I suppose it is indicative of something or other that I first met Yoshi O’Brian as the result of answering a Help Wanted ad found in one of the local free circulars (the cheapest venue available to potential employers Wanting Help).  Five years beyond a four year program at the state university had left me increasingly desperate to begin living the spiritually fulfilling life of a modestly successful writer that I had been convinced an English degree in hand, determination in heart, and a splash of moxy would earn me; as the balance of my adult years turned more from “student” status to “post-student” status, I became more susceptible to such advertisements as the following:

“WRITER WANTED: Earnest, hard-working, intelligent Youth prepared to face Truth fearlessly.  Must be Well Groomed and Open Minded.  No catholics need apply.  Clear Enunciation while Speaking a Must.  Call 503-281-3731 for Appointment.”

I did not respond immediately to the ad, in fact it at first did not even occur to me to do so.  While I had often been complimented on my penmanship and more than once on my grooming, the first thing that struck me about the ad was the third statement: it was not the naked sectarianism so out of place with 21st century American public values, it was the fact that while the author had been so careful to capitalize other words not normally so treated in this day and age, this word was being treated as a regular noun.  Though it left me unsatisfied, I decided to believe that it was merely a typo caused by the sloppy and most likely drunk printer employed by the publishers of the free circular.  Putting the mystery to this uneasy bed allowed my mind to turn to the possibility of interview for the position of a Fearless Facer of Truth.

Thus late in the afternoon of a stifling hot summer Friday I stepped from the number 12 bus to stare with growing disappointment at the characterless block of offices squatting on the curb of the less impressive stretch of Barbur Boulevard that had been described to me over the phone by the man’s voice that answered the advertized phone number.  That voice had been smooth, deep, and rich, and had left me with an unexplained glow of happy expectation; in the few moments that it took to set up a day and time for an interview and to provide the address of this building, a voice that confident and smooth did not deserve to reside within the Stalinist-inspired architecture and grimy windows of this final stop for those local businesses before filing Chapter 7 proceedings.  I made my way to the lobby and mashed the appropriate call button, informatively labeled “217A”, and announced my presence to be buzzed in.

Please keep in mind that up to this point I still had no idea what the actual business conducted by the supple voice in Suite 217A, Holyrood Office Complex, Barbur Blvd, Portland, Oregon 97212 was.  Apparently neither did Holyrood’s property management team, who must have felt that personalizing either call buttons or office doors with anything other than alphanumeric digits was simply not worth the cost and effort to keep current.  Secretly, I hoped that this was a sleeper branch office for a multinational publishing giant; realistically, I expected that this interview was a path to yet another dead-end job I would leave before the year was out; desperately, I needed this job to be one that provided enough free time and money for me to continue my own pursuits, without being too taxing to my body or pride. The details about what service or product the particular industry headquartered in Suite 217 provided the paying public was of little consequence to me.

Gaining the top of the stairs and an entirely hotter layer of air on the second floor, I found the closed door to Suite 217A at the end of a deserted hall and gave the pressboard a few knuckle raps.  A voice (the unfiltered live version of the telephonic dispenser of interview times) bid me enter and I did so, so by winning my way into the thirty-five by fifty foot space that served as the offices of A Closed Case Private Investigative Services, LLC.

“I added the ‘A’ to the name ‘Closed Case’ so I would be listed first in the phone book,” Yoshi would explain to me much later during one of our more memorable marathon sessions.  “Corners the market of the ‘Needs a PI But Too Lazy To Scroll Through The Whole Phone Book’ demographic, d’ye see…it may not be a robust demographic, but at least I’ve got that one sewn up in the bag.”

“But most people these days find services they need through Google,” I had put in.  “And Google results are not alphabetical.”  I wasn’t quite clear on what Google results were based on, but was reasonably sure it wasn’t the order of the alphabet.

Yoshi had characteristically ignored any contribution I made to the feast and flow of conversation and had gone on to explain, based on his admittedly unique interpretation of Jungian archetypes and personas, how the name “Closed Case” subconsciously inspired confidence in prospective clients; but there is time enough later in this tale for relating those conversations.  For now, I am describing my first meeting with the man who would become such a large and unwelcome part of my life.

The most vivid impression I have of that moment, a moment that only years later would I realize the historical importance of, was the fug of warm hot dog that hung thickly in the close atmosphere; it was not an unpleasant scent, and for some reason my brain made some kind of logical connection between the aroma of processed meats and the rotund, sun-browned, middle-aged little man who had risen from his seat at my entrance to extend a welcoming hand across his desk.  A professional-grade grin flashed even brighter from the contrast of his five o’clock shadow as he stated: “Yoshi O’Brian, proprietor.  And you, I believe, are Nicholas?”

His name fit the scene in the same inexplicable way as the aroma of frankfurter, and had on my spirit an overall calming effect, which I sorely needed just then.  For my hopes of a secure and well-paid position were taking some major blows recently: the address, the state of the building and now the office, the fact that the job was actually with a private investigation agency…I mean, who ever heard of those still making any money?  I was beginning to wonder if this lark wasn’t just harming my chances at searching a safe, standard job with steady hours and a steady paycheck.

But there was something about Yoshi that inspired confidence; not just in me, but in what I don’t mind describing as his hapless clients.  It was a combination of that radio announcer-quality voice, his squat and broad build that emitted an aura of grounded permanence, and his baldly genuine approach to every event—an attitude that can also be described as boorish and tactless, but never left his acquaintances in doubt as to his intentions and opinions.  It is the finest skill a confidence trickster can possess (though I do not mean to imply that Yoshi would ever use his talents to such an end).

“ ‘Nick’ is just fine, sir,” I replied to his query, but he was having none of that.

“No, no, my boy.  I do not doubt that your offer is based purely on the good intention of conveniencing me with a shorter name, but your parents chose to provide you with the full appellation for a reason, and I will not be a party to disrespecting their wishes.  I shall not begrudge you the extra syllables.”

