by Steve Bein
“Daishi?” Mariko had never heard of it. She looked at Han, who shrugged. Evidently he didn’t know any more than she did. “Any good?”
“Don’t get any better.”
Her phone stopped buzzing, only to start anew a couple of seconds later. Mariko guessed it was her mother, the only person she knew who would keep calling until Mariko picked up, so she thumbed a button through the fabric of her pocket to let her voice mail pick it up. She looked to Han and silently—with no more than a glance to Nanami, a slight tilt of the head, and a quick raise of the eyebrows—asked what they should do. Han replied by standing up, letting all the pressure off Nanami’s neck. Once again Mariko felt thankful to have a partner whose stream of thought aligned so closely with her own. For one thing, it allowed such acts of near telepathy, which was very handy when neither of them wanted to reveal to a street connection that they’d never heard of this Daishi. For another, thinking like a good narc meant she was a good narc.
She pointed to her jawline and gave Han a querying look, and he replied with a nod and a thumbs-up: in response to her unasked question, he confirmed that his jaw and his tooth were fine, and they wouldn’t need to arrest the kid after all. “Next time when we say we just want to talk,” she said, unlocking the cuffs, “maybe you should consider the possibility that we just want to talk.”
Nanami got to his feet. He knew his part in this unspoken conversation too: he hadn’t seen any of Mariko’s communication with Han, but the fact that they let him stand of his own accord meant he wasn’t going to jail this morning. He gave them a short, contrite, professional bow and left.
Once again the phone buzzed in Mariko’s pocket. “Hold on,” she told Han. “My mom’s having a fit.” She answered the call with an exasperated “Yeah?”
“That’s not a tone you want to take with me,” said a rasping male voice. “You don’t want to ignore my calls either.”
Mariko looked at the caller ID and couldn’t believe her eyes. KAMAGUCHI HANZO, it said. The Bulldog. Son of Kamaguchi Ryusuke, underboss of the Kamaguchi-gumi. Former confederate of Fuchida Shuzo, the yakuza enforcer Mariko had killed in her now-famous swordfight. As the Kamaguchi-gumi’s equalizer, the Bulldog had the contract on Mariko’s life, and unless Mariko missed her guess, the Bulldog had passed up a chance to kill her this morning. He’d stolen Glorious Victory instead—though the question of why was a mystery that was never far from her thoughts.
She almost put the Kamaguchi on speakerphone, then thought better of it and just beckoned Han to listen in with her. “Bulldog-san,” she said, more for Han’s benefit than anything, “you want to tell me how you got this number?”
“Heh. Not by asking politely.”
Mariko would not be intimidated by this man—or at least not let him know she was scared. “I’m beginning to think you’ve got the hots for me,” she said. “First you break into my apartment. Then you beat up some poor guy to get my phone number. I’m flattered.”
“What? Break into—? Ah, fuck it. Where are you at? I’m sending a car for you.”
She and Han looked at each other in disbelief. Mariko had to take a second look at her phone, as if to verify that it was still in her hand, that she’d actually dragged herself out of bed, that this whole god-awful morning hadn’t been some terrible dream. “And what makes you think I would voluntarily get in a car with you?”
“I got a bargain for you. I think you’re going to like it.”
She gave the phone another quizzical look. “A bargain?”
“You heard me. You get me something I want and I’ll give you something you want.”
Mariko couldn’t tell which she felt more: confusion or fury. Two seconds ago he seemed to have no idea about her break-in this morning. Now it sounded like he was offering Glorious Victory as a bargaining chip.
In the end, fury won out. “Now listen here, you son of a bitch. I’m not going to be dragged into some kind of bullshit bartering game for my own property. You bring my sword back; then we can talk.”
“I got no idea what you’re talking about, you loopy—”
“Go to hell,” Mariko said. Then she hung up.
Han gawped at her in amazement. “Was that really Kamaguchi Hanzo?”
“Yeah.” Her phone rang again. She clicked the call directly to voice mail.
“The Kamguchi Hanzo? Like, the Bulldog crazy guy Kamaguchi Hanzo?”
“Yeah.”
