Disciple of the Wind

by Steve Bein

  In an ideal world, when it came time for the guy with the baseball bat to search her for weapons, he’d find the boot knife and pepper spray, figure she was hiding something else, assume he’d found it when he found the Cheetah, conclude that he was smarter than she was, and overlook the Pikachu. That was the ideal world. In a less than ideal world, he’d disarm her completely, and to arm herself she’d have to kick the guy’s ass and take his bat.

  When she reached the sidewalk in front of her building, she was surprised to find a familiar face. His name was Endo Naomoto, and he was known in Narcotics circles. Endo was an ex-baseball player who still got to swing his bat now and again, but not at baseballs anymore. If it weren’t for his choice of profession, Mariko would have found him kind of cute. He’d graduated from hero of the minor leagues to major-league disappointment, and after a much-too-early retirement he became a slugger on the black market. He didn’t last long with the violent stuff, not because he couldn’t hack it but because he quickly showed a knack for the financial end of the biz. Narcotics hadn’t picked him up in several years, so either he was a hell of a lot smarter than most guys slinging dope—which was true—or else he’d gotten out of the business entirely—which was possible, given that he was currently serving as chauffeur and hired muscle for some very shady individuals.

  As promised, he had the bat with him, and also a baseball, which he was idly bouncing on the end of the bat. When he saw her, he knocked the ball into his free hand. “Detective Oshiro?”

  “Hi, Endo-san. You always walk around town with a baseball bat?”

  He shot her a double take at the mention of his name. She was glad to put him on his heels already, because that stunned look he was giving her was the same look she’d given her phone not half an hour ago.

  He tried to play it off. “Hey, as far as you know, I’m just going to the batting cages.”

  “Uh-huh. Let’s go see your boss.”

  He ushered her to a stately BMW sedan—white, she noted. She also noticed that the driver’s seat was all the way back, and that if she’d been sitting in it, she’d need it all the way forward to be able to reach the pedals. It was the sort of detail Mariko collected routinely, apropos of nothing, but it was worth remembering his reach advantage if it came to blows. His bat would be longer than average too, and heavier to boot. She hadn’t forgotten his baseball as a potential weapon, either.

  He drove her to the Shinjuku Park Tower, a posh downtown icon that Mariko knew primarily as the sort of place her sister, Saori, would love to have her wedding in, if only the Oshiros were billionaires. (Or, as Saori would have been quick to point out, if she snagged a billionaire of her own.) When it was first designed, its three majestic white towers might have been likened to steps on the stairway to heaven, but today the first thing anyone would think of was three bars of cellular reception. At fifty-two stories, it was the tenth-tallest building in Japan, a distinction Mariko had always found utterly depressing. She remembered her grade school field trip to Chicago, and the jaw-dropping view from the observation deck of the Sears Tower. She also remembered her disappointment when she learned how tiny Japanese skyscrapers were in comparison. “They don’t have typhoons in Chicago,” she remembered her father saying. “No earthquakes, either.”

  Diminutive or not, Shinjuku high-rises were among the most expensive real estate on the planet. When Endo parked in the Park Tower’s underground garage, Mariko felt underdressed just stepping out of the car.

  It said something about Mariko’s lifestyle that this wasn’t the first time she’d been in a dimly lit parking garage with a known violent offender. Last time it was Kamaguchi Hanzo’s enforcer, a bodybuilder named Bullet, leading her to an elevator not so different from the one Endo was approaching now. The difference was that last time the department knew where she was going—they even had a rolling tail on her—and Kamaguchi had every reason not to kill her. This time she was on her own.

  As the elevator doors closed in front of her, Mariko tried to convince herself that Endo had no reason to hurt her. It didn’t work. Endo was a lot nicer than Bullet, but Mariko’s mind was too good at imagining possibilities, stories, worst-case scenarios. Cute, yes, but maybe he had a penchant for throwing women off tall buildings. She’d seen weirder MOs in her career.

  They emerged on the fiftieth floor, in a corridor of warm lighting and deep, soft carpet. A long, slender, marble-topped table faced the elevators, home to an ikebana arrangement whose flowers were real, not plastic. Apart from the elevator the hallway was perfectly silent.

