The cry of cicadas, p.1
The Cry of Cicadas, page 1
The Cry of Cicadas
Byrns on the Homefront, Volume 1
J. Sydney Jones
Published by J. Sydney Jones, 2024.
What the Critics Say about Previous Works
Hitler in Vienna (biography; 1981, reprint 2002)
“Lively and perceptive.” New York Review of Books.
Viennawalks (travel guide; 1984, reprint 1994)
“A delight.” New York Times
Time of the Wolf (thriller; 1990)
“An accomplished thriller…and exciting game of cat and mouse.” Publishers Weekly
Frankie (YA novel, 1997)
“A fast-paced realistic piece of historical fiction.” School Library Journal
The Empty Mirror (2009)
“A colorful story that neatly combines fact and fiction.” – Washington Post
“A meaty historical that bodes well for further adventures.” – Publishers Weekly
Requiem in Vienna (2010)
“Sophisticated entertainment of a very high caliber.” – Kirkus Reviews
“A first-class historical mystery.” – Booklist
“Pitch perfect, with an intriguing plot, interesting characters, and wealth of Viennese color.” – Richmond Times-Dispatch
The Silence (2011)
“The intricate plot unfolds with suspense and style.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Very much in the fireside-snug Baker Street style.” – Haaretz (Jerusalem)
The Keeper of Hands (2013)
“Jones recreates the beau monde of vintage Vienna with verisimilitude and consummate style.” – Kirkus Reviews
A Matter of Breeding (2014)
“One of the series best at combining plot and historical background.” – Publishers Weekly
“Jones is one of the jewels of the historical mystery scene.” – San Francisco Book Review
The Third Place (2016)
“This masterfully plotted tale offers an intimate and revealing portrait of turn-of-the-century Vienna, with fine characterizations, gentle humor, clever dialogue.” – Booklist
Ruin Value: A Mystery of the Third Reich (2014)
“Fans of WWII fiction should consider this one mandatory reading.” – Booklist
Basic Law: A Mystery of the Cold War (2015)
“A perfect blend of thriller and whodunit…it challenges the reader from the first to the last page.” – Richmond Times Dispatch
The German Agent (2015)
“A well-written espionage thriller.” – Kirkus Reviews
The Edit (2017)
“Jones brings deliciously dark humor to his psychological thriller, a worthy cousin to John Fowles’ classic The Collector.” – Kirkus Reviews
Copyright © 2024 by J. Sydney Jones
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
jsydneyjones.com
Cover art by Peter Ratcliffe
Layout and formatting by Jason & Vidya at ebookpbook.com
ISBN: 979-8-9896582-0-6 (ebook)
“Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.”
—Matsuo Basho
Also by J. Sydney Jones
Viennese Mysteries Series
The Third Place
A Matter of Breeding
The Keeper of Hands
The Silence
Requiem in Vienna
The Empty Mirror
Standalone Fiction
The Edit
Basic Law
The German Agent
Ruin Value
Time of the Wolf
The Hero Game
Frankie
Nonfiction
The Man in the Tower: And Other True Tales from a Vanished Europe
Hitler in Vienna: 1907-1913
Viennawalks
Vienna Inside-Out
Tramping in Europe
Bike & Hike
The Crusades: Biographies
Table of Contents
Part One: A Matter of Loyalty
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part Two: Body Count
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Part Three: Spy Chaser
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Part Four: End Game
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
PART ONE
A Matter of Loyalty
Chapter One
October, 1941
They first met Tadeo Suzuki not long after Max and his wife Elizabeth moved to San Ignacio. For days they’d surveyed available houses, escorted by Elizabeth’s realtor brother, Theodore, whom everyone but Max called Teddy. He somehow couldn’t use that name with the aristocratic-looking Theodore Schuyler, but Teddy’s looks were not finding them a house to live in.
At the end of the third week, Max decided to take matters in hand and check out the real estate ads in the local paper, the San Ignacio Reporter. And bingo, he found exactly what they were looking for: a one-story, three-bedroom on a double lot on the edge of town.
It was a hot day in mid-October when he and Elizabeth drove from the San Ignacio Inn to the viewing.
In New York he knew the seasons would be changing by now; leaves coloring in Central Park, autumn chilling the early morning air. Here it was still summer. Mid-eighties with Halloween around the corner and threat of war in the air.
“You’ll get used to it,” Elizabeth had told him when they were first considering the move. “If you ask me, winter is a highly over-rated season.”
