by Barry Lancet
I found myself returning the smile. “I don’t know, what?”
“Twenty-five yuan.”
He chuckled appreciatively, lifting his saké cup jocularly for a sip. His lips were parted in a grin, but his eyes were dark, penetrating tunnels ready to lap up every detail of my response.
Which was immediate. Despite my best efforts, I felt the blood drain from my face. Something slimy and repulsive tugged at my guts.
Bread would be paid for in Chinese currency because the People’s Republic had invaded and conquered.
Zhou’s quip was a brilliant piece of spycraft, and it scared the crap out of me. It exposed the listener’s level of patriotism. Or corruptibility. If a person loved his country, he couldn’t be anything but appalled. His reaction would be a mental knee-jerk he couldn’t contain—as had mine.
Those of wavering loyalties would respond with appreciative laughter when the bait was dangled. Or nervous laughter if they were stepping for the first time onto Zhou’s ledge. Whether a thin titter or a full-blown guffaw, the reaction would telegraph the listener’s state of mind in a flash.
The joke struck such a gut-wrenching chord that I found it physically impossible to offer a covering laugh. I was outclassed and overmatched.
Two could not play at this game.
CHAPTER 51
ZHOU’S demeanor changed yet again.
His eyes dulled. The smile dimmed. The inviting flush vanished from his face. He was no longer interested in me on a professional level. I might lead a glamorous existence. Rub up against people from all walks of life and be able, on occasion, to supply him with a tidbit of useful information. But I was constitutionally unrecruitable, so I was no longer a man leading a desirable business lifestyle.
He radiated disinterest on a grand scale.
“So, Mr. Brodie, what can I do for you?”
I understood from his tone that this was my moment.
“You’ve heard about the home invasions, of course.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Here we go again.
“The prevailing opinion is that the Triads are behind them and some related killings, but I have it from a good source that it’s not the Triads but spies pretending to be Triads. Is that possible?”
“Not if your source thinks it’s Chinese spies.”
“That’s precisely what he thinks.”
Zhou paused to examine my answer, before saying, “Please continue.”
“My contact was certain. And if anyone would know, he would. His opinion is based on years of experience dating back to the war.”
Zhou nodded distractedly, staring into the distance. “Go on.”
“That’s it. My people are tracking the Triad angle. This new contact contends it’s you guys. He’s seen it before. I got the idea he knew people who had been victims of such tactics.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A yes. Wu was right. “But in this case your informant is mistaken.” Setback.
“Are you sure?”
His chest expanded as he weighed his reply. “Did Tommy happen to mention my position?”
I shook my head. “I only requested someone high up in the food chain.”
“Good, Tommy was discreet.”
He leaned forward, his eyes sliding left toward the table where the Chinese couple sat, then right toward the window. Zhou shifted in his seat to place his back more prominently toward the man, blocking a larger part of our table from view. Between the platter and the dish of crab, he traced some Japanese characters on the table. You can go no higher.
Then he sat back and said, “Our time is drawing to a close. Do you have any other questions, Mr. Brodie?”
“I need to make sure we are on the same page.”
“I don’t know if I can help you.”
“Fine. Have your people ever gone after others in Tokyo using the Triad ruse?”
“I absolutely don’t know what you’re raving about.” A more emphatic yes.
“So the home invasions are not your doing, or that of anyone you know?”
“No.” Definitely not.
“How can you be so sure it’s not a Chinese spy from, say, another camp?”
He shot me a look of impatience. “What do you know about Triad methods?”
“I’ve heard that they are sloppy, unpracticed killers, and use blunt blades.”
His smile was cruel and bereft of charm. “True as far as it goes, but deceiving.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Deceiving how?”
“Triad leaders discovered long ago that hacking off body parts horrifies people. So what you call ‘unpracticed’ is actually calculated. They often assign the chopping to younger members, who have less experience. The act terrorizes the victim. The finished product terrorizes everyone else.”
Product.
“My people like the method because it’s easy to reproduce,” Zhou added. “It doesn’t require practice.”
“You’re saying you know the details about the recent home invasions and the approach used doesn’t match yours?”
“On the contrary. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Yes.
Of course he would know. He would have investigated. Just to make sure one of his men wasn’t freelancing.
“Okay,” I said.
He smiled. “Koroshi monku, is it not? I love that Japanese phrase.”
The phrase translated literally as “killer words.” What it meant in most instances was that the reason or argument put forth was an end-all. It smothered any further resistance.
Considering Zhou’s Japanese fluency, his bandying about of that particular image was no accident.
CHAPTER 52
THE saké gone, Zhou signaled the waitress and ordered a round of beer.
The order alarmed me. No one followed multiple rounds of saké with beer.
“So,” I said, “just to be sure there’s no misunderstanding, what we have here is a killer imitating a spy imitating the Triads.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Confirmation.
“Makes my head hurt.”
He chuckled. “Welcome to my world. Do you mind telling me your source?”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“You’ve already given me more hints than you should. You’ve been talking to a certain doctor who escaped our country years ago.”