  “I have to search you now,” Endo said.

  “You’ll be gentlemanly about it, won’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  She set her purse on the table next to the flowers and stood with her arms outstretched. He did as he promised and didn’t grope her. He was even polite enough to let her fish her cigarette case and lighter out of her purse before he searched it, which was exactly why she put the thought of being gentlemanly in his head in the first place.

  He found the knife, the pepper spray, and the Cheetah. “No badge? No gun?”

  “I’m off duty.”

  “Well, we’re just going to leave your whole arsenal right here, okay?”

  “Come on, my wallet’s in there—”

  “We’ll send someone for it.”

  “Seriously? My phone, all my pictures—”

  “Come on.”

  He steered her toward the end of the hall, where a floor-to-ceiling window opened onto a view of the city that rivaled Captain Kusama’s. To the southeast she saw the sprawling forest surrounding the Meiji Shrine, highlighted here and there with the first hints of autumn gold. Everywhere else she saw urban sprawl. Even from this remove she could see her city was unusually quiet. The triathlete in her noted that it was a perfect day for biking; traffic was as light as she’d ever seen it. The cop in her saw the same evidence but reached a different conclusion: people were scared.

  Just as they reached the last room, the door began to open. Mariko kicked it as hard as she could.

  It flew away from her, hitting something almost instantly—something hard enough and heavy enough to bounce the door back toward her. A forehead, she guessed.

  She didn’t wait to find out. Endo had just enough time to look down at the Pikachu before Mariko jammed it in his armpit and squeezed the trigger. His teeth clamped shut. The tendons stood out in his neck like the cables of a suspension bridge. Mariko kept up the pressure, driving him toward the window. His whole body went stiff as a board, and finally he teetered backward over his heels.

  The door opened behind her. Mariko was already in motion, Endo’s bat in her hand. She turned to see a woman with a bleeding forehead coming straight at her. Mariko jabbed the Pikachu at her. The woman parried it expertly, knocking it to the floor. Mariko didn’t care. She brought the bat around low and fast. It caught the woman in the shin with a meaty thunk.

  The woman cried out but she didn’t drop. Mariko got a good two-handed grip on the bat. The woman reached for a hip holster. Mariko timed a kote strike perfectly, smashing the pistol the instant it was visible. She probably broke some finger bones too, but she didn’t hang around long enough to find out. She faked a chop to the temple, forcing the woman to duck and cover. That was all Mariko needed. She stepped inside the hotel room, slammed the door, and locked every lock it had.

  She stood with her back pressed to the door, facing a small foyer. She’d never seen a feature like this in a hotel room before. Then again, she’d never paid the kind of money it took to stay in a luxury suite. A pair of cube-shaped chairs faced her from the corners of the foyer, upholstered in suede. To her right was a wall with a mirror, shoe rack, and coat hooks. To her left, an open doorway into the next room. Through the doorway she saw a shadow approaching.

  She moved at once, but the man casting the shadow was too quick. He stood in the doorway, bac
klit. Mariko could see he had something in his right hand—a pistol, maybe. He held it the way Humphrey Bogart would hold it, parallel to the floor, his elbow tight against his ribs. He turned it toward Mariko.

  She slapped it out of his hand. Whatever it was, it hit the carpet with a crystalline clink.

  “Now that,” the man said, “was an eighteen-year single malt.”

  He was a distinguished-looking gentleman, and if he found Mariko’s baseball bat threatening he showed no sign of it. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, a charcoal gray suit from an expensive foreign clothier, and a most disdainful look, which he cast not at Mariko but at the wet spot on the carpet. “I’m quite sure it did not spend all those years in the cask so that carpet fibers could drink it up. Really, Detective Oshiro, you must be more careful.”

  “Uh, right …”

  He looked up at her and blinked like a mole in the sun. He might have been Mariko’s height once, but age had bent his back. As soon as she registered that observation, she realized his age was difficult to guess. The crow’s-feet touching the corners of his eyes suggested mid-fifties, but judging by his liver spots he must have spent a hundred years in the sun. He was tan where he was not splotchy, with a high forehead and delicate hands. They were better suited for playing piano than assassinating wayward cops.

