by Steve Bein
Shoji came into the sitting room carrying a platter with a steaming tetsubin pot, two matching teacups, two tea bags, and a little plate of sandwich cookies. She walked slowly but surely, without the aid of her cane. Carrying out domestic duties seemed to have bolstered her spirits; she was totally unlike Mariko in that respect. “There,” she said, “let’s sit. Now why should you have run across the name Furukawa Ujio? Is he in trouble?”
That sounded alarm bells in Mariko’s mind. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re a police detective. Don’t sound so suspicious. If you must know, I’ve been quite glad not to hear from Furukawa-san. It’s about time he ran afoul of the law.”
San, not sensei, Mariko thought. Doctors always received the honorific sensei, even the ones who deserved to go to prison. Well-mannered women of Shoji’s generation would never make that slip. The only reason she didn’t refer to Yamada as sensei was that she thought of him as her old friend Keiji, not the PhD from Todai. So what did that mean about Furukawa? A doctor without a doctorate?
“He’s not dead, is he?”
“What?” Mariko said.
“Furukawa-san. He wasn’t killed in one of those automobile accidents, was he? Or in that horrible business at St. Luke’s?”
“No.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been grateful to be blind, Mariko-san. I was glad not to see the firebombing in ’forty-five, and I’m glad not to see these awful, awful pictures coming out of Terminal 2. It’s bad enough just to hear about it—”
Just like that she was crying again. Mariko hurried out of the room, mostly to give Shoji a moment of privacy but also to fetch a tissue box. When she returned, her old friend had composed herself. “I’m so sorry, dear.”
Mariko didn’t know what to say. Handling emotional stuff came about as naturally to her as handling snakes.
Shoji folded the tissue into a neat triangle and raised her sunglasses just enough to dab at her eyes. “I have a guess,” she said. “Furukawa-san is not dead, and neither is he in trouble with the law. Does that mean he made contact with you?”
“Wow, Shoji-san, you must be psychic.”
“Don’t mock what you don’t understand, dear.”
“Sorry.” Mariko gave a little bow, as was customary with an apology. As soon as she did it, it occurred to her that with someone who couldn’t see, the bow was probably moot. “Um, yes, he called me. We talked.”
“About my son?”
“No. I told you, I didn’t know you had a son.”
“About Keiji-san, then.”
“Yes.”
“And he told you some things you didn’t want to hear.”
“Yes. How do you—?”
“My son is a schizophrenic,” Shoji said.
Mariko didn’t see how that was relevant, but she didn’t want to interrupt. Shoji took a deep breath before she went on—to steel her nerves, by the sound of it, so now she even had Mariko bracing herself for what was to come. “It is a terrifying disease. Terrifyingly powerful. Visions, voices, delusions, these were my son’s bullies in childhood. They toyed with him, Mariko-san. Without medication, he had no chance for a normal life.”
Shoji’s every word dripped with humiliation. Mariko had a good guess as to why. Most people in her culture saw mental illness as a cause for shame. Mariko was more sympathetic—Saori’s meth addiction had opened her eyes to a few things—but people of Shoji’s generation would be much less so. “That must have been awful,” Mariko said. “This was, what, the sixties?”
“Yes.”
“So when it came to treating something like schizophrenia, pretty much everyone had their heads up their asses.”
Shoji tsked her. “Language, Mariko-san.”
“Sorry.”
“The truth was worse than you imagine. It’s easy for young people to forget, but as a country we were a very long time convalescing from the war. We rebuilt ourselves on manufacturing—Honda, Toyota, Sony, all the worldwide names. But who did we have developing new medicines? We were decades behind. I would hear outlandish stories in the news—first a heart transplant, then the artificial heart, and none of it happening here. Even the Germans made medical advances we would not see for years. And the British? The Americans? They were like sorcerers. Every day I wished one of them would whisk me away. I know I’m not supposed to think that way, but what else was I to do? I had a very sick boy; I needed help.”
