Japantown

by Barry Lancet

  An unsettling dread trickled down my spine. They were out there. That much was certain. But between my earlier foraging in Asia after Mieko’s death and the SFPD’s distinct lack of progress since the J-town slaughter, I held more dead ends than I could stomach. And it frustrated me no end that I stood here clueless while every nerve in my body was telling me I needed to do something.

  Anything.

  I cast my thoughts back to the beginning. Japantown. Might be a good idea to take a last look before I left for Tokyo.

  Throwing on a windbreaker, I slipped a Browning in my jacket pocket, then drove back to where it all began.

  —

  Bathed in a reptilian silver-blue moonlight, the streets of Japantown were deserted. Kanji, ancient and spiderlike, crawled over darkened storefronts.

  Wishing the brick could talk, I slogged across the mall to the place where an entire family had been cut down. An oppressive hush reigned, as if the city itself mourned the Nakamuras.

  All five victims were gunned down in seconds. Probably five or six. Seven, tops. Good groupings. No wasted shots. But there’s always an order.

  During the ride over, an upsurge in the prevailing winds had swept away the rain clouds, leaving behind brooding skies, a glittering wetness, and a concourse dotted with puddles.

  Little remained to mark the kill spot once the blood had been scrubbed away. From a respectful distance, I stared at the scoured brickwork, and after a time I could make out where pools of vital fluids had worked their way into the cracks and fissures and left faint shadowy outlines.

  Faint shadowy outlines. The phrase all but summed up the J-town case to date. The whole of the SFPD was grabbing at shadows and I had what? More shadows. When you pared things to the core, we had five bodies and a single kanji character. No fingerprints. No trace evidence. No witnesses. No suspects. The bodies gave us names, and the kanji gave us an AWOL linguist in a Japanese hick town more secluded than an Appalachian holler.

  We had nothing.

  Blowing out my breath in frustration, I trod the length of the block-long concourse. In the one hundred fifty yards from Denny’s to the hotel, I counted a dozen darkened doorways, a few of them deep enough to hide in. The alley chosen by the killer was the best of a half dozen spots the mall had to offer. It was draped in absolute darkness. Streetlight couldn’t penetrate it, moonlight fell prey to the balcony overhead, and the walls on either side headed off any ambient light.

  What was an innocuous walkway in daylight became the perfect killing blind once the sun went down.

  I strode down the chosen passage. It led to a public parking lot behind the shops. On a rise to the right, I saw shingled townhouses. A half dozen windows glowed even at this late hour. To the left, steeped in shadow, I could make out the ragged boxlike backs of the shops that lined Post Street.

  A solid hide and an escape route emptying into a deserted parking lot. I tried to imagine it. . .

  It’s past midnight and the family is giddy with excitement after the day’s activities. Since jet lag still holds sway, they hoof it to the twenty-four-hour Denny’s a block away. Like the last two evenings. It’s a pattern, nearly a tradition.

  Any way you look at it, it was an execution.

  But what kind of execution?

  When the Nakamuras head for the Denny’s yet again, the shooter moves into action. He has laid the groundwork because he’s stalked them for most of their trip. Maybe all of it. He retrieves his weapon, most likely in a nearby car, and sets up in the alleyway. He presses into the darkness and waits. He’s confident, prepared. His weapon is cleaned and loaded, his escape route planned.

  But no witnesses?

  No.

  The shooter would wear dark clothing. No, make that all-black attire. Black clothes, black shoes. Black ski mask donned once he settled into his hiding place. Nothing to draw notice as he walked from his car. Then nothing to separate him from the night once he stepped into the shadows.

  Fiber’s old. Doesn’t think it’s from the shooter.

  No fiber. His garments don’t shed. They are special, high-grade, perhaps made to order.

  We got footprints in the passageway alongside the restaurant. Soft and padded and probably silent.

  Add treadless shoes to the wardrobe. Carefully selected footwear. Nothing traceable. Possibly custom-made.

  Well positioned, well dressed. Leading to a well-planned execution.

  But what kind? And why?

