Japantown

by Barry Lancet

  No answer.

  In the distance, the sound of a siren reached my ears.

  “You hear that, Bill? They’re on the way already.”

  His eyes popped open, pain carving up his face. “What?”

  “The siren. Help is close.”

  “I’m cold, lad. Real cold.”

  I yanked a blanket from a Korean bedroom chest and spread it over him. “Better?”

  His eyelids fluttered. “They tore up the place bad.”

  “Nothing we can’t fix.”

  “Guess I’ll have to sell a few more pieces quicklike to keep the frikkadel flowing.”

  “Guess you will.”

  “I will, you know.”

  “You always do.”

  With a faint nod, he closed his eyes and the last signs of animation drained from face.

  CHAPTER 60

  I SAT in the hospital waiting room with my head in my hands. I was utterly lost. I didn’t know where to turn or what to do. I didn’t even know what to think. A feverish uncertainty clawed at my chest. My breathing came in fits and starts. I’d put everyone I cared about in danger.

  Attendants had wheeled Abers straight from the operating theater into intensive care, where visitors were banned. Most of the internal damage had been repaired, but there were complications, and the prognosis was uncertain.

  Informing me that Abers would do nothing but sleep for the next twelve to twenty-four hours, the doctor sent me home, and I went. I drove back to the shop in a daze, left the closed sign in place, and pulled out a limited edition of twelve-year-old saké normally reserved for clients. I didn’t want to drink alone but I had nowhere else to go. Renna would be wrestling with his wife’s trauma and guilt. At the Meyerses’, I’d have to contend with Lisa, Jenny’s best friend. At home, everywhere I looked would remind me of my daughter.

  That left the shop.

  The premium saké disappeared in record time. I poured myself a second shot, downed it, grabbed the bottle, and marched from my desk into the small conference room adjoining the office.

  I swallowed a third shot, then a fourth. I stared at the beige carpets and then at the pearl-gray walls. I had always been proud of this little hideaway where I closed deals and previewed new pieces. Now it meant nothing. My eyes roamed the room and settled on the Burchfield watercolor. I drank a fifth shot to the neglected painter.

  The pale pastels of the piece drew me in, as they always did. Nightfall met an orange sunrise peeking over the horizon. In the foreground, a tree in a surreal combination of pinks, blacks, and greens sprouted upward—lush, pulsating, vital—waiting for the coming day with a decisive dignity.

  Dignity was something I knew a little about.

  —

  With an ever-widening sneer, Scott Mutrux threw me for the third time. I was seventeen and stubborn, and when I staggered up and faced off for a fourth round, he slammed me to the mats again without hesitation. Mutrux was a snarling blond bully three years my senior, and I was a starry-eyed, fresh-from-Japan newbie to the L.A. dojo. Until that point, I’d lost to very few people in Tokyo or L.A.

  Battered and bleeding, I tried to rise. Darkness gathered at the edges of my vision. Anger consumed me. Stepping onto the mats, Mieko bent over and whispered the poem about stillness and the Okazaki Hills. In Japanese. For the first time. Without fully understanding the nuances of the verse, I sensed an inkling of a Zen ideal about peace and knowing. The full message was beyond my years, but somehow I latched on to its essence.

  Mieko’s breath was warm and sweet. My heart wrapped itself around the stillness she spoke of. The darkness grew bright and Mieko and I exchanged smiles.

  I didn’t challenge Mutrux again that day. I let Mieko help me into a corner, where I sat until my head cleared. I sat straight and tall and proud. Like Burchfield’s tree.

  —

  Scott Mutrux knew something I didn’t. And whatever it was, it was overpowering. But I was determined to discover his secret.

  For two years, I practiced. Kata and kamae and shizentai and rei filled my days and my dreams. And in my nightmares I saw Scott Mutrux’s sneer. After the first year, I began to mix in the street moves I’d learned. And some judo. Then tae kwon do. New combinations emerged. I practiced them, refined them. The stillness watched. I reached for it but caught it only rarely. I couldn’t hold on. When I did connect, it brought a knowing calm. My skin tingled and an inner glow warmed me.

