Girl in a Box

by Sujata Massey

  “Yes,” I said, after a beat. “I suppose I am.”

  By eight o’clock, Michael still hadn’t returned. The store had closed at seven, which meant that even if Mitsutan’s security people had kept him in their office, he would certainly have had time to get back to Roppongi Hills by this hour. Or at the very least, he would have phoned to tell me about the nightmare he’d gone through, and where he was heading next.

  I abandoned the phone and went over to the low table near the sofa where Michael had slept the night before. The few possessions he’d brought from the New Sanno were neatly stacked; some folders, all marked “top secret”; and a small black address book.

  Michael’s black book! I opened it and saw a photograph of Jennifer pasted inside the cover. But I couldn’t brood on that now; I was looking for contact information, ideally someone with whom he’d been working in Japan. I scrutinized the various embassy officers’ cards. The only person I could remember him naming was Brian, the soldier who’d led me to him in the first place, and who’d helped Michael pack up the apartment. Brian was probably part of the armed backup group Michael had mentioned.

  There was no business card for Brian Jones, but within the address book I found a handwritten line with his name and two telephone numbers in Tokyo.

  I was going to break my promise to Michael—but only because I was worried. I dialed Brian’s number, and he picked up on the second ring.

  “Jones here.”

  “Is this Brian?”

  “Yes, Sis. What’s up?”

  “How did you know it was me?” I was stunned by the fact that he’d recognized my voice, and also knew my code name. Michael obviously had included him in the intelligence loop.

  “I’ve heard you speaking, lots of times.” Brian sounded amused.

  “I guess I didn’t notice—”

  “Pretty hard for a black guy not to get noticed in Tokyo.”

  “Well, of course I’ve seen you, and I know you’ve helped me—but I wasn’t aware that you overheard me talking.” I felt so flustered and embarrassed that I rushed on to my point. “Do you know where Brooks is at the moment?”

  “Well, we spoke on the phone around one, and he said that by late afternoon he was going to an Italian restaurant in Roppongi for take-out. Said you were getting tired of room service food. I tell you, in all my years hanging with the guy, he never took the time to hand-deliver me meals—”

  “He never arrived here. I think he might have encountered trouble at Mitsutan.”

  “You mean the store on the Ginza? Last time I talked to him, he was over at the embassy. He didn’t mention Mitsutan.”

  If Brian didn’t know about Mitsutan, he must not have known the specifics of the operation, so I was going to have to watch my words. “Yes, that’s the place, and I know for a fact he was there. From what I understand, he was asking too many questions about things—and security may have taken him into custody, perhaps even turning him over to the police, or worse.”

  “That sounds bad.” Brian’s voice had changed.

  “Do you have any connections to the embassy? Is there someone who could make a discreet inquiry to see if the police are holding him?” I would rule that situation out first before I panicked.

  “I don’t think there’s a need to worry about the police,” Brian said. “Michael’s tight with the Japanese cops. He took a police chief to lunch today, right before that guy sent a detective crew over to that banker’s suicide apartment in Roppongi Hills. Some concern of yours, he said. Do you think whatever he’s gotten into is connected to that?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s trouble relating to some—bad people—behind the department store.”

  “Rei, you’re going to have to give me a for-instance, because I get the feeling you’re holding back quite a lot of what’s been going on. Not that I’m trying to pry, but this is my buddy. He’d take a bullet for me, and I would for him.”

  I shuddered at the image and said, “I think that he blew his cover and someone’s got him.”

  “You mean—someone like the guys who were following you, the other night?” Brian exhaled sharply. “We don’t know who those guys were. Yakuza, probably, but it was too dark to catch sight of their faces, let alone their tattoos.”

  “Probably it was Nozumi-gun,” I said. “They’re involved in Mitsutan, I’m almost certain.”

