Pacific Burn

by Barry Lancet

  We both nodded.

  “Good.” Ito looked behind us one last time, then tapped the door lightly, heard a confirming tap on the other end, then said, “Now.”

  CHAPTER 44

  A POLICEMAN waited on the other side of the door.

  “This way,” he said, and Rie smiled and scooted sideways around me.

  “I’m so glad—” she began, going to her purse for her badge.

  I blanched. “Rie, no.”

  I reached out to pull her back but was too late. A crack to the side of her head swept her aside. Her body slammed into a lamppost and crumpled. She was down and cleared away. Not dead but unconscious. No longer a threat.

  By none other than the Steam Walker. The Napa killer. Mr. Bamboo Forest. His visage peeked out at me from under the visor of a policeman’s cap.

  My recognition had not been instantaneous. He’d applied makeup to change his appearance. The shape of his face, its angles, the size of his eyes—all had been transformed. My warning to Rie had been instinctual, based solely on seeing a uniform at the rear entrance instead of Sasaki-san, the second Brodie Security guard.

  Had Rie not slipped by me, the advantage would have fallen to the Walker. The few extra seconds his disguise bought him might have been enough to finish the job.

  But brooding over spilled milk was not in his constitution. He attacked swiftly, targeting my throat with a sharp karate thrust meant to crush the larynx, with suffocation and death to follow in short order. I was trapped in the narrow confines of the restaurant’s exit corridor, Ito penned in behind me by my bulk. I ducked my head and took the hit on the jaw. My head snapped back. My neck muscles shrieked.

  But my counterattack was already in progress.

  I’d begun a beat earlier and the Steam Walker reacted a beat later. From cocked hips, I delivered a retaliatory side kick that clipped his pelvis and spun him around.

  I rushed after him, but he twirled all the way around and sluiced forward to truncate my charge, recapturing his territory. He was determined to keep Ito out of the picture. As long as the Walker stalled my advance, our encounter would be one-on-one. Unlike Rie, Ito was too big to squeeze past me.

  My jaw throbbed. Rie groaned but didn’t stir.

  The Walker feinted with a head bob, then threw another karate punch, changing up midstream and striking out with a leg snap. In the confines of the corridor, I leaned away from the kick, nullifying most of its effect, but absorbing a jarring blow to my right thigh.

  Swallowing the pain, I sprang before he could regroup. But my injured thigh caved against the weight and I was forced to retreat.

  I’d gained a yard, which allowed me to cover Rie if the need arose. I wasn’t going to give any ground but neither was the Steam Walker. Ito was still trapped.

  Distant sirens grew louder. They sounded close. The ambulance maybe two blocks out, police vehicles four. Still plenty of time for the Walker’s purpose. In his disguise he could linger until the last second.

  Seeing me stagger, the Walker swarmed in. Thirst for the kill glittered in his eyes. I shifted my weight to my good leg, then swung my sore limb around in a tae kwon do hook kick. Most people favor an injured appendage and take it out of play, which hampers their options. I went the other way.

  Startled by the counterintuitive move, the Steam Walker backpedaled. As I finished the arc of the sweep, I dropped to the ground, pushing both hands palm out to break my fall, then flipped on my side. Supported by my forearm and strong leg and leveraging the momentum of my leg sweep, I “walked” my free hand in a rapid circle, and as the Walker regrouped and swooped in again, I helicoptered my legs around and knocked him off his feet.

  He rolled away and rose a moment after I pulled myself upright. We glared at each other. Freed at last, Ito dashed forward.

  Out front, a police car gave a last electronic whoop as it pulled up to the restaurant. Even with our two-on-one advantage, the Walker considered another advance. Which telegraphed just how hard-core his training was.

  Then Ito reached under his jacket for a weapon and the Walker eased back a step, then another, then faded into the night.

  We watched his retreat in silence.

  Eventually, I said, “Have anything under there?”

