Japantown (19 page)

“Takahashi? How’d you find me?”

“A young woman at your office. She giggled some.”

Mari and Toru on their sleepover. The cyber stakeout.

Takahashi said, “Welcome back to the
civilized
hemisphere.”

“Only by a couple thousand years.”

“Some of us do count. Will we have the honor of your company in Kyoto this trip?”

“Unlikely, I’m sorry to say.”

Along with neighboring Nara, Kyoto ranked among my favorite Japanese cities. A visit to Takahashi’s guaranteed not only a preview of his latest acquisitions, most of them shining examples of Japanese art, but several excellent meals at five-star hideaways and a stroll through
one of the city’s more beautifully groomed temple gardens. A garden enthusiast and amateur shutterbug, he would snap photographs while waxing poetic on the subtle and ingenious design elements concocted by renowned Japanese landscapers of centuries past.

The art dealer shifted in his seat. “Disappointing, but plainly you have more pressing matters.”

My ears perked up. “You have something new, then?”

“Yes. You can add this to our earlier discussion: I believe the kanji to be symbolic.”

“So you’ve deciphered it?”

“After a fashion. The experts I discussed the problem with agreed that my final interpretation was the best of a bad lot. From a connoisseur’s perspective, the composition is clumsy and amateurish, so I dropped the idea of an artistic approach and attacked the meaning from the most rudimentary angle. What emerged was irresistible in a morbid sort of way.”

“How so?”

“Well, if we give the upper element some weight and read it literally, what do you have?”

“
Ruler
or
king
. Maybe
royalty
.”

“Exactly. And if we read the lower section as a cohesive element?”

“You mean as
kowasu? Destroy
?”

“Yes.
Break, smash, obliterate.
Does that suggest anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

“Not a real word, no. But to a cruder mind, possibilities present themselves.”

“Such as?”

“The intended pronunciation is unclear, but the image is potent. The closest I can find in your English is the mirror image of the word king
maker.
”

“Mirror image?”

“Yes. Not a builder, but a destroyer. A king
breaker,
if you will.”

“Do you have any idea what it means?”

“None whatsoever.”

“You found no past references at all?”

“None. But tell me, does my interpretation fit the situation?”

“I’m not sure. What does it imply?”

“Well, again, it suggests violence, but on a larger scale. It suggests the tearing down of powerful institutions or powerful men.”

Hara.

“It fits,” I said.

Takahashi fell into a troubled silence. “You worry me, Brodie-san. You’re in over your head again, aren’t you?”

“Again?”

“Need I remind you that last fall you were dodging the yakuza and death threats? Well, this portends to be worse.”

My knuckles tightened on the receiver. Somewhere inside the device I heard plastic crack.
Death threat. Damn
. Takahashi had been ringing up his contacts throughout the country, asking about the same kanji that led to the linguist’s disappearance. It never occurred to me to warn my dealer friend after Mori vanished in Soga.

“Who did you talk to about this?”

“Four or five experts. Historians, linguists, scholars. Why?”

“You have to go back to each one of them and swear them to secrecy. Under no circumstances are they to make any further inquiries.”

“These are men I trust, Brodie-san. I’ve dealt with them for years—always in the strictest confidence.”

“Make them
promise,
” I urged.

“I risk offending them with such talk.”

“Better a bruised ego than—”

“Than what? What
aren’t
you telling me?”

“People are dying, Takahashi-san, and we don’t know why.”

CHAPTER 29

O
GI
glanced fondly at the gleaming metallic garrote he had designed. He delighted in its natural arc and silvery sparkle. To maintain the fine cutting edge on the inside curve, he had adapted a sushi chef’s sharpening stone for the first phase of the shaping process, then a gem cutter’s delicate file and eyepiece for a final honing of the nearly invisible, double-sided cutting edge he sought. The customized blade trimmed the kill time from twelve seconds to seven, a 42 percent improvement that brought him undreamed-of results. Where once the victim had a brief moment in which to struggle and strike a counterblow, now the neck was severed before the target had any inkling of an attack. For a man of seventy-two who still relished the kill, the five trimmed seconds were vital. In its improved form, the garrote offered the perfect solution for a proud fighter of samurai lineage desiring to keep his hand in.

