Japantown

by Barry Lancet

“I don’t know. What kind?”

  “No, this is a best-ever. You have to guess.”

  “Okay, how about honeybees?”

  “Wrong.”

  “Digger bees?”

  “Nope.”

  “Great big old South American milk-pail bees.”

  “That’s silly. No.”

  “Okay. What?”

  She pouted. “No, no. It’s a best-ever, so you have to think about it until you guess the answer. And if you’re thinking about it, you’re thinking about me. See?”

  —

  I did see. And it hurt. My heart ached at such transparent need I couldn’t quench, and I promised myself I’d spend more time with her on my return.

  When the plane shuddered again, the flight attendants suddenly suspended activity, hurriedly returned their serving trolleys to the galley, and were strapping themselves in by the time the pilot made the requisite announcement of rough weather ahead.

  If he only knew.

  Wind chop plagued us all the way to Narita Airport. Even on firm ground, the turbulence continued unabated—they hit us twenty minutes after I pushed through the doors of Brodie Security.

  CHAPTER 24

  TOKYO, 5:15 P.M.

  GET in here, Brodie.”

  A large, thick-fingered hand forged from ten generations of fishermen slapped me on the back as I arrived at Brodie Security. Shig Narazaki, my late father’s partner, was an early hire. Talented, shrewd, and fast on his feet, he became indispensible and was soon helping Jake expand the business. He’d also been the closest thing I’d had to an uncle when I lived here as a child.

  “What happened to you?” Narazaki asked. “You’re as soggy as day-old rice.”

  “George’s limo service.”

  Narazaki grinned. “The Viper with the top off?”

  “That’s the picture,” I said. “George figured he could outrun a summer shower.”

  Joji “George” Suzuki, a longtime friend and car aficionado, had picked me up at the Narita airport in his latest acquisition—a 1992 Viper convertible, the inaugural year. Before leaving home, he’d removed the top to accommodate my luggage, exposing us to an unexpected downpour as we sped from the glittering rice fields of Chiba into the urban chaos that was Tokyo. Fifty minutes later, his sleek machine glided into the city’s sprawl of high and low, old and new. Wherever you looked, you saw tangled masses of narrow apartment blocks, needle-shaped office buildings, and kanji-spotted storefronts.

  But that was Tokyo. You either loved it or hated it. The city’s architectural bouillabaisse fell somewhere between Singapore’s neat and proper and the junkman’s jamboree that was Hong Kong. Old wooden homes were overshadowed by towering apartment complexes alongside convenience stores in garish neon next to crumbling neighborhood ma-and-pa shops, maybe a tofu maker with gleaming steel vats in the kitchen and living quarters upstairs. But somehow the urban gumbo worked. Everything found a place and everyone knew where to go. The streets were clean, the people were courteous and purposeful, and the countless subway trains running underfoot were plentiful and on time.

  Brodie Security plied its trade in a neglected byway of the fashionable Shibuya district in west-central Tokyo. Its offices were located four stories above a soba shop and a few doors down from a fourth-generation herbalist, whose wooden shack, a remnant of hard times after World War II, had begun to list southward. Inside, the business that Jake built was all activity. Twenty desks crammed into a forty-by-fifty-foot area, with private offices running along the back. A quick scan tallied fifteen bodies. I knew each of the full-time employees by name, as had my father. A long-haired Japanese youth I’d never met, either a freelancer or a new hire, had his head buried in the innards of one of our servers.

  Jake’s old partner chuckled. “Count on George. But the Viper’s fast, no?”

  “Very.”

  “That’s the big picture. If I understood Noda’s grunts, we have a lot to hash out.”

  “You understood.”

  He stared at my feet. “You wouldn’t have to leak on our newly waxed floors if you berthed your boat with us.”

  Narazaki continued to push me to take a permanent chair at the agency in Tokyo and run the antiques business from afar. One day he would relinquish the reins of the company, but he felt obliged to stay on as long as I remained an untested quantity. “When you tracked down the Rikyu piece, you faced the yakuza and lived,” he’d snipped, “but that was more about art and luck than anything else. Before you take up Jake’s post, you need field training, otherwise you’ll be as useless as spent moxa.”