  Behind her, Mariko heard a hollow sliding noise at the door, then the high-pitched grinding of an electric motor retracting the deadbolt. Either Endo or his lady friend had a key card—probably Endo, judging by the sheer mass that crashed into the door soon after. Mariko watched the door leap forward, only to slam to a halt when it reached the end of its chain. Endo dropped his shoulder into it again, and again the door only moved a few centimeters before it stopped dead.

  “Oh, do keep it down,” the ageless gentleman snapped. He could just as well have been fussing at a couple of pesky pigeons. “Need I remind you that ours is a secret society? You two are loud enough to wake the dead. Detective Oshiro, be a dear and unlock the door, won’t you?”

  “No, sir.”

  He reacted as if she’d poked him with a pin. “Excuse me?”

  “I said no, sir.” Mariko was surprised to hear herself speak so formally. Something about this man engendered respect. “I’d rather keep your hired muscle on the other side of the door, if it’s all the same to you.”

  He pushed his glasses back up the ridge of his nose with one thin finger. “Oh, come now. They won’t hurt you.” Raising his voice, he said, “Do you hear that? You’re not to hurt her.”

  “With all due respect,” Mariko said, “the last time that woman tried to not hurt me, she damn near killed me. She is the one I chased through Tokyo Station, neh?”

  He gave her a jolly but guilty shrug, as if she’d caught him stealing from the cookie jar. “Yes.”

  “And she was under orders to make sure I ended up with the mask?”

  “Oh, very good, Detective.”

  Mariko pointed at the bruised half of her face. “This is what she calls restraint.”

  “And you? What do you call restraint? You may have noticed you’ve got a rather large club in hand.”

  Mariko aped his guilty shrug-and-grin. “Are you kidding? I’m the model of self-control.”

  It was true. Mariko could have shattered the woman’s kneecap but chose to take her in the shin instead. She could have crushed every bone in her hand, but hit the pistol instead. She held back when she could have beaten the woman’s brains out. And she could have taken the bat to Endo while he was down. But Mariko didn’t feel like explaining any of that. Instead she just hollered, “Tell him, honey. Tell him how easy I went on you.”

  “You broke my fucking finger, bitch.” The woman’s voice was strained, squeaking like a rope under too much tension.

  “See?” Mariko gave the ageless gentleman a broad smile. “A model citizen, that’s me. Now if you want those two to come in and join us, you’ll have to ask them to pass the pistol in here first.”

  He sighed. “I do think we got off on quite the wrong foot, Detective Oshiro.”

  “The pistol. Then my stun gun. Then their key cards. Oh, and tell them to go fetch my purse while you’re at it.”

  “You are quite the intractable one, aren’t you? Your file certainly wasn’t wrong about that.” He gave her an imploring look, and when that failed, another sigh. “Do as she says, Norika-san.”

  Mariko heard a catty harrumph in the corridor. Then came a heavy thump on the carpet, and the pointed toe of a patent leather pump pushed a Glock Model 27 through the narrow gap allowed by the door chain.

  The Pikachu and two key cards followed. Squishing the purse through the gap was harder, but Endo made it happen. “There,” the big ex-ballplayer said. “Happy now?”

  “Almost,” said Mariko. She bumped the door shut with her hip and relocked the deadbolt. Keeping her eye on the ageless man, she picked up the Glock. Her kote strike had knocked the weapon out-of-battery, which was to say the slide wasn’t sitting right and the first round wasn’t seated right in the chamber. It was a common malfunction that took all of five seconds to fix. She kept the Glock, returned the Pikachu to her pocket, and tossed the baseball bat in the corner.

  “That’s better. Now then, what did you say your name was?”

  “Furukawa,” he said. “Furukawa Ujio, at your service. I’ll thank you not to point that pistol at me.”

  “No problem. I’ll just need you to assume the position and let me pat you down.”

  “Oh, come now. Is that really necessary?”

  “Afraid so.”

