The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel

by Taylor Stevens

  Munroe waited a beat and then began with the facts, much as she had with Bradford’s lawyer, adding details she’d neglected in the law office, but leaving out the hostess club, the trackers, the truth behind the attack in the garage that had led to Bradford’s car being reported stolen, and the issue of Nonomi Sato.

  Nakamura asked questions. He stood. He sat. And stood again, arms crossed, pacing, as she led him along the trail, dot to dot and point to point, and when she was finished, she took the pages back, stacked them, and stuffed them inside the folder. Then she said, “What will you do?”

  Nakamura turned from her, a smaller man than he’d been an hour ago, and stared at the wall as if the world pressed down on his shoulders and threatened to squash him. “It’s not my decision alone,” he said.

  “There’s an innocent man sitting in jail right now.”

  He stared out the window. “My responsibility is to the company.”

  The unspoken was so loud he might as well have screamed. Going to the police about Tagawa’s theft wouldn’t happen because calling on the law would reveal his own company’s practices and open a whole other can of disgrace, loss of face, and legal action.

  As far as Nakamura was concerned, Bradford was fucked.

  That answered the issue of what she’d do about Nonomi Sato.

  Munroe pushed back from the desk and stood. Picked up the folder and tucked it under her arm. “I understand your position,” she said.

  Nakamura turned from the window. “Please leave the documents.”

  Munroe returned the folder to the desk, let herself out, and left for the wall of monitors in the security room, where she and Okada could watch in real time as the puppets played to the pull of the strings.

  Munroe and Okada stood side by side, watching wordless as the story unfolded in grainy silence, and Nakamura, footsteps heavy, left his office.

  In the hour since Munroe had walked out, the activity in the executive wing had picked up, the company bosses leaving one by one for the boardroom, and they were all there now, waiting for Nakamura, all but Yuzuru Tagawa.

  Okada’s phone beeped. He checked the screen, answered a text, and to Munroe said, “Maybe twenty minutes.”

  Those were the first words spoken since she’d entered the room, silence their best precaution against electronic ears. They’d soon have company as the evening techs, sent off on errands by Okada, finished the busywork designed to keep them away. On the monitor, Nakamura entered the boardroom.

  By design there were neither cameras nor recording devices beyond those walls, but she had no doubt that in the security operations center on the other side of the building, there were ears listening in.

  Tagawa, too, had gotten wind that something was afoot.

  In her days at the facility, Munroe had observed him; first as a part of Bradford’s initial list, then as a suspect as the data continued pointing toward him. Tagawa was well-kept, fastidious with his appearance, a man of routine and long hours, never arriving later than seven or leaving before eight, but in the days following Dillman’s murder he’d grown disheveled and had begun displaying the jumpy nervousness of a man with demons at his back. Now, at just after seven in the evening, breaking routine and a history of patterns, he was in the hallway, headed for the stairs, head hung low as if in a trance or deep in thought, on his way out of the facility.

  Okada pointed toward the screen.

  Munroe was already on her way for the door.

  Wars were won through exploiting the enemy’s weakness.

  Shame was Tagawa’s weakness, honor was his weakness, and in using Nakamura to force a catalyst, she’d manipulated both.

  Tagawa would lose his job, but that was the least of his worries.

  Munroe raced down the stairs and reached the entry in time to catch a glimpse of Tagawa through the glass, rounding the corner for the parking lot.

  Losing his job would mean losing access to ALTEQ’s trade secrets, but selling those to Jiro had been an undermining operation in the short term for which Tagawa had been well compensated, revenge for which ALTEQ had no proof, thus no way to retaliate legally or otherwise.

  The technology in the lower lab had been Tagawa’s ultimate goal, the theft for which his brother had been held responsible and over which the brother had taken his life. Tagawa’s failure to steal it back would be a bigger shame but not the end of everything. No, the reason for his slow coming-apart, the reason he’d left the facility dazed and weighted like a man on the way to his own funeral, was the murder. Tagawa knew what the authorities didn’t, knew that if his role as thief had been uncovered, his connection to Jiro would soon follow, and then accusations, possibly arrest, for murder wouldn’t be far behind.

  In this shame-based society, where judgment was the social control, where a man maintained his value not by choosing right over wrong but by living according to the expectations placed upon him, Tagawa had exceeded his brother’s dishonor. He would bring his family greater shame.

  Munroe gave him time to reach his car and then tagged after him to the Ninja, which was closer. She followed him because suicide, embedded as a noble tradition within the culture’s history, and still often viewed as a moral responsibility, meant that many a man, facing financial pressure and much less disgrace than Tagawa did now, had turned to death by his own hand as the means of preserving honor. Inseki-jisatsu, responsibility-driven suicide.

  Munroe wanted Tagawa dead.

  To save Bradford, she needed him alive.

  He drove a wandering route, erratic and unpredictable as he braked, then sped up, and made lane changes at the last second or too far ahead of time, driving like a drunk or a man so distracted that he was no longer mentally present. He received calls and made calls, then rerouted back toward Osaka proper, and in a sudden about-face, turned in for a train station and abandoned his car in a no-parking area. Munroe swore, looped around, and lost sight of him in the process.

