Graham went up to the tape and said, "For Christ's sake, get out of there. This is a crime scene. You can't take pictures in there." The man didn't respond. He kept moving backward. Graham turned away. "Who is this guy?"
Ishiguro said, "This is our employee, Mr. Tanaka. He works for Nakamoto Security."
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The Japanese had their own employee wandering around inside the yellow tapes, contaminating the crime scene. It was outrageous. "Get him out of there," I said.
"He is taking pictures."
"He can't do that."
Ishiguro said, "But this is for our corporate use."
I said, "I don't care, Mr. Ishiguro. He can't be inside the yellow tape, and he can't take pictures. Get him out of there. And I want his film, please."
"Very well." Ishiguro said something quickly in Japanese. I turned, just in time to see Tanaka slip under the yellow tape, and disappear among the blue-suited men clustered by the elevator. Behind their heads, I saw the elevator doors open and close.
Son of a bitch. I was getting angry. "Mr. Ishiguro, you are now obstructing an official police investigation."
Ishiguro said calmly, "You must try to understand our position, Detective Smith. Of course we have complete confidence in the Los Angeles Police Department, but we must be able to undertake our own private inquiry, and for that we must have— "
Their own private inquiry? The son of a bitch. I suddenly couldn't speak. I clenched my teeth, seeing red. I was furious. I wanted to arrest Ishiguro. I wanted to spin him around, shove him up against the wall, and snap the cuffs around his fucking wrists and—
"Perhaps I can be of assistance, Lieutenant," a voice behind me said.
I turned. It was John Connor, smiling cheerfully. I stepped aside.
Connor faced Ishiguro, bowed slightly, and presented his card. He spoke rapidly. "Totsuzen shitsurei desuga, jiko-shōkai wo shitemo yoroshii desuka. Watashi wa John Connor to mōshimasu. Meishi o dōzo. Dōzo yoroshiku."
"John Connor?" Ishiguro said. "The John Connor? Omeni kakarete kōei desu. Watashi wa Ishiguro desu. Dōzo yoroshiku." He was saying he was honored to meet him.
"Watashi no meishi desu. Dōzo." A graceful thank you.
But once the formalities were completed, the conversation went so quickly I caught only an occasional word. I was obliged to appear interested, watching and nodding, when in fact I had no idea what they were talking about. Once I heard Connor refer to me as wakaimono, which I knew meant his protégé or apprentice. Several times, he looked at me severely, and shook his head like a regretful father. It seemed he was apologizing for me. I also heard him refer to Graham as bushitsuke, a disagreeable man.
But these apologies had their effect. Ishiguro calmed down, dropping his shoulders. He began to relax. He even smiled. Finally he said, "Then you will not check identification of our guests?"
"Absolutely not," Connor said. "Your honored guests are free to come and go as they wish."
I started to protest. Connor shot me a look.
"Identification is unnecessary," Connor continued, speaking formally, "because I am sure that no guest of the Nakamoto Corporation could ever be involved in such an unfortunate incident."
"Fucking A," Graham said, under his breath.
Ishiguro was beaming. But I was furious. Connor had contradicted me. He had made me look like a fool. And on top of that, he wasn't following police procedure — we could all be in trouble for that later on. Angrily, I shoved my hands in my pockets and looked away.
"I am grateful for your delicate handling of this situation, Captain Connor," Ishiguro said.
"I have done nothing at all," Connor replied, making another formal bow. "But I hope you will now agree it is appropriate to clear the floor, so the police may begin their investigation."
Ishiguro blinked. "Clear the floor?"
"Yes," Connor said, taking out a notebook. "And please assist me to know the names of the gentlemen standing behind you, as you ask them to leave."
"I am sorry?"
"The names of the gentlemen behind you, please."
"May I ask why?"
Connor's face darkened, and he barked a short phrase in Japanese. I didn't catch the words, but Ishiguro turned bright red.
