Tokyo Enigma

by Sam Waite

  "Where?"

  "We can ship it to my company."

  "You have a sound lab?"

  "No, but we use experts in private industry, sound technicians included."

  "I'll make a copy."

  "All right, but who gets the original? It could make a difference."

  You could almost see Yuri's mind ticking through its options. It was clear that she didn't like any of them, but she came up with the right decision.

  "You can have the original."

  By the time we made a copy, my shirt had been washed and dried. I was presentable when a FedEx man came by for the tape and gave his personal oath for next-day delivery. I didn't think to ask if he meant real time or if crossing the International Date Line gave him an extra twenty-four hours to make good.

  I thought we had an excellent chance of getting back an audible version of the recording, but that didn't guarantee we'd have much worth knowing. The only thing we'd learned from our near-death experience was that we were making someone very nervous.

  I didn't believe that the hornet's nest we ran into was put into place just because of my fight with a lower echelon goon. We must be getting close to something. That worried me, because we didn't have much of an idea what it was. So far, they had been on the defensive. How far could we push before they became the hunters?

  Yuri still looked upset, and I couldn't think of anything to cheer her up. "I guess we'd better take the bike back to your agency."

  "You got an agenda?"

  "Not for today."

  "Would you like some tea?"

  "Sure, I'll try almost anything once."

  "You don't drink tea?"

  "It's been a while."

  "I'd offer coffee, but I don't have any. I don't drink alcohol at home, so no luck there either."

  "Tea's perfect."

  Yuri busied herself with kettle, cups and strainer, while I stared at the goldfish.

  "What's its name?"

  "Wanda."

  "Really?"

  "No, it's a movie title." She crinkled her forehead in a scowl but smiled with her mouth and eyes. "Do I look weird enough to name a fish?"

  I held up my hands in surrender. "Just making conversation."

  "You aren't very good at it."

  Yuri was. I didn't have to say much else. She told me she wouldn't mind having a dog, if she had a yard or time to take care of it. In New Orleans, she used to throw sticks into a bayou for her aunt's Labrador retriever to fetch. She'd often dived in too, clothes and all, even though her aunt had warned her about the dangers of alligators and water moccasins. The dog loved the water, which cooled it off in Louisiana's steamy summers. Having a dog in tow also made it easier to meet boys. She made her lopsided grin when she said it.

  How would that grin look on top of wet clothes and bare feet?

  "I doubt you needed much help from a pet Lab."

  "I don't know why you doubt it." Yuri set two cups on a coffee table and sat on the sofa beside me. "Didn't you just ask me the name of my fish? Pets help conversation."

  That was different. Hadn't I figured out we were only colleagues? Didn't a man answer when I called here? Didn't you say he'd stay to take care of you?

  Didn't I have anything to say out loud? "I'm not a boy. I mean..." I gave up.

  "You're no youngster, but that's not what you wanted to say is it?"

  "I mean I'm no suitor."

  If that had been true and if we'd both understood it, we would have chuckled and sipped tea. Instead, Yuri recoiled almost imperceptibly and shifted her weight away from me. She couldn't go far. It was a small sofa.

  It was also what historians call a defining moment. "Carpe diem, now, Mick. Mañana doesn't come."

  "I was going to stay at the hospital because I was worried, because I felt some responsibility for what happened. And because..."

  The tension in Yuri that I couldn't see, but could sense, dissipated. She ran her finger over the handle of her teacup but didn't pick it up.

  "I wanted to be with you when you were hurt. I made Morimoto-san give me your home phone number."

  "He told me what you said."

  "When I called, a man answered, then you said he was going to watch over you for a couple of days. I was already angry about what happened to you."

  In truth, angry wasn't even close to what I'd felt, but it was as much as I wanted to say. "I won't apologize for going to Foxx Starr. Considering the state I was in, not going was not an option, but I'll admit it might not have been the smartest move."

  Normally, Yuri would have come up with a chastising one-liner. She was silent.