Mariko nodded sympathetically, and realized belatedly that Shoji couldn’t see her. “Of course you did,” she said. “But Shoji-san, there’s no need to be ashamed. Any mother wants what’s best for her child.”
“Yes, but I … I made compromises. I talked to Furukawa Ujio. He told me of an organization that … well, there was no place they could not reach.”
A cold wave washed over Mariko’s skin, raising goose bumps up and down her arms. “You? No. You couldn’t have.”
“My son was sick. He needed better medicine. Furukawa’s was state-of-the-art.”
Mariko’s heart sank. “But he didn’t give it away for free, did he? And he didn’t help just any schizophrenic kid, either. How did he know you were a goze?”
Shoji sniffed and dabbed the tissue to her eye. “I don’t know. But what was I to do? The best antipsychotic drugs in the world, and all I had to do was tell him what I saw. I was going to see it anyway. All I had to do was tell him… .”
She broke down crying again. “I never knew,” she said. “I swear to you, I never knew what would happen.”
“Shoji-san, I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I had a vision. When Furukawa-san came into our lives, when I accepted his help, I saw the future. The day would come when I had to make a choice: save my child or save all the others. I had no idea what it meant. But any mother would choose her child, wouldn’t she?”
Mariko took her by her soft little hand. “I’m sorry, Shoji-san, I still don’t understand.”
“My child or the others. That was what I saw. But I thought it meant the medicine. I thought … I don’t know what I thought. Maybe Furukawa stole his drugs from a laboratory. Maybe one more experiment there would have helped more children. But you must understand, my son was hurting himself. It happens with schizophrenics. He climbed out a window once, trying to escape whatever he was hallucinating. When he fell—can you imagine, Mariko-san? Seeing your son lying there unconscious, his leg broken in five places, and being thankful? We lived on the third floor. It could have been so much worse… .”
An ice-cold dread settled in Mariko’s stomach, malignant as a tumor. “Shoji-san, what’s your son’s name?”
Shoji gave her a sweet, sad smile. “Makoto. Makoto-kun. It means ‘truth.’”
Shoji Makoto. But the kanji for sho could also be read ko. Koji Makoto. Shoji’s son was Joko Daishi.
As soon as the thought struck her, Mariko knew it was true. The weight of it crushed the breath out of her. There was a saying in English, one that had always stuck with Mariko because it seemed so Japanese: the child is the father of the man. In Joko Daishi’s case, the child with a badly broken leg became the man with a rolling limp. The child suffering from schizophrenia became the delusional man with a god complex. The goze’s child became the man who claimed to foresee the future—a man who was utterly fearless because he believed he’d already seen the hour of his death.
Mariko was a little ashamed that she hadn’t seen the connection between Shoji and Joko Daishi before—though if she was honest with herself, there was no reason she should have caught it. Shoji and Koji were both common surnames. Since they shared the same kanji, on a police report they’d look identical. It was unusual for a son to change his surname, but perfectly ordinary among Japanese religions for a person to take a new name when taking on the cloth. Japan’s most famous monks and nuns were all known by their Buddhist names, not their given names. The daishi of Joko Daishi was clearly meant to evoke this tradition; it meant Great Teacher, just a
s in Kobo Daishi, one of the greatest figures in Japanese Buddhism. Perhaps Koji Makoto would have changed his name more dramatically, but his mother had already given him the perfect name for a religious leader: read literally, the kanji for Koji Makoto meant Short Path to the Truth.
Why change from Shoji to Koji? Maybe to save his mother from a shameful association, once his name finally became public? Even if he saw himself as bringing enlightenment to the masses, he had to know everyone else would see him as a monster. In his warped mind, changing his name was probably an act of compassion.
Mariko remembered the one time she talked with him. It was hard to forget; she’d never encountered anyone who spoke of mass murder with such childlike delight. My mother is the future and my father is the past. Gibberish at the time, but now Mariko understood at least the first half: his mother, a goze, could see the future. So who was his father? Shoji made no mention of any husband. In fact, the conspicuous absence of a husband in her story suggested that she had raised her son alone. What a scandal that must have been, to be a single mother in the sixties. Compound that with being blind in an era when there was no social tolerance for disability, then add schizophrenia to the picture. Was it any wonder she turned to someone for help? Even if it came from the Wind?