“And you told him to go to hell?”
“I guess so.” Her phone chirped again. She clicked to ignore it again.
“Mariko, this is a golden opportunity. You need to take that call.”
“What?” Mariko shot him a you-need-to-go-back-to-the-loony-bin sort of look. “You’re kidding me. ‘Golden opportunity’?”
Her phone buzzed in her fist again, and Han nodded toward it. “Think about it. What’s the one thing a detective needs more than anything else to work narcotics?”
The look on Mariko’s face didn’t change. “A partner who doesn’t want to see her shot dead by a yakuza?”
“Come on. What am I always telling you need to develop?”
“A network of contacts.” She answered him as if she were answering a teacher’s rhetorical question in grade school.
“Exactly. And who could be a better contact than Kamaguchi Hanzo? This dude’s probably got access to everything the Kamaguchi-gumi is running. Dope, guns, extortion, racketeering, you name it.” Han was so excited he couldn’t stand still. “I’m telling you, Mariko, this is amazing. I’ve been in this division for eight years and I’ve never had the chance to develop a high-level connection like this.”
“I bet you never had any of them put a price on your head either.”
“I don’t think he wants to shoot you. I really think he wants to talk.”
Mariko looked down at her phone, which was vibrating in her hand like a fly trapped in a jar. She was tired of feeling unsafe. She wanted to answer the phone and challenge the Bulldog to a shoot-out at high noon. Clint Eastwood antics weren’t her cup of tea, and she still wasn’t all that confident in her marksmanship left-handed, but at least a good old-fashioned shoot-’em-up would see her problems resolved once and for all.
And yet Han was right. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and every indication said Kamaguchi didn’t intend to kill her. First, he seemed to be honestly confused about the sword theft. Second, he wasn’t the type to call in advance to schedule a drive-by.
Damn it all, she thought. Then she answered her phone.
“Bitch, you hang up on me again, I’ll make you regret it.”
Mariko rolled her eyes and almost hung up. Only a panicked gesture from Han made her think twice. She sighed and said, “What do you want?”
“I told you. A bargain. Tell me where to pick you up.”
“Metropolitan Police HQ,” she said. “Chiyoda-ku.”
“Fine. Half an hour.” And the line went dead.
The silence made Mariko’s heart race. She’d just made a date with the man who was hired to kill her. And he had just agreed to meet the target of his assassination order in front of a high-rise full of cops. More to herself than anyone, she said, “I can’t believe I’m going to go through with this.”
“You’re not going alone,” Han said. He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll be right behind you in an unmarked car, with two others on a rolling tail.”
“I’m not scared,” she said. It was only a little lie. “It’s just . . . the guy’s a gangster, Han. He makes a living destroying other people’s lives. Do I really want to get into bed with him?”
“This is Narcotics, Mariko. We deal with bad people. It’s part of the job.”
“Yeah, I get that. It’s just . . .”
She didn’t know how to finish her own thought. Fortunately she and Han shared a telepathic wavelength. “It’s a gamble,” he said. “I know. You’re on first base and you’re thinking of stealing second. That’s just one of th
e risks you take sometimes if you want to win the ball game.”
17
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters looked like a giant concrete book, standing on end and opened slightly, with a three-story drink twizzler for a bookmark. The building’s eighteen floors of unadorned, wedge-shaped, postmodern concrete loomed over the heart of Chiyoda City, Tokyo’s governmental district, right across the street from the Ministry of Justice and right across the moat from the Imperial Palace gardens. A phallic red-and-white tower stood atop the building, complete with three observation decks full of various antennae, dish-shaped and mini-phallus-shaped, whose arcane purposes Mariko couldn’t begin to guess at.
The mere sight of the HQ building still sent a thrill rippling over Mariko’s skin. She’d worked so hard to get onto the TMPD, harder still to make detective and sergeant, and seeing the department’s headquarters through the windshield of a squad car confirmed for her what still seemed unreal: that at last she’d made her way to her dream assignment in Narcotics. Moreover, HQ’s overlook of the Imperial Palace stirred memories heavily laden with happiness and grief. She’d only been in the palace once, and it was the murder of her beloved sensei that had prompted her visit. Thinking of Dr. Yamada was enough to make her want to cry, but since that was something she could never let a coworker see, she had to suppress the urge every time she showed up to work.
