CHAPTER 70
Thomas woke the moment he hit the chill water, panic opening his eyes. His legs were drawn up to his chest and strapped in place with silver duct tape, his wrists lashed together behind him.
It took a moment for it to all come back to him.
He had been out for a walk to think, to get a little space. He had returned to the ryokan, letting himself in because Jim and Kumi were out. The woman who ran the place said there had been a gaijin—a foreigner—snooping about. Thomas had gone to his room, but someone had been already inside, waiting. He had been hit from behind, hard enough to plunge him into unconsciousness . . .
The shock and cold of the water made him cry out, a wordless gasp of terror as he fought to understand what was happening.
He was inside, in a tiled room with a sink and a central floor drain, and he had been dumped fully clothed into an o-furo, the square tub common to traditional Japanese bathrooms. He writhed and splashed as best he could, but he was secured with the duct tape and could barely move, let alone get out.
Standing over him, drenched and breathless from the exertion of getting him into the bath, was Parks. He was pointing that replica short sword squarely at Thomas’s chest.
“Hi,” he said. “You’ve been out for a while. Don’t know my own strength.”
He sounded chatty, even friendly, but there was an edge to the remarks, as if he were only just resisting to the urge to slash the sword across his face.
“What the hell is this?” said Thomas. “Get me out of here.”
“The Japanese have lots to teach us about personal hygiene, don’t you think?”
“This is absurd,” said Thomas, sitting on the bottom of the tub like an Egyptian cube statue while his captor loomed over him. He felt stupid and powerless. He blinked and swallowed. His mouth was dry, his stomach empty to the point of nausea, and his vision blurry. The blinking helped. He tried, stupidly, to rub his eyes, and Parks chuckled.
“Come on,” said Thomas, his voice echoing flatly in the tiled room. “You have the weapon. Get me out of here.”
“Right,” said Parks, not moving. “Good idea. Especially since I’m so very stupid.”
He leaned forward and Thomas flinched back, sure Parks would stab him with that purposeful blade, but he only chuckled again.
“The sword,” Parks said, as if just noticing it in his hand. “It has a certain style, don’t you think? And firearms are so hard to get in Japan, you know. Satoh had a gun. You wanna see it?”
He reached behind him and produced a small black automatic, casually pointing it at Thomas’s face.
“Neat, isn’t it?” he said. “Heavier than it looks. He didn’t take it to Italy because it would be difficult to get it through airport security, and he didn’t know that the paranoid loser brother of another paranoid loser would try to gut him like a fish.”
The core accusation took a moment to register in Thomas’s mind, and another moment for the extent of his danger to strike home.
“You think I killed Satoh?” he said.
“I gotta say, I was surprised,” said Parks. “Didn’t think you had it in you. Didn’t think old Satoh would give you the option. The man had skills, you know?”
“This is a mistake,” said Thomas. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Italian police think you did,” said Parks.
“They are wrong,” said Thomas, more urgently. “The man who killed Satoh died in Bari. He had tracked me there. We fought on the walls of the castle and he fell.”
“Another victim, huh?” said Parks, mock impressed. “Quite the serial killer, aren’t you. And let’s not forget old Monsignor Pietro. Wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to know, huh?”
“This is crazy,” said Thomas. “I found Satoh dead. I found Pietro dying. The killer was still around both times. The second time he tried to kill me too.”
“But you survived where a black belt martial artist didn’t,” said Parks. “Sounds plausible, English teachers being famed for their survival skills. And then you killed the guy who did it on some castle in . . . ?”
“Bari,” said Thomas. His mouth was dry. He tried flexing his wrists, but the tape wouldn’t budge and the slightest movement made giveaway ripples. He thought the water was warmer than it had been.
“Bari,” said Parks. “Right.”
He stood up and walked away for a moment, turning his back, confident Thomas couldn’t move.
“So here’s what we do now,” he announced. “We talk, or rather, you do.”
“About what?”
“You can start by talking about this.”
Carefully he laid something down on the tabletop, stood up, and watched Thomas’s eyes. It was the silver votive shaped like a fish.
“What am I supposed to say about that?” said Thomas.
“Where did you get it? Where did it come from?”
“I didn’t get it,” said Thomas, irritated. “As you well know. It was in Ed’s room in Chicago. I had barely noticed it before you came in and stole it. The next time I saw it was when the police showed it to me in Italy, among Satoh’s things. How did you get it back?”
“This is a different one,” he said. “You will have noticed by now that the water you are sitting in is getting warmer. Marvelous things, o-furo, don’t you think? It has a heater built right into the bath, gas in this case. Leave it on long enough and the water will boil. The controls are, of course, well outside your reach. So, tell me about Ed’s silver fish. Where did it come from? Originally. Where was it made and when?”
“How the hell should I know?” said Thomas. He could hear the gas heater now, feel the water warming quickly all around him. “You aren’t listening to me. I know nothing about that thing. NOTHING. All I know is that Ed was interested in religious images of fish with oversized fins. I heard there was supposed to be a silver cross with one of those fish on it. Satoh told me about it, but I was skeptical. Now there’s talk of a similar cross here in a grave about eight hundred years too early. Does it sound like an odd coincidence? Sure, but that’s about as far as my insight goes. Okay? I don’t know anything about it. Now how about you take this Goddamned tape off my wrists?”
He was playing up the righteous indignation a little, watching Parks’s response, but his panic was showing through. The water was already hand hot and getting warmer by the moment.
“This one was bought in Bilbao, Spain,” Parks said suddenly, looking at the fish. “It is silver.”
“So why are you asking, if you already know where they come from?” Thomas demanded, shifting, trying to stir the water so that the heat that was building at the bottom would dissipate. He was starting to sweat.
“I didn’t say where it came from. I said where it was bought. It’s old and it’s not from Spain. I think it was made in Mexico about three hundred years ago, and that it traveled to Spain as a lot of silver did in trade. What do you think of that?”
He was probing, trying to trigger a response. Thomas was getting desperate.
“I don’t think anything of it,” he said. “It means nothing to me. It came from Mexico? Oh. How interesting. Can I go now?”
The water was starting to steam.
“You know that the Smithsonian was sent a strange fish scale found in Florida in 1949? Like a coelacanth scale?”
Thomas had the fleeting idea that Parks was insane.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t know about that.”
“Your brother did,” said Parks, leaning in close, the pistol lolling casually from his hand. “Where did he die?”
“The Philippines,” said Thomas. It was only later that he realized he had finally given Parks something he didn’t already know. The man’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped a little.
“The Philippines,” he repeated in an awed whisper. “Where in the Philippines?”
“I don’t know,” said Thomas.
Parks reached forward and dunked him hard so that his feet rocked up in front of him. His head tipped back under the scalding water, and through the pain came the sudden surety that if Parks didn’t right him soon, he would drown.
He was dragged back into a sitting position and gasped the cool air. His skin was bright pink. A few more minutes and he would start to burn.
“That’s all they told me,” said Thomas. “Leave me in here as long as you like. That’s all you’ll get: the Philippines. For God’s sake, get me out . . .”
But Parks was lost in thought, whispering “The Philippines” to himself like some odd, quizzical mantra. He seemed to have forgotten Thomas entirely, and when he did finally remember his presence Thomas found himself wishing to be ignored.
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” Parks said with something like wonder. “All that poking around in Italy, and you still know nothing. Satoh said you would be useful, but . . .”
He shook his head, like a parent whose child has disappointed him one time too many. Then he raised the pistol again and aimed at Thomas’s face.