The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1)

by Michael Pronko

  “I don’t think he’s going to answer,” Hiroshi said to Sakaguchi.

  “Oh, he will,” Sakaguchi said. The rhythmic picking was louder than the jazz through the speakers.

  Sakaguchi said, “How much do you get paid for the drugged drinks?” The bartender kept up his steady chipping while Hiroshi’s eyes followed the bits and pieces of ice sailing up and off the counter as silver flickers before they fell to the floor and sink and melted away.

  Hiroshi pulled out the photo of Michiko and flopped it on the gleaming, black counter. Still picking at the ice, the bartender looked down but did not respond.

  “When was the last time you saw this woman?” Hiroshi said. “Was she here last night? And the night before?” Sakaguchi sighed. Hiroshi could tell it was a preparatory sigh. Hiroshi continued: “Well, as Takamatsu used to say, questions sometimes get in the way of action.”

  In one quick lunge, Sakaguchi grabbed the hand holding the ice pick and yanked the bartender down hard across the counter. Hiroshi snagged the bartender’s other wrist and twisted it until the ice cube rolled into the sink. Sakaguchi pushed down until the ice pick rolled away so Hiroshi could elbow it and the serrated knife down the bar.

  Sakaguchi pushed the bartender’s arm into the middle of his back, shredding his fresh tulip, and pulled him forward across the bar top until his toes barely touched the floor on the other side. The bartender did not squirm and did not say a word. His eyes stared as sullenly as before, only now to the side without being able to see their faces, or much of anything else.

  “Let’s try those questions again,” said Sakaguchi.

  “I think he remembers them, but let me help. The drinks are drugged, right?” The bartender nodded, yes, sideways, his ear smashed into the bar top by Sakaguchi’s huge hand.

  “Speak up,” Sakaguchi commanded.

  “Yes.”

  “And you get paid extra for those?”

  “Yes.”

  “They order from the David?”

  “Right.”

  “Through the window or by phone.”

  “Both.”

  “How often do you make them?”

  “Not often.”

  “How not often?”

  “Every so often. It’s just for fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “The girls do that to their boyfriends. The guys know. When they can’t move, it gets them hot, I guess.”

  “It turned someone cold. This woman killed someone. That makes you an accessory to murder.”

  Sakaguchi let up his weight enough to let the bartender turn his head the other way and cough.

  “You know this woman?” Hiroshi shoved the photo of Michiko in front of him. Thick drops of blood slowly dripped from the bartender’s nose to the counter.

  “No.”

  Sakaguchi pressed into him again. “You sure?”

  “Maybe she comes in sometimes. They all look alike.”

  “Look again.” Sakaguchi leaned his entire bulk onto the bartenders’ head.

  The bartender groaned, coughed, and spat out, “She’s been in before.”

  “In here or in there?”

  “Both.”

  “Before someone arrives to arrest you, you better get your story straight.”

  Hiroshi reached into the bartender’s back pocket for his wallet, took out his wallet and ID and read it carefully, memorizing the details before taking a photo of it with his cell phone. He tossed the wallet aside and nodded to Sakaguchi. Hiroshi picked up the ice pick and slammed it straight into the bar top. It quivered in place and cracks radiated through the black lacquer as if it were glass.

  Sakaguchi released his grip, and the bartender stood up, stretching. He touched his nose and picked up a white towel to staunch the blood.

  Sakaguchi grabbed the half-chipped block of ice from the sink and hurled it at the mirror, splintering it and knocking over bottles. Top-shelf vodka, gin, and single malt spilled everywhere.

  “Who’s the owner of this bar?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Who pays you?”

  “The guy who owns the building.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “He’ll find you,” said the bartender, gesturing toward a small black security camera in the corner and wiping the blood from his nose.

  “We’ll send someone around for you later,” Hiroshi said. The bartender stared at them as they walked out the door.

  Hiroshi pointed out the David Lounge next door. Sakaguchi tried the door, but it was locked. He pounded with his fist.

  Hiroshi said, “They don’t open up until later.”

  “Sugamo should be downstairs by now. We’ll post him there to wait for her,” Sakaguchi said.

