The Moving Blade

by Michael Pronko

  “Probably just a lack of coordination, and territoriality.”

  “My hunch is he’s not.” Hiroshi shook his head, realizing he sounded like Takamatsu.

  Washington nodded. “Probably he’s one of ours.”

  “Ours?”

  Washington squinted for a second. “I mean, he’s not a criminal.”

  Hiroshi looked down as they walked a few more blocks, wondering if he was totally off about Gladius. He couldn’t be that wrong. He could feel it. He waited for Washington to continue.

  Washington slowed for a second, then started walking quickly again. “I haven’t known you to be wrong, though, so I asked an old friend in Singapore with access to check some old databases, unofficially. Turns out Gladius had a few detainments years ago for transporting stolen goods across international borders. He’s listed as a translator for one of the new security agencies, or rather one of the contractors to the agencies. Hundreds of them popped up after Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  A group of red-faced Japanese businessmen tumbled out of a tall building followed by a bevy of hostesses in expensive dresses and swirling hairdos. The women stamped and shivered on the street as the men, stumbling drunk, laughed and waved goodbye and clambered into taxis. The hostesses gave them cutesy waves until the men drove off, and then let their faces fall as they hoisted up their dresses and scurried back inside.

  “Ginza’s another world, isn’t it?” Washington chuckled.

  “Having money is another world.”

  “What was Mattson working on, do you think?”

  “Something about the bases.”

  “American bases?”

  “Any other kind?”

  Washington smiled, “Guess not, but that’s sensitive territory.”

  “It’s territory Japanese can’t get into at all.”

  “Wonder what next week’s talks will produce? Big changes? I doubt it.”

  Hiroshi asked, “How much immunity do you think Gladius has?”

  “Those new agencies are off limits to us. I’m surprised my friend could even find anything on him.”

  “So, what’s your thought?”

  “He sounds like a person who can do what needs to be done. They like to keep that type in the field. Speeds up operations. They overlook his quirks.”

  “Quirks? Might be more than that. I wish I could figure out which hornet’s nest Mattson was poking and why Gladius would care.”

  “Why not poke the nest yourself?” Washington chuckled. “You’re good at that, Hiroshi. Why we need you at Interpol.”

  Hiroshi nodded his head, thinking about how Interpol would be a better place to work. Much better. “Jim, thank you for this. I already owe you for setting up the interview.”

  “We want the best we can get. Once the Interpol Asia chief talks with you, you can start planning your move.”

  Hiroshi looked around for Ueno. He had pulled to the next cross street and was waving Hiroshi to hurry over.

  “Are you sure Gladius is involved?” Washington asked. “If so, I can—”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’ll ask that friend in Singapore again. Before he left the Tokyo post, my friend was working on a drug smuggling case at the American bases, so he might know something more.”

  “I doubt it’s drugs, but anything would help.” Hiroshi bowed and hurried off to where Ueno was waving frantically through the open window, leaving Washington to walk on his own through the late-night Ginza streets.

  Chapter 27

  As soon as Hiroshi got into the car, Ueno took off. Hiroshi rubbed his hands in front of the car’s heating vent.

  “Jamie must be back by now. Did you—”

  “We’re going to Kanda,” Ueno said, making a U-turn in the late night street.

  “What? Wait.”

  “Sakaguchi and everyone else are there.”

  Hiroshi looked over, but Ueno said nothing more. Hiroshi could tell he wasn’t going to, either, so he left another message for Jamie and turned up the heat in the car.

  Ueno parked on a wide street of drab buildings near Kanda Station. Along the first floor, a gyudon beef-rice shop, manga kissaten, and two convenience stores spilled dingy yellow light onto the empty sidewalk. From the surrounding buildings, office lights shone through window blinds and fell onto the street in mute stripes.

  Ueno and Hiroshi got out and hunkered against the cold wind whipping through the buildings. They spotted Sakaguchi down the street talking with the chief, a thick cloud of breath from their argument floating over the chief’s Borsalino hat. Avoiding them, Ueno and Hiroshi went the other way around to the back street.