I felt that I had no choice but to agree, and he was gracious enough to offer me a chair.  Once we were both settled I offered a portfolio of some of my better pieces as he had requested over the phone, and sat quietly watching him read, which he did quickly and while maintaining a soft smile which never faded nor grew.  After at least a full five minutes he placed aside the stack of printed pages (he had only made it through half) and sat regarding me across the desk with the same benevolent expression.  I became uncomfortable with the silent examination but willed myself to remain still, to make neither movement nor sound, determined that I would not display my growing unease with this entire situation.  It must have been some sort of test, for at last he slapped the desk with an open palm and crowed aloud.  “Aha!  A lad who possesses a gift even more valuable than his extensive writing skill: that of patience!  I congratulate you, young man; few of your peers are capable of breaking their addiction to the persistent computerized babble of cell phones and i-Pods to allow a few minutes of that ‘element in which great things fashion themselves’, as a man once described it.”

It was an example of Yoshi’s remarkable character that he was able to deliver this judgment without the slightest trace of condescension, and I almost found myself thanking him for such a ridiculous comparison, but didn’t get the chance.  Moving with the suddenness of a duck diving for a fast sinking morsel, the round little man vanished behind the desk and popped back up bearing a can of Mountain Dew.  He did not offer me one, or even seem fully aware of his actions as he cracked open the tab and threw back a considerable gulp before eyeing me again.  “I think you are a good fit for the position, Nicholas.  Your writing is sound, your demeanor thoughtful, and your limbs are proportionate, which as the Greeks inform us is the best measure of a man’s potential for success, and I for one have yet to find proof that they were wrong.  But I wonder what you think?  Are you prepared…nay, eager…for the position?”

Truth was my best, and only, avenue at this point.  “I have no idea, sir.  I don’t know what the position actually entails.”

Yoshi frowned and nodded rapidly to himself many times.  “Yes, yes, very just. How can you make a decision with the very few tidbits of information I have allowed you?”  He finished off the soda with one final swig, the motion of which carried through to send the empty can from his lips across the room to a cardboard box where, by the musical rattle, I guessed the aluminum can had joined a considerable number of its fellows.  This done, he leaned back in his chair with his hands thrown behind his head, staring intently at the ceiling.  “As you know, I run a private investigative agency; that is, I am a detective.”

“Yessir.”

“That is, I detect things, for which people pay me money.”

“Yessir.”

“I apologize, I didn’t mean to get technical.  Nor need you worry about such fine details, for the scope of your duties and responsibilities will not include the actual detection of things that need detecting.”

“Well, thank god for that,”  I allowed myself, and instantly regretted it.  I might as well try to get the job, if I had taken such pains to come out here.  But Yoshi did not seem to notice the sarcasm; he simply nodded in agreement.

“Yes, and it would be not only the disappointed clients thanking their gods, but also the profession of detective work, were I to be so irresponsible as to allow you to detect at this stage in your development.  No, the work I have for you is related, but just as vital.  What I require is a person to act as a sounding board for my thoughts; someone to perform all those mundane tasks that an investigation require yet so distract from the serious level of cogitation I constantly require; in those rare but dangerous times that I require it, a trusted set of eyes and ears and a quick pair of fists to watch my back; and finally, but most vitally, this individual must be willing and capable of capturing my continuing adventures in written form for posterity.”

I stared at him, hoping I wasn’t hearing what I thought I was hearing.  “You want a biographer,” I stated, more trying to convince him than asking him, and praying that he would pick up the hint.

Yoshi pursed his lips and steepled his fingers.  “A Boswell to my Johnson?  Yes, but more.  Of course, in these circumstances, a Watson to my Holmes would be more apropos to the nature of my profession, but Watson always struck me as something of a reactionary chump.  I will require spirited assistance of much more initiative and enterprise than the fictional doctor is portrayed to have possessed.”

Don’t say it, don’t say it, I told myself.  If you don’t say it, or even think it, it may just be your sick imagination after all, and not the actual case.  But I said it anyway.  “You placed an advertisement in the Want Ads for a… sidekick?”  There had been no way to stop it.

Yoshi slapped the table with his open palm for the second time in a quarter of an hour.  “By the gods, I knew you were a wordsmith!  ‘Sidekick’… yes, exactly the mot juste!  It would have saved me no end of bother and a decent amount of capital had I simply sent that to the Classified section, if only I thought of it.  Well lad?  Whadd’ya say?  Are you prepared to don the mask of Kato, as it were?”

I stood, drawing myself to my full height and attempting to stare down my nose haughtily, a thing I had neither done myself nor seen done before, so am still not sure how I pulled it off.  “I do not know if you are having a little joke, sir, or if you are legitimately insane.  For my part the outcome is the same: I intend to walk out of that door and place my own ad beneath yours exposing your ridiculous proposal.  If this is, as I suspect, a poor attempt at a joke, know that I find it nothing but a nuisance… I may also consider legal recourse to recover what I have lost in time and money as the butt of your humor.”   I paused here to see if this speech was getting any effect; of course I had no intention of seeking legal counsel and did not have the extra cash available to run my own ad, but I really was furious and meant for him to acknowledge his wrong.

But he did no such thing.  Instead, he regarded me glumly and sucked his teeth for a few minutes.  When I did not make immediately for the door at that point he must have read something into that fact and sighed heavily.  “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I should have realized the kind of personality I would want to hire would of course haggle over his wages.  Fine.  I will offer you another $100 guaranteed in your weekly envelope, and of course any extra I may feel you deserve for going above and beyond.”

One word in this last statement caught my ear: ‘another’.  We had not discussed wages at all, and while nothing would induce me to even consider accepting such a humiliating position as ‘sidekick’, especially to such a second-rate gum-shoe fly-by-night as this, my curiosity caused me to remain in place and ask; “ ‘Another’ $100 in the weekly envelope would bring the sum total to… what?”