"Excuse me, Captain, but I see no reason for you to speak in this— "
And then, Connor lost his temper. Spectacularly and explosively. He moved close to Ishiguro, making sharp stabbing motions with his finger while he shouted: "Iikagen ni shiro! Soko o doke! Kiiterunoka!"
Ishiguro ducked and turned away, stunned by this verbal assault.
Connor leaned over him, his voice hard and sarcastic: "Doke! Doke! Wakaranainoka?" He turned, and pointed furiously toward the Japanese men by the elevator. Confronted with Connor's naked anger, the Japanese looked away, and puffed anxiously on their cigarettes. But they did not leave.
"Hey, Richie," Connor said, calling to the crime unit photographer Richie Walters. "Get me some IDs of these guys, will you?"
"Sure, Captain," Richie said. He raised his camera and began moving down the line of men, firing his strobe in quick succession.
Ishiguro suddenly got excited, stepping in front of the camera, holding up his hands. "Wait a minute, wait a minute, what is this?"
But the Japanese men were already leaving, wheeling away like a school of fish from the strobe flash. In a few seconds they were gone. We had the floor to ourselves. Alone, Ishiguro looked uncomfortable.
He said something in Japanese. Apparently it was the wrong thing.
"Oh?" Connor said. "You are to blame here," he said to Ishiguro. "You are the cause of all these troubles. And you will see that my detectives get any assistance they need. I want to speak to the person who discovered the body, and the person who called in the original report. I want the name of every person who has been on this floor since the body was discovered. And I want the film from Tanaka's camera. Ore wa honkida. I will arrest you if you obstruct this investigation further."
"But I must consult my superiors— "
"Namerunayo." Connor leaned close. "Don't fuck with me, Ishiguro-san. Now leave, and let us work."
"Of course, Captain," he said. With a tight, brief bow he left, his face pinched and unhappy.
Graham chuckled. "You told him off pretty good."
Connor spun. "What were you doing, telling him you were going to interrogate everybody at the party?"
"Aw, shit, I was just winding him up," Graham said. "There's no way I'm going to interrogate the mayor. Can I help it if these assholes have no sense of humor?"
"They have a sense of humor," Connor said. "And the joke is on you. Because Ishiguro had a problem, and he solved it with your help."
"My help?" Graham was frowning. "What're you talking about?"
"It's clear the Japanese wanted to delay the investigation," Connor said. "Your aggressive tactics gave them the perfect excuse — to call for the Special Services liaison."
"Oh, come on," Graham said. "For all they know, the liaison could have been here in five minutes."
Connor shook his head. "Don't kid yourself: they knew exactly who was on call tonight. They knew exactly how far away Smith would be, and exactly how long it would take him to get here. And they managed to delay the investigation an hour and a half. Nice work, detective."
Graham stared at Connor for a long moment. Then he turned away. "Fuck," he said. "That's a load of bullshit, and you know it. Fellas, I'm going to work. Richie? Mount up. You got thirty seconds to document before my guys come in and step on your tail. Let's go, everybody. I want to get finished before she starts to smell too bad."
And he lumbered off toward the crime scene.
With their suitcases and evidence carts, the SID team trailed after Graham. Richie Walters led the way, shooting left and right as he worked his way forward into the atrium, then going through the door into the conference room. The walls of the conference room were smoked glass, which dimmed his flash. But I could se
e him inside, circling the body. He was shooting a lot: he knew this was a big case.
I stayed behind with Connor. I said, "I thought you told me it was bad form to lose your temper with the Japanese."
"It is," Connor said.
"Then why did you lose yours?"
"Unfortunately," he said, "it was the only way to assist Ishiguro."
"To assist Ishiguro?"
"Yes. I did all that for Ishiguro — because he had to save face in front of his boss. Ishiguro wasn't the most important man in the room. One of the Japanese standing by the elevator was the jūyaku, the real boss."
"I didn't notice," I said.
"It's common practice to put a lesser man in front, while the boss stays in the background, where he is free to observe progress. Just as I did with you, kōhai."
"Ishiguro's boss was watching all the time?"
