Tokyo Heist

by Diana Renn

  “Violet is correct,” Kenji says. “It was harsh. But theirs was an unfortunate match. Fumiko and Tomo did not see eye to eye about art. She felt it distracted him from his focus on the company. ‘Gambling,’ she called it. She was always threatening to sell off his collection.”

  “And where is Fumiko Yamada now?” Agent Denny asks.

  “Deceased. She succumbed to pancreatic cancer nine years ago,” Kenji replies.

  “When Kenji and I cleaned and closed up her house, we searched, but there was no sign of the painting. We do not believe it was hidden in their home,” Mitsue adds.

  Would Kenji lie about the painting? To the FBI? To my dad and to Margo? He seems so sincere. Yet there’s a piece that doesn’t fit with him, too. Skye said he hit on her. That means he betrayed his wife in some way. He’s capable of deception.

  While the adults keep talking, I take my sketchbook out of my backpack and draw some of the information I’ve picked up, adding it to other bits I’ve sketched out since Friday.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Yamada, do the two of you have children or relatives who might have an interest in the art?” Agent Chang asks. “Or who might have some insight into the painting?”

  “Mitsue and I were not blessed with children. My only heir is my nephew, Hideki. He was a child when his father hid the painting, though, and has no idea of its whereabouts now.”

  “Fascinating history,” says Margo, “but I still fail to understand what any of it has to do with Julian being attacked and Glenn’s paintings being destroyed.”

  I notice she’s looking at my sketchbook. I turn it to shield my work from her view. Then I look at the panels I’ve just drawn along a timeline, and suddenly a few things jump off the page. Things I never noticed before. It’s like playing the Frame Game, looking for that new angle on something you’ve looked at a million times. A pattern emerges, a sequence or story that almost makes sense. The image I keep staring at is the broken window at my dad’s house. I’d been assuming Skye dashed over there after their fight, but that window could have been broken any time between four, when my dad left for the art show, and nine, when we returned. I stand up so fast I knock my chair over. “I think I know what might have happened!”

  “Violet,” my dad warns.

  “It’s all right. Go ahead, Violet,” says Agent Chang, watching me with interest.

  “Okay. Let’s say Fujikawa sent the two gangsters to find the painting. They broke into the Yamadas’ basement and took the drawings. But they couldn’t find the painting.” All eyes are on me. I look back at my sketched panels to steady myself. “So they followed Skye around. They thought she had some connection to the painting, since she did restoration work on the drawings. Maybe they followed her to my dad’s house one day, thinking she hid the painting there for safekeeping.”

  “In my house? That’s absurd,” my dad says.

  “I’m not saying Skye actually put a van Gogh painting there. I’m saying the yakuza thought she might have. So when your window got broken the other night, after the art show—”

  “Your window got broken?” Margo turns to my dad. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “Just petty vandalism.”

  “Sorry, Dad, but I don’t think so. I think the yakuza came that evening or maybe even before the art show. I think they broke in to look for a painting hidden in your house.”

  Agent Chang stares at me. Agent Denny types furious notes.

  I take a deep breath and wrap up my theory. “They were probably nearby today, watching the house. Maybe they thought Julian was crating the van Gogh painting along with your stuff. They followed him all the way to this gallery and saw their chance to get the van Gogh. When it wasn’t there, they got mad and took it out on Julian. And on your paintings.”

  Everyone is quiet. I close my eyes. I feel kind of sick.

  “But that is preposterous. Who would have led the yakuza to think Glenn, of all people, was harboring a stolen van Gogh?” Margo asks.

  Agent Chang shuts her laptop. “That’s exactly what we need to find out. And we need to get these yakuza into custody and investigate their possible connection to the Yamadas’ break-in. But Violet’s theory gives us some fresh avenues of exploration. Good thinking, Violet. And with the license plate number, we can start making inquiries at car rental agencies right away.”

  “Thanks.” I steal a glance at my dad, but he’s picking a hangnail instead of beaming at me with fatherly pride. I sink back into my folding chair.

  The phone rings. Margo retreats to her office to take the call, apologizing to us for leaving. “It’s Julian’s mother,” she says. “She’s quite distressed about her son, as you can imagine. I’ll rejoin you all in a moment.”