  During my childhood, Narazaki had come for dinner twice a week, bringing gifts on the holidays. If my father were away on an assignment over the weekend, Uncle Shig would drop by and give me pointers on my karate and judo, sparring with me and then beaming with pleasure when I mastered a particularly complex move. The Brodies were his city family. In a common scenario for the extended family culture of Japan, he left for the big city while his own brood—a wife and three sons—stayed behind in the countryside, saddled with aging grandparents, rice paddies, and a fishing boat, run with a brother, and as they grew, the sons. Narazaki returned home four or five times a year for conjugal visits.

  “It’s a hard life,” I said. “Maybe this will help.”

  I tossed him a bottle of Johnnie Walker and his fisherman’s hands snatched it from the air with a quick sureness.

  “Liquids from every pore, huh? Doesn’t buy you fish bait in these waters, but wet or dry, it’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to be back. Five minutes in my office after I dry off?”

  “You got it.”

  Once ensconced behind the closed door of my father’s old post, I drew the blinds, dipped into my suitcase, and slipped on a fresh shirt and jeans. Then I took a seat behind Jake’s onetime desk.

  I kept my workspace at Brodie Security pretty much the way my father had left it: same wooden desk, same bookshelves, and same paraphernalia. There was an old Japanese army short sword Jake had confiscated during his days as an MP, a three-hundred-year-old ceramic saké carafe presented to him when he opened Brodie Security, and a first-place trophy for marksmanship from his LAPD days, a talent the gene genie had graciously passed on to me and I’d polished on a shooting range in Los Angeles with my South Korean neighbor and his son.

  To the bric-a-brac I’d added a photograph of Jenny and a certificate for Honorable Service in the Recovery of an Invaluable National Asset awarded by the Agency of Cultural Affairs for my role in unearthing the long-lost Rikyu masterpiece.

  As a courtesy I placed a call to Hara’s office to let him know I was in town, but caught him in a meeting, so I left a message with his secretary. A minute later Narazaki knocked, entered and, after shutting the door firmly behind him, he slapped me on the back again as I struggled to my feet.

  “Damn good to see you, boy. You hooked your first big one. He check you out?”

  Recalling the bodyguard’s attack, I nodded solemnly. “That he did.”

  A wide grin split Narazaki’s face. “The monster catches always do.” Then the grin vanished and he grew serious. “You snagged this one yourself, but why don’t you hand it off and let us reel her in?”

  “Can’t do that. I’m consulting for the SFPD.”

  Narazaki scratched the back of his head. “You could step away from the investigative work and just report our results.”

  “Not this time. Besides, you’re the one who’s always on me to get more involved in Brodie Security. This seems a good place to start.”

  Narazaki frowned. “I was thinking something smaller.”

  I shrugged. “Hara came to me.”

  He looked skeptical, then acquiesced. “True. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “All right, then I’ll just have to give you plenty of backup. I’ve put Noda on point. He’s the best we got. You work with him, you’ll learn fast. Just keep your head down.”


  “Not a problem.”

  “And I want George to handle support duties. He’s itching to do more than keep the books. That work for you?”

  Last October, I’d suggested George take a part-time position at the firm. We needed new blood and George needed to step away from the family-owned multinational without straying too far from home. Both of us had been born in Tokyo in the same year to fathers who were best friends, their rapport one of those rare and fully ripened blends of East and West. After sharing some good childhood memories, we’d floundered in the rough waters of my parents’ divorce before George came through in a pinch when I needed him, and our friendship was reawakened.

  “Sounds good.”

  “Then it’s settled. Noda leads and you’ll assist, with George as non-critical support. Noda was a great friend of your father’s. He’ll show you the ropes in, ah, his own way.”

  Reopening the door, Narazaki called for Noda and George, and seconds later they drifted into the room. The chief detective dropped his bulldog frame into a chair with a thud, nodding in my direction. George settled in with genteel grace, crossing his legs. The slash cleaving Noda’s eyebrow was prominent. The office grapevine had it that the pimp who attacked him never got a second chance with the knife. Noda relieved him of the weapon, then left a few scars of his own.