But his prized blade needed sharpening. Disengaging the wire from its wooden handles, Ogi passed each end through the jaws of a vise and drew the thread taut. Six men and three women had succumbed to the sleek blade since he took up the weapon on his sixty-fifth birthday, seven years ago. Unfortunately, he was forced to use his toy sparingly, as near decapitation left a distinctive impression with the authorities. Ironically, it was for this same reason that the garrote endeared itself to him. The steel wire’s immediacy rivaled that of every other killing tool he had ever employed. By necessity, the razor-sharp blade brought him to within a hair’s breadth of his victims, and the power he felt as he claimed their lives rejuvenated his aging warrior soul.

His phone rang. Reluctantly, Ogi stepped away from his workbench
and dug out the secure cell phone from the folds of his samue. “Ken Sheng,” he said.

“Brodie and Noda are headed down to Soga.”

“How fortunate. We’ll give the Iroha team a workout. Make it a priority clear. I want them eliminated.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me.”

The man on the other end spoke with a respectful hesitation. “I’ve been instructed by our mutual acquaintance to let them pass unharmed.”

“I’m overriding that. Full weapons and camouflage.”

Late last night, after Dermott’s second call, Ogi had decided to remove the pesky art dealer if he should be foolish enough to present himself gift-wrapped at the gate.

“Are you sure? My orders were quite firm.”

“Are you questioning me?”

A fearful intake of breath. “No, sir.”

“Good. Then proceed.”

“Any special disposal instructions?”

“Generic will do.”

Surrounded by undulating waves of forested mountains in every direction, the isolated valley in which Soga rested offered dozens of sites where bodies could be buried—and stayed buried—for centuries.

“As you wish, sir.”

“And let’s keep this between ourselves. Do I make myself clear?”

“Thoroughly, sir.”

Ogi hung up and returned to the task at hand. A pang of regret tugged at him as he considered Brodie’s demise. Earlier, he had mulled over the idea of killing Jake Brodie’s son himself. After dispatching a tenth victim—an admirable milestone for such a piece of equipment—he planned to frame the weapon in his den, and Brodie would have made a worthy subject for such a milestone. Unfortunately, Ogi wasn’t in Japan at the moment, so he forced himself to put personal ambition aside for the greater good of their client. By this time tomorrow, Jake Brodie’s only offspring would be lying beneath a carpet of summer ferns deep in the Japanese countryside.

DAY 4

THE VILLAGE

CHAPTER 30

O
N
Sunday, George and I piled into his Dodge Viper, sans top, and a mere two hours later, after breaking most of the laws on the books, we found ourselves two hundred miles west of Tokyo, cruising down the highway toward the village where the linguist had vanished.

“You are part owner of Brodie Security,” George shouted over the steroid horsepower of the Viper’s roar. “There’s no need for you to tolerate him. You ought to let him go.”

“Are you mad?” I shouted back. “Noda found the kanji in a single day.”

“But he undermines your authority. Think how it
looks
.”

“Only in your imagination. Besides, he’s too good.”

Against Noda’s growling protestations, George had succeeded in nosing his way further into the Japantown case by pressing the softhearted Narazaki. But as the summer sun radiated off the swoops of the Viper’s apple-red exterior and scorched the black leather interior, I was deep in thought about an unsettling early-morning conversation I’d had with the seasoned detective in the soba shop on the first floor of our building.

—

Sitting at a varnished pine table, Noda nodded at the empty wooden bench across from him, dipped a half dozen strands of soba in sauce, and lifted them to his lips. The brown pasta traveled from plate to sauce to palate and disappeared with that swiftness the Japanese are able to muster for noodles. Murata Soba officially opened at 11:30 a.m., but served Noda any time Chef Naoki Murata was on duty.

With grim determination, I slid in opposite him and posed the question that had troubled me all night. “Why didn’t you speak up at the meeting yesterday?”

Before he could answer, the kitchen door flew open and the master of the shop strutted in. Murata’s kitchen whites were starched and spotless, the apron at his waist drawn taut. His face was round and jolly, with an underlying tiredness that showed itself in the clustered wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth when he smiled.