Little wonder, too, that the Wind would be interested in a seer. They were an intelligence agency first and foremost; all the political scheming was founded on having more information than anyone else. And Shoji had the ear of the Imperial house. She was the Emperor’s personal seer. Not that heads of state used fortune-tellers and soothsayers anymore, but Furukawa would find surely some use for a woman who could get herself an invitation to tea at the Imperial palace.
Shoji was crying again, and now it made sense. Her son’s name was all over the news. Goze or not, Shoji had probably been telling herself what any mother would tell herself: it wasn’t him; it can’t be him; my son has his troubles, but he’d never do something like that. That was what you told yourself if your son murdered somebody. You didn’t automatically believe the worst of him; you gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Until he was the leading news story in the country. Denial had its limits. That was especially true in Shoji’s case, for she was burdened by the power of prophecy. Your child or all the others. That’s what she saw in her vision. From the beginning, she’d said the meaning wasn’t clear. Now it was coming into focus.
“Shoji-san,” Mariko said, “you can’t blame yourself.”
“Oh yes, I can. I turned to criminals to find medicine for my son. What if I hadn’t? What if he’d spent his childhood in a psychiatric ward, with no help from me or Furukawa-san? This awful Divine Wind would never exist. A hundred and thirty-nine people, Mariko-san. He’s killed a hundred and thirty-nine so far. All of them had mothers. I chose my child over theirs—”
“No, Shoji-san. He did this. You did everything a mother is supposed to do: you took care of your sick child. But I hold adults responsible for their own actions. He’s not dangerous because he’s ill. He’s dangerous because he’s willing to murder innocent people to prove a point.”
“You don’t understand,” Shoji said. “A hundred and thirty-nine dead, and still my vision has not yet come to pass. I see a number, Mariko-san. 1304. I don’t know what it means, but I know it’s awful. A hundred and thirty-nine dead already, and I can only think, it’s not so bad yet. It’s going to get so much worse.”
31
There was no consoling Shoji after that. Mariko coaxed an invitation out of her to spend the night, just so Shoji wouldn’t be alone. Mariko needed the company too; she was wrestling with her own fair share of guilt. She once had the chance to shoot Joko Daishi in self-defense but she’d chickened out. Furukawa offered her a second shot at him and she turned him down. There would not be a third, because Joko Daishi wasn’t just a lunatic, cultist, or terrorist anymore; he was a good friend’s son. Regardless of whether he deserved to die, killing him was out of the question.
She knew she couldn’t blame herself for another person’s behavior. Saori had taught her that. The only sane way to deal with addiction was to hold the addict accountable. Even so, there was no escaping that niggling thought that maybe, just maybe, if Mariko had somehow figured out the right thing to say, she could have kept her sister from using. It was pure self-abuse. Mariko knew that. She could beat herself up all night and it wouldn’t change the fact that Saori had damn near killed herself using meth. By the same token, Joko Daishi wasn’t finished with his killing spree. It wasn’t Mariko’s fault, but she couldn’t help blaming herself.
She hadn’t brought anything out to Machida except her purse, so to stay the night she had to run out and pick up a couple of necessities. On her way to the stores, she took care of some phone calls. First was Saori, to invite her to come out to Machida the next day. Shoji enjoyed her company too, and it had been a while since the fabulous Oshiro sisters had gotten together. Then a call to her mom, to break the news about her suspension. Her mom was a lousy liar; she feigned sympathy but Mariko could hear the relief in her voice. A suspended cop was unlikely to get shot or stabbed or any of the other things that happened on the syndicated American police dramas her mother followed so masochistically.
The next call was to Han, who didn’t pick up, so Mariko left a message asking for a Terminal 2 update. She knew she’d have to tell him about her suspension too—preferably over a couple of beers, so she invited him to go out the following night. Then, finally, came the call she didn’t want to make.
