The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel

by Taylor Stevens

  “You have your lawyer,” the officer said. “Tell us about the fight.”

  Eyes to the table, Munroe began. She spoke slowly. Enunciated clearly. Darted an occasional glance at the recorder to be sure it continued functioning as it should, and she walked them through the day, from the beginning.

  Law enforcement in Japan was a single force without jurisdictional issues and territorial grabs, and even two districts over from where Bradford was being held these officers would have no problem connecting the cases.

  She explained why ALTEQ-Bio had brought in consultants and used that as the basis for why she’d trailed Tagawa, laying down in simple sentences all that connected him to the murdered woman, and to organized crime, and to the theft from within. Additional questions followed and with each answer Munroe wound back to Tagawa, always Tagawa, and the murder, the mafia, and the theft.

  Her cuts and bruises and her accusations of assault were enough to guarantee that they’d hold him for at least twenty-four hours. Now that he was in custody and she’d connected the dots for them, it was only a matter of time before they started asking better questions. Tagawa, the paranoid man with guilt on his soul and blood on his hands, the same man who’d watched his carefully constructed world crumble at his own doing, would do what he was expected to do: confess. Tagawa would break.

  She hadn’t had the time to conjure proof, but she’d conjured a crisis.

  The officers left the room and Munroe and the lawyer sat in silence.

  On a pad of paper he asked if there was more that he should know.

  She scribbled that they should have coffee when this was over.

  The officers returned and the clock ticked on. The lawyer left. Procedure and bureaucracy took over, and by the time Munroe was dumped out onto the front steps of the detention center, the night was over.

  The lawyer, in his car, met her at the train station.

  She sat in the passenger seat and he offered her a steaming Styrofoam cup. He left the engine idling. At her feet was the backpack she’d left with Okada when she’d torn after Yuzuru Tagawa. She sipped the coffee and said, “Are the investigators taking the accusations seriously?”

  “My impression is that they are proceeding cautiously,” he said. “Any lack of follow-through will become problematic for careers now that there are criminal elements threaded through the story, even if some are paid not to look.”

  “If they pursue it, the confession will come.”

  “You’re certain?” he said.

  Munroe smiled and reached for her backpack. “Thank you for the coffee,” she said, and stepped out of the car.

  Munroe stood just inside the facility entrance, watching and waiting, as she’d done for the last hour, while the trickle of employees passing through the stiles grew to a rapid flow. Spotting Munroe, they averted their eyes.

  News had traveled fast: another scandal tied to another foreigner.

  Facts never really mattered.

  Arms crossed, Munroe kept her focus beyond the glass to where Mother Nature, sighing her own breath of fresh air, provided an overcast sky and early-morning rain in a temporary welcome relief to the muggy heat.

  A flash of gray caught her attention: the reflection of Nonomi Sato’s car pulling into the lot. Munroe counted off the beats and then moved to the door, allowing the woman time to gather her things and begin the long walk in.

  They met a quarter of the way down the sidewalk.

  Munroe stopped in front of Sato, who, in a perfectly timed bow, said, “I’m sorry,” and continued on around her.

  Artistry filled her walk, her demeanor, and the lies and pretenses tightly controlled behind a veneer that never cracked. Munroe let her go a pace or two and then said, “I know who you are and what you’re doing.”

  Sato kept walking as if Munroe had spoken to someone else.

  “If you enter the facility today, you’ll be arrested.”

  This time the woman stopped. She turned just slightly and looked over her shoulder. “You are speak at me?” she said.

  Perfectly timed, perfectly performed.

  “I am,” Munroe said.

  “I help some things?”

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  Sato blushed, as if Munroe had uttered an alien language. She waved a hand in front of her face as if fanning away a bad smell, the Japanese gesture for embarrassment and no and go away and discomfort and refuse to engage. Mixing ls and rs perfectly, she said, “I am not understand English.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  Sato blushed deeper and waved her hand faster, and she turned and walked away, continuing the charade, perfect as it was, far past its useful point.

