by Sam Waite
"Guess I'm not in the loop. Sorry, I mean..."
"I know what that means. Look."
Yuri opened her satchel and popped the top off a box that contained a listening device. "I got the go-ahead for this yesterday. It's not cheap. I'm talking about our service, not the bug. Your company must be loaded."
"Don't impress us too much. We might buy you out."
"How do you want to handle it? Straight or backdoor?"
"Straight means we saunter in, and I distract Ito with my charm while you plant the bug? I don't think that will work."
"From what Morimoto-san said about the office, I didn't think so either. I brought these." She lifted the flap on a pocket inside the satchel.
"Nice tools," I said.
She had a set of picks and rakes for breaking a lock and a ring with maybe fifty master keys on it.
"Make those yourself?"
She grinned. "Not the hooks or the rakes, they were perks, but I did grind out the bypass pick from a hacksaw blade."
I saw something else in her satchel. It was a narrow leather sack about ten inches long and attached to a wooden handle. "Do you mind?" I squeezed it. It was filled with metal balls about the size of double-ought buckshot. "Make that yourself?"
She tucked her chin and batted her eyelashes in a parody of a coquettish belle. "Why I surely did, Mr. Sanchez."
I laughed and shook my head. "Ever use it."
"Once, right after I got this." She pointed to the scar on the side of her chin.
Be still my heart. "Any other talents?"
"Ni-dan, second-degree black belt, shorenji kempo. How about you?"
"Nothing really. On a good day though, I bench press three-sixty. I'm kind of primitive."
"Pounds or kilos?"
Kilos would have been close to eight hundred pounds. She was funny. Instead of a laugh though, I made a fist with my right hand and slapped the crook of my elbow with my left. Universal body language.
We caught a taxi and I directed the driver to Nishi Azabu. Once in the neighborhood, I remembered the route to Foxx Starr. With my directions, the driver made good time. There were still lights on in the office when we drove past. I hoped Ito was not some kind of workaholic and would go home at a reasonable hour. Yuri and I went to a coffee shop and waited.
Except for exterior lights, the whole building was dark when we walked back. It had an open-air entry with an elevator on the side of a stairway on the ground floor. We took the stairs. There were only three offices on each floor and no cameras or any other security devices that I could see.
Yuri checked out the locks on the door. There were two.
"Try these on the lower lock." She handed me the master keys. "Test the blue ones first."
The keys were coded with colored tape according to lock manufacturer.
"The bottom lock is older. It's probably the original, so one of those keys will likely work. The top lock might take a while. It's still old but higher security."
"Meaning?"
"The pins have little heads on them like a nail. When you raise one and twist the turning tool, there's a little give, because the pin's shaft is narrower than the head. It tricks you into thinking you've got it in the right position. There are five pins, and if one hasn't been picked properly, you have to start over. We're lucky. The most recent locks are impossible."
The seventeenth master key I tried opened the bottom lock. As I stood guard, I heard a noise near the stairs. I gestured to Yuri, and she zipped her pick out of the lock faster than a ferret backing out of a skunk hole. This would not be a good time to meet Panther and his thirty-eight-size lump. I stepped quietly down the stairs and nearly disturbed a young couple making out like Parisians. They didn't notice me before I eased out of sight and went back up the stairs.
"It was nothing."
For a terrifying moment, Yuri looked as furious as a woman scorned. "Che!"
I didn't know that word. Maybe it was just another way to say, "that lock."
She went back to work, while I kept alert for more amorous couples.
It was another ten minutes or so before Yuri announced success. She looked ragged as we slipped inside. It might have just been nerves, but she tittered when she saw the old lock on the door to Ito's private office. She slipped a rake into the keyhole, shimmied the pins into place and had the door open in less time than it would have taken a drunk with the proper key.
I held the flashlight while Yuri broke out the listening device. The receiver was sound activated and had a short-range radio transmitter. There were two options. Either post a human in the neighborhood to monitor the transmissions or plant a recorder nearby. Lack of manpower demanded the latter course, so only two decisions were left: where to place the transmitter so it would pick up conversation and where to spot the receiver.