He named a figure.  My head snapped back involuntarily and I could not help a snort of surprise, which I believe he interpreted as disgust, for he spread his hands and shrugged.  “That really is all—take it or leave it.  As of even date my coffers are a bit bare; they will soon once more be bursting at the seams with doubloons, but that time is not now, and I can offer you no more.  Please believe that I would if I could.”

Honestly, I had no other plans for the week beyond certain personal hygiene items that could (although probably strictly shouldn’t) wait another few months.  While the proffered wage certainly would not allow me to retire comfortably anytime soon, it was a quite generous starting salary, and not what I would have expected from the tenant of the type of office I now stood in.  Feeling that I might as well ride this train till I got bored or found something better, I told him that I would agree to the position at the last amount named. “Not that I make all of my decisions from mercenary motives, you understand; it is simply that I am generally offered salaries in at least the next higher bracket,” I lied, but he accepted both blatant falsehoods with a solemn wag of his head in commiseration: we apparently both suffered equally from his inability to pay me more money.

I expected there to be some kind of paperwork to fill out, perhaps something for tax purposes, but that was not how Yoshi operated.  After I had agreed and made my feeble fabrications, the round little man leapt to his feet and bustled around the side of the desk.  “Come, come!” he cried.  “We still have fifteen minutes until Happy Hour is over, and in these ruinous times, a penny saved is at least two and a half pennies earned!”

I misread his intentions of a desire to demonstrate a celebratory spirit in welcome, but did not feel comfortable about the prospect of doing shots with a brand new employer—suppose one started in on the tequila, and the new boss saw the truth of what he was getting for an employee?  In my case, especially if Cuervo was involved, he would count himself lucky to merely call the whole thing off without any police involvement.  I attempted to beg off, making excuses about a sick cat, but Yoshi did not appear to regard my participation as optional; indeed, he displayed no enthusiasm for the outing and seemed to approach it as some distasteful chore.  With his mouth set in a line of grim determination, he crushed an honest-to-God felt fedora over his thinning black hair and struggled into a tan overcoat, hustled me out the door and down the stairs. 

A brisk five minutes on the cooling sidewalk delivered us onto the ripped plastic seat covers of bar stools bolted to the floor of the Fireside Tavern, where Yoshi, disregarding any preference I may have had, demanded two glasses of house red.  A little nervous now because this was obviously the wrong tavern or neighborhood where two men would feel comfortable sharing glasses of wine together in public, I kept my eye on a knot of queer-bashing toughs in the corner who were paying us too much attention and tried to pay attention to what Yoshi was saying as we waited for the drinks, but it was obvious that he did not expect an audience.  He was muttering under his breath, and occasionally shaking his head as if in the middle of a most heated argument, and when the bartender finally brought the glasses he snatched his glass like a drowning man reaching for the last straw, and glared at me.  “Now lad, d’ye swear yer fealty to me an’ mine in this enterprise, till we both agree to call it quits?”

I nodded.  “I do.”

He grunted, then dove into his glass, gulping his wine audibly.  I raised my glass to my lips to take an obligatory sip and felt my elbow being shoved upwards, sending the wine cascading down my throat till I must drink or choke to death.  I glanced down as I guzzled and confirmed that it was Yoshi pushing on my elbow, a jet-black eye glittering at me as he drained his own glass.

Despite his head-start, we finished our glasses at the same time, which is something I’m not sure if I’m proud about.  I placed the glass carefully on the bar; the alcohol had not affected me too much, but the acidity of the wine had made my eyes water.  Yoshi was busy scraping his change into his pocket, then he turned to the door, as if I was forgotten.  “Thanks for the drink,” I blurted out.

He stopped in mid stride, already halfway to the door, and turned with an expression of surprise.  “Nae ta, big man,” he said.  “I’ll see you at the office at nine t’morrow.”  And the doorway was flooded with late afternoon daylight, and he was gone.

My own departure would have followed his example, but when I moved to do so a thick voice behind me stopped me with “Hey.”

I turned an enquiring raised eyebrow at the bartender.  He was not impressed.  “You owe for two glasses of wine,” he notified me.

Of course I did.

++++

I should have known better than to show up a half an hour early the next day.  In fact, as the Goodwill-purchased alarm clock wheezed asthmatically at the ungodly hour of six (allowing enough time for shit, shower, shave, and a donut before navigating the tangle of bus lines), I told myself that the man I had met yesterday would have his own version of nine o’clock, and that showing up the customary thirty minutes prior would only reveal me as a chump.  But old habits die hard, and the traditional nervousness before embarking on a new enterprise converged with a complication in the Tri Met schedule to deliver me at the Holyrood Office Complex at exactly 08:17 by my watch, thereby more than early enough to be able to witness my latest employer arrive at ten minutes to ten.

He barely acknowledged my presence in the narrow second floor hallway, grunting at me as he shouldered past to unlock the door I had stood outside of for almost two hours.  I followed him in, at his invitation took the same chair I had occupied in that spartan office the day before, and… how shall I describe the rest of that day?  It was worse than the excruciating boredom; far worse, because the day was filled with Yoshi’s expounding on one subject after the next, a completely random path of mental wanderings enjoyed aloud, with (as far as I could see) absolutely nothing to do with detective work or skills, networking, contractor estimates, or anything else that might have more relevance to my supposed job.  Like every other insufferable bore, Yoshi’s long-winded lectures on everything from the rise and fall of Carthage to the behavior of ant colonies or the current administration’s deplorable policies of taxation were delivered with the assurance of one who will brook no dissent and for whom any opinion that deviated from his own can only be the result of ignorance, malice, or simplicity.  I still have my notes from that first day, the first dozen pages crumpled by the furious slashing of ballpoint as I attempted to capture a lecture on ley lines, which evolved into a comparison of our own government’s current foreign policy with that of the crumbling 18th century Ottoman Porte, and then somehow became (including diagrams and formulae scribbled in the margins) an application of Baye’s probability theorem to predict celebrity romances and break-ups, implying that a persuasive sportsman could make some easy money at this.  But it was soon obvious that my note-taking efforts were futile: the man apparently did not remember even his most impassioned speeches only an hour after making them, and if he had any expectations that I was going to turn his verbal wandering into literature, I decided I could simply write whatever I wanted and ascribe it to him.  If the subject was esoteric enough, the tone pompous enough, and the thread bizarre enough, Yoshi himself would be hard put to deny the material was his, if he would even bother.  But some native instinct told me that I was safe to cheese the note taking, and after a half hour break for lunch at McDonald’s, I returned to my seat without even bothering to open my notebook, and I remain confident that he didn’t even notice.