  Narazaki said happily, “Japantown is the biggest case of the year. Rich, famous, plenty of headlines.”

  “We don’t solve it, that’ll make headlines too,” Noda shot back.

  In this land of oversize rose-colored glasses, the scowling detective was an advocate of the no-nonsense school of thought. The Japanese staff saw him as a crude but necessary evil. Americans found him refreshingly straightforward.

  Narazaki, as the silver-haired patriarch, coddled his employees, pincushion personalities included. “Kei-kun, you old grouch,” he said, referring to Noda in the affectionate form of a superior addressing an underling, “what would it take to make you happy?”

  “To be happy is not in his nature,” George said. “I’d take a hot springs trip to Tochigi and twenty-one-year-old twins.”

  Born into an aristocratic family with mounds of money and a lineage dating back to a powerful samurai clan, George sported an arrogance that stopped just short of intolerable. Echoing his status, today’s wardrobe consisted of a light blue Givenchy sports coat, a starched white shirt with a faint marine stripe, and a mint-green Gucci necktie. For a Suzuki, he harbored something of a wild streak, which meant he occasionally went without a tie.

  Ever tolerant, Narazaki chuckled. “Who wouldn’t? Brodie, you want to bring us up-to-date?”

  I sketched the murder scene in Japantown, then supplied a brief recap of the major events, including my suspicions about Homeboy, the break-in at my shop, and the connection between Mieko and the kanji. Last, I added my impressions on the seriousness of the threat.

  Narazaki shifted in his seat. “Hold on. You sure it was the same kanji?”

  “Positive.”

  He looked doubtful. “What are the chances?”

  “It’s the same,” I insisted a little too loudly.

  The room grew quiet and Narazaki became pensive. “I’m sorry, Brodie-kun. Let’s hear the rest.”

  In closing, I mentioned the delicate balance we had to maintain with the SFPD, as well as my last-minute decision to spirit Jenny away. Expecting fireworks, I wound up the recital with the tail’s vanishing act down the no-exit alley and nodded at Noda. When all eyes swiveled in the chief detective’s direction, he merely grumbled incoherently about friends having run into some pros down in Soga-jujo a long time ago.

  I grew still. What happened to Get yourself to Tokyo, Brodie?

  Before I could decipher what lay beneath Noda’s reticence, there was a soft tap on the door and Mari Kawasaki, our in-house computer expert, shuffled in. Fresh-faced and apple-cheeked, she wore pink farmer’s overalls cascading over a blue denim shirt, and sported hair teased with orange highlights, this month’s color. In the inexplicable way that many Japanese women have, her twenty-three years looked like sixteen and belied, in her case, an innate talent for all things software, Internet, and IT.

  “What is it, Mari-chan?” Narazaki asked.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt but I think you should, like, see this.”

  Confused, Narazaki asked, “Do we have a walk-in client?”

  “No, it’s the computer. And it looks like trouble.”

  Amid scraping chairs being pushed aside as we stood, Narazaki and I traded looks. Then Noda grumbled vague words under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “It’s started.”

  CHAPTER 25

  THE staff had gathered around a large computer console. As we approached, I saw commands scrolling up the screen unbidden. The seat before the monitor was unoccupied, the keyboard unmanned.

  >Open system op.

  >Manager password?

  >TokyoBase.

  >Access denied. Manager password?

  >BrodieSecurityCentral.

  >Access denied. Manager password?

  >Open file: Correspondence—Tokyo

  George squinted at the screen. “Isn’t that the Brazilian affiliate’s account?”

  Eyes glued to the rising text, Mari gave a curt nod. “Yes. He’s in their system and found some old passwords. He knows a third failure will lock him out, so he’s shifted to joint correspondence.”

  Brodie Security shared a secured network with affiliate agencies in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. All accounts required passwords that were changed twice a week, and all messages between offices were encrypted. As we watched, the entrant called up a past-due notice, read and discarded it, then rummaged through a file of internal memos. The manner was probing, of someone unfamiliar with the system.