“Oh, it’s you, Brodie-san,” he said. “Wondered why no one came back to the kitchen. Mornings we get only deliveries. Deliveries and Noda.”

His voice softened when the chief detective’s name passed his lips.

I said, “How’s Junko?”

“Doing well. She finishes dental assistant training next spring.” His plump red cheeks parted in a broad smile. “You want something?”

“No thanks.”

“You sure? No trouble.”

“Maybe next time.”

“Holler if you change your mind. I’ll be in the kitchen preparing for the lunch crowd.”

He snapped his apron strings and breezed back the way he’d come. In a moment we heard the soft, even rhythm of large grinding stones cracking grain for his handmade noodles.

Noda had come into a lifetime supply of soba after Murata’s daughter, Junko, had dipped a toe into Tokyo’s darker waters and been sucked under. She had signed up for a telephone dating service and earned a thousand dollars in easy money for a few afternoons’ work stroking the egos of lonely old men. “Just egos,” as she put it. Promised more if she would upgrade her wardrobe, she borrowed money from the service, whose manager encouraged her to buy Chanel and Dior and Versace, first one a week, then two, until she grew accustomed to the feel of fine fabric against her skin. When he suggested pearls and gold to complement her upwardly mobile clothing profile, she accepted a fistful of crisp new bills. As an afterthought, he presented her with a state-of-the-art monogrammed cell phone to add a touch of elegance when she
called her friends from a nightclub or a department store. Her beauty and coy smiles brought more easy income, but the bills on all three fronts mounted up faster than the assignments came in.

One morning, Junko woke to an insistent pounding on her front door. The monthly 10-percent interest on her $30,000 new lifestyle had ballooned to $9,000 and was demanding attention. Which is when the manager stopped cooing and offered Junko a choice: a private interview with a yakuza friend of his who slashed pretty young faces, or a plush apartment near the Ginza suitable for entertainment more involved than the verbal stroking of attention-starved men. Too ashamed to admit her folly to her parents, Junko vanished into the throbbing hive of Tokyo’s water trade. Once Murata lost contact with his daughter, he approached Noda. With 35 million people in the greater Tokyo area, it took Noda five weeks to locate Junko, after which he confronted her yakuza pimp, torched the apartment, and brought her home with all strings severed.

The detective’s bisected eyebrow dated from that encounter, as did the soba chef’s gratitude.

With Murata once more out of earshot, I repeated the question. “Why didn’t you tell everyone what you told me? About the danger you warned me about in San Francisco?”

“Might discourage them.”

“They’re pros.”

“This is different.”

“How?”

“They’ve never run up against a group like this before.”

“Have you?”

He shook his head. “Only heard about them.”

“You think it’s the same guys?”

“Unless someone only wants us to think it’s them.”

“And we’ll know if we go down there and they pay us some attention?”

“Yep.”

In one sinuous motion, his chopsticks snatched more noodles, dipped them in sauce, and shoveled them into his mouth. A loud intake and the soba vanished.

“What kind of attention?”

“Won’t be a dance party.”

The laconic detective was holding out again. “What else?”

“Some friends ran into trouble down there.”

“When?”

“About five years ago.”

“And?”

“It was dark.”

“I take it it didn’t go well.”

He studied my face.
“Shinshutsu-kibotsu.”

My heart plummeted. The expression translated roughly as “Only when God comes out does the devil slink away.” Noda was talking about phantoms. An elusive, undesirable presence. As in Japantown. As in the superstitions swamping the case at the SFPD.

“How bad?” I asked.

A flicker of pain came and went. Understanding dawned. “Which is why you tried to discourage George?”

He grunted.

“You didn’t want to watch your back and his?”

Another grunt. “One’s enough.”

Meaning me. It would take a lot to fill Jake’s shoes. In my teens I’d soaked up every scrap of information I ran across at Brodie Security, turning it all over in endless fascination. I’d served an apprenticeship of sorts during those five years, and even though my current tenure at the firm was short, Japantown filled me with a new determination to master the game, regardless of the learning curve.