  He looked at her as if she’d just asked him to squat down and take a dump on the carpet. With great reluctance, he turned around and put his palms on the wall. “I must tell you, Detective, I’ve conducted a great many employment interviews in my day, but I daresay this is the worst yet.”

  “Employ … ? Huh? What do you mean, interview?”

  “Well, of course. Why else did you think you were here? Detective Oshiro, I’ve arranged to see you today because I’d like to offer you a job.”

  23

  Furukawa’s suite was twenty times the size of Mariko’s apartment. The dining table sat eight—or would have, if it weren’t covered in computer equipment. Mariko didn’t have a single room that would seat eight. The ceilings here were nearly three meters high. There was a parlor. A walk-in pantry in the kitchen. Two spare bathrooms. Mariko couldn’t imagine why anyone would even want three bathrooms. It was just more to clean. Then again, if you had daily maid service, maybe that didn’t matter.

  Mariko couldn’t tell what the computers in the dining room were up to; the monitors showed only a little text box for entering a username and password. An old-school landline phone sat on the table, hooked up to a boxy gray gadget she’d never seen before. Cables ran down from the gadget onto the floor, then to a hasty stapling job along the baseboard, then to all the other phones in the suite. There were no folders, no papers, no pens—nothing analog.

  There was, however, a pool table. It dominated an open space just beyond the dining room, and its mere existence was a staggering display of affluence. If you put them side by side on a floor plan, Mariko’s entire bathroom would have a smaller footprint than the pool table. The same was true of her kitchen. Then there was all the space around the table; it had a boundary as deep as the length of a pool cue. In Shinjuku, that much floor space could easily cost half a million dollars.

  Mariko got to see every last feature of the suite, not because her host gave her the grand tour but because she insisted the two of them wouldn’t sit down and talk until after she’d cleared every room. No matter the thread count of the sheets, this was enemy territory.

  “There,” Furukawa said, “are you quite satisfied? No, wait, don’t answer that. Allow me to pour you a drink first. We ought to share a toast.”

  “A toast? What for?”

  “A momentous meeting. It was decided some time ago that our paths would cross. Now, at long last, h
ere we are.” He wrapped one of his slender hands around the neck of a broad-shouldered crystal decanter. Mariko assumed the smoky amber liquid within was the eighteen-year-old whisky she’d spilled earlier. “Shall I pour two?”

  “A little early for the hard stuff, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, how very gauche of me. I do apologize. In my line of work a man keeps odd hours.”

  “And what line of work would that be?”

  He pondered the question for a moment. His free hand circled subconsciously as he thought. “Let us say ‘middle management.’ That strikes close enough to the mark.”

  “I didn’t know ninja clans had middle managers.”

  That got a good, deep laugh out of Furukawa. “My dear, we all but coined the term. If you and I were to be having this conversation five hundred years ago, I would be the chunin, quite literally the ‘middleman.’ I would be answerable to some high-ranking shonin, just as my genin would answer to me.”

  Just like kenjutsu, Mariko thought. She practiced many techniques from a chudan stance, a middle position below jodan and above gedan. “That Norika,” she said. “She’s one of your genin?”

  “She is.”

  “And that’s what you want me to do? Be your genin? Run around train stations in my nightie?”

  “Oh, no. You would serve in quite a different capacity.”

  Furukawa filled a tumbler with three fingers of whisky and settled the crystal stopper back into the decanter. “You’re sure you won’t have one? Or perhaps something more fitting for the brunch hour—say, a mimosa? We’ve got some very fine fresh-squeezed orange juice on hand, though I must tell you, the champagne in this hotel is best described as potable.”

  Mariko didn’t know what to make of this man. He was alone and unarmed, and when faced with the fact that Mariko had trounced both of his bodyguards single-handedly, his only concern was waking the neighbors. Had she been on duty, he would have had no cause for worry; between the law, general orders, and standard operating procedure, there was very little Mariko could do to threaten him. But she was under suspension. General orders and SOP had no bearing on her, and Furukawa knew that. As far as the law was concerned, all she had to do was say she was trapped in his room against her will and she could shoot him on the spot. Yet his biggest worry was that the champagne wasn’t up to snuff.