”—he picked up a doll—“there was no slowdown in this. Why not? Obviously, the same people who were trying to freeze Porter out had a special stake in this one item.”

From his pocket Peter produced another doll, a Danjuro with the traditional actor’s head.

“But that’s not ours!” Mr. Porter protested.

“No, as they say in the trade I did some comparison buying last night. You see, here the two halves are sealed at the stomach. But Porter Play’s are screwed together. So another big question was: why design ’em to open at all? Well, you’ve got your answer right there.”

He nodded toward the work bench where a police assistant was still unloading the dolls: removing first the weights and the small cellophane sachets beneath them; emptying the sachets, and pouring the pure, rough-textured heroin into a container. The stuff was light tan in color.

“Practically China’s trademark,” Gamer said. “They smuggle it in by fishing boat. But Japan’s only a flag stop. There’s damn little market here and the comrades need the hard currency. The trick’s to get it past customs into the States.” He selected a sachet. “About half an ounce in each, I’d say.”

“Worth?—”

Garner shrugged. “Not really much in Japan. Five bucks maybe just now. But when you get it Stateside and cut it with milk sugar and it gets to your junkie at three bucks a capsule—” His hand made a soaring gesture. “Three or four thousand at least!”

Henry Porter sat down heavily. “My God, my God! No wonder our sales kept increasing!”

Peter regarded him soberly. Such a rotten thing, using a child’s toy. And what a black eye for Mr. Porter’s firm. He could wish now he’d torn Morita apart. Still, there were others above Morita — Stateside — the big shots who’d moved in remorselessly on Porter Play’s distribution setup; men whom Federal agents just as remorselessly were already tracking down through orders, invoices, bills of lading. Not until they’d nabbed every last man could Peter file his story.