Death Sentences (5 page)

"What about the papers?"

"A garbage truck passed yesterday morning. So we've contacted the municipal sanitation crew. Some of our people are already off to the dump."

"Good. Nothing along with the print kit, then?"

"Unfortunately not. But on the surface of the stand-you know, the place where you stick the paper-well, there's a fair amount of ink left on it, and a series of words that look like part of a sentence. The writing is incredibly small and cramped. Anyway, we're not supposed to read it, so we're turning it in as is, as material evidence."

"Do that."

Sakamoto hung up.

A coin dropped into the change slot.

As he fished it out and slipped it into his pants pocket, Sakamoto took a leisurely look out over the darkening city.

The stuff hadn't turned up.

At least we were on the right track.

Maybe our timing was off.

Yet the problem wasn't just one of our timing.

Sensing danger, she would have gotten the stuff out of the house right away. Then she would have hidden it somewhere.

If she was using the print kit, no doubt she made quite a lot of copies.

She wouldn't just toss them in the trash. That would only put her in greater danger. With the new regulations on the use of photocopy machines, which demanded that all copies be numbered and accounted for, people had begun reproducing the stuff manually, copying it by hand or using old-fashioned mimeographs.

As a result, the number of reproductions circulating illicitly had fallen to about one tenth of what it had been with the use of photocopies.

That meant a hike in price.

Reproducing the stuff was a serious offense. Sakamoto and his detectives, as members of a covert deputation of Special Police, had pretty much free rein when it came to dealing out justice.

It was unlikely, then, that after running such a serious risk, she would simply let it go.

Especially not now that she had a buyer.

She had to be hiding it.

She was going to palm it off.

Sakamoto was sure of it.

That's why she'd gone to such great lengths to clean her apartment. Miura Sachiko was planning to fly the coop.

He couldn't let her get away.

Sakamoto pulled his right hand out of his pocket and felt along the left side of his coat. Feeling his piece there, he began to walk.

The Corolla with his partner sat at the edge of the road like a watchdog.

No one had gone in the shop since she had. No one had come out.

After carefully buttoning his coat, Sakamoto opened the door.

The waitress greeted him sullenly as he entered.

"Take any seat that suits you."

Miura Sachiko looked up anxiously.

She quickly looked away.

Ignoring her, Sakamoto went past her and eased into a booth.

A glass of water and a hot towel were plunked down in front of him.

"What'll it be?"

"Hot coffee."

The waitress went in the back.

Sakamoto stretched across to pick up the sports page from the creased newspapers on the seat next to him.

It was yesterday's. Covered with stains.

He folded it so he could read part of it.

The coffee soon arrived. It must have been reheated many times; it looked thick as mud. You don't often see coffee that bad these days.

Without so much as a sip, he knew how it'd taste. That's how coffee had been in the old days, when he was a kid. It didn't occur to him to complain. He didn't care all that much for coffee anyway.

He stirred in lots of cream and sugar and took a sip.

Just then-

The door opened.

A man entered.

Miura Sachiko looked up and nodded at him.

It was him-Sagara.

It looked like this investigation was really on the right track after all.

Sakamoto took a big gulp of the syrupy liquid.

Until about a year ago, Miura Sachiko had worked in an administrative building at one of the city colleges.

Sagara had been Sachiko's boss at the same college. He was assistant director of education.

The two began an affair. Nobody knew exactly when it started.

As a matter of fact, the investigation hadn't really started in earnest till yesterday around three. By four they'd had a tap on her phone.

There hadn't been any real evidence till then. Actually, from the very beginning, there hadn't been much to go on.

It had all been a hunch.

But that's how Sakamoto's team worked.

Whatever it took to get the job done.

Four days ago they'd begun with "whatever it took." Completely by coincidence, one of the team on a stakeout had caught wind of something.

Before long they had a name-Sachi. Initially, though, they didn't know if Sachi was a man or a woman, or even a real person.

Pursuing the source of the rumor turned up the name Miura.

The rest was done on computer. They located the addresses for five persons named Miura Sachiko, which they had printed out only yesterday afternoon.

There was a complete absence of data about one of them.

That's precisely what bothered Sakamoto.

There was something strange about that blank-or so he thought.

Sakamoto concentrated on her.

So it had begun.

First he had had his staff check her records. They did it discreetly, of course.

He himself waited for information from the wiretap.

Confirmation had come at ten last night.

She had received a call at her apartment.

"Hey, it's me."

It was a man. He didn't give his name.

"Everything okay?" Miura Sachiko asked.

"Yeah," he answered.

They'd traced the call back to a pay phone at the college.

"See you there at five, okay?" she said.

"Are you sure everything's all right?"

This time he sounded worried.

"Sure ... right on track."

"See you then."

That was the end of it.

It was hardly what you'd call a normal conversation.

One of the squad had taken a quick spin to the college.

Since it was the end of the fall term, only a handful of people were still there, grading papers.

Sagara was one of them.

The squad leader waited patiently for them to come out after work, snapped pictures of all six, and returned.

In the meantime, they learned more about Sachiko and Sagara's affair.

She had undergone a divorce in her twenties. She'd remained single since.

After the divorce, Sachiko had found work at the college; it was her alma mater, and she had pulled some strings. Sagara was the one who had hired her.

She had left the job a year and a half ago.

She cited "personal reasons," but apparently her relationship with Sagara had become public knowledge.

She moved into her current apartment.

There was no way that her savings or pension could cover the price of that place.

She must have been bought off.

The two had completely severed ties. At least that's how it looked from the outside.

