Inside the museum, another Japanese face wasn’t so openly mirroring his thoughts. As the only Asian face in the sparsely populated museum, he knew he would be conspicuous. And he had built his career on not being conspicuous.
He knew that Japanese tour groups were taken through on a regular basis, so he had delayed his inspection until such a group showed up. The flock of Japanese businessmen headed by a bustling Leeuwenberg entered the museum, and the man studied the group carefully. He decided that it would do. In this group of tourists, he could disappear as surely as he could on a darkened night.
He approached the stragglers at the end of the group and asked if they would mind if he followed them through the museum. A few members of the group thought this request unusual and perhaps even a bit impolite, but they didn’t dream of refusing a fellow countryman.
As he walked through the museum with the group, the man loosened his tie and mimicked the reluctant shuffle of the businessmen, even though he was anxious to see something. Like a chameleon, he adapted to his surroundings and blended in so effectively that Leeuwenberg didn’t notice that his tour group had increased by one. The man showed patience as Leeuwenberg took them by dingy ship models and exhibits that celebrated Holland’s past as a major maritime power. The only thing that raised even a flicker of interest in him was a model of Henry Hudson’s ship, The Half Moon, which the guide said was used to discover the Hudson River. The man had been in New York only a few days before.
His patience was rewarded when the group went into a section of the museum devoted to the Dutch presence in Nagasaki. In the 1600s the Dutch had a monopoly on access to Japan through a community in the port of Nagasaki. The museum had maps and artifacts depicting this community, including a model of the tiny island to which the Dutch community was confined. The island, made artificially rectangular by stone sea walls, was linked to the mainland by a single bridge. There was a guard tower at the mainland side that made the Dutch enclave look like what it was designed to be: a prison that would keep the corrupting European influence away from the people. In the five minutes the group spent at the exhibit, the man absorbed every detail, committing the placement of doors, windows, and cabinets to memory.
When the tour group returned to the museum lobby, Leeuwenberg meticulously counted them. He had the exact number he started with, and he had no hint that he had hosted an additional member during the tour. A few of the Japanese near the back of the group noticed that the stranger was missing, but none knew exactly when he had disappeared. Any lingering curiosity about the man vanished when Leeuwenberg suggested, “Would you gentlemen care to delete two museums from today’s tour and visit some Rotterdam cabarets? You can drink Dutch beer.” A ragged cheer of enthusiasm rose as Leeuwenberg’s statement was translated into Japanese and passed on.
Two hours later, the museum went through its normal closing routine. Two guards walked through the various rooms asking a few lingering members of the public to leave. One of the guards walked into the men’s room, looking under the stall doorways to see if he could see any shoes. Seeing nothing, he turned off the light and exited the men’s room, continuing his rounds.
The man was crouched on top of the toilet seat in a back stall. A schoolboy’s trick, but sometimes the simplest strategies are the best. He waited.
A few hours later, the door of the restroom opened. The man carefully looked down the darkened hall. There was no evidence of life. During his tour of the museum, the man had carefully noted there were no key boxes, which indicated there was no night watchman, so he was fairly confident he would not be disturbed. He stepped into the hallway and made his way towards the Nagasaki exhibit.
The object he was looking for was in a glass case near the model of the Dutch settlement. He pulled out a collection of lock picks and inserted one pick into the cabinet lock to make an exploratory probe. It was a simple lock and he felt the tumblers turn under a little pressure from the face of the pick. He wiggled the pick around, twisted, and the lock snapped open. He lifted the top of the glass case, reached inside, and took his prize. Then he relocked the case.
He walked to a window he had previously chosen. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a scrap of wire. He carefully wrapped the ends of the bare wire around the contacts for the alarm sensor guarding the window, shorting out the sensor and making it possible for him to open the window without setting off the alarm.
He took out a small flashlight and risked shining the light for a few seconds to make sure the wire was connected to the proper contacts. Then, on a whim, he extracted a length of string from another pocket and securely tied it to the wire that was shorting out the alarm system. When he was satisfied with the connections, he unlocked and opened the window. The alarm stayed silent.
