by Steve Bein
“Sir, it’s not like I had a hell of a lot of choice—”
“Tone, Oshiro-san. This is your second warning. Watch it.”
Mariko swallowed. “Yes, sir.” She put her hands in her lap and balled them into fists, trying to keep them below Kusama’s sightline so he couldn’t see her whitening knuckles.
It didn’t work. “May I see your right hand, Sergeant?”
“Sir?”
He gave a little smile as if to say, indulge me, and motioned toward her hand with his own. Mariko felt awkward but she had no choice: she placed her maimed right hand on the desktop.
It was still ugly to her, though she’d had a few months to get used to it. The last thing she expected was for him to reach across the desk and pull it a little closer. His skin was soft, softer than hers. That was a detail Mariko would rather not know about a commanding officer. She certainly didn’t want him feeling the kenjutsu calluses on her tomboy hands. She didn’t become a cop because she was fond of intimacy.
“I’d heard you lost your trigger finger,” Kusama said, “but you’ve still got a little nub of it, haven’t you?”
Mariko felt her ears and cheeks grow hot. “Yes, sir.”
“You shot Akahata left-handed?”
“Yes, sir.” Her breath fluttered in her throat.
“But when you stabbed Fuchida Shuzo, it was with the right hand, wasn’t it?”
It wasn’t a question. The incident with Fuchida was the one that first put Mariko in the spotlight. A crazed yakuza butcher with a sword was enough to make the news by himself. So when Mariko was forced into a sword fight with Fuchida, when he maimed her hand and stabbed her through the gut, when she stabbed him through the lungs in return, when both of them flatlined and the paramedics brought Mariko back … well, Kusama must have been delighted. She wondered whether he was the one responsible for the headline SAMURAI SHOWDOWN, which had led every major news program for days.
Mariko, the samurai cop. Mariko, the narc with the junkie sister. Mariko, the woman in a man’s world, fighting tooth and nail to get what she wanted. She could have been the crown jewel of the TMPD—a thing of beauty, in Kusama’s mind, glamorizing his beloved department. But a thing of beauty was still a thing.
He released her hand and sat back in his chair. “You do understand,” he said, “I had such high hopes for you. But what can I do with you now that you’ve killed two suspects?”
“Zero suspects,” Sakakibara said. They were the first words he’d spoken since he’d entered the room.
“Excuse me?” said Kusama.
“Oshiro never once fired a shot at a suspect. She did kill two perpetrators. In the line of duty. Acting in both cases in self-defense and the defense of innocents.”
Kusama inclined his head. “True enough. But in the public eye, there’s very little difference.”
In the public eye I’d still be a hero, Mariko thought, if only you made different choices about what the public eye was allowed to see. But Sakakibara had a different point to make. “Maybe not in the public eye, Captain, but in this office there ought to be a hell of a lot of difference. You want to kick her ass, you go right ahead. But do it because she gets lippy, not because she did her damn job.”
Mariko wanted to jump out of her chair and give him a high five. She made a vow to discover his favorite brand of cigar and smuggle a few into one of his desk drawers.
Captain Kusama wasn’t quite so enthusiastic. “Your lieutenant makes a good point,” he told her. “But the fact remains: you were once of great use to me, and now you’re a facial scar I have to figure out how to cover up.”
“Do what you have to do,” Mariko said. Seeing Kusama’s hardened glare she immediately subdued her tone. She remembered her two warnings. “I beg your pardon, sir. What I meant to say is, I think my record shows I’m willing to make sacrifices for the team. If I have to take another hit to keep the department looking good, that’s fine—but that’s not really what I came here to talk to you about. Joko Daishi’s due to be released today, sir, and I have to ask you not to let that happen.”
Kusama shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“With all due respect, sir, you’re a captain in the TMPD. There’s very little you can’t do.”