  What Mieko taught me that day on the mats was this: Lose a battle, but don’t lose yourself.

  Two years later, Scott Mutrux and I faced off again. I was nineteen to his twenty-two. I’d grown a few more inches. I threw him to the mats twice. Mutrux slunk away amid jeers.

  —

  The night of Soga’s visit to my shop was the longest of my life. Longer and lonelier than last night when I’d fretted over Jenny’s abduction. Longer and lonelier than the night George had called me after a fourteen-year silence to tell me of my father’s death.

  Longer and lonelier because I’d never felt so helpless.

  Images of Jenny and Abers and everything good and decent in my life tormented me. I didn’t have the answer, but I knew the question: How could I hope to find Jenny or support Abers if I couldn’t find myself? I posed the query to the saké, the Burchfield, and myself. The first soothed me, the second inspired me, and the third—when I’d dug as deep as I possibly could then stopped to listen—answered me.

  I’d found the stillness again and felt the glow. The knowing. An inner strength. Then I heard my father’s words, which had long ago become my own: “Stand tall. For the little guy—and for yourself.” Soga had taken Mieko. They had taken Jenny. But I would not let them suck the life out of me as long as I drew breath.

  DAY 9

  DESPERATION

  CHAPTER 61

  THE next morning my office phone rang twice and went dead.

  I locked up and slid into the shop van, an unmarked white panel truck parked around back. I drove east on Lombard, swung right at Van Ness, and a few blocks down eased into the corner gas station. I told Al to fill it up and strolled into the garage. Al’s kid had a Safari van on the rack and was tinkering with the front axle. We exchanged nods. I slipped out the back door, through a chain-link gate at the rear of the lot, and into the diner next door. The Soga boys would have the pay phones closest to my store tapped, and recording equipment set to snatch any cell phone conversations from the air, but slipping out the blind side of the gas station into the coffee shop behind it exposed me for less than twenty seconds.

  After ordering a cup of coffee and a Danish to go, I stepped down the hall to the restrooms and a pair of pay phones. A quick look confirmed that no one stood within earshot. I dialed, fed the recorded message the money it wanted, and waited. It rang once.

  “Yeah?” a voice said.

  “Me. Got something?”

  “They’re here. Don’t know how many.”

  “New York? You sure?”

  “Got to be. They wear suits, but clothing looks like bibs on bulldogs.”

  “Awful fast work.”

  “Mochiron.” Of course. “I put ten men on it round the clock. I stayed out of sight. George did the same in L.A.”

  A chill crawled down my spine. Ten men was an army. “I told you to keep it low-key. Jenny’s life is at stake.”

  “Extreme long-distance surveillance only. Binoc work from neighboring buildings, cars way back. Nothing closer.”

  “Nobody was spotted?”

  “No.”

  Relief rolled over me. “All right. What you find?”

  “Nothing until we started watching the alley entrance and underground parking.”

  “They didn’t use the main entrance?”

  “Maybe before but not now.”

  Always a step ahead, I thought. Once our hacker nailed theirs, Soga went into deep-stealth mode. “How many?”

  “Five so far.”

  “And George’s team?”

&
nbsp; “Three. All smoked-glass windows on their cars, underground parking, up the back stairs instead of lobby elevators. Hard to nail down.”

  But he had, thank God. “Five’s a big number for their kind. You have a home address?

  “Secluded stretch in Long Island along the north shore.”

  “Nice place?”

  “Large, wooded, on the water. High walls all around.”

  “What kind of water?”

  “Big.”

  “Must be the Long Island Sound. Easy access to mainland.”

  “Yeah, inlets, east, west, north.”

  “So they can’t be penned in.”

  “No. Got a dock and two boats. Look fast.”

  “Owner?”

  Noda grunted. “Had someone hit the local gas station two miles down the road. Old Japanese guy lives there, with two younger ones.”

  Kohai-sempai. Juniors serving their superior. Typical Japanese hierarchical arrangement. A good sign.

