Tokyo Enigma

by Sam Waite

  Rap, knock, rap, knock. The sounds came in twos, syncopated, light then hard. I saw a crow, heard a caw. A raven rapping, tapping at my hotel door. A furnace burned in my head, but my skin felt chilled when I pulled back the bed covers. I limped to the door. It was Yuri.

  "I brought goodies." She grinned and hobbled in on crutches. A big shopping bag dangled from one hand along the shaft of a crutch. "Get back in bed."

  I did.

  "You look better," she said.

  "Better than what?"

  "Yesterday. I was here yesterday. You don't remember?"

  I shook my head.

  "You were pretty groggy. I didn't stay long, but I was able to figure out you needed these." She sat on the bed and pulled a package of bubble-wrapped pills out of the shopping bag. "These are for pain and fever. These are sleeping pills. They're stingy with those. These are antibiotics."

  "How'd you snare that?"

  "I went back to the emergency room and talked them out of the pain and fever drugs, sleeping pill and one set of antibiotics." She held up three pills wrapped in blue. "I said you were in a bad way and couldn't come in. That's it though. Next time you gotta go yourself."

  I reached for a set of pills wrapped in yellow that she hadn't touched. There were about twenty pills.

  "Those are more antibiotics," she said. "The hospital only gave me three, one day's worth."

  "Where'd you get the other set?"

  "From a VD clinic. I figured you'd need more, so I asked Ota-san to help. You remember Mai, your traveling companion?"

  "Yeah, I'm not her type."

  "Nah, she said you were okay for an old guy. Anyway, she went to a VD clinic and gave them the right symptoms, but refused to be examined. I guess they didn't want an infected lass wandering the streets, so they gave her the cure. Might work for water germs."

  "That's public health. Won't they..."

  "She used Maho-san's alias ID. Let's see that leg." Yuri took off the bandage, applied antiseptic and put on a new dressing. "Does it hurt?"

  "Not now. How's your ankle?"

  "A nuisance. I had it X-rayed. Nothing's broken, but a sprain can seem worse than a break at first. I got a cortisone shot. Should be off the crutches in a week or so."

  "You need to elevate it whenever possible." I put a pillow down for her foot, and she lay with her head on my chest. I nuzzled my cheek against her hair and combed my fingers through it. It smelled of winter, clean and stark. Her breast rose against me as our breathing flowed in and out of sync. Maybe our thoughts did too. We talked only a little about mundane things. She'd brought fruit and snacks as well as medicine. Driving with a sprained foot was tough. It'd be nice to spend the winter in Kyushu, or Australia, or Truk.

  After a while, she lifted her head and looked up at me. I sensed the words before she spoke.

  "It's time I should go."

  I wanted to tell Time to take the day off, take a year. Right then, I wouldn't have minded firing the bum and kicking his sorry self into eternity.

  "You ought not get out of bed today, but if you're up to it, how about we have a meeting here this evening, Sayoko, Nozaka and Morimoto? I've been out of touch, myself. We can't leave it hanging too long."

  I looked in the shopping bag. "Bananas, almonds and four kinds of pills. I'll be fine."

  "Just don't take the sleepy stuff, until night time."

  "Everything but. Goodbye Yuri."

  I ate half a banana and chased it with a packet of powder to protect my stomach from the medicine I was about to take. In Vietnam, twenty-year-old medics and corpsmen invented cures to ailments that American doctors had never encountered. I knew one who brewed a yellow salve to kill a fungus that ate white blotches across skin. Another concoction of antibiotics cured a fever. The medic said the key was one massive dose. Otherwise, the bug seemed to gain resistance. It was worth a try. I took a palm full of antibiotic pills and two fever pills. Three hours later, I was sopping wet with sweat but cool as a beat-poet iceman. I rubbed myself down with a damp towel, shaved, drank about a gallon of water and ate a little. Bring 'em on Yuri.

  She did.