The best place we could find for audio reception was underneath a coffee table. It looked risky to me, but there was no reason for Ito to expect a bug, so why would she look? As for the receiver, we had a quarter-mile radius to find a spot. Yuri led the way out and down a street a couple of blocks from Ito's office. We walked under a giant cherry tree whose branches spread over the fence. Yuri stopped and pointed skyward. I cupped my hands for her foot and hoisted her to branch level.
While I kept watch for strangers in the night, she pulled herself up, and taped the receiver to the topside of a thick branch. Foliage would have helped, but even though the tree was bared by autumn, the receiver wasn't noticeable from the street. She dropped down. The pale light of a corner lamppost etched the lines of her grin in shadow. She looked like a schoolgirl who'd just raided Farmer Jones' orchard. She also had smudges on her hands and clothes from soot that had covered the tree.
Despite her obvious pride of accomplishment, Yuri was a little shaky.
"You need a beer," I said. "Don't argue."
"Make the first round a Guinness and single malts thereafter, and I won't fuss a bit."
We found an Irish style pub, took two stools at the bar and ordered pints. For a long moment, we sat silent and let guilt-tinged elation crackle between us like lightning snapping on the cusp of a storm. In the electric afterglow of illegal mischief, Yuri balled her fist and punched my arm.
"What have we got?" I asked.
"Truth? About a ninety percent chance that the bug will work like it's supposed to. After that, who knows, maybe fifty-fifty that we'll get anything useful."
"Fifty percent isn't bad."
"Make it forty-five, fifty percent of ninety remember."
"Still beats nada." We clinked glasses.
"What does Mrs. Sanchez think about your illegally breaking and entering in foreign countries?"
It took me a while to figure out who she was talking about. "My mother's dead. My wife didn't much like it, so she didn't stay Mrs. Sanchez very long. I never remarried. How about you? Is there a Mr. Somebody?"
Yuri gave one of her crooked grins. "I'm pretty sociable, so there's usually a 'Mr. Somebody', but I've never been married."
She followed up with an interview like the pro she was. All through a pint of stout, she traced more of my bicultural-bilingual background to a young Mick working summers as an honest-to-Pete cowboy on the Benavides ranch, a tour in the Air Force, several months on the freight docks of Southern Pacific Railway and one year of law school before that fateful call from my old colonel, Abe Granger, inviting me to join Global Risk.
By the time she was ready for a single-malt, I was ready to change the subject. She pointed to a bottle of eighteen-year-old Bunnahabhain Scotch and asked the bartender for a shot.
"Looks expensive," I said.
"You're paying right?"
"That's my point."
Yuri changed her order to a double and turned the bartender over to me. I didn't have much hope, but I asked for mescal. He brought out a bottle and pointed to the worm. Mescal at an Irish pub. Only in Tokyo. "Only in Tokyo" covered a lot of ground. I couldn't suppress a smile.
; "What are you laughing at?" Yuri squared her shoulders, in case the joke was on her. It was a nice pose. Her sweater was cut wide at the neck. It framed the graceful sloop of her bare shoulders and draped softly along the contours of her torso. Strands of hair had worked loose from her braid and formed a dark mosaic on the white of her skin.
"I just pictured Morimoto trying to pick a lock or climb a tree to plant a bug receiver. Now tell me that's not funny. With you, if something needs doing, you do it. In this business, that strikes me as normal behavior. Morimoto's helpful and polite, but how can I put this, he acts like he's preprogrammed and needs instructions for anything unexpected. He doesn't react to what's going on around him in constructive ways."
Yuri leaned away from me and opened one eye wide like Popeye about to down a can of spinach. "Careful cowboy. That's our nation's elite you're disparaging."
"Morimoto?"
