Tokyo Enigma (9 page)

"Clumsy" would have been a compliment. "Oafish" struck
closer to home. If I'd gone against the Panther, I'd be the one with the
broken jaw, or worse. He wouldn't care much about the
consequences of hammering my head against the floor.

I replayed my mistakes. Instead of throat-grabbing and
kneeing, one punch under the nose should have taken the guy out. A
twist of his wrist and pressure against the elbow might have worked.
A kick, instead of a knee, to the groin would have brought him down.
A dozen
post facto
scenarios played out better than real
life.

They always did.

I needed a drink, but I'd stared into that abyss before and
didn't like what I'd seen. A drink when I wanted one was all right.
"Need" was different. It was unquenchable.

The hotel had a modest workout room for executives to
burn off power lunches. The concierge and I were getting to be
buddies. I called and asked if there was a better equipped gym that
he could get me into.

He sent me to a place called Tipness, another product of the
random-name conspiracy that seemed to be in charge of Japanese
marketing. A young woman at the desk apologetically asked for the
equivalent of about thirty dollars, for a single session, then a little
extra for a towel. It didn't bother me. I intended to get my money's
worth.

I started out with squats. After warm-ups, I loaded one
hundred fifty kilos onto the bar. It was only three hundred thirty
pounds, but I couldn't quite get to a ninety degree squat. Normally, I
could handle that much easily. Today, my knee objected in the only
way it knew how—with spasms of pain. My rational ego didn't care. It
was payback-to-id time. In six sets, I'd worked down to a hundred
kilos. Next, I went to leg presses, leg curls and calf raises. I switched
to upper body with bench press, incline dumbbell, butterfly, tricep
extensions, stomach crunches with twenty kilos on my chest,
pull-ups, and dumbbell rows. Two hours after I'd started, I strained
through my last set of one-arm curls with ten kilos.

I was purged, physically and emotionally.

I'd found the exit from Wonderland. The yakuza was a man,
not a panther. Dorian was a client, not a cause. And Yuri was a
colleague, nothing more.

At the hotel, I had a glass of amontillado and a light supper.
Then I went to my room, turned off the alarm and slept.

During the night, wind and rain had cleansed the air and
politely ended their task before the city awoke. I stood at the
window and breathed slow and deep. With each breath a pulse
teased through my body, gently invigorating it. Mt. Fuji's distant
snowcap shone stark in the sun against pristine blue. Wind whisked
veils of snow from Fuji's peak and scoured the sky in what seemed
an affirmation of my own catharsis.

The young man I encountered yesterday may or may not
have deserved what happened, but I felt no remorse. He had chosen
his own perils and taken a path paved with the weakness of victims. I
was simply a rut in that road.

Over the phone, Morimoto told me that the photos from
Yuri's camera were good. However, he had not been able to identify
the man who had met Ito. He was also trying to find out more about
Hosoi's bank accounts, but hadn't come up with anything new.

I told him someone needed to change the cartridge in the
tape recorder that Yuri and I had planted. He said that had already
been arranged. Yuri had called and pinpointed the tree limb where
the device was hidden.

"Tell anyone going near Foxx Starr to be very careful. I
might have made people there angry enough to want revenge."

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind why. I'll explain when I see you."

"We are already cautious because of what happened to
Taen-san."

"Good. Whatever precautions you're taking now, should be
increased, if possible. You too Morimoto-san. Be careful, even if you
don't go near there. They've seen your face."

Morimoto was silent for a while. "That's why we don't give
out phone numbers."

One man's logic is another man's
non sequitur
. Let
someone else set the rules, then learn them and obey your way to
happiness. Morimoto had followed that philosophy to success and
then to jeopardy, but he still didn't question the tenet. Perversely,
that thinking had led him to hire thugs to pressure debtors. His
predecessors had done so. His former colleagues probably still did in
obeisance to their ultimate morality, corporate success.

I had no response to Morimoto's implied accusation that my
demand he transgress by giving me Yuri's phone number was
somehow a factor.

