by Barry Lancet
Inside the restaurant I saw movement. Noda was up and about.
I put some distance between myself and the soba shop, then stepped toward the automobile. Noda came out a few seconds later, saw the lay, and without a word headed in the opposite direction.
As I slid into the car, I cast a discreet glance back. Palming his cell phone, Noda was punching buttons.
The way I saw it, maybe it was time to take a calculated risk.
CHAPTER 41
HE was a hundred ten pounds of brittle bone and sagging yellow flesh bundled up in an Italian suit and a chrome-plated wheelchair that seemed to swallow him whole. His hands lay like dead fish under a scarlet lap cloth.
Fifteen minutes after my abduction, the limousine had rolled up to a redbrick neoclassical edifice built in the early 1900s and I was handed over to a more presentable pair of private bodies in blue suits, silk ties, and cologne. The second guard ushered me into a gloomy, high-vaulted room lathered in textured wallpaper, plush carpeting, and floor-to-ceiling velvet drapery—all in scarlet. Overhead, a silver chandelier added the final touch. It was a concept of Old Russian or European elegance that Japan’s powermongers of generations past had embraced for their parlors.
“I hope you’ll excuse the dimness of the room,” my unknown host said. “Bright light hurts my eyes.”
Not knowing whom I was dealing with, I remained silent. All interior lighting had been extinguished in favor of a dim illumination courtesy of a north-facing window overlooking a shaded rock garden. I’d been in midnight power outages with more light.
“Please have a seat, Brodie-san.”
“Thank you, ah . . . forgive me, I don’t know your name.”
“All in good time.”
Though evasive replies were second nature for men of his make, the answer displeased me. It was cagey and heralded anything but a fruitful meeting. With reluctance, I dropped into a stuffed armchair across the room, the only seat in the spacious parlor not on wheels. Between us lay an oversize coffee table chosen, no doubt, to maintain distance. Seeking a clearer view of the man before me, my eyes struggled to adjust to the daytime dimness.
“I apologize for the suddenness of my summons. Allow me to offer you some refreshment. Fresh juice? Coffee, beer, whiskey?”
Two female attendants hovered nearby, attentive to my answer. Their kimonos were silk and expensive, their manner solicitous but lacking the effortless grace of the highly trained.
“Nothing, thank you.”
Hearing my reply, the kimonoed servants bowed and retreated. The scented watchdogs settled by the exits at either end of the room. I wasn’t going anywhere without permission.
“I am told you are conversant in our ways,” the old man said. “Do you know the expression No aru taka was tsume o kukusu?”
“ ‘The clever eagle hides its talons’? Sure.”
“Good. For that is what I wish to discuss.”
The phrase embodied a way of life for many Japanese: Never show your real power. A faceless form in the shadows is a position of strength. It is how Japan deals not only with its own but the world at large. The pose has the additional benefit of being hard to attack. Targets are tough to zero in on if they can’t be pinned down. The most influential men in recent Japanese history were the hidden kingmakers who shied away from the limelight. These powerbrokers were sometimes called kuroko, after the nearly invisible Kabuki stagehands dressed in full-body black who assist the actors during onstage costume changes in full view of the audience. These behind-the-scenes movers were also known as shadow shoguns. Most Japanese know that shadow shoguns exist, but few know who they are. Before me sat one such phantom.
“Do I leave you speechless, Brodie-san? Come, come. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Alluding to one’s own strength broke the cardinal rule, so his reference involved a different power center.
I cast the only line at hand. “Japantown?”
He nodded encouragingly, a bony hand flicking once beneath the scarlet lap cover.
“The kanji?”
I watched him as I said it. He evinced no surprise, no puzzlement, no curiosity. He knew. Back in San Francisco, no one outside of the SFPD task force and a few select insiders were aware of the calligraphy’s existence. In Japan, only a handful of highly placed sources within the government had been informed of the kanji. Which told me just how influential the wheelchair-bound man before me was.
My host said, “And should the eagle choose to show interest?”
“It might display its claws. The sight of talons is often enough.”
The skin around his eyes crinkled. “I am pleased you understand the distinction.”
I digested the distinction. He was offering one of several possible interpretations for the Nakamura killings. I chose the most likely one: “Japantown was a message?”
“An able comment.”
“Meant to strike fear?”
“A penetrating remark.”
I threw him a curve. “If these are men who do not willingly reveal themselves, they must have extracted a heavy price to leave a signature of their work.”
“Your understanding gains in breadth. And?”
Eagle . . . kanji . . . message . . . “This is intimidation at the highest level, so only those in top positions would know the kanji’s meaning and fear it.”
My host brought gnarled hands from under the scarlet lap spread and placed them on the padded armrests of his chair. Patient. Attentive. Expectant.
I gazed up at the unlit chandelier. The murders . . . a message . . . Hara’s foot dragging . . . son of a bitch! Was I deaf, dumb, and stupid? It was as obvious as batter on shrimp tempura: Brodie Security was fish bait.
The attack was directed against the maverick businessman, who in turn deflected the assault, setting us up to draw Soga into the open.