He climbed through the window into an alley running behind the museum. He ran the string tied to the shorting wire outside with him and closed the window until it was almost fully shut. Then he tugged at the string until the shorting wire was worked off the alarm contacts and pulled outside through the narrow opening of the window. He shut the window the last fraction of an inch and used a flat piece of metal to poke up between the two parts of the window and swing the lock back in place. The man allowed himself a grin as he put the metal, wire, and string in his pocket. When the authorities discovered the theft, the locked cabinet and untripped alarm would give them something to puzzle over.
Looking both ways, he put the stolen object in a long brown paper sack and stuck it under his arm like a loaf of French bread. Nonchalantly, he walked out of the alley towards his rented car parked a few blocks away. He whistled a little tune as he walked, happy as any tourist.
A few hours later another man was whistling, but this time it was literally half a world away, in Tokyo, Japan. His whistling was an absentminded habit when his thoughts were absorbed by a problem. He was a tall man, wearing a wrinkled gray suit over a white knit shirt that was yellowed from neglect. His hair was closely cropped to his head and his skin was pockmarked. He walked towards the California Orange bar with a long loping gait, much like a wolf.
The bar was in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, and when he entered, it took a few seconds to let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting. The bar catered to students, and at thirty-eight, he was easily the oldest person in the establishment. Even the bartender looked young.
The walls were decorated with broad slashes of color and a long bar dominated the narrow room. It was early afternoon, but there were a dozen young people populating the room, mostly sitting in groups of three or four. The music coming over the sound system was a Japanese rap song and the older man curled his lip. Lately, four out of five top hits in Japan were rap songs, and the surrender to percussive cacophony offended him. He much preferred the traditional and melodic Japanese enka music.
Sitting at the bar was the person he was looking for, nineteen-year-old Yasuo Ishibashi. The young man was nursing a beer, and he seemed to be sitting at the far end of the bar to avoid company. Ishibashi looked troubled, and his gaze was focused on his beer mug.
The older man strode over to the open stool next to Ishibashi and sat down. Ishibashi looked up briefly, and morosely returned to staring at his beer. When the older man caught the bartender’s attention, he ordered a Johnnie Walker Black Label, an expensive drink in Tokyo. When the drink was served, he sipped it and smacked his lips in appreciation. Then he started talking to Ishibashi. “Do you come here often?”
Ishibashi looked offended that his solitude had been disturbed, but politeness forced him to answer. “Pretty often.”
Given a wedge, the older man continued, “Are you a student?”
“Waseda,” Ishibashi said, naming an expensive private university.
“Waseda!” the older man said. “My brother went to Waseda. I’m a great admirer of your school.” The man gave Ishibashi a toothy grin, revealing a row of badly aligned teeth highlighted by a prominent gold front tooth.
Ishibashi gave the rumpled man n
ext to him a surprised look. The thought of any relative of this disheveled character going to Waseda seemed to startle him. Before Ishibashi could say anything, the man offered, “Let me buy you a drink.”
“No, thank you. That’s very nice of you, but you don’t have to buy me a drink.”
“Nonsense!” the older man insisted. He waved at the bartender, who came over to the end of the bar. “Bring my young friend a drink,” the older man said. “Do you like Johnnie Walker or Chivas?” he asked Ishibashi.
Nonplussed, Ishibashi said, “Johnnie Walker is fine, thank you, but you don’t have to buy me a drink.”
“Nothing is too good for a Waseda student,” the older man said. “You’re the future hope of our country.”
Ishibashi waved his hand as if to brush off both the compliment and the drink, but the bartender was already pouring. Sighing, he picked up the drink and poured it down. Johnnie Walker Black, which was far above his drinking budget, did taste good. Before he could finish the first drink, the weird fellow next to him was already waving for another round.
