Tokyo Enigma (3 page)

"Yes."

She pulled out a chair and sat down. "I'm Yuri Taen.
Expected a man?"

My surprise wasn't just that she was a woman. There was a
regional accent in her speech that I couldn't fit to the face.

"Yeah, I did. Mr. Morimoto only gave me your last name. He
didn't say anything else."

"He didn't say, 'Yuri?'"

"It wouldn't have helped. I would have pictured a Russian
cosmonaut."

"Well anyway, call me Yuri. I prefer that, even at the agency,
and..."

Her eyes were a lighter brown than her hair, which was
slightly tinted and woven in a complex braid in back. It was long, but
it wouldn't get in her way.

"Call me Mick. Are there many women in your agency?"

"I don't know the percentage, but it's kind of high, maybe
fifty percent or a little less. Investigation is one business that passes
for equal opportunity employment in Japan. A lot of customers are
women, so women handle women's problems."

"What about the Dorian case?"

"The victim was a woman, and I speak English. I'm what we
call a 'kikokujo', a returnee raised some years abroad. I went to
junior high, high school and college in New Orleans."

She pronounced it in the Yat vernacular of the Big Easy's
natives. It was a weird effect, but at least it explained the accent, and
I was glad for it. I was from Laredo, Texas, an upscale village on the
Rio Grandé. Not exactly the Deep South, but close enough to
stir some nostalgia and comfort.

Yuri was attractive, well educated, physically fit and
appeared street savvy, which raised a question.

"What's the story on Morimoto?" I said.

She didn't move her mouth, but her eyes gave away a smile.
"He speaks English, and he needed a job
.
You'll have to ask
him the rest."

"He won't talk about himself. At least, he wouldn't
yesterday."

Yuri nodded slowly and gazed quietly at the tabletop as
though her conversational skills had taken leave. The waiter brought
coffee. She poured sugar and cream into it and stirred, still silent.
The clink of the spoon when she put it down broke the spell.

"So, what's the agenda this morning?" she said.

I recapped my encounters with Morimoto and said I wanted
to talk to anyone close to Hosoi, relatives, friends or work associates.
I also wanted to talk to the hotel clerk who was there when Dorian
and Hosoi checked in.

"Let's start with yesterday." Yuri's coffee cup was half full.
She gulped it down. "If it's all right with you, I want to see the
pictures of Dorian."

We went to my room. I booted the computer and opened the
folders that contained the photos.

"OK, no injuries to Dorian that looked like a strangulation
victim fighting back," she said. "Let's look at his hands." She enlarged
images of those bruises, folded her arms and hummed softly while
she rocked back and forth. I half expected her to say she had divined
exactly what had happened. Agatha Christie meets Marie Laveau, the
New Orleans Voodoo Queen.

After a few minutes, she shut down the computer. "I have a
suggestion for how to get Foxx Starr to cooperate even if they don't
mean to," she said.

"I don't see the connection."

"To what?"

"The photos."

"There isn't any. I thought you wanted to talk to some
models. I'll see about having someone call and ask for a shoot. We
can find out what services they offer. From what you described, the
girls might do more than have their pictures taken."

"I asked Dorian something on those lines. He said no."

"Maybe the police made him shy. Whatever, it gives us a
shot at someone Hosoi had worked with. You said she was in a travel
poster?"

"Yeah, for a railway, but I don't remember the name. You'll
have to ask Morimoto."

Yuri called her agency.

I couldn't follow what she was saying, but it seemed like
she'd spoken to a few people before she cut the connection.

"I want to see pictures of Hosoi's neck. The law firm ought to
have access to any evidence available to prosecutors. You got the
number?"

"Yeah." I handed her Ishii's business card. "I wonder why
Morimoto didn't suggest that. I'd been pushing him to get an
interview with Dorian, but still it seems pretty important."

"He's a by-the-book kind of guy."

"You mean things have to be spelled out for him."

"Unn," Yuri waggled her left hand as she punched in the
phone number. When she hung up, she was smiling. "They have
copies of the pictures, and they gave me the name and shift of the
hotel clerk, four to midnight."

