Girl in a Box

by Sujata Massey

  Michael’s eyes were shining with something odd, and I found myself wondering to what—or whom—he truly gave his allegiance.

  39

  I was still in the hotel a day later—and it wasn’t good. I felt as impotent as a woman could feel; all I could do with myself was order room service and talk on the telephone.

  “My mother’s driving me crazy,” I confided to Miyo in the middle of Monday morning, when I’d phoned in to the K Team desk, using a brand-new cell phone Michael had bought me. It was a standard spy procedure, changing cell phones, especially at times when surveillance was suspected.

  “Really?” Miyo said. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to spend with her, talking about it, since you’ve given up your job.”

  “I haven’t formally resigned. You know I’m not feeling well.”

  “Well, in any case, your chance to work here is gone. I heard Okuma-san talking about you on the telephone this morning to the secretary at Personnel, who wants to confirm your home phone number, because she wasn’t able to reach you.”

  “I can’t imagine why.” Only that the phone was in the cleared-out apartment in Hiroo—unless Michael had taken it with him. “How are you doing with—the news about Ravi?”

  There was a pause. “I’m still very sad about it, and Archie’s just—devastated. We spent all last night just holding on to each other, crying. Archie said the family is arriving soon; people are coming from America and also India. Many people.”

  “And how is the situation at his bank?”

  “Archie says that everybody is shocked and sad. Archie said someone’s coming in from New York to do an investigation, and he’s sure it’s because they think Ravi might have been doing something wrong, you know, to have taken his own life.”

  “It figures.” So the crimes of Warren Kravitz’s division would all be pinned on Ravi Shah. How convenient for everyone!

  “Rei-san, I have to go in a minute, but there’s one thing I want to ask. Are you really at home?”

  “Why?” A prickle went up my back. I’d started to really trust Miyo, but who was she working with, that she was pushing for this information?

  “Mrs. Okuma wants to know. She said there’s no answer at your home, not even from your parents.”

  “I am on the Izu Peninsula for a bit, to recuperate,” I fabricated. “The air is better for me there, and the hot springs are part of my doctor’s recommended treatment.”

  “Well, please feel better,” Miyo said, but there was an edge to her voice that made me think she hadn’t believed a word that I’d said.

  Now I understood that Michael had been correct about the danger of my remaining at Mitsutan. Still, I felt terrible that a man had been killed and nobody was close to being implicated in his death. All I’d figured out was the method by which Mitsutan was inflating its numbers.

  I was trapped in my high-gloss box of a hotel room, without even Michael around to keep me company. At the moment—I checked my watch—he was supposed to be talking to a liaison at the American embassy who was close to the Japanese national police and might be able to persuade that organization to send detectives to inspect Ravi’s apartment for evidence of a breakin.

  Michael was doing something, at least; I could do so little. I thought about calling Personnel myself, since they were trying to find a way to officially fire me; no, I thought, Michael would hate that. Everything should be done through Mrs. Taki.

  Her number had to be among the documents Michael had dumped into a box and brought to the hotel. I rummaged for twenty minutes before finding my little address book, which had her office, cell, and home phone numbers.

  None of the calls were answered. I shook my head, wondering what she was doing. It was one thing if she was under a bubble-dryer at the beauty salon, but it was too late in the day for that.

  I started the routine of calling her numbers one more time, and felt rewarded for my persistence when she picked up her home phone.

  “Ah, Rei-chan. Is that you?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry to disturb you. Were you sleeping?” I flinched at hearing her use my real name—she’d never been told my code name, or Michael’s; but it would be pointless to try to explain these things to her now, over the phone.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day, though for you, it’s already over,” she said. “And how did you and Michael celebrate?”

  I’d forgotten that the previous day—the day of Ravi’s death—was the holiday of love. It didn’t matter at all. And what was she doing, hinting around that Michael and I were involved in a romance? For the first time, I understood exactly what Michael had said about how a relationship between us, sexual or not, would be regarded by the rest of OCI.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day to you, and to answer your question, I didn’t do anything special. He does his job and I do mine.”