  She showed up with Sayoko, who described her kidnapping. She'd run out of money and places to stay. She'd gotten several calls from Ito, finally answered one and, after some cajoling, agreed to meet. Ito persuaded Sayoko to ride with her. It was the last she saw freedom. They went to Ito's house. A couple of thugs ushered her inside, and they locked the doors. She'd been afraid to scream or try to escape. They had threatened retribution.

  "Does she understand she's a witness against a policeman?"

  Yuri asked her. "Yes."

  "She understands the danger?"

  "Yes."

  "She won't leave the agency by herself until this is over?"

  Yuri translated my question, but didn't have to explain the answer. Sayoko's head was wagging like a puppy dog tail.

  "I think we should call Kuroda. He might not have been interested in an unverified kidnapping, but now we've got a witness for his bad-cop investigation."

  Everyone agreed. It went on a list of things to do tomorrow. Item number two was to interview Dorian.

  "Did Ito try to get any other information from her besides the key?"

  "Not specifically," Yuri translated.

  "Then why were they keeping her?"

  We came up with lots of reasons. They might have figured out that we had connected her to the plainclothes cops. They might have wanted her to help them find the motorcycle boy. Maybe they just hadn't yet decided what to do with her.

  "Did they ever talk about the tape? Did they know what was on it?"

  Sayoko ran her fingers along the sides of her head. "They didn't talk to me about it, but they talked about it in front of me. They said they could use 'her' for dubbing. 'Her' meant me."

  "Dubbing? You mean a voiceover?"

  Yuri answered directly. "Probably not. It's a loan word, but in Japanese we use it to say 'make a copy.'"

  "They wanted to use Sayoko to make a copy of the tape. That doesn't make any—"

  Nozaka snapped his fingers and pointed at me.

  Gotcha!

  That's why the plainclothes cop didn't care when I told him we had copied the tape. They had already figured the cat was out of the bag, or if it wasn't yet, it soon would be. They didn't need the original tape or even to stop distribution of it. All they needed was a copy. When I realized what they had in mind, I wanted to go back to the river, find Yamazaki and put a knife in his heart. I wanted to torch Ito's home with all the rest of them tied to stakes inside.

  Sayoko would have been forced to play the role of Maho, same positions, same actions with another man. They would shoot a separate video that matched the original, then map images of the man over those of Ohashi, the commissioner. They could say the original was the fake, a libel fabricated by political or personal enemies. They didn't have to prove how it was done or anything else, just raise doubt.

  Sayoko would have been a human prop needed only to get the body parts in the right positions. After they had finished with her, then what? They had already killed twice, Maho and the engineer, Hashimoto.

  To pull it off, they would need a world-class technician in digital video and video animation. Japan was knee deep in talent like that. They could probably find someone who needed money.

  Without the fever and after two days' rest, my leg wound wasn't much of an encumbrance. I went to Protect Agency on my own. Yuri had contacted Kuroda, and he agreed to meet us at the agency.

  I asked Ishii, the lawyer, to sit in with us. He represented my client, Dorian, so could he help us out? He said no. He listened to what we had found, but he didn't see a direct tie-in to Maho's murder. If there was no link, he couldn't bill for his time. I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn't construct a logical link myself.

  Gut link, yes. Logical link, no.

  He wouldn't understand that. Lawyers don't think with anatomical bits below their necks. At least, not
when it comes to fees. I called Abe and asked him if GRIM Inc. would guarantee payment for Ishii's time. Otherwise, he might never see my cheery face outside a Japanese lockup.

  It took him an uncomfortably long time to say okay. We'd talk about that when I got back. I called Ishii again. With payment worked out, he said he was on his way.

  Our team exuded a false calm, while we waited for Kuroda. Even with the lawyer there on GRIM's nickel, we were all anxious about explaining what had happened. We still didn't know the condition of the people we'd encountered. I was especially concerned about the man Yuri had kicked. If she had hit the guy's throat instead of his head, he would not have survived without immediate and expert medical attention. I don't know if I had struck an artery in Yokoyama's neck or not. If I had, it would have been difficult to stop the bleeding. I knew the gunman I tackled had lost an eye. If anything happened to Yamazaki, it was an act of nature. We had his gun with his prints. We could establish self-defense, but that didn't mean we were clear. Judicial systems saw the world in proprietary light. Legal facts and true facts didn't always mesh.