More out of a morbid curiosity than anything did I return to the headquarters of A Closed Case Private Investigative Services, LLC the next day.  By now I believed I had a much clearer understanding of my situation, and while it did not fill me with satisfaction and hope, it was comforting to know that this was a very temporary gig, and that I just needed to reap as many of the material rewards as possible before the inevitable conclusion.  I was not seriously expected to produce any written work as a Bosworth or a Watson, nor was I truly any Robin assisting a Batman to maintain the balance of Law and Chaos in the city.  I was being paid by a lonely eccentric to act as audience to his spoken stream of consciousness.  His business was obviously falling apart, and I decided that I could certainly sit still with an interested look on my face for the next few days that he was capable of paying me.  When his money ran out I would be finished, with a decent wad of cabbage to show for it, and then I would get serious about finding a real job at last.

So I sat through a second day of what, just a year ago, I would have described as insufferable, and found I could suffer through it just fine.  I allowed the stream of words to flow past me in tranquility, my ear tuned to key phrases or tones of voice that would trigger such responses from myself as “Oh, really?”, “You don’t say!”, or “I’ll bet that hurt!” and other similar harmless tropes that I felt would seal my reputation as an expert listener.  Occasionally I would leave my own private thoughts long enough to check in on his latest topic of conversation, then sink back into my own meditations on grocery lists or whether or not I should get a dog.  And it was during one of these brief trips to the surface that I caught him discoursing on the Selous Scouts.  It was an unusual enough topic for any two people to be discussing at least thirty years and thousands of miles away that I had to clarify.  “I’m sorry,” I said, for the first time that day interrupting him.  “Did you mention the Selous Scouts?”

Yoshi seemed at first completely nonplussed at my interruption, staring at me in no less horror than if the standing lamp had suddenly asked a question.  He pulled himself together and confirmed the topic with a grunt and a wag of his head.  “I did.  I was making a comparison between that rotting baboon meat Selous Scout candidates were forced to eat during their selection trials and the surf-n-turf menu at the Black Orchid on Thursday nights.  My conclusion was that the Selous Scout candidates got the better of the deal.”

“Were you a Selous Scout?”  In asking the question, I peered harder at him, realizing that I still did not have a clear idea of his age.

Yoshi snorted and passed a hand through the air dismissively.  “In the short time you have known me, have I given you any indication that I am a masochistic muscle-head so insecure that I need to pin an osprey to my hat to justify my existence?  If so, I have done you a disservice.  No, I was never one of that merry band of patriotic prats, but I did work with them for a few years.”

This was getting odder.  “In what capacity?”

Yoshi sighed heavily, as if all this was paining him deeply, and he snapped open another can of Red Bull.  “When I was with the RLI, in 3 Commando.  Many years ago.  It really doesn’t matter.”  His sudden dismissive air told me he was finished with the subject, and I relapsed into the passive set of ears that was earning me my paycheck, but kept his words stored carefully in memory.

You see, I knew more about the Selous Scouts and the Rhodesian Light Infantry (or “RLI” as Yoshi had called it) than most of my peers through sheer luck: my last paid writing assignment had been a retrospective article for Soldier of Fortune magazine on the non-Rhodesian mercenaries who had flooded into the RLI during that unhappy region’s “Bush War” that ended in 1980 with the independence of the newly named state of Zimbabwe.  Most of these adventurers, ideologues, or criminals had ended up in 3 Commando, giving the unit the reputation of being the “Rhodesian Foreign Legion”, and my job had been to write a 1,500 word “where are they now” type of thing, complete with old photos if possible.  During the research for that article I had met a former member of the RLI, a man named Ricky Fugent, and during the interview found that he was not the bloodthirsty white supremist I had expected, and that I quite enjoyed his company.  Crippled by colon cancer and confined to a bed by the time I met him, I had visited him a few times since the interview out of a genuine feeling of friendship and enjoyed his stories of a young man more full of curiosity and a thirst for adventure than common sense.  But I had also learned quite a bit more than I expected about a now-forgotten nation and their infamous security forces…and I also had a resource that may give me further insight on my enigmatic employer.
When that second interminable day at last dragged to a close, I found my way home and immediately telephoned Ricky.  He was feeling up to a visit, so after a quick microwaved ramen dinner I made my way to his apartment.

Ricky was not looking well.  His cancer was well advanced, and his doctors had only recently backed away from an extremely aggressive chemo campaign, leaving only a husk of what had once been a tall, vigorous man.  Ricky lay panting in bed, swathed with sheets, his bald head gleaming with sweat, but his grin at my entry to his bedroom was genuine, and his eyes were clear.

“Stinks in here, don’t it?” he asked as I sat in a chair between his bed and a pile of medical equipment.

“It does.  You need to lay off the broccoli.”  I was pretty sure, looking at him, that the man had not had solid food in a few weeks.

Ricky shrugged.  “Open the window, let’s get some breeze in here.”  I did.