A few hours later, the older man was checking into one of Tokyo’s many love motels. In a land famed for its scarcity of space and privacy, love motels exist to provide amorous couples with both, at any time of the day or night. No desk clerk handled the check-in, because all transactions at this motel were handled discreetly by credit card and computer, with no humans to interfere with anonymity and secrecy.
The man inserted a recently stolen credit card into the check-in machine, and a video monitor flashed a polite greeting in kanji on its screen and directed him to room 116 with a little map. A magnetically encoded key was extended from a slot, and as he took the key, an admonition appeared on the screen reminding him to return the key when he was done because the room was being charged to the credit card by the hour.
The man returned briefly to the underground parking lot that served the motel. He looked around to assure himself that he was still alone before he opened the door to his Toyota. Sleeping soundly on the back seat was Ishibashi, drunk and snoring loudly. The man reached into the back of the car and took out a small bag. Then he rousted the sleeping student and helped him out of the car. With the drunk Ishibashi leaning against his shoulder and weaving unsteadily, the man and the youth made their way to room 116.
The magnetic key unlatched the door and they entered the room. The windowless room contained a bed covered with a garish red cover, a television, two doors along one wall, and an enormous mirror mounted on another wall to reflect any activity on the bed. The man dumped Ishibashi on the bed and chained the door behind them.
Placing the bag on the floor he walked over to the doors on the opposite wall and opened one. It was a toilet. He closed the door and opened the second door. It was a Japanese-style bathroom with a large heart-shaped tub. The room had a drain in the tile floor, low-set faucets on the wall, and two small stools. He took one of the stools out of the bathroom and positioned it by the bed.
He then perched on the edge of the bed and looked at the youth for a few moments, contemplating his next actions. While he sat there he noticed the sounds of a couple in the next room coming through the too-thin walls. They were moaning and groaning and occasionally the woman was shouting terms of endearment in both Japanese and French. He couldn’t decide if it was an office lady who thought speaking French during love-making was sexy, or a hooker who was entertaining a visiting French tourist. Either way, the woman speaking French during sex seemed to symbolize everything he hated about what Japan had become. Her voice spoiled what he had come for.
He turned on the TV, twisting the sound knob savagely to maximum volume. Before the picture came on there was a notice on the screen that the television would be an extra charge to the credit card. When the notice disappeared, the screen dissolved into a soft-core Japanese porno film showing a scene with a young girl running naked on a beach. Because Japanese censors don’t allow frontal nudity, a blue dot floated on the screen to cover her crotch. He wasn’t interested in the girl, but he was grateful that the booming music that accompanied the girl’s capering on the beach drowned out the sounds from the next room.
He turned his attention to his bag and unzipped the top. He took a length of rope from the bag. He placed the bathroom stool directly under the light fixture in the room’s ceiling and stood on the stool. Reaching up, he was able to tie the rope around the fixture. He stepped off the stool and went over to Ishibashi. The young man had fallen into a drunken stupor again, and a line of drool was dripping down his face.
The older man roused Ishibashi and got him off the bed. He led him over to the stool and tried to hoist the drunken youth onto the stool.
“What’re you doing?” the young man asked.
“Just cooperate for a moment,” the older man said.
“Cooperate?”
“Don’t you want to end your troubles? I have a way for you to do it.”
“What do you know about my troubles?” the youth mumbled.
“I know all about them and I’ve decided to help you out of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain in a minute. For now, just cooperate and stand on the stool.”
The youth was clearly puzzled, but in his drunken state he couldn’t fathom what was happening and docilely did as he was asked to.
“What are you doing?” Ishibashi protested as the older man tied the rope around his neck. As the young man raised his hands to his neck to remove the rope, the older man quickly kicked the stool away.
When Ishibashi’s weight hit the rope, the light fixture gave way and partially pulled out of the ceiling. This was a development the older man had not planned for. He had expected Ishibashi’s neck to snap, but instead, with the failed light fixture absorbing some of the shock, Ishibashi was hanging from the rope by his neck with his feet barely brushing the floor.
