by Barry Lancet
His words stopped me. My heart fluttered like it does when it recognizes a kernel of truth. Again, I considered the flurry of activity in the eighteen hours since I’d set foot in Japantown: the bogus homeboy, the shop break-in that wasn’t, Hara’s unexpected visit.
Renna must have too.
Suddenly I knew what the handiwork at my store was about. Nothing was taken, because the B&E artist had come for something other than art. Which could only mean information on me, the shop, or my movements. Or all three. And maybe he’d even left a souvenir behind. One that could listen in.
Maybe he’d already found me.
DAY 2
THE TELL
CHAPTER 15
AFTER dashing off an email about the kanji to Brodie Security in Tokyo, I’d dispatched a second message to a dealer I’d met last summer who had already become a friend. It occurred to me that he might have a new perspective on a trail that had, for me, gone cold years ago. My long shot paid off early the next morning with an incoming call of some urgency.
Kazuo Takahashi was a high-powered art dealer in Kyoto. As far as I could tell, he was a near genius when it came to any aspect of Japanese culture. He had a brilliant eye and a deep understanding of his country’s roots back to the beginning of the Nara period, in the eighth century. But more important, he was impeccably honest, an equally hard quality to find in our field.
When I lifted the phone, the amiable voice of my Kyoto friend greeted me. “Brodie-san? Takahashi. I hope I didn’t wake you or little Yumi-chan?”
The question was phrased in the familiar-polite form of Japanese. Takahashi spoke only Japanese, and used an affectionate suffix with Jenny’s middle name.
“No, she’s at a friend’s,” I said, “and I was already awake.”
“That doesn’t surprise me if you’re working on something related to the kanji. But before we get to that, can we talk business for a minute?”
“Sure.”
“I need your assistance with the Sotheby’s auction in November. Are you available?”
“I’ve nothing planned.”
“Good. A client wants a Lichtenstein. A pivotal early piece. The work fills a hole in his collection and he insists that someone be on hand in Manhattan to guarantee the acquisition. We’ll keep an open line during bidding. The usual fee?”
“No problem. Now, what can you tell me about the kanji?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s a curious specimen.”
“How so?”
“First off, I think you know the character is not listed in the any of the major kanji resources, but that’s only the beginning. Did my email arrive? I rewrote the kanji so we could make comparisons as we talk.”
“Hold on.”
I walked into the other room, booted up my computer, and printed the file Takahashi had sent. Aside from a small kitchen, our apartment had a breakfast nook, two “petite” bedrooms (the real estate euphemism for “standing room only once you put in a bed and a dresser”), one bath, and a family room with two elegant bay windows. Beige carpet ran through all the rooms and I’d hung framed posters on the walls from art exhibitions at Tokyo’s Nezu and Goto museums, and “loaners” from the shop graced one select spot on a rotating basis. In front of the northernmost bay window, I set up a small workstation, with laptops for Jenny and me, where either of us could pound a keyboard and still be social.
I grabbed the paper rolling onto the receiving arm of my printer, laid it on my coffee table, and sat on the couch. From my workstation, I snatched the photocopy Renna had given me at the M&N and set it alongside Takahashi’s new version.
Original
New
“Got it,” I said into the extension.
“Is it clear?”
“Very.”
“Good. First, the awkwardness you so correctly noted suggests that the writer does not pen the character frequently.”
“So when he does write it, it’s probably for a specific purpose?”
“That would be my assumption. Moreover, the inconsistent hand and dullness of line point to a limited education, probably ending in the sixth or seventh year of schooling.”
A new thought occurred to me. “Could it be someone who had no need to write Japanese regularly? Say, a Japanese living abroad?”
Takahashi answered with noticeable hesitation. “Specimens I normally review do not enter that realm, of course, but, yes, a distancing could account for worsening skills. In which case, perhaps your penman may have had another year or two of schooling in a, um, more primitive environment. In either case, clearly he shows no advanced calligraphic training nor a sense of a deeper understanding of penmanship.”