  TV crews were running up camera cranes from the back of their trucks to angle a shot down into the interior of the crime scene. Their lights—stronger than the police lights—turned the area as bright as noon. Blue tarpaulins ringing the murder site billowed in the wind and yellow crime scene tape marked off the entire street, a short, narrow space with ten-story buildings rising above it. The crime scene crew worked taking photos, collecting samples and looking for any fragment of evidence. Plastic markers with numbers dotted the asphalt next to bloodstains.

  Hiroshi walked to where Takamatsu stood a few steps from the body lying under a thick black plastic sheet. “Want to see?” Takamatsu asked.

  “Not really,” Hiroshi said.

  “You better.” Takamatsu led him forward and stooped down beside the body.

  “Why?”

  “So you’ll remember.”

  He didn’t want to remember this.

  Takamatsu pulled the sheet back at an angle.

  The cheap, worn clothes and thin, frail body was like a homeless person. The oversize coat barely covered the wounds. Bony arms and thin legs flailed out at impossible angles and a walking cane lay to the side. His wrinkled face turned upwards and his jaw hung loose.

  Hiroshi nodded at Takamatsu to pull the sheet back over, and whispered, “Sword?”

  Takamatsu nodded. “Angled upwards and all the way through. Got a second cut in this time.”

  Sakaguchi stormed over. “I can’t believe this guy’s dead.”

  “You know him?” Hiroshi asked.

  “If you had come with me, you’d know, too.” Sakaguchi pulled a book from his inner coat pocket. Hiroshi took the book, The Okinawa Solution by Tetsuya Higa, and pondered the photo on the back cover of Higa as a young man with forceful, angry eyes. “Mattson’s editor. Met him at the bookstore. He attacked power relations in Japan.”

  “Enough to get himself killed?” Hiroshi asked.

  Sakaguchi stared at the thin, lifeless body. “He was good at pissing people off.”

  Takamatsu lit a cigarette, cupping his hands to get it lit in the wind. He leaned back with a billow of smoke. “So, this killer is the same as before.”

  “Higa had a bad leg, so he couldn’t run. He talked so much, I wonder what he said at the end.” Sakaguchi turned away to sign forms on a clipboard held by a young detective. Seeing the media trucks inching up over the tape, he looked around for Sugamo, but shouted instead at Osaki, who was talking with a police photographer: “Osaki, I thought I told you to get those TV trucks out of here?”

  Osaki stopped talking with the police photographer and walked off to get the trucks to pull back from the scene. Sakaguchi followed him.

  Hiroshi followed Takamatsu’s gaze up to the lights from the windows above, wondering if anyone could have seen anything. The back of the closest building had a delivery bay with a loading dock and a guard station with a glassed-in area big enough for a chair and a clipboard. The street was too small for surveillance cameras, but the entrance to an automatic parking garage with a turnaround floor seemed large and busy enough to have one.

  “Let’s take a short walk,” Takamatsu said, leading Hiroshi past the crime scene tape and around the corner. He stopped to examine the streets every few steps, and lit a cigarette. Hiroshi watched his direction, but saw only the steadfast streets of Kanda.
/>   “How did the sword delivery go?” Hiroshi asked.

  Takamatsu inhaled his cigarette and shrugged.

  “Was he any help, or just another Korean restaurant owner?”

  “Bit of both. And a sword collector. Those clean-looking types are always the ones that have their fingers in the deepest.”

  “You think he was involved in—”

  “He’s in there somewhere, somehow, but he knows how to work the police.”

  “He’s from Korea or zainichi Japanese?”

  “We didn’t get into family residence, but he’s making money, no matter how long he or his family has been here. His lair was fitted out for business.”

  They arrived back at the other side of the crime scene. Takamatsu looked back where they had walked and shook his head.

  Seeing them back, Sakaguchi stopped talking with a young detective and stormed over to Takamatsu. “Did you call the media? That woman?”

  “Saori Ikeda?” Takamatsu shook his head. “It wasn’t me. They find out no matter how secret we are.”