"I'll call later." I hung up.

Except for some stiffness in my knee, the damp cold outside
felt good. The sidewalks were still wet and strewn with gingko
leaves. There seemed to be more on the ground now than in the
trees. Soon they would be bare. I had two hours before a meeting
with Dorian's lawyers, so I walked. Using a map and occasional visits
to
koban
, neighborhood police boxes, I found the place with
time to spare.

The lawyer, Ishii, had not been impressed with my evidence
that Dorian did not kill Hosoi. He was, however, impressed with the
fervor of my own conviction and my insistence that it was vital for
Dorian to believe it. He agreed to stop advising his client to beg the
court's mercy. The focus would be solely on acquittal, if Dorian
agreed.

I tore a slip of paper off a notepad on Ishii's desk and wrote,
"Hang in there," on it. Then I signed it and pushed it toward
Ishii.

"Before you talk to him, hand him that."

It occurred to me after I left that "hang" might not have been
the finest choice of words, but I expected Dorian would get my
meaning. It also occurred to me that my confidence, at the moment,
lacked substance. We were spinning wheels. Unless Morimoto could
identify the man who was with Ito, or unless we got something
useful from the tape, I didn't know where to go from here.

Then again maybe I did. If the mystery man was a ranking
bureaucrat, as Yuri suspected, then an investigative agency might
not be the best resource. They'd have better files on felons. I called
Morimoto and asked him to make a copy of the SD card that
contained Yuri's photos and to look up the phone number to Reuters'
Tokyo bureau.

Will Simons, an old friend from university, covered financial
news for the British wire service. After he graduated, he'd enrolled in
a Japanese university and studied economics. He could write articles
in either Japanese or English. I figured he was underemployed as a
reporter, but he liked what he did.

Morimoto had the SD card ready when I arrived. He was
co-operative as always, but he didn't look happy with me.

The punch-out at Foxx Starr was a grave matter.

"We don't use violence in Japan," he said.

The oddest thing about that statement was he obviously
believed it. I wanted to grab his ears and tell him to take off the
blinders, but he probably wouldn't think that was very Japanese
either. Who did he think had attacked Yuri? What did he think
happened to the people he had intimidated as a banker? There was a
gulf that wasn't going to get crossed, so I left it alone.

Simons said he could meet me in the evening and chastised
me for not calling earlier for old time's sake. I didn't say that I hadn't
thought to call at all until I figured he could help me in the case.

I went to the hotel and loaded the images from the SD card
onto my notebook computer. They were good. Enlargements of the
small shopping bag, however, offered no evidence of what might be
inside. For more than two hours I tweaked pixels hoping more detail
would help. I became so absorbed that I nearly worked through the
time to pack up and meet Will.

* * * *

"You're working on the Dorian case?" Will dropped his head
back. "Hah!" His sharp laugh attracted attention from other diners,
but he didn't seem to care. "Do you read Harry Potter stories?"

"What?"

"Do you believe in magic?"

"I believe the guy's innocent."

"Are you serious?"

"Uh huh."

"So who killed poor Maho-san and why?" Will sliced a bite
off a rack of Australian lamb. An oily film glistened on his lower lip as
he chewed. He wasn't exactly portly, but he had enough fat in his face
to smooth out wrinkles and make him look ten years younger than
his age.

"I've no idea, but I know it wasn't Dorian."

Through the course of the meal, I explained my doubts and
sketched the progress to date, leaving out key details such as the
money transfers.

"All right, Mick that's enough to pique my interest, only
because it's you. I'll look at your photos, but my personal association
with bureaucrats extends to top people in the Finance Ministry and
Ministry of Economics Trade and Industry. Not likely I'll recognize
the guy."

After supper, we went to a wine bar that Will recommended.
Nice place, lots of labels of vintners and CDs alike. They played
sixties cool-era jazz. Coltrane, before he got too wiggy for me to
understand; Monk, turning second-intervals into African harmonics;
Jimmy Smith, refining raw passion through the beauty of an organ,
The Sermon, twenty minutes long and full of sin. Besides the wine
and the music, the place had a seductive selection of cheese and
breads. If I hung around Will long enough, I might get my own
wrinkles ironed out.

