The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1)

by Michael Pronko

  He folded shut the double-entry account book, ground out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and said, “Please call before you come.”

  “If I needed to call, I wouldn’t come at all,” she said.

  His secretary brought the files and set them down on the table in the back cubicle. Michiko took off her sunglasses, pushed back her hair, and pulled out her account books. Sono followed her in to the cubicle.

  In the small kitchenette, the secretary started preparing two cups of green tea. The greenish-yellow flicker from a fluorescent light, twitching and buzzing along the length of bulb, cast shadows across Sono’s creviced smoker’s face.

  “I thought you were leaving?” he said.

  “Day after tomorrow,” she said. “Just a couple of loose ends left.”

  He looked at her closely, lit a cigarette, and opened the top account book. “I wouldn’t call this a loose end.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “It’s under control.”

  As the secretary set the cups out, tea spilled over into the two saucers. Sono gave the secretary a weary glance, but she kept her eyes down and went back to her desk.

  “When your father’s factory is paid off, what are you going to do with it? Sell it? You should have sold it before.”

  “I wanted to make a point.”

  “You won’t even be here to see the point made.”

  “The point is I have sentimental reasons, a belief in the old economy. And Uncle Ono is still there.”

  “Other properties will hold value better.”

  “I have those, too. But Kawasaki will grow and when it does, I’ll be ready. There has to be something better than more apartment buildings,” she said. “And can you put out that cigarette?”

  Sono looked at his cigarette. “I didn’t know it bothered you.” He stabbed the cigarette out in the ashtray and set it on top of a gray-metal cabinet behind him.

  A thread of smoke still rose from the ashtray. Michiko looked at the smoke, then at Sono. He reached back and ground out the cigarette firmly.

  “And can you turn down the air-conditioning?”

  He called for his secretary, who came out with a lap blanket over her shoulders and turned it down. “Land for apartments is where we make the most.”

  “Those factories can become apartment buildings, but not before I say so,” Michiko said, examining the books line by line.

  “How do you know that? Same guy as before?”

  “I look and I listen.”

  “You can manage all that from overseas?”

  “That’s why I have you here.”

  “I’ll send the last payment after you tell me you’re gone, OK?”

  Michiko pulled out the envelopes of cash from Shibata the photographer and set them carefully on the table.

  He shook his head. “I told you not to bring cash to the office.”

  “I didn’t know it bothered you,” she said, without looking up from the ledger lines as she entered the amounts in her book.

  Sono carried the packs of money to a black safe in the back of his office, bending down to stack them inside. He closed the heavy door, set the handle and spun the tumblers.

  Sono nodded, “Any questions on this one?”

  “Let’s go on to the next.” She pulled out the next account book in her stack.

  He pushed his green and a red book across to her. She opened it, straightened her glasses and began copying its figures into her account book.

  “If you put all this on a computer, it would be easier,” she chided him.

  “If I put it on a computer, it would be easier for someone else to access it.”

  “You can encrypt things these days.”

  “It is encrypted. Only I know how to read these,” Sono said.

  “And now I know, too,” Michiko said. They pulled out the next account book from the stack at the same time.

  After checking it, she folded it shut with the string place-mark left neatly on the last completed page. She took off her reading glasses.

  “You should stop seeing anyone from Bentley,” he said, fingering his cigarette pack.

  “I won’t be talking to them again.”

  “They know your name.”

  “Who?”

  “A detective.”

  “Which name?”

  “The one on the factory and most of the accounts.”

  “He knew my name before he came in or by the time he left?”

  They locked eyes. He pulled his cigarette pack from his pocket and then put it back.

  Michiko said, “That’s why I’m keeping those videos. They arrest people for what you like to do. And those they arrest are made examples of. You want me to send copies again?”

  “There’s no need for that,” he said, leaning back and frowning.

  “You used to like to re-watch them,” she snickered.

  “I destroyed all the ones you sent.”

  “I hope so. They were so young; you wouldn’t need much of a trial.”

  Sono sipped his tea and resettled himself, tapping the account books on the table between them.

  “It didn’t bother you to tell them about me.”

  “They beat that information out of me. I was in the hospital for a month.”

  “A month? I was gone a year.” Michiko stared down at the blurring figures on the pages as the memories came back clear and sharp.

  ***

  The morning that year started, Michiko made the mistake of telling Shibata to wait outside while she withdrew money from an account in her name in Roppongi. The bank teller, used to large cash withdrawals, did not blink an eye but reached across the counter to help Michiko place the money in each envelope before Michiko set them in her black leather duffel bag.

  Shibata waited across the street from the bank with the photos and mailing envelopes. He smoked and dug around in his camera bag, checking again, anxious to get everything done. They had tickets for an early evening flight out of Narita.

  He looked up and saw it all happen at a distance: Four guys in black suits and sunglasses grabbed Michiko outside the bank and forced her into a car. They were not robbing her. He could see the smile on one of them at the weight of her duffel bag.

  Shibata was in good shape then and he took off across the street, but traffic was too heavy to get across six lanes in time. They would beat him senseless, he knew, but he ran across anyway, hoping to at least delay them. All four of the men had hands on her as passersby scurried out of the way.