  “Okay.” Brian’s voice was crisp. “First thing I’m going to do is call Langley, to let them know he’s MIA. Then I’ll come to you, take over the surveillance. I’m sure Michael would want me to watch over you, in his absence—”

  “Don’t worry about me; worry about him,” I said, trying to stifle my growing feeling of panic. “The hotel room’s locked and I’m not opening for anybody. Just tell me where you’ll be this evening. I may need to get in touch with you again.”

  “My plan was to meet a couple of friends over at the Sanno because they’re broadcasting the Lakers game tonight on ESPN. But I can’t possibly relax now.”

  I considered the situation. The New Sanno was in Hiroo, which was probably closer to the Ginza than his apartment.

  “I think you should still go. Please. At least you’re geographically close if I decide—if I decide I want you to come over.”

  “I’ll give you my cell number, and don’t hesitate to call about anything. Okay?”

  It was the second number listed next to his name in the address book, but I wasn’t about to tell him I’d been snooping in my boss’s black book. Instead, I said, “Just one more question, Brian. You’re not really an ordinary military grunt, are you?”

  “I don’t think anybody likes to think they’re ordinary, and certainly not a grunt.” The sarcasm in Brian’s voice was clear.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I can’t tell you what I do,” Brian said. “All I’ll say is I’ve lived in that apartment in Hiroo before. And in Japan, you, Michael, and I are the sole members of a particular family—or should I say, trio?”

  A triangle, I thought bleakly, with the point on top missing. I thanked Brian and hung up, resolute about bringing the last family member home, before it was too late.

  41

  The display windows at Mitsutan had changed. The Valentine’s Day teddy bears were gone because White Day was ahead—the holiday on March 15 when Japanese men were supposed to give a return gift to the women who’d blessed them on Valentine’s Day. In Japan, no prezento could go unreturned.

  It was just after nine o’clock when I stood in the shadow of the building, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t being watched. I glanced back and forth from the street to the interior of the window, where a young woman wearing blue jeans was altering a window display. She could wear clothes like this because she wasn’t an official Mitsutan employee, but someone who worked for the creative agency that handled Mitsutan’s window dressing.

  The woman was clothing a faceless mannequin in a lacy white bra and panties; I knew the designers well enough by now to identify them as La Perla, the perfect brand to give for White Day.

  The next window featured a completed display of white chocolates by Pierre Hermé, one of the chic international brands, like Anya Hindmarch and Akris, that I would never have known mattered if I hadn’t worked at Mitsutan. I’d learned so many trivial things during my time at the store. What I really needed to know, I had missed completely.

  I moved on, to the side of the building close to a window where another stylist was arranging a pure white handbag on a spotlighted cube, a handbag that was easily identifiable as Dior by the giant leather letters C and D hanging from the pockets in front. If the letters hadn’t been there, the bag could have been made by anybody; but then nobody would pay $5,000 for it.

  I couldn’t imagine somebody feeling duty-bound to give this kind of thing to a coworker, unless she was a mistress. That made me, in turn, think about Mr. Yoshino; how Michael had feared that he’d been the one who’d figured me out, but I now believed that Mrs
. Okuma, the only woman in the Mitsuyamas’ inner circle, was the one who’d detected my identity. And I would bet my last 10,000-yen note that she was involved in the financial inflation, and knew why Mr. Fujiwara had been killed.

  Mr. Fujiwara had to have played an important role in keeping the system running. He was the director of customer service, who would have been the ultimate authority over customers who might have questions or complaints about merchandise they’d bought, or problems with their charge cards. Mr. Fujiwara knew, and maybe he’d asked for more money in exchange for his cooperation. In any event, he’d done something to become the store’s enemy.

  Now Michael was caught up in the mess. Finding him would be a nightmare. He could be stashed in one of Mitsutan’s dozens of warehouses scattered on the outskirts of the city; or in a store-owned vehicle; or in one of its buildings, like the main store or the annex. Or perhaps I’d never find him, because he was slowly hardening inside the cement foundation of one of Nozumi-gumi’s many new construction projects inside or out of Tokyo.

  I steeled myself, trying to remain calm enough to work. I would start with the obvious places first. The annex probably wasn’t locked up tonight, since the stylists were working.