That earned her a tiny smile. “You’re learning, Sergeant. Flattery will get you farther than belligerence. And you’re right: I’ve spent a career building the right connections. I’ve tapped every last one of them to keep this Joko Daishi in custody as long as possible. You might have done me the service of presuming I’d do exactly that, but you’re not one to assume the best of your superiors, are you? You may think of me as a bureaucrat, but I assure you, Oshiro-san, I am a policeman first.”
Mariko nodded, duly reprimanded. He shouldn’t have had to remind her to respect the badge. Loyalty to the force had to count for something, even if some members of the force cared more about image than results.
Kusama gave her a chastising look, and softened it when he saw she’d gotten the point. “You said it yourself, Sergeant: this man has a cult of personality. He also runs a terrorist cell with dozens of zealots who will do whatever he asks. One of them has pled guilty to every charge your suspect is facing, and that means we have no argument to hold him without bail.”
Mariko felt her face flush. She heard a ringing in her ears that threatened to drown out the world. It was just as she’d feared: Joko Daishi wielded too much influence to stay in prison. His cult, the Divine Wind, had all the power of a yakuza clan. He had a lawyer slicker than Teflon, a network of illicit connections that probably included moles within the police department and the DA’s office, and a string of volunteers who would take the fall for him no matter what the legal system threw at him. That was to say nothing of fanatics like Akahata Daisuke, who were willing to become suicide bombers at Joko Daishi’s command.
There was one last recourse Mariko could think of to keep the cult leader from reclaiming the power she’d stripped from him when she brought him down. “Sir, he has a mask,” she said. “Very old, something you’d be more likely to see in a museum. He believes he gets divine power from it.”
“Yes, the devil mask. I saw photos of it in his case file. You impounded it as evidence, neh?”
“We did. He had everything he needed to carry out the subway bombing well before we were onto him. He didn’t pull the trigger on it because he was waiting for a holy day in his cult, their equivalent of New Year’s, except they call this the Year of the Demon. He stole the mask right before the celebration—and by ‘celebration,’ I mean bombing that subway station. That was just the beginning, sir. We’ve investigated every lead we have on the Divine Wind, and assuming our lab guys did their estimating right, we’ve seized about half of the cult’s explosives.”
Kusama gave an appreciative nod. “I’m impressed.”
“It’s not good enough, sir. Joko Daishi intends to burn this city to the ground. He says the Divine Wind will deliver the Purging Fire. It’s a holy quest for him. He believes the mask gives him divine sanction.”
Kusama gave her a quizzical frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He thinks he can’t be killed, so long as he holds the mask.”
“Ah. As I recall, you tested that theory.”
Mariko could only nod in affirmation. She’d ripped Joko Daishi off his motorcycle at a hundred kilometers an hour, yet somehow he’d walked away from it. Mariko didn’t like to believe in magic, but she’d seen some things that just weren’t natural. The only other word to use was supernatural.
But in this case, it didn’t matter if the mask was magical. It only mattered that Joko Daishi believed in it. “Sir, the mask is legally his property, and his lawyer is going to argue that it was material evidence only in the case we had against Joko Daishi. Since he’s got a proxy to take the fall, his lawyer is going to try to have the mask released to Joko Daishi as soon as he gets out. Please trust me, sir: you’ve got to keep that m
ask out of his hands. He’s at his most dangerous—”
“Spare your breath, Sergeant. He’s already got it.”
Mariko couldn’t keep herself in her seat. “What?”
“I told you from the beginning: there’s nothing more I can do. We released him this morning, mask and all. And don’t you look at me like that. Do you think I want a terrorist loose in my city? Of course not. My hands are tied.”
“With due respect, sir—”
Now Kusama was on his feet as well. “Due respect is exactly what you owe me, Oshiro-san, and you should count yourself lucky that I gave you two warnings to that effect already. You are insubordinate, obstinate, and now that I’ve met you myself, I see you’re clearly prone to outbursts.”
“Sir, that’s just not true—”
“And now you interrupt me? Stand at attention, Oshiro.”
Mariko snapped to attention, instantly silent. She risked a quick glance at Sakakibara, who closed his eyes and shook his head. It was a tiny movement, almost imperceptible, but it communicated massive, soul-crushing disappointment.