  She hastily parked, left the helmet with the bike, and rushed for the entrance, searching for her target and for traps so easily missed in the hurry to find him.

  The station had four tracks, two to a platform. She slipped the transit pass into the ticket stile, pushed through, and took the first set of stairs.

  There was no way to hide if he waited for her at the bottom.

  Speakers chimed. A woman’s voice announced a train arrival.

  Munroe stopped halfway down for a glimpse along the front end of the platform, then leaned over the rail and scanned the parallel platform. Tagawa was there, two tracks over, in line at the door mark, hands limp and head down, oblivious to the lights of the approaching train.

  Munroe raced up, ran down the concourse. The train hissed to a stop below. She pushed against the crowd of bodies starting up. Her feet hit the platform as the doors began to close and she rushed the nearest car, shoving an arm between rubber stoppers. She pulled the doors apart enough to slip between.

  All eyes in the crowded car were on her when she squeezed inside.

  The train lurched and Munroe grabbed a handhold ring, caught her breath, and then started the slow walk, car to car, in Tagawa’s direction. She stayed with him for several stops, followed him through a line change, and when at last he stepped off onto the white tiles of Kitashinchi station, Munroe slipped along the stairwell’s edge, realizing what he’d done.

  This was Jiro’s territory.

  The flow of passengers headed up the stairs, but Tagawa crossed to the other side, just shy of the yellow safety line, and stood there even after a train had come and gone. Munroe inched closer and watched him: every step, every muscle; the way he held his head; the way he breathed; tense and ready to call upon speed and reflex and intervene if necessary.

  A human accident, the polite term for railway suicide.

  She expected him to jump, eventually, but not there. Not yet.

  He hadn’t seen her following him, but someone in the facility had; someone had called him. And then Tagawa h
ad made calls and he’d changed paths and abandoned the car. He’d brought her to Jiro, laying the trap and gifting the gift, and waited for Jiro’s men to take her first: revenge for what she’d done to him, honor before an honorable death. Two wins for the price of one.

  The taste of underground, of metal and heat and oil, filled the air inside Munroe’s head, where on a chessboard of strategy knight played against rook and pawn against king. Shoes and boots thudded down the stairs, echoing a tell of a cluster greater than regular foot traffic. There were six of them, conspicuous in the way they didn’t belong, conspicuous enough that transiting passengers averted their eyes deliberately so as not to see as Jiro’s men fanned out among the crowd, searching for white skin in a sea of beige.

  Munroe looped around the back of the stairwell in Tagawa’s direction.

  She stood behind him at the edge of the platform, on the danger side of the caution line. He felt her presence and turned; seeing her, his eyes narrowed.

  Munroe drew nearer to him.

  Jaw clenched, he said, “You heap shame upon me.”

  “You brought it on yourself.”

  A shout not far away overrode whatever next escaped his lips.

  The station’s speakers chimed. The voice announced an arriving train.

  Jiro’s men came striding for her.

  Waiting passengers moved out of their way.

  Familiar eyes bored into her from a familiar face distorted in rage: the man with the gun, the man she’d hit with Bradford’s car. He moved in close and took a swing.

  Munroe braced for impact.

  He hit her back and punched her side.

  Munroe gritted her teeth and smiled while his fellow thugs crowded in, sandwiching her and Tagawa in the press. She grabbed a fist full of Tagawa’s shirt and belt while blows rained down, and she panted past the need to strike, counting seconds, feeling the rolling thunder through her feet, and then she jerked—away from the fists and kicks, backward, off the platform, dragging Tagawa with her, into the path of the oncoming train.

  Somewhere beyond the screech and squeal of locking brakes were screams and yells and a blur of motion on the platform above as time slowed and divided and divided again, and Munroe rolled and shoved.

  The same man who had been dazed and listless just five minutes earlier now fought for his life, driving fists into Munroe’s shoulders and against her head. Hand to his trachea, she squeezed and choked him, thrusting him over the rails, rolling him flat against the far wall.

  The rush of hot air and burning metal brushed by her head and the train came to a stop. Voices rose on the other side, yelling and commanding. Beyond the view of witnesses, free from cameras and observation, Munroe leveraged her full height and weight against Tagawa.

  He fought and scratched and bit, drawing blood.

  She detached from the pain, blinded by the need to survive and win.

  She pushed her thumbs hard into Tagawa’s carotids, pressing down until the man passed out. And then, having subdued him without leaving bruises, having endured the fight without throwing one blow, she lay beside him fighting back the consuming fire inside her head.

  Munroe pulled her phone from her pocket and texted Okada.

  Call the lawyer.

  Tagawa woke. Flashlight beams and shouts reached out from beneath the wheels at both ends of the train. Tagawa struggled to his feet and Munroe didn’t fight him. He called for help and rescuers arrived and with them were the police. He threw accusations at Munroe, which she denied, and she in turn accused Tagawa of assaulting her.

  The bite marks and scratches, the bruises rising in response to the punches Jiro’s men had thrown, gave testament to her claims, and in the end they were both arrested and taken away.