  I reached for her hand that was tracing the teacup's handle and touched my fingers to her palm. She looked at me, and her gaze flicked back and forth from one of my eyes to the other as though she sought passage to my soul.

  "About the man who was here when you called..."

  I touched my lips to her ear and spoke softly. "I don't care."

  We spent a long time on the sofa before the phone rang.

  Yuri answered. She spoke a few words, and then wrinkles played across her forehead. "You ought to take this."

  It was Morimoto. He'd gotten a call from Dorian's replacement.

  I had meant to talk to people at Dorian's company, but it hadn't been a high priority. His problem was hardly business related. "Give me his number, Morimoto-san. I'll call first thing tomorrow."

  He gave it to me. "He says it's important."

  "I'm not a doctor or a fireman. Anything I can help him with can wait until tomorrow."

  "He said it was an emergency."

  "All the more reason to wait."

  "But..."

  "Goodbye, Morimoto-san. By the way, if I get any more calls, just take a message."

  * * * *

  I woke before Yuri and went out quietly to buy coffee and toiletries. By the time I got back, she was up and didn't look happy.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I just—" She shook her head slightly. "You weren't here."

  I smiled, glad that she cared. She returned it.

  "Afternoon tea is all right, but I don't want to face the morning unarmed." I held up the coffee. "I also got a razor. Can I borrow your shower?"

  "Mm hmm, but wait." She kissed me hard on the mouth and made a husky growl in her throat.

  "I'm kind of primitive myself." She rubbed her cheek against my day-old stubble and nipped my earlobe. "Make that feral."

  The musky aura of morning clung to her hair and skin. I held her to me and stepped toward the bedroom. She resisted.

  "Too late. We've got an innocent man to clear, and you have an emergency that you ignored yesterday."

  She nudged me toward the bathroom.

  I thought about asking for help washing my back. Then, I remembered how she'd scrubbed my wounded arm and decided not to push my luck.

  After breakfast, we rode the Honda to Protect Agency and checked in with Morimoto.

  He said Dorian's replacement, Lance Allworth, had gotten into town a couple of days after me. Morimoto had the phone numbers to his home and office. I tried the office first. He was there.

  "What's the emergency?"

  "I'd rather talk to you in person." He said it was complicated and asked me to meet him at a coffee shop nearby.

  "I'll be right over."

  He'd described himself as sandy-haired, blue-eyed and mid-thirties. It was a big coffee shop, but he was easy to find.

  Allworth was reading the Nikkei Asian Review on a tablet computer. The top headline said that deflation was about to be fixed after years and years of sapping the economy. I ordered a five-dollar glass of grapefruit juice and wondered what things were like before prices had collapsed.

  "Have you seen Dorian?" I asked him.

  "Not yet. I've been pretty tied up." He rotated his index fingers around each other to emphasize "tied up" and looked embarrassed as though he was worried I might think he was a shirker.

  I guessed he had
made Eagle Scout before he was thirteen, had graduated from his father's alma mater and had married his high school squeeze right out of college. He also looked tough enough to spit in the eye of anyone who called him stodgy. Kyle Solutions should have sent him instead of Dorian in the first place.

  "No reason you should have visited him, just curious. He's my problem, not yours."

  "I hope that's true. That's why I called."

  I arched an eyebrow.

  "One of our Tokyo engineers said he needed to talk to me about Dorian. We were in the office. I said 'all right, go ahead,' but the engineer, his name was Hashimoto, said 'we'd better talk someplace else.' 'That was okay too,' I said, even though I didn't understand why the office wouldn't do. Well, that night I was really in a bind. There's a lot to sort out, you see. So I—"

  The only thing I saw was that I wanted Allworth to make his point. "What did Hashimoto say, Lance?"

  "Well that's the thing."

  I arched both eyebrows and made a steeple with my fingertips.

  "He was killed in a traffic accident. I thought I should tell you, since he'd said he wanted to talk about Dorian. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but ..."

  "I'm not a big believer in coincidence. Where exactly were you when you talked to Hashimoto?"