"Yes. And Ishiguro clearly had orders not to allow the investigation to begin. I needed to start the investigation. But I had to do it in such a way that he would not look incompetent. So I played the out-of-control gaijin. Now he owes me a favor. Which is good, because I may need his help later on."
"He owes you a favor?" I said, having trouble with this idea. Connor had just screamed at Ishiguro — thoroughly humiliating him, as far as I was concerned.
Connor sighed. "Even if you don't understand what happened, believe me: Ishiguro understands very well. He had a problem, and I helped him."
I still didn't really understand, and I started to say more, but Connor held up his hand. "I think we better take a look at the scene, before Graham and his men screw things up any more than they already have."
☼
It'd been almost two years since I worked the detective division, and it felt good to be around a homicide again. It brought back memories: the nighttime tension, the adrenaline rush of bad coffee in paper cups, and all the teams working around you — it's a kind of crazy energy, circling the center where somebody is lying, dead. Every homicide crime scene has that same energy, and that finality at the center. When you look at the dead person, there is a kind of obviousness, and at the same time there is an impossible mystery. Even in the simplest domestic brawl, where the woman finally decided to shoot the guy, you'd look at her, all covered in scars and cigarette burns, and you had to ask, why tonight? What was it about tonight? It's always clear what you are seeing, and there's always something that doesn't add up. Both things at once.
And at a homicide you have the sense of being right down to the basic truths of existence, the smells and the defecation and the bloating. Usually somebody's crying, so you're listening to that. And the usual bullshit stops; somebody died, and it's an unavoidable fact, like a rock in the road that makes all the traffic go around it. And in that grim and real setting, this camaraderie springs up, because you're working late with people you know, and actually know very well because you see them all the time. L.A. has four homicides a day; there's another one every six hours. And every detective at the crime scene already has ten homicides dragging on his backlog, which makes this new one an intolerable burden, so he and everybody else is hoping to solve it on the spot, to get it out of the way. There is that kind of finality and tension and energy all mixed together.
And after you do it for a few years, you get so you like it. And to my surprise, as I entered the conference room, I realized that I missed it.
The conference room was elegant: black table, black high-backed leather chairs, the lights of the nighttime skyscrapers beyond the glass walls. Inside the room, the technicians talked quietly, as they moved around the body of the dead girl.
She had blond hair cut short. Blue eyes, full mouth. She looked about twenty-five. Tall, with a long-limbed, athletic look. Her dress was black and sheer.
Graham was well into his examination; he was down at the end of the table, squinting at the girl's black patent high heels, a penlight in one hand, his notebook in another.
Kelly, the coroner's assistant, was taping the girl's hands in paper bags to protect them. Connor stopped him. "Just a minute." Connor looked at one hand, inspecting the wrist, peering closely under the fingernails. He sniffed under one nail. Then he flicked the fingers rapidly, one after another.
"Don't bother," Graham said laconically. "There's no rigor mortis yet, and no detritus under the nails, no skin or cloth fibers. In fact, I'd say there aren't many signs of a struggle at all."
Kelly slipped the bag over the hand. Connor said to him, "You have a time of death?"
"I'm working on it." Kelly lifted the girl's buttocks to place the rectal probe. "The axillary thermocouples are already in place. We'll know in a minute."
Connor touched the fabric of the black dress, checked the label. Helen, part of the SID team, said, "It's a Yamamoto."
"I see that," Connor said.
"What's a Yamamoto?" I said.
Helen said, "Very expensive Japanese designer. This little black nothing is at least five thousand dollars. That's assuming she bought it used. New, it's maybe fifteen thousand."
"Is it traceable?" Connor asked her.
"Maybe. Depends on whether she bought it here, or in Europe, or Tokyo. It'll take a couple of days to check."
Connor immediately lost interest. "Never mind. That'll be too late."
He produced a small, fiber-optic penlight, which he used to inspect the girl's scalp and hair. Then he looked quickly at each ear, giving a little murmur of surprise at the right ear. I peered over his shoulder, and saw a drop of dried blood at the pierced hole for her earring. I must have been crowding Connor, because he glanced up at me. "Excuse me, kōhai."