"None other." Yuri took a slow draw on her Isle of Islay Bunnahabhain. "He graduated from Waseda University. For Japan, that's the equivalent of what? Yale? Dartmouth? Anyway Ivy League. He landed a job at one of Japan's ten nationwide banks. At the time, that was major league. By the time he hit his forties, he was in middle management, right on schedule to cradle-to-grave coddling.
"He followed the rules better than ninety-five percent of the nation. Then, bang, the ten city banks became four or five major groups, depending on your definition of 'major.' Turns out the old rules for progress didn't work anymore. They put the nation's economy, and more specifically Morimoto's personal life, in a world of hurt. Trouble is, he didn't understand the change. Neither does anybody else who's in charge, at least not that I can see."
Yuri had gotten well beyond whatever I was getting at. "So what happened?"
"So, mmm..." She sipped the Scotch. "After the bank made Morimoto a section boss, he put his mind to work making sure everything got done the way it always had. If he could point to a precedent, he could justify whatever he did, even if it was wrong. From the viewpoint of an entrepreneur, he was making no contribution to his organization, but he was doing what was expected, what he believed it took for further promotion."
"No risk, but gain?"
"Not anymore. Now it's like the Bible story about the servants who were given talents. The two who went out on a limb and made some profit got praised. The one who buried his so he wouldn't lose it got reamed. I don't pretend to know what that story is supposed to mean, but one way to look at it is that playing it safe might be the most dangerous option."
"And that's Morimoto?"
"It's the whole top of the Japanese pyramid. The current prime minister plays at innovation, but he's a throwback to world war two morals."
"You take risks."
"Uh huh, but who am I? Do I look like a cabinet minister or some bureaucratic honcho to you?"
I took my time answering. Light from esthetically placed lamps at the bar traced a shadow play across her face. The tiny beauty marks at the corner of her eye gained stature, and her smile lines delved into impish depths that weren't apparent a moment ago.
"You look okay," I said. In a flash, memories of Grandmas Sanchez and Fitzgerald, the two women who taught me everything I understand about human warmth, swirled up in a double team. "Okay," is the best you can do? That short-circuit between your brain and vocal cords is the reason you haven't made us great grandmas. You've got a lot to learn about risk, Mr. Man from GRIM.
I reckoned I did, and time was running out. Cyrano de Bergerac was tough, ugly and had a way with words. As for me, "tough, ugly and tongue-tied." I mumbled the words, but not low enough.
"What did you call me?" Yuri looked mad.
"I didn't call you anything. I was talking about myself."
"I was trying to explain about Morimoto and the petty lords who've walled up their little fiefdoms so tight there's no room for Japan to maneuver out of the mess it's in."
"My mind wandered."
"So, I'm boring?"
"No, just the opposite."
Yuri's mouth dipped at one corner. "You're wrong."
"I just said you are not boring."
"You're a long way from ugly. Kind of odd though." Yuri patted my arm and ordered another scotch. "Don't worry big spender. I'm gonna nurse this one slow and easy."
It was after 1:00 a.m. by the time we left. The local trains had stopped running, and there was a short line of taxis at a station. Yuri told the driver to let me off first. We passed the ride mostly in silence. I took up a lot of the back seat, and she rolled against my shoulder now and again when the driver took a corner. It was a comfortable camaraderie that I hated to break with shoptalk, but we needed to fix tomorrow's schedule. I planned to meet Dorian at the Tokyo detention center. Later, I would get briefed by Morimoto.
Yuri said she was going to stake out Foxx Starr to make sure the bug was working and to monitor visitors.
The taxi driver made good time in the light traffic of early morning. When we got to the hotel, Yuri gave my hand a squeeze and held it a moment.
"It was fun."
"Yeah it was." I glanced at the hotel entrance. "Would you..."
Yuri tilted her head, and a quizzical smile ticked the corners of her lips.
"Um, be careful tomorrow." I leaned over and kissed her hair. "Goodnight."
She winked.
I got out, and the driver took off for her home, wherever that was. She waved as I stood at the curb.
Carpe diem mañana, Don Juan.
Chapter 5
I checked with Ishii, the lawyer, to make sure my appointment with Dorian was still good, and then took a taxi to the detention center.