  “Well, Rei-san, for what reason are you calling? Surely not to tell me you couldn’t find that book before you left the store?”

  “Oh, I’ve got your book, I’m sorry. I’ll mail it to you today.”

  “Ah, thank you so much! If you don’t mind sending it express, and to my house—you have that address, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Actually, I’m calling because I think you may need to call Mitsutan’s personnel department and—defuse a difficult situation. Because I haven’t been working, they’ve been trying to reach me by phone in Hiroo, and of course nobody is there to answer.”

  “Really! Did you move in with Michael, then?” Her question was coy.

  Mrs. Taki’s expertise in intelligence was showing, I thought, smiling to myself despite everything. “Okay, we’re together, but not together. It’s just a matter of security.”

  “You mean, kusare-en,” Mrs. Taki said, using an expression for a kind of affair between people who were friends. It wasn’t the Japanese ideal, more a relationship of convenience.

  “No, please, it’s nothing romantic at all.” I had to get her off the romance track; it was embarrassing me beyond belief. “Taki-san, this is what I humbly request you to do. Remember the Mitsutan number you used to report that I was sick? Can you please call them back—ask for Aoki-san’s secretary, Yamada-san; she won’t give you trouble. You could tell her that you knew they’ve been calling our home phone, but the fact is we’re away, so that’s why there was no answer.”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Taki’s voice was reassuring. “But is there something else I can say? That message sounds a little strange.”

  “Actually, I’m afraid she’ll want to tell you something—that I’m fired.”

  “Heh? Michael never said anything about you having trouble in your work—”

  “Just let Personnel give you the bad news. I suppose you’ll probably apologize a million times and tell her that I’m a terrible, irresponsible daughter.”

  “Are you sure? I could make an excuse about your illness again. Perhaps they’ll take you back—we worked so hard to get you hired!” Mrs. Taki sounded more upset than I’d expected.

  “Michael doesn’t want me to return.”

  “Why?”

  “An order from his boss. Oh, and getting back to Personnel, if they say something about my credit card bill, please let them know I’m aware of the problem, and there are funds to pay at my bank. They can run any charges through again. The last thing I want is to have my name go into a loan shark’s database.”

  “That’s a silly idea, Rei-san; you have no reason to worry about sharks in Japan. But the other things, like your clothing locker—I imagine Personnel might want to ask you to clean it out?”

  She’d made a good point. The uniforms were there, and I probably needed to get them cleaned before returning them to Mrs. Ono. Thinking of Miyo, I said, “I’ll ask a friend to do it for me.”

  After I’d finished speaking with Mrs. Taki, I moped about the hotel suite. It was one of the largest guest spaces in the hotel, but I felt that it was closing in on me. I thought about going to the fitness center, but Michael had thoug
ht it was too risky. He’d tossed me a travel jump rope, also confiscated from the apartment, and some light weights.

  I jumped rope until a phone call came from the front desk. Someone in the room below me was trying to sleep. I apologized to the clerk and switched to 100, a series of fast abdominal Pilates exercises that one could do lying on the floor. When the phone rang again, I was exasperated. The 100 were quiet exercises; I couldn’t believe I’d disturbed anyone.

  It was only Michael on the other end. He told me the situation looked promising with the Japanese national police. Although Michael hadn’t revealed his true identity—he had posed as a bureaucrat from the State Department—he had suggested that the police take a second look at the scene of the suicide, including dusting the apartment for fingerprints.

  “What are you doing? Have you had lunch yet?” Michael asked when he was through telling me about his work.

  “I’ve been exercising, and, no, I haven’t eaten. I’m sick of room service. This hotel is packed with excellent restaurants, and I just feel so—confined.”

  “What about La Gola?”