Traditionally, artists, scholars, and Buddhist monks penned poems or axioms for display. To this day, historical works provide partial psychological portraits of some of Japan’s most noted luminaries.
I said, “How about a nisei educated in a Japanese boarding school?”
Nisei are the children of Japanese parents, born abroad. They would have less exposure to the traditional education system.
“Possibly,” the dealer said, “if he received some classical education. It would explain the curious combination of familiarity and gracelessness.”
“It would, wouldn’t it. What else?”
“I suspect the kanji might be constructed. Several characters seem compressed into one, as if the creator was less concerned with meaning than with merging elements to make a symbol. A logo, if you will. The key to unlocking its meaning may lie along those lines.”
“Can you read it?”
Takahashi hesitated. “I have a list of obvious and obscure interpretations, but I’ll need two or three days to confirm my ideas. In the meantime, we can deal with the psychological implications. To an experienced eye, this is a disturbing piece.”
I was afraid of that. The foreboding I’d carried since my chat with Renna hit me with redoubled force and a feathery fear tripped lightly through my extremities.
“To you of all people,” the Kyoto dealer was saying, “I need not explain how I know what I know, but there are overwhelming undercurrents of arrogance, and an additional element I find very disquieting.”
I felt my pulse spike with his last words. Calligraphy came with psychological baggage if you had the ability to read it. A string of characters could reveal a number of all-too-human traits: playfulness, joy, sorrow, pride, shallowness, longing, kindness, cruelty, anger, spiritual depth, or a lack of it.
“What do you see, Takahashi-san?”
The art dealer shifted uneasily. “Since you expressed some urgency in your note, I’m going to go out on a limb: there is a restrained manic energy here. Something brutish and uncontrolled.”
He hesitated.
I said, “Which means what?”
“If I were you, Brodie-san, I’d be in no hurry to meet the man who wrote this. In fact, I should be strongly inclined to move in the opposite direction as fast as I possibly could.”
CHAPTER 16
THE next bombshell arrived by email from Kunio Noda, a man of few words and also Brodie Security’s best detective.
Hit with twenty-nine-year-old boy wonder at Waseda U. Kanji listed in his database. Only known appearance linked to town of Soga-jujo, Shiga Prefecture. You want it tracked, means a trip out there. Waiting reply.
Noda
I stared at the computer screen in astonishment. First Takahashi, now Noda. How had he found it so fast? Discovered in one day what I’d failed to turn up in two months of intensive searching four years ago? I’d spoken to a dozen linguists. Two dozen historians. Having pursued countless antiques with no more than old receipts or the foggy memories of a previous owner, I knew how to follow an obscure trail, yet I’d been unable to unearth more than the terror-stricken testimony of an old man. Once again, Noda had proved he was no slouch.
While I ran over the disturbing implications of Noda’s message, a sleepy-eyed Jenny unlocked the front door and drifted in. After yes
terday’s run-in with Homeboy, I’d insisted she carry a key. I didn’t want her forced to wait outside even for a second. When I looked over, Lisa’s mother waved from the hall and headed back upstairs. Another adjustment. There would be no more unescorted trips between apartments for the foreseeable future.
“You’re up early again, Daddy. Is your leg still hurting?”
“The leg’s fine. I just couldn’t sleep.”
Jenny dragged a chair over to the stove, hopped up on it, and stared into the frying pan. “Are you making your special pepper-eggs?”
“Yep, but with Tabasco this time.”
“Can I have some?”
“Swap you half for a kiss.”
She gave me a peck on the cheek, then bounced excitedly on her toes. Jenny was buoyant this morning, the unsteadiness of yesterday nowhere to be seen. An additional night with Lisa had done the trick. Relieved, I hoped the mood would hold.
As my daughter grew, echoes of Mieko had begun to emerge. In the lilt of her voice. In her smile. In the way she carried herself. I was beginning to notice what I’d seen in her mother at the local karate dojo when we first met. I was seventeen and Mieko was a year younger. Even though I had a girlfriend and no plans to stray, my future wife attracted notice. She had buttery skin, dark brown eyes, and the otherworldly calm of someone who knew things.