“I wondered when I might hear from you,” said Furukawa Ujio. “Did you have a pleasant visit with your friend Shoji-san?”
“How did you—?”
“Please. I know where your phone is. Even if I didn’t, our earlier conversation raised questions in your mind about Professor Yamada. There was only one place you could go.”
Mariko didn’t know which pissed her off more, the fact that he was right or the fact that he was so damn smug about it. Yamada-sensei had a similar ability to read her mind, and Mariko had always found it maddening in him too. She hated that Furukawa reminded her so much of Yamada.
“Thirteen oh four,” she said—too loudly. There were other pedestrians in earshot. She’d reached the narrow street where she planned to do her shopping, an urban box canyon and an all-out assault on the senses. All of the stores were brightly lit, and most had English names: FamilyMart, ABC-Mart, Mode Off. A pachinko parlor chimed and dinged and chattered, loud as a Vegas casino. Its signs were in English too, and though they were supposed to advertise slot machines, the placards read PACHINKO AND SLUTS. Cigarette smoke gave way to the syrupy, succulent smells of a yakitori restaurant. Between the sensory overload and the cramped quarters, it was enough to drive anyone into a full-blown panic attack.
Lowering her voice and covering her mouth, Mariko said, “Does that number mean anything to you?”
“No. Why?”
“Look into it. It has something to do with Joko Daishi’s next attack.”
“I see. His mother told you this?”
“Yes—and by the way, threatening to withhold a sick kid’s medication is pretty low even for you.”
“Withhold?” Furukawa seemed surprised. “Far from it. We went to great lengths to treat young Makoto.”
“Of course you did. Out of the goodness of your heart.”
“That’s quite enough,” said Furukawa. “I have no further appetite for your moralizing, Detective Oshiro. Either hang up the phone or come upstairs so we can speak like well-mannered adults.”
At that very moment someone tapped her on the shoulder. She whirled around, her elbow flying high, only to see Endo Naomoto backpedaling with a startled look on his face. “Whoa,” he said. “Totally sorry about that.”
The other shoppers flinched away like a skittish school of fish. Sudden violence out of small women was not a part of their daily routine. Endo was just as rattled. “What the hell?” Mariko said. “What are you doing here?�
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“Playing billiards,” Furukawa said through the phone. At the same time, Endo nodded up at a fourth-floor window behind him. “The boss shoots pool here,” he said.
Mariko huffed and got her heart rate under control. She looked up at the long row of windows on the fourth floor, with a sign running under them reading BILLIARDS BAGUS. “You have to be kidding me,” she said, looking Endo in the eye while speaking into the phone.
“Come upstairs,” Furukawa said. “Let’s talk.”
“We already talked.”
“You have more questions now. You have been speaking with Shoji-san, neh? About her son?”
Mariko hated that this man knew so much about her—not just her private conversations but even which store she was heading to. He got in her head in a way only Han and Yamada-sensei were allowed to. “Good night, Furukawa-san.”
“Whatever Shoji shared with you, it’s not the whole truth.”
“She has no reason to lie to me.”
“Oh no? Did she explain Professor Yamada’s role in her son’s life? Did she explain the assignment Yamada was supposed to give to you? Or why he gave you his sword?”
Mariko laughed—not too dismissively, she hoped. She didn’t want to oversell it. The truth was that she knew precious little about her sensei and she was always eager to learn more. One of the great mysteries in her life was why he’d taken her under his wing and entrusted her with Glorious Victory Unsought. Yet one more secret that Furukawa knew about her. How did he pull this stuff out of her head?
He had the good graces not to make her ask. “Please, do an old man a favor. Spare my knees and come upstairs so I don’t have to come down to you. We can speak in private here. Endo-san will show you the way.”
“Nope. Endo-san will do my shopping for me.”
Endo seemed earnestly offended. “What? No way.”
Mariko took out the little notebook she carried everywhere—standard detective equipment, as she thought of it—and tore out a page. “Here. The stores are closing in twenty minutes. If I have to talk to your boss, you have to run my errands.”