Max, who had lived in New York City since birth, wasn’t so sure. Seasons had informed his life. Perhaps you were cut off from the land and its cycles in the city, but there were other reminders: in September, the Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera would start their fall seasons; in winter, skating in the park was accompanied by the clip-clop of horse-drawn carriages on snowy streets; his favorite cozy restaurant just off Gramercy Park opened its sidewalk seating in April; fingerless gloves on the fancy women announced the arrival of summer. A thousand sights and smells that informed each season.
He was nostalgic, homesick even. But the move had been the right thing to do. Even curmudgeonly Dr. Rosenberg at Bellevue thought it necessary.
So Max was giving it his best try, looking for things to admire here.
He had five positives so far, and telling Elizabeth of this change of attitude produced one of her quizzical smiles.
“You might be right,” he said. “Seasons in general may be overrated and there seems to be plenty here to like.”
Then a broader smile from her. “How equitable of you. Plenty to like, as in…?”
He ticked off the list on his fingers. “The Pacific Ocean. The salt smell first thing in the morning and the way the water changes colors under different skies.”
She licked her forefinger, and checked off on an imaginary scroll. “I’ll give you that one. But watch out. You might start waxing poetic if you continue like this.”
He ignored this, continuing with his list. “The foothills east of town.”
She looked at him expectantly. “That’s it? Just hills? No description? Be honest. It’s the Cardoni winery up there that you really mean. Their table red.”
He shrugged, cleared his throat. “How about the historic downtown. All the brick shopfronts.”
“But more importantly,” she countered, “your musty used bookshop, ‘Just One More Page’.”
“You don’t give a guy a break, do you? Number four, local seafood, including freshly dug clams.” He paused for her rejoinder. Nothing came.
“And finally, yes, you can laugh at this one. But I’ve actually come to like the way a complete stranger will say hello to you on the street. It’d be irritating in New York but almost endearing here.”
Elizabeth shook her head, then gave him a peck on the cheek. “You’re becomi
It was true. He was beginning to feel at home in tiny San Ignacio despite its lack of seasons.
A sixth favorite was working its way in, as well—the sometimes jarring, sometimes humorous blend of Spanish and English for place and street names.
Thus, they arrived early at the house on San Anselmo, just off James Street on the outskirts of town.
The owner, Max noted, was early, too, standing by the front door as if in anticipation. Max saw Suzuki was not a tall man, but his thinness made him appear so. He was hatless and his greying hair bristled up as if electrified by static.
Max always took in such details of appearance. They had come in handy during his twenty-plus years on the force.
They got out of their car and approached. “Mr. Suzuki?”
The man nodded. “Mr. Burns, I believe. And Mrs. Burns. Let us hope no mouse will disturb our plans.”
Max smiled at the reference. “Wrong Burns,” he said. “We spell ours with a ‘y’ not a ‘u’. You an admirer of the Scottish bard?”
“Not really,” the lanky elderly man said, moving a hand through his thick hair. “It is Mr. Steinbeck’s fault, you see. He has made unconscious poetry lovers of us all with that little novel of his from a few years ago. Of poetry in general, though. Yes, I am an advocate.…”
He paused as if catching himself from saying too much, a look of sudden sadness about his eyes. “But that is a different matter.”
Elizabeth at his side squeezed Max’s hand. It was something she did to show quiet approval of people or places. Max looked at her and blinked assent. He took an immediate liking to Tadeo Suzuki. Max saw a quiet strength to him and a certain grace, though he was dressed in dungarees and chambray work shirt as if he had just come from the fields. But Max too was adapting to the more casual dress code of California and felt a comfortable freedom with no tie binding his neck. Ties growing up in the Byrns household had been de rigueur; the only time he remembered his father—a medieval scholar at Columbia—without one during daylight hours was on his death bed.
“Would you care for a tour or should I let you wander on your own?” Suzuki asked.
“A tour, please,” Elizabeth said brightly.
Suzuki opened the door onto a pleasant sitting room with shiny hardwood floors, empty of any furniture. He drew the curtains to let the light in and led them first to the kitchen where Elizabeth nodded at the gas range and then down a hallway to the bedrooms and a full bathroom.
Max was pleased to discover that the house was in a U-shape, almost like a medieval cloister, around a central garden area that was now a barren patch. He was reminded of how, when he’d most needed it last year, his visits to the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan had soothed his soul.
They gazed at the area from the window of what was meant to be the master bedroom, Max figured. A room itself in an L-shape.
It would be Elizabeth’s studio, he immediately thought. She needed such a space for her art restoration work. Especially after leaving her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, leaving her colleagues and friends behind to help him recover. She deserved it.