  “That great little Italian place on the street behind Kurofune Antiques?”

  “Exactly. I’ll stop there and look at the menu, give you a call, and you can order what you want. You’ll hear from me by five at the latest, okay?”

  La Gola had a marinated salmon that was one of my favorites, so I grudgingly thanked Michael. Only a few more hours to kill. I took a nap, and when I woke up, it was dark.

  I got out of bed, went to the window, and opened the shade so that I could see the five-star view of Tokyo Tower, glittering skyscrapers, and boldly flashing billboards, including one for a pachinko parlor. Pachinko and other gambling games were almost entirely controlled by gangsters, but the games were so ingrained in Japanese society that there was even a large pachinko parlor right across from the historic Kabuki-za.

  I switched on my laptop and started a search for references to the Kanazawa-kai and Nozumi-gun yakuza organizations. More than 3,000 hits. I scanned down for the newspaper articles that I trusted; and by the time I’d read the first forty, I had a good picture of the relationship between the two gangs, which had frequently tangled, with young gangsters on either side being the usual victims of shooting or stabbing.

  Kanazawa-kai was one of the top yakuza organizations in Japan; it ran several loan-sharking agencies, in addition to the drug operations Michael had mentioned. Given its particular mode of work, I could see why the group had a need to launder money.

  Nozumi-gumi was a different story. It was almost sixty years old, and it had diversified into many fields—including construction and real estate. But it did loan-sharking and debt collection, just like Kanazawa-kai. It had once filtered money through a bank, according to the news stories, but that bank had been shut down long ago.

  Wait a minute. If Nozumi-gumi needed a bank, perhaps Mitsutan’s credit division was the answer.

  I jumped up from the computer and began pacing the room. If Nozumi-gumi left its own dirty money with someone in accounting at Mitsutan—it could, theoretically, match up with the inflated profits Mitsutan was reporting.

  Yes, I thought with growing excitement. There might actually be a lot of money sitting around in the coffers of Mitsutan just because the Mitsuyamas had a secret deal whereby they took in money for Nozumi-gumi, and then rationalized its existence by means of the inflated profits being reported to stockholders, the media, and the Japanese government.

  How clever Mitsutan’s strategy had been! While most retailers involved in money laundering would have declared a financial loss and diverted unsold goods as payouts to their gangster friends, Mitsutan’s board had instead proclaimed a profit, and used their own banking division to discreetly handle the distribution of dirty funds. It was a brilliant strategy, but perhaps one that Kanazawa-kai was aware of, and was attempting to shut down using Warren Kravitz as a whistle-blower to the American government.

  And if this theory was true, the gangsters stalking me a few nights earlier couldn’t have been Warren Kravitz’s Kanazawa-kai friends. My stalkers had to be Nozumi-gumi, linked with the store that had become my second home. Someone at Mitsutan had deciphered who I was.

  40

  Michael had made me promise to refrain from going outside, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t call him. I did, every fifteen minutes, starting around five-thirty in the evening, because he’d talked about being back at five.

  The calls I made went straight into his voice mail; he wasn’t picking up. Maybe he was tied up in an important meeting at the embassy and just couldn’t answer his phone. As I was hanging up my phone for the fourth time, I saw a message on its screen telling me there was an incoming call. I pressed talk and heard Miyo Han’s voice on the other end.

  Miyo! A prickle shot through me, now that I was thinking about who at the store had figured out my identity.

  “They’re getting a replacement for you,” Miyo said, sounding as if she was about to cry. “I just wanted you to know, in case you’re thinking of trying to come back.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish we could see each other, but I think it’ll be a while till I can get out—”

  “But I need to talk to you. The fact is, I’ve had a terrible day. Okuma-san nearly bit off my head!”

  “Because you’re feeling upset about—everything?”

  “I am upset, but it’s not just about Ravi. You see, this American customer came in, and he was asking me for an extra favor—okay, it was a bit unusual, and I probably shouldn’t have done it. When Okuma-san walked in and saw the situation, she started yelling at me right in front of him and other customers who were coming in.”

