Non-Stop Till Tokyo (24 page)

He came over and picked up the device, weighing it in his hand, then struck hard downward. The end snapped out faster than I could see, and suddenly it was about a foot and a half of black metal whipping through the air.

I leapt away. “Whoa! What is that?”

“Expanding spring-coil baton. Seventeen inches fully extended. Three parts, see: handle, main spring, end spring, with a loaded metal tip. Flick your wrist—” he demonstrated; I shuddered back, “—and the springs give you a lot of striking power.”

“It looks weird.” I stared at the rubber and black metal, still flexing gently in his hand. “Like an evil executive toy.”

“It’s a weapon. You can break a guy’s arm with this. Here.”

I’d have preferred to touch the sex toy, but I took it, and he showed me how to retract and expand it (a kind of sharp turn of the wrist was all it took), and made me do a few practice strikes.

“Pathetic,” he said.

“I don’t hit things!”

“You do now. Okay, remember this: when you’re striking, don’t aim at what you want to hit. Aim beyond the target. If you want to hit this now—” he hoisted up a cushion and held it out, “—make like you’re aiming like a foot beyond it, at the wall, even.”

“Why?”

“Momentum. You ever go down a staircase and try and go one step too many? Like you step off the last one but you think there’s another? And it jars all the way up your spine, because there’s a hell of a lot of force when you move, but you won’t feel it till you hit something unexpected.”

“Like walking into a door, at normal speed, and it always seems to hurt far too much.”

“Right. Okay, try again, and put some muscle into it this time.”

I tried a few times, getting the hang of it, Chanko repeating instructions. Snap the wrist, aim beyond the target, keep my eyes on the target, not the black metal striking tip.

On the fifth go, I ripped the cushion in half.

“Good,” he said, as I stared at the leaking foam filling. “Now put it in your bag and keep it there, and use it when you need it. I gotta finish lunch.”

Chapter Ten

I put the horrible thing in my bag, sorted out my new identities and hung up my clothes in the spare bedroom, while Chanko produced really good
yakisoba
noodles. I brought some up to Yoshi and Taka. They were working now, barking incomprehensibly at one another, with hands flying over the keyboards and a lot of bad language.

With nothing useful to do, Chanko and I sat in the LDK, talking tactics. I thought the fallback plan was the first one I’d had: that Minachan, Sonja and I would hit Roppongi. Chanko didn’t agree.

“Dumb idea. Too many gaijin. Not enough time.”

“Well, what’s
your
backup plan if the airline thing doesn’t lead anywhere?”

“How are the guys getting on with that, anyway?”

I made a face at him. “No idea. I asked, but they just gave me a lot of computer talk I couldn’t understand.”

“Thought you were meant to be good at languages.”

“Yeah, well. It’s all Geek to me.”

“Jesus,” he muttered. “Stop giggling, you should be ashamed of—”

I’d seen Chanko move fast a few times, faster than looked possible for someone of his size and bulk, but this time he left me gasping. As Taka’s shriek cut through the air, he was up and through the living room door while I was still spilling coffee over myself. The whole house actually shook as he pounded up the stairs in three long strides, and I heard the slam of a door flying open and bouncing off the wall.

I ran after him. I didn’t stop to think what I would do if they were in the house, or where they were coming from. I just knew where I felt safest, and it was right behind Chanko.

Currently, that meant just outside the study door, where his back was eloquently expressing irritation.

“Well then, what was the screaming about, you girl?” he demanded.

“Look at this, look at this!” I was sure Taka was bouncing in his chair, though Chanko was blocking my view. “I am the emperor of the net! I am the Information King! Bow down and worship!”

“Shut
up
, Taka,” said everyone, and I shoved at Chanko to get out of the way and let me see what all the fuss was about.

“We’ve got it,” Yoshi announced with barely suppressed glee.

I sat down abruptly. I’d been so sure it wouldn’t work.

“Kelly? You got Kelly?” Chanko demanded.