  “Nope. Sasaki has the gun. But next time we’ll both be carrying.”

  * * *

  Ito went in search of his partner and I turned to attend to Rie.

  I bent down alongside my motionless date. Her face was relaxed, her breathing steady. Both good signs.

  “How’s Sasaki?” I called.

  “Found him,” Ito said, and stepped behind a line of trash bins.

  Rie had a strong pulse. I shook her gently. She groaned. Her eyes opened.

  “That was some trick,” she said with a weak smile. “Embarrassed twice in one night.”

  Coherent. Good recall. Cracking a joke. I’d seen my share of postfight recoveries, and this was as good as it got.

  A minor miracle against someone of the Steam Walker’s caliber. Maybe we squeezed by.

  “Hoshino’s okay,” I said. “How’s Sasaki?”

  Ito’s voice cracked. “He’s gone.”

  * * *

  We made a brief detour to the emergency room on the way to my hotel.

  Rie glided through without damage, other than a slight swelling where her head had met the lamppost. I was another story.

  Rie was tough and knew how to take a blow. Years of judo and kendo had given her exceptional muscle tone, balance, and combat instincts. By the time help arrived, she was steady on her feet and perky, if slightly abashed. I limped into the hospital. I could feel my jawline and cheek swelling up. But bloating and bruises were special effects that a high pain threshold allowed me to ignore. Aside from a limited soreness, I felt fine. I walked out of the trauma center with a stack of heat plasters for the soreness and pills for the pain.

  Rie accompanied me to the hotel, as did a fresh guard detail, who took a room across the hall. Rie ran a bath. I thanked her, and she made to leave. At the door, I bent over to kiss her and found myself knocked sideways by an invisible force.

  Rie stepped back inside. “What was that about?”

  I found my balance. “I think the medical cocktail the doctor fed me kicked in. I’ll be fine.”

  Rie studied me for a moment, then trained her gaze on the king-size bed, large sitting area, and oversize flat-screen TV.

  “Don’t you normally stay at your old family home?”

  Although the firm held the paperwork to my father’s place, I usually bunked there when I came to town.

  “Yes, but we’ve got a client who needs to hide for a while.”

  “That doesn’t explain the deluxe room. Someone in your office overcompensated.” Then her eyes narrowed. “Or was this part of a grand seduction scheme?”

  Even in my drugged state, I was lucid enough to know we’d just treaded out onto a shaky ledge. Shades of nuance emerged with the question. One suggested she might feel manipulated depending on my answer, while another hinted that I could hurt her feelings because I hadn’t cared enough to arrange an elegant setting, even if she had no intention of staying.

  “Aside from wanting to see you again, there was no grand plan, though if there was to be, this would be a good way to go. The clerk at the front desk upgraded me when he matched my name to the Brodie Security corporate account.”

  “I see.” Rie cracked open the drapes with a finger and peered out. “VIP treatment. Great scene out there. Too bad you can’t enjoy the view.”

  In light of the sniper action in San Francisco, my shadows had drawn the curtains after clearing the room.

  “No complaints about the other amenities, though,” she added. “There’s a large-screen TV, a stereo system, and a phone in the bathroom. In the very large marble-floored bathroom.”

  “Yes, but did you notice the cushioned lounge chair?”

  “Of course. Now off with the cell phone and the clothes.” />
  “What?”

  “With you, I’m beginning to think there’s never going to be a right time and I don’t like my men scratched and dirty.”

  “You only want me for my fancy room. Or are you fishing for an apology because I got called away to Kyoto in the middle of our last date?”

  She leaned forward and kissed me. “Still charming after all we’ve been through. No fishing. Kyoto only proves my point. That’s why I want your mobile turned off. You need a bath and we need some private time.”

  CHAPTER 45

  DAY 9, SHIBUYA DISTRICT, TOKYO, 12:15 A.M.