She also spoke Japanese, which I found a refreshing reminder of what I’d been yanked away from with my parents’ recent divorce. Indeed, Japanese was all she spoke, so I became her unofficial translator during practice sessions at the dojo.
Mieko’s English improved rapidly, but we stayed friends, our common bond Japan. At eighteen, we both enrolled at the local two-year college. Once she’d taken a semester’s worth of classes to bolster her English ability, Mieko returned to Japan to finish her education.
After my mother died, I cleared up the odds and ends and headed for San Francisco, where Mieko tracked me down one summer when she returned to see her parents. She offered solace I didn’t know I needed, and slowly the weight of my loss lifted.
During our separation, Mieko’s steadfast self-assurance—the quality I’d been attracted to at our first meeting—had ripened into a profound sense of knowing. A deep stillness now lay at her center. In those almond-shaped eyes I discovered a light I wanted to crawl into. We stayed in touch, grew closer than I would have thought possible, and after the closeness matured, we eventually married.
“You don’t mind sharing your eggs?” Jenny asked, dragging me back to the present.
“Not with you.”
Accepting my gallantry as a given, Jenny plopped down on her beanbag chair, arms and legs strewn about in indolent abandon. “I love your pepper-eggs,” she said. “They taste good.”
“What if I said you like them because they make you sneeze and then you giggle because your nose itches?”
She wrinkled the organ in question. “That too.”
I gave the food a final stir and said, “Breakfast is ready.” I split the eggs between two plates, buttered the toast, took the plates to the table, then returned to the kitchen for Jenny’s milk. My daughter bounced into her seat with impatience, pigtails flying. She ate her eggs and sipped her milk.
“Like ’em?” I asked, while I was thinking, How had Noda found the kanji so fast?
Jenny smiled and nodded and shoveled in another mouthful of egg, holding her fork in a close-fisted overhand grip. As she lifted the next mound to her lips, she said, “Uh-oh,” and sneezed twice. The yellow mass flew from her fork as if launched by catapult, smacked against the far wall, and dribbled down onto the carpet.
Eyes wide with apprehension, Jenny said, “Oopsies,” leapt from her seat, dashed into the kitchen for a rag, hurriedly wiped up the egg, rinsed the cloth, then charged back to the table and wiggled into my lap. “Sorry I messed up the place, Daddy.”
I said, “What mess?”
The comment yielded a nervous smile.
“In fact,” I said, “that part of the room is now the cleanest spot in the whole place. Could you do the rest of the apartment too, please?”
Jenny laughed and snuggled deeper into my lap. “You’re a good daddy most of the time.”
Before I could probe that gem, Jenny hopped off my lap and raced into her small cubbyhole of a bedroom at the back of our apartment to prepare for summer school. After she washed and dressed, I combed out her hair, rebraided it, and escorted her upstairs to the Meyerses’.
Back in the apartment I faced a hard truth. Unwittingly, I was re-creating the same harmful cycle Jake had foisted on me when he left at night for an assignment both my mother and I sensed was dangerous. Jenny’s smile was still bright, but a fretful note had crept in after the skirmish with Homeboy. I would have to keep a close eye on her.
I shook off my domestic troubles and scanned Noda’s email with renewed amazement.
Somehow, the chief detective had leveraged Brodie Security’s resources and given the elusive kanji a home. Not in the dictionaries or history books. Not in folkloric traditions or any of the musty archives I’d rummaged through, but in a little town in a distant prefecture hundreds of miles west of Tokyo. No wonder I hadn’t found it. Noda had latched on to the slimmest of slim threads.
I sent the detective a congratulatory email and asked him to hold off on a trip to the village. Then, bearing secrets of a far-off kind, I set out to keep my third appointment with Lieutenant Frank Renna in the last thirty hours.