  I approached the building—frequently checking behind me, to alleviate the sense I had of being followed. Nobody was there, so I looked resolutely ahead to the annex, where one window was lit. I counted upward five levels, and then from the left side toward the right, to ascertain that this was the same window from which someone had peered at me a few days before. This time, the curtain was closed.

  I stepped through the door—which was open, as I’d expected—into a hallway lit only by the yellow light behind an emergency exit sign. The doors to Personnel and the locker rooms were locked. I looked up the grimy staircase, which vanished into black, and I wished I had something stronger to use for illumination than the mini-flashlight on my key chain.

  Not wanting to make any noise on the steps, I bent to take off my Asics, and as I did so, something scratched against the floor. I winced at the sound, and as I picked up my left shoe, I discovered that I’d stepped on a pair of eyeglasses. They hadn’t broken, though. I picked them up, and I didn’t even need to look at the American brand name, Ralph Lauren, on the inside to know who they belonged to. They were Michael’s, the ones he wore as a light disguise, with clear non-prescription lenses.

  He’d lost his glasses. Had he left them for someone like me to find, or had they fallen during a struggle? Perhaps they’d been ripped off his face by someone hoping to make him less able to fight—no, I couldn’t think about that. I just needed to find him.

  I found an open storage closet, slipped in, and took out my telephone. I dialed Brian’s cell number, which I’d programmed in ahead of time. He picked up immediately.

  “I found his glasses,” I whispered after he’d said hello.

  “Come again?”

  “His eyeglasses, the ones he uses when he pretends he’s with State. They were lying within the entrance to a building behind Mitsutan, the store’s annex. Since they’re still here, I think he must have passed through not too long ago. He might still be here.”

  “You went to that store? Rei, what the hell are you doing?” Brian sounded alarmed.

  “I had to do it. You can’t expect me to stay in my box when Michael’s missing!” It was hard to keep my voice to a whisper, because I was so upset; but I couldn’t risk being overheard. “I’ve got to get off. I’ll get back with you when I have a chance.”

  “Hold on. I’d like to come out there and be your backup. Where are you, exactly?”

  I gave him the subway directions. “When you get here, come out to exit B12. It’s one of the few exits that will be open at this time, and it comes right out on the street near the front of the store. The annex is behind the store, in an alley next to its parking garage. I should be out of the building by then, and I’ll just hide in the alley, near the parking garage, until I see you.”

  “Do you want me to call you when I get there?”

  “Better not. Even if the phone’s on vibrate mode, someone could hear it, because the building’s so quiet.”

  “Then you call me. One ring, and hang up, if you’re in trouble. Two rings if you’re still cool.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Sure. And Rei? Don’t try to be a hero, okay?”

  I didn’t answer, because I was tired of telling lies.

  Ms. Aoki of Personnel had spent a little time telling my trainee group about the annex. This was where we would change our clothes, use the toilets, wash our hands, eat, smoke, and talk naturally: all forms of expression that were too human for us to reveal to customers in the main store. So I knew the places to do these things, and I also was dimly aware that the annex’s third and fourth floors were storage areas, and the fifth and sixth floors were executive offices. Above that, I didn’t know; the building was eight stories high, so there was a top level that I didn’t know about, and perhaps this was where Michael was.

  So many options; but I had to figure out plan A and plan B. My first temptation was to check every room, floor by floor, but I quickly nixed that. It would take too long to pick all the locks, and I might never find out who was in the lit-up office on the fifth floor. I had to discover the identity of the people in charge, because if I didn’t ever find Michael, I wanted to know exactly who was to blame.

  Keeping close to the wall, I climbed the stairs, which had the kind of grimy, sticky dirtiness that I could feel through my socks. Probably the stairs were never cleaned, just as the building was poorly lit and barely heated. I shone my mini-flashlight briefly as I reached each floor, looking for an obvious sign of an open door, but saw nothing. As I approached five, I slid the flashlight into my backpack again. Enough light for me to see where I was going seeped out of a half-open door located midway down the hallway.