  “Let’s go with it,” I said.

  “I’ll set up this end.”

  “Good. See you tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  “One last thing,” I said. “They paid a visit.”

  “How many?”

  “Just two. They shot my shop assistant.” Overnight, Abers’s condition had not improved.

  “Tell me,” Noda said, and I did. He stayed silent for a long beat after my report, then said, “Nothing we can do now but wait for the doctors. Stay cool, stay quiet, and keep your head down.”

  “That’s the plan, but someone’s got to pay.”

  Noda grunted and disconnected.

  Next I called Renna. After Soga’s visit to my shop, I could no longer afford to be seen with, or overheard talking to, a police lieutenant, friend or no friend. When he answered, I told him it was on for New York, and asked if he was going to join the party.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Renna said. “I put in for an official leave of absence. Made this morning’s paper.”

  “Perfect.” Soga would see the article. “Catch you on the other coast, then?”

  “As planned. No one but the chief and the mayor will know I’m gone.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “A lot of people around here think we’re paranoid.”

  “How about you?”

  “I know better.”

  Next I made a collect call to Tokyo. When Goro Kozawa came on, neither of us mentioned the other’s name. I said, “It’s time to open those doors you mentioned.”

  “Just tell me how.”

  I did.

  Then, with my bag of takeout prominently displayed, I strolled back to Al’s, paid for the gas, and headed back to the shop. From my office, I did what Casey asked. I called Lizza Hara and played my frivolous card. Though she willing agreed to a second face-to-face meeting, I felt guilty as hell. I was using her just as her father had.

  He meant her to be a beacon for Soga.

  For me, she would be a shield.

  —

  THREE BLOCKS AWAY

  As soon as Jim Brodie started up his shop vehicle and struck out for an unknown destination, four unmarked vans, one for each point of the compass, began to roll. Equipped with GPS-tracking monitors homed in on a device attached to the chassis of the art dealer’s car, each van followed from afar. While the target rolled east down Lombard, two of the tracking vehicles advanced along parallel roads to the left and right, the third ran an intercept course three-quarters of a mile ahead on the same road, and the fourth brought up the rear a half mile back.

  When Brodie turned right on Van Ness, the cars front and back immediately turned in the same direction so that they paralleled the mark. The vehicles traveling on parallel tracks swung onto Van Ness and took up the rear and forward positions. As long as the target was mobile, no car made visual contact. No car approached closer than three blocks.

  Once the subject reached his destination, the surveillance vehicles sped up, the trailing one accelerating as the target turned into the gas station, pulling into a shadowed driveway across the street, giving the spotter in the back of the van a bird’s-eye view from behind tinted windows.

  At stationary posts seventy to one hundred yards away on their respective points of the compass, the remaining three vans activated parabolic microphones capable of capturing a cricket’s call at two hundred yards. The driver of the closest vehicle primed a fourth machine. Amplification software was adjusted, and Brodie’s phone calls were captured by three of the four long-distance mikes.

  Two of the recordings were perfect.

  CHAPTER 62

  FROM the cabin window of my United flight, I could see Manhattan in the distance, its skyscrapers clawing at a hazy yellow sky. Once my plane touched down at JFK, I grabbed my duffel bag from the overhead compartment and caught a cab to a midtown hotel on Thirty-eighth and Ninth, where I walked through a dim lobby with a dusty chandelier, a black- and white-checkered linoleum floor, and a pair of scuffed red vinyl couches. At the far end of the lobby a doorway led to a cheesy cocktail lounge with more red vinyl. In the indistinct light of the bar, I could make out the sheen of a well-tailored summer jacket but no faces. Fine men’s apparel on Thirty-eighth and Ninth?

  I rode a rickety elevator to the fifth floor and knocked on a door of walnut veneer streaked with age, maybe eight decades’ worth. The door opened. I entered. The door closed. Noda stood in the shadows, holding a cell phone and a gun. The lights were dimmed and the curtains drawn. The room had a double bed with a faded maroon spread with some kind of crest, a brown carpet with well-worn footpaths, and an ugly brown desk with more nicks than the expressway into town had potholes.

