But then, a few steps behind the rest of the passengers, there was a tagalong who somehow didn’t match the rest of the crowd. Was it the tight cut of his dark suit? Was it his inconsistent gait—one second lolling, the next second speeding up? Tatsuyama decided it was a combination of things. The straggler’s relatively young age, edgy haircut, and tough-guy bearing simply didn’t fit the business suit.
He let the suspicious tail get several yards ahead of him before rising from the bench and following. Tatsuyama’s sandals clacked on the hard floor of the sparsely peopled station. The young man in the dark suit stopped and turned to look back. Tatsuyama couldn’t stop too, but there was no place to hide. Should he meet the tail’s gaze, or should he walk right by as though he suspected nothing?
Tatsuyama chose to do both. He kept walking, and he locked eyes with the straggler. The straggler let him pass. Where the corridor split, Tatsuyama paused as though deciding whether to stop in at one of the convenience stores inside the station. He wanted to see whether the fellow in the tight, dark suit would go right or continue straight ahead and exit to the street.
The young guy turned and entered the convenience store without returning a glance. Something just didn’t feel right.
As he exited the train station into the cool, nighttime air of late spring, Tatsuyama spotted Shiori again. She wore boots, a plaid skirt, and a light sweater. Nobody stood near her. She looked as safe as any other arriving passenger. Tatsuyama took one last look back toward the terminal doors before approaching her. He saw no one with a disconcerting look. The trailing passenger was nowhere to be seen.
Shiori looked radiant for someone who had just completed a three-and-a-half-hour trip by mass transit at that late hour of the evening.
Tatsuyama smiled as he approached her. “Hey, how was the trip?”
“It was fine, arigatou.” She smiled right back. “I thought you were in a rental car. Change of plans?”
“Nothing big.” He refrained from mentioning concerns about a tail. “Talk to anyone on the train on the way?” he asked as he flagged a taxi.
She shook her head. “I just read and made some notes on my iPhone. It was a pleasant trip. I was surrounded by sleeping businessmen and a few tourists. From France, I think.”
Once the taxi driver had stowed Shiori’s small suitcase and returned to his own seat, Tatsuyama asked him to give them a quick tour around the streets of the famous Gion Geisha District before heading to the little inn.
Just in case, he thought.
As they pulled away from the station, he watched the dark-suited young man step out of the building, take out a cell phone, and stare straight at their taxi.
25
At sunrise Tatsuyama eased back into his room at the ryokan in Kyoto. He had just taken a nice, hot soak in the shared ofuro down the varnished wood hallway of the old inn.
He was happy that, even in the middle of a major Japanese city, he and Shiori could enjoy the centuries-old charm of a place like this. Two large lanterns that had illuminated the entryway the night before came to mind. Chinese calligraphy on yellowed paper. The warm glow from within. Now the lanterns swayed lazily in the soft, early morning breeze. They evoked notions of simpler times.
The inn was a place built for privacy from the outside world. Slim rectangles of wood, evenly spaced side by side, protected the street-front windows from the prying eyes of passersby.
One entire side of the inn looked out on a classic Japanese garden, complete with stone lanterns, sculpted evergreen trees, a fountain that flowed through hollowed segments of bamboo, and rake-groomed pebble walkways. The opposite side of the garden was planted against a six-story brick building with no windows facing the ryokan. With wooden enclosures at the front and back of the garden, concealment was complete.
Guests of the inn could slide open a door panel in their rooms for an intimate view of the garden. And while the sound of the trickling water was soothing, it also masked quiet conversations within each of the five guest rooms.
Tatsuyama dressed in a comfortable, crisply ironed, dark-blue yukata and sat for an hour or more, simply enjoying the garden and waiting for Shiori to finish sleeping.
Feels like another world, he thought. A safe haven. Perfect getaway from the madness of the past week.
