Michael Crichton - Rising Sun

by Rising Sun [lit]

  "Thanks." I gave her my card. "You've been very helpful, and if there is ever anything you think of, or want to tell me, call me."

  "Okay." She glanced at my card. "Thank you."

  I turned to go. As I was leaving, an American in his late twenties, wearing an Armani suit and the smug look of an M.B.A. who reads the fashion magazines, came down and said to the other two men, "Gentlemen? Mr. Nakagawa will see you now."

  The men leapt up, grabbing their glossy brochures and pictures, and followed the assistant as he walked in calm measured strides toward the elevator.

  I went back outside, into the smog.

  ☼

  The sign in the hallway read WORKING TOGETHER: JAPANESE AND AMERICAN MANAGEMENT STYLES. Inside the conference room, I saw one of those twilight business seminars where men and women sit at long tables covered in gray cloth, taking notes in semigloom as a lecturer drones on at the podium.

  While I was standing there, in front of a table with the name tags of latecomers, a bespectacled woman came over to me and said, "Have you registered? Did you get your packet?"

  I turned slightly and flashed my badge. I said, "I would like to speak to Dr. Donaldson."

  "He's our next speaker. He's on in seven or eight minutes. Can someone else help you?"

  "It'll just take a moment."

  She hesitated. "But there's so little time before he speaks . . ."

  "Then you better get going."

  She looked as if I had slapped her. I don't know what she expected. I was a police officer and I'd asked to speak to somebody. Did she think it was negotiable? I felt irritable, remembering the young fashion plate in the Armani suit. Walking in measured steps, like a person of weight and importance, as he led the real estate salesmen away. Why did that kid think he was important? He might have an M.B.A., but he was still just answering the door for his Japanese boss.

  Now, I watched the woman circle the conference room, moving toward the dais where four men waited to speak. The business audience was still taking notes as the sandy-haired man at the podium said, "There is a place for the foreigner in a Japanese corporation. Not at the top, of course, perhaps not even in the upper echelons. But there is certainly a place. You must realize that the place you hold as a foreigner in a Japanese corporation is an important one, that you are respected, and that you have a job to do. As a foreigner, you will have some special obstacles to overcome, but you can do that. You can succeed if you remember to know your place."

  I looked at the businessmen in their suits with their heads bowed, taking notes. I wondered what they were writing. Know your place?

  The speaker continued: "Many times you hear executives say, 'I have no place in a Japanese corporation, and I had to quit.' Or you will hear people say, 'They didn't listen to me, I had no chance to get my ideas implemented, no chance for advancement.' Those people didn't understand the role of a foreigner in Japanese society. They were not able to fit in, and so they had to leave. But that is their problem. The Japanese are perfectly ready to accept Americans and other foreigners in their companies. Indeed, they are eager to have them. And you will be accepted: so long as you remember your place."

  A woman raised her hand and said, "What about prejudice against women in Japanese corporations?"

  "There is no prejudice against women," the speaker said.

  "I've heard that women can't advance."

  "That is simply not true."

  "Then why all the lawsuits? Sumitomo Corp. just settled a big antidiscrimination suit. I read one-third of Japanese corporations have had suits brought by American employees. What about that?"

  "It is perfectly understandable," the speaker said. "Any time a foreign corporation begins to do business in a new country, it is likely to make mistakes while it gets used to the habits and patterns of the country. When American corporations first went multinational in Europe in the fifties and sixties, they encountered difficulties in the countries they entered, and there were lawsuits then. So it is not remarkable that Japanese corporations also have some period of adjustment coming into America. It is necessary to be patient."

  A man said with a laugh, "Is there ever a time when it's not necessary to be patient with Japan?" But he sounded rueful, not angry.

  The others in the room continued to make notes.

  "Officer? I'm Jim Donaldson. What is this about?"

  I turned. Dr. Donaldson was a tall, thin man with glasses and a precise, almost prissy air. He was dressed in collegiate style, a tweed sport coat and a red tie. But he had the nerd pack of pens peeking out of his shirt pocket. I guessed he was an engineer.

  "I just had a couple of questions about the Nakamoto tapes."

