Tokyo Heist

by Diana Renn

  “This is Roppongi Hills,” Kenji announces as we approach a glass complex of connected buildings and walkways, which make me think of brightly lit ice cubes linked and stacked together. “Our restaurant is inside. This complex,” he goes on, “was constructed by one of my company’s top competitors, Minoru Mori. Hideki is planning a multi-use complex even greater than this. Restaurants, cinemas, offices, shops, and the most modern apartments. Assuming he can raise the necessary capital, it will be his first great project for the company when he is at the helm. A symbol of the new Japan, rising above the hard times we have experienced. A symbol of strength and hope. I have to admire his youthful ambition.” He chuckles. “I just want to retire and run art galleries with my wife.”

  My dad’s been gazing out the window, probably not listening as usual. But suddenly, he says in a flat voice, “Why don’t you tell us something that really matters, Kenji?”

  Kenji blinks rapidly. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Fujikawa’s men. Who do you suppose tipped them off about the FBI sting?”

  “We do not know,” Kenji replies. “Did either of you mention the operation to anyone or in conversation between yourselves? Perhaps you were overhead.”

  “I’ve talked to no one,” my dad snaps. “Come on. You can’t pin that on us.”

  Kenji looks at me. “Has anyone come to your hotel room?”

  “Just the regular cleaning service. Oh, and room service.” Then I remember gabbing away in Harajuku, trying to impress Reika with the mystery. “I might have mentioned the sting, just a little, to Reika,” I mumble. “While we were shopping in Harajuku.”

  Someone must have followed us and overheard. It’s my fault the sting failed. I should have been more careful about how and where I told Reika about it. Now I really owe it to the Yamadas to find that painting and put an end to this mess. I can’t even meet Kenji’s stern gaze.

  “Another question,” my dad says. “Are Fujikawa’s men still in Seattle?”

  “Customs in the U.S. and Japan have been alerted, but we still must use extra precautions,” Kenji says. “Borders do not always contain them. Shinobu Nishio has used at least three aliases in the past. Kazuo Uchida has used five.”

  “Wait, what were their names again?” I exclaim.

  “Kazuo Uchida. Shinobu Nishio.”

  I unzip my backpack and find the rubbing I did from Julian’s notepad. I hold it up to the streetlight coming through the car window. It doesn’t say “kazoo” at all. It says Kazuo. 6:30.

  I hand the note to Kenji. “This is a rubbing I made from Julian’s notepad the night of my dad’s art show. I think Agent Chang might be interested in the fact that Julian knew Kazuo Uchida. Especially considering Julian was assaulted by Kazuo and now has quit his job.”

  “Julian!” my dad explodes. “I never trusted that guy. I’m not surprised he’s got some kind of connection to these gangsters. Jesus, do you think he warned them about the sting?”

  “I found this note before the FBI even planned the sting operation,” I point out. “Julian and Kazuo must have been talking about something else. But yeah, I also wondered about Julian tipping someone off. I wondered if Margo told him about the plan, and then he leaked it to someone.”

  “Agent Chang investigated this possibility, after you mentioned that Julian quit,” Kenji says. “I spoke with her about it today. She says Julian could not have known about the sting in advance. He never went back to work after he left the hospital. And Margo knew nothing of the sting. She was out of the room when it was being discussed. Margo swears she’s had no communication with Julian Fleury since she saw him in the hospital. But I will certainly mention this note to Agent Chang, since she has been interested in what Julian might know about this case. We need to find out what Julian and Kazuo were communicating about and if Julian has any possible connection to Fujikawa.”

  My dad turns to Kenji and narrows his eyes. “Why do I get the feeling you’re holding back information?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I feel like you know more about Fujikawa than you’re letting on. And I want to know what the Japanese authorities are doing about him, not just the FBI.”

  “I appreciate your concern. But Hideki prefers to keep this as a private family matter.”

  “What about my family matter? I’ve brought my kid here. I need to know if she’s safe.”