We chatted a little, about the atrocities committed by the producers of the latest Star Trek against the memory of Shatner and crew, and the insufferable nature of female relatives.  I gave him my usual tribute: a taster bottle of Dewar’s, and after a quick check that his hospice nurse was nowhere near, I placed a few drops on his tongue.  His pallid face glowed with warmth.  “What’s all this buttering up for, huh?”  he asked.  “You’ve got something on your mind.”

 I nodded.  “It’s about a guy who says he served in the RLI.”  As one of the longest serving stick leaders in the RLI, Ricky had met a significant number of Rhodesian Commandos during his career.  I gave him the best description I could of Yoshi O’Brian.

Ricky’s jaw was set in concentration.  Even before I had finished my somewhat florid description he stopped me with a gesture.  “Big fat gut?  Drinks coffee and tea like it’s his life blood?  Won’t shut the hell up for ten minutes?  He’s a mix of Jap and  Irishman; the combination makes him look like a squat little Sitting Bull?” 

That last comment nearly bowled me over: Yoshi himself had mentioned to me only yesterday that he had once spent time in acting but because of his look could only get roles playing Native American characters.  I told Ricky this, and he grunted in surprise. “well, that settles it,” he said.  “The comment was not my own…the man I’m thinking of told me the very same thing thirty years ago.  Bring me the album.”

Not for the first time I fetched the folio of old photographs from its place in the parlor and waited in anticipation as Ricky slowly scanned through the plastic-covered leaves.  At last he paused for at least a full minute, staring at the photograph in front of him before spinning the folio on his lap and jabbing a bony finger at a grainy 3 x 5.

He did not need to explain himself further.  As I bent over the pastel chromatics of the 1978 photograph capturing an apparently hastily organized group shot of young thugs in bush wear and bandoliers, the glittering black eyes and defiantly squared jaw of Yoshi scowled back at me from the back row of maybe a dozen Rhodesian Light Infantrymen.  The man’s appearance in the photo was breathtaking: he looked exactly the same three decades ago as he had three hours ago when I left him.  I stared in disbelief, trying to mark any signs of change…but even his receding hairline had made no progress since the late 70’s.  The mad suspicion that this was some elaborate and pointless joke in which the photo had just been taken was wiped away by the inclusion in the picture of a much younger and robust Ricky standing just to the left of the group with a FAL assault rifle over one shoulder and a broad, bright grin.  This was a portrait of youth in its prime, risking everything in a largely ignored corner of the world for a now-forgotten cause, and everyone in that photograph who had survived would be sufficiently long in the tooth now that the physical effects of such a life as theirs would show in face and frame; even if not as radically as Ricky’s, one had reason to at least expect a few wrinkles and grey hairs.

I did not get a chance to say any of this to Ricky yet, for as I had been gaping at the photograph he had begun speaking.  “I knew him as Yoshi Barrigar in those days, but of course no one gave their real names.  He was our Troop Medic for almost a year…he was even in my stop for two rotations until I couldn’t put up with him much longer and gave him the choice of either finding a place in another stop or swallowing his teeth with a bit of my boot polish.”

This seemed extreme enough to warrant an interruption.  “What did he do to piss you off so much?”

Another shrug from Ricky.  “No one thing in particular.  He was just a constant talker, and most of what he had to say was just complaining.  Life was tough enough in those days, I sure as hell didn’t think I needed the cheerleader of gloom to keep reminding me of it.  I just didn’t like his personality.  I don’t remember much of where he came from, although I had heard rumors that he had actually been captured while he was running guns to ZANLA and in an effort to avoid being executed on the spot had claimed he was sneaking into the country to join the RLI.  He was taken up on his offer—remember, ‘77 and ‘78 were becoming desperate years for us—and sent to Cranborne Barracks.  After training he came to us at 3 Commando, where one of our older staff officers, a gent named Spencer, recognized him.  Said he knew Yoshi and could vouch for his credentials as a fully trained doctor…said he carried a medical degree from some school in Costa Rica.  We asked Yoshi, he admitted to it, and after an interview with the Battalion surgeon he was made our Troop Medic, we being short of one at the time due to a misunderstanding about the length of fuse in the Belgian grenades.”  He shook his head at this sad memory, and I desperately tried to steer him back on to the topic of Yoshi before his mind went too far down the  path of grenade-ignorant medics.  “Was Yoshi at least a good medic?” I asked.

Ricky considered this question longer than I expected him to.  “He was a good technician, if that makes any sense.  I did see him perform some absolute miracles; saving not only lives but rescuing even the most damaged limbs to where not only was the leg or hand or arm not taken off, as would have been the case with any other medic, but the troopie in question would often get back some use of it.  But his bedside manner, if you will, was absolute shit.  To this day I still believe he was actually a horse-doctor intelligent enough to transfer his trained skills to two-legged patients instead, and there is no question that his skills were an enormous benefit to our team.  But there were times when a troopie with his leg a shredded mess from a cloud of 7.62 would actually consider the option of using another Troop Medic even if it meant ultimately losing his leg; at least he would not be subjected to Yoshi’s endless harangues, verbal abuse at the slightest twitch, unnecessarily rough handling, and refusal to administer pain relievers.  Yoshi seemed to resent being the Troop Medic in the first place, and from his actions and attitude one could easily believe that he actually hated all of us…”

As Ricky had been speaking he had been growing increasingly weak, his voice fading and his breathing more labored.  I took his hand in mine (so brittle and so light!), allowing him to wind down to silence, and sitting quietly in the gathering gloom.  The yellow glow from a bedside table, hitherto washed out by the late afternoon sunlight, now became the prominent light by which I studied for long minutes the photograph of that band of young men, armed to the teeth for death but bursting with life themselves, and the one anomaly in their midst: the scowling, squat, middle-aged man with the glittering black eyes and pug nose.

“You say…he’s here in the city…now?” Ricky’s breathing was becoming exponentially more labored.  “Working as…a P.I.?”

I nodded.  “You want to meet, catch up on old times?”