Dorian's lawyer met us in his office with the postmortem
photos of Maho Hosoi. A bruise on her neck indicated it had been
constricted by a cord that crossed on the front left side. There were
also two faint oval bruises on either side of her hyoid bone just
above the mark left by the cord. Pressure at those points would close
the carotid arteries. That would knock out or kill a person a lot faster
than trying to cut off air supply, seconds instead of a couple of
minutes. I asked Ishii if that could have been the cause of death.

"The trauma from the cord is greater," Taen said. "As far as I
know, that's considered the cause. I'm not sure prosecutors care
which injury caused the death. They care who did it. First hands then
the cord or the cord then hands. I don't think it will make much
difference to the case."

"Probably not to the legal staff on either side. But what
about to the truth?"

Taen just clicked her tongue.

It was early afternoon when we left the law office, but the
sun was already low in a cloudless sky. It gave a golden cast to the
cityscape. Skyscrapers were brilliant on their western faces and
cloaked elsewhere in stark shadow. Autumn's kind illusions
imparted grandeur to vapid architecture before the buildings were
bared to winter's unforgiving overcast. Sort of like middle age, when
you still feel fit and wonder if the bright white hairs and deepening
facial lines are just decorations.

The hotel where Dorian and Hosoi were found was near
Shibuya, a nexus of railway lines and a combination street party and
costume ball. Yuri drove through the central area, past groups of
young men and women dressed outlandishly but identically. A
cluster of girls wearing blue blazers, white shirts, tartan micro skirts
and cork-soled shoes carefully ignored a clutch of boys in denim
jackets, jeans and boots with buckles. The tee-shirt of one bore an
image of James Dean. Young rebels fashion-coded their statements of
individuality, the same as in other countries, but with finer
co-ordination and greater flair than I'd seen elsewhere.

Yuri had called the hotel earlier and booked an hour in the
murder room. She pulled into an underground parking area that had
spaces for five cars. "Got anything with your picture on it?"

I gave her my driver's license.

She wrinkled her nose. "That it? How about a
passport?"

"What are you doing, Yuri?"

"Testing the clerk's memory."

I gave her my passport.

"Follow me, but stay out of sight of the clerk until I motion
for you, okay."

Yuri led the way through an automatic door and walked past
a row of potted plants.

I stopped at the first plant, while she went ahead to the
window. When she spoke Japanese, her manner changed abruptly
from cozy to cold. She showed the clerk my passport. She pointed to
the document and then motioned for me to go to her.

I walked up and smiled at the clerk.

Yuri poked her finger in my direction. "
Kare,
ka
?"

My beginner's Japanese class had covered the phrase
delivered in rough masculine construction. "This him?"

The clerk's mouth opened a bit, and his face went a shade
paler.

"
Kagi jyodai
." Yuri held out her hand.

The clerk developed a twitch near his eye and handed her a
key.

She turned toward the elevator. "Let's go. I told him that I
was here to double check what he'd already told the police, and then
he identified your photo as that of the foreign man who checked into
this hotel with Hosoi. That doesn't sound good to me. How about
you?"

I shook my head.

The room was a gloriously pagan tribute to St. Valentine's
Day. A heart-embossed spread was draped across a heart-shaped
bed. There was a heart-shaped bath built for two and a
floor-to-ceiling, heart-shaped mirror next to it. We checked every drawer and
nook in the room. We didn't even find dust.

"It's hard to see how Dorian could have strangled the girl
without injury from a struggle unless she was already unconscious. If
that's the case though..." I left unsaid that the prosecutors' rough-sex
theory wouldn't make sense.

"Let's test that." Yuri lay across the bed face down. "Sit on
my back."

I could see her point, but I wasn't sure I wanted to go
through with it.

"Go on. I won't break."

She put her arms to her sides to maximize her immobility. I
straddled her hips and pressed my legs against her arms.

"Take off your belt."

I hesitated.

"Take it off and wrap it around my neck, just don't squeeze
anything."