  I HIT the shower, soaped up, scrubbed, rinsed, then stepped clean and suds-free into the deep, steaming Japanese bath and allowed fingers of heat to work their way through my body. Muscles were soothed. Nerves were calmed. Serenity surfaced. Several centuries back the Japanese had found the ideal way to lift the weight of the day, and in all my travels I’d yet to find a better solution.

  When I emerged five minutes after the soak in the blue-and-white yukata sleeping garment provided by the hotel, Rie had the television tuned to a news program.

  “Nothing about poisoning yet,” she told me, “or our back-door skirmish.”

  “Only a matter of time.”

  Rie grimaced. “My people will question Brodie Security first, then get to you eventually.”

  “But not tonight?”

  She shook her head. “We’re thorough but slow. I’ll leave first thing.”

  “I’m thinking I should keep your name out of it.”

  “I’d be grateful.”

  With Rie in earshot, I rang the guards across the hall. We contrived a common but believable fictional name for my date. It would lead nowhere. I’d start out insisting my dining companion was incidental to the scene as the attack was directed at me. If pressed, I would relinquish the name. If pushed further, I’d dig in my heels.

  Once I rang off, Rie headed for the bath, smiling back at me over her shoulder. I heard her disrobe, then the sound of the shower left the rest to my imagination. I glanced at the clock. It was nearly one in the morning. I slipped between the sheets for a moment of shut-eye.

  I lost consciousness.

  Some time later, Rie joined me. I felt a gentle kiss on my good cheek, then my neck.

  Consciousness returned. I took it from there.

  * * *

  Much later Rie said, “You held up quite well, considering.”

  “I aim to please. The meds dulled the pain.”

  “Remind me to thank the doctor.”

  “How about we turn this into a double feature, then you’ll really have something to thank him for?”

  * * *

  We were sitting up in bed, sipping complimentary hotel coffee.

  Rie set her cup down. With her finger, she traced the scar near my collarbone, where a bullet had nipped at the muscle tissue along the ridge of my shoulder. “You are damaged goods. Tell me about this.”

  We’d woken early, had a morning tussle, then slipped back into the blue-and-white sleeping robes we’d discarded during the night and never recovered. We washed up in turn, brushing teeth and such. Rie discovered a K-cup coffee machine in a cabinet near the desk and brewed an impressive French roast with the touch of a button.

  “A small round clipped me.”

  “In LA or San Francisco?”

  “Right here in Tokyo.”

  “That’s unusual. Was it yakuza?”

  Unusual because Japan’s rigid antigun laws were strictly enforced. Criminals or anyone who momentarily slipped over the edge could be forgiven a lot as long as they didn’t wield a firearm. Bring a loaded weapon to the party and the whole of the police force would hunt the offender down with fierce doggedness, then bury him for a long long time. She guessed yakuza because they were the ones who most often flaunted the gun law.

  “Another PI, actually. He had some resentment to work out.”

  “You get payback?”

  “A friend nailed him for me.”

  Rie’s finger circled the pearly scar tissue, then dropped down to a wound just below my ribs. “This is one of the sword injuries, isn’t it? They made a big deal of it in the police report a few months ago. You have another one on your thigh, right?”

  “Yes. Never do anything by half. That’s my motto.”

  “I thought the wounds were supposed to heal without scarring because the cuts were shallow.”

  “I suspect the doc was wearing rather large rose-colored shades when he gave the prognosis. On the other hand, it’s only been three months.”

  Rie reached for my arm and looked at a horizontal slash across my forearm, then a matching one on the other arm. Then a thin diagonal scab line. My newest trophy, from the knife fight in Ken’s hospital room.

  “The knife cut must have hurt, but these other two look worse.”

  “They went to the bone,” I admitted.

  And through all the muscle and nerves to get there. At one time, I’d known the names of the injured body tissues, but in the end I relegated the whole basket of medical jargon to an echo chamber of discarded memories.

  My companion winced. “What could do this?”

  “A garrote,” I said.