  "In my office."

  "When was that?"

  "Two days ago."

  "And he died when?"

  "Last night on his way home. Like I said, there's a lot to sort out, so I didn't get back with him right away. I'd planned to try to see him today."

  I was done talking and listening. "We need to see your office. Now."

  I heard Lance's voice, but my focus was elsewhere as we walked to the company headquarters. When we got to his office, I told him to leave. Like I thought, he was a tough guy. He didn't give ground easily.

  I rolled up my sleeve and explained the reason for the bandage, told him I had broken a man's jaw and that my female colleague had been hospitalized for a concussion. "Dorian is in a Japanese lockup. Maho and Hashimoto are dead.

  "How deep do you want to get into this Lance? What are Kyle Solution's widow's benefits?"

  He handed me the key to his door.

  "Just so you'll know, I might be using your phone."

  Lance nodded as he backed away.

  About an hour later, I found what I was looking for in a light fixture. I left it in place.

  I went out, locked the door behind me and located Lance.

  "Do you have another key to your office?"

  He shook his head.

  "Good. I won't be using your phone after all."

  I went outside and called Yuri.

  "You've got bugs. Do you have an exterminator."

  "What?"

  "I need to sweep an area for transmitters. Do you have any locators?"

  "Of course."

  I told her where I was. She said she'd be here in forty-five minutes.

  There was one more call to make. It was 3:00 a.m., Abe Granger's local time. I was going to enjoy this.

  "You know who this is. Who's that?" Abe sounded only slightly groggy.

  "This is Mick, working all the twists out of that high-profile case you sent me on."

  "Glad you called. What can I do for you?"

  "You know it's no fun waking you up, if you're not riled about it."

  "Never happen, Mick. Speak to me."

  "We've got another death in the company, a traffic mishap. As far as anyone knows, it was an accident."

  "You're not accepting that?"

  "Let's say I'm not satisfied. I just found a bug in Allworth's office. He's the guy who replaced Dorian."

  I talked for about ten minutes, filling him in on the case to date. Abe gave an occasional grunt to let me know he was listening. Anyone else I knew, me included, would only be thinking about going back to bed. Six years from now, Abe would be able to recite precisely what I was telling him.

  "By the way, did you get my tape?"

  "We did. We got a clean copy. It wasn't difficult. It's already shipped and will be with you Rikki-Tik. Probably tomorrow morning, your time."

  "Thanks, I've got a couple other favors to ask. I'd like a digital camera, as small as you have, and two or three vehicle tracers and receivers. I also need everything you can find out about Dorian from the time he graduated from high school."

  "I thought you'd decided he was innocent."

  "I've decided he's not guilty of strangling the girl. No one's innocent. Sleep tight, Abe."

  After Yuri arrived with her bug locator, we found another transmitter in Lance's office and four more in other rooms. Lance had wanted us to take them out, but we convinced him it was safer to let sleeping bugs lie. Whoever planted them would take other measures, if they were gone. No point in sounding alarms. He just needed to be careful about what was said.

  We also briefly interviewed every employee of the company. No one would admit to knowing anything about Dorian's escapade or Hashimoto's death. No surprise there, but we needed to cover bases.

  By the time we finished, it was late. I invited Yuri to dinner.

  "Do you like grilled fish?"

  I nodded, and she led the way to an izakaya, a sort of Japanese tavern. The place had enough variety, from red snapper to tiny flounders to mackerel, to make me home sick for the Gulf Coast. One thing the place had that Gulf Coast restaurants didn't was a serving of raw fish with the still twitching victim skewered, vital organs intact, and artistically arranged next to its own flesh. Guaranteed fresh.

  I didn't mind raw fish, but live fish was a different matter. I turned away from the table next to us and focused on Yuri. We sat on barrel-shaped stools at a wood plank table amid a mostly drunk, boisterous crowd of what Japanese call "salary men" and "office ladies." It might not have been the best atmosphere to bring it up, but about a third of the way through a quart-sized mug of beer I asked who the guy was taking care of her.