  He dodged cars, watching Michiko struggle and land a few kicks before they shoved her into the back seat. A car grazed Shibata’s knee before he got to the sidewalk. He ran at full speed, but when he got to the car all he could do was slap its trunk as it sped away.

  He yelled and ran and threw his bag at them, hearing the cameras inside smash, but hoping they’d stop and come back for him, drag him inside with her.

  ***

  When the car stopped, Michiko tried to peer out of the bag over her head as they pushed her out of the back seat. After standing up beside the car, they pulled the bag off her head in what appeared to be the private garage of an apartment building. Large black SUVs filled the few spaces and the door to an elevator was the only way out she could see. The four men started to walk her toward the door.

  Michiko swung her leg into the stomach of one of the guys, flooring him. He looked surprised and embarrassed lying on the pavement and heaving for breath.

  She cracked the wrist of a fat guy in a black suit closest to her. He dropped to his knees, snatching at his wrist and letting out a scream. She kneed him in the jaw, slamming his head back into the side panel of the car, and he was out.

  The other two, more wary, came around the car from both sides. Michiko braced herself to take them down, but the man she had first kicked in the stomach snatched her legs. She lost her balance as the man who had been driving jabbed a stun gun into her ribs. She toppled over, falling hard onto the concrete floor of the pa
rking garage.

  The other man came from the other side and jolted her with another few seconds of pain from a second stun gun. She bucked and rolled and then quit moving.

  The two men dove on top of her and slipped plastic cuffs around her wrists and ankles. She roused herself and tried to kick them, but they hit her again and again with their open palms until she stopped.

  They picked her up from the pavement and carried her to the elevator that took them up to penthouse where they kept her for a few weeks.

  After that, she didn’t know where she was. A few months later, she didn’t care where or what she was.

  ***

  Michiko took a sharp breath and sipped the tea, despite the dripping, to calm herself. Only the flickering, buzzing bulb disturbed the silence.

  Sensing Michiko was not focusing on the accounts, Sono said, “What happened before was an accident.”

  “An accident?” Michiko stopped and looked up from the books, holding her pen in the air.

  “It was more than that. I understand. Risk is part of doing business.”

  “Part of business?”

  “There’s always risk. It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re right it won’t.” Michiko looked back at the account figures.

  “I’ve never told you everything.”

  “You never explained how they found out.”

  “I never knew. Look, I don’t tell anyone everything. That’s why this works. But we need someone like the Bentley guy to blame. Now, he’s gone.”

  “I’ll be gone, too, so it doesn’t really matter. The building site in Roppongi I told you about—”

  “That information was valuable. Look what they paid us. But with that guy gone, our insurance is gone, too.”

  “He took the blame with him. That’s better insurance.”

  Sono let go a phlegmy cough.

  He was used to days of silence, broken up by short meetings with clients or brief phone calls. He could wait on her as long as she wanted, but he had no idea what she wanted. He took off his glasses and worked the hinge back and forth in his hand.

  Michiko folded the account books and pushed those his back to him.

  Sono took the books back. “You don’t tell me everything, either. That’s also why this works.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “Can I give you some advice about accounts in Europe?” Sono asked.

  “Go ahead,” she said, arranging things in her bag.

  “Banks in Europe are more cautious than here, so be careful about large amounts of cash. Do not keep changing the password and account numbers. That brings suspicion. If you remove a regular amount each month, it is less likely to draw attention.”

  “I know all this,” Michiko said.

  “I’m just trying to be sure you do.”

  “When will you send the payment to Switzerland?”

  “Once you’re settled there. You’ll have to move it quickly. But wait until I tell you.”

  “I don’t want any accounts to get frozen again.”

  “We have this all set. The information is already passed on to both parties. They’ll fight it out. We get our cut from both. We move the money bit by bit.”

  She looked at him, considering how hard it would be to manage all this without him. He knew what he was doing, but never let her know. Until she could get to Paris and finish things, she still needed him.

  “Enjoy Europe. You deserve a rest. Until your flight, just stay out of trouble.”

  She stood up from the table and looked down at him. “What are you talking about?”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “It’s just a phrase.”

  “It’s the wrong phrase,” she said and pulled down her sunglasses.

  He sat still, listening as her footfalls receded along the row of partitions and the front door clicked shut.

  He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Despite the deep, lung-filling smoke, he could still smell the perfume she’d left in her wake.

  Chapter 33

  Sakaguchi was waiting in front of the Almond Coffee Shop. His huge bulk drew stares. Everyone wanted to ask if he was a sumo wrestler, but nobody did.

  Groups of people circled along the sidewalk discussing where to go next, their faces flushed and limbs loose after a first round of food and drink. People chatted into cell phones as if conversing with voices in their heads.

  “Where’re the other guys?” asked Hiroshi.

  “Ueno and Osaki are following us. Don’t look around. Works better that way. Where’s Takamatsu?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’ll turn up.”

