The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel

by Taylor Stevens

  What’s the special occasion? she’d asked.

  Do we need one?

  Well, apparently fucking so.

  Munroe replayed the night in her head: the way he’d lingered over a meal that had kept going with dessert and coffee, and his distractedness.

  And the lies. Of course the lies.

  All I can do is hope you’re able to figure it out, he’d said. Maybe at least then you’ll understand that my intentions were good and that even in the lies, I never meant to hurt you.

  Motherfucker.

  Bringing her here was far too abstruse to have been planned out as a hint, like the clues left in the drawer. No, Bradford, the romantic, had used her as cover to case a target and inked the location onto the calendar after the fact.

  Munroe glanced up at the window where they’d sat and then turned again, tracking a line of sight up and down the street, gauging what he would have seen from his side of the table. And there they were: hostess club option one and hostess club option two.

  Munroe started with the nearest club, almost directly across the street, where a glass box frame embedded in the wall showed off a menu of names in the same way the plastic food replicas were the menu for the restaurant next door.

  The stairs led down and Munroe followed two men into a smoky atmosphere, where the ambient music was low and a backlit bar faced the entry. The rest of the room was a single lounge with sectional seating that created faux divisions of space and a sense of privacy. Blue under-counter LEDs and soft-colored drop shades were the extent of the lighting.

  The mama-san, a woman in her late fifties, if one was generous, elegantly clothed and wearing enough makeup and perfume to make a cliché of her age, greeted the men with an air of touchy-feely warmth and familiarity that only just bordered on flirting, then she guided them toward a table.

  They sat and the mama-san left them, and a moment later two young Japanese women joined the men with smiles and coy girlish flirtation.

  Munroe’s view of the interchange was cut short by the man who stepped out from behind the bar and headed in her direction. He was in his early thirties, maybe, dressed in a designer suit and tie with shoes at a spit-polish shine, his hair gelled into styled asymmetry. He was the master, the man who handled the girls, the male counterpart to the mama-san who catered to the clients, and he glanced up and down just once, as if trying Munroe on for size.

  She’d changed into jeans and a blouse, but her hair and makeup were still heavy on the feminine side in the wake of her visit to Bradford.

  In broken English the man said, “American?”

  Munroe nodded, her focus trained over his shoulder, toward the interior, catching glimpses of the routine as the bartender sent a half-full bottle to the newcomers’ table and the two young women, full of coquettish giggles, poured drinks and made conversation.

  The master shifted, blocking Munroe’s view. “You speak Japanese?” he said.

  Attention still on the tables and the men, and fighting for an unobtrusive look, Munroe said, “A little.”

  “Come tomorrow afternoon,” the master said. “Busy now. We talk again.”

  Munroe cut her eyes back to him, her expression blank for a heartbeat, and then she nearly laughed. This had been a job interview. And of course. Why else would a foreign woman have wandered in alone, looking confused and possibly in need of money?

  She smiled and said, “I don’t need work.” She handed him the slip of paper on which she’d written the hostess club’s address. “Is this here?”

  The master studied the paper and shook his head, and it was difficult to see in his polite manner if, now that she was neither customer nor future employee, the headshake was of disappointment, relief, or indifference.

  He swept a palm toward the door and said, “That way.”

  Munroe mimicked his motion with one of her own. “Down the street?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “Address that way.”

  She bowed. “Thank you,” she said.

  “You look work? Work here is good.”

  “No work,” she said, “only friends.” And she glanced over his shoulder again, snagging a final impression of the interaction. Hostess clubs would be different in some ways and the same in others. Master and mama-san here meant master and mama-san there, and mama-san was all about making the male clients happy. Unless Munroe intended to snuggle up to strange men under the watchful eye of her new master, getting access to the target location would require a change in plans.

  Down the street, trading one hostess club for the next, Munroe studied yet another menu of names, this one handwritten, beautifully scrolled in colorful chalkboard paint, and nestled in folds of lavender satin.

  She checked over her shoulder for the second-floor restaurant window in the near distance, at the face so clearly seen beyond the pane standing in for Bradford and providing a perfect line of sight. The menu had no address to compare against the slip of paper, no prices, but the location put the place in the higher-end, about a hundred dollars an hour, and that was before drinks or any talk of sex.

  Hostess clubs weren’t brothels, not in any technical sense. They were closer to a diluted offshoot of the geisha tradition in which young girls trained for years to become the perfect evening companion. But here, instead of the classically trained, were attractive women who flattered men who paid in minute-based increments for the privilege of being fawned over and lied to.

  Hostess clubs were drinking establishments where businessmen came to relax and feel good after work, little niches carved out for the sole purpose of sexual titillation, fully integrated into a culture in which work continued long after business hours ended. The more attractive and more educated the woman, the higher the price paid to acquire her time, and whether the women slept with their clients was a separate issue. Some did. Some didn’t. The pressure was always there.