“
Pin-pon
!” said Taka cheerfully, as though he’d got a quiz show question right. “Hollister, Kelly. Economy class, booked last Thursday. No-show for the 2240 flight on Saturday—”

“And seventeen other no-shows on the flight,” said Yoshi. “Isn’t that absurd. I’ve never missed a plane.” The screen in front of him showed the short list, first and last names, and we all clustered around, peering.

“Five Japanese names, we can lose those.”

“Guy might be American Japanese.”

“I’ll bet he’s not,” I said.

“Keep the names and check last?”

Four more were women. That left us with eight males, all of whom had surnames that could be American.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Let’s take a look at the customer information. They might have addresses registered, for air miles and stuff.” Yoshi clicked rapidly through a few screens. “Okay, here we go. This is an address in New Jersey, that’s in America, right? Presumably we’re looking for a man in Japan?”

“Depends how long he’s been here and if he’s changed his details.”

“Umph. Let’s just look at everything.” Not all the passengers had details on the system, which could mean someone else had booked them in, or not.

Taka drummed his fingers irritably. “New York. London. New York. Don’t any of them have addresses in Tokyo? Shit. Let’s check the Japanese.”

One of the Japanese guys had a billing address in the States, but it was for a company. All the rest of them were booked through Japanese businesses. “That’s got to be a no,” said Yoshi. “Surely he wouldn’t be doing this through a company? Or if he was employed?”

Five of the eight non-Japanese men had been booked into business class, but we couldn’t decide if that meant anything. We all glowered at the screen till Yoshi snapped his fingers and started checking when they had flown in. All of the business people had arrived in the last week, mostly in the last few days. We knew Widow’s Peak had been in Tokyo at least three times in the last month, and we all believed he’d been here throughout. None of us could imagine someone wealthy, someone employable, someone who had time apart to think, getting involved in the hothouse Bonnie-and-Clyde scheme Kelly had pulled.

We couldn’t find recent arrival dates for three no-shows: Alexander Kinnear, Gregory Lefkowitz, Michael Hearn. One of them was most likely our man. Unless all of our ideas were wrong, of course.

“He’s living in Tokyo. Is he illegal? Subletting? Or could we find him if you could get into the immigration systems?”

“Dream on,” Taka told me.

“How about flights out?” Chanko asked. “Who’s gone, who’s still here?”

“Give it a try,” said Yoshi, fingers dancing over the keyboard. “Oh, come on, give it up for me…you beauty. Kinnear-san flew out on Sunday morning, he got a standby ticket to New York. Actually, that doesn’t tell us anything, does it? The others could have gone on different carriers.”

“Crap. You’re right. If he’s Kinnear, he’s gone. If not, who knows.”

It looked like a dead end after all. I sat back down, leaning against the wall, feeling the excitement ebb away. I’d hoped so much…

But they were only just starting. Yoshi sat hunched forward with his face set in a scowl of concentration; Taka leaned back, his long, skinny arms dangling; and they both locked themselves into the glowing screens, in a constant rhythm of tapping and cursing, suggestions and arguments, brainwaves that petered out, then mutated into new ideas.

This wasn’t my world. I got out of the fetid atmosphere before my brain fuzzed up completely, and was trying out my new brown contact lenses, turning Japanese with a straight shoulder-length wig, when Minachan rang.

“
Moshi-moshi
.”

“Hey, how’s it going? You got the film?”

“Yeah. We’ve worked it out. There’s all sorts of stuff happening now, so it was really useful.”

“Yeah, you sound excited,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know if it’s going to get us anywhere. And if it doesn’t, I don’t know what to do next.”

We talked about the Roppongi plan a bit. She was cautiously pessimistic.

“I mean, sure, if we had time… Look, I’ve got a couple of punters I could talk to, you know? Well-connected people. Couldn’t we try to get protection for Nori-chan that way?”

“We could, I guess, but I don’t want this to lead back to you. We’re all in enough trouble as it is.”

“You got that right,” she said. “Did you see Yukie yesterday?”