“Needs work,” Tadeo Suzuki said, nodding toward the barren patch of ground outside. “Are you a gardener, Mr. Byrns?”
Elizabeth chuckled at this.
“I assume that means no,” the Japanese man said.
“Sorry.” Elizabeth tapped his arm reassuringly. “I should let you know that my husband has a decidedly black thumb. An excellent investigator, but not an ounce of compassion for poor plants.”
“An investigator?”
“Sounds grand,” Max said. “But I was really just a cop.”
“A noble profession,” Suzuki said.
“That’s what I’ve always thought, too, Mr. Suzuki,” Elizabeth said.
“But your husband thinks otherwise?”
“That’s another story,” Max said with a wry smile. “A different matter.” Echoing Suzuki’s own words earlier regarding his love of poetry; they both had secrets.
This brought a smile from the Japanese. “We may be a backwater, Mr. Byrns, but even here news of the Markham kidnapping did trickle down.”
Max felt his face grow red. Damn, this followed him like an albatross. And then the all-too familiar feeling of panic, the thickness in his throat, tightness in his chest. He took a deep breath, tried to divert his mind as Dr. Rosenberg had counseled. “Don’t believe all you read in the papers,” he said with false cheer.
They continued the tour, inspecting the other bedrooms and bath. Outside, Suzuki led in a leisurely but stiff-gaited walk that made Max think of a large shore bird, moving with quiet elegance as if parting waters. They surveyed the garage, in as pristine shape as the rest. Not even a spot of oil on the concrete floor.
“I have to admit, it’s in great condition.” Max spoke slowly, trying for normalcy, fighting back the wave of anxiety from mention of his former life. They moved on to the sundrenched, parched courtyard. “Like nobody’s ever lived here.”
“No one has,” Suzuki said with what seemed a touch of emotion. “Not a single soul since it was built eight years ago.”
“It just sat here vacant all that time?” Elizabeth asked.
“Oh, I would come periodically to air it during summer days or turn the heat on in the winter. But otherwise, vacant.”
“What a shame.” Max took deep breaths. Focus, he told himself. He looked around the parched ground trying to imagine what it would look like with a medieval garden installed. “When did you buy it?”
A wry smile from Suzuki, then, “I had it built.”
That took a moment to sink in.
“You mean,” Max said, “built to be sold or to live in?”
“Ah, I see now what your wife says, Mr. Byrns. A true investigator. You ask the right questions. … No, not as an investment. To live in. But we didn’t.”
Max was about to ask why, but stopped, fearful of some family tragedy.
Elizabeth, however, seemed to feel no such compunction. “Why ever not?”
Suzuki tipped his head. “My wife, you see.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth began, blushing at her lack of tact.
“No. No reason to be. I built it for her. For Kyoko, my companion of nearly forty years. It was her that helped make me, to make our family what we are. And she’s never asked for even the tiniest bit of luxury. We still live in the small house we bought all those years ago. So, I wanted to surprise her. Spoil her for once. But when I brought her here, she looked timid, like a tourist visiting a fine country home. It is difficult to explain. She is a simple woman, a humble woman. She came from a small village…”
“She felt it’s too fine for her,” Max said.
Tadeo Suzuki nodded firmly. “Too fine for a humble farming family. For a Japanese farming family in America.”
Max could hear the edge of bitterness in him, and was reminded of the hard road the Japanese had had to endure in California, denied citizenship, their immigration restricted, always looked down on as the mistrusted foreigner.
“You’re a farmer then?” said Elizabeth
Another nod. “I was. My sons James and Hiro have taken it over now. They say I have earned my rest. So, I please them by acting happy to spend my days playing chess or designing the perfect Zen garden.”
“It doesn’t sound like you’re any happier to be retired than I am,” Max said. “You know, I also play. Perhaps a game . . . ?”
“I look forward to it, Mr. Byrns. As for my sons, I actually think they believe I am too old for the big farm I built. Too old and in the way.”
They were silent for a time. Max thought he had his nerves under control now. Again, he tried for normalcy, like Dr. Rosenberg had counseled, forcing himself to reflect on how oddly similar their situations were. It wasn’t their ages, for Max was at least a decade younger. But after what happened that night eight months ago in New York, he too felt in the way at the police department. He’d become more introspective, thoughtful. Some called it second-guessing.
And second-guessing could get a cop killed.
And now it hit him again; no controlling it this time. Blind fear. Shortness of breath. He’d been having the panic attacks and dream less often and was beginning to feel out of the woods. But now, awake, the dream came back, the endless loop that played in a grainy black-and-white flash when he reached deep sleep.