She turned her head so that the left side faced me. Even so,
the only way to cross the belt at the same point the cord crossed on
Hosoi's neck was to press my left fist a foot or so deep into the
mattress and pull up with my right hand. Hard to do.

"Be careful now. I'm going to squirm."

Yuri didn't exactly squirm. She crunched her stomach
muscles like a giant inchworm and twisted to the side. I didn't move
much, but it was enough for her to free one arm. She raked her
fingernails lightly across the back of my hand.

"That would have put a scratch on Dorian and skin under
Hosoi's nails. It wasn't that hard. You sure you tried?"

I nodded. "Maybe Hosoi's not as strong as you. She'd also
been drinking."

"Dorian's not a big as you either. Let's say it's improbable
but not impossible. Now you lie down. It's my turn to be on top." She
smiled and pushed my shoulder.

"What for? You can't hold me down."

"That's not the point. I want to get as much a feel of what did
or did not happen as I can. Might help me think."

Yuri sat on my hips, pressed her shins on my elbows and
looped the belt around my neck. I tried to push up with my arms but
couldn't, so I bucked and twisted like she had. The difference was,
she was tossed enough for me to turn completely over. She ended up
straddling my groin.

"
Wao
!" She laughed and slapped my chest. "Turn
your head so I can cross the belt at the same spot we saw on Maho's
neck. Hold still. I'm going to tighten a little." She leaned forward to
get better leverage. "She would have to have been on her back. But
you wouldn't just lie still with your head in that position if you were
conscious, while some was strangling you. I wonder..."

"Wonder what?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. It's not there yet."

"I'm going to call Morimoto to set up our agenda for
tomorrow." When Yuri hung up, she said Morimoto told her the
travel poster Maho had done for Foxx Starr had been located. There
was one other girl in it. Another investigator from Protect Agency
had called Foxx Starr, described the poster and set up a private
photo session with the other model. Morimoto had also set up an
interview with Maho's brother in her hometown of Morioka. It was
the third day after her death and the day of her funeral. We would
have to meet him there. He said family obligations prevented him
from meeting us elsewhere. Her parents had refused to talk to
us.

"I'll check out Foxx Starr and follow up on anything the
investigator finds out from the other model. Morimoto will go with
you to her hometown," Yuri said.

Progress. We were becoming a team.

I wasn't sure how much Yuri and I had learned from our
role-play experiment that would be useful in building a case, but I
was even more certain that things hadn't happened the way police
described.

My hotel was in the Maronouchi district close to the
Imperial Palace grounds and Shimbashi station. Traffic flowed
smoothly on streets laid out in a grid. No wonder central Tokyo was
so expensive. It was surrounded by Gordian knots of suburban
pathways. Gingko trees planted at regular intervals on broad
walkways were in yellow splendor under streetlights. Their leaves
dotted streets and walkways like petals on a nuptial aisle.

An American academic once wrote a book on the superiority
of Japanese cities. Paris might be beautiful, but it was static. Tokyo,
for the large part, might be a study in functional disorder, but it
could evolve. It was organic. So was a bucket of earthworms.

There was space against the curb about a half block from the
hotel. Yuri pulled over and I got out. I stepped onto the sidewalk and
turned to wave goodbye.

She lowered her window, held her fists together and said,
"Symmetry."

I cupped my hand behind my ear. I'd heard, but I didn't
understand.

"Just came to me. The bruises on Dorian's hands, they were
symmetrical, perfectly symmetrical. Bye." She grinned and drove
into the traffic.

"Symmetry" meant we could change the rating on our
scenario of Dorian strangling Maho in the manner described by
prosecutors from improbable to impossible. Yuri's idea of role-play
at the love hotel had been useful after all. It had made it clear that
there was no way he could have exerted identical pressure on both
hands. I fired up my computer to study Dorian's photos again.
Something else was not right. Not only were the bruises
symmetrical, they were even across each hand. You'd expect a
deeper bruise on one spot that absorbed the most pressure,
probably the outside edge of the hand just below the little finger. I
took a lace out of my shoe and used it to try to strangle my ankle in a
way that left even marks on my hands. It wasn't possible.