CHAPTER 17
GUESS it’s not a candy wrapper,” Renna said.
“Guess not.”
We were in Renna’s office behind closed doors, drinking bad coffee and discussing Noda’s find. Wrestling with the implications, Renna grew thoughtful, while I wondered how best to broach the subject of my new client, a clear conflict of interest. In the squadroom on the other side of Renna’s glass-paneled door, three detectives on the J-town task force had gathered around a ten-foot-long whiteboard with all the latest leads. The most senior of the lot was shaking his head.
Renna snapped out of his reverie. “What you’re telling me is the kanji’s so rare, chances of its being at the crime scene accidentally are about as good as my waking up next to Miss Universe?”
“Or Mister Universe.”
“So what’s the name of this place again?”
“Soga-jujo. I checked the map. It’s a small farming village in a little isolated river valley. We’re talking real backwoods, Frank. Good old boys. One or two surnames. Radish and rice growers for centuries. Probably twenty, thirty generations. You could go out there and film Deliverance Two.”
Renna made a decision. “Send your man. The city will pay. Any way I can get a handle on this thing works for me.”
This is where I drew the line. I wouldn’t jeopardize our friendship over a conflict of interest, and in accepting Hara’s case, that was exactly what I had. Having access to the Japanese mogul gave me a handle on the case I didn’t want to relinquish if it wasn’t necessary. Renna would see that too. But it was still a conflict.
“The city won’t have to foot the bill,” I said. “Katsuyuki Hara came to see me. Wants me to work the case. Turns out he’s the grandfather of the kids.”
Renna’s head snapped up. “The telecom guy? You?”
“Yep.”
“You say the word, I’ll dump him.”
We were silent. In the squadroom, the three detectives were now at their desks, working the phones. Pinned to a bulletin board on the far wall were a rotation roster, a pair of wanted posters, and under a CRIMINAL OF THE WEEK sign, a photograph of the mayor, his eyes masked with a black bar of kraft paper. As I gazed out on the scene, I wondered how far my friendship with Renna could stretch under the strain of the case. With his career on the line, he would have to wend his way through the labyrinth of city and police politics with caution.
Renna leaned forward. “Hang on to Hara, but you clear everything out of this office with me first.”
“H
ara wants results, not details, so he won’t be a problem. But I’ll need to brief my boys in Tokyo. It’s the only way they can work.”
Furrows creased the lieutenant’s brow. “Okay, but keep it in-house.”
“Done. Can you hold off City Hall?”
“No telling, but at the moment they need me more than I need them.”
“And if that changes?”
Renna’s whole career rested with the SFPD. The alternatives were not appealing.
“Without results? The boot downstairs or worse. That happens, you can bet the mayor will act. Have you met him?”
“No.”
“You’re about to.”
I heard a tap on the door behind me. Renna waved to a figure on the other side of the glass. Mayor Gary Hurwitz stepped into the office, followed by a suited entourage of three, including city councilman Calvin Washington, deputy mayor Robert DeMonde, and Gail Wong, the mayor’s spokesperson and head tiger shark of his support staff.
“Gary,” Renna said, standing. Following his example, I also rose.
“Sit, Frank. I hope I’m not intruding.”
“No, good timing,” Renna said, remaining on his feet. “Let me introduce you to Jim Brodie. He’s the guy I told you would be consulting on Japantown.”
The major gave me a bright smile. “Yes, of course. My visit was fortuitous, then. I want to stay on top of this one, so I’m glad we have a chance to meet.” He wore a gray herringbone suit, white button-down shirt, and powder-blue tie, an ensemble that complemented his wavy black hair and piercing gray eyes.
We shook hands and Hurwitz introduced the other three. I exchanged quick handshakes with them, Gail’s assessing gaze lingering the longest, then the mayor said, “I was down the hall at Judge Taylor’s, so I thought I’d stop in and preview any new developments you might have.”
It was clear he expected nothing, so I watched with masked satisfaction as Renna rolled out Noda’s discovery.