  Prostitution in Japan was only illegal as intercourse in exchange for payment. Oral sex, anal sex, any other kind of sex was wide open, as was made clear by the many “soap houses” and “fashion health” spas that operated in high numbers, turning Japan into one of the top destinations for sex-trafficking victims.

  Munroe left the window display for the restaurant.

  The same foreignness that marked her as a perpetual outsider also turned her seemingly odd behavior into an amusing quirk, and when the table at which she and Bradford had sat was finally free, the proprietress, with demure smiles and a welcoming bow, offered Munroe what she had insisted upon waiting for.

  Munroe ordered, and ate, and waited, and ordered again, and waited some more, while the evening deepened and the street began to empty somewhat, and because keeping the table prevented the restaurant from serving other clients, she continued with high-priced flavor-infused drinks that kept the money flowing.

  Men came and went into the club and Munroe evaluated them by their ages, their modes of arrival, the length of time they stayed, and the numbers in their groups. The night drew down to closing time and Munroe, having seen as much as she had, paid the bill and left.

  She didn’t bother with further surveillance.

  She’d gotten what she’d come for; she’d found her mark.

  The challenge had already begun to churn the turbid waters, nudging the hibernating hunter beneath, shoving the nightmare into the background where personal things belonged. The bed called out, offering sleep and dreamless rest. Munroe tugged off her boots and reached for the laptop, logged into her bank, and checked the account.

  No money from Walker yet, but it would come.

  She showered and slept and woke with the sun, then dressed in yesterday’s clothes and accessed the account again. This time the numbers were there. In response the stirring rose, tangible and soothing: inner demons laughing at having been loosed to wreak havoc, setting her free from the encumbrances of fear of loss and love and the emotions that clouded reason and jeopardized clarity.

  An e-mail from Walker waited in her in-box:
confirmation of the wire transfer, scanned images of the contract, a name and number for the military contact Bradford might have been talking to, and a request for information on everyone Munroe had spoken with about the case.

  The language was formal: the type of cover-your-ass legalese that had underpinned most of Munroe’s jobs before she’d met Bradford. This was Walker stating that as long as Munroe planned to be a dick, Walker had no problem being a corporate asshole.

  Munroe smiled.

  This was familiar ground, comforting in its own strange way.

  She typed out a reply: names and numbers that she’d promised to send and a formal assurance that regular reports would be provided as per the terms outlined in the contract. She’d have to find a way to get the paperwork countersigned and returned, but that was a formality. The deed was done.

  She hit send, copied out the info on Bradford’s military contact, opened a browser window, and hunted for Warren Green. A reverse search of the phone number led to a work line that didn’t allow for corroboration, so she scoured profiles and databases and social networking profiles until she found him.

  Green was African American, career military it would seem, an athlete and father of three, and she’d have to wait until evening to catch him during his morning.

  Munroe placed the items from Bradford’s drawer on the bed, gazing over them, allowing her mind to wander freely, attempting to match abstract questions with abstract answers, but there was nothing new.

  Whatever else Bradford was, he wasn’t stupid. He may not have known who was coming after him, or even how or what or why, but there was no reason to throw his foresight away. She picked up the security pass, tapped the laminate against her fingers, then held the card sideways to get a better look at her face without the distraction of the hologram.

  Munroe stood, faced the mirror, and studied the reflection.

  She needed into the hostess club, needed into ALTEQ, and wouldn’t get respect or access into either looking as she did.

  The shopping arcade was a fifteen-minute walk from the hotel, essentially a series of covered pedestrian streets. A department store anchored an intersection and on the floor with beauty supplies Munroe tracked down a set of grooming clippers. Two floors down, where an assortment of stationery supplies filled half the floor with enough miniature office everything to put a hardcore crafter into a cutesy-color coma, she bought pens and paper.

  In the hotel room she dumped her trove on the bed and carried the clippers into the bathroom cubicle. Her hair, already overgrown by the time she’d left Djibouti, had lengthened even more over the last few months. Not long enough to be explicitly feminine, but long enough to cause doubt, and doubt was never a good thing in subterfuge.

  Munroe leaned over the sink and turned on the shears.

  With well-practiced fingers she ran the blade guard up the back of her head and then the sides, switching out combs as needed, feeling for places she’d missed. Strands of dark brown fell into the basin, and then smaller slivers, and then those smaller still.

  She shut off the clippers and stood staring at the image made blemished and blotchy under the fluorescent lights. She was no longer the woman who’d arrived in Japan to visit her lover, but the man who would set him free.

  —

  Munroe shoved the television to one side of the long, narrow desk and taped several of the large sheets of paper along the wall in a de facto command center. Working off the notes she’d scribbled while still at the apartment, recounting the details claimed from perusing Bradford’s external drive, she compiled the information into a visual representation of the many threads entangled inside her head.

  She had no interest in the thief for the sake of uncovering theft; that had been Bradford’s job. But espionage and machinations walked hand in hand, and since theft was why Bradford had been hired, theft would lead her to whoever had set him up.

