by Steve Bein
“I see. Better to let this case go, then, neh? Burn everything to ashes in your Purging Fire and start again?”
“I hope not. This is a most unusual cancer; it is one you deluded ones can cure yourselves. The host can reject the tumor. He has only to see the path.”
Damn it, Kusama thought. Joko Daishi may have been out of his mind, but he was disciplined enough never to mention himself or his own goals. Hamaya had coached him well.
“What about me?” asked Kusama. “What if I said the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is the only oncologist this patient needs? Suppose I told you to get the hell out of my operating room?”
Joko Daishi giggled. “You are the most talented physician of a thousand years ago. You know nothing, even at the height of your craft. You see chemotherapy and you mistake it for torture. But I say unto you: you will learn better medicine, whether you will it or not.”
Close and getting closer, Kusama thought. But just like that, Hamaya stepped in. “My client and I must be going. Unless … well, do you intend to detain us, Captain?”
Kusama wanted to smack that smarmy grin off his face. In the old days he could have done just that. Disciplined or not, Joko Daishi would probably react to getting hit by striking back. He was violent enough, that was certain. As soon as he threw his first head butt, every cop in the room could pile onto him. No matter what the perp said after that, the cops could refute it. Officer safety first.
Back in the seventies that was business as usual. Strike first, get the story straight later. But today perps could wear tiny fucking microphones. For all Kusama knew, this entire meeting was already streaming live online. There were probably countries out there where that was illegal; too bad Japan wasn’t one of them.
He looked up at Hamaya, whose grin was smeared across his face like two tapeworms laid side by side. Kusama could throw him in a cell, and his client with him. Not legally, not without probable cause, but nothing could stop him from doing it illegally.
He thought about Detective Oshiro and her disregard for authority. For all her flaws, when she had the chance to stand by her partner she’d chosen to stand by the law instead. What would she say if her captain broke the law to do the right thing?
Kusama caught Sakakibara’s eye. The Narcotics LT must have been entertaining the same thoughts, and darker ones too. The heel of his palm rested on the butt of his pistol, as if he were debating whether it was worth his freedom to shoot both of these men in the back of the head. For Captain Kusama, that wasn’t a hard question: of course it was worth it. Joko Daishi was responsible for over a hundred murders. But probable cause was probable cause, and Kusama didn’t have it.
Fuck it, he thought. “Lieutenant Sakakibara, I want you to—”
“Get these men out of your office? Right away, sir.”
That wasn’t at all what Kusama had in mind, and Sakakibara knew that damn well. But he was good police, and this morning that meant he’d obey the law even when his captain lost his nerve and wanted to break it. “I’m giving you shitheads ten seconds to get out of here,” Sakakibara said. “After that I’m going to arrest you for loitering and tresp—”
Kusama never saw the SWAT cop reach for his sidearm. The weapon just appeared in his hand. He reached out with the barrel, intending to press it right to Joko Daishi’s skull before he pulled the trigger.
The world went into slow motion. Kusama sprang up from his chair. He sprawled across his desk, pawing for the pistol, for Joko Daishi, for anything. But the desk was too wide. He couldn’t reach.
Thunder and gun smoke filled the room. Something sharp and hot lacerated Kusama’s cheekbone. He expected blood spatter, not bullet fragments. Then he saw the truth: it was Sakakibara, not the SWAT operator, who had fired. Now the SWAT cop twisted and fell, almost as if through water.
Everything happened so slowly. Kusama saw him level his pistol as he fell, training it on Joko Daishi. Kusama couldn’t help but admire him for that; he wouldn’t give up, not even after Sakakibara put a round in his flak vest. Even now, Sakakibara’s pistol followed the man. Why wasn’t he still shooting?
Now Kusama saw it. The other SWAT operator loomed over his buddy, intent on smothering the weapon, but he seemed to hang in the air. The world still moved in slow motion. Kusama leaned farther across the desk, reaching for Joko Daishi. Even as he did it, he wasn’t sure if he meant to pull the man out of the line of fire or push him into it. It didn’t matter. He was too slow. He couldn’t reach.