Kusama walked out from behind his desk, stood face-to-face with Mariko, and removed her sergeant’s pin.
It hit her like a bullet in the gut. She felt like she should want to cry, like that should have been an urge to repress, but there was only a hollowness instead. He might as well have pulled out one of her lungs.
In the most casual act of cruelty, Kusama set the pin down on the edge of his desk, facing her, right where she could reach it. It reflected in the polished teak: a tiny plate of gilded copper, with a cluster of leaves in the center and triple bars on either side.
Kusama walked back around to the other side and took his seat. “Sit down,” he said. “Let’s talk like civilized adults.”
Mariko looked over at Lieutenant Sakakibara, who still stood at the window with his arms folded across his chest. He gave her a tiny nod toward the chair. His face was as stern as ever, as inscrutable as ever; she couldn’t tell whose side he was on.
She had no alternative but to drop herself back in her seat. She started to speak in her own defense, then thought better of it and shut her mouth.
“You see?” said Kusama. “You can behave yourself.”
He shifted in his seat and adjusted his tie. So softly that she could hardly hear him, he said, “I don’t care for raising my voice, Oshiro-san. It’s unbecoming. So are these little tantrums of yours. I find you to be moody, temperamental, and far too aggressive for this line of work. I wouldn’t be surprised if you killed those two men only after your emotions got the better of you.”
And now it all comes out, Mariko thought. He’s a misogynist, pure and simple. Yes, she’d blown her top with him. Yes, she shouldn’t have. But if Sakakibara had been in Mariko’s shoes, forced to kill in self-defense, no one would ever have called his emotions into question. He would have done his duty, period. And if Sakakibara had made the same argument Mariko had about Joko Daishi, using the same words and the same tone, Kusama would never have called him moody or temperamental. Assertive, perhaps, but for men of Kusama’s generation, women weren’t afforded the luxury of being assertive. Their vocabulary for “assertive woman” was “bitch.”
Mariko had no safe way to react. If she objected, she’d only become more of a bitch in Kusama’s eyes. If she remained silent, she’d be a docile bitch who accepted her punishment. Her best option was to remove herself from the situation before she dug herself any deeper, but getting up and walking out was, once again, typical of a petulant bitch.
She squared her shoulders, sat back in her chair, and pressed her lips shut. Strong but not assertive. Her sergeant’s bars stared back at her, along with their doppelganger reflected in the wood.
“You’ve killed two men in the line of duty,” Kusama said. “So far this year, that’s two more than the rest of the department combined. Now you tell me what I’m supposed to do with that.”
Mariko said nothing; she only made a face as if she were thinking carefully about the question. That wasn’t bitchy. In truth she only had thoughts for her stripped sergeant’s tag. It was hard to believe such a little thing could be so heavy, so laden with meaning.
“Ah,” he said, “so you do understand.” He’d misinterpreted her silence, but Mariko wasn’t going to correct him. “You’ve given me reason enough to put you behind a desk for the rest of your career. Don’t think I won’t. I can suffocate you with this job. I can make you spend your days dreaming of some prince on a white horse to marry you and whisk you away from all of this.”
That was something else he’d never have said to Sakakibara. Still Mariko said nothing.
“I had such high hopes for you,” Kusama went on. “It’s a shame that so many people saw you shoot Akahata. If only you’d found some other solution, there might have been a better way to spin this.”
“I’m backing her play on this one,” Sakakibara said. “If you’re facing someone packing his own bodyweight in high explosives, you don’t spend a lot of time looking for ‘other solutions.’”
Mariko wanted to say the same thing, though her language wouldn’t have been quite so polite. She didn’t care for being the damsel in distress, and Sakakibara wasn’t much of a shining knight, but so long as she was banned from speaking in her own defense, it came as a great relief when he dipped his shield in front of her to ward off an attack.
“I appreciate your lieutenant’s point,” Kusama said. “But you understand what I mean. If only it had been your partner to shoot Akahata, all of this would have been so much easier.”