And that was on days when no gangsters came calling. Talking to Kamaguchi on the phone had shaken her to the core, and she hadn’t been herself even before she saw his name on the caller ID. If Kamaguchi wasn’t responsible for the break-in, who was? And if he didn’t have Glorious Victory, what could he possibly offer as a bargaining chip? And what did he want in return?
Han was pretty shaken up too. He tried not to show it, but he was already on his third cigarette, and he paced back and forth in front of the HQ building like a panther in a cage. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call Sakakibara in on this? We could have snipers on all these rooftops in ten minutes flat.”
“You were the one who said this was a good idea.”
“Yeah, but that was before I knew I was going to be waiting on the sidewalk with you. If he shoots at you, he might hit me by mistake.”
“You know, Han, you can be a real asshole.”
“Just trying to lighten the mood a little.” He smiled from behind his cigarette, but Mariko wasn’t laughing. “Okay, okay, guilty as charged,” he said. “But seriously, shouldn’t we call the LT?”
“Come on, you know what he’s going to say. ‘Frodo, you’re a sergeant; think for yourself and do your damn job.’” Mariko caught herself short. “Holy shit.”
“What?” said Han, his shoulders suddenly stiff. His eyes darted this way and that, clearly on high alert. “You see Kamaguchi?”
“No. Frodo.”
“Huh?”
“The nickname. Frodo. I think I just figured it out. The hobbit part’s easy, neh? I’m short. But who’s the only hobbit who winds up with nine fingers?”
She waved her maimed right hand at him. Han puffed at his cigarette and shook his head. “You’re insane. How can you be thinking about that right now?”
Mariko shrugged. “Honestly, I’m just kind of surprised Sakakibara’s nerd trivia runs that deep. Didn’t figure him for a Tolkien fan.”
“Great. Mystery solved. Now all we need to know is—”
Just then a big red Land Rover came to a sudden stop in front of them. Traffic swerved around it like a flock of doves fleeing a hawk. The rear door opened automatically, like a taxi’s, and a big man stepped out. It wasn’t the Bulldog; this guy was bigger. He obviously spent a lot of time at the gym, and maybe some time with a steroid needle too. Mariko wondered where they ever found enough pin-striped fabric to make a suit that would fit him. Tailoring a suit for a guy with no neck couldn’t have been easy in the first place.
He nodded at her. “You Oshiro?”
“Yeah,” said Mariko.
“Get in.”
Mariko nodded as nonchalantly as she knew how, then sauntered in her summoner’s direction. She would not be seen to be scared. On cue, Han jogged to the unmarked car idling at the curb. No point in having an invisible tail; they wanted the Kamaguchis to know Mariko was never out of sight.
She waited until Han was in the car before she got within arm’s reach of the Land Rover. “Where’s Kamaguchi?” she said.
“Waiting for you.” The bodybuilder climbed into the backseat, taking up most of it. Under his suit jacket Mariko saw the telltale lines of an antiknifing vest—all the rage in yakuza couture ever since a certain cop got herself all over the news with her samurai showdown. Tokyo had seen a rash of sword and knife attacks since then, mostly among yakuzas who thought it was gokudo, extreme, hard-core, to duke it out old-school. Evidently Kamaguchi’s errand boy didn’t care to become a statistic. “Come on,” he said, “get in.”
The seat he offered her was on the left side of the vehicle. Mariko didn’t know whether this was a calculated tactical choice, but if it was, it was a good one. Most cops wore their holsters on the right hip, and if Mariko had worn hers there, her pistol would have been in easy reach for him. But Mariko shot left-handed now, so when she got into the car, her weapon was safely between her left hip and the door. “Let’s go,” she said.
