Alina stepped inside and shut the door. Eyes never leaving Munroe’s torso, she slipped out of her shoes and left them in the entry, then dumped her purse on the desk. Fingers outstretched, she reached to touch the longest, thickest scar that ran from the right side of Munroe’s rib cage down to her belly button.
“Who did this?” Alina said.
Munroe snapped a hand around Alina’s wrist before skin connected with skin. “It was a long time ago,” Munroe said. She let go slowly. “Don’t touch me.” Then, releasing Alina completely, she added, “Please.”
Alina took a step back, just out of Munroe’s personal space. Never dropping eye contact, she pulled her own shirt over her head, then unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans and pushed them off. She stood and, arms wide, turned a slow circle, her gaze finally disconnecting when physics forced her head to follow her body.
Angry gashes marred the pale skin along her back, her chest, her buttocks and upper thighs, all body parts that had been hidden by the alluring red dress. Creeping up beyond Alina’s panty line was the pink of a still-fresh wound.
Munroe clenched her fists and inhaled a long, long, deep breath.
She didn’t need to ask who’d done it: Alina had told her as much inside the club. Munroe let the air out slowly and with the air the burden.
This woman was not her fight.
“He did this to break me,” Alina said. “He needs to be sure that I know I am worthless, that no man will ever find me beautiful once my clothes are off. He says that when he doesn’t need my face to make money anymore, then he will take that, too.”
“You tried to run away?”
Alina nodded, lips taut, expression grim.
Munroe offered her the jinbei again and this time Alina took it, slipping the cotton jacket over her shoulders, wrapping the belt around her waist, and knotting it with experienced hands.
Munroe pulled her T-shirt back on, sat on the bed, and patted the space beside her.
Alina offered a slight smile, then, like a kid, she knelt on the bed and crawled across to the side that backed up to the wall. She pulled the band out of her hair and lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes. Slowly, tears trickled down toward her ears, eventually making water spots on the pillowcase.
Munroe shifted and leaned against the headboard.
Questions about Bradford chased each other in a race against time, but Munroe held them back, allowing the silence to settle, giving Alina a chance to absorb the possibility that her torment might soon be over.
Without opening her eyes, Alina whispered, “You promised to keep me safe. How will you do that?”
“Keep you hidden while we work on getting you a new passport,” Munroe said. “When you have that, I’ll put you on a plane and send you home.”
“I have no money.”
“I know,” Munroe said. “I consider it a cost of doing business—payment in exchange for the information you have.”
Alina looked down at her chest and patted her crotch. “I thought maybe, you know, I should have to buy my way, but not so?”
Munroe smiled, and Alina laughed a snot-wet laugh and dried her eyes.
“I came to Japan legally,” she said, “through an agency in my country. They hire girls for the hostess industry, put them on contract for a few years, and then when the contract is finished the girls go home. I had many friends who have done it. The work, it sucks, but the money from two years in Japan goes very far in making a better life in Russia. You know of these things?”
Munroe nodded. Alina continued in fluid fact-based sentences that neither played for pity nor masked frustration and pain. She told of how when she’d arrived, her passport had been taken with the understanding that the travel documents would be returned when the contract expired—how this was an accepted practice to guarantee that the agency recouped its money for transportation and housing, ensuring the girls didn’t take off to work on their own once they’d arrived in Japan. But unlike most girls’, Alina’s passport and the passports of a handful of others who worked in the club were never given back. Without passports, they overstayed their visas, were there illegally, were afraid of the police and afraid of their bosses.
The owner of the agency, also the owner of the club, claimed her for his own, providing her with an apartment and clothes and food while taking from her the money she could have used to provide for herself, always threatening to throw her out into the streets, to strip from her the higher-classed privilege of hostessing and turn her to prostitution, and then to kill her and bury her where no one would ever find her. “I knew from the beginning that the agency is run by the mafia,” Alina whispered. “Most hostess agencies are, yes? But I thought that this is Japan, and in Japan they follow the law—not like the mafia in Russia, which owns the law—I thought this was different.”
“Not so different.”
“It’s exactly the same. Business and crime and government all tied in one ugly bow. The other girls think I am lucky. They hate me a little, I think, even though I am here against my will just the same. He promises to return my passport, but he has promised many times and beats me when I ask. They think I have it better—they don’t know.” She paused and looked at Munroe, her face ten years older than it should have been. “They don’t know about the many trips to the hospital and the many trips I don’t make because I am too scared to go. You think it’s strange I trust a stranger after a few minutes of conversation, that I trust a stranger to protect me and then I leave everything and go into the night?”
Munroe didn’t answer.
Alina said, “My youth is fading, and Jiro tires of me. He will kill me soon—or worse, give me to one of his men. There is nowhere for me to go that is safe, nobody I can ask for help. But you’re a foreigner, less likely to have connections, and I thought you were a soldier like your friend, I thought maybe you could help me. If not, what did I lose? Either way, I die.”
“I am like my friend,” Munroe said.