Tremendous pain shot through the young man’s body, sobering him up as the rope jerked at his neck, crushing his windpipe. In the large mirror Ishibashi could see himself dangling from the rope with the half-pulled-out light fixture above. His toes skimmed the floor, but he wasn’t low enough to relieve the pressure on his neck by standing on his tiptoes. He reached out to the older man standing next to him, trying to grab him for support. The older man stepped back.
Ishibashi clawed at the rope and tried to pull himself up to release the pain and tension from his neck. He was partially successful and tried to croak out a yell for help. From his crushed larynx a hoarse sound emerged and the effort caused him even more pain. Hanging from his neck and hands, Ishibashi tried to ignore the new pain and continued to shout. His feeble shouting made no impression on the older man or the couple in the next room. Even if the couple could be distracted from their passion, the loud sound of the television drowned out Ishibashi’s weakening croaks for help.
Gradually, while watching himself strangle in the big mirror on the opposite wall, Ishibashi felt himself succumbing to pain and weakness. His strength gave out and he could no longer suspend himself hanging from the rope. The noose tightened. His toes frantically scratched at the surface of the carpeting in the room trying to support his weight. It was incomprehensible to Ishibashi that the older man had done this to him. He had just met him in the bar. He tried to curse the man, but the rope was too tight around his neck and he could only make a weak gurgling noise. Finally, Ishibashi lost bodily control before slipping into unconsciousness and death.
When the older man was sure the youth was dead, he briefly thought about retying the rope to hoist the body higher. But the growing brown stain on the young man’s pants made the older man reluctant to make a neat job of the faked suicide. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and decided he didn’t want to do more.
“If you were a tough guy, you wouldn’t be here,” the older man said with contempt to the dangling body. In Japanese slang a tough guy is someone who can hold his liquor. The older man inspected the room, wiping down doork
nobs and the stool with a handkerchief to get rid of fingerprints. Then, after turning down the volume on the TV while using the handkerchief as a glove, he quietly left.
3
While things that would directly affect my life were happening literally around the world, I was sitting in Los Angeles feeling fat, dumb, and happy.
Well, I guess fat isn’t totally accurate, although I do have that extra five to ten pounds that seem to attach themselves to your body around your fortieth birthday. Dumb isn’t totally accurate either, although I felt pretty dumb when I lost my computer programming job as part of what is euphemistically known as corporate downsizing. I felt dumb about devoting countless hours to a corporation that was willing to cut hundreds of employee jobs without cutting a single executive. But despite the weight and the lack of a job, happy was a totally accurate description.
I was sitting in the living room of my apartment in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles sharing good news with my girlfriend, Mariko Kosaka. I held up a letter that had been delivered by DHL, the next-day overseas courier service, and asked Mariko, “Do you want me to read it to you?”
“Of course, Ken. You dragged me down here just so you could read it, so don’t play coy with me now,” Mariko answered.
With a sheepish grin, I looked at the letter and started reading.
“Dear Mr. Tanaka. I am the foreign guest booking producer for the Japanese television program News Pop. News Pop is a blend of current news stories and live interviews, and it’s very popular in Japan. We noted with interest your participation in solving the murder of Mr. Matsuda, as reported in the Asahi Shim-bun newspaper. We feel this story would also be of interest to our viewers and we would like you to appear on our television show either next weekend or the weekend following. We realize this is short notice, but I’m sure you can appreciate that our program likes to present stories while they are still topical and in the public’s mind. If you can appear on either show, please contact me by fax or at the number listed on our letterhead. If you would like, please feel free to reverse the telephone charges. If you can appear on the program, we will pay your airfare to Japan and food and lodging expenses for a period of up to five days. You will stay at the luxurious Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and fly business class to Japan via ANA. I hope you will be able to accept our invitation, and I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest possible convenience. Yours truly, Buzz Sugimoto, Foreign Guest Booking Producer.”
The Toyotomi Blades (Ken Tanaka Mysteries Book 2) Page 2