  “I’m sorry, but I cannot reveal details about the situation.”

  “Tell me what’s really going on!” my dad demands. “If I don’t get all the facts, there’s no mural. No art show. I’ll pack my stuff and be gone in the morning.”

  “May I remind you, you are contractually bound to—”

  “Contracts be damned. And you can keep your money!”

  I can’t help smiling. My dad’s showing real chikara, standing up for us. For me.

  “Yes, of course.” Kenji motions to his driver to park. “I can understand. If I had a daughter, I would feel the same. I will tell you, my nephew and I prefer to settle this matter with Fujikawa by using our private resources. Without Japanese authorities.”

  My dad stares at him. “Are you telling me the FBI isn’t working with the CIB and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and all that?”

  “That is correct. Fujikawa works with many people within law enforcement in Japan, paying them for protection. Not everyone is trustworthy.”

  “So you’ll just pay this guy off, and he’ll go away? Money solves everything, huh?”

  Kenji sighs. “I wish it were so simple. Fujikawa is angry about the sting. He has put forth an ultimatum. If I cannot produce the painting by July eighteenth, he will confiscate something of value from us.”

  “Not something. Someone! He’s going to hurt you, Dad!” I explode. I can’t believe Kenji won’t just say it like it is. “I heard Kenji on the phone the other day. Fujikawa is going to kill you if that painting doesn’t show up in eight days!”

  Kenji looks at me with an expression I cannot read. I feel his body stiffen. I’m sure he’s not thrilled that I was eavesdropping, and that I’ve now revealed this threat to my dad.

  “He’s not going to touch me,” my dad scoffs. “I’m nobody to him. It’s an empty threat.”

  “You are not nobody,” Kenji says in a somber voice. “You are very important to the company. And to Mitsue and me. And I apologize, Glenn, for not telling you. I had my reasons.” He shoots me another look, and this time the expression is clear. Displeasure. I’ve crossed a boundary; I’ve violated his trust. “But I had every hope he would accept our offer, Glenn,” Kenji goes on, “and I did not wish to cause you alarm. I can tell you I have doubled the security staff at our building and arranged for undercover protection.” He gestures to a car across the street and another parked in front of us. “You see, you are never alone.”

  “But your offer fell through. You got a Plan B?”

  “Yes, I do. I intend to find that painting. Searching for it is my full-time occupation right now. My nephew’s, too. We are making inquiries based on new leads.” Our eyes briefly meet in the mirror. His look is a little softer this time. I guess he remembers that I’m the one who found Tomonori’s sketch journal. I feel slightly forgiven. But only slightly.

  2

  4

  It’s Day One of my confinement. Still rattled from last night’s conversation with Kenji, I collapse into a lounge chair by the pool to wait for Reika so we can go over the sketch journal again. Yoshi is already settled in three lounge chairs down, turning the pages of a baseball magazine. A man hoses down a walkway. Another rakes a gravel path. Another prunes flowering shrubs. It’d be almost peaceful here in the hotel gardens, except I trust none of these groundskeepers. I can’t shake the feeling that the informant about the sting operation is someone in Japan, someone close to us.

>   An out-of-breath Reika flops in the lounge chair beside me. “Sorry I’m late. I had to ditch the ‘responsible older cousin.’ She’s seeing her boyfriend. I’m free for six hours.”

  “Thank you for spending your furlough at the lovely Grand Prince Prison.”

  “There’s nowhere I’d rather be. Any news before we get started on the pages?”

  I quickly tell her about our ride with Kenji last night. “I’m sure it’s my fault the sting failed,” I conclude with a sigh. “I should have been more careful. The informant has to be in Japan because almost no one in Seattle knew about the sting—just the Yamadas, the FBI agents, my dad, and me. Somebody here in Japan overheard us. We were being followed.”