  “Cops right behind you,” Noda said. “Affiliates picked you up at Kennedy. Confirmed you weren’t followed.”

  “That George camped out in the lounge?”

  “Who else?”

  Noda wore gray summer pants and a black turtleneck under a slate jacket. The break on the jacket hid a holster.

  I indicated the gun. “You’ve been busy.”

  “A loaner from our associates. George is carrying and we got a third for you.”

  He tossed me a small Browning and I dropped it in the side pocket of my windbreaker.

  In two minutes there was a knock. Noda drew his gun and nodded. I checked the peephole, then opened the door. Renna walked in with a plainclothes cop I didn’t know and a dusky blond guy with wire frames, an olive green Italian suit, and pale gray eyes.

  Noda holstered his piece.

  I said to Renna, “You made it.”

  “Might be a one-way ticket. Word came down last night, this venture doesn’t solve the J-town problem, I’m better off walking home.”

  I felt for my friend. In San Francisco, officials hid behind spokes-people and blamed Renna. Insiders labeled the lieutenant’s decision to take on the Japantown case “career suicide.” But I and a handful of like-minded souls saw it differently. In stepping up to the plate, Renna had done the right thing. If you let a Japantown go unanswered, how could you look yourself in the mirror every morning? Problem was it happened far too often. To all of us. When confronted with our own Japantowns, many of us fled. An unfaithful spouse, betrayal at the office, a family member with a terminal disease—whatever it was, we turned our back on the problem instead of facing it. I should know. I’d crawled into a hole for eight months when Mieko died.

  Renna’s struggle was different. He was being skewered for not delivering. The truth was, the breaks did not come your way on every case. If you cleared 70 percent of your files, you made the big leagues. But even big leaguers struck out. From the outset, Renna and I both knew there was a chance Japantown might slide into unsolved territory.

  “Got another piece of news,” Renna said quietly.

  With the sinking tone of his voice, a coldness crept into my bones. Had Jenny’s body turned up? Did Casey set Dermott loose?

  “Abers didn’t make it.”

  Al
l the men in the room frowned at the floor.

  Involuntarily, a moan escaped my lips. I turned my back on the others, shoving my hands in my jacket pockets and stretching the fabric to the limit. I bit my lower lip as a hollow ache opened inside.

  A hand touched on my shoulder. “There’ll be time for mourning him properly when this is over,” Renna said. “Now we have to focus on the living.”

  Meaning Jenny. My head heavy and listless, I inhaled noisily and gathered myself up. “All right. Let’s get on with it.” I turned back to the men in the room. “These your New York guys?”

  “Yeah. Jamie McCann, Jim Brodie.”

  I shook hands with the plainclothes cop.

  “Sorry about your loss,” he said. “You Irish?”

  “Father’s side.”

  “Good side.” He was big and beefy and around the same age as Renna.

  Renna coughed behind a fist. “And this is Luke.”

  “First or last name?”

  “Just Luke.”

  “Ah.” We shook hands.

  McCann said, “He’s the agency’s contribution. Whatever strings you pulled cleared passages that haven’t been opened in decades. It’s a goddamn New York miracle. We got all the manpower we needed the instant we needed it. SWAT, antiterrorist squad, air cover, and Luke.”

  Well, what do you know? Kozawa had opened some doors.

  “What is it you do, Luke?”

  Luke focused icy gray eyes on me. His irises were small, cold disks that seemed to register everything in the room without passion or comment. He looked faintly Nordic and wore an expensive cologne. “Mostly I take out the garbage. Today I’m to cover your back.”

  “Noda’s doing that.”

  “He can still do it, but I do it too.”

  “Unless I give you something else to do?”

  “Yes.”

  I nodded and introduced Noda. More hands were clasped.

  “A pleasure,” Renna said. “You speak English?”

  “Sure. You wanna have a spelling bee?”

  “Jokes. You can stay.”

  Noda’s cell phone buzzed. He flipped it open and said in English, “Talk.”