No wonder Hara was avoiding my calls. No wonder his secretary told me to keep on doing what I was doing. Having taken the offensive and set me in motion, her boss had ducked for cover. He was leveraging Brodie Security’s manpower and my connection to the SFPD to force Soga into the open. He lured us into Soga’s sights by jetting over to see me then directing his famous daughter to visit my shop while the Japanese paparazzi, predictably, did what they always did: recorded her every tear and flourish. An unwitting pawn in her father’s plans, Lizza had even posed in front of the shop. “No one ever really knows what Father thinks,” she’d told me in confidence. How right she was. I flushed with anger at Hara’s betrayal, only to cringe a moment later at my gullibility.
Hara had orchestrated the setup to end all setups.
A noose into which I’d obligingly slipped my neck.
CHAPTER 42
HATE welled up from a dark region low in my gut. It was not a pleasant feeling. Across the room, my host’s eyes glittered with unmasked glee. He was feeding on my loathing with the relish of a rodent rooting through entrails.
Barely containing my repugnance for both men, I hissed at the powerbroker through clenched teeth. “We’re pigeons for the eagle, then?”
His Gray Eminence presented a stoic front as ageless and impervious as the stone ramparts of Osaka Castle. Except for his eyes. They were enlivened with a gleam of amusement. My consternation was proving to be first-rate entertainment.
A half-smile flitted across his lips. “Have you been followed?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“San Francisco.”
“They are monitoring your movements. If they feel you are a serious concern, they will strike. You, Brodie Security, even your family, if necessary.”
Jenny.
“That’s a lot of people,” I said.
“Numbers present no obstacle to them, as you’ve seen.”
Quite clearly, the man knew everything about Japantown. “But the Nakamura family was defenseless. We’re not.”
“Hara expects the pigeon to find claws. Out of necessity.”
“What are the chances of them considering us a ‘serious concern’?”
His lips parted in silent mirth. Three brackish stumps studded gray-black gums. His rotting dark hole of a mouth sent waves of revulsion through me that I managed to hide only with great effort.
“Have no worry on that account. Hara has been very thorough and”—knowing what was coming, I felt my stomach convulse—“if he hadn’t been, I would have.”
In the village, I’d been attacked with knives, shot at, and poisoned. Now, in a gilded parlor, a man of power and privilege tells me—without pretense—that he would have gladly set me up if my client hadn’t already done so. It took me a long moment before I found my voice again. “I’ll take that drink now. Whiskey, straight up.”
My host raised a finger and a watchdog moved to the side bar.
In a distant part of the building, a clock chimed seven times. As I waited for the liquor, the old man’s bony hands slithered from the armrests back under the protective covering of the red lap cloth, and he was once more as motionless as the lichen-encrusted stones in his garden.
The decadence of this ancient salon was wearing me down, as were the powerbroker’s riddles. I dreaded his next words but craved them too. In the meantime, the liquor provided a welcome warmth and numbed my misgivings.
“Personally,” the old man said, “I think someone miscalculated.”
I stared at my host and tormentor without expression. “How’s that?”
“They took everything from Hara. With no family remaining aside from his errant daughter, he’s fighting back.”
“So you also think it’s an attack on Hara?”
“Almost certainly. They want him alive but tamed.”
“Why?”
His tone turned glacial. “Who knows? But surely, if whoever hired Soga sought Hara’s money or business, Hara would be dead and they’d deal with the heirs.”
Closing my eyes, I let my head fall back against the chair. I’d had enough of the slime. “So why am I here?”
“I want to help.”
My eyes snapped open. “You’re offering to help me?”
“Against Soga, yes.”
“What have you got?”
Eyes boring into mine, the old man leaned forward. “I can open doors.”
“Okay. Who are they?”
“They are what you’ve seen.”
“Where are they based?”
“Maybe Soga-jujo, but most likely elsewhere.”
“How many are we talking about?”
“The size of their organization is unclear.”
“You give all-too-familiar answers.”
“You’re asking the wrong questions. Names and locale we don’t have, but useful information we do.”
“Can you give me an example of their handiwork?”
“Sanford Smith-Caldwell, the Boston businessman eight months ago.”
“Really?”
As the CEO-elect of a major East Coast financial firm with global interests, Smith-Caldwell’s death had been paraded across world headlines.
“Believe me, it’s true. Before him, a Bonn broker in Hong Kong slated to return home to the company presidency. Australian businessman Howard Donner, whose family sold his clothing empire to a large Asian conglomerate within days of his death. Also likely, but not yet confirmed, a French developer who had just purchased a large block of neglected seafront property in Italy.”
“I heard about the Frenchman. The radio said he fell overboard from his yacht and drowned. Also something about a high number of summer fatalities among late-night swimmers in that part of the Mediterranean.”
The powerbroker gave me his open-maw grin. “Soga would play to the statistics.”
“Were all of the deaths ‘accidental’?”
“Yes. The Frenchmen drowned, Smith-Caldwell fell down a flight of steps at his vacation home, the German’s BMW collided with a semi, and Howard Donner’s private jet crashed in the outback.”
“No suggestion of . . . other hands?”
“Not to the investigating authorities.”