  “She has to come up for air sometime.”

  “Unless she’s gone already.”

  Hiroshi pushed the elevator button, and they got on. When the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, Hiroshi and Sakaguchi looked straight into a solid wall of bulky black silk suits, all big enough to fit Sakaguchi—the men inside them all his size.

  Chapter 45

  The five-man wall blocking Hiroshi and Sakaguchi’s exit wore sunglasses and dressed in black, jackets, shirts, and pants.

  Hiroshi reached for his badge, but the three men in front mirrored him by reaching into their jackets, so that Hiroshi put his hand back down.

  “We don’t need to see your badges,” said a shorter guy standing behind the front line. “We know you’re cops.”

  “You’ll want to answer our questions then,” Hiroshi said.

  “Someone will, but not us,” the shorter guy said. “Upstairs.”

  The men stepped forward, and Hiroshi and Sakaguchi stepped backwards to squeeze onto the elevator. There was nothing for Hiroshi and Sakaguchi to do but see what these men would do. The short guy slipped around the door and put a key in the button panel and pressed the top button. The other two men stepped on—the elevator dipping slightly—and the weight limit buzzer sounded.

  The two men stepped off, and the buzzer stopped. One of them stepped on again, with no buzzer, but when the other put his foot on, the buzzer went off again.

  The short guy, impatient, gestured for the last guy to get off and wait. He stepped back into the hallway and folded his thick, work-out arms over his stomach with a dead-black sunglass stare. When the elevator got to the top floor, the door opened into a tri-level penthouse with one entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lights of Roppongi.

  The three men who rode up on the elevator with Hiroshi and Sakaguchi strolled to a U-shaped bar on the upper part of the split-level room and sat down on bar stools. Two women in silver lame dresses stood up from a long, overstuffed sofa by the windows. They brushed their long hair with their hands, rearranged their dresses, and walked to a back room without even a glance at Hiroshi and Sakaguchi.

  A stocky man stood up from the sofa and watched the women walk away. He refocused his attention to Hiroshi and Sakaguchi and walked toward them with a limp that made his loose silk pants sway. The mandarin collar of his shirt was pinned with a diamond stud that held it tight around his broad, muscular neck. His face was as rough, wrinkled, and red as that of a rice farmer who worked outdoors every day of his life.

  Hiroshi waited patiently by the elevator door, with Sakaguchi by his side.

  A tall, gaunt man with a ponytail halfway down the back of his thin leather jacket came striding out of the back room where the women disappeared. An energetic young man with thick-framed glasses and a laptop against his chest bounded out after him.

  “Welcome,” the rice farmer said, his voice cheery and raspy. With broad gestures, he waved Hiroshi and Sakaguchi over to plush couches surrounding a low table inlaid with a tiger image made from cut, polished stones. The tiger’s crouching body and legs were made of artfully arrayed agate and onyx, the claws of polished white coral. The eyes were made from glittering tigers eye stones that caught the light from deep inside.
/>   Hiroshi looked at Sakaguchi, who shrugged and took a step toward the man. Hiroshi hesitated.

  “We don’t get many visitors up here. Would you like a cup of Gyokuro tea from Fukuoka? I had to give up alcohol a few years ago.”

  “We won’t be here long,” Hiroshi said.

  “Always time for tea,” the rice farmer said, holding out his arms to welcome them over to the sofa before nodding to the men at the bar, one of whom walked to the kitchen.

  The rice farmer sat first, gesturing for Hiroshi and Sakaguchi, and then the tall ponytail man to do the same. The young guy with thick-frame glasses stood to the side, clutching his laptop and seesawing slightly from leg to leg. Hiroshi sat on the edge of the sofa.

  “I’m Mochida,” the rice farmer said.

  “I’m Hiroshi Shimizu,” Hiroshi said, pushing his meishi across the table. The ponytail took it, read it, and put it in a case in his jacket pocket.

  Mochida smiled and said, “The police are getting younger all the time. And are you a sumo wrestler?” he asked Sakaguchi.