I spread my hands as a sign I had no further comment.
Zhou said, “That old man has been a thorn in our side for years. I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars American if you tell me where he is. I can get the money in twenty minutes.”
I didn’t reply.
“Okay, one hundred and fifty. Cash. Sixty minutes.”
I shook my head.
“How about this? We’ll buy you a building in San Francisco. Four units. You just arrange another meeting with him, give me the location, and we show up in your place. You’ll have your own place for that beautiful daughter of yours. A slice of San Francisco real estate worth several million dollars.”
A chill ran down my spine at the thought that a man like Zhou knew about Jenny.
I cleared my throat. “Not my style, sorry. Even assuming we are talking about the same gentleman.”
“We are.” Zhou studied me. “Name your price. China is awash in cash.”
I shook him off and he said, “When I meet resistance, I normally change the candy. I try power, revenge, or a Chinese honey trap. We have some international beauties. But I think you are like my friend Tomita. I can’t reach you.”
I stared at him, offering no reaction he could read.
He said, “The world needs people like you and Tommy. To protect it from people like me.”
A disarming comment. Followed by the return of the thousand-watt smile. “May I be frank?”
“Refreshing idea.”
He gave an icy chuckle. “You’d make a fine asset if I could turn you, but we’re on opposite sides.”
>
“Meaning?”
“Meaning we’ll never be friends. But an enemy well regarded is better than an acquaintance whose loyalty you doubt.”
It may have been his first genuine sentiment of the evening. “A matter of peace of mind, I’d bet.”
His smile was tinged with a weariness he allowed me to see. “You are a very intuitive man, Mr. Brodie. Such a waste.”
Our waitress brought two foamy mugs of Kirin lager. She set them down and left. Zhou pushed his mug toward mine until the glasses touched.
“This evening’s on me,” he said. “I require only one last thing. You must stay seated until you drink both the beers before you. Under no circumstances are you to leave before you finish. And not for at least ten minutes, even if you guzzle the beers. Don’t take a toilet break. Don’t call anyone. For a nonspy, you play the game too well, so I’m not taking any chances.”
“There’s no need—”
“Don’t waste your breath. You have nothing to fear from me as long as you circulate none of what transpired here tonight other than the Triad information. Now I must leave you. I’ve signaled my men. Again, do not follow me. Do not leave prematurely. The shooter has orders to terminate you if move more than five inches out of your seat.”
Anger rolled through me.
Koroshi monku of a different order.
CHAPTER 53
TWO beers and two cups of coffee later, I was still sorting through my cat-and-mouse session with Zhou when Noda called and suddenly my night was far from over.
I’d finished the beer at a leisurely pace, then ordered the first cup of coffee, staying well past Zhou’s ten-minute minimum to avoid any misunderstanding.
Three minutes into the second cup my cell phone buzzed. “Got some news,” Brodie Security’s head detective said.
“Good or bad?”
“Hard to tell.”
Noda preferred monosyllabic answers and, barring that, the shortest sentence that took him from question to answer.
“Don’t be shy.”
Outside of a mandatory information dump, he seemed incapable of stringing three sentences together unless a major emergency loomed.
“Found where Miura’s key fit.”
The key I’d dug out of the fractured kendo sword. “Serial number?”
“And shape. Mitsui condominium tower in Shakujii-koen.”
The construction arm of the Mitsui conglomerate. Noda had made the rounds of all the big builders, starting at the top.
“That’s a posh neighborhood,” I said.
“Cost us a case of premium saké.”
“Fair enough. Who lives there?”
“A woman. Sounds pretty.”
“Got anything else?”
“An appointment to pay our condolences.”
“Isn’t it a little late to be making a call?”
Noda was quiet for a beat before he said, “The lady in question is, uh, accustomed to late-night visits.”
“Ah,” I said. “That kind of pretty.”
* * *
The woman’s name was Masami Saito.
She lived in the shadows and wouldn’t be attending Yoji’s funeral. She’d be eager for news, which was no doubt the lure Noda had cast.
The discovery astounded me. Mistresses weren’t uncommon in Japan, but keeping a love nest with all the attendant accessories took a healthy money stream, which I was convinced my client’s late son didn’t possess. On the other hand, I’d seen Yoji’s compulsion for nice things, and it looked like we were about to get a glimpse of one more.
Noda and I sat in a company car, looking up at a prestigious condominium tower built on prime property directly across the street from Shakujii-koen Station. The koen part of the name means “park,” in this case a reference to an impressive urban spread of greenery, woodlands, and a pair of large ponds, each several city blocks long.
“Approaching grieving women seems to be becoming a habit,” I said.
“Works that way sometimes.”
A couple of months ago we’d sat in another company car outside the house of a woman whose husband had gone missing on the Japantown case. With the earlier visit to Yoji’s widow, my tally had climbed to three.
“Probably a habit worth breaking,” I said.