A frown signaled my displeasure. Maybe his claims were valid, or just maybe he was tossing around prominent headlines for me to soak up. Since he offered no verification, he could pitch whatever he wanted my way and I had no chance of substantiating his claims. The only thing I knew for certain was that the nameless man before me was one of Japan’s shrewdest political minds—and one of the most dangerous.
I said, “Japantown wasn’t subtle.”
“They tailor assignments to the client’s needs, but I assure you an act as blatantly brutal as Japantown is as rare as a flawless black pearl.” Noting my skepticism, he said, “Not unexpectedly, you are a hard man to convince. You want something for nothing, but diving for pearls comes not without risk.”
I stiffened. Was he threatening me? Desiring nothing more than to be finished with the old manipulator, I spat out a challenge. “Bowl me over, then.”
A low growl escaped his lips. “You may regret those words.”
I sunk back in my chair, wondering what I’d unleashed.
“Four years ago,” he began in a low rumble, “there was a string of murders in Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Chicago . . .”
Four years ago . . . Los Angeles . .
He knew something about Mieko.
CHAPTER 43
THE spiteful gleam in the old powerbroker’s eyes told me he would extract payback for my verbal scrappiness, as players in his circle invariably do.
“Soga is usually extremely subtle. That is how they’ve stayed in business for so long. Four years ago they spread a series of killings over half a year. No American law enforcement agency ever connected the crimes. Not the local authorities, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals. No one caught the common link. Since we unofficially monitor all unnatural deaths of Japanese nationals, we pieced it together.”
My breath caught in my throat. This wasn’t going to be another list of headlines.
“Seven people died. Four in Los Angeles, two in Chicago, one in Utah. In each case, at least one victim was wealthy and owned car dealerships in prime locations. Of the three primary victims, two were Japanese nationals.”
No wonder I never turned up a motive. The target was not Mieko’s parents but her uncle. Through a Japanese cousin in the trade ministry, her uncle had locked up pivotal Nissan franchises early in the game, building a successful string of outlets on the West Coast from San Diego to Seattle. After his death, his heirs sold the business to the first bidder and retired young.
I said, “So Soga camouflaged the automotive connection by killing the uncle away from his home. Are you sure about the dealerships?”
“There can be no doubt. The lots of all three owners were swept up by two shell corporations based in the Balkans and sold to a third in Costa Rica.”
Sickened, I sprang from my chair, needing to stretch my legs, needing to think. My abrupt movement triggered a reaction from the bodyguards, and they charged in at a fast clip. At the last second, the old man shook them off.
“Let’s avoid sudden movements in the future, shall we, Mr. Brodie?” said my withered host.
Pacing back and forth in front of the oversize table, I ignored the comment, instead wrestling with the new puzzle pieces he’d provided, while, with undisguised glee, he watched me squirm on the pin he’d thrust into me. I ignored that, too.
At his death, Mieko’s uncle possessed an annual pretax income of three to four million dollars a year. An orchestrated grab of the three businesses from the bereaved at a hefty discount that offered instant financial independence without the next-of-kin having to lift a finger would be a win-win, allowing someone to build an empire on the cheap.
The old man asked derisively, “Have I swayed you this time?”
My breathing was ragged, and my chest heaved. Had I lost my wife to some hustler’s ambitions for steel on wheels? Was Jenny growing up motherless because of blind greed?
My
response was terse. “Did you follow up on the shell companies?”
He shrugged bony shoulders expressively. “My people tried but failed. Nothing but dead ends. That is where you come in. You and your organization.”
I collapsed back into my chair. From deep within the corridors of Japanese power, I’d been gifted with a credible nugget of information about the Japantown killers no one else could possibly uncover. And with it, I’d also been given a believable motive for my wife’s death. Knowing I could backtrack his story, the powerbroker couldn’t stray too far from the truth. But when all was said and done, as with his earlier examples, he offered no hard evidence.
I needed more. Much more.
At once heartened and frustrated, I ran my fingers through my hair. “Exactly what kind of service does Soga provide? Clearly, they can’t go around killing people at will.”
“Anything in Japan can be explained if you trace it back to its roots. In the first two and a half centuries of their existence, Soga was involved in spying, strong-arming, blackmail, and kidnapping, as well as the not-infrequent assassination. They worked first for the ruling shoguns and daimyos, then for the new Meiji government, and finally for our budding war machine as Japan sought overseas territories before and during World War Two. After the collapse of the war effort in 1945, Soga expanded overseas, and judging by their assignments slowly acquired clientele in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.”
“Why go abroad?”
“After Japan’s surrender, work here was scarce. The Allied Forces occupied the country for more than five years, so Soga went searching for additional income sources and found a demand for their services in the private sector abroad. First with some of the high-powered Japanese who escaped from Manchuria and other places and then with foreigners.”
“Which part of their service?
The old man gazed up at the unlit chandelier. “The same types of machinations, with an emphasis on sophisticated, high-level ‘accidents’ of a permanent nature. For equally high-level fees.”
I stared at the powerbroker. “Can you prove this?”
“Of course not.”
I shook my head. “Let me rephrase that. How do you know?”