  At the coffee shop the Nakamuras are enjoying their cake and sundaes. Chatting happily. The shooter double-checks his gun, his guise, his escape route. The post-midnight pedestrian traffic is sparse. Maybe young lovers meander by, hands clasped. They don’t see him. Maybe a pair of drunken Japanese businessmen lurch into the mall from a bar on the next block, overloud voices breaking the night calm. They are oblivious to his presence.

  The Nakamuras finish and leave the restaurant. They turn into the concourse, heading back to their rooms at the Miyako. The children are jacked up from the sugar rush, their voices echoing down the corridor of shuttered shopfronts. Their cheerfulness is infectious. Their banter alerts the shooter. The family can see their hotel sign. It’s a two-minute walk. They feel content, safe. A chilly breeze reminds them of warm beds only a moment away. The cousin leads. The children follow languidly after. Then the parents.

  Now! The shooter steps out behind them. The men are too far away to retaliate, too slow to turn in any event. They never hear the shots that take them down. The shooter levels his weapon, its heft rising smoothly in his hands. He locks on to the large male and pulls the trigger. The first target drops. He sweeps the gun left to right. A flick of the wrist, controlled bursts, and the parents fall. Husband, then wife. Blood is spraying, bodies are dropping. The shooter is in the groove, he feels the rhythm. Smooth trigger action, precise hits. No wasted time. No wasted ammunition. He swings back and catches the children. His control is spot-on. They are his. Completely.

  Seven seconds, tops, and they are all dead. Is he a psycho? A local gang member on a rampage? A gun nut? An ex-military renegade?

  He downs the men first, so he’s a planner. Methodical. Clinical. Too clinical to be a gangbanger on a tear. Could still be an unhinged personality of some type, though. Or, as my witness in Kagoshima believed, a serial killer. Some of them were methodical to a fault, if newspaper accounts are to be believed. And they sometimes worked with a second person.

  Is it a gun fanatic or ex–armed forces personnel with schizo tendencies, then? Someone who suffers from feelings of inadequacy? Inferiority?

  If a well-trained former soldier or a neurotic would-be military hero wanted to prove something to the world, he would select a tougher target, not a family of tourists. No, the shooter is not suffering from minor mental anxieties. Borderline disorders are out. He’s either a full-blown psychotic or nothing.

  Were the killings racially motivated?

  Every race crime I’d run across in South Central involved some form of degradation or disrespect. Beatings and murders both. Whether against black or white, Hispanic or Asian. But insults were absent, while the kanji suggested a Japanese connection of some sort.

  Then why such an unlikely target? A helpless family is an empty conquest . . . unless . . . unless what?

  Unless the target was chosen for him. Unless it is an assignment.

  If so, then a clean takedown is a must. Which he does. With precision. Striking the two biggest threats first.

  Does that eliminate the mentally deranged? No. Does it “prove” anything? Not quite. How about the escape?

  The killer stashes the weapon in a bag of some sort. Dark or black to blend. A carry bag to disguise the shape of the gun. He retreats down the alley and emerges in the parking lot behind the mall. Immediately, he turns left and trails along in the overhanging shadows of the mall shops, then of those along Post Street. He moves swiftly but not so swiftly as to draw the glance of a pedestrian or someone uphill looking out their win
dow.

  The clock is ticking.

  In ten seconds he’s across the lot, a block away from the kill. The car is there. On the street somewhere. Parked under a tree no doubt, an urban canopy shielding the killer from private eyes uphill and the revealing rays of the streetlights overhead. He glides into a darkened vehicle, cabin light disengaged. The engine purrs. He shifts into drive and rolls off, headlights extinguished until he rounds the first corner. Twenty seconds and counting. He’s two blocks away, then three. A minute later he’s six blocks removed and fully divorced from the crime scene, with only the moon overhead to witness his passage.

  Japantown would have unfolded like that. Give or take a minor detail or two.

  Still doesn’t eliminate the all-out nutcases, though. And then it hit me: the tell is in the lack of evidence.