  One of the detectives said, “Not good.”

  “Yeah,” a long-haired Japanese man I’d never met chimed in. “Techno scum. Don’t recognize his op style, but he’s absorbing your system at warp speed. Way uncool.”

  The speaker looked to be about Mari’s age, maybe a year or two older.

  “By that you mean a hacker?” I asked.

  “What else? I give him eight to ten hours online before he cracks your network unless we act.”

  Narazaki said, “Brodie, let me introduce Toru Namikoshi. He’s the outside contractor who set up our computer system.”

  We shook hands. Toru wore jeans and a black Bathing Ape T-shirt with a self-mocking retro design. A red bandanna above a thin, pale face kept his long wavy locks in check.

  One of the women in the crowd said, “He’s one of the top computer hands in Japan and Mari’s boyfriend. Heavy input.”

  Rolling chuckles echoed through the office.

  Toru looked sideways at me through a hank of hair that had slipped forward. “You know much about computers?”

  “A little more than the next guy.”

  “I’m the next guy.”

  “A little less, then.”

  He gave me a wry smile and cocked an eye at the monitor. The hacker ran a search function, then opened and scanned several more files. Seeing an unguided cursor move across the screen made my skin crawl, and a sense of violation and outrage welled up inside me.

  Noda asked, “Does he know we’re watching?”

  “No, this is a default monitor. It’s inactive by system standards.”

  “How’d he get in?” I asked. “Don’t you have firewalls?”

  “The best, man. Dynamite watchdog software, too. But he signed on with a low-level password that gets him into the server space we share with our Brazilian counterpart. He only has a foot in the door, but he’s trying to access our main server by inserting a Trojan horse program that’ll capture other passwords as people log on. Once he has enough he’ll gain access to our secure files.”

  From an overhead flat screen hanging on the far wall, a CNNJ announcer was reporting on the impressive exodus of Japanese banking executives heading to Zurich to attend the fun
eral of sixth-generation financier Christoph Spengler, who had tragically perished in a fire caused by a faulty electric socket in his wine cellar. “Spengler worked with all the megabanks in Japan, making frequent trips to Tokyo and Osaka. The bank’s connection to Japan goes back to the late eighteen hundreds, when a Spengler representative based in Hong Kong paid a . . .”

  “Mute that damn thing,” Noda snapped, and one of the staff rushed over to the remote and turned off the sound.

  In front of me, the computer screen went blank. Mari said, “He’s gone.”

  “Good,” Toru said. “I’ll set up a node for his return.”

  Narazaki said, “Do you think he’ll be back?”

  “Yeah, man. Once they’re in, they keep coming at you like a boomerang from hell. Usually it’s just for the high of cruising a new data stream, but not this black hatter.”

  Toru flopped into the seat in front of the console, cracked his knuckles, and hit the up arrow on the keyboard, scrolling back through the hacker’s commands. He stared at the initial string of commands for a long moment, then winced, touched a finger to his lips to silence us, and rose. Stepping behind the computer, he toyed with the wires, then curled his fingers around the main cable and traced it all the way to our central server in a back room. Without a word, we all followed him. Frowning, Toru pulled the blinking box away from the wall, crouched down, and ran his fingers over the length of cable behind the server, and finally allowed himself a private smile. He waved us closer.

  We all shuffled forward and peered over Toru’s shoulder. Along a vertical cable climbing from the junction box at the base of the wall to the innards of the server was a hairline slit about a quarter inch long.

  Toru scribbled on a piece of paper: “Do you scan for listening devices?”

  Narazaki read it and wrote, “Every morning.”

  More hurried scribbles followed:

  “Anything today?”

  “No.”

  “Recently?”

  “Not since last February.”

  “Good,” said Toru, breaking the silence. “No audio, then. See that?” he asked, pointing to a slight swelling in the cord above the slit. “Someone’s spliced a capacitor into the line. Never seen these babies before but I’ve heard about ’em. Watch.”