  She smiled, lowered her chin and looked at me through her bangs. "You said you didn't care."

  "I didn't, then. I do now."

  "Why didn't you care then?" She nudged her knee against mine.

  I shrugged.

  "Because you were a rutting bull?" Her eyes teased, while she savored her secret.

  "I wouldn't put it like that. Let's just say I seized the day."

  "That's not all you seized."

  "Are you going to tell me or not?"

  "Promise you won't get angry."

  "How about a promise to get angry if you don't."

  "All right, he's a former boyfriend. We went together for a while, but we both decided we made better friends than lovers."

  "There's a rarity. You sure that conclusion was mutual."

  "I'm sure. Anyway, he's between jobs and had the time to look after me. He's a good guy. You'd like him."

  I was comfortable leaving that notion to speculation. After we ate, I invited Yuri to my hotel. She said she preferred her own bed and invited me to her apartment.

  Tough choice. I hoped the concierge wouldn't miss me.

  Chapter 10

  It was about six-thirty when I left Yuri's. She had mumbled "goodbye," still snuggled in bed with a blanket pulled up to her chin. During the night, a cold front had chilled the atmosphere several degrees. Even indoors, my breath fogged the air.

  Outside, a humid wind fluttered the skirts and coats of early risers and skittered them along like the last leaves of autumn. I had beaten the morning crush of commuters, but not by enough. The relatively empty train I entered was packed before it reached the stop for my hotel. I had trouble forcing my way out before the crowd on the platform started pushing in.

  A clerk at the hotel desk said I didn't have any packages. I gave him my cell phone number and asked him to contact me immediately if I got a delivery. Upstairs, I took my time changing clothes, and, on the way to the dining room, bought a newspaper to read over breakfast. I was on my third cup of coffee and working the crossword when the c
lerk brought the tape to my table.

  I called Protect Agency and told Morimoto I was on my way.

  Like Abe had promised, the copy of the tape was clean. Yuri translated as Morimoto and I listened. Even without understanding the words though, it was easy enough to know we had something. A man was speaking in guttural slurs. Ito was snide and taunting. A young woman's voice was defiant. There was the sound of a slap and then crying.

  Yuri folded her arms across her chest and bit her lower lip. "If that's who I think it is, we did bad."

  Morimoto was nodding.

  "Maho's friend?" I guessed.

  "Sounds like it. Ito called her 'Sayo-chan.' It could be a diminutive form of Sayoko. Maho's friend was Sayoko Shioda. You can tell as much from the context as I can. They're asking her what she's told anyone about 'that thing.' Whatever that means."

  Yuri put her hands behind her neck and tilted her head back for a few seconds.

  "I'll get Nozaka. Maybe he'll remember her voice. If it is her, he's got her phone number."

  After she left, Morimoto scrunched his forehead as if he was too deep in thought to be disturbed.

  I bothered him anyway. "What do you think?"

  "They told us about the travel poster."

  "Yeah, next Nozaka called and asked for a photo session with the girl who was not Maho in that poster. Yuri got tagged following Ito. Then I stormed into Foxx Starr and punched out the resident watch. Ito started thinking and remembered telling us about the poster. That's not enough to convict, but... por Dios!" I slapped my head.

  Yuri walked in with Nozaka. "What's wrong?"

  "Are you still getting transmissions from the bug in Ito's office?"

  Yuri shrugged and gestured toward Morimoto.

  "We checked the receiver yesterday. The tape was blank," he said.

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  Morimoto still didn't get it. He only looked flustered.

  I fought for calm. If I showed anger, that would kill any relationship with Morimoto. "We don't know exactly when this conversation occurred, but obviously it was before we snatched the tape. Later, they found the bug. They know now that we have recorded this conversation. They might assume we know more than we do. If they haven't gotten to Sayoko again, you can bet they're looking for her."

  "Okay, Mick." Yuri put her hand on my shoulder. "Since Nozaka-san is here, let's go ahead and try to verify that it's her."