  "The Nakamoto tapes?"

  "The ones in your laboratory last night."

  "My laboratory? Mr., ah— "

  "Smith, Lieutenant Smith." I gave him my card.

  "Lieutenant, I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about. Tapes in my lab last night?"

  "Kristen, your secretary, said everybody in the lab was working late on some tapes."

  "Yes. That's true. Most of my staff."

  "And the tapes came from Nakamoto."

  "From Nakamoto?" He shook his head. "Who told you that?"

  "She did."

  "I assure you, Lieutenant, the tapes were not from Nakamoto."

  "I heard there were twenty tapes."

  "Yes, at least twenty. I'm not sure of the exact number. But they were from McCann-Erickson. An ad campaign for Asahi beer. We had to do a logo transformation on every ad in the campaign. Now that Asahi beer is the number one beer in America."

  "But the question of Nakamoto— "

  "Lieutenant," he said impatiently, glancing at the podium, "let me explain something. I work for Hamaguchi Research Labs. Hamaguchi is owned by Kawakami Industries. A competitor of Nakamoto. Competition among the Japanese corporations is very intense. Very intense. Take my word for it: my lab didn't do any work on any Nakamoto tapes last night. Such a thing would never happen, under any circumstances. If my secretary said it did, she's mistaken. It's absolutely out of the realm of possibility. Now, I have to give a speech. Is there anything else?"

  "No," I said. "Thanks."

  There was scattered applause as the speaker on the podium finished. I turned and left the room.

  I was driving away from the Bonaventure when Connor called in from the golf course. He sounded annoyed. "I got your page. I had to interrupt my game. This better be good."

  I told him about the one o'clock appointment with Senator Morton.

  "All right," he said. "Pick me up here at ten-thirty. Anything else?"

  I told him about my trips to JPL and Hamaguchi, then my conversation with Donaldson.

  Connor sighed. "That was a waste of time."

  "Why?"

  "Because Hamaguchi is funded by Kawakami, and they're in competition with Nakamoto. There is no way they would do anything to help Nakamoto."

  "That's what Donaldson told me," I said.

  "Where are you going now?"

  "To the U.S.C. video labs. I'm still trying to get the tapes copied."

  Connor paused. "Anything else I should know?"

  "No."

  "Fine. See you at ten-thirty."

  "Why so early?"

  "Ten-thirty," he said, and hung up.

  * * *

  As soon as I hung up, the phone rang. "You were supposed to call me." It was Ken Shubik at the Times. He sounded sulky.

  "Sorry. I got tied up. Can we talk now?"

  "Sure."

  "You got information for me?"

  "Listen." He paused. "Are you anywhere around here?"

  "About five blocks from you."

  "Then come by for a cup of coffee."

  "You don't want to talk on the phone?"

  "Well . . ."

  "Come on, Ken. You always want to talk on the phone." Shubik was like all the Times reporters, he sat at his desk in front of his computer and wore a headset and
talked on the phone all day long. It was his preferred way of doing things. He had all his stuff in front of him, he could type his notes into the computer as he talked. When I was a press officer, my office had been at police headquarters in Parker Center, two blocks from the Times building. And still a reporter like Ken would rather talk to me on the phone than see me in person.

  "Come on by, Pete."

  That was clear enough.

  Ken didn't want to talk on the phone.

  "Okay, fine," I said. "See you in ten minutes."

  ☼

  The Los Angeles Times is the most profitable newspaper in America. The newsroom takes up one entire floor of the Times building, and thus is the area of a city block. The space has been skillfully subdivided, so you are never confronted by how large it actually is, and how many hundreds of people work there. But still it seems you walk for days past reporters sitting at clusters of modular workstations, with their glowing computer screens, their blinking telephones, and their tacked-up pictures of the kids.

  Ken's workstation was in Metro, on the east side of the building. I found him standing by his desk, pacing. Waiting for me. He took me by the elbow.

  "Coffee," he said. "Let's get coffee."

  "What is it?" I said. "You don't want to be seen with me?"