The drive seemed to take forever and no time at all. The muscle man had no qualms about discussing business in front of a cop, and so over the course of a couple of phone calls Mariko learned that he went by “Bullet,” that one of his errands today was to collect a lot of something, and that the code he and his fellow yakuzas had developed for speaking about their criminal activities left Mariko utterly clueless about whether Bullet was supposed to collect weapons, protection money, or baseball cards. It could have been anything, and it left Mariko wondering whether she’d even pick up on it if he decided to turn the conversation to the subject of where to dump her body after he killed her.
Bullet had a private parking spot in the parking garage under an Ebisu high-rise, and a pass code for the elevator’s keypad that admitted him to the penthouse floor. So much for backup. This wasn’t good.
The elevator doors opened onto a wide vista of Ebisu and Roppongi, two of Tokyo’s wealthier districts. Mariko presumed this was Kamaguchi Hanzo’s apartment, since if it were not, she could hardly make sense of the ostentation. Most penthouse apartments would have a foyer with a locked door separating the home from the elevator—the better to keep out riffraff such as, say, police officers, or the pizza boy, or neighbors’ kids goofing off in the fire exit stairwell—but if Kamaguchi wanted to overwhelm his guests straightaway, the best way to do it was to flaunt the view. His furniture was too obviously expensive to be elegant. The same went for the carpeting, the paneling, the fireplace ignited by remote control. There was more artwork on the walls than Mariko would have expected from a gangster, but the collection was eclectic, probably selected by price tag more than by taste. It was an observation deck, not a living room, and the intended subject of observation was Kamaguchi’s personal wealth. Mariko noted that Glorious Victory Unsought was not in his collection.
Neighboring Roppongi had a nefarious reputation as a haven of the most powerful yakuzas, and Mariko wondered how it felt for a gangster of Kamaguchi’s stature to live so close to real power and still be removed from it. Ebisu was gauche by comparison, a Harley parked next to a sleek Ducati, expensive but without the class.
“There she is,” said Kamaguchi Hanzo, and as soon as she laid eyes on him she understood why his street name was the Bulldog. His underbite was more pronounced than his father’s, even more pronounced than the mug shots let on. His belly was as round as a barrel and his broad shoulders were sloped, as if his skull were so heavy it weighed them down. He had a thick head of jet-black hair, but otherwise he looked older than he really was. His rap sheet—which Mariko read as soon as she’d learned the hit from the Kamaguchi-gumi had fallen to him, and had read umpteen t
imes since then—said he was only thirty-eight, but his wrinkles marked him at least ten years older than that. Just part of the territory, Mariko guessed, for one born into the high-stress life of criminal middle management. She wondered whether his moonlighting as a street enforcer caused him more stress or served as stress relief. As soon as the question struck her, intuition told her it was the latter. Not a comforting thought.
“The hero cop,” he said. “The dragon slayer. The girl who doesn’t know when she’s overstepped her limits.” He spoke with a slight rasp, as if he were just getting over laryngitis, or as if he’d been shouting all night the night before.
Mariko felt oddly cold. She’d expected her heart to race at the sight of this man, but instead she only flexed her fingers, calculating the exact distance between them and the grip of her SIG Sauer. She was still scared, but it was a sullen, brooding fear, not nervous jitters. “What do you want?” she said.
“To show you something.” He beckoned her over with a meaty hand. “Come on. I’m making kebabs.”
Given the sheer pretentiousness of the apartment, Mariko was surprised to learn Kamaguchi cooked for himself, but she had no interest in seeing him in the act—or rather, more pragmatically, no interest in following him into a roomful of knives. But she reminded herself that if he wanted to kill her, his own home would be the last place he’d do it, so she forced a cocky, relaxed deportment and followed him.
The Bulldog’s kitchen smelled of onion and peppers. He had a little pile of each heaped on his marble countertop, alongside a few other vegetables and a big steel bowl with chunks of beef marinating in it. He also had a laptop sitting on the counter, on the opposite end from where he was preparing his food, and given the sheer size of the kitchen, the opposite end was pretty far away. His fingers swept up a big chef’s knife in a reverse grip, spun it around in a motion that looked like he’d spent a lot of time with a blade in his hands, and gestured at the laptop with it. Mariko hated playing games like this—he was trying to boss her around—so she sat on a stool and waited.