Ricky shook his head.  “Hell no.  I’ll call the cops the second he tries to cross…my doorstep.  But listen…” here his grip on my hand tightened.  “Be careful.  If you’re working for him…be careful.”

He seemed to be getting agitated, so I flashed him a grin.  “Of course.  I’m always careful around you mercenary types.  A guy hears stories, after all…” and I let the poor joke die in the heat of his intense gaze.

“No, Nick, for real.  Not because of anything that he said or did in Rhodesia…I am the last man to judge anyone for that,”  Ricky seemed to be drawing strength from his determination to warn me.  “But because of something else.  That ‘Major’ Spencer, the staffy who vouched for Yoshi’s medical creds had said he recognized the Jap-Irishman.  Well the thing is, ol’ Spence recognized Yoshi from the early days of Spencer’s own career of fortune hunting.”  Another pause to indicate the water bottle on his night stand, which I passed to him, and after pulling generously, Ricky continued: “Spencer had been one of the Americans trapped at the satellite station on Zanzibar when that island went through its revolution.  The clubhouse Spencer and the other Americans took shelter in was the English Club…owned by a man named Yojimbo Barrigar.”

“His father?”  But I knew.  There was no other reason why Ricky would have gotten this upset.

“No, imbecile, the same man.  And the reason Spencer recognized him the minute he stepped off the bus from Cranborne, is because Spence says he hadn’t aged a day.  He said it was like he had just walked out of the English Club yesterday, bitching about the iniquitous taxation from the Arabs on the one hand and having to pay off the gangster Africans on t’other.  Took poor ol’ Spence for quite a shock.”

“Wasn’t that like 1963, ’64?  Surely your friend was mistaken fifteen years later.”

Ricky was having none of it.  “I knew Spencer pretty well from Angola, where we’d gotten ourselves in something of a jam, and he was as cool a head as you’ll find.  I’m telling you: I got no proof, but Spencer was truly shook about it, an’ if he says the man hadn’t changed in fifteen year, I tell you it’s as good as Gospel.”  Now Ricky bared his teeth, though whether in pain or an attempt to impress upon me his point I couldn’t tell.  “An’ now you come in here, giving me a description that matches to a T a thirty-year old photo.  What I want you to do lad, is ask yourself if it’s reasonable for a man to look the exact same for fifty years?”

Well, the question was not really if it was reasonable, but possible.  “Looks the same” is a very broad, and very subjective, description of anything, but brief acquaintances especially, and not to be relied on too heavily from even your own perception.  But here I was being asked to believe that a man had not aged in fifty years based on the evidence of one grainy photograph and the second-hand testimony of a dying man liberally loaded with pain killers.  And honestly, Yoshi’s was that generic, gruff, ageless appearance that many men seemed to acquire sometime after highschool and maintained until suddenly bent and crippled in a wheelchair or hospital bed.  And finally, what did any of this prove?  What had Ricky’s point been?

I chewed over these questions on the bus ride home, having calmed down Ricky and softly stealing from the room as he dropped into an uneasy sleep, but I arrived at my stop still uneasy.  Throughout the next day, a Friday, the uneasy feeling persisted, and I found my boredom as I suffered through another excruciating eight hours of random and relentless lecturing this time tinged with suspicion.  Regarding Yoshi from my notebook held dutifully at note-taking position, I couldn’t help but marvel at the remarkable resemblance to the man who had glowered at me from a crowd of troopies in the Rhodesian bush.  And while I could not at that time clearly articulate what the problem was, I had a hunch that Rick was right: Yoshi was somehow a part of something much deeper than a standard confidence trick.

I spent a weekend in relative comfort: while the amount that Yoshi paid me was not obscene it was certainly more than I was accustomed to; I had a memorable Saturday night on the town and spent Sunday recovering, all the time dreading the coming Monday and return to the grueling task of playing listener to what was without a doubt the city’s premier wind-bag who had nothing to do for eight hours and a captive audience.  So imagine my joy when I arrived at the offices of A Closed Case the next day to find a beaming Yoshi making this announcement:  “We have a case!”

The client’s name was Mrs. Mab Drinkwater, and she was scheduled to arrive at ten.  For an hour I sat quietly as I watched Yoshi dance about the small room, moving a chair six inches to the left then returning it a few minutes later, only to decide it looked better in the corner, or continuously hiding the candy dish in a drawer or returning it to its place on his desk, completely incapable of making up his mind.  But he did not appear anxious, simply excited, gleeful.  And when Mrs. Drinkwater at last arrived I quickly figured out why: Yoshi and this Mrs. Drinkwater had obviously known each other for many years, and equally obvious was Yoshi’s helpless school-boy crush on the woman.

Nor was it hard to see why.  Mrs. Drinkwater was a handsome woman in her later middle years, dressed in the tasteful low-key fashions that only the extremely rich can afford, and she exuded an air of confidence and authority while at the same time moving across the room with a voluptuous sensuality in hip and shoulder that would put a houri to shame.  She was quite short, and I did not care for the imperious glance with which she swept me, calculated my worth in her life, and then completely discarded the idea of your correspondent, but Yoshi was nearly drooling by the time he took her bejeweled hand and brushed his lips across it.  I would have bet at that moment that he was going to propose working for free (!), but he went the opposite direction:

“Ah, Mab,” he sighed, beaming into her face as he held her hands hostage.  “So you need something detected at last.  Or have you simply come to gallop across my fingers, I who straight dream on fees?  Allow me to observe from the beginning that I will take only cash, in US currency, and that I will require half the estimated fee as a down payment before I even consider stirring a muscle in your favor.”

Mrs. Drinkwater favored him with a gleaming smile that belied the message written in the rest of her face.  “Yoshi, you still have that talent to fascinate and charm a woman, don’t you?  Please be so good as to release my hands…no, you already…alright, thank you…yes, no forgiveness required, simply release my… there, fine, alright.  Now: I will of course pay your ridiculous fees, but this time it is serious, Yoshi.  I need you both because of your…background…and because I absolutely rely on your impartiality in this.”  Although her audience was nodding and murmuring a strange mixture of assurances and endearments, she repeated herself.  “Your impartiality, Yoshi.  I know that you, unlike any others I could ask, will give me the truth of the matter.  And I very much need a clear and complete description of the matter no matter how painful it may appear.”