After a while there was a light tap at the door. When he slid it open, Shiori greeted him with a warm smile. She, too, wore traditional Japanese clothing: a light kimono in a pink, crimson, and gold cotton fabric. It bore a fine geometric print accented with small chrysanthemums. She wore white tabi socks, and her hair was pulled back in a style popular among young women when wearing traditional Japanese attire.
“You look nice, Shiori.” He motioned for her to have a seat at the low table.
Tatsuyama had made sure to book a separate room for Shiori. It was the best room at the inn, in fact, and the only room with its own private bath. No need to complicate matters, he had thought. Besides, with all she was doing to help him, it would be good to spoil her.
Once Shiori was comfortably seated, the innkeeper’s wife entered and served hot o-cha tea. They bowed politely to the older woman. When the steaming Japanese green tea was served and the sliding door had closed, the two new friends prepared to face a day of planning.
“Sleep well?” he asked, sincerely interested.
“I did, arigatou. Very well. And you?” She studied his face.
He nodded. “Well enough.” The truth was—though he never told her—in his restless dreams, he had fought the dark-suited young guy from the train station over and over again. Each time, it was to protect Shiori.
For a good half hour, the two exchanged observations and opinions about the garden, the pleasant atmosphere of the ryokan, and their love for the old city of Kyoto. As delightful as the moment was, Tatsuyama couldn’t repress his anxious thoughts forever. They kept clawing their way into his mind and poisoning the idyllic beauty of the setting.
“Tatsuyama?”
He snapped out of his dark musings. “I’m sorry, Shiori.”
“Are you OK?”
“I hate to ruin a very enjoyable conversation, but all the Yamada troubles keep crowding out everything else. Is it too soon to talk about what we need to do? I promise you my undivided attention once we’ve figured things out.”
“Not at all,” she said, her tone soothing. “We have no idea how soon we’ll have to face more of Yamada’s dirty work.”
“Arigatou,” he said. “One last thing before we start, then. I just want to say how much I appreciate you coming all the way here to help me think and plan. I feel much more at ease with you here. To help.” It was the closest he could come to telling her how he really felt.
“Honestly, I’m glad to be here too,” Shiori said. “I think it’s better that we look out for one another—at least until this ordeal is resolved.”
Tatsuyama smiled and savored the idea of looking out for one another.
“About planning,” she said. “I hate to start on a negative, but there was something I was hoping to bring with me. I couldn’t bring it, though.”
“What?”
“That video of Naoko, Haruta, the new security officer, and the others collaborating at 109.”
“Something happened to it?”
She nodded. “It’s gone. I’d been trying to figure out a way to get it without my boss knowing. Then I realized if he checked and found it missing before I had the chance to leave Tokyo yesterday, he’d have known immediately who had taken it.”
“Without a doubt,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t put yourself in further danger.”
“So I waited till the last minute and tried one more time to get it, just before I left. That’s when I saw it wasn’t there anymore.”
“Erased?”
“Erased, or moved to a different file,” she said. “And I wouldn’t know where to start looking.”
“Too bad,” he said. “That could have been a nice piece of evidence in my f
avor in court.”
“I feel bad about it, Tatsuyama.”
He shook his head. “No reason to feel bad. You’ve already done so much…and at immense risk to yourself.”
She lowered her gaze and started to speak when Tatsuyama said, “Put it out of your mind, Shiori. It served its purpose. We know how they set me up.”
“I was just hoping to take it to the police. Then they could force Yamada’s yakuza off our backs,” she said.
“Well, maybe if we figure this thing out another way,” he said, “the police will be able to persuade your boss to tell what he did with the video. Meanwhile, we’ll just work around it. OK?”
Shiori nodded.
“So, let me tell you what I’ve come up with,” Tatsuyama said. “I believe anything we do to stop Yamada Hideyoshi has to be done publicly. We need television, Internet, social media—everything unleashed on him at one time.”
She tilted her head. “Why publicly?”
“I don’t think people will risk standing up to him without knowing that there are a lot of other people like themselves doing the same thing at exactly the same time. Don’t you agree?”