“We’re not responsible for the death this time.”
“Feels like it.”
The tower lobby had a small office with a guard. A gleaming parquet floor bled to one of polished marble. Once out the door, a resident had only to walk ten paces to a taxi stand. Ten paces to the left brought her or him to a fleet of indoor ATMs and a mall with an upscale supermarket, dry cleaners, cosmetic kiosk, and hair salon. The train station was another twenty paces past the taxi stand. A prime location in a good neighborhood. For Yoji, the stop fell about halfway between his downtown office and his home in the burbs.
Convenience on all sides.
Propped up on the dash was one of the photographs I’d removed from Yoji’s locker. The attractive woman I took to be a cousin or a sister. Looking pointedly at it, I said, “Anything else I should know before we go?”
“Yeah. Yoji was broke.”
Not what I was expecting, but it would do. “Thought he might have gone over the edge.”
“Why?”
“Career stalled. Wearing platinum cuff links when we first met. Lexus at the house. Pamphlets for pricey tropical vacations on the coffee table.”
“Good call.”
I waited. Nothing more was forthcoming.
I said, “Because?”
Scratching his jaw, the detective dredged up the facts. “Monthly fees for the sick kid took a third of his salary. Spent a third on drinking and clothes. Second mortgage on the house eight years ago from the same bank. Took more cash from a legal loan shark four years later at nine percent. Second one in January this year at twelve.”
“Can’t be cheap to keep a lady friend here,” I added, though it was far less than Roppongi, Aoyama, and the other chic districts in central Tokyo where millionaires, company presidents, and politicians stashed their love interests.
Noda grunted. “Cost him more than the kid.”
An image of Yoji’s wife cradling her disabled son rose up before my eyes. Given her misplaced hysterics, she hadn’t endeared herself to me, but my sympathies were shifting.
“Life insurance?” I asked.
“After the debt, about five years of living expenses.”
I shook my head. The widow faced an indefinite future but almost certainly one of lack and poverty. Knowledge of the mistress could unhinge her completely.
I nodded at the photograph. “That the woman?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe someone did the wife a favor. This thing was a time bomb.”
Noda nodded. “Found an old flame on her side, too.”
My ears perked up. “Boyfriend or secret admirer?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“A lover would make Yoji’s killing what? A copycat murder by someone who knew about his father’s concerns?”
“Yeah.”
“What a mess.”
The case had just imploded. Who had killed Yoji and why? An admirer of his wife or someone after information? The heavy beating Yoji suffered suggested the second, unless a lover or would-be Romeo with a white-knight complex had meted out punishment. But where did the Sengai come in? If anywhere? And what about the kendo thugs? And how, then, did Hamada’s death fit?
I said, “Could the wife have been part of it?”
“Still checking.”
“Well, at least with the insurance she can keep a roof over her son’s head until this is straightened out.”
Noda’s grimace told a different story. “You’re living in a fairyland. Bankers’re drooling over the house.”
“Body’s not even cold.”
“Cold enough.”
“Sounds like Yoji might have been dead even before someone took it into their own hands.”
/> CHAPTER 54
YOJI’S expensive tastes extended to women as well.
Masami Saito greeted us sheathed in a tailored suit of mourning. She was gorgeous, in her late thirties to Yoji’s mid-fifties, with full-bodied black hair, big brown eyes, and pale almond skin with a shimmering translucence. She wore a pair of petite diamond earrings and a delicate gold necklace displaying a string of equally delicate diamonds with even better color. Japanese women do not go in for big jewelry but they zero in on quality. These sparkled with the brilliance of top-of-the-line Tiffany creations plucked straight off the Ginza.
“Do come in,” she said with a wide smile and a bow, pulling the door aside.
We entered, then stepped out of our shoes and into the guest slippers waiting for our arrival.
She led us into the interior with a proprietary walk. The sitting room was not what I expected. Instead of a cozy, pillow-laden love nest in overly cheerful colors, the room had a pristine, understated elegance. A white designer sofa with a regal back and squared-off armrests was the room’s centerpiece. Fronting it was a black lacquer table, also elegant and carrying a price tag, I knew, of a small automobile. Thick white wall-to-wall stretched everywhere underfoot. The large-screen TV and stereo were black to match the table. A broad picture window swept across the east side of the room, giving out on a stellar view of Tokyo proper.
Now we knew what Yoji’s loans had purchased.
Saito pointed us to a seat on the couch with a practiced wave. “It’s wonderful to have friends of my Yoji visit. Please make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right with you.”
Our replies trailed after her as she vanished into the kitchen.
We sat.
“Friends?” I said in an undertone.
“What else?”
“Someone has very good taste.”
“Hers.”
“Because?”
“Jewelry, furniture, clothes. All well coordinated.”
“Come to think of it, Yoji’s place was nothing like this.”
“Can you price the painting?”
The solitary wall decoration was a black-on-white abstract oil painting by Lee Ufan, the Korean-born, Japan-based artist.