  “Nonomi,” Munroe called out, singsong and lilting, “don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Go in there and I will permanently blow your cover. Come walk with me and you’ll have a chance to continue things as they are.”

  Sato stopped again, turned again. She bowed in apology, still blushing, face scrunched with confusion and in a tone that offered not even a fine-line crack in the veneer, she said, “Am not understand English.”

  The beauty in the performance was real to the point of creating doubt.

  Like a pilot disoriented in the fog, unable to tell up or down, Munroe trusted the instruments. She’d done her homework, she knew the facts, and she knew the performance in the way she knew herself. Facing Sato, with her perfect masquerade, was like facing a mirror.

  Munroe motioned the woman nearer. “Come with me, I’ll teach you.”

  Sato responded to Munroe’s sign language with measured cautious steps and an expression full of skepticism and shy doubt.

  Every inch closer was a reconfirmation of the illusion, the guise.

  When the woman was close, Munroe stuck out her hand and said, “I’m a great admirer of your work.”

  With a face full of innocence and uncertainty, Sato shook Munroe’s hand limply, as if handshakes were a foreign thing, as if she wasn’t in that same heartbeat calculating how best to eliminate this threat.

  The coffee shop only had three tables with their accompanying chairs, but it was a block away from the facility and two floors up; it got them off the street and away from prying eyes and listening ears.

  Sato sat poised and model still, hands in her lap, and face down toward the table while the drinks were made and served. The artistry that had been enchanting at the beginning was wearing in its endurance.

  The espresso came. Munroe prolonged the quiet with the rituals of adding sugar and sipping cautiously, and then returning cup to saucer, she said, “This long into silence and the average person becomes uncomfortable. They start with questions, tell a nervous joke or two, and then offer a few reasons why I’ve made a mistake and they shouldn’t be here right now. If they become desperate or scared enough, they move into demanding to know what I want.”

  “Not all people behave that way,” Sato said. “Not all Japanese people.”

  Her eyes never left the table and her voice, just above a whisper, was soft and childlike, but it had none of the stilted broken English of fifteen minutes prior.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know how I know?” Munroe said.

  “You spoke with my parents.”

  “That wasn’t me,” Munroe said, and she took another sip of the rich dark daylight. “But if you’re aware of that connection, then there’s no reason to continue pretending. If I wanted to ruin you, I would have done it a while ago.”

  Sato glanced up and her facial expression shifted, almost as if she’d turned into someone not quite her. “Why haven’t you?” she said.

  “I don’t care who owns the technology.”

  “You were hired to find me, to out me.”

  “Correction,” Munroe said. “Miles Bradford was hired to find you and out you. My only interest was in figuring out who set him up and why. Now I’m done, so I’m leaving.”

  “You’re certain your discovery was accurate?”

  �
��As certain as you are,” Munroe said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve got proof that ties Tagawa to the murder—video footage, maybe—stashed away on the chance he ever managed to get close to you.”

  Sato smiled and picked up the bone-white cup, took a sip, then, her eyes never leaving Munroe’s, she set the espresso down. “Tagawa was a plaything,” she said, “easy to manipulate, fun to watch dance. He was never much of a concern.”

  “Until he brought Miles Bradford in to find you.”

  “I do admit, that was enjoyably clever, watching Tagawa set his barn on fire to burn out the mice. I wasn’t worried. What do you want from me?”

  “Your partner.”

  “What makes you think I have a partner?”

  Munroe leaned back, smiled, and shook her head. “You know what I am and you know that I know.”

  “I only presume to know. You’re not an easy person to learn.”

  “You know enough.”

  “I know that every word out of your mouth, lie or truth, is a way for you to measure and read and learn more than you know.”

  “All I want is your partner.”

  “Why?”

  “Makoto Dillman.”

  “I’d much rather Makoto Dillman was alive right now,” Sato said. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “But your partner did.”

