The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (17 page)

That was the second time Alina had spoken of Bradford killing a man. The notion itself wasn’t impossible, only strange and incongruent, an accusation that Munroe had never seen coming considering that Bradford was now sitting in jail for a murder he hadn’t committed. What was the point in that when a real one was so readily available?

“Your friend came to the club three times in the past two months,” Alina said, “each time with the same group of men.”

“Did you know them, or know how I can find them?”

“They weren’t regulars, but your friend knew them well—they were all from the same workplace. Maybe that helps?”

“You’re sure he knew them from work?”

Alina rolled back over and offered a knowing smile. “There are things you learn when you do this job as long as I have,” she said. “There is a certain feel. This is a country of traditions and ceremony and yes, they were from work. And, like you, your friend made an effort to be like the others, but he didn’t drink.”

“The same men for each visit?”

“Yes, until the end when the problems started.”

“Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”

“In the club, yes. By picture, I don’t know.”

“What about in person?”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me about them,” Munroe said.

Alina shifted and stuffed the pillow under her head. “There’s nothing to say about them. They were men, and one man is the same as another.”

Munroe reached for Alina’s face and gently brushed the hair aside. “Not all men are violent,” she said.

“Maybe there are some good men,” Alina said. “Maybe your friend is a good man. To me, one is the same as the other. I’m only food, a good meal that they can look at but not eat.” She turned her head and glanced at Munroe. “The other girls do
dohan
, you know what this is?”

Munroe shook her head.

“
Shimei
is like when you ask for me inside the club. A date, yes? So I get paid for the time we sit and talk.
Dohan
is same thing, but outside the club. In
dohan
is much money and no eyes to watch.
Dohan
means many things, depending on the customer.” Alina paused, waiting for the implication to settle. “You understand?” she said.

Munroe nodded.

“Jiro would not let me go for
dohan
—it’s easy to get my own money that way, to get sympathy. Anyway,” Alina said, rolling back to her side, “that has nothing to say about the men who came with your friend. They were not regular customers, also not so rich like most customers we see. They were Japanese, and they came from work with the same business workclothes like every businessman.”

“Did they speak English?”

Alina paused. Half smiling, eager, she pushed up on an elbow. “One. One spoke English. He was the one who talked to your friend. Good English, I think.”

“The others?”

“One of Jiro’s men, yes.”

Munroe glanced at Alina. With the inclusion of Jiro’s men, Bradford’s story had just taken an epic jump that would have to be roped into the chronology when this thread was finished. She said, “Did my friend talk with you?”

“Mostly with Anna. She’s from the Philippines. She’s beautiful. Very small. Tiny. She speaks beautiful English.”

“Did any of them smoke?” Munroe said.

Alina pressed her palms to her forehead. “I can’t remember.”

“Wear glasses?

“Yes, two.”

“You said Jiro’s men were there. I assume they were part of the problem at the end. Tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

“The beginning?” Alina said. “Which night?”

“The last one.”

“Your friend came with the people from work, same as the other times before. This night, before the club closed, two new customers came and they were placed at the table next to your friend’s. I knew them from Jiro. You could say they are work associates, right, but nobody important—low-level associates. But this night they are dressed in suits and looking like businessmen and given the choice of hostesses and provided drinks. Something is wrong with this, you know? Maybe to everyone else in the room this seems normal, but the mama-san knows, the master knows, you can see it in their faces and it’s clear that I am meant to ignore everything.

“Eventually Jiro’s men, they start a conversation with your friend. They make a big deal that he is a foreigner, that he is at a hostess club, which is a big part of Japanese culture. Shinji, I think his name is Shinji, he speaks good English, so he is the one to do the talking and soon he is offering drinks to your friend. It’s uncomfortable because your friend doesn’t want to be there, but he makes a good show of being friendly. Soon Shinji is asking where he is from and makes a big deal about Texas with hats and cattle and guns, and he asks to see the belt of your friend. Shinji is making a lot of noise like he is drunk, but he’s not drunk and your friend is more and more uncomfortable. The others around the table, they are laughing and they tease him, all of them, and so to make the peace your friend takes off the belt and gives it to Shinji to look. But then Shinji refuses to give it back.”

Munroe closed her eyes. She could see where this was going. “I should stop?” Alina said.

Munroe shook her head. “The more detail, the better.”

“At first, your friend seems to play it like a joke. But then after more asking and still Shinji refuses to give back the belt, it turns into an argument and Shinji becomes very not drunk and very angry and the table gets moved and some drinks are spilled. Me and Anna—Anna was hostess for your friend—and Ivana and Yuki, we are trying to make the peace and calm things, and then the mama-san comes and the master and also the man who is like security for the club, and very politely, with many apologies, they say the men are disturbing the guests and to please go outside. So it is six men outside.

“I know that something is wrong and I make an excuse that I need air, and because there is the commotion and the mess and everything needs to keep calm for the other guests, no one cares that I am gone. I reached the street after the fight is already started. The men from your friend’s work are on the other side of the street watching the argument. They’re very scared, I think. But also drunk and it appears they don’t know what to do.

“Your friend is calm at first, and he asks for the belt and then Shinji tries to hit him with something. Not the belt; I don’t know what. Maybe a bottle, maybe a brick or a knife—I couldn’t see—only after that everything moves very fast, and then Shinji is on the ground and Dai—the other one—he takes a knife and tries to cut your friend. Your friend breaks his arm first. Then slams him to the ground, then everything goes quiet.