  “I was. Now I’m a homicide detective.”

  “Investigating in my building, it seems. So, what can I help you with?”

  Hiroshi said, “Murder.”

  The crust that overlay Mochida’s face hardened.

  The ponytail leaned over the tiger, and the computer guy quit bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “If those clubs are yours, you could be in trouble,” Hiroshi said.

  “You mean the club you just busted up,” Mochida said calmly.

  “That was your club? The name on the business papers is not ‘Mochida.’”

  “Business papers?” Mochida smiled. “If it wasn’t my place, why else would I invite you up here?”

  One of the men brought the tea from the other room in elegant handmade cups. After the drugged drinks in the Tulip, neither Hiroshi nor Sakaguchi felt like drinking anything. “You can’t get this tea very often, you know,” Mochida nodded to them both to try it. Mochida sipped his tea with relish, smacking his lips with the delight of a connoisseur. “So, what is it you need exactly?”

  “Video from the surveillance cameras.”

  “Why would I give that to you? After all the expensive imported liquor you wasted?”

  “We can investigate the bars the slow way. That’d involve twenty-some people in and out of everything in this building for a week, maybe two. No income plus lawyer fees, it adds up,” Hiroshi said. “This looks like a high-tech building.”

  “That’s my tech guy there,” he pointed to the laptop guy, who adjusted his glasses. “They’re getting younger every year, too.”

  “We’re looking for a woman.”

  “Who isn’t?” Mochida’s voice rose in amusement.

  “This woman,” Hiroshi put the photo of Michiko on the table. Mochida, the ponytail, and the computer guy glanced at the photo.

  “Pretty girl,” Mochida said.

  “Dangerous girl.”

  “All pretty women are dangerous!” Mochida laughed.

  “Not all women commit murder.”

  “Fortunately,” Mochida said and leaned back in his chair. The laptop guy took the photo and began scanning it with a mobile scanner. Mochida tapped the table over the white-stone fangs of the tiger. “You have to understand, people come to my clubs trusting not to be seen.”

  “We only need the footage for certain dates. Just the twelfth floor, the entrance and elevator.” Hiroshi pulled out a pen, jotted down the dates, and pushed the paper over.

  The laptop guy took the dates and times and tapped them in. The scan finished. He handed the photo back and started a search for Michiko’s image.

  “There was no murder in this building,” Mochida said. “We would have known.”

  “Your bartender poured the knockout drugs.”

  “I can turn him over to you. He’ll testify and do the time. You’re done.”

  Mochida turned to the guys at the bar.

  “I don’t want any sacrifice. I just want the video on specific nights,” Hiroshi said. This was the second time he’d been offered a fall guy, or fall girl. The guy outside the club offered to find a hostess to take the rap, and now Mochida was offering up the bartender. Hiroshi couldn’t believe that all these low-level people would be so loyal, or maybe so desperate.

  “You want to see if she was with the guy who died?” Mochida asked.

  “That’s all.”

  He shrugged a wordless “no big deal,” his crusty face creasing at the ease of giving an okay to something so simple. The computer guy carried over the laptop to Mochida, who nodded and then turned it to show Hiroshi the screen, re-typing a code and pressing play. A dozen video screens appeared: shots from inside the clubs, the hallways and the elevator.

  “You have a lot of video.”

  “Video is very persuasive. It provides insurance,” Mochida explained.

  “What time, roughly?” the computer guy asked.

  “Midnight,” Hiroshi said. The computer guy tapped in the time and the videos raced by on fast forward. When the videos slowed, Michiko and Steve walked into the elevator. Steve leaned his bulky frame over to kiss her as the elevator doors shut.

  “Is that them?”

  “Yes. Can you copy all the cameras?”

  The computer guy zoomed in and let it run as he made a circling gesture to the men at the bar. One of the men disappeared into a back room and brought back a blank DVD.

  “I’ll put all of them on this. You can see the date there, at the bottom. You’ll need a special media player: Winzap. It’s used on all security film. Do you have that?”

  “Maybe at the station.”

  “I’ll put a copy of it on here with the video.”

  “We have a tech lab.”

