The Moving Blade

by Michael Pronko

  “No place to hang your coat up in here,” Hiroshi said to Takamatsu.

  “He brought out a stool for me.” Takamatsu nodded at his coat folded neatly behind him.

  “Suspension gives you time for clothes shopping,” Hiroshi scoffed.

  “Less than you’d think. Divorce cases take time.” Takamatsu chuckled. “Even though the causes are never hard to figure out.”

  “How do you know this yattai stall?” Hiroshi asked.

  “I once thought of putting a GPS tracker on the undercarriage, but I can always find him through his roof.”

  “His roof?”

  “Blue tile,” Takamatsu said. “Like the roof of Mattson’s house.”

  “I didn’t notice the roof.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have, with all there is to see inside. Like I told you, it’s small details—”

  “Enough. No squabbling tonight.” Sakaguchi looked back and forth at them until they both went back to their drinks. Sakaguchi motioned for a refill of shochu. “What did you see?” he asked Takamatsu.

  “It reminded me of that break-in from a couple years back where they killed the servant,” Takamatsu looked around Sakaguchi to be sure Hiroshi was listening. “It’s important to remember past cases. On that one, the servant, who doubled as chauffeur, came back for something the wife forgot. He interrupted the robbers at work and, though he fought hard, took a knife in the gut. The wife was at some gala event, while the servant bled to death at home.”

  The master set down octopus legs and fish paste balls in dashi broth.

  “I talked to a couple old colleagues in Chiba and Saitama. They had the same kind of break-ins, but no murders,” Takamatsu continued. “It seems like it’s a Pan-Asian set-up. They work in rotation.”

  “What kind of rotation?” Hiroshi asked.

  “Japanese come in first, take what they want, then tip off the Koreans. The Koreans come in and clean out what they want and pass the rest on to the Chinese. The Chinese from southeast Asia come first, leave the leftovers for mainland Chinese.”

  “That explains why the house got hit more than once,” Sakaguchi mused, working his chopsticks.

  “But wouldn’t they do it all on the same night?” Hiroshi asked.

  “I think that’s the burglary ideal, but it doesn’t always work. One group specializes in safes and secret closets, the next in computers and jewelry and the last snatches anything they can hock.”

  Sakaguchi frowned. “What about that ministry official killed last year? He was stabbed too. Any similarities?”

  Takamatsu played with his cufflinks. “We found nothing. No clues. No leads. Nothing. They were good.”

  “But what about Mattson?” Hiroshi said. “Was it bad timing or did they want something specific?”

  “Or, did they really go there to kill him, and to cover that up they made it look like he surprised them? I wonder.” Takamatsu nodded at a shallow metal oden steamer filled with fish cakes, black kelp in thick knots, and grey triangles of konnyaku. The master ladled out a selection with broth on top.

  “Either way, they know what they’re doing.” Sakaguchi took his bowl up to his mouth, slurping loudly.

  “That ministry official had millions of yen in the house,” Takamatsu said. “The family didn’t want the police to tell the press.”

  Sakaguchi set down his chopsticks. “Only officials keep that much money at home.”

  “Donations, bribes, hush money, they have to hide it somewhere, poor things,” Takamatsu laughed.

  “You think Mattson was hiding dirty money?” Hiroshi asked. He tried to look out through the plastic curtain around the stall. It was fogged up from steam, closing them in with no view outside.

  Takamatsu said, “Even if he was hiding money, that’s not why he was robbed.”

  The master set out another round of shochu mixed with tea.

  “Maybe he was robbed for the shunga?” Takamatsu laughed. “Can’t get those out of my head.”

  “I’m sure you can’t,” Hiroshi said.

  “You’re no different.” Takamatsu laughed again.

  Sakaguchi swallowed the last of his bowl and asked for more. “The bookstore twins said Mattson would know who owned the prints. They were rare, those prints, and worth a fortune.”

  “Enough to kill for?” Hiroshi asked.

  “Mattson was a specialist, but not a dealer. Maybe he owned a lot of rare prints. But more likely he just kept what he liked, sold the rest.”