“I didn’t see anyone. That was kind of the point. What about her?”

Minachan sighed. “You know that bastard Oguya?”

“Who?”

“Oguya Hiroyuki? That bull-necked goon who was her ex-boyfriend or whatever? She had bruises all up the insides of her legs yesterday. Made me sick.”

“Oh God.”

“Well—this is disgusting. Yukie’s scared of mice, you know? And Jun kind of swept them into the little boxroom last night to get them out of the way? Well, Oguya shut her in there with them. Sonja heard her screaming, banging on the door. He was leaning against it, she said. Laughing.”

“That’s revolting,” I said blankly. “That’s insane.”

“Sonja went crazy,” Minachan said. “She threw a chair at him. Missed, but he wasn’t very pleased, and I wouldn’t want to make an enemy of that piece of shit. Poor Yukie. She was so scared. She’d wet herself, she was so scared. And he laughed.”

I felt sick with guilt. I hadn’t picked the mice, and I hadn’t remembered she was scared of them if I’d ever known, and I hadn’t locked her in a dark little hole full of them, and the guilt was still twisting and churning inside me.

“Is she okay?” I asked. “Is Sonja?”

“Sonja, sure. If she stays away from
him
. Yukie, no. Not even slightly. She won’t talk to anyone. I wish she’d just run away, but she won’t.”

“Yeah, running away worked for me,” I said. “She’s got family here.”

Minachan let a breath hiss through her teeth, more eloquent than any obscenity she could have come up with. “I know. Have you heard how Nori-chan is?”

There was a bellow from above. “Kerry, get your ass in here!”

I hurried upstairs, promising Minachan I’d call her back, and ran into the study, where Yoshi was at a computer with Chanko peering over his shoulder. He was leaning on the back of Yoshi’s swivel chair, and Yoshi’s feet were braced against the wall to stop it moving.

“What?”

“Is this her?”

I stared at the screen. Kelly stared back. Young, no more than eighteen or nineteen. The picture couldn’t have been more than five years old, and I wondered what had happened in the intervening time to make her face so hard and closed. She was freshly pretty then, not sexy, with her hair bouncing in bright curls around her head, smiling like a small-town beauty queen, which was what she was, I realised, noticing the sash she wore.

And next to her, a tall young man, a couple of years older, with wide shoulders and a proud, possessive arm round Kelly. A square-jawed, good-looking chap, with a crew cut that didn’t disguise his hairline, already starting to go.

“Ack!” I choked, gesturing at the widow’s peak.

“Sure is,” said Chanko, with immense satisfaction. “And check the caption.”

It was the Hollister family website, it seemed, amateurishly designed and apparently not updated for over four years, according to the dateline. The captions were all jokey and full of exclamation marks. This one read:
Mike on leave from the Marines—a girl in every port!!!

“Michael Hearn, come on down,” said Chanko softly.

“Got him.” Taka was rocking in his chair and flexing his long fingers. “And if we only have to work on one name—”

“We’ll take him apart,” agreed Yoshi.

“Great,” I said. “Have we heard about Noriko today? How she is?”

Yoshi put a hand to his mouth. “I haven’t called the hospital,” he muttered, looking stricken. “I got caught up…”

“They’d have called you if there was any change.” I hoped that was true.

“I’m going to ring.”

“Go for it,” Taka said. “I’ll call the guys looking after her, then start on the gaijin. Hearn-san,” he corrected himself as Chanko gave him a look. “Let’s see if he’s still in Tokyo, for a start. It’ll take a while to check the planes, but…” He reached for a phone.

Chanko jerked his head at me, and we went downstairs.

He didn’t say anything at first, just drummed heavy fingers on the worktop. I started to put on some coffee, and finally, almost reluctantly, he spoke.

“Butterfly, looks like we may get this guy. You gotta think about that. What then?”

“Depends on what he does.” I spooned coffee into the filter paper. “I mean, if we can, you know, persuade him to hand over the briefcase, that’s it, isn’t it?”