  Trying to distract Sakaguchi, Hiroshi said, “What about this guy? Any guesses?”

  “Too many.” Sakaguchi thumbed his cellphone. “He didn’t seem the type to have a lot of family or friends. I’ll have to call the Endo Brothers. Add this to their woes.”

  “Used to be more people like him in Japan,” Takamatsu said, and lit another cigarette.

  “Like what?” Hiroshi frowned.

  “People that would speak out. Better warn those bookstore twins they could be next.” Takamatsu blew the smoke high in the air. “Where’s the girl?”

  “I think I better go find her.” Hiroshi said, feeling confident she’d leave now, after this new killing. “Get her on a plane out of here.” He’d insist.

  “I think for once Hiroshi’s on to something. Check out that American guy who’s been hanging around,” Takamatsu said.

  “Who?” Sakaguchi asked.

  “The Marlboro man. I used to love that brand.”

  “I already did,” Hiroshi said. “Trey Gladius is secret service, emphasis on secret.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Interpol.”

  “They know everything.” Takamatsu smiled, rolling his cigarette in his fingers. “Show them how good you are, they might offer you a job.”

  Hiroshi looked away. He did not want them to read his face since he already had been offered an interview. He checked his cellphone.

  Sakaguchi shouted at a group of young detectives shivering in the cold. “Check the area for surveillance cameras. And start canvassing every one of these buildings. Check the public phones around here, if there are any. He was paranoid. Said the police tapped his phone lines. He might have used one.”

  Takamatsu looked for a place to grind out his cigarette on the pavement. “I better get out of here. I am meeting Saori Ikeda later.”

  “A bit late for a meeting,” Hiroshi said.

  Takamatsu laughed. “We should quit and set up our own agency. We’ll make a fortune with our combined experience, and my instincts.”

  “Instincts aren’t everything. You told me that.” Hiroshi shuffled in place to stay warm.

  “No, but sometimes there’s nothing else.” Takamatsu straightened his cuffs and walked off into the night.

  Sakaguchi stared at the TV people at the end of the alley, pushing for better angles from which to grab sensational footage. “Three sword-cut bodies, a ruined bookstore, two robberies, stolen documents and a taped-up girl. And the chief says to wind it up or postpone it. The Foreign Ministry told the chief to be sure this does not disrupt the conference.”

  “Still four days away.”

  Sakaguchi looked at his watch. “Three. The delegates and staff have already started arriving. Have to put on a nice face for them.”

  One of the cameramen ventured inside the barrier with his camera on his shoulder. Sakaguchi charged at him. The cameraman scurried away dragging his camera behind him. The soundman’s microphone pole clattered to the ground. Sakaguchi kept going, yelling at the reporters and the young detectives in equal measure. Sakaguchi demanded more tape and more tarp to expand the perimeter. The youngest detectives scrambled to get it.

  After his outburst, Sakaguchi came back.

  “Feel better?” Hiroshi asked.

  “If I’d got a hold of that cameraman I’d have felt better.”

  Hiroshi stared into Sakaguchi’s eyes. “Why didn’t Ueno answer me all day?”

  “He was busy.”

  “With what? What did you have him do?”

  Sakaguchi stared at Hiroshi. “In sumo, using your opponent’s momentum against him is the most effective technique of all. All it takes is a step to the side, or a step back. Or both.”

  “Is that why Ueno left her alone all day?” Hiroshi asked.

  Sakaguchi stood quietly, looking at the TV camera lights.

  “Are there detectives watching Jamie or not?”

  Sakaguchi turned to Hiroshi. “We might have had the guy already if you hadn’t taken her to your apartment all night.”

  Higa’s body bag was wheeled out on a gurney. The general hubbub of the site fell quiet and still, everyone glancing at the body, and then bowing their heads. Sakaguchi and Hiroshi put their hands together and bowed in prayer as the body went past.

  When the body was loaded into the medical truck, Hiroshi turned to Sakaguchi. “You want to use her to draw them out. As bait.”