I set my notebook computer on the table and fired it up.
When I displayed a close-up of the mystery man's face, Will lost his
humor.

"Where was that taken?"

"I don't know. A Japanese colleague shot it."

"Show me the whole photo."

I panned out so Ito was in the picture.

"Who's the woman?" Will emptied his glass in one swallow
and refilled it.

"Who's the man?"

"Okay Mick, here's the deal. I said I'd help you, but we need
to do some serious horse-trading. If you tell me who the woman is
and the circumstances of the photograph, then I'll identify the
man."

It looked like the investigation's spinning wheels were about
to get traction. I made a quick call to Morimoto to make sure he had
not turned up anything. He hadn't.

"Let's negotiate," I said to Will.

We reached an agreement that covered a lot more than
names of the people in the picture. Will would pursue the possibility
of any link between the man and my client or Hosoi. We would meet
periodically to exchange information, and he would not write any
story without consulting me, unless it was breaking news. Also, the
final decision on what to write or whether to write would be
his.

With those ground rules, I identified Ito and even gave him
her home and office addresses.

Will tapped his pen on his notepad after he wrote down the
information. I was about to remind him it was his turn, but he spoke
first.

"The man in the picture is not a top bureaucrat, but your
guess was close. He's the chief secretary of Hisahiko Ohashi, a
commissioner in the Fair Trade Commission. I've seen him a few
times at interviews with his boss. I don't remember his name. I'll get
it for you by tomorrow morning."

Will held his pen between both index fingers and pressed it
against his lower lip. Not exactly a Rodin pose, but it looked like he
was thinking.

"Do you know that game, six levels of separation? The idea is
that anyone can find a link to anyone else in the world within six
relationships. You might not know it, but you can get to Saddam
Hussein in two. You know me, and I interviewed one of his generals
who fled the country ahead of a purge."

I could've linked to Saddam in one, but that was another
story.

"Yeah, I've heard of it, but I don't think it works with
everyone. Mongolian nomads, for instance. What's your point?"

"Just that in terms of coincidence there's not much to tie the
secretary to Dorian."

Not in terms of coincidence, but the attack on Yuri was not
coincidence. I wasn't ready to share that information. Even if I did, it
wouldn't mean anything to Will. I knew it the same way I knew
Dorian didn't kill Hosoi: evidence and instinct.

"Ito must be shady, Will. I don't know what she's into yet,
but you can bet it doesn't involve official business with the
FTC."

"I intend to follow up on this," Will said. "I'm just saying that
for all we know right now, Ito could be the man's wayward
niece."

Will didn't believe it any more than I did, but he'd keep
telling himself that until he had facts to the contrary. That's one
reason I respected him.

In the last two days, I'd had a fight with a gangster, found a
tenuous link between my client and a man associated with the top of
Japan's bureaucracy and, worst of all, entered a pact of trust with a
news reporter.

I wavered, then ordered a bottle of nineteen eighty-five
Viña Monte, a Rioja with a funky name, oaky taste, mellow.
Maroyaka
, as they say in Japan.

There's a fine line between "want" and "need." It was our
third, and final, bottle of claret.

I was surprised to see Yuri at my early morning meeting
with Morimoto.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?"

Her forehead was creased with wrinkles and both corners of
her mouth turned down. It could have just been an inverted smile,
but I doubted it.

"I might have taken another day off if I didn't have to worry
about you getting us into a war with the Gotoh Gumi."

The tone of her voice could have frozen the whiskers off a
baby harp seal.

"What's that?"

"It's the yakuza faction that Panther, as you call him, belongs
to."

"He's not a panther. He's a—"

"His name is Saburo Yamazaki. He's steamed about the guy
you beat up. He has a broken jaw."

I was right. The agency could ID a felon faster than it could a
bureaucrat.