  “Why would they steal computer images of woodblock prints?” Hiroshi asked.

  “Maybe they needed the image to set the sale up?” Takamatsu said. “As proof or promise.”

  “Could be,” Sakaguchi said. “We found where the netsuke carvings fit along the shelf. The dust left a perfect outline for each of the four. So, the dead guy in Golden Gai was definitely at Mattson’s. His name was Hideyasu Sato. A few prior arrests, but no convictions.”

  “Maybe he hid the original prints someplace before he was killed?” Hiroshi wondered.

  Sakaguchi nodded. “Those twins also said they were expecting the manuscript, but it was never delivered. I believe them about that.” Sakaguchi finished his bowl with a couple quick pushes of his chopsticks.

  Takamatsu and Hiroshi looked sideways at Sakaguchi filling himself up.

  Noticing their glances, Sakaguchi said, “This is lunch and dinner. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  “Don’t you think that American guy is a bit suspicious?” Hiroshi asked. “I mean, how did he even know there was a break-in at the house?”

  “He probably knows people.”

  “What people?”

  “Americans who know. Anyway, I thought you were the pro-America faction?” Takamatsu said.

  “I’m the pro-transparency faction. I’m going to make a few inquiries about who that guy Trey really is.”

  “On your computer? Or with your friends at Interpol?” Takamatsu asked. “I’m not sure I’d trust them. They never set foot on the street.”

  “I think I’ll poke around, see who he is,” Hiroshi said.

  “I can tell you that. He’s the knight in shining armor.” Takamatsu smiled. “Isn’t that how Americans think about themselves? They’re going to save the world?”

  Sakaguchi waved his chopsticks to quiet them down. “Chief told me Mattson was at every high-level meeting between Japan and America for the last couple decades. Why don’t you follow up on that instead? See if someone wanted him not to speak next week.”

  “I’ll do both,” Hiroshi said. “I know someone who will know about Mattson.”

  “The woman whose husband I’m investigating owns a media group. She knows all the major players. I’ll ask her, too,” Takamatsu said. “She’s been after some of these diplomats for years, has dirt on them all. She didn’t have any dirt on her husband, though. Had to hire me for that.”

  “Jamie had no idea where the manuscript might be,” Hiroshi said.

  Sakaguchi looked at him. “The other guy in the bookstore, crazy left-wing nut from Okinawa, said Mattson was going to expose something shocking,” Sakaguchi said.

  “If Mattson put in all the shocking things about Okinawa, it would make a long book,” Hiroshi said.

  “Maybe it’s gone,” Sakaguchi said.

  “We’ll find it,” Hiroshi said.

  “It’ll be fun looking. The daughter’s gorgeous, isn’t she?” Takamatsu asked. “I haven’t even seen her and I can tell.”

  “You caused enough trouble last summer,” Sakaguchi said, pointing his chopsticks rudely in Takamatsu’s direction.

  Takamatsu smirked.

  Hiroshi tapped his glass on the wood counter. “That woman should have been arrested, not taken out to dinner and whatever else you did.”

  Sakaguchi got a call and stepped outside the plastic curtain around the stall.

  Takamatsu leaned forward to be sure he could see Hiroshi’s face. “I was doing my job. You think of suspension as punishmen
t. I’d call it a consequence.”

  “You almost got me killed. And she might have killed you.”

  “If I didn’t follow my instincts—all of them—I wouldn’t have flushed her out and found who killed those men.”

  “There are safer ways to do it.”

  “Safe gets you nothing.” Takamatsu took his pack of cigarettes out and started tamping it in his hand.

  Hiroshi shook his head.

  “Hiroshi, you think you can get by with computer programs. You can’t catch bad guys through the web, or net or whatever you call it. The only way to work is with your feelings up front, and with the guts to follow where they lead. It’s about people, not data. The street, not some information superhighway.”

  Sakaguchi came back in and sat down. He looked at Hiroshi and then at Takamatsu. “Didn’t I say no squabbling? Let’s focus on Mattson. He’s the center of all this.”