  Reika brushes away a tear. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I blurted out that stupid comment about the sting at the subway station, when I left you. This really cute guy was passing by, and I just wanted to get his attention. So maybe someone following us overheard me say that. I’m really sorry, Violet. Lots of people in Tokyo understand English, even if they don’t speak it perfectly. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “That’s okay.” I sigh. Reika is so smart, but I can’t stand it when she does dumb things just to get some guy’s attention and totally loses her focus. “Let’s just take a look at this journal. We don’t have much time.”

  Reika sniffs and nods. “Okay.”

  I look at my set of pages until my eyes hurt. The more I study them, the more straightforward they seem. Reika’s translations of the captions and notes by each sketch make them seem even more ordinary, despite their beauty. And there’s no story. They’re just sketches of random things Tomonori saw and liked in his travels around Europe and Japan.

  I take the twenty-five photo-booth strips and look at those to rest my eyes. There are a couple of silly shots where we’re making goofy faces and peace signs with our fingers. But most are serious ones of us studying papers.

  But looking at the sketch journal pages that are visible in some of the photos, I see how truly detailed Tomonori’s drawings are. Way more detailed than any roughs I produce in my sketchbook. Otherwise they wouldn’t show up so sharply in the photo strip—a photo from a photocopy, doubly removed from the original source. And the sketches Tomonori did of the woman must have taken a ton of time. Now that I’ve been laboring over backgrounds and other details in Kimono Girl, I can appreciate this. The kimono in his sketches shows a dragon, clouds, and flowers. The sculptures he sketched show filigree. The framed paintings he copied show the cracks in the wood. You don’t just dash off drawings like that. It would take me two days to even attempt one of these pictures with my best fine-point pens.

  I turn the photo strips sideways and upside down. Then I see a strange shape emerge in the base of a sculpture pedestal in one of the drawings. A black bird with a long, curved neck.

  I snatch up my photocopied journal pages and rifle through them. When I find the corresponding page, I turn it upside down. Again, I see a black bird, its wings spreading out. It reminds me of the tattoo on Skye’s shoulder. A cormorant, drawn to blend in with the pedestal.

  I grab another journal page and turn it upside down. Now that my eye is trained, I’m quick to spot another cormorant within the frame of a still life. It wears a collar around its neck, and a dangling leash. In the corners of the frames are tiny ayus.

  On the next page, I find another embedded sketch. This one shows a long boat embedded in a drawing of a stringed instrument called a koto. The boat has a basket attached to the front and something on fire. Could Tomonori have burned the painting?

  I get faster at spotting these tiny hidden drawings, discovering at least one on each page.

  In the folds of a Greek statue’s skirt, I spot men on a boat, one wearing a strange grass skirt and a headband, another one casting a bunch of lines or strings into the water. In a sketch of a bowl of fruit, I find a drawing of a long, canoe-like boat with hanging lanterns on it; the lanterns blend in with grapes hanging over the lip of the bowl.

  The last spread in the journal contains six sketches of a beautiful young woman in a kimono. The details are more on her robe than her face, though. And embedded in her kimono I find very small sketches that seem to tell a story. I number the pictures in a sequence that makes sense. It feels like trying to follow untranslated manga, using only pictures to guide me.

  My heart beats faster as a possible story comes together. A man puts a painting on an easel. He puts another painting over it. He wraps up a canvas with the two paintings. Carrying a wide, flat object, he boards a train. Then a long boat. Or he takes the boat before the train—I can’t decide which would come first. And embedded in the final kimono, still carrying the painting behind a painting, the man walks down a flower-lined path, approaching the door of what looks like an old house. A house like something in a folktale, with low hanging eaves and curved shingles. In one hand, he carries that flat package, and in the other, he holds what looks like a long walking staff or a stick.

  “Reika. Check this out.”

  Reika snatches the pages from my hands, exclaiming over each picture I’ve circled in the kimono drawings and elsewhere.

  “What’s up with all these cormorants?” I ask her.

  “Ukai?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Why do you ask?”

  “No, ukai. Cormorant fishing. It’s an ancient sport. Though now it’s really more of a tourist attraction on some of the rivers in Japan.”

  “Where? Here in Tokyo?”