She gazed past him for a moment. “How will we go about finding other people who really have something against Yamada? That is, without accidently running into an ally of his? Somebody who’ll run back to him and spout out everything we’re trying to do?”
“Between Coach Ikeda, Junichiro, and me, we know lots of people who would never cave in to Yamada. People inside and outside of sumo. Some of them very powerful. I’d stake my life on their integrity.”
“That’s exactly what you’d be doing, Tatsuyama—staking your life on their integrity. And all it would take is you being wrong about one of those people. Just one.”
He frowned. “That’s true. And asking around could call Yamada’s attention to us before we’re ready.”
“How do we go about this without relying on anyone else?” She leaned on one elbow, tapping her lips.
“At first I thought the only thing Yamada had on me was a lie—a fake assault. If that actually was all he had, I could’ve simply bided my time till my court date. I could’ve been an ideal citizen. The court might have been lenient, even without the video. And then I’d be free to go on with life.”
Shiori’s gaze remained on his.
“But the trap at Hole in the Wall proved that Yamada doesn’t simply want me out of this one tournament. He wants something more.”
“Hai, I think he’d like to control you,” Shiori said. “To have you work for him. To win or lose at his command. To have you persuade other sumotori. And if he can’t control you—”
“He’ll never control me.”
“He controls a lot of people. That’s what he does to make his empire work. He makes them work for him or get out of the way. He gets through to them somehow. Right now he’s trying to control you by threatening you with a loss—the loss of your career.”
“OK, I get that. But what about Hole in the Wall? Was he trying to bring me in for a little face-to-face time? To explain how he expects me to serve him? Or do you think Tasers, knives, and guns prove he’s changed goals? Has he already shifted toward trying to eliminate me?”
“I don’t know whether he’s made that shift yet. But he probably realizes he can’t force you to wrestle for him or lose matches for him. Naoko would have let him know that much.”
Naoko, Tatsuyama thought. Yamada’s power grab was painful enough. Why did he have to use his daughter to wield the knife that cut me off from sumo? And what did Naoko really think—or feel—about doing the cutting?
His gaze drifted to the bowl of tea on the low table between himself and Shiori. “May I ask you something…delicate for me?”
“I think so,” she said.
“What about Naoko? Do you think she deceived me out of family loyalty? Or would a woman like her have other motives?”
Shiori didn’t respond right away. When she did, she said, “Do you still like her, Tatsuyama?”
“I haven’t…” He stopped and began again. “When they first released me from jail after the so-called assault, I was ready to go find her. I wanted to apologize for having gotten involved at the concert. I thought I’d ruined her afternoon. But do you know what?”
Shiori inclined her head, waiting for him to continue.
“The more I think back on it,” he said, “the more I question little things.”
“Like what?”
“For example, before I went up to help Akiko at the concert, Naoko told me to leave it for store security. But then, when I argued that there was no store security, I think I recall Naoko giving me a nudge—like she wanted me to go get the drunk away from Akiko-chan after all.” He looked at Shiori and said, “I’m sure I would have gone to help Akiko anyway, but what if Naoko knew exactly what Yamashita was doing to Akiko and why? What if she’s behind her father just like Yamashita and Haruta are? What if the tears weren’t real?”
“Is there anything that makes you think Naoko would never have hurt you unless someone forced her to do it?” Shiori ventured.
“It was just a hope I had.”
Shiori looked away, toward the garden. Her cheeks flushed a pale pink.
“But that hope seems to have been dashed,” Tatsuyama said. “Detective Kobayashi is convinced that she…well, to put it in Kobayashi’s words, that she played me like a cheap shamisen.”
Shiori turned back to Tatsuyama and laughed softly.
“Hey, that’s not funny!” he said, acting hurt. “No guy wants to be made a fool of.”
Shiori kept smiling and shook her head. “I don’t want to make a fool of you either,” she said. “It’s just that Kobayashi worded it funny.”