Mariko nodded, though in truth the more rational choice was to strangle him. Did he think she wanted to be the one to take a life? She’d have been perfectly content to switch places. Even Han would have preferred it; he wasn’t vexed by the moral problems that kept Mariko up at night. Besides, only blind luck had put Mariko on the scene instead of Han. Had the coin flip landed the other way, the headline would have been that Han shot first and asked questions later, and no one would ever have known that Mariko was involved. Instead it was the other way around: Han still enjoyed his anonymity, and Mariko was the one who went to sleep thinking of that gunshot echoing off the tunnel walls.
“As it stands,” Kusama said, “my hands are tied. We operate within a system, Detective Oshiro, and the rules of that system are designed to protect the public without trampling anyone’s civil rights. If the rules are flexible, they can’t do what they were created to do. So as much as I might like to, I cannot bend the rules. It’s not for lack of will; it’s for lack of muscle. The rules themselves are too sturdy.”
Or petrified, Mariko thought. But the truth was more complex than Kusama made it out to be. On the street, law enforcement had more to do with creative thinking than rote memorization. Even a simple traffic stop was never simple. Sometimes you let the driver off with a warning. Other times you looked for any excuse that would allow you to search the vehicle. Some drivers struck you as innocent and out of their depth; others were hiding something and both of you knew it. You might have reasonable suspicion in both cases, but that didn’t make the cases the same.
In Joko Daishi’s case, Mariko had logged a week’s worth of overtime helping the DA’s office dig up charges to level against him. No doubt he had followers willing to plead guilty to all of them. But there was at least one charge that left no wiggle room. “Captain, this man tried to run me down with a motorcycle. The last time I checked, that’s attempted murder.”
Kusama gave her a parental glare, warning her about her tone. Mariko lowered her gaze, softened her voice, and went on. “You’re good police, sir. I know you’re not the type to let this slide. Never mind that it was me. The guy tried to kill a cop. Please tell me that still means something in this town. Tell me we can hold him without bail.”
Kusama shook his head. Mariko opened her mouth, but Sakakibara cut her off before she could say something to get herself suspended. “His lawyer’s pushing for involuntary m
anslaughter,” he said. “Says his client was high on psychedelics at the time. Says he didn’t see you standing in front of him.”
Mariko was happy to direct her frustration at someone else—someone who wouldn’t threaten to strip her of her detective’s rank as well. “Sir, that’s bullshit.”
“It sure as hell is.”
“Can’t we just tell the DA not to push for manslaughter? Let’s call it aggravated assault and add the narcotics charge to it. He’s admitting he was high at the time, neh?”
Sakakibara snorted in disgust. “The damn lawyer claims his client didn’t take the drugs willingly. Says it was a part of a religious ceremony. The MDA was forced on him.”
“So what, it’s a normal part of church for these people to force-feed drugs to their priest?”
“That’s the story, yeah.”
Mariko wished she had a bokken in hand and something to smash with it. She managed to keep herself from hammer-fisting Kusama’s desk, choosing to hit her own thigh instead. “So no narcotics charges, a big fat no on the attempted murder, and another prime suspect on all the terrorism and conspiracy charges?”
“Looks like it.”
“And since Joko Daishi has no record—”
“Involuntary manslaughter isn’t enough to hold him without bail. Yeah.”
Mariko slammed her fist on her thigh again, then remembered what Kusama would infer about her violent tendencies. That made her angry enough to want to hit something again, but this time she managed to bottle it up—barely. Swiveling to face Kusama, she said, “Please, Captain, you’ve got to do something. I’m telling you, if this guy isn’t Tokyo’s number one security threat, I don’t know who is.”
“I want you to listen to me very carefully,” Kusama said, his voice low and cold. “You and I operate within a system. So does the district attorney who pressed to hold our perpetrator without bail. So does the judge who said that wasn’t warranted for a suspect with no priors. He’s not wrong, by the way. If it had been some kid driving drunk who almost hit you, they’d have released him on bail too.”