Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

Hoshi Taiku is a short middle-aged man with a round face that complements his soft belly. From his seated position, looking up, Goldstein appears gigantic and menacing. Curiously, this effect remains undiminished when Goldstein draws his own chair close, then settles down with an appreciative sigh.

“My back,” he explains. “When I gotta stand around, it goes into spasm. I don’t know, maybe I should get myself one of those supports. I mean, standing around is all I ever fuckin’ do.” He removes a cheap ballpoint pen, a notebook, and a small tape recorder from his jacket pocket and sets them on the table.

“First thing I gotta do is explain your rights. Understand?”

Taiku does not reply. Instead, his gaze shifts to the wall on the other side of the room, a small act of defiance which elicits a triumphant smile from Goldstein. Goldstein has bet Sergeant Alex Mowrey $25 that Taiku will crack before 1 o’clock in the afternoon. It is now 10:30 in the morning.

Goldstein lays his hand on Hoshi’s shoulder, and notes a barely detectable shudder run along the man’s spine. “Hoshi, listen to me. You chatted up the desk clerk, the bartender in the Tiger Lounge, and a barmaid named Clara. I know you know how to speak English, so please don’t start me off with bullshit. It’s inconsiderate.”

After a moment, Hoshi bows, a short nod that Goldstein returns.

“Okay, like I already said, you got certain rights which I will now carefully enumerate. You don’t have to speak to me at all if you don’t want to, plus you can call a lawyer whenever you like. In fact, if you’re broke, which I doubt very much, the court will appoint a lawyer to represent you. But the main thing, which you should take into your heart, is that whatever you say here is on the record. Even though you haven’t been arrested and you might never be. You got it so far?”

Goldstein acknowledges a second bow with a squeeze of Taiku’s bony shoulder, then releases his grip, leans back in the chair, and scratches his head. In contrast to his body, Goldstein’s oval skull is very small and rises to a definite point in the back, a sad truth made all the more apparent by a hairline the stops an inch or so above his ears.

“So it’s up to you, Hoshi,” he finally declares. “What you’re gonna do and all. You say the word, tell me you don’t wanna clear this up, I’ll put you under arrest, and that’ll be that.”

“No lawyer.” Despite a prodigious effort, the words come out, “‘No roy-uh.’”

“Okay, then you gotta sign this.” Goldstein takes a standard Miranda waiver from the inside pocket of his jacket, then spreads it on the table as if unrolling a precious scroll. “Right here, Yoshi. Right on the dotted line.”

A moment later, after Yoshi signs, a knock on the door precedes the entrance of Detective Vera Katakura.

“The lieutenant wants you in his office.”

“Now?” Goldstein is incredulous.

“Not now, Morris. Ten minutes ago.”

When he returns a few minutes later, Hoshi Taiku, though unattended, is sitting exactly as Goldstein left him, has not, in fact, moved at all.

“I’m gonna be a while,” the detective explains. “I gotta take you downstairs. Stand up.”

Re-cuffed, Hoshi is led across the squad room to a narrow stairway at the rear of the building, then down two flights to the holding cells in the basement.

“What you got here, Morrie?” Patrolman Brian O’Boyle asks when Goldstein approaches his desk. O’Boyle has been working lockup since he damaged his knee chasing a suspect ten years before. He sits with his feet on his desk, perusing a worn copy of Penthouse magazine.

“Gotta stash him for a while,” Goldstein explains. He lays his service automatic on O’Boyle’s desk, then grabs a set of keys. “Don’t get up.”

Goldstein leads Taiku through a locked door, then down a corridor to a pair of cells. The cells are constructed of steel bars, two cages side-by-side.

“Yo, Detective Goldstein, wha’chu doin’? You bringin’ me some candy?”

“That you, Speedo Brown? Again?”

“Yeah. Ah’m real popular these days.”

Taiku’s arm tightens beneath Goldstein’s grip and his steps shorten. Speedo Brown is every civilian’s nightmare, a bulked-up black giant with a prison-hard glare that overwhelms his bantering tone.

“Put your eyes back in your head, Speedo. I’m stashin’ Hoshi outta reach.”

“That the bitch cell,” Speedo protests as Goldstein unlocks the cell adjoining his. “Can’t put no man in the bitch cell lessen he a bitch. You a bitch, man? You some kinda Chinatown bitch? You Miss Saigon?”

Goldstein pushes Taiku into the cell, locks the door, then turns to leave. “C’mon, baby,” he hears Speedo coo as he walks off, “bring it on over here. Let Speedo bus’ yo cherry.”

Hoshi Taiku perches on the edge of a narrow shelf bolted to the wall at the rear of his cell. He stares out through the bars, his face composed as he studiously ignores the taunts of Speedo Brown. But he cannot compose his thoughts. He has disgraced his family and betrayed his nation. In the ordinary course of events, he would already have lost everything there is to lose. But not here in this land of barbarians. No, in the land of the barbarians there is a good deal more to lose, as Speedo Brown’s words make clear.

“You come to Rikers Island, ahm gonna own yo sorry ass. I got friends in Rikers, git you put up in my cell. You be shavin’ yo legs by sunrise.”

Taiku thinks of home, of Kyoto, of his wife and children. If he is arrested, they will be shunned by their neighbors, his disgrace falling on them as surely as if they’d committed the act themselves. But he has not been arrested, has not, in fact, even been questioned, a state of affairs he finds unfathomable. In Japan, in Kyoto, he would already have done what is expected of anyone arrested for a crime. He would have confessed, then formally apologized for upsetting the harmony of Japanese society. That was what you did when you were taken into custody: You accepted your unworthiness, took it upon yourself, the consequences falling across your shoulders like a yoke.

But he is not at home, he reminds himself for the second time, and there are decisions to make, and make soon. Should he speak to the detective? If so, what should he say? Is it dishonorable to lie to the barbarians who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Who occupied Japan? Who humiliated the emperor? Taiku no longer believes that Goldstein will hurt him, not physically. That’s because Goldstein has made the nature of his true threat absolutely clear: Talk or face immediate arrest and Speedo Brown, or someone just like him. Well, talk is one thing, truth another…

Taiku’s thoughts are interrupted by the appearance of Patrolman O’Boyle. He is walking along the hallway, a prisoner in tow, a female prisoner.

“Up ya go, Taiku,” O’Boyle orders. “You’re movin’.”

“Thank you, Lord,” Speedo Brown cries.

O’Boyle cuffs his prisoner to the bars of Taiku’s cell, then unlocks the door and motions Taiku forward. Already on his feet, Taiku finds that his legs do not respond to his will, that his heart has dropped into his feet, that he has a pressing need to immediately void his bladder. He has never known such fear, has not, prior to this moment, known that human beings had the capacity to be this afraid.

“You wanna hustle it up, Tojo? I don’t got all day.”

Again, Taiku wills himself to move, again he fails.

“Lemme put it this way, Taiku. If I gotta call in backup and extract you from that cell, I’m gonna carve your little Jap ass into sushi. You comprende ? ”

Taiku’s mouth curls into a little circle, then he finally speaks, “Man threaten me.”