  Dozens of apartments and renovated Victorians line the hillside overlooking J-town. All it would take was one peek from a window, one barking dog on a walk with its master, one late-night returnee. But we have nothing.

  Nothing.

  It didn’t take a genius to choose the hunter’s blind and escape route, but to drop all the targets and escape without being spotted or leaving a single sign of your presence suggests more than just professionalism. It suggests supreme professionalism.

  No fingerprints, no trace evidence, no witnesses.

  In the middle of a vibrant, densely populated urban district.

  It wasn’t a psycho. Disciplined or otherwise. Because the workmanship spoke of more than weapons competency. It screamed of some kind of rarefied training that encompassed camouflage, expert planning, and precision timing. The shoot wasn’t the work of a dabbler or a talented amateur, either. Or a hopped-up gangbanger. Or an ex-military renegade. It was the work of a higher order, say special ops. Maybe higher.

  Whatever that might be.

  Renna and I had set our sights too low. The evidence was there in what we couldn’t find. I spooled the idea out further and considered what followed the Japantown atrocity: Homeboy . . . the “nonburglary” of my shop . . . the tail the rookie cops missed . . .

  All three events were clustered in the same thirty-six-hour time frame.

  All three happened seemingly out of the blue.

  All three exhibited similar elements of expertise.

  They must be related? But how?

  I’d gotten closest to Homeboy, yet no one other than Jenny and I had seen him. If we were the intended targets, then it was another case of no witnesses. A chill crawled up the back of my neck. And what was it Abers had said about the break-in? He called them “some seriously slick intruders.”

  Massaging my forehead, I sifted through it all one more time and the pattern hurtled into focus with devastating clarity: the string of incidents since Japantown was a containment maneuver.

  Of me.

  I was being tracked.

  Watched.

  Managed.

  For some inexplicable reason they had hit my home, broken into my shop, tailed me. Classic stalk and contain. Homeboy’s words weren’t simple talk-back or slap-down. He was checking out Jenny.

  Jenny.

  For a moment I floundered. Then the rage built. My face grew hot. The veins along my neck bulged. And Noda’s words echoed in my ears with new clarity:

  Get to Tokyo, Brodie. They don’t kill in their own backyard.

  DAY 3

  KINGBREAKER

  CHAPTER 23

  I WASTED no time.

  Standing in Japantown with cell phone in hand, I woke Renna from a sound sleep and fed him my interpretation of Noda’s warning. It was all inference. Indirect linked impressions. But it felt right. Solid. I’d be foolish to ignore it. Especially with regard to my daughter.

  Before I’d finished, Renna had devised a plan. For the days I stayed in Tokyo, Jenny would be sheltered in an FBI safe house the SFPD had access to on occasion. Renna would arrange for a policewoman to keep Jenny company during her stay. Sequestered in a secret location with a twenty-four-hour watch, Jenny would be secure and I could operate overseas without distraction. The precaution might turn out to be far-fetched, but I refused to come down on the wrong side of safe, and thankfully Renna was of like mind.

  So, under cover of darkness, and with apologies to Kerry Lou and Lisa Meyers upstairs, I whisked Jenny off to the lieutenant’s house. Renna emerged before I’d cut the motor.

  Miriam led Jenny indoors for some hot chocolate, and Renna pulled me aside. He explained that an unmarked car would arrive in half an hour to take Jenny to the FBI house, with a second car as backup. For security reasons, it was best if I said good-bye now.

  On the drive over I’d prepared Jenny for the move. I told her that she was going to stay at a “secret fun house.” She could play games all day and watch as much television as she wanted—not the usual one hour a day—but in return she would have to skip summer school and avoid all contact with her friends while I was away in Japan, except Renna’s kids, Christine and Joey, who would come to visit every other afternoon. Almost immediately she began tugging on my free arm, wanting to know why I always had to go away.

  “I have to travel for my work, but I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said, relieved she hadn’t asked why I wanted her to stay at the fun house instead of Lisa’s, as she usually did.

  “How long is soon?”

  “About a week.”