I thought this to be odd, for while Yoshi swore solemnly that he would fearlessly speak truth to power, I wondered why this woman who apparently set such store on impartiality didn’t just call in to one of the thirty-two (I counted my first day on the job) other private investigative services licensed in this city who most likely did not know her from Eve.  But no matter: it was a case, and would no doubt provide me personal relief by distracting Yoshi from his explanations of Neolithic European hengesor the legal status of djinn in 21st century Iranian courts.

The pair at last got down to business, she seated in the shabby wooden dining room chair in front of the desk that I had sat in for my interview, he behind the desk, and myself in a nylon collapsible sports chair that caused me to sit at such an angle that my knees were level with my chin, notebook at the ready.  Mrs. Drinkwater’s case appeared to be that standard bread-and-butter to your modern PI: a wandering husband whose absences and expenses cannot be easily explained.  Yoshi spent about an hour gathering details from her, and I must admit I was impressed by his professionalism in his thorough but always respectful way of wringing every scrap of information that may be useful from the client. 

In under an hour, Yoshi had amassed an enormous amount of detail about the bare bones of the case, which was basically this: Mrs. Drinkwater’s husband, one Auberon Drinkwater, had last been seen last Tuesday at noon by their next door neighbor when he came running out of the Drinkwaters’ overpriced West Hills home in obvious distress and went tearing out of the driveway in the family Jag.  Mrs. Drinkwater had held her peace throughout the week because apparently week-long absences by her spouse had become more frequent over the past few years, and were frankly something of a relief for her and an excuse to spend scandalous amounts of money in pampering her wounded feelings.  So imagine her distress, and immediate need for the particular skills offered to the clients of A Closed Case Private Investigative Services, LLC, when she found that as of Friday the family coffers were bare.  Checking, savings, and investment portfolios, both shared and those that Mr. Drinkwater was not aware Mrs. Drinkwater knew the existence of (apparently a past service of Yoshi’s); all had been reduced to a zero balance in a matter of ten hours, a feat that hardly credits belief except that Mrs. Drinkwater had the documentation for our examination.  Her primary concern, I am sure, was for her husband’s welfare, and it must have been the highly unusual nature of the lost money that kept her thoughts on the Drinkwater fortune, for that is what her conversation focused on:

“Find that money, Yoshi.  I will know what to do about it, but first I must know, and as soon as possible, what happened to that money.  I do not expect you…no, I do not WANT you…to attempt to retrieve a single cent: simply tell me what happened to it.  Am I clear?  What’s that?  Yes, yes, of course, Auberon no doubt…but the money, Yoshi.  I cannot express to you the urgency of that matter.  Every minute such a fortune spends outside of my hands makes it that much more difficult to retrieve, as I’m sure I don’t need to remind you.”

Yoshi provided her every assurance with an air of bumbling devotion as he politely hustled her out of the office and into her car (“Why Mab, have you exchanged the empty hazel-nut for a Saturn?  What a bold statement!”), but his manner when he returned to the office was not one of a man aflame with urgency.  He strolled back to his desk whistling tunelessly, produced an energy drink and drained the can in two slugs, then leaned back with hands behind his head, eyes misted over with memories and throat permitting the occasional soft chuckle.  I sat quietly in my seat waiting for him to make the first move; after all, this was my first real case and I expected the professional to show me what to do next.  But a half-hour later Yoshi was still lost in the past and all the offices of A Closed Case Private Investigative Services, LLC had produced in pursuit of this rapidly vanishing money was a page full of doodles in my notebook.  I mentioned the fact to Yoshi.

The PI waved a paw dismissively.  “Nicholas, I know my profession.  More than that, I know these people.  With Mrs. Drinkwater and her kind, everything is an emergency, everything needs to occur for them immediately.  I firmly believe that is because the memories of those folk are so short…in their perception everything pretty much does occur immediately, or it doesn’t happen at all for them.”  He paused, chewing on his lip as his fingers drummed the desktop and his gaze bore into the far corner.  “Although…Auberon’s departure occurred on Tyr’s day… a ‘tactical withdrawal’ in the war?...and the money seemed to disappear from where it had been expected on Freya’s day.  That’s disappointing…one would not have expected such poor taste.  Nothing seems to sully Love more than Lucre.”  He paused in these apparently inane ramblings to fix me with a gimlet stare.  “Are you capturing all this?  I certainly hope so.”

It was the first time he had ever rebuked me, and I burned with shame.  Here I had ridden in the lap of luxury, taking his generous paycheck without accomplishing anything for days, and the first time he relied on me I had been dozing at my post.  I scribbled down what I thought were the important elements of what I had heard him mutter, and it looked like this:

            Auber left Tuesday = retreat from a war?
            Money left Friday, love & luck? Bad taste.

I paused, looking up at him expectantly, to find him silently staring back at me.  This tableau held for a few moments until he at last swung his feet from the desk and swept around to lean over and stare at my notebook, something of a shock to myself.

Already in the defensive because of my sudden feelings of inadequacy for the job (completely irrational, but that was what was churning my gut at the moment), I felt my skin prickle in sweat as I realized he was drinking in what I had written and probably comparing it to what he had said.  But at last he clapped a gnarled hand on my shoulder and practically crowed in delight, something I never knew anyone did outside of books.  “Nicholas, my boy, your pathetic interpretation of my words have ground a new lens through which I must view this problem set!  I congratulate you, and thank you.  I knew you were the perfect choice as my sidekick—“

“Ah, ‘assistant’, please…”

“I say ‘sidekick’, and I’m the one with influence over the pay master!”  He gave me what I have no doubt he felt was a sly wink. “Believe me, I am not one to brush aside semantics as unimportant, but right now there are more immediate concerns.  We have been presented with two cases in one: the disappearance of Mr. Auberon Drinkwater and the disappearance of the Drinkwater fortune.  We must spend our precious resources on those questions before we can turn our attention to debating your title, for it is the former two questions that affect  my paycheck, while the latter only affects yours.”