  “I know. I used to work there,” the laptop guy said, repositioning his glasses. “Didn’t pay very well.”

  Mochida picked up Michiko’s photo and frowned. “She looks familiar, doesn’t she?”

  He handed the photo to the ponytail guy who said, “I think this is the girl who beat up Tanigawa.”

  Mochida pulled a face and shook his head, trying to remember.

  “Tanigawa, from Iwate? She sent him to the hospital.”

  “I remember,” Mochida said, chuckling. “Pretty ones like her don’t need to be violent usually. Where was she working?”

  “She started at the Venus de Milo, but then moved to the Ring, and the Strap and Tie.”

  “That S&M joint?”

  “They make a lot there. Tanigawa tried to shake the girls down for a cut, so she beat him up!”

  “And most women are so passive!” Mochida laughed out loud. “If she worked at the Ring, there’ll be an address for her. Get that, can you? And look in the Venus database. That mama-san kept good records.”

  The laptop whirred.

  Mochida sipped his tea. “Real estate’s so much easier. Fewer personnel problems.”

  The laptop guy sat back, his eyes moving rapidly over the video footage. He turned the screen to Mochida who watched for a few minutes and laughed. “Oh, her! Now, I remember! I knew I’d seen her somewhere.”

  The ponytail looked and nodded his inert face, “Yes, that’s her. The same one.”

  “She was in trouble with those guys and now with the cops. She gets around!” Mochida shook his head with a laugh.

  “Trouble with what guys?” Hiroshi asked.

  “There was a development project in Kawasaki or Shinagawa, I forget the details. That’s why I have to hire this guy,” Mochida waved at the laptop guy. “She found out ahead of time. In bed, I guess. How it usually happens. Messed up their investment.”

  “And then tried to blackmail them!” The ponytail guy shook his head.

  “When the investment went bust, they asked her to work off the debt.”

  “Work off the debt?” Hiroshi asked. “What do you mean?”

  Mochida and the ponytail guy snorted.

  Mochida le
aned forward over the tiger’s head. “The group she jerked around does not like to lose money. They’re not used to it.”

  The ponytail said, “They’re not a forgiving group of investors.”

  Mochida said, “She’s lucky to be alive.”

  The laptop kept clicking away.

  “Were these guys from Kobe?” Hiroshi asked.

  Mochida shook his head, smiling at Hiroshi. “I don’t bat in the big leagues. I know my place. Learned it the hard way.” Mochida pointed to his crippled leg.

  “Who did she sell the information to?”

  “Foreigners, I heard. That made it even worse.”

  The ponytail said, “Those Kobe guys like to keep the best deals inside Japan.”

  “But who knows what really happened. The foreigners are the ones you should be looking into,” Mochida sneered. After a few minutes of clicking, the laptop guy turned and waved to one of the guys at the bar—their well-pumped muscles made them all look the same to Hiroshi. The bulky, black-suited guy came back holding two pages of printout and a second DVD.

  The laptop guy glanced at the printout and looked at Mochida for an approving nod. Getting it, he slid the printout and the DVD copy over the tiger.

  The printout had Michiko’s Kawasaki address and another in Roppongi, a clear head shot, her age and birthdate, insurance card info, old work schedules and a list of cell phone and landline numbers. Below that was the address for Bentley Associates in Nishi-Shinjuku and the names Steve Deveaux, Mark Whitlock, and Barbara Harris-Mitford.

  “Do you want us to take care of it for you?” Mochida asked, his underlings listening attentively.

  “We’ll handle it,” Hiroshi said, standing up.

  “Maybe we can talk again sometime.”

  “I doubt it,” said Sakaguchi, on his feet in one motion.

  “You didn’t touch your tea.” Mochida smiled. “I’ll send you some.”

  Hiroshi put the DVD and printout in his pocket as they walked toward the elevator. The short guy keyed them in and waited to take them down to the ground floor.

  “Be careful you don’t get beat up!” Mochida called out after them before the doors closed. The laughter from the penthouse echoed through the elevator shaft as Hiroshi and Sakaguchi descended.