  "No. Shit. I want to avoid the Weasel. He's down hustling that new girl on Foreign. She doesn't know any better yet." Ken nodded toward the far end of the newsroom. There, by the windows, I saw the familiar figure of Willy Wilhelm, known to everyone as Weasel Wilhelm. Willy's narrow, ferretlike face was at this moment composed into a mask of smiling attentiveness as he joked with a blond girl sitting before a terminal.

  "Very cute."

  "Yeah. A little big in the rear. She's Dutch," Ken said. "She's only been here a week. She hasn't heard about him."

  Most organizations had a person like the Weasel: somebody who is more ambitious than scrupulous, somebody who finds a way to make himself useful to the powers that be, while being roundly hated by everyone else. That was the case with Weasel Wilhelm.

  Like most dishonest people, the Weasel believed the worst about everybody. He could always be counted on to portray events in their most unflattering light, insisting that anything less was a cover-up. He had a nose for human weakness and a taste for melodrama. He cared nothing for the truth of any situation, and he considered a balanced appraisal weak. As far as the Weasel was concerned, the underlying truth was always strong stuff. And that was what he dealt in.

  The other reporters at the Times despised him.

  Ken and I went into the central hallway. I followed him toward the coffee machines, but he led me into the library. In the middle of the floor, the Times had a library that was larger and better equipped than many college facilities.

  "So, what is it about Wilhelm?" I said.

  "He was in here last night," Ken said. "I came by after the theater to pick up some notes I needed for a morning interview I was doing from home. And I saw the Weasel in the library. Maybe eleven o'clock at night. You know how ambitious the little turd is. I could see it in his face. He had the scent of blood. So naturally, you want to know about what."

  "Naturally," I said. The Weasel was an accomplished backstabber. A year earlier, he had managed to get the editor of the Sunday Calendar fired. Only at the last minute did he fail to land the job himself.

  Ken said, "So I whisper to Lilly, the night librarian. 'What is it? What's the Weasel up to?' She says, 'He's checking police reports on some cop.' So that's a relief, I think. But then I begin to wonder. I mean, I'm still the senior Metro reporter. I still do a story out of Parker Center a couple of times a month. What does he know that I don't? For all I know, this should be my story. So I say to Lilly, what's the name of this cop?"

  "Let me guess," I said.

  "That's right," Ken said. "Peter J. Smith."

  "What time was this?"

  "About eleven."

  "Great," I said.

  "I thought you'd want to know," Ken said.

  "I do."

  "So I said to Lilly — this is last night — I said, 'Lilly, what kind of stuff is he pulling?' And he's pulling everything, all the old clips from the morgue, and apparently he's got a source inside Parker who's going to leak him internal affairs records. Some kind of a hearing about child molestation. Charge brought a couple of years ago."

  "Ah, shit," I said.

  "That true?" Ken said.

  "There was a hearing," I said. "But it was bullshit."

  Ken looked at me. "Fill me in."

  "It was three years back," I said. "I was still working detective. My partner and I answered a domestic violence call in Ladera Heights. Hispanic couple, fighting. Both very drunk. Woman wants me to arrest her husband, and when I refuse to, says he's sexually abusing her baby. I go look at the baby. The baby looks okay. I still refuse to arrest the husband. The woman is pissed. The next day she comes in and accuses me of sexual molestation. There's a preliminary hearing. Charges dismissed as without merit."

  "Okay," Ken said. "Now, you got any travel that's questionable?"

  I frowned. "Travel?"

  "The Weasel was trying to locate travel records last night. Airplane trips, junkets, padded expenses . . ."

  I shook my head. "It doesn't ring a bell."

  "Yeah, I figured he must be wrong about that one. You're a single parent, you're not going on any junkets."

  "No way."

  "Good."

  We were walking deeper into the library. We came to a corner where we could see out to the Metro section of the newsroom through glass walls. I saw the Weasel still talking to the girl, chatting her up. I said, "What I don't understand, Ken, is why me? I mean, I got no heat on me at all. No controversy. I haven't been a working detective for three years. I'm not even a press officer any more. I'm liaison. I mean, what I do is political. So why is a Times reporter gunning for me?"