  “What was the favor?” I asked.

  “Well, this man was worried about how much money his wife was spending here, so he asked me to look for her record of purchases for the year, and as you know, it’s pretty easy to pull that up, so I did. When Okuma-san saw what was on my screen, she actually sent him away from the K Team office. I’ve never seen her behave that way with any customer—it was awful!”

  “What did this American look like?” I wondered if it was Warren Kravitz, trying to gather the same kind of evidence against the store as I’d found out myself. But Melanie paid cash, all the time—would the numbers, inside the system, also be fixed?

  “His clothes weren’t much—just khaki trousers and a white shirt without a tie—but he was really cute, somewhere in his thirties, I guess, dark-haired and with really cool glasses, though I bet he’d look better without them. The thing that really charmed me enough to do the favor, though, was that he spoke Korean.”

  “Did he give you a name?” I was so anxious that I could barely get the question out. She’d described exactly what Michael had been wearing when he left the hotel, minus the blazer.

  “Jonathan, he said. Jonathan Lockwood, from the American consulate, which is why he spoke such good Korean—he said he had been posted to Seoul. I don’t usually go out of my way for married male customers, but he was kind of—irresistible.”

  “Well, I agree that this customer sounds like a hard one.” I remembered Michael mentioning a foreign service officer called Lockwood at the embassy. Michael had probably used Lockwood’s name because he was married and had a wife whose record could actually be pulled and serve as evidence of number-tampering at Mitsutan.

  “Okuma-san said I should never have gone as far as I did. She telephoned Security, right after he left.”

  “Did they call the police?” My God, how was I going to get Michael out of a Japanese prison?

  “I have no idea. After the call was made, she just shouted at me, and you know, she gets mad sometimes but she never shouts. She said I’d once been a good employee, but you had been a bad influence. She said she knew you’d taught me to go into the computer to look for this kind of information, and it was wrong.”

  “Really?” Suddenly I felt a chill. I remembered how, the night that Miyo and I h
ad looked at my spending record, I’d let her do everything, and I hadn’t gone in behind her and erased the history of what we’d looked at. I knew how to do it; I’d been trained back in Virginia—but I hadn’t wanted to do it, with Miyo looking on.

  I’d returned to work the next day fully intending to erase the evidence of Miyo’s credit investigation, but the visit from Ravi had thrown me off course. Mrs. Okuma had been in that day; she could have figured things out and called somebody within the store, who in turn could have sent gangsters to my doorstep.

  “What is it, Rei-san?”

  “Nothing.” I’d been thinking that what had seemed like such a blessing—the hard evidence of financial lies—had also been my undoing, and in turn, had put Michael in danger.

  “Ten more minutes and I’m done with work. Rei-san, I’ve got nothing to do tonight and I’m scared she might get me fired. Let’s get together. Please?”

  I was no longer fearful about Miyo’s role in my life, but I was still on restriction. “I can’t. Like I’ve been telling you, my own parents have me locked up for a while.”

  “I forgot. You’re a girl in a box, aren’t you?” Miyo’s voice held a hint of the cold mockery that had once been her staple with me. But now I knew that the coldness was just a shield to hide her insecurity.

  “You could say that,” I said, looking around at the luxurious hotel room that had become my prison. “Listen, Miyo-san, if you see that same foreign guy as you’re leaving the store tonight, will you call me right away?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to go out with a foreigner. Anyway, how can you think of picking up a married man with Ravi not even cremated yet?”

  I thought quickly. “Remember how I told you about the way my father feels about me dating foreigners? Well, the truth is, I think the man who came to see you was someone who’d actually, um, hoped to see me. He is the one my parents are against. Oh, it’s such a mess!”

  “Because you’re in love with a married gaijin?” Miyo’s voice sank to a conspiratorial whisper.