  “Partner,” Sato said, and she snorted. She took another sip of coffee, crossed her legs, and stared out the window. “To be frank, I can’t tell you what you want. Assuming you’re right, assuming such a partner does exist, I don’t know who he is and I have no control over what he does, just as he wouldn’t know who I am or what I do. I would assume that the same people who wire money to my accounts would wire to his, but I had nothing to do with him being brought into this and I’ve never communicated with him directly.”

  That explained the wobble, the part that didn’t fit. Explained how Dillman had gotten dead against Sato’s best interests.

  Munroe leaned as far forward as the small couch and knee-crunching coffee table would allow and said, “He’s in one of the security departments.”

  “I can’t help you with what you want.”

  “Oh, I’m quite certain you can.” Someone had destroyed footage, changed records, listened in on conversations; someone had known what Dillman was doing, and only those in security had that kind of access, a dangerous kind of access. “There’s no way you’d trust your safety, your security, or your mission to an unknown quantity, so who is he?”

  Sato sighed. “This is tedious.”

  “I can find him on my own, but I’m done here. I want to move on, I want the shortcut. Think of it as an exchange of favors.”

  Sato smiled then, an evil dangerous smile. Munroe’s heart fluttered in response, drowning in the joy of affinity, the same surge of bliss that made lovers ache. She cared not a whit that Sato read this and played her now, just as Munroe played her in turn. They sat, staring at each other as equals and opponents, knowing and measuring, and finally Sato put down her cup and said, “What I don’t get is why you’d pursue this because of Makoto Dillman. You don’t impress me as the righteous avenger type.”

  “There’s nothing righteous about it.”

  “The technology is worth a lot of money. Removing the one who watches my back would allow you to cash in on that prize.”

  “Like candy left out in an open jar,” Munroe said. “Why tempt me?”

  “Measure you,” Sato said.

  “I could have stolen the data from your house.”

  “You stole my money.”

  “I’m short on cash. Dillman was scouring your background when he was murdered, you know? I take the blame for that. I pushed him down the path to discovery and then your idiot partner made the mistake of trying to take out two for the price of one.”

  “You’re certain it wasn’t me who did it?”

  Munroe smiled the same vicious smile. “Not because of your denials. If you wanted Dillman gone, you would have done to him like you did to me.”

  “No hard feelings, I hope.”

  “Not if you give me your partner.”

  “I give him to you and you walk away?”

  “I am you, Nonomi,” Munroe said. “I’ve had my share, I’ve done my time. Staying one step ahead of the world comes with a price and I’m tired of paying it. I’d found a way around it until Tagawa fucked things up, so I can assure you that there’s nothing you have that I want badly enough to chase.”

  Sato’s shoulders relaxed and the facade that had slowly come undone throughout the conversation shed completely and she was a different person in the same way Munroe would shed her character when an assignment had ended. Sato ran her spoon along the inside of the espresso cup and, timed to the tinkling musical notes, said, “If today is for confessions and blame, then I’m to Meilin’s death what you were to Dillman’s. It was from me that the rumor of Chinese infiltration came, and then, as you say, that fool Tagawa made the mistake of trying to take out two for the price of one.”

  “Why the Chinese?”

  Sato shrugged. “Everyone hates them. Everyone suspects them. It made good entertainment watching Tagawa destroy himself trying to find them.”

  “And your partner?”

  “Technically, my partner doesn’t exist,” Sato said. “When my contacts pass intel my way, they go to great lengths to make it appear as though it has come from multiple sources. And my requests, in the few times I’ve made them, have produced results without any direct evidence as to how. Deniability. It protects their assets from contamination. It would seem they believe I’m smart enough to get this job done but not quite smart enough to understand the way they play the game.”

  “Regardless, he knows who you are.” Dillman would still be alive if he didn’t.