  "At eleven o'clock on a Thursday night, you mean?" Ken said. He was staring at me like I was an idiot. Like there was drool coming down my chin.

  I said, "You think the Japanese are doing this?"

  "I think the Weasel does jobs for people. He is a scumbag for hire. He does jobs for the studios, record companies, brokerage houses, even the realtors. He's a consultant. The Weasel now drives a Mercedes 500SL, you know."

  "Oh, yeah?"

  "Pretty good on a reporter's salary, wouldn't you say?"

  "Yeah, I would."

  "So. You got on the wrong side of somebody? You do that last night?"

  "Maybe."

  "Because somebody called the Weasel to track you down."

  I said, "I can't believe this."

  "Believe it," Ken said. "The only thing that worries me is the Weasel's source inside Parker Center. Somebody in the department's leaking him internal affairs stuff. You okay inside your own department?"

  "As far as I know."

  "Good. Because the Weasel is up to his usual tricks. This morning I talked to Roger Bascomb, our in-house counsel."

  "And?"

  "Guess who called him all hot and bothered with a question last night? The Weasel. And you want to guess what the question was?"

  I said nothing.

  "The question was, does serving as a police press-officer make an individual a public personality? As in, a public personality who can't sue for libel?"

  I said, "Jesus."

  "Right."

  "And the answer?"

  "Who cares about the answer? You know how this works. All the Weasel has to do is call a few people and say, 'Hi, this is Bill Wilhelm over here at the L.A. Times. We're going with a story tomorrow that says Lieutenant Peter Smith is a child molester, do you have any comment on that?' A few well-placed calls, and the story doesn't even have to run. The editors can kill it but the damage is already done."

  I said nothing. I knew what Ken was telling me was true. I had seen it happen more than once.

  I said, "What can I do?"

  Ke
n laughed. "You could arrange one of your famous incidents of L.A. police brutality."

  "That's not funny."

  "Nobody at this paper would cover it, I can promise you that. You could fucking kill him. And if somebody made a home video? Hey, people here would pay to see it on video."

  "Ken."

  Ken sighed. "I can dream. Okay. There's one thing. Last year, after Wilhelm was involved in the, ah, change of management over in Calendar, I got an anonymous package in the mail. So did a few other people. Nobody did anything about it at the time. It's pretty dirty pool. You interested?"

  "Yeah."

  Ken took a small manila envelope from the inside pocket of his sport coat. It had one of those strings that you wrap back and forth to close it. Inside was a series of photos, printed in a strip. It showed Willy Wilhelm engaged in an intimate act with a dark-haired man. His head buried in his lap.

  "You can't see the Weasel's face too well in all the angles," Ken said. "But it's him, all right. Action snap of the reporter entertaining his source. Having a drink with him, so to speak."

  "Who is the guy?"

  "It took us a while. His name is Barry Borman. He's the regional head of sales for Kaisei Electronics in southern California."

  "What can I do with this?"

  "Give me your card," Ken said. "I'll clip it to the envelope, and have it delivered to the Weasel."

  I shook my head. "I don't think so."

  "It'd sure make him think twice."

  "No," I said. "It's not for me."

  Ken shrugged. "Yeah. It might not work, anyway. Even if we squeeze the Weasel's nuts, the Japanese probably have other ways. I still haven't been able to find out how that story ran last night. All I hear is, 'Orders from the top, orders from the top.' Whatever that means. It could mean anything."

  "Somebody must have written it."

  "I tell you, I can't find out. But you know, the Japanese have a powerful influence at the paper. It's more than just the ads they take. It's more than their relentless PR machine drumming out of Washington, or the local lobbying and the campaign contributions to political figures and organizations. It's the sum of all those things and more. And it's starting to be insidious. I mean, you can be sitting around in a staff meeting discussing some article that we might run, and you suddenly realize, nobody wants to offend them. It isn't a question of whether a story is right or wrong, news or not news. And it isn't a one-to-one equation, like 'We can't say that or they'll pull their ads.' It's more subtle than that. Sometimes I look at my editors, and I can tell they won't go with certain stories because they are afraid. They don't even know what they are afraid of. They're just afraid."