  The master set out three small bowls of thick noodles, so hot the three of them had to hold them by the base and the rim as they brought the bowls up to their mouths, slurping loudly, not just to cool the broth, but to cover up the irritation of not knowing more than they did.

  Chapter 15

  The last time Hiroshi stood on his professor’s porch he was dropping out of the history department and going to America to study accounting. Back then, after what seemed like hours, with his finger close to the doorbell, he finally walked off without a word of sayonara. More than twenty years had passed since then, but when Hiroshi called that morning, Eto Sensei sounded like Hiroshi had just missed last week’s seminar. Maybe there was no need for the apology Hiroshi prepared in his head on the hour-and-a-half train ride to Yokosuka.

  Eto Sensei was different from most professors. In class, he prodded students to think for themselves about government transparency, the rule of law and political reform. He revealed and explained his opinions as one way of thinking, not as truth to be followed. The afternoon seminars spilled over into late-night discussions in his living room where Eto Sensei’s wife, Yoko, made sure no one went student-hungry for long. She brewed pot after pot of tea, set out senbei rice crackers and cooked rice-filled omelets. She was not afraid of giving her opinion too, as she bustled in and out.

  Now, as he was about to press the doorbell, Eto Sensei’s wife pulled open the front door, startling Hiroshi from his memories. “Hiroshi, don’t just stand there. Come in. He’s excited to see you. It seems like yesterday you were talking in the living room,” she said.

  “Several yesterdays,” Hiroshi said, stepping inside and taking off his shoes. “This is a wonderful home, but I loved that old house too.”

  “We wanted to fall asleep to the sound of the ocean. Unfortunately, the Americans changed their flight patterns so fighter jets and helicopters go right over our house. You can’t hear yourself think. Payback for his politics, I guess.”

  She beamed at him, wiping her hands on her apron as she showed him inside to the living room. Though the house was new, the interior looked as if it was transported entire just as it had been, even the books on the same shelves. Beyond the living room, a sunroom with picture windows opened onto a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean stretching to the horizon.

  Yoko said, “You’re a detective now? That’s something to be proud of.”

  “I don’t think Sensei thinks that. If you’re not doing academic research…”

  “But a detective is a researcher. Only not in books, in the world.”

  Hiroshi paused, never having thought of it that way. Maybe his university studies hadn’t been derailed, just rerouted. After Hiroshi’s parents died in his second year of college, Eto Sensei found a scholarship so Hiroshi could continue studying. But in the end, Hiroshi caved in to pressure from his uncle, who took over the finances of the family, and steeled himself for the sensible, tedious subject of accounting, which his uncle deemed best. When Hiroshi finally returned from Boston, after delaying for years, he refused to join his uncle’s company, as he was supposed to, and took the job as detective instead. He hadn’t entirely escaped accounting. His uncle had barely spoken to him since.

  “I see you remember an old man in his dotage,” Eto Sensei’s voice rang out with the same authority. No one ever whispered, daydreamed or doodled during his classes.

  Hiroshi bowed level to the ground.

  “Oh, please. I’m retired! My back is too stiff to bend over in return.” Eto Sensei laughed. He was tall and thin with silvery hair that matched his black turtleneck sweater and grey wool jacket. His skin was more wrinkled around his neck and face, but his eyes brimmed with the same enthusiasm as years ago. He leaned on a cane that Hiroshi pretended not to notice.

  Eto Sensei sat down in a chair that kept him angled forward. Hiroshi sat across from him on a leather couch. The living room was set up for a seminar with students who might never come. Through the open picture windows, the salt-fish smell and shush of waves floated up from below.

  “Tell me everything,” Eto Sensei said.

  “What’s a detective’s life like?” Yoko asked, bringing in a teapot and cups. She arranged everything and then poured a cup for both of them.

  “Terrible pay, heavy workload, and nothing ever gets finished.”

  Eto Sensei chuckled. “Sounds like academia. Must be interesting, though.”

  “I follow trails of stolen money all day. How they get it is the easy part. Where they hide it is the hard part.” Eto laughed and Hiroshi was pleased his old professor had the same light manner over the seriousness inside.