  Ishii did most of the explaining. Kuroda didn't reveal anything in his expression until the presentation was over. When he did talk, he zeroed in on Nozaka for not reporting it earlier. Nozaka was the only one who hadn't been busy getting medical treatment. He was also the only who could locate the site again.

  We had it choreographed, bad news first, then evidential offerings to Kuroda. I came to Nozaka's rescue by dropping the thirty-eight on the table. It was in a plastic baggie. Drama, make him forget the bad stuff.

  Kuroda's focus shifted. "What's this?"

  "It was Yamazaki's. He dropped it. You might find a piece of my prints on the trigger guard where I picked it up. Any others should be his."

  Kuroda checked both sides of the gun through the baggie. Country of origin unknown. "What about the tape they wanted?"

  Mai Ota placed a copy of the tape in front of Kuroda and explained how we'd gotten it. Laws broken there I guess, but at least we hadn't stolen anything.

  "You should have told me," Kuroda said.

  "Told you what? We didn't know anything, until we checked. Besides, we had another concern, a kidnapping, that you and your people didn't much care about."

  Ishii was taking notes. He squirmed a little as Yuri translated. She must have done a good job.

  "Just a minute." I stood and walked out before Kuroda could react. Sayoko had been waiting in another room. I brought her back with me.

  Sayoko bowed and in a voice scarcely above a whisper told Kuroda about being taken to Ishii's home and held against her will. Nozaka and I had rescued her. Otherwise she'd still be there, or worse. She also told him about conversations regarding the tape.

  "Would you like to see it now?" I asked Kuroda.

  He nodded, but watched only several seconds, before he turned it off. "The woman is Maho Hosoi. Who is the man?"

  Yuri told him, but, of course, he already knew. He just wanted to confirm that we did.

  "There's more," I said. I showed him a picture of the plainclothes cop in the parking lot. "Do you remember this?"

  "Yes."

  I gestured toward Sayoko. She told him about her sex show with Maho and seeing one of the policemen that he was investigating.

  A wisp of a smile wriggled onto Kuroda's stoic mask. Maybe he'd gotten a glimpse of his next promotion. He already had Yuri's and my statements that we'd seen the two plainclothes policemen with Yamazaki in the forest, but Sayoko's statement seemed special. I wondered if he knew more about that night than we did.

  "This is a lot of information," he said. "It's good information, but we have to verify what you've done."

  He said he'd get a court order to open Maho's safe-deposit box. Don't bother, it'll be empty. Nozaka and Yuri and I would have to go back to the forest and show police where the things we'd described happened. He wanted Sayoko to take him to the house in Izu.

  In all of Kuroda's yada, yada there was an item that never got mentioned.

  "What about Dorian? What about Maho's murder investigation?" I asked.

  "As I said before, that will never be my case. But there will be another police officer assigned to it. You will have a fair investigation, and I will do what I can."

  Not good enough, Kuroda-san.

  * * * *

  Yuri and Nozaka went with the police to tour the site in the woods. I didn't think I could add much, so I begged out. That left me free to see Dorian. Ishii set up the visit, but he didn't come with me. No police chaperone either, just the two of us.

  I wasn't sure how to play it with this guy. Threaten, reassure or humor. He was the one being weighed on the scales of justice, but he was either unable or unwilling to help himself. Dorian showed up in jail-cell utilities, no civvy clothes, no one to impress.

  I stopped trying to figure Dorian out and just talked from my gut. "A low-life private investigator, who may or may not be dead because of me, said he figured you were holding out. I agree."

  "Are we talking about my defense?" Dorian maintained his practiced calm.

  "We are. The question is, how much you can contribute."

  "Nothing's changed. I still don't remember anything."