  Jenny wilted. “That’s too long.”

  We went through a variation of this conversation before each trip. An answer of “two days” would have elicited the same response.

  “Can’t you stay? It’s my summer vacation.”

  Knowing she was spinning out excuses, I gave her a broad grin and dragged her into my lap so she sat behind the wheel, looking out at the same rain-slicked blacktop I navigated.

  “You want to drive?” I asked.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “You’re too smart for me. I promise to make it as short as I can. And I’ll call.”

  “And promise to be careful of China guys?”

  “Promise.”

  Then she unveiled a mind-bender that rivaled the email Hara slung my way about the same time.

  —

  Running late, I rushed back to the apartment, finished packing, uploaded Hara’s communiqué to my smartphone for later reading, and dashed out to SFO in the Cutlass. Abandoning the car in long-term parking, I boarded my JAL flight to Narita and settled in with a cup of green tea and airline rice crackers to read Hara’s notes on his family.

  Sent on CompTel Nippon digital stationery with the motto Ears and Eyes to the Future splashed across the top, the dispatch was filled with nothing more than names, addresses, basic vitals, and a short list of American acquaintances, everything the SFPD already had from the passports and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Forty-plus hours for a man who owns Japan’s largest communications network and I get name, rank, and a PR blip.

  I recognized the Japanese stall when I saw it. The immediate question was why? The ways of Japan were rarely linear and the whys often went unexplained. When the Great Hanshin Earthquake devastated Kobe in 1995 and hundreds were trapped in the rubble, a Swiss rescue team arrived at the scene from Europe sooner than Japan’s own prime minister, who was an hour away by plane.

  Why? Because career-minded public figures ducked for cover. In a country where good work is expected—but not praised—enemies pounce on any blunder, so pols and bureaucrats alike occupied themselves with minutiae surrounding the event. Inaction protected careers, my Japanese sources told me. If you didn’t instigate anything, you couldn’t be blamed for anything later.

  So, on the heels of the quake, fires raged unchallenged. Pinned under rubble with the clock ticking, hundreds of Japanese died needlessly, and hundreds more lingered in makeshift aid centers watching their own vital signs weaken because medical supplies were locked up in red tape no bureaucrat was willing to stick his neck out to expedite. Doctors, volunteers, an
d key units of the Japan Self-Defense Forces sat on the sidelines, waiting in vain for deployment orders. With the phone lines down, I could only speculate about the well-being of Kiyoshi Tanaka, one of my elementary school buddies in Tokyo, who had married his high school sweetheart and taken a job in Kobe. Their only child, Shoji, was my godson.

  Shoji and his mother died from a fire that overtook them fifteen hours after the quake, long after rescue workers could have pulled them from the wreckage, their neighbors told me, if the proper equipment had been deployed soon after the earthquake. Kiyoshi died waiting for a blood transfusion to be shipped from a nearby medical facility that was tied up in paperwork by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

  That was the classic Japanese stall on a grand scale. The world had seen it in various permutations before, saw it again with the Fukushima tsunami and nuclear disaster, and would see it in the future. As if that were not enough, life and death were secondary to the nation’s face, all the more so when the citizenry in question was considered second-class, as the residents of Kobe were. The unspoken policy went like this: with the world watching, an unseemly rush to the scene suggested panic, immaturity, and weakness. It was also undignified, an even larger faux pas.

  Turbulence jiggled my teacup in the hollow of the tray table. A glance outside showed a line of brooding storm clouds in the distance. Hara wasn’t hiding from the disaster that was Japantown, but as usual he was going his own way. I wondered why. I had no clue, but since I would see the communications magnate in Tokyo, I gave up trying to unravel his behavior for now and returned my attention to the knotty problem Jenny had unveiled as she helped me steer the Cutlass down the deserted streets of San Francisco toward Renna’s front door.

  “This will keep you thinking about me,” she had said.

  “I always think about you, Jen.”

  “Well, now you’ll think about me more.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said. “But what do you have for me?”

  “A best-ever joke. What kind of bees give milk?”