“But Mr. O’Brien—“

“ ‘Yoshi’, please, I have corrected you enough on this point.  Or ‘My dear O’Brien’, but I must ask that you are able to deliver that without it seeming to be an affectation, which I doubt you are capable of at this point, so please ignore that option.”

“Yes, very well, Yoshi…It seems to me that the answer is simple: Mr. Drinkwater has absconded with the funds.  The story is almost cliché; it has all the marks of a middle-aged business man with a mistress and a mid-life crisis.  All we need to do is track down the girlfriend and we’ll find Mr. Drinkwater and his money.”

Yoshi scoffed as he cracked open another energy drink.  “ ‘All we need to do’ is find someone for whom we have no name, description, location, or even confirmation of existence beyond the suppositions of The Sidekick Nicholas?  Well, well, we should have that cleared up by lunch tomorrow, do you reckon?”  A dismissive belch followed this, rank with the syrupy smell of the last swig of energy drink.  “Fortunately our task is a little easier than that.  There is no mysterious mystress, no love nest to which he has escaped to await discovery among his gathered piles of doubloons.  No… The man and the money have disappeared to different places for different reasons, although I have no doubt that ultimately they are connected as, eventually, all events are.  But without going down that particular path of logic, simply accept that I shall be treating these as two separate incidents, and in accordance with my client’s wishes I shall focus my primary efforts on discovering the location of the money.”

Well, you can imagine what I thought of that.  This man, who was so full of confidence and fine words, was obviously crap as a detective.  I blamed it on his massive intellect; he had followed his twisting logic to the point that he had thought himself out of being able to see what was staring him in the face.  I almost physically doubled over as if I’d been punched in the gut; although the rational side of my brain asked why this disappointment should be such a surprise, the more instinctive (and the majority) part of me felt as the native islander must have when volcanoes were discussed in his Geology 101 lecture at Mainland University.  And the proverbial straw was Yoshi’s assignment to me:

“While I am discovering the important mystery, the one that will achieve mine and ultimately your paychecks, you will trace Auberon’s movements since Tyr’s day.  You may or may not find him.  The fact that he used the Jag in his condition tells me that he was more concerned with achieving the shortest time than achieving distance… a moment, if you please.”  The man produced a water-stained map of the metropolitan area and spread it across his desk.  “Yes, here, I believe you shall find the most success,” he claimed, stamping a stumpy forefinger against a region of the map marked “Forest Park”.  “This is where you shall begin your search; it is the nearest area to the Drinkwater residence that provides the conditions necessary for what you are looking for.”

Most of my friends and family would not immediately describe me as ‘astute’, but it was obvious that Yoshi was dancing around the subject.  “And what am I looking for?” I asked.

“Scotch bonnet, most likely,” was his reply.  “Really, any species of mushroom will do, but Marasmius oreades is the most commonly occurring species in this case.  You must find and map each location where you find a significant number of mushrooms growing in a ring or arc.”  After rummaging about in his desk drawer for a few minutes as I stood gaping in shock, Yoshi at last produced a battered yellow Garmin GPS device and plunked it onto the map.  “You can borrow that to help you get the grids.”  His eyes at last met mine.  I found no trace of humor in them.

“You want me to go tramping around in the woods looking for mushrooms.”  I stated.

Yoshi did not bother to smile. “Nicholas, I know that searching for Auberon is not a glamorous job.  After all, hunting for the money is the real job, but I feel that we owe Mab a complete package, and that means an accurate report on her husband’s movements over the past week.”

“By mapping mushrooms?”

“Yes, that’s right.”  He blinked at me, apparently confused by my own incomprehension.

I gave him a shaky smile to appease him, hoping it may keep him from attacking me from behind as I turned my back and headed to the office door without another word.  It had been a decent ride, last week’s paycheck had been generous enough that I regretted nothing and would not even discuss my pay for this Monday.  It would be cruel to further exploit this man’s obvious mental illness.  I simply walked out of the Holyrood Office Complex, into the light early afternoon rain, and managed to catch the number 12 as soon as I reached the bus stop.

+++

Yoshi O’Brien and the A Closed Case Investigative Services, LLC became for me merely another source of whacky tales with which to entertain slacker friends and folks met at parties thrown by those friends.  While I had spent those suffering hours in the stuffy office rank with mildew, listening to the self-congratulatory ramblings and trying like hell to make a sleepy nod look like a nod of assent, Yoshi had seemed to me such a vital and alive presence that a part of me was surprised by the unreality with which I remembered him now.  It was as if those few days I had spent in his employ had not truly occurred, or that I was not remembering them correctly.  This idea left me with a certain sadness, a sense of loss, because in a way, I wanted people like Yoshi to exist and to succeed in life despite the demands and expectations of The Man, The System, The Suits, or whatever slogan we wanted to attach to the Kafka-esque nightmare we claimed and secretly desired the world to really be.

My vow to finally buckle down and find a “real” job was once more put on hold in order to complete a project for a friend of mine, a movie script adaptation of an obscure Eastern European novel.  I don’t know if the movie was ever made; but I do know that in the end the friend was unable to pay me the agreed upon wage in actual cash and instead gave me an amount of marijuana he claimed exceeded the wages owed (“I don’t smoke, dipshit!”  “But you can sell it to get your cash, dude.” “Why don’t you sell it then, and give me my money?”  “Because like I told you, man, the cops are watching me!”  “Well then, coming to my house with a huge bag of pot was an excellent plan.  Bravo.”).

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