  —

  Munroe lay on the floor in a room small enough that she could touch the walls without fully stretching out. Beside her was a narrow mat, a joke of a futon, and she eschewed it for the concrete’s greater discomfort.

  The guards had yelled at her once, ordering her to sit and face the door, and she’d ignored them. If they wanted to come in and beat her for the transgression, they were welcome to do so, but she expected they wouldn’t bother.

  Cameras had recorded her arrival at Kitashinchi station. They’d documented the way she’d approached Tagawa, and the attack by Jiro’s men, and then the shove that had, for all intents, pushed them backward off the platform.

  She’d been arrested because Tagawa accused her of assault. She would have been released already if that was all that there was.

  She’d been kept because people in power had questions.

  Munroe drifted in the twilight of memory and interrupted sleep where time blurred and mattered less. She slept and woke and woke again when officers stood on the other side of the door, barking for her to stand.

  She got to her feet slowly enough that she obeyed on her own terms. The door opened. Like a swimmer taking a breath in anticipation of plunging into the depths, she pushed down hard against the instinct that would arise should the officers touch her.

  They ordered her out, yelling when no yelling was needed, commanding for no reason other than to degrade her. She breathed in the calm and avoided eye contact and they led her down bare halls to a door, then ordered her inside a room barely twice the size of the cell and locked the door behind her.

  Munroe ignored the table and chairs and lay out on the floor again. They’d come for her when they were ready and she wouldn’t lose sleep over wondering when that might be. Arms draped across her abdomen, she allowed the time to take her back under.

  Sound and movement pulled her up again.

  The door swung open, an investigating officer stepped into the room, dropped a few sheets of paper on the table, and took a chair.

  He was maybe in his early thirties, dressed in shirtsleeves and slacks and with shoes polished to a high-spit shine. “Please sit,” he said. His English was heavily accented.

  Munroe stood and slid into the chair beside the school-desk-size table.

  He looked down at the papers in front of him. “You were fighting,” he said.

  “I was assaulted,” she said. “I am the victim. I want my lawyer.”

  “We would like to hear your version of what happened.”

  “I was assaulted,” she said. “I am the victim. I want my lawyer.”

  “I understand,” he said. “You will speak with your lawyer when finished. A statement is necessary to release you, please explain the fight.”

  “I was assaulted,” she said. “I am the victim.”

  “Yes.” He scratched his cheek. He tapped pen to paper. He looked at her then, and very slowly, speaking as he wrote, glancing up between words, he said, “Was assaulted. Is victim.”

  He turned the page around so she could see it.

  “Now,” he said. “Please tell the rest.”

  Munroe dropped her eyes to her hands and remained silent. Without evidence that her statement was witnessed or recorded, with no guarantee her words wouldn’t be misinterpreted and paraphrased, she had nothing to say.

  “We cannot release you until you speak,” the officer said. “You will be held indefinitely, you will spend years cut off from your friends and family, cold and hungry. Why do this? Tell me about the fight and you can go.”

  Munroe nodded to acknowledge his threat and kept silent.

  Not only was he a liar, he was a bad liar.

  They could deport her, certainly, and could hold her for twenty-three days for each charge though she had no idea how many charges they’d laid against her, if any, and they were under no obligation to tell her. But not indefinitely. Not years.

  He stood, and his words grew stronger and the volume louder.

  She closed her eyes.

  He smacked her on the head with the rolled-up papers.

  Munroe glanced up just long enough to smile and exhale.

  Outside these walls he would be a dead man.

  The badgering continued and
Munroe blocked the investigator out, descending deep, deep into twilight, where the world was dark and quiet and his spittle and venom were but whispers in the background.

  Somewhere out there he struck her with the rolled-up paper again.

  She grabbed hold of the rising demons and yanked them back.

  And then the door opened and he was gone, and Munroe left the chair for the floor and the cold that seeped into her skin to mute the fire raging beneath.

  The door opened again. Two men entered, one older, one younger.

  Munroe sat in the chair again, went through the same routine again. They knew there was more; they were hunting.

  The younger one said, “You associate with criminals. You are in Japan for criminal activity and you bring shame on your country.”

  “I was assaulted,” Munroe said. “I am the victim. I am willing to answer any question but only with my lawyer to act as a witness.”

  For something as basic as a fight in which she was clearly not the aggressor, a lecture followed by her formal apology for her involvement should have seen her on her way.

  The two men conferred, speaking in front of her, oblivious to the weapon of language and how in their assumptions their words were used against them.

  They picked up again with offers to release her if only she would provide an account, and when that failed, they continued with threats of long detention: They were lions without teeth.

  Munroe waited them out.

  Eventually they left, and she lay down to sleep again, and when at last the first officer returned, Bradford’s lawyer was with him.

  He scanned her face and her lips, his eyes lingering on the places where her skin was tender and sore. The officer motioned to the table and the lawyer sat next to Munroe. He placed a digital recorder on the table.

  Munroe coughed and said, “Thank you for coming.”

  The status light on the voice activation lit up.