“The men from work, they grab your friend and they make him run. Shinji still has the belt and he stands and lifts Dai by the waist and pulls him away and then I couldn’t stay longer, so I don’t know what happens after this, but I overheard the conversation with Jiro the next week that Dai was dead. All of this for a belt,” Alina said. She looked up at Munroe as if Munroe might possibly have the answers. “It makes no sense to me. Why not give it back? Why make so much effort for this small thing? Why did Jiro want it? Was it worth a lot of money?”

“It’s not an expensive belt,” Munroe said, “but my friend wore it every day. Someone used it to kill a woman.”

The room fell silent for a long, long while and Alina turned her head toward the wall above the desk and stared at the diagrams, the cryptic notes, the arrows and fact pieces too far away in the dark to truly see. Finally she said, “You aren’t looking for your friend, you already know where he is.”

“In jail, awaiting trial for a murder he didn’t commit,” Munroe said. “I’m trying to find out why.”

By the time they’d drifted into sleep, the tiniest touches of light had begun to creep beneath the curtains. Munroe woke a few hours later, and when she was dressed she woke Alina, who startled at her touch.

Seeing Munroe, Alina groaned and dropped back down onto the pillow.

Munroe sat on the bed to lace her boots. “We need to get to the consulate,” she said.

Alina rubbed sleep from her face, crawled out of the bed, dragged her purse off the desk, and shut the bathroom door behind her.

Water rushed through the pipes behind the wall.

Munroe leaned into the headboard and closed her eyes.

According to Alina, Jiro had government connections. Munroe assumed that meant within the police force as well, and if she were a possessive, violent man whose woman had walked out on him, she’d be vicious in trying to get her back, if only to kill her. If the woman didn’t have a passport, the consulate would be the first place she’d start looking.

In leaving for the consulate first thing this morning they might already be too late.

The Russian Federation embassy in Tokyo was an alternative.

She didn’t have the time to spare to make the trip north.

In the hotel garage Alina pulled the helmet over her head and her shaking fingers fumbled, unable to thread the strap through the buckle. Gently, so as to avoid putting Alina more on edge than she already was, Munroe moved her hand and secured the helmet, then gave her a slip of paper and fifty thousand yen.

“My phone number,” she said, “and money to pay the fees for the passport.”

The helmet nodded. Then Alina shoved the paper and money deep down into a pocket.

Munroe mounted the bike, turned on the ignition, and brought the horses to life. Alina climbed on behind her. Had circumstances been otherwise, Munroe would have dropped the woman off at the consulate with enough money for taxi, hotel, and airfare and that would have been the end of it. History wouldn’t allow her that, and she could only hope that today’s mission would be simple.

Good deeds had a tendency to get people killed.

The Russian Federation consulate was a two-story, pine-tree-fronted, modern-style, windowless white-and-orange block that stood on a clean and quiet street in a neighborhood of upscale block-shaped apartment buildings. Separating the consulate from street traffic—had there been any street traffic—was an array of plastic cones, a few police officers, and an official van parked on the sidewalk against the white concrete of the compound’s security wall.

The street dead-ended into a metal traffic barrier a block or so down.

Munroe passed the building once for orientation, then looped back and stopped on the sidewalk beside the front gate.

Alina slid off, clutching her bag with one hand and attempting to unbuckle the helmet with the other. The nearest police officer approached the bike, irritation written in his expression. Eyes on him, words to Alina, Munroe took the helmet and shoved it on her own head. “I need two hours,” she said. “Call me on the consulate’s phone if you think you’ll take longer.”

“Thank you,” Alina said, but her focus, too, was on the officer, as if he was a dangerous thing. She quickstepped for the gate.

Munroe rolled off the sidewalk before the policeman reached her and waited nearby while Alina talked her way past consulate security and beyond the front door, then returned to Bradford’s apartment while her mind spun through the fallout that would come if instead of helping Alina she’d just dumped the woman into a trap.

She parked blocks away and walked a circuitous route, as much a caution against having been followed as of stepping into a different kind of trap, and then opened the door to dusty hot air and the apartment exactly as she’d left it.

The calm and order was frustrating. Maddening. Wrong.

Japanese criminal investigators were known for being effectively thorough. Even if they had everything in place for an open-and-shut conviction, if they believed Bradford was guilty, they should have come as a way to cover all the angles and double-down on evidence and motive.

Munroe grabbed the second helmet and stuffed another backpack with several more days’ worth of Bradford’s work clothes. She checked the windows, the doors, and left them closed. The food in the fridge had started to mold, but she’d have to take care of that another day. She routed to the hotel first, to drop off the clothes, and by the time she put the battery back into her phone, more than two hours had passed and Alina had called twice.

Munroe stopped the bike in front of the consulate gate. The door opened and Alina came bounding for the street. The look on her face and the posture of her stride said that she didn’t have a passport.

The policemen watched her from the van.

Munroe pulled the second helmet from the backpack and shoved it onto Alina’s head. “We’ll fix it later,” Munroe said. “Don’t talk now, we need to go.”

Alina slid up behind Munroe and clenched hard when the bike started up.

Munroe headed away from the consulate, away from the hotel and the airport, and toward Kyoto, where, because of the sheer number of white-skinned tourists, those who searched for Alina would be less likely to find her.