  The FBI agents confer in low voices, and then Agent Chang faces the rest of us. “Here’s how we’re going to handle this letter. We’ll stage a sting operation.” She explains: Kenji will write a response letter, promising to show up with the painting. In six days, an FBI agent will pose as Kenji and go to the Hammering Man, carrying a blank canvas wrapped in paper. At the handover, a team of undercover FBI agents, posing as tourists, will nab the two thieves and get the drawings.

  “It would be helpful if you could all get out of town for a bit, while we take care of the situation,” Agent Denny says. “Might be a good time for you folks to take a little vacation.”

  “Actually, we are all scheduled to travel to Japan on Thursday,” Kenji says.

  “Hold on,” my dad says. “Isn’t Tokyo crawling with yakuza? I don’t think we should go.”

  I chew my lip. After how close I’ve come, is he really going to call off our trip?

  “Actually, I see no reason why you can’t keep your travel plans,” Agent Chang says. “Yakuza generally do not bother foreigners. They don’t want the interference of foreign governments investigating, or the media sniffing around.”

  “I, too, see no great cause for alarm, Glenn,” says Kenji. “The museum and the mural site are both in our office building, which has security. Your hotel has excellent security as well. But if it would put your mind more at ease, I can arrange for Violet to have personal protection.”

  “Wow! You mean like a bodyguard?” I exclaim.

  “Precisely. We’ve worked with a personal security agency for years.”

  “Oh, wow. That’d be so cool.” Reika will freak when she hears this.

  My dad scratches his neck. “I don’t know. I’m uneasy about it.”

  “Why don’t the two of you talk it over?” Agent Chang says. “Agent Denny and I have a few more questions for Mr. and Mrs. Yamada.”

  Margo emerges from her office, and the FBI agents take the Yamadas in there to talk.

  My dad doesn’t mention the sting to Margo, but he confesses he’s having second thoughts about taking me to Japan while the FBI sorts things out here in Seattle.

  “Oh, take the child, Glenn,” Margo says. “Nobody’s going to trouble the two of you there. And it might do you good to have her along. You’re a lot more fun to be around ever since Violet showed up. You’re not quite as intense. And the Yamadas like her,” she adds. “They like that you’re a family man. Remember what I told you.” She waggles a ring-encrusted finger. “Keep the clients happy, they’ll come back for more.”

  “I see your point. Keep the clients happy. I guess we’ll stick with the plan.”

  While my dad and Margo continue selecting substitute paintings for the Tokyo show, I go look at the lone madrona painting. Keep the clients happy. Scowling, I shove my hands in my jeans pockets. It’s not like my dad actually wants me to come on this trip. I’m just part of a plan.

  I should be happy, right? I’m still going to Japan in two days. The case is in the hands of professionals. My information was helpful. The yakuza almost certainly took the drawings. And there’s a good chance of
getting the drawings back, assuming the sting works.

  And if it doesn’t work? I look at the clouded glass windows of Margo’s office. The agents and the Yamadas are silhouettes now. Silhouette Kenji rubs his forehead. Silhouette Mitsue pulls her wrap around her shoulders and sits hunched over, shaking her head.

  I will be forced to employ drastic measures. That might mean more sabotage on construction sites, more lives lost on the Kobe bridge project. Who could stop something like that from happening? That’s a job for Superman. Not for Kimono Girl. Not for me.

  But as I pick up my sketchbook to put it away, it falls open to those copies I did of cormorants the other day. And suddenly I know why ayu sounded familiar. That’s what these diving birds eat in Asia. Or carry, I should say. They dive for the ayu, hold it in their throats, and deliver it to fishermen who hold them by a leash. One picture I copied shows a cormorant with a collar around its neck. The collar keeps the birds from swallowing. They can’t keep the rewards of their work. Maybe Tomonori Yamada was like a cormorant, and the art was like the ayu. Maybe that drawing he left in his briefcase the day he died is a clue to the painting.

  1

  5

  With two metal paint boxes banging against my legs, I hurry after my dad. We’re walking from the Grand Prince Hotel to the Yamadas’ West Shinjuku office, through a canyon of silver skyscrapers. “Hey, wait up!” I call. But he doesn’t slow down.