  “He’d better. What’s his wife think? Did you ever meet her?” Hiroshi asked. They walked down the crowded sidewalk.

  “No. You?”

  “He never mentions her.”

  “Maybe she takes care of the house. He brings in the money.”

  “That’d never work with an American woman.”

  “How long did you spend over there?”

  “Too long maybe.”

  “Ever think of going back?”

  “Sometimes. All the time. And you?”

  “Not to Osaka, but I’d go back to sumo. It’s tougher, but more predictable.”

  Hiroshi laughed. “Are you married?”

  “With a face like mine?”

  Hiroshi drew back and looked at him. “Must have sent fear into your opponents.”

  “There aren’t any women my size anyway,” Sakaguchi said.

  Hiroshi laughed. “Might find someone tonight.”

  “Roppongi is the last place I’d look.”

  They walked down the main street past girls in shiny tops and short skirts handing out glossy pamphlets. Bouncers in tuxedos called out their club’s offerings. Well-dressed businessmen strode on the balls of their feet and black-clad young hipsters swung along sober and glib.

  “What landed you in the chikan section really?”

  “Money.”

  “Something went missing?”

  “No, just the opposite. Takamatsu ended up with too much.”

  “How could that happen?”

  “That’s what the chief of homicide wanted to know.”

  “Well?”

  “He got it as part of an investigation. Not the best part.”

  “He got it from where?”

  “I didn’t ask, exactly,” Sakaguchi said. “Anyway, they split up our unit. That was before you came.”

  Hiroshi stopped and looked up at a second story window. Lace curtains half-covered an ironwork array of cute, gray cats and curlicued letters for Les Chats Gris.

  Hiroshi flashed Sakaguchi the photo he got from Mark at the airport.

  “This the girl? Wait, Akiko forwarded it to me, too.” Sakaguchi fumbled with his cell phone until he brought up the picture. “The short one, right?”

  “The tall one’s the one we want. The short one will take us to her.”

  Sakaguchi followed Hiroshi up the steep stairs inside. Outside the door, Sakaguchi stopped at a stack of boxes resting on the landing—a fire code violation. The boxes and his body blocked the exit.

  Hiroshi pulled open the door to face a dozen women who looked up from magazines, cell phones and conversations. He breathed in the thick blend of smoke and perfume and pretended to look at the photos of Paris on the walls, while scanning the women dressed in tight, stylish dresses their hair swirling in carefully coiffed designs.

  Some feigned indifference, while others started to leave. Since he was the only man in the room, and everyone was a hostess, Hiroshi would have to be a stalker, jilted lover, or a cop. They paid their bills and sashayed out. In the hallway on the landing, they had to make themselves small to squeeze by Sakaguchi as they fled.

  Hiroshi scanned the room for Reiko, Michiko’s friend in Mark’s photo. She, or someone very much like her, was sitting by the cat-covered window. She looked older than in the photo, her hair dyed a blond that arched over her he
ad in neat, thick plaits. She turned the pages of a glossy magazine, glancing at her cell phone screen as an incoming message lit it up.

  Hiroshi checked the photo in his cell phone again to be sure it was Reiko and walked over to her table.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  Reiko kept looking through her magazine.

  Hiroshi said, “You’re Reiko, right?”

  Reiko put her cell phone in her purse, carefully, without looking up from her fashion magazine and asked, “And you are?”

  “A friend of Michiko’s.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I want to ask you a few questions,” he said in a low voice. She finally looked up at him, and the blue-tinted contacts in her eyes surprised him. The combination of Japanese face with blond hair and blue eyes gave her an exotic prettiness, amplified by thick blue eyeliner. Her eyelashes ended in small, blue feathers pasted to her skin.

  “This is not a good place to talk,” she said, noticing the exodus of women.

  “Where is?”

  “No place, really.”

  “I can start speaking louder.” Hiroshi set down his cell phone with the photo of Reiko, Michiko and Mark in front of her.

  She stood up, twisting her hips and pulling the gold chain of her white leather purse over her shoulder. “I have to go to the women’s room first.”

  “I’ll wait out front.”

  Hiroshi walked out and told Sakaguchi to stay where he was. They waited for her in the hallway.

  When Reiko finally came out and saw Sakaguchi outside, she scoffed and walked downstairs, frowning at Hiroshi, who fell in beside her. Sakaguchi followed.

  “So, what do you want to know?” she asked, adjusting her purse.

  “Where’s Michiko?”

  “Paris, London, Milan, I’m not sure.”

  “Where is she exactly?”

  “She loves to go abroad. I’m a bit of a homebody.”

  “Let’s get a drink. My treat,” Hiroshi offered, stopping in the busy sidewalk.

  “I’m supposed to be at work at ten,” Reiko said, checking her watch.

  “You can be a little late.”

  “All right, follow me,” she said and led them to a side street where she pulled back the thick metal door. One long counter and several short tables crowded the back of a long, narrow room. A row of retro yellow lamps along the counter illuminated the leather upholstery of the seating and the thick wood of the tables. Jazz played quietly. One man sat along the counter sipping whiskey. Reiko walked to a back table.