Daughter of the Sword: A Novel of the Fated Blades

by Steve Bein

  Why hadn’t she just turned and walked? Her usual answer wouldn’t cut it this time. Yes, she had to prove herself to her commander, but she knew that would be true for the rest of her career. Yes, first impressions were important, but that was all the more reason not to take this assignment; it was as if Lieutenant Ko was setting her up for failure. And she’d gone along with it anyway. Why? For the umpteenth time she looked to her reflection for an answer: why did she feel compelled to take this sting?

  “Sergeant, this is Two,” said Toyoda’s deep voice in Mariko’s Bluetooth. “I have a possible approaching the suspect now.”

  Yet another flaw in the operation, Mariko thought. At ten minutes to ten, there were so few shoppers left that you could take a good guess at which ones were looking to score a hit. Bumps, in turn, could guess that the three people who never wandered more than a few paces from their positions might have been, oh, say, cops. And if a buyer didn’t come within the next ten minutes, the only people left in the mall would be Bumps and Mariko’s team.

  But Mariko managed to keep a lid on all such lamentations. Instead she said, “Come on, Two. A description might be helpful, don’t you think?”

  “Tight little number. Orange hair. Fuck-me pumps.”

  “Oh, I got her,” said Mishima. “Yeah, that’s real nice.”

  “I don’t suppose I could bother you two to be professional, could I?” Mariko winced as soon as she said it. These guys had been salivating over the air all night, but pissing them off now wouldn’t do any good. She needed them sharp.

  “Possible has reached the suspect,” said Toyoda.

  Mariko reached into the purse slung across her torso and withdrew a compact—one she never used except in circumstances like these. Flicking it open with a stubby thumbnail, she used it to look over her shoulder. There was the perp, talking to.…Oh no. Saori.

  Just like that, everything fell into a lower and hotter level of hell. Bumps would be done with his transaction in thirty seconds or less. Pull the trigger on the sting too early and he wouldn’t be guilty of anything. Pull it too late and she’d have no choice but to arrest him and Saori. Within her thirty-second window, she had another window of one, maybe two seconds where she could nail Bumps Ryota and still let Saori walk.

  There was the other option too. She could choose not to pull the trigger at all. Let them go. Tell Ko his plan was a pooch screw from the get-go, then set up a new sting on Bumps and another buyer. Or just let Saori walk and then hit Bumps, hoping he was carrying enough to nail him on intent to distribute.

  “On your toes, boys,” she said into the Bluetooth. “We go on my signal.”

  Saori and Bumps were still talking. Saori’s hair was longer than Mariko remembered, dyed peroxide orange. Bumps had long hair too, shoulder length, straight pressed, and tawny like a lion’s. Both were bone skinny, their clothes hanging off them like sails from a mast in dead air. Their image in Mariko’s hand mirror trembled. It was hard to tell if either had passed anything to the other.

  “What are we waiting for, Sergeant?”

  “Zip it, Three. We don’t have a bust if he doesn’t sell her anything.”

  There. Had their hands touched? In the trembling mirror it was hard to tell. Mariko turned around to get a better look. Bumps was definitely putting something into his jacket pocket. What about Saori? Mariko could only see her back. Saori’s hands were in front of her belly, her skeletally skinny elbows winging out on either side.

  “Hell with it,” Mariko muttered. Then full volume, “Move, move, move!”

  Bumps Ryota locked eyes with her. They were jumpy, his eyes, but despite the fact that he was amped, he froze in place for one full second before he bolted.

  One second was enough time for Mariko to clear the heavy Taser from her belt line, not enough time to close within firing range. Bumps took off like a rabbit on speed.

  Toyoda was on an intercept course with him. Mishima bore down on Saori, just on the fringe of Mariko’s peripheral vision. Bumps juked right and put a bench between himself and Toyoda. Instead of vaulting it, Toyoda went around. That was all the breakaway Bumps needed.

  Mariko bounded over the bench, dashing past Toyoda and not sparing the breath to call him a jackass. She wasn’t going to catch Bumps. Five more strides and he’d be out of the dry neon mouth of the mall and into the slick, busy darkness of the streets.

  Whether out of inspiration or desperation, Mariko couldn’t say, but she chucked the Taser. It wheeled end over end, almost in slow motion, and Mariko was sure she hadn’t put enough into the throw. The thing was heavy; it wasn’t going to make it. But then it hit Bumps in the base of the neck. He stutter-stepped, stumbled, regained his footing. It was enough.

  Like so many others in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Mariko had taken the department’s aikido course. In the heat of the moment, she couldn’t remember a single technique. She grabbed a fistful of Bumps’s stiff, tawny hair. Bumps kept running. She stopped.

  In the next instant Bumps was on his ass. “Stay down,” Mariko said, panting, fumbling for her cuffs with her shaky, sweaty left hand.

  One of those newer-model Toyotas hissed by, the kind that looked like a pregnant roller skate. A raindrop thwacked heavily on Mariko’s scalp. She felt it roll through the forest of her choppy hair, tracing a cold line down the back of her head toward the collar of her blouse. Overhead, the low-hanging clouds glowed white, the way they could only do in a