  Sato’s lips widened and the smile, so full of darkness, came back in an impish grin. “There is always a long-term strategy and sometimes one must sacrifice infantry to capture the castle. Why don’t you turn me in?” she said. “What makes you stop short of glory?”

  “I gave them their thief. They’ll pay for the job completion, and that’s enough.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question.”

  “They’d allow an innocent man to rot rather than risk investors and customers discovering they’d stolen the technology to begin with. If they’re not smart enough to figure out who you are, I see no reason to help them.”

  “Shigeru Hara is the man you want,” Sato said. “He was Dillman’s number two, promoted to number one after the murder.”

  Munroe set the small cup down and said, “Thank you.”

  Bradford’s lists had been drawn from three directions: company executives, security, and lab. She thought he’d suspected one from among them; in reality there’d been one from each. She said, “If you warn Hara before I get to him, then you’ll have created something that I want badly enough to chase.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Sato said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had an enjoyable challenge and you’d be an exquisite thrill.”

  “Perhaps, but costly nonetheless.”

  Sato waved a hand, as if to brush Munroe’s concerns away. “Hara’s been playing both sides, working as Tagawa’s inside man, cleaning up Tagawa’s evidence, watching Tagawa’s back, while at the same time getting paid by my employers to clean up after me and watch mine, all very entertaining until he killed Dillman. Hara’s an idiot, a dangerous damaging idiot, and I want him gone. You’ll save me the trouble. Tell me, Michael, who are you really?”

  “Does it matter?” Munroe said. “Yesterday’s truth is today’s lie, and tomorrow we’ll both be someone else.”

  “Indulge me,” Sato said. “Two tigers meet by chance in a forest, seeing for the first time in all dimensions the same supple power that has, until then, only met them in the flat reflection at the water’s edge. For that, it matters.”

  Munroe smiled and drained the last of her coffee. “A woman with your talent
s should have no trouble finding what you want.”

  Sato sighed an exaggerated sigh. “You torment me,” she said.

  The building was a modern three-story walkup, with a glass front and a pebbled wall of buzzers and speaker beside the entry awning. A pricy little pad just beyond the budget of what one would expect for a man of Shigeru Hara’s means.

  Munroe punched doorbells at random until the lock whirred and she pushed inside to a tiled foyer and ambient light. Short halls branched right and left, three doors to a side. A head appeared from one of the upstairs levels and an older voice called out, “Who’s there?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Munroe said. “I pushed the wrong number.”

  A door above shut. Munroe took the stairs to the second floor and paused outside of Hara’s apartment, attuned to the entrance below while she scrubbed the lock, working with skills gone rusty through lack of use.

  But, even rusty, locks were easy.

  Locks were an illusion that helped mostly honest people stay honest.

  Munroe slipped inside to the chemical fragrance of leather and new upholstery. The front half of the apartment blended kitchen, living, and dining area into one. The walls were bare and the furniture sparse; nothing to indicate permanence or home. Directly ahead, an overhead light in the stubby nook of a hallway illuminated the frames of three doors, and Munroe stepped out of the genkan in their direction, shoes still on, moving slowly, testing the wooden floors for squeaky boards.

  The hallway doors led to ofuro, toilet, and the single bedroom, where a sword was mounted on the wall above the unmade western-style bed and the desk had nothing on it, not even dust. In the stand-alone closet, Hara’s clothes, expensive as they were, were few.

  The kitchen fridge contained a small assortment of food and the cupboards only a handful of dishes. The drawers were similarly limited in knives, silverware, and cookware, leaving the impression that there might be other homes, other places where Hara spent his time, or that this situation was temporary and he’d soon be moving on to better things.

  Munroe crossed the living area for the far wall. Tagawa was still being detained and there’d been no further news on Bradford’s case, so Munroe slid into the chair that backed into the corner and sat in the dark, waiting with predatorial patience for the man who’d killed Dillman, the man who had, in aiding Tagawa, facilitated Bradford’s setup and arrest.