Sakakibara shifted his aim a couple of millimeters. Somehow he snaked in a shot right between the two SWAT cops. Two pistols roared almost in unison. Their reports stabbed Kusama in the eardrums. He watched as the bullet meant for Joko Daishi splattered bits of Hamaya Jiro all over the windows.
Then the world zoomed back to normal speed. “Down, down, down!” the second SWAT cop bellowed. He flattened his partner and wrapped both hands around his gun arm. The man on the bottom howled in pain. Kusama, flat on his desk like roadkill, saw no blood down there. He assumed Sakakibara’s second round also hit the bulletproof vest. If so, that was one hell of a shot.
On the other side of the room, the wind whistled through a little bloody hole in the window. Gray matter containing Hamaya’s law degree oozed slowly down the glass. The attorney himself lay on the carpet, gaping at the ceiling. He seemed to have grown a second mouth in the side of his head; the hollow-point left a hideous crater in its wake.
Sakakibara paid the body no mind; his weapon was trained on Joko Daishi’s center body mass. For his part, the cult leader just looked around, much like a little boy trying to decide which animal to watch at the zoo. That more than anything told Kusama the man was out of his mind. He’d narrowly survived an assassination attempt, his friend took a bullet to the head, and the look on his face never changed. He didn’t even seem to notice the ringing in his ears, a ringing Kusama was damn sure he heard, because his own ears blared with a steady blast like a distant car horn.
Captain Kusama finally managed to haul himself off his desk. He scrambled around and helped the SWAT operator disarm and handcuff his one-time comrade. “You were thinking the same thing,” the shooter said as the cuffs clicked shut around his wrists. “I know you were.”
You’re right, Kusama thought. Damn you, you’re right. That was why he’d started to tell Sakakibara to arrest Joko Daishi: because it was a better plan than gunning him down.
His office door flew open. Junko kicked it aside, a little.32 revolver in her hands. Behind her, so many voices were shouting that Kusama couldn’t keep count. By now every cop on the floor had heard the shots and come running. Faces and the muzzles of pistols appeared in the doorway, one after another. Joko Daishi watched them with an air of expectant joy, like a child watching the carp come flocking to the surface after the first chunks of bread hit the pond.
When he stood up, Sakakibara clamped a hand on his shoulder and slam-dunked him back into his chair. “Hey, Bullet Magnet, sit the fuck down.”
“Why?” cried the handcuffed cop on the floor. “Why save him?”
Because the law demands it, Kusama thought. Sakakibara answered differently: “Because I’m standing next to him, dumbass. When people get jumpy, sometimes their shots wander a bit. Which, you know, you might have noticed already.”
He fixed his furious glare on the gun-toting crowd clustered in the doorway. “What are you, a firing squad? Holster your weapons. Now.”
They did as they were told. Kusama and the other SWAT operator helped the handcuffed cop to his feet, and together they ushered him into the room outside. Kusama ordered an escort for him, first to the emergency room, then to a holding cell. He told everyone else to disperse, and all but one of them did. Junko, strangely territorial all of a sudden, refused to turn her back on Joko Daishi. “You’re my boss” was the only explanation she offered.
Kusama lacked the energy to fight her, so he just shut the huge office door in her face. He needed time to think. “Fucking hel
l, Sakakibara, what are we going to do?”
“Down the freight elevator, straight to the motor pool. We stick him in the back of an SUV and we drop him off anywhere he wants to go. And you, Bullet Magnet, you’re going to comply, because otherwise I can’t vouch for your safety.”
Joko Daishi craned his neck to look back at him. “Oh, but I can. I have foreseen the hour of my death. My time has not yet arrived.”
Sakakibara snorted. “How nice for you.”
The lunatic turned back to Captain Kusama. “May I ask a favor of you?”
Kusama almost choked on his breath. “You have to be kidding.”
“No.” He glanced at his fallen attorney. “Hamaya-san has escaped the fetters of this deluded world. I rejoice for him, but I do not know your laws as he did. Tell me, can you legally force me to leave this building only on your terms?”
