The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (14 page)

Kitashinchi, the high-end nightlife and drinking district at Osaka’s heart, was what most people envisioned when they thought of Japan: a maze of narrow, pedestrian-crowded streets with building facades covered in neon signs of every shape and color. This was where the rich and the beautiful and the weird and the exotic collided, and the party raved the long night through in clubs and restaurants and bars and all manner of dens of iniquity, yet always in the best of taste.

Munroe came to the end of a block, glanced at the address she’d written down from Bradford’s calendar and the hand-drawn lines she’d copied off online maps, and took a left, down another street within the matrix.

Storefronts and stairwells, bathed in light and cluttered by advertising boards, opened directly to the passersby. Taxis crawled among the pedestrians who, without sidewalks and crosswalks, went where they pleased as they pleased. Scantily dressed women—both hostesses and ladies of the night—competed with transvestites and street hawks for the attention of the salarymen in their suits and ties, many of them incoherently drunk, and the businessmen who came to entertain clients, and others who came for entertainment and thrills.

Munroe paused, and in the middle of the street, jostled by pedestrians on all sides, she turned a slow circle, glancing up and around.

The street was familiar, but not in the way the last ten had been.

This was familiar because she’d been here before.

Munroe swore under her breath and pushed forward until she stood in front of the stairs that led to the restaurant where Bradford had taken her to dinner less than two weeks back.

What’s the special occasion?
she’d asked.

Do we need one?

Well, apparently fucking so.

Munroe replayed the night in her head: the way he’d lingered over a meal that had kept going with dessert and coffee, and his distractedness.

And the lies. Of course the lies.

All I can do is hope you’re able to figure it out,
he’d said.
Maybe at least then you’ll understand that my intentions were good and that even in the lies, I never meant to hurt you.

Motherfucker.

Bringing her here was far too abstruse to have been planned out as a hint, like the clues left in the drawer. No, Bradford, the romantic, had used her as cover to case a target and inked the location onto the calendar after the fact.

Munroe glanced up at the window where they’d sat and then turned again, tracking a line of sight up and down the street, gauging what he would have seen from his side of the table. And there they were: hostess club option one and hostess club option two.

Munroe started with the nearest club, almost directly across the street, where a glass box frame embedded in the wall showed off a menu of names in the same way the plastic food replicas were the menu for the restaurant next door.

The stairs led down and Munroe followed two men into a smoky atmosphere, where the ambient music was low and a backlit bar faced the entry. The rest of the room was a single lounge with sectional seating that created faux divisions of space and a sense of privacy. Blue under-counter LEDs and soft-colored drop shades were the extent of the lighting.

The mama-san, a woman in her late fifties, if one was generous, elegantly clothed and wearing enough makeup and perfume to make a cliché of her age, greeted the men with an air of touchy-feely warmth and familiarity that only just bordered on flirting, then she guided them toward a table.

They sat and the mama-san left them, and a moment later two young Japanese women joined the men with smiles and coy girlish flirtation.

Munroe’s view of the interchange was cut short by the man who stepped out from behind the bar and headed in her direction. He was in his early thirties, maybe, dressed in a designer suit and tie with shoes at a spit-polish shine, his hair gelled into styled asymmetry. He was the master, the man who handled the girls, the male counterpart to the mama-san who catered to the clients, and he glanced up and down just once, as if trying Munroe on for size.

She’d changed into jeans and a blouse, but her hair and makeup were still heavy on the feminine side in the wake of her visit to Bradford.

In broken English the man said, “American?”

Munroe nodded, her focus trained over his shoulder, toward the interior, catching glimpses of the routine as the bartender sent a half-full bottle to the newcomers’ table and the two young women, full of coquettish giggles, poured drinks and made conversation.

The master shifted, blocking Munroe’s view. “You speak Japanese?” he said.

Attention still on the tables and the men, and fighting for an unobtrusive look, Munroe said, “A little.”

“Come tomorrow afternoon,” the master said. “Busy now. We talk again.”

Munroe cut her eyes back to him, her expression blank for a heartbeat, and then she nearly laughed. This had been a job interview. And of course. Why else would a foreign woman have wandered in alone, looking confused and possibly in need of money?

She smiled and said, “I don’t need work.” She handed him the slip of paper on which she’d written the hostess club’s address. “Is this here?”

The master studied the paper and shook his head, and it was difficult to see in his polite manner if, now that she was neither customer nor future employee, the headshake was of disappointment, relief, or indifference.

He swept a palm toward the door and said, “That way.”

Munroe mimicked his motion with one of her own. “Down the street?”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Address that way.”

She bowed. “Thank you,” she said.

“You look work? Work here is good.”