  If my life were a painting right now, it would be by Salvador Dalí, with everyday objects warped and weird. It’s my fourth day in Japan, but I’m still in a jet-lagged daze, my days and nights upside down. I’m hungry at the wrong times. And I’m dripping like a Dalí clock. It’s a billion degrees in Tokyo. Walking in the humid air feels like pushing through heavy curtains. I smell different scents with every step: rice, teriyaki sauce, fish, and perfume. They intrigue me until they all mix together, and then it’s like breathing a thick, weird soup.

  The asphalt everywhere traps the heat. I envy the Japanese girls in their gauzy skirts and camisole tops. They carry lacy parasols to ward off the sun. They slice the thick air with paddle fans. It’s like I’m in a dream, dressed in all the wrong things—jeans and T-shirts. I bump into people and trip over my feet. I thought I’d fit right in here, but I’m constantly aware of my difference.

  On top of jet lag and heat exhaustion, I’m freaking out about the FBI sting. It’s scheduled for seven Monday evening, Seattle time, which is eleven tomorrow morning, Tokyo time. And this undercover operation has to work. Now we know exactly what kind of people the Yamadas are dealing with.

  We found out on Saturday. On our first full day in Tokyo, Kenji and Mitsue showed up at our hotel, in a car with a personal driver, to take us sightseeing. At Senso-ji Temple, they seemed to feel relaxed enough on sacred ground to bring us up to speed. Outside the towering red-and-gold pagoda, with incense swirling around us, they told us about their most recent phone conversation with Agent Chang.

  “The FBI tracked down the Avis rental car to a Mr. Uchida and Mr. Nishio, both of Osaka, Japan,” Mitsue said. “Agent Chang turned the names over to her associates in the CIB, the Criminal Investigation Bureau, as well as the Organized Crime Bureau. Criminal record databases in Japan are not kept and available the same way they are in your country. However, Uchida and Nishio both turned up in Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department files.”

  “They are no strangers to law enforcement,” Kenji added as temple pilgrims dressed in white filed past us, holding candles. “They’ve served jail time in Japan for assault and robbery. They have ties to Fujikawa’s gang.”

  “But if Agent Chang traced the guys back to Avis, couldn’t the FBI just nab them that way? I mean, the car rental agency would know where they’re staying.” I couldn’t resist asking this, even as my dad frowned at me. Before we left Seattle, I had promised my dad that I wouldn’t get involved in the case in any way or pester the Yamadas with questions.

  “I wish it were so simple,” Kenji said. “The men returned the car the same day that Julian Fleury was assaulted, and checked out of their hotel. Agent Chang presumes that they’ve now rented a car with a different agency, under different names, and changed their accommodations. She has people checking on that. Meanwhile, we must hope they follow their boss’s instructions and appear at the appointed time at Hammering Man.”

  My dad sighed and shook his head. “I sure I hope the Feds know what they’re doing.”

  “Let us turn to happier topics,” Mitsue said quickly. “Violet, would you like to purchase a fortune?” She steered me over to a wall of wooden drawers by the shrine to the bodhisattva Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy. She showed me how to insert coins into a box, get a numbered bamboo stick, and find the matching number on a wooden drawer. My fortune came out of that drawer. “If it is a bad fortune, you can tie it to a tree outside, and the wind will take it away,” Mitsue told me as I unwrapped it. “Oh, it’s good,” she said, reading over my shoulder.

  The fortune was in many languages. Mitsue was right; in the English section, it did say NO. 83. EXCELLENT FORTUNE. Beneath that, it said: TROUBLE AND DISASTER ARE GETTING OFF AS TIME PASSES BY, SIGN OF THE FORTUNE IS OPENING UP TO US. GETTING SUCCESS IN LIFE, YOU ARE REAL BUSY. THE LOST ARTICLE WILL BE FOUND. YOU ARE SOON TO CROSS DARK WATERS, BUT PERSON WITH OPEN HEART AWAIT ON OTHER SIDE.