I stepped back. "Sorry."
Next, Connor sniffed the girl's lips, opened and closed her jaw rapidly, and poked around inside her mouth, using his penlight as a probe. Then he turned her head from side to side on the table, making her look left and right. He spent some time feeling gently along her neck, almost caressing it with his fingers.
And then, quite abruptly, he stepped away from the body and said, "All right, I'm finished."
And he walked out of the boardroom.
Graham looked up. "He never was worth a damn at a crime scene."
I said, "Why do you say that? I hear he's a great detective."
"Oh, hell," Graham said. "You can see for yourself. He doesn't even know what to do. Doesn't know procedure. Connor's no detective. Connor has connections. That's how he solved all those cases he's so famous for. You remember the Arakawa honeymoon shootings? No? I guess it was before your time, Petey-san. When was that Arakawa case, Kelly?"
"Seventy-six," Kelly said.
"Right, seventy-six. Big fucking case that year. Mr. and Mrs. Arakawa, a young couple visiting Los Angeles on their honeymoon, are standing on the curb in East L.A. when they get gunned down from a passing car. Drive-by gang-style shooting. Worse, at autopsy it turns out Mrs. Arakawa was pregnant. The press has a field day: L.A.P.D. can't handle gang violence, is the way the story goes. Letters and money come from all over the city. Everyone is upset about what happened to this fresh young couple. And of course the detectives assigned to the case don't discover shit. I mean, a case involving murdered Japanese nationals: they're getting nowhere.
"So, after a week, Connor is called in. And he solves it in one day. A fucking miracle of detection. I mean, it's a week later. The physical evidence is long gone, the bodies of the honeymooners are back in Osaka, the street corner where it happened is piled high in wilted flowers. But Connor is able to show that the youthful Mr. Arakawa is actually quite a bad boy in Osaka. He shows that the street-corner gangland shooting is actually a yakuza killing contracted in Japan to take place in America. And he shows that the nasty husband is the innocent bystander: they were really gunning for the wife, knowing she was pregnant, because it's her father they wanted to teach a lesson. So. Connor turns it all around. Pretty fucking amazing, huh?"
"And you think he did it all with his Japanese connections?"
"You tell me,"
Graham said. "All I know is, pretty soon after that, he goes to Japan for a year."
"Doing what?"
"I heard he worked as a security guy for a grateful Japanese company. They took care of him, is what it amounted to. He did a job for them, and they paid off. Anyway, that's the way I figure it. Nobody really knows. But the man is not a detective. Christ: just look at him now."
Out in the atrium, Connor was staring up at the high ceiling in a dreamy, reflective way. He looked first in one direction, and then another. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind. Suddenly, he walked briskly toward the elevators, as if he were leaving. Then without warning, he turned on his heel, and walked back to the center of the room, and stopped. Next, he began to inspect the leaves on the potted palm trees scattered around the room.
Graham shook his head. "What is this, gardening? I'm telling you, he's a strange guy. You know he's gone to Japan more than once. He always comes back. It never works out for him. Japan is like a woman that he can't live with, and can't live without, you know? Myself, I don't fucking get it. I like America. At least, what's left of it."
He turned to the SID team, which was moving outward from the body. "You guys find those panties for me yet?"
"Not yet, Tom."
"We're looking, Tom."
I said, "What panties?"
Graham lifted the girl's skirt. "Your friend John couldn't be bothered to finish his examination, but I'd say there's something significant here. I'd say that's seminal fluid oozing out of the vagina, she's not wearing panties, and there's a red line at the groin where they were ripped off. External genitals are red and raw. It's pretty clear she had forcible intercourse before she was killed. So I'm asking the boys to find the panties."
One of the SID team said, "Maybe she wasn't wearing any."
Graham said, "She was wearing them, all right."
Michael Crichton - Rising Sun Page 3