  Sakaguchi looked off into the night. “Even when you step back, or to the side, you don’t let go. I pulled the detectives back, but they’re still there.”

  “Still where?”

  “Where you come in.”

  “Where I come in? I already am in.”

  “Stay with her after you find her.”

  “Find her? I can’t even get her to answer the phone.”

  Sakaguchi took a call. Quickly hanging up, his face furious, he waved for Hiroshi and Ueno, shouted for Sugamo and Osaki, and turned Hiroshi around with a heavy arm. “Find her later. Right now, I need everyone. We’ll need Takamatsu too.”

  Chapter 28

  After Ueno dropped her off from the coffee shop at her father’s home, or her home, or whatever it was now, she opened the door, putting aside the memory of the last time she entered. This time, Jamie knew there were going to be detectives there. But when she stepped in to the genkan, she could not see or hear any sign of them. She pushed the front door closed, but left it open a crack, in case she needed to bolt, and stepped up onto the floor, walking slowly, peering into the living room. Nothing.

  She padded into the kitchen, checked the door to be sure it as locked, and that the bathing area was empty. Walking back to the stairs, she ascended, listening carefully in between the creak of each step. Her clothes and the futon were unfolded, as she’d left them. Where were the guards? Maybe the detectives were outside and she just had not seen them on the way in.

  She thought about calling Hiroshi, he’d left messages all day and she was sure he’d come right away, but she reassured herself that if Setsuko was not afraid of being followed, she should not be afraid either, or she’d try not to be. Finding the scroll from her father would help. Her father’s words would give her direction, something she needed badly. Following Setsuko’s explanation, Jamie went downstairs to her father’s office, took down a painting and pushed different spots until she nudged out a wood panel. Behind it was a wall safe.

  She twisted the dials with her birthday as the combination, as Setsuko told her, but the numbers didn’t work. She called Setsuko, but got no answer. So she called her mother, Sachi.

  Sachi picked up right away. “Where are you?”

  “In the study,” Jamie replied.

  “Of the house? I thought you’d be back in New York?”

  “The combination is supposed to be my birthday, but it didn’t work.”

  “The combination to what?”

  “His safe.”

 
“There’s nothing worth the trouble of—”

  “He left something in there for me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Setsuko told me.”

  “Listen to your mother. Pack your things. Get on a flight. You were just—”

  “It looks like it needs four numbers.”

  Try the lunar calendar,” Sachi said.

  “What?”

  “Put in the year of the monkey—that’s the ninth in the cycle—and then your year, Showa era fifty-two, and then eight for August and then fifteen. You had a very auspicious beginning. Nearly killed me.”

  “Not that again. Which order?”

  “Try the nine first and if that doesn’t work, put the nine last. Eight and fifteen in order.”

  “Stop talking for a minute and let me try,” Jamie said. She dropped the cellphone into her pocket without turning it off and tried the numbers in different orders until she heard a soft click and the thick door of the safe eased open. “Got it!” Jamie shouted down to the phone.

  Sachi kept talking, her voice muffled inside Jamie’s breast pocket.

  From inside the safe, Jamie pulled out a dozen envelopes thick as her grip, wrapped tightly with tape. She tore into the side of one of them to find a stack of ten thousand yen notes.

  Jamie picked the phone out. “What do I do with all this money?”

  “How much is there?”

  “A lot!”

  “That’s why your father got killed. Take it to one of the international banks, deposit it, and go back to New York. Are you listening?” Sachi shouted into the phone.

  “I’m listening, mother, but I’m also trying to do what father said.”

  “What Setsuko said your father said.”

  “I can’t just ignore what he asked me to do.”

  “Yes, honey, you can. I always did.”

  Jamie clicked the cellphone off and ignored the buzzing when her mother called back. Jamie tiptoed up to look all the way to the back of the safe, but there was no scroll. She weighed the packets of money in her hands, thinking how this cash would pay things off in one go, getting her out from under the crushing penalty interest rate on her credit card debt. Her mother was right—take the money and go.