  “In Gifu, and in Nagoya. Oh, and just outside Kyoto, I think. In Arashiyama.”

  I almost drop my pages. I stare at her. “Hello? The Hiroshige print is called Moon Crossing Bridge at Arashiyama. When we were talking about Tomonori’s ayu, why didn’t we think about cormorant fishing? Cormorants and ayu go hand in hand. Or, uh, wing in fin.”

  Reika groans. “I guess we were too focused on the small things to see the bigger picture.”

  I’m also kicking myself for not having shared Kimono Girl with Reika. Ever. If I’d shown her my story so far, or even talked about it, she might have seen my sketches of cormorants and made that connection sooner.

  “Maybe the painting is hidden in Arashiyama,” Reika suggests. “Maybe it’s in a boat!”

  “I don’t think that would be good for the painting,” I say, thinking of water damage, humidity, and other problems. I’ve learned a lot about art conservation in just a few days working with Mitsue, and I’ve seen how art can be ravaged by the elements and by time. “I think Tomonori would have found a safer place for it. Like in this building we see the man standing by here, whatever it is. But I agree, that painting must be in Arashiyama.”

  “Wait. I see something else.” Reika points to a cluster of lines and crosses near one of the embedded bird drawings. “This is the kanji character for akatsuki. Meaning ‘dawn.’” She turns the page and circles an identical mark. “Here’s another! And another! He’s written ‘dawn’ on almost every page. If this is a kind of treasure map, this word is like ‘X marks the spot.’”

  “We have to show this to Kenji right away. Maybe the building the man walks into has something to do with dawn. Maybe Kenji will know what that means.”

  Suddenly, a breeze blows a section of newspaper over to my chair. Bending to pick it up, I notice Yoshi is no longer in his lounge chair. His newspaper’s been abandoned.

  I spot him a few yards away, talking with a blond couple wearing fanny packs and Mariners caps.

  “I could be wrong, but those tourists don’t strike me as Japanese speakers,” I say to Reika. “Come on. I want to hear this.” We sneak behind a shrub and listen.

  “Yes, I saw Ichiro play for Yomiuri Giants, three years ago, before Mariners bought him,” Yoshi says in perfectly clear English. He swings an imaginary bat. “He is quite an excellent hitter. Do you know his batting
average?”

  Reika and I, wide-eyed, look at each other. We’ve just found our leak.

  2

  5

  Bells chime a tinny melody as the doors to the bullet train close. Moments later, the train shoots out of Tokyo station. Our first-class car glows orange from the rising sun. The shinkansen is nothing like the Amtrak from Seattle to Portland. After the gentle announcements of stations, in Japanese and English, it’s almost completely silent. The train sways slightly; it never shudders or lurches. The ticket-taker bows and murmurs a soft greeting when he comes into our car. He bows again when he leaves. The sandwich-cart lady does the same thing.

  The three Yamadas sit at the opposite end of the train car from my dad and me. They are studying the journal clues Reika and I showed them and a map of Arashiyama. Anyone might think they were ordinary travelers. But I know they’re refining their search strategy.

  My dad reclines the seat in front of me and snaps on a sleep mask from the hotel. “I’m going to catch up on some z’s. Wake me when we get to Kyoto.”

  I glare at his seat back. How can he sleep now, of all times? Kazuo Uchida and Shinobu Nishio, reported masters of disguise, may be back in Japan already. Their boss, Hiroshi Fujikawa, lurks somewhere in this country, ready to take off with the Yamadas’ favorite artist—my dad—if they don’t deliver the van Gogh painting one week from today. I’m sure Yoshi’s furious that Reika and I reported him as an informant and got him fired. What if he comes after us, too?

  As the train glides into Shinagawa Station, where Reika is supposed to meet us, I scan the platform for her, my heart pounding. The platform’s not so crowded this early, heading out of the city, but I don’t see her anywhere. What if her aunt and uncle changed their minds about letting her travel with us? Or worse . . . what if Yoshi did something to her?