  Rie stifled a gasp but couldn’t dampen the surprise that flashed across her features. “Was that when—”

  “Yes. Have you finished your cataloging of my imperfections?”

  “Hold on. Last night, in the dark, I thought I felt two scars on your thigh, not one. Also a starburst on your back.”

  “Interesting, isn’t it, where police training comes in useful?”

  “Shut up and turn over.”

  “I’d like to finish my coffee.”

  Rie favored me with an indulgent smile that said not a chance, gently relieved me of my cup, set it on the side table, and nudged me. I rolled over and this time was rewarded with a clearly delineated gasp.

  “Is that a knife wound?”

  “It is.”

  “I thought you collected only art.”

  “Only one collection is intentional.”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “And only one has any value.”

  I heard a throaty giggle. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” She gave the starburst a friendly peck, flipped me over, and kissed each of the other scars, then my nose, both cheeks, my lips. She lingered over the last destination.

  “Very affectionate for a hardened cop,” I said when she raised her head.

  “Shut up. See if you can keep up this time.”

  Despite the tough words, Rie mixed eagerness with a becoming modesty. Her pale-beige skin glowed with a translucence I’d once seen in a European painting, the name of which, in my distracted state, escaped me.

  Afterward, we settled in for some bedroom talk. Some personal, some professional, all of it memorable.

  But not as memorable as a stray comment of hers later on that sent the case in an entirely new direction.

  CHAPTER 46

  WHEN I emerged from my shower squeaky clean and with a hotel towel tight at my waist, I found Rie fully dressed and glancing through the papers on the Nobuki case I’d spread out on the coffee table in the sitting area.

  She’d showered before me and had filled the wait by flipping through the paperwork. Now she waved the police composite of the Napa Valley killer in the air. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “All in the family,” I said.

  “This is the Steam Walker, right?”

  Rie had been knocked aside before she could catch a good glimpse of her attacker.

  “Yes. Everything started with that.”

  “You gave me the overview, but how about more details? Maybe I can help.”

  More eyes on the case couldn’t hurt, so as I dressed I laid out the events once more, inclusive of the finer points. I told her about the “accidental” death of the first son in Napa; Shu’s eyewitness account that turned the supposed mishap into murder and garnered us the sketch; the City
Hall sniper attack that sent the father to the hospital with brain damage; the mayor’s Pacific Rim Friendship Program; Naomi’s antinuclear-power activities and her DC dance with a record-breaking three federal agencies; my fight in Ken’s hospital room after my return from Washington; TNT’s narration of the Steam Walker legend and the yakuza enforcer’s warning about the contract out on me; our desperate attempt to track down Akihiro at the cosplay event in Kyoto; the follow-up meeting at the manga museum with his girlfriend; their sixty-foot death plunge off the veranda of Kiyomizu Temple; my encounter in the bamboo forest; and finally, the consultation with a researcher at a think tank whose comments put the nuclear mafia front and center on the suspect list. A hell of a lot had happened.

  When I’d finished, I looked up to find her flush with astonishment.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know Big Haga?” Rie asked.

  The same detail Mari had tripped over, expressed with the same sense of amazement.

  “I know a lot of people, and a lot of criminals. But that’s not the point.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. Tell me who you’re looking at for this.”

  I concluded the review with a full list of the suspects, the recital of which elicited a fresh round of disbelief. “That’s an unmanageable number for a single case,” she said. “How can you possibly narrow the field?”

  I reached for a slate-blue shirt. “We poke and prod and dig, and when we hit a nerve, we press it.”

  “And hope you don’t get yourself killed.”

  “That too,” I admitted, recalling my art dealer friend’s plea that I give up my father’s old work. “Not a word to any of your police friends.”

  “Of course not.” She pointed at Shu-kun’s sign of approval at the bottom of the Napa portrait. “I’m sure you followed up on this, right?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Shu Nobuki scribbled that OK after the police artist finished her work. What’s to follow? He’s eight and got the K backward.”