Kusama and Sakakibara exchanged a glance. Sakakibara closed his eyes and shook his head. “No,” Kusama confessed.
“Then I believe I shall leave through the front door.”
Kusama strangled the air. The opportunity for a disorderly conduct charge dangled right in front of him. The mere sight of Joko Daishi was sure to get civilians alarmed and disturbed. But that meant the only way to arrest him was to wait until he got into the public view, and today wasn’t the day to raise questions about whether the TMPD was trampling civil rights. Could they rearrest him every time another human being laid eyes on him? If not, then why arrest him this time? Was it just because they could get away with it? Was it because he didn’t have legal counsel anymore? Kusama was sure he could spin Hamaya’s death as the accidental discharge of a firearm, but that would get sticky if the TMPD used this as an opportunity to hold Joko Daishi without representation.
The terrorist stood up from his chair, and none of the cops in the room did a damn thing to stop him. He presented his back to Sakakibara, who had no choice but to uncuff him. “I have one more favor to ask,” he said. “Would you pass a message to the swordswoman for me?”
Kusama sighed angrily. “One of your sermons?”
“A benediction. Tell her she must forgive herself for what is to come.”
25
“Please, Detective Oshiro.” Furukawa pressed his long-fingered hands together as if he were praying to her. Maybe he was doing just that. “Shoot me or arrest me as you will; I am powerless to stop you. But allow me to observe that neither one will advance your interests.”
“Justice,” Mariko said. “That’s my interest. You’re a murderer.”
“So you say. But you are not so naive as to think I will go to prison.”
Mariko didn’t need to think about that for long. This was a man who could change the face of government with a single phone call. He had the kind of money it took to rent a Shinjuku penthouse large enough to have a pool table. That, or else he was backed by that kind of money, which meant there was a hell of a lot more where that came from. Middle management, he’d said. How powerful would the upper management be, if a middleman was capable of all this?
That realization only made Mariko tighten her grip on her pistol. “Oh, come now,” Furukawa said. “You won’t shoot me. Not if you want to leave this suite alive.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I don’t need to. It is a simple truth: the Wind will not abide the assassination of one of its chunin. But that is irrelevant, since you have no intention of pulling that trigger. You want Joko Daishi, and I am the one who can give him to you.”
Mariko focused on the Glock’s sights, then on Furukawa’s skinny, sunken chest. She wasn’t going to pull the trigger. He was right.
“You see, Detective Oshiro, this is how the Wind operates. What need is there for coercion? We put people in a position where their interests align with our own. They only need to do what they always do. What they inevitably do. Then they do our work for us.”
“What if I’m stubborn? What if I refuse?”
“You won’t, or else you and I would never have met. Do you think I would allow you to see my face if there were any possibility that you could arrest me? Do you think I would put myself in a room with you if I thought you could actually kill me? No. I placed your captain in a position to suspend you. I placed you in a position to indulge your own impetuous curiosity. It is no different than playing billiards. Apply the right impetus from the right angle and the balls will do exactly as you bid them.”
Mariko glowered at him. She hated that he’d read her mind so easily, that she’d allowed herself to be so easily read. She never would have shot him unless he presented a lethal threat, but he didn’t have to know that.
A glint of triumph glimmered in his eyes when he saw he’d struck the bull’s-eye. Mariko recognized that look, and all at once she understood that ineffable similarity she’d seen in him all along. She’d known one other person who had that maddening knowledge of her own affairs, someone who was always a step ahead of her, who stood in judgment over her like a stern grandfather. Not many people could make her feel like she was always catching up, but Furukawa did, and one other man did too: Yamada Yasuo.
“You did know him,” Mariko said. She’d harbored a healthy skepticism about that before, but now there was no doubt. “You two are so alike. So why was he a good man, and why are you such a corrupt son of a bitch?”
There was that wince again, as if her words stuck him like a needle. The attack on his character didn’t seem to bother him at all; it was her discourtesy that rankled. “We both know you’re not going to shoot me, Detective. Would you be so good as to lower your pistol?”