Alina sighed. “We’ll see.” She rolled over and, lying on her side, she said, “Your friend killed that man in self-defense—he was provoked.”
That was the second time Alina had spoken of Bradford killing a man. The notion itself wasn’t impossible, only strange and incongruent, an accusation that Munroe had never seen coming considering that Bradford was now sitting in jail for a murder he hadn’t committed. What was the point in that when a real one was so readily available?
“Your friend came to the club three times in the past two months,” Alina said, “each time with the same group of men.”
“Did you know them, or know how I can find them?”
“They weren’t regulars, but your friend knew them well—they were all from the same workplace. Maybe that helps?”
“You’re sure he knew them from work?”
Alina rolled back over and offered a knowing smile. “There are things you learn when you do this job as long as I have,” she said. “There is a certain feel. This is a country of traditions and ceremony and yes, they were from work. And, like you, your friend made an effort to be like the others, but he didn’t drink.”
“The same men for each visit?”
“Yes, until the end when the problems started.”
“Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”
“In the club, yes. By picture, I don’t know.”
“What about in person?”
“Maybe.”
“Tell me about them,” Munroe said.
Alina shifted and stuffed the pillow under her head. “There’s nothing to say about them. They were men, and one man is the same as another.”
Munroe reached for Alina’s face and gently brushed the hair aside. “Not all men are violent,” she said.
“Maybe there are some good men,” Alina said. “Maybe your friend is a good man. To me, one is the same as the other. I’m only food, a good meal that they can look at but not eat.” She turned her head and glanced at Munroe. “The other girls do doh
an, you know what this is?”
Munroe shook her head.
“Shimei is like when you ask for me inside the club. A date, yes? So I get paid for the time we sit and talk. Dohan is same thing, but outside the club. In dohan is much money and no eyes to watch. Dohan means many things, depending on the customer.” Alina paused, waiting for the implication to settle. “You understand?” she said.
Munroe nodded.
“Jiro would not let me go for dohan—it’s easy to get my own money that way, to get sympathy. Anyway,” Alina said, rolling back to her side, “that has nothing to say about the men who came with your friend. They were not regular customers, also not so rich like most customers we see. They were Japanese, and they came from work with the same business workclothes like every businessman.”
“Did they speak English?”
Alina paused. Half smiling, eager, she pushed up on an elbow. “One. One spoke English. He was the one who talked to your friend. Good English, I think.”
“The others?”
“One of Jiro’s men, yes.”
Munroe glanced at Alina. With the inclusion of Jiro’s men, Bradford’s story had just taken an epic jump that would have to be roped into the chronology when this thread was finished. She said, “Did my friend talk with you?”
“Mostly with Anna. She’s from the Philippines. She’s beautiful. Very small. Tiny. She speaks beautiful English.”
“Did any of them smoke?” Munroe said.
Alina pressed her palms to her forehead. “I can’t remember.”
“Wear glasses?
“Yes, two.”
“You said Jiro’s men were there. I assume they were part of the problem at the end. Tell me what happened, from the beginning.”
“The beginning?” Alina said. “Which night?”
“The last one.”
“Your friend came with the people from work, same as the other times before. This night, before the club closed, two new customers came and they were placed at the table next to your friend’s. I knew them from Jiro. You could say they are work associates, right, but nobody important—low-level associates. But this night they are dressed in suits and looking like businessmen and given the choice of hostesses and provided drinks. Something is wrong with this, you know? Maybe to everyone else in the room this seems normal, but the mama-san knows, the master knows, you can see it in their faces and it’s clear that I am meant to ignore everything.
“Eventually Jiro’s men, they start a conversation with your friend. They make a big deal that he is a foreigner, that he is at a hostess club, which is a big part of Japanese culture. Shinji, I think his name is Shinji, he speaks good English, so he is the one to do the talking and soon he is offering drinks to your friend. It’s uncomfortable because your friend doesn’t want to be there, but he makes a good show of being friendly. Soon Shinji is asking where he is from and makes a big deal about Texas with hats and cattle and guns, and he asks to see the belt of your friend. Shinji is making a lot of noise like he is drunk, but he’s not drunk and your friend is more and more uncomfortable. The others around the table, they are laughing and they tease him, all of them, and so to make the peace your friend takes off the belt and gives it to Shinji to look. But then Shinji refuses to give it back.”
Munroe closed her eyes. She could see where this was going. “I should stop?” Alina said.
Munroe shook her head. “The more detail, the better.”
“At first, your friend seems to play it like a joke. But then after more asking and still Shinji refuses to give back the belt, it turns into an argument and Shinji becomes very not drunk and very angry and the table gets moved and some drinks are spilled. Me and Anna—Anna was hostess for your friend—and Ivana and Yuki, we are trying to make the peace and calm things, and then the mama-san comes and the master and also the man who is like security for the club, and very politely, with many apologies, they say the men are disturbing the guests and to please go outside. So it is six men outside.