  I tiptoed along the hall, stopping two doorways down from that door, which I could see had Mr. Kitagawa’s name on it. A woman’s voice was speaking from within.

  “Several customers were in the office when he was there. His presence could be remembered by them, if his photograph should appear in the papers.” Mrs. Okuma’s voice was not pitched politely, as it usually was with customers; it was lower and harder, befitting her status as a power player within Mitsutan’s secret circle.

  “There will be no photographs. Nobody will find him.” Masahiro Mitsuyama’s voice was firm.

  “Excuse me,” Mrs. Okuma persisted, “but Lockwood is a foreign service officer. Surely he will be a high-priority missing person for the national police as well as the American government.”

  “He can’t be a real embassy official, because he was seen in Shimura’s apartment—you know, where Farraday used to be. This new man must be the new spy.” Mr. Kitagawa was speaking now, no longer using the friendly voice he’d used when he took me out. He sounded tough, almost as tough as Masahiro Mitsuyama.

  “We can’t get rid of him the same way.” Masahiro Mitsuyama sounded thoughtful. “Well, our friends will have an idea.”

  “It would be difficult to do, without a lot of trouble,” Mrs. Okuma spoke up. “He’s listed in our database—”

  Masahiro Mitsuyama said, “As a security precaution, you’ll remove that name from your own records tomorrow. The record of the charge card will be erased. I’ll get my son to go into the computers and fix it.”

  “But what if his wife tries to use her card when she shops here?” Mrs. Okuma persisted.

  Mr. Kitagawa spoke up again. “Why would a wife bother to go shopping when she’s worried about a missing husband? And you said you looked into the matter and found she wasn’t a frequent shopper at all.”

  “It’s true she didn’t shop much,” Mrs. Okuma admitted. “You might be right. I hope so.”

  “Both of you, enough,” Mr. Mitsuyama said. “You’re wasting time. All that matters is the gaijin is in the trunk and ready to go when Yoda-san arrives.”
<
br />   My head started pounding then, and I lost track of the whatever was said next. Car trunk. I’d had a very bad experience in a car trunk, some time ago; now it came back to me: the closed-in feeling, the terror. And Michael was in one, quite possibly dead.

  I took several deep breaths and pushed myself back into the present, where I heard Mr. Kitagawa’s voice rumbling about damage control. He said that the security officer who’d brought Michael to the office could be trusted, but would need to be watched. After a certain amount of time had passed, and if he’d remained quiet, he’d be rewarded.

  I felt torn between staying to hear more and fleeing to grab Michael. If only they’d say where the car was, but no such luck. I had a sense the car couldn’t be far off, if they were waiting for someone, this Yoda person, to take it away. Remembering that there had been no cars in the alley, I had a sudden thought about where the vehicle holding Michael might be: the store’s garage.

  How much time had passed? I glanced at my watch. Twenty minutes. The time was too short for Brian to have made it from Hiroo to the Ginza. I had to get to Michael before the car was driven away.

  I tiptoed back down the hall and entered the stairway, again clinging to the shadows as much as I could. But midway down the flight of steps between three and two, I heard someone coming.

  I turned and fled back up to three, where I took shelter behind a custodian’s cart.

  Two sets of footsteps were going up, both of them slow and measured.

  “Don’t forget what I said, about being too—rough.”

  It was Enobu Mitsuyama, talking to someone.

  “Why call us, then?” The voice was insolent, not the way anyone would normally speak to the heir to the Mitsutan chain.

  “I didn’t call you; my father did. I don’t agree with what’s happening at all.”

  “Your father says one thing, you say another. What are we to do?”

  “All I want is to—to remind you is to be human. If you—or any of your group—have any memory of what humanity means.”

  Enobu Mitsuyama’s companion snorted in response, and their voices became too far away to hear as they continued upstairs. But I needed the breather, because I felt that I was finally fitting together the pieces of a very complicated puzzle.