  I wasn’t sure how excellent this fortune was. Trouble and disaster are getting off—did that mean I’d have to experience those things first before they went away? The lost article will be found—maybe that was the van Gogh portfolio. But the fortune shed no light on who might find it or where. A person with open heart waiting sounded pretty good. But soon to cross dark waters? Not so much.

  Around us, the Buddhist pilgrims began to chant prayers. I hoped some energy from those prayers to the bodhisattva might drift in our direction. I folded the fortune up neatly and placed it in an outer of pocket of my pack. Given the news about those yakuza, I figured it would be a good thing to have Kannon watching our backs.

  Now, as we walk to the Yamadas’ office building, I catch up with my dad at a crosswalk, panting. “Hey, slow down. These boxes are heavy.”

  “Sorry. Hideki is checking in first thing, and I don’t want to be late,” my dad says.

  I raise an eyebrow. My dad has never met me on time for anything in his life.

  I turn to see if Yoshi’s keeping up, too. Sure enough, he’s there, watching my back in case Kannon, the goddess of mercy, gets lazy. My personal bodyguard has been consistently five feet behind me ever since we arrived at Narita Airport. The moment I leave my hotel room, he pops out of his room across the hall. I don’t even think he takes bathroom breaks. The guy has a bladder of steel. Maybe that’s his superpower.

  Other than that, I know almost nothing about Yoshi. He speaks “no Engrish,” as he’s always reminding me, wringing his hands and stepping backward, when I try to strike up conversation. He seems to be in his late twenties. Originally from Hokkaido, in northern Japan. Heavyset, broad-shouldered. Dressed in a suit, hair neatly combed. Pleasant enough to look at. If I drew him as a shape-shifter character, he’d be a man that turns into an ox. Strong and loyal.

  His one distinctive quality is that he’s a huge fan of besu-boru. On our sightseeing excursions this weekend, he stopped a lot to check ticker signs and newspapers for the latest scores on the baseball teams he follows, both Japanese and American. And he looked thrilled when I presented him with his omiyage: a Seattle Mariners cap and a pack of Mariners trading cards. (“Ichiro!” he said with a grin, donning the cap and swinging an imaginary bat.)

  Maybe I can teach him some English and draw him out in conversation. As someone in the Yamadas’ inner circle, maybe he knows something about the investigation.

  “Hey, Yoshi,” I say, as we cross the street, “what are all these buildings here?”

  “Ah, sorry
?” He smiles, embarrassed, and waves his hands. “No Engrish.”

  I point to a skyscraper across the street. “This. Building. Name?”

  He nods. “Hai. Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office.” With growing confidence, Yoshi goes on to name other buildings we pass. “Sumitomo Building, very famous. Sompo Japan Building, very famous.” He pauses before a tall building with a dome on top. The glass windows gleam brilliant blue, as if the building had been lifted from the sea and plunked down in West Shinjuku. “Yamada Building.”

  “Let me guess. Very famous?”

  “Hai!” Looking pleased, he motions for us to go in.

  The revolving door sucks us in, whirls us around, and spits us out again. Suddenly, we’re standing on a white marble floor studded with marble pillars, in a paradise of air-conditioning. Security guards and receptionists in navy blue suits bow as Yoshi leads us through the lobby, which still smells of recent construction from the building renovation. A tall, white wall rises before us. Two bright lamps hang from each end, like spotlights. A stepladder leans against it.

  My dad studies the wall as if it’s a mural that was already painted. Then he presses his hands on the wall. Then his cheek. He closes his eyes.

  “Uh, Dad, what are you doing?” A small crowd of office workers forms around us.

  “Reading the wall,” he replies, eyes still closed. He moves down the length of it, caressing the surface. Then he opens his eyes. “Someone did a crap job on the primer.”

  I am suddenly aware of another silent presence behind me. I turn to find a handsome man in a crisp gray suit standing with arms folded and a trace of a smile. He’s like a younger Kenji—maybe not much younger than my dad. A tall, trim man, with just a couple of silver threads in his styled hair. I clear my throat to alert my dad, who thankfully stops becoming One with the wall.

  “Marklund-san?”

  “What?” My dad looks startled and stares at the Japanese man. “Oh. Right. That’s me.”