Her smile faded. Her dark eyes met his gaze. “Tatsuyama, I don’t want to tell you how you ought to feel about Naoko, but you almost took the bait from her a second time. At Hole in the Wall. If they had caught you, you could be locked up in one of her father’s warehouses right now. You won’t wrestle for him, but he could force you to train sumotori for him. Or he could make you disappear altogether. He apparently has that much power!”
Tatsuyama looked at her intently. What’s so different about Naoko and Shiori? Not polar opposites, but so different. And Shiori…even on the heels of Naoko’s betrayal, I’d already place my fate in Shiori’s hands…any day.
After a long pause, he felt a jolt within. “Wait a minute. Shiori,” he said slowly, “you are brilliant!”
She leaned forward. “What?”
“You said that Yamada could make me train his sumotori. Well, if the plan to take Yamada down in a very public way can’t be worked out, then I can convince him that money talks to me too. I can act as though I’m willing to train his rikishi, but in reality, I can quietly win them over for a sudden, powerful uprising against him!”
“I hate to say it, but that’s crazy talk,” she argued.
Tatsuyama winced. “What?”
“You don’t know, Tatsuyama. You might fool him. But he deals with liars and doubletalk all the time. He might never trust you. If you go to Yamada and offer him your services for money, he might agree, but you’ll never know whether you’re playing him or he’s playing you—until it’s too late. You will have walked right into his trap without him ever needing to offer you the bait for a third time.”
“Bait. You mean Naoko,” he said hesitantly.
Shiori grasped the edges of the low tea table and leaned over it toward him. Appealing to him with tear-glittered eyes, she said, “You know what I’m saying, Tatsuyama. You are not in this for the money. Yamada knows that. He’s never even approached you that way. He knew your heart. And he concocted a whole different plan. He sent his own daughter, never worrying about her, because you’re a decent man—a truly decent and noble man. Don’t fall for it again. I have a feeling that if Naoko comes back to you just one more time, you’ll still give her the benefit of the doubt. You’ll follow her. And if you do, tha
t’ll be tragic. It’ll break at least one heart completely in half, because an admirable man will have fallen needlessly.”
Tatsuyama looked down at Shiori’s hand. She still held on to the edge of the table. He recalled that same hand grasping his wrist at Hole in the Wall, saving him from falling into the trap there. He placed his hand on hers. A wind chime clanged melodically in the garden. He gave a very tender squeeze.
Finally he said quietly, “I suppose we need to devise a third plan, then.” He relaxed his gentle grip. As he withdrew his hand from Shiori’s, her fingers followed his. The movement was almost imperceptible. But he felt it.
She hesitated. Looking down toward her tea bowl, she brushed away a tear. Her gaze returned to him, and she smiled once again, bashfully.
26
Detective Kobayashi woke up at seven on Thursday morning and reached immediately for his cell phone. His routine included taking a quick peek at the headlines before his feet even hit the floor.
He did a double take. This is impossible.
Tossing his phone onto the bed, he rushed to the shower. Twenty minutes later, he emerged from his bedroom, grabbed his keys and wallet, and headed out for Tokyo Metro Police headquarters.
Traffic was unusually light. Good thing, because his mind was buzzing. Where had Tatsuyama gone off to? The yokozuna had dropped completely off the radar. Not that Kobayashi blamed him for disappearing, especially after what he had just read about Coach Ikeda. He hoped Tatsuyama would get in touch with him soon, though.
How did this morning’s news fit with the results of his investigation so far? Kobayashi had been running down rumors of payoffs and threats. In Ikeda’s case, here was a threat somebody had acted on. He didn’t for a minute believe the story as reported in the news.
It had to be Yamada. But Yamada working through whom? A rival training stable? Ikeda’s own stable? The Japan Sumo Association? He had his suspicions there, too. For that matter, he had his suspicions about the arresting officers at the Shibuya 109 incident a week ago. Their timing had been uncanny—especially in the absence of any other security measures. And if Yamada had two policemen on his payroll, he could have twenty.
Sumotori: A 21st Century Samurai Thriller Page 12