  She drew the facility building according to satellite images and sketched the department divisions according to what she remembered from her visits. Onto index cards Munroe wrote the names from Bradford’s drive, taping them to the facility map based on where they ranked in the company’s hierarchy. This outline was the beginning, the path to the end, and at the moment it was nothing but a big black hole where information should be.

  The company employed more than eight hundred people, which provided plenty of wiggle room for murderers and spies. Bradford had, in so many words, told her that the three folders on his drive were the only avenues he’d seen for stolen data to move out of the facility: through upper management, the team down in the lab, or security personnel.

  Munroe tossed a pillow from the headboard to the middle of the bed, leaned back, and studied her handiwork, and when thinking reached the point of diminishing returns, she dug through the backpack with Bradford’s things and pulled out a shirt and a pair of pants. She dressed in his clothes, though she didn’t fill them out the way that he had, and emptied the spare wallet he’d left behind, replacing the contents with her own.

  She shoved the wad of leather into her pocket, picked up the helmet.

  This was her element: stealing secrets.

  Now it was time to steal another.

  Munroe swiped the badge over the reader, the arm swung open, and she strode through without a backward glance, heading for Bradford’s office.

  Above her, cameras tracked her movements. In the security operations center, databases processed the readings off the badge’s RFID chip, and she took her time, providing ample notice that she was in the facility, allowing the security team to red-flag the clearance that had gotten her inside and track her down.

  Munroe stopped outside of Bradford’s office.

  She knocked and, receiving no reply, opened the door to a room just as empty as it had been when Okada had shown it to her. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed and waiting, and when after several moments there was still no response from the security team, and six employees had passed with the same eye-avoiding courtesy nod-bow that they would have given to anyone else, she continued up the stairs and into the left-branching hall.

  Three doors down and then to the right, she found the personnel department, a wide room filled with desks crammed front to back and side to side, much like the desks in the police precinct station had been.

  Folders and binders were stacked here and there and the whispered whir of quiet activity and conversation filled the air against finger strokes on keyboards and the hum of photocopy machines.

  A woman carrying a tablet stopped and asked Munroe if she needed help. Munroe unfolded the forms Bradford had left tacked to the contract and in English said, “Who do I see about this?”

  The woman glanced over the first page, reading it out loud, talking to herself as much as to Munroe, and then motioned down beyond a row of desks, to another door.

  In the end, it took less than twenty minutes to get the paperwork sorted out. Bradford had been thorough on the back end and clever in his arrangements, giving basis to his claim that he’d intended to bring her in long before this nightmare had started. Her role as a consultant meant payments went directly to his company, not to her, skirting the issue of her having been hired and putting the need for a work visa into a gray area. For now, having presented herself with the proper documents, Munroe was officially on the company roster, though not as an employee.

  She commandeered Bradford’s office through another round of red tape and bureaucracy, culminating in the guarantee that a desk and chair would be waiting for her when she next returned, each step made as visibly as possible, and by the time she’d finished, there was no possibility that either branch of security was unaware of her presence.

  Finished, she left the facility for the landing across the street from which she’d watched the doors waiting for Okada to arrive, killing time, building familiarity with faces and cars and train and bus schedules while the employees began the slow trickle home: far better than sitting in a hotel room, staring at
the wall, attempting to conjure something out of nothing.

  Evening came. Lights switched on. When only the late stragglers remained, Munroe left her perch and returned to the bike.

  —

  At nine in the evening Kitashinchi had barely begun to wake. Munroe found an empty doorstep within sight of the hostess club and, with her face and her foreignness somewhat disguised within shadows, she waited in the night and the neon and the numbing boredom of surveillance as the streets filled and the clock pushed on toward midnight and at last her mark arrived.

  He was a man with expensive shoes, a portly belly, and a blush-red nose that spoke of having already experienced many hours and many drinks before arriving for the evening’s final hit. His visit to the club should have been a group affair, a way to make deals and bring finer points to agreement, ensuring that when they were raised in the boardroom no one risked the loss of face, but he arrived alone, just as he had the night before, chauffeured in a private car rather than by taxi.

  Somewhere inside that club a woman counted off bonuses each time he returned for her, because surely that’s why he returned, and it was why Munroe had chosen him.

  The car pulled to a stop, blocking the narrow street. The driver stepped out and Munroe rose from her perch. She timed her steps to the driver’s as he opened the rear door, timed her steps to the portly man’s as he heaved himself up from the backseat and the driver returned to the wheel, and collided with her target as his hand reached for the hostess club’s door, knocking him off balance.

  She caught him when he tripped, straining as his weight bore down on her and the alcohol off his breath clogged her airway. She mimicked the deference that she’d seen from so many men in the everyday hierarchy that encompassed life in Japan, and then like in a scene from a badly acted movie, she brushed off his clothes with humbled apologies while he huffed and muttered in extreme offense until he realized she was a foreigner.