Now, however, the two of them were clearly doing something together.

This time it was a completely different sort of affair.

Money, that was the only possible motive.

Living high on her settlement money and pension, Miura Sachiko had known a period full of pleasures, even illicit ones. Before she realized it, there wasn't enough left for daily living expenses.

She was already afflicted. A normal job was impossible.

She had only two options for making money. She could sell her body, or she could share with others the very pleasures now eating away at her body.

As things stood, the advance of the symptoms had restored her to an attractive twentysomething, but these days, with teenagers a dime a dozen, even her bout of youthfulness wouldn't bring in enough cash. She was, in fact, a woman in her forties. No matter how hard she tried, it was bound to show.

That left her only the other option.

As the wiretap made clear, the exchange between ex-lovers wasn't a matter of love for sale.

Apparently, Sagara was also strapped for cash.

Paying off Miura Sachiko was the start of his money problems, and his debts had been snowballing ever since.

Their mutual desire for cash might well have made them all cozy and familiar again. This was largely guesswork on Sakamoto's part.

He couldn't be far off, though. And if he were, it didn't much matter. Just about any motive would do.

Last night-

Some of his men had pushed for raiding her apartment right away. Sakamoto had stopped them, however. Something bothered him about the way she'd said that everything was "right on track." A screwup would get them nowhere. They could lose their grip on what really mattered, the stuff.

For the same reason, they hadn't put anyone on Sagara.

Clearly, Sagara hadn't received anything yet. If something made him jumpy, and the transaction didn't happen, it would slip through their fingers.

They'd give him slack, and when it was time to rope him in, they'd rope him.

So far they'd read it dead-on.

Now here they were-Miura Sachiko and Sagara at the table.

3

"How's things?"

"Urn. .."✓

He could hear their words, faintly.

The conversation was utterly meaningless, though.

From behind his newspaper, he intently watched their hands.

But there was no sign of anything passing between them.

Anyhow-

Miura Sachiko carried only a small shoulder bag. There was no way she could bring many copies of the stuff in it.

That meant that something was going to happen.

Maybe she was planning on taking him to the hiding place. Or was it going to be a more elaborate operation?

The two had been very cautious, even on the phone. Both of them probably had their suspicions, but Miura Sachiko at least had clearly anticipated the possibility of police surveillance.

They couldn't afford to be careless.

They'd wait until the very last minute.

The two sat silently.

The coffee Sagara had ordered arrived.

Sagara made a show of taking a sip, grabbed the check, and stood up.

Miura Sachiko stood, too.

She cast a suspicious look at Sakamoto.

Sakamoto deliberately looked right back. He looked her over carefully, head to toe.

She turned away abruptly.

She went out of the shop right behind Sagara.

Sakamoto did his best to restrain himself; taking a deep breath, and then another, he stuck to his seat.

He then drained the rest of the coffee in one big swig, hopped out of the booth, and went to the register.

The waitress returned to the front with a sour look on her face.

Sakamoto pulled a few coins from his pocket and hustled out.

The Corolla stood right in front.

His partner flicked a finger to indicate their direction.

Apparently, they'd doubled back into one of the lanes to the left.

They were heading toward the love hotel area.

Sakamoto took off in pursuit.

Just when he thought he'd lost them, he spotted them ducking into a hotel.

Sakamoto paused.

He waited a full minute.

They didn't come out. They must have gotten a room.

He casually went over to the hotel.

He ducked under a mass of vines covering the entrance and went in.

A chime sounded.

A small window slid open to the left of the entrance.

"Just one person today?" The voice from behind the low-set window was that of an older woman.

"Can ya get me a woman?" he asked roughly.

All the while, out of the corner of his eye, he watched the numbers on the elevator just inside.

Number three stayed lit.

"May I ask who sent you here?"

The woman's voice had a hard edge.

"Nobody, it's just, you

"May I see some kind of identification?"

Sakamoto selected a business card from among the many fake ones he kept with him, just in case, and slid it inside the window.

A call to the number on the card would connect to an operator at headquarters. The operator would make up something to go along with the number.

"May I see another?"

She was a shrewd one.

There were those who would use someone else's business card as a front.

Sakamoto acted a bit angry and tossed a handful of the same cards inside the window.

"You want to see my ID, too?"

"That's all right. It's just that we don't do that kind of thing here. Not our business ..."

"Sure, but you can work something out, can't you?"

If this didn't work, he was going to have to reveal himself.

The problem was, he wanted to keep it all as quiet as possible.

Otherwise, everything would come out in the open.

"Well, sir, you're welcome to get a room for yourself. That's no problem."

"And?"

"Get yourself a room, then try a call to this place."

With the key that she pushed through the window was a flashy card.

Below "Massage-Real Live Girls!" was a phone number in large print.

"Sure, I get you."

Sakamoto swept up the key and the card.

The key was for a fourth floor room.

"You see, we aren't that kind of place. We don't want that kind of reputation, not around here."

Suddenly, she sounded all business.

"I get you. You mind if I stay overnight? I want to take a little nap before I call."

"Please take your time. There are videos available with the room, too."

She grinned at him obscenely.

Sakamoto headed for the elevator.

The elevator came down from the third, and he went up to the fourth.

He then hustled down the stairs to the third.

To his relief, the hall stood empty.

It was early on a weekday, so business was slow.

Still, as he picked his way quietly down the hall, cries of passion sounded from a couple of rooms.

If an employee noticed him, he could simply say he'd gotten the wrong floor. If they took him for a voyeur, that was all right, too.