Only a few days had passed since I last saw Dorian, but he looked as though he'd aged years. Red streaked the whites of his eyes. His face had an alabaster cast as though blood had drained and pooled into purple half moons staining his lower lids. His voice cracked.
"Maybe I should confess."
I pictured truncheon-wielding interrogators and halogen lamps, until I realized he didn't know himself whether he was guilty. That was a hard burden that I ought to have lifted earlier.
"No, Mr. Dorian, you shouldn't. I don't believe you killed the girl."
A flash of fire in his eye showed it was the psychological cancer of self-doubt that had ravaged him, not Japanese police. He was a strong man.
"Can you prove that?"
"It's personal conviction. I can't prove it, but it's based on physical evidence that can't be explained by the suppositions of the prosecutors. At least not to my satisfaction, and I'm not the only one." I related the events and rationale that had led Yuri and me to our conclusions. Dorian accepted that news like a man who had just learned the identity of his daughter's rapist. Rage swelled veins at his temples and on the backs of his fists.
"How long have you known?"
I shook my head.
"How long?" He asked again.
"I still don't know much of anything, but as far as being convinced, two days."
"Do you have any idea how close I came? At first I couldn't believe any of it was real. They pushed hard. Threatened me with execution, if I didn't admit guilt. My own lawyer told me that if I did confess and looked repentant, I could get off lighter."
The anger left Dorian as fast as it had come. He opened his hands and rested his forehead in his palms.
"None of that really mattered. My own doubt made me too weak to fight back. They showed me pictures of the girl. They talked about her past and her family. If I believed I was guilty, if I had done what they said, I'd hang myself. If I know that I'm innocent, then there is nothing they can do to break me."
Dorian lifted his head and looked as though he wouldn't mind sending me to the gallows. "Do you understand?"
I nodded. Saints have used the strength of their conviction to redirect the course of history. The problem with that human attribute is the delusion can impart similar power to madmen. What was Dorian? I still hadn't figured that out, but I believed beyond doubt
he hadn't killed Hosoi.
"We're making progress," I said, "although I can't guarantee anything. Meanwhile, don't sign any confessions. I'll talk to Ishii about it."
I gave Dorian a moment to let that sink in before I switched tack.
"I met Hosoi's brother. He said that she had made some very large bank deposits recently. He figures that to be evidence you were keeping her as a mistress."
Dorian's eyes locked onto mine.
"Why would he think that?"
Under other circumstances, the reply would have been a normal response. As things stood, it was obvious. I shrugged and wondered if Dorian might be fishing for something else. He opened his mouth and closed it without speaking.
He tried again. "What do you know about the money?"
I decided not to mention the Spanish restaurateur's statement about the payment he saw delivered to Hosoi. "When I leave here, I'm going to meet a former banker who's working on that."
"Do you think you can keep me informed a little more regularly?" A spark of the old Dorian flared, but then he let his gaze fall back to the table.
"I can't come here every day," I said, "but I'll try to pass on new information to your lawyer. I told you that we were making progress, but I figure no matter what we come up, with we're down a dead-end alley. That is unless you can help crack a tough nut."
"What?"
"I think at least two people were directly involved in Hosoi's murder. If you didn't kill her, somebody went to a lot of trouble to target you. Can you tell me why?"
He shook his head without looking up.
"I believe that you can, Mr. Dorian, and why you don't puzzles the hell out me."
* * * *
I looked at Morimoto's business card. It had a map with English directions on it. Maybe I could have found the place on my own, but I left the adventure of locating Protect Agency to a taxi driver.
The headquarters was bigger than I had expected. It took up three floors of almost prime real estate on the fringe of Shinagawa, an industrial ward at the juncture of Tokyo City, Tokyo Bay and Kawasaki.
I loitered next to the receptionist's desk until Morimoto pushed open a door that had been secured by a digital lock. I glimpsed dense rows of cubicles on the other side of the door. If all those desks were staffed, investigations must indeed be a growth industry.