“No work,” she said, “only friends.” And she glanced over his shoulder again, snagging a final impression of the interaction. Hostess clubs would be different in some ways and the same in others. Master and mama-san here meant master and mama-san there, and mama-san was all about making the male clients happy. Unless Munroe intended to snuggle up to strange men under the watchful eye of her new master, getting access to the target location would require a change in plans.

Down the street, trading one hostess club for the next, Munroe studied yet another menu of names, this one handwritten, beautifully scrolled in colorful chalkboard paint, and nestled in folds of lavender satin.

She checked over her shoulder for the second-floor restaurant window in the near distance, at the face so clearly seen beyond the pane standing in for Bradford and providing a perfect line of sight. The menu had no address to compare against the slip of paper, no prices, but the location put the place in the higher-end, about a hundred dollars an hour, and that was before drinks or any talk of sex.

Hostess clubs weren’t brothels, not in any technical sense. They were closer to a diluted offshoot of the geisha tradition in which young girls trained for years to become the perfect evening companion. But here, instead of the classically trained, were attractive women who flattered men who paid in minute-based increments for the privilege of being fawned over and lied to.

Hostess clubs were drinking establishments where businessmen came to relax and feel good after work, little niches carved out for the sole purpose of sexual titillation, fully integrated into a culture in which work continued long after business hours ended. The more attractive and more educated the woman, the higher the price paid to acquire her time, and whether the women slept with their clients was a separate issue. Some did. Some didn’t. The pressure was always there.

Prostitution in Japan was only illegal as intercourse in exchange for payment. Oral sex, anal sex, any other kind of sex was wide open, as was made clear by the many “soap houses” and “fashion health” spas that operated in high numbers, turning Japan into one of the top destinations for sex-trafficking victims.

Munroe left the window display for the restaurant.

The same foreignness that marked her as a perpetual outsider also turned her seemingly odd behavior into an amusing quirk, and when the table at which she and Bradford had sat was finally free, the proprietress, with demure smiles and a welcoming bow, offered Munroe what she had insisted upon waiting for.

Munroe ordered, and ate, and waited, and ordered again, and waited some more, while the evening deepened and the street began to empty somewhat, and because keeping the table prevented the restaurant from serving other clients, she continued with high-priced flavor-infused drinks that kept the money flowing.

Men came and went into the club and Munroe evaluated them by their ages, their modes of arrival, the length of time they stayed, and the numbers in their groups. The night drew down to closing time and Munroe, having seen as much as she had, paid the bill and left.

She didn’t bother with further surveillance.

She’d gotten what she’d come for; she’d found her mark.

The challenge had already begun to churn the turbid waters, nudging the hibernating hunter beneath, shoving the nightmare into the background where personal things belonged. The bed called out, offering sleep and dreamless rest. Munroe tugged off her boots and reached for the laptop, logged into her bank, and checked the account.

No money from Walker yet, but it would come.

She showered and slept and woke with the sun, then dressed in yesterday’s clothes and accessed the account again. This time the numbers were there. In response the stirring rose, tangible and soothing: inner demons laughing at having been loosed to wreak havoc, setting her free from the encumbrances of fear of loss and love and the emotions that clouded reason and jeopardized clarity.

An e-mail from Walker waited in her in-box: confirmation of the wire transfer, scanned images of the contract, a name and number for the military contact Bradford might have been talking to, and a request for information on everyone Munroe had spoken with about the case.

The language was formal: the type of cover-your-ass legalese that had underpinned most of Munroe’s jobs before she’d met Bradford. This was Walker stating that as long as Munroe planned to be a dick, Walker had no problem being a corporate asshole.

Munroe smiled.

This was familiar ground, comforting in its own strange way.

She typed out a reply: names and numbers that she’d promised to send and a formal assurance that regular reports would be provided as per the terms outlined in the contract. She’d have to find a way to get the paperwork countersigned and returned, but that was a formality. The deed was done.

She hit send, copied out the info on Bradford’s military contact, opened a browser window, and hunted for Warren Green. A reverse search of the phone number led to a work line that didn’t allow for corroboration, so she scoured profiles and databases and social networking profiles until she found him.

Green was African American, career military it would seem, an athlete and father of three, and she’d have to wait until evening to catch him during his morning.

Munroe placed the items from Bradford’s drawer on the bed, gazing over them, allowing her mind to wander freely, attempting to match abstract questions with abstract answers, but there was nothing new.

Whatever else Bradford was, he wasn’t stupid. He may not have known who was coming after him, or even how or what or why, but there was no reason to throw his foresight away. She picked up the security pass, tapped the laminate against her fingers, then held the card sideways to get a better look at her face without the distraction of the hologram.

Munroe stood, faced the mirror, and studied the reflection.

She needed into the hostess club, needed into ALTEQ, and wouldn’t get respect or access into either looking as she did.