  "Not that night. I'm more interested in what you remember before then. The investigator I mentioned was seen giving Maho Hosoi money. We found his business card in the office of one your former employees, a Mr. Hashimoto. Have you heard about him? Killed in a car wreck."

  "Yes."

  "I'm not sure it was an accident. What do you think?"

  "I have no opinion. What are you getting at?"

  "Do you know if Hashimoto ever hired a private detective?"

  "Yes, at my request. It's common practice in Japan for companies to have prospective employees and business partners checked out."

  "Was Maho being considered for a job?"

  "I never said she was a subject. That's your inference. I wasn't directly involved. I don't know who Hashimoto used, or who he had investigated."

  "That's rough. Might've been an asset in getting you out of here."

  If I hadn't been watching closely, I wouldn't have noticed the slight rise in Dorian's eyebrow.

  "There's another factor." I said.

  "Which is?"

  "People have been hurt since we started this. If I find out that you've been hiding information that could have prevented that, I'll do whatever I can to keep you here for as long as possible. If anything else happens to me or anyone I care about, I won't bother with the authorities. I'll make sure that you have Mick Sanchez nightmares until the day I turn 'em off."

  He started to say something, but fell silent.

  I got up and walked to the door. "If your memory gets better, let me know."

  I called Will Simons and asked if he wanted to see a late afternoon matinee, private showing, strictly confidential.

  He made time for me. He was glad he did.

  "There's more creativity than I would have given that boy credit for." Will switched off the commissioner's video.

  I was curious about what had impressed him the most, but I let the question lie. "No doubt it's him, right?"

  "It's him."

  "But, as agreed, you won't do anything with it right now."

  "I couldn't if I wanted to. Reuters wouldn't touch this unless there was an official investigation. I could introduce it to some scandal-sheet lads though. They'd use it. They'd print still shots from the video. Then there'd be an investigation, and then we could run with it."

  "Don't do that, not just yet. They might have a counter-ploy."

  I told Will about the video-dubbing theory and briefed him on our woodland adventure. He asked me if he should set up another meeting with the FTC secretary. I said no. First, I wanted to find out how things went with Yuri and Nozaka.

  There was no way to tell when they'd be back, so I went to Protect Agency to wait. Sayoko and I kept each other company. She was antsy to get out. Instead
of an escorted break though, I gave her a lecture on risk avoidance in tortured Japanese, supplemented with gestures and artwork. I'm sure I made no sense, but it helped pass the time. After I was done, we played cards until our tummies rumbled. I was about to give in and take Sayoko out for supper, when Yuri and Nozaka came back.

  "How'd it go?" I said.

  "We did the tour. They made a sweep," Yuri said, "over a broad area. All we found was Yamazaki's body."

  I felt like I'd been sucker punched in the soul. I'd expected Yamazaki to suffer and pull through. I guess my expression said as much. Yuri addressed my unspoken response.

  "He was beached on a shoal, a good bit downstream from where you and Nozaka-san left him. The medical examiner said he'd drowned."

  "Drowned?"

  "Yeah. Nozaka-san was surprised too. He's already made a statement that Yamazaki was alive and on land when you both left him. They're going to want an affidavit from you also. Doesn't make sense does it?"

  "No." Unless, perhaps, Yuri and I weren't the only ones scheduled to be taken out that night. Assume Yamazaki had killed Maho. I had a theory of two people who carried out the murder. Could the other guy have been Yokoyama? With loose ends like that tied up, Yuri and I were hardly worth an afterthought. But why a drowning and why leave his body? Maybe Yamazaki had seen something coming, pushed into the river and swam until his strength gave out. Maybe some people had held him under water and let his body float downstream. They didn't care if he was found. Dead men don't talk a lot.

  Maybe supposition on the past wasn't worth a plugged nickel. What mattered was where to go from here. I didn't know at the moment. Yuri, Nozaka and I were shaking our heads at one another, when a young investigator for Protect Agency knocked on the door. He held a mobile phone.

  "There is a call for Sanchez-san."

  It was Abe Granger.

  "Congratulations," he said.