Sara Paretsky - Windy City Blues

“She’s a retriever,” I said.

Later, at the police station, we looked at the negatives in the envelope Po had retrieved from the water. They showed a picture of the man in the ski mask looking on with intense, brooding eyes while Santa Claus talked to his little boy. No wonder Cinda found him worth photographing.

“He’s a cocaine dealer,” Sergeant McGonnigal explained to me. “He jumped a ten-million-dollar bail. No wonder he didn’t want any photographs of him circulating around. We’re holding him for murder this time.”

A uniformed man brought Jonathan into McGonnigal’s office. The sergeant cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Looks like your dog saved your hide, Mr. Michaels.”

Po, who had been lying at my feet, wrapped in a police horse blanket, gave a bark of pleasure. She staggered to her feet, trailing the blanket, and walked stiffly over to Jonathan, tail wagging.

I explained our adventure to him, and what a heroine the dog had been. “What about that empty film container I gave you this afternoon, Sergeant?”

Apparently Cinda had brought that with her to her rendezvous, not knowing how dangerous her customer was. When he realized it was empty, he’d flung it aside and attacked Cinda. “We got a complete confession,” McGonnigal said. “He was so rattled by the sight of the dog with the envelope full of negatives in her mouth that he completely lost his nerve. I know he’s got good lawyers-one of them’s your friend Oldham-but I hope we have enough to convince a judge not to set bail.”

Jonathan was on his knees fondling the dog and talking to her. He looked over his shoulder at McGonnigal. “I’m sure Oldham ’s relieved that you caught the right man-a murderer who can afford to jump a ten-million-dollar bail is a much better client than one who can hardly keep a retriever in dog food.” He turned back to the dog. “But we’ll blow our savings on a steak; you get the steak and I’ll eat Butcher’s Blend tonight, Miss Three-Dot Po of Blackstone, People’s Heroine, and winner of the Croix de Chien for valor.” Po panted happily and licked his face.

MR. AND MRS. Takamoku were a quiet, hardworking couple. Although they had lived in Chicago since the 1940s, when they were relocated from an Arizona detention camp, they spoke only halting English, Occasionally I ran into Mrs. Takamoku in the foyer of the old three-flat we both lived in on Belmont, or at the corner grocery store. We would exchange a few stilted sentences. She knew I lived alone in my third-floor apartment, and she worried about it, although her manners were too perfect for her to come right out and tell me to get myself a husband.

As time passed, I learned about her son, Akira, and her daughter, Yoshio, both professionals living on the West Coast. I always inquired after them, which pleased her.

With great difficulty I got her to understand that I was a private detective. This troubled her; she often wanted to know if I was doing something dangerous, and would shake her head and frown as she asked. I didn’t see Mr. Takamoku often. He worked for a printer and usually left long before me in the morning.

Unlike the De Paul students who formed an ever-changing collage on the second floor, the Takamokus did little entertaining, or at least little noisy entertaining. Every Sunday afternoon a procession of Asians came to their apartment, spent a quiet afternoon, and left. One or more Caucasians would join them, incongruous by their height and color. After a while, I recognized the regulars: a tall, bearded white man, and six or seven Japanese and Koreans.

One Sunday evening in late November I was eating sushi and drinking sake in a storefront restaurant on Halsted. The Takamokus came in as I was finishing my first little pot of sake. I smiled and waved at them, and watched with idle amusement as they conferred earnestly, darting glances at me. While they argued, a waitress brought them bowls of noodles and a plate of sushi; they were clearly regular customers with regular tastes.

At last, Mr. Takamoku came over to my table. I invited him and his wife to join me.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said in an agony of embarrassment. “We only have question for you, not to disturb you.”

“You’re not disturbing me. What do you want to know?”

“You are familiar with American customs.” That was a statement, not a question. I nodded, wondering what was coming.

“When a guest behaves badly in the house, what does an American do?”

I gave him my full attention. I had no idea what he was asking, but he would never have brought it up just to be frivolous.

“It depends,” I said carefully. “Did they break up your sofa or spill tea?”

Mr. Takamoku looked at me steadily, fishing for a cigarette. Then he shook his head, slowly. “Not as much as breaking furniture. Not as little as tea on sofa. In between.”

“I’d give him a second chance.”

A slight crease erased itself from Mr. Takamoku’s forehead. “A second chance. A very good idea. A second chance.”

He went back to his wife and ate his noodles with the noisy appreciation that showed good Japanese manners. I had another pot of sake and finished about the same time as the Takamokus; we left the restaurant together. I topped them by a good five inches and perhaps twenty pounds, so I slowed my pace to a crawl to keep step with them.

Mrs. Takamoku smiled. “You are familiar with go?” she asked, giggling nervously.

“I’m not sure,” I said cautiously, wondering if they wanted me to conjugate an intransitive irregular verb.

“It’s a game. You have time to stop and see?”

“Sure,” I agreed, just as Mr. Takamoku broke in with vigorous objections.

I couldn’t tell whether he didn’t want to inconvenience me or didn’t want me intruding. However, Mrs. Takamoku insisted, so I stopped at the first floor and went into the apartment with her.

The living room was almost bare. The lack of furniture drew the eye to a beautiful Japanese doll on a stand in one corner, with a bowl of dried flowers in front of her. The only other furnishings were six little tables in a row. They were quite thick and stood low on carved wooden legs. Their tops, about eighteen inches square, were crisscrossed with black lines which formed dozens of little squares. Two covered wooden bowls stood on each table.

“Go-ban,” Mrs. Takamoku said, pointing to one of the tables.

I shook my head in incomprehension.

Mr. Takamoku picked up a covered bowl. It was filled with smooth white disks, the size of nickels but much thicker. I held one up and saw beautiful shades and shadows in it.

“Clamshell,” Mr. Takamoku said. “They cut, then polish.” He picked up a second bowl, filled with black disks. “Slate.”

He knelt on a cushion in front of one of the tables and rapidly placed black and white disks on intersections of the lines. A pattern emerged.

“This is go. Black play, then white, then black, then white. Each try to make territory, to make eyes.” He showed me an “eye”-a clear space surrounded by black stones. “White cannot play here. Black safe. Now white must play someplace else.”

“I see.” I didn’t really, but I didn’t think it mattered.

“This afternoon, someone knock stones from table, turn upside down, and scrape with knife.”

“This table?” I asked, tapping the one he was playing on.

“Yes.” He swept the stones off swiftly but carefully, and put them in their little pots. He turned the board over. In the middle was a hole, carved and sanded. The wood was very thick-I suppose the hole gave it resonance.

I knelt beside him and looked. I was probably thirty years younger, but I couldn’t tuck my knees under me with his grace and ease: I sat cross-legged. A faint scratch marred the sanded bottom.