She did as she was told. Her thumb automatically groped for the safety, but there wasn’t one. Glocks weren’t built that way. But Mariko’s brain was running on autopilot, coasting on its default position that this was her favored SIG P230. The sight of the Glock in her hand made her realize something she should have registered already: she was now illegally in possession of a firearm. If this were a legitimate police operation, she’d call in the cavalry, turn over the weapon in the course of processing the crime scene, and that would be that. But now she was on suspension and trapped by a criminal syndicate. She didn’t have to think long about whether she planned to turn the Glock over to Investigative Division. She spent more time thinking about how much she didn’t like the prospect of stuffing an unsafetied weapon into her waistband, and what a hassle it would be to run Norika down and steal the holster the crafty bitch must have had on her.
Since she didn’t have anywhere safe to put the weapon, Mariko just held the damn thing. Her trigger finger tapped irritably on the outside of the trigger guard. “So? What now?”
“Now you accept my offer. Join the Wind. Bring an end to the reign of Joko Daishi.”
“Bring an end to—?” Mariko didn’t like the sound of that at all. “You can’t be serious. You want me to kill him?”
“It’s the only way to stop him.”
“Okay, first of all, no, it isn’t. Prison works just fine. Second, do you understand what happens when I follow you down this road? Do you have any idea how often I run across a perp who I know is guilty, but I can’t prove it yet? It happens every week. If cops start taking the law into their own hands, there is no law. I’m not crossing that line. Not for you, not for anyone. Go sell your ninja suits someplace else.”
Furukawa deflated with a sigh. He had the air of a disappointed schoolmaster. “Ninja suits! I suppose you’d like that. I could wear the black shozoku and you could wear a white cowboy hat. Quite the appropriate garb for your movie theater moralizing. The world is not black and white, Detective.”
“If you don’t like how I see it, find someone else. Don’t you have assassins of your own? Send that bitch Norika after him.”
“We tried. For years she posed as one of Joko Daishi’s concubines—originally to serve as a bodyguard, you understand. That was when we thought we could control him. Terminal 2 changed all of that. Norika was given the order. She tried to kill him
but failed; the man is too well protected. It was all she could do to recapture the mask and escape. I sent her straight to you.”
“Why me?”
“Because we believe you are the only person who can kill him.”
“Then you’re an idiot.” When he gave her a quizzical frown, she aped it right back at him. “Seriously? What do you not get about this? I’m not doing it.”
“It is the only way to stop his reign of terror.”
“It’s first-degree murder!”
Mariko thought that was pretty self-explanatory. When she saw it didn’t move him, she turned and headed for the door. “I’m a cop. You want a vigilante. We’re done, Furukawa-san. Have a nice day.”
“Detective Oshiro, I haven’t given you permission to leave.”
Mariko press-checked the Glock, confirming she had a round chambered. Waving good-bye with the gun, she said, “I’ve got my permission slip right here, thanks.”
“You’ve killed before.”
That stopped Mariko in her tracks. “Excuse me?”
“Akahata Daisuke. You shot him right through the head.”
Mariko didn’t need a reminder. She had replayed that nightmare in her mind a thousand times. “That’s none of your damn business,” she said coldly. “And it was in self-defense, by the way.”
“Oh, you don’t believe that’s relevant, do you? There were fifty-two people on that subway platform. You saved them all. If you hadn’t been there—if you had been a sniper far out of harm’s way—you’d still have taken the shot, wouldn’t you?”
Damn right I would, Mariko thought. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing her say it.
“Do you know what I think? I think you’d have shot him even if he were innocent.”
A hot tear rolled down Mariko’s cheek. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Oh, but I do. What do guilt and innocence matter in the face of arithmetic?” Furukawa laughed as much as spoke. “Suppose I put you there again. Suppose this time Akahata’s only crime is bad luck. I have wired a bomb to him. In ten seconds it will explode, but only if he is alive. Shoot him and you disarm the bomb. Hold your fire and he will innocently blow himself to pieces, and fifty-two others besides. Can you tell me the law matters?”