“I know that something is wrong and I make an excuse that I need air, and because there is the commotion and the mess and everything needs to keep calm for the other guests, no one cares that I am gone. I reached the street after the fight is already started. The men from your friend’s work are on the other side of the street watching the argument. They’re very scared, I think. But also drunk and it appears they don’t know what to do.
“Your friend is calm at first, and he asks for the belt and then Shinji tries to hit him with something. Not the belt; I don’t know what. Maybe a bottle, maybe a brick or a knife—I couldn’t see—only after that everything moves very fast, and then Shinji is on the ground and Dai—the other one—he takes a knife and tries to cut your friend. Your friend breaks his arm first. Then slams him to the ground, then everything goes quiet.
“The men from work, they grab your friend and they make him run. Shinji still has the belt and he stands and lifts Dai by the waist and pulls him away and then I couldn’t stay longer, so I don’t know what happens after this, but I overheard the conversation with Jiro the next week that Dai was dead. All of this for a belt,” Alina said. She looked up at Munroe as if Munroe might possibly have the answers. “It makes no sense to me. Why not give it back? Why make so much effort for this small thing? Why did Jiro want it? Was it worth a lot of money?”
“It’s not an expensive belt,” Munroe said, “but my friend wore it every day. Someone used it to kill a woman.”
The room fell silent for a long, long while and Alina turned her head toward the wall above the desk and stared at the diagrams, the cryptic notes, the arrows and fact pieces too far away in the dark to truly see. Finally she said, “You aren’t looking for your friend, you already know where he is.”
“In jail, awaiting trial for a murder he didn’t commit,” Munroe said. “I’m trying to find out why.”
By the time they’d drifted into sleep, the tiniest touches of light had begun to creep beneath the curtains. Munroe woke a few hours later, and when she was dressed she woke Alina, who startled at her touch.
Seeing Munroe, Alina groaned and dropped back down onto the pillow.
Munroe sat on the bed to lace her boots. “We need to get to the consulate,” she said.
Alina rubbed sleep from her face, crawled out of the bed, dragged her purse off the desk, and shut the bathroom door behind her.
Water rushed through the pipes behind the wall.
Munroe leaned into the headboard and closed her eyes.
According to Alina, Jiro had government connections. Munroe assumed that meant within the police force as well, and if she were a possessive, violent man whose woman had walked out on him, she’d be vicious in trying to get her back, if only to kill her. If the woman didn’t have a passport, the consulate would be the first place she’d start looking.
In leaving for the consulate first thing this morning they might already be too late.
The Russian Federation embassy in Tokyo was an alternative.
She didn’t have the time to spare to make the trip north.
—
In the hotel garage Alina pulled the helmet over her head and her shaking fingers fumbled, unable to thread the strap through the buckle. Gently, so as to avoid putting Alina more on edge than she already was, Munroe moved her hand and secured the helmet, then gave her a slip of paper and fifty thousand yen.
“My phone number,” she said, “and money to pay the fees for the passport.”
The helmet nodded. Then Alina shoved the paper and money deep down into a pocket.
Munroe mounted the bike, turned on the ignition, and brought the horses to life. Alina climbed on behind her. Had circumstances been otherwise, Munroe would have dropped the woman off at the consulate with enough money for taxi, hotel, and airfare and that would have been the end of it. History wouldn’t allow her that, and she could only hope that today’s mission would be simple.
Good deeds had a tendency to get people killed.
The Russian Federation consulate was a two-story, pine-tree-fronted, modern-style, windowless white-and-orange block that stood on a clean and quiet street in a neighborhood of upscale block-shaped apartment buildings. Separating the consulate from street traffic—had there been any street traffic—was an array of plastic cones, a few police officers, and an official van parked on the sidewalk against the white concrete of the compound’s security wall.
The street dead-ended into a metal traffic barrier a block or so down.
Munroe passed the building once for orientation, then looped back and stopped on the sidewalk beside the front gate.
Alina slid off, clutching her bag with one hand and attempting to unbuckle the helmet with the other. The nearest police officer approached the bike, irritation written in his expression. Eyes on him, words to Alina, Munroe took the helmet and shoved it on her own head. “I need two hours,” she said. “Call me on the consulate’s phone if you think you’ll take longer.”
“Thank you,” Alina said, but her focus, too, was on the officer, as if he was a dangerous thing. She quickstepped for the gate.
Munroe rolled off the sidewalk before the policeman reached her and waited nearby while Alina talked her way past consulate security and beyond the front door, then returned to Bradford’s apartment while her mind spun through the fallout that would come if instead of helping Alina she’d just dumped the woman into a trap.
She parked blocks away and walked a circuitous route, as much a caution against having been followed as of stepping into a different kind of trap, and then opened the door to dusty hot air and the apartment exactly as she’d left it.
The calm and order was frustrating. Maddening. Wrong.
Japanese criminal investigators were known for being effectively thorough. Even if they had everything in place for an open-and-shut conviction, if they believed Bradford was guilty, they should have come as a way to cover all the angles and double-down on evidence and motive.
The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel Page 13