  “In the seminar, you were good at following arguments, though I’m sure illegal finances are more convoluted. Are you married?”

  “To the job.”

  “What was that girl’s name in our seminar?” Eto Sensei tapped his forehead. “I can’t remember anything anymore.”

  “Ayana,” Hiroshi said. Ayana. After the student debates wound down and the dishes were dried, Ayana waited for Hiroshi to take the train home from Eto Sensei’s house. During the ride, she dismantled his weaker points and praised his bolder ones. Hiroshi snuck glances at her and stammered, “Sono tōri desu” or “So desu ne,” meaningless phrases of agreement that made him sound more bumbling than silence would have. As with Eto Sensei, when he left for America, he didn’t even tell her goodbye. He wrote her a letter asking her—begging her—to come visit him in America, but he ended up throwing it away at Narita Airport. The rejection would have been too much on top of the embarrassment of being forced—like an arranged marriage—to study accounting.

  “Ayana, yes. Such a beauty, wasn’t she? She wrote the best papers in the class. Often better than yours, Hiroshi.”

  “I’m not surprised. She had that demure side around others but didn’t miss anything.”

  “I gave a speech at her wedding but couldn’t even remember her name. That’s old age: lots of experiences, only half-remembered.”

  “Ayana got married?”

  “And divorced. She lived in America for a long time, went into library studies. She works at the national archives now, in the center of Tokyo. I thought everyone was in touch with everyone on what’s that thing?” Eto Sensei snapped his fingers trying to remember.

  “Facebook?”

  “That’s it. I knew it was about face. Your other classmates are all part of the bureaucratic machinery now, government ministries and corporations, not that there’s much difference—or distance—between the two,” Eto Sensei mused. “You’re not in touch with Ayana or anyone?”

  Hiroshi looked out the window, lost in what might have been.

  Eto Sensei noticed and smiled. “On the phone, you mentioned Bernard Mattson.”

  “He died last week,” Hiroshi said, turning back to the conversation. “Did you hear?”

  “Yes. He wasn’t that much older than me. I always thought one of the right wing groups would get him.”

  “Why would they…?”

  Eto leaned back his chair with a shake of his head. “He was the one wh
o ensured the Japanese military would never re-arm. So, the right wing blamed Mattson for keeping Japan subservient, from rebuilding the empire to its former glory after the defeat.”

  Hiroshi looked confused. “You mean, they blame him for the fifty thousand American soldiers stationed here?”

  Eto waved his index finger, the same gesture he used to use for emphasis. “Exactly, but nowadays it’s the left wing that wants the bases out of Japan. It’s now the right-wing that cozies up to America. Hard to say who would hate him more.”

  “As you used to say, if you wait long enough—”

  “Everything turns around,” Eto Sensei finished the sentence for him. “Have you been following the protests?”

  “I saw one of the marches pass by.”

  “The protesters are having some effect for once. I never thought that would happen.”

  “What other issues might make Mattson, well, a target? It’s not even clear it’s political, but we have to look at everything.”

  Eto thought for a moment. “He did so much over the years, it could be many things. He was the force behind the SOFA agreements, which spread to other countries. America has harbors, airfields, firing ranges, and supply depots all over the world.”

  “Japan was the model?”

  “One he helped design. So, I was surprised to hear from colleagues that Mattson came out against extending the agreements. He hinted the bases should be returned.”

  “He did?”

  “From Cold war architect to peacenik internationalist. Nice headline. Never too late, I suppose.” Eto reached for his tea.

  Hiroshi followed his lead, taking a small sip of tea. “Why would he do an about-face? His love of Japanese culture?”

  Eto Sensei looked impatient with his former student. “Maybe he finally realized the monster he created. Japan is where the American empire got started.”

  Hiroshi was reminded of the lectures Eto Sensei gave on why the Americans had lingered so long in Japan, on what the atomic bomb really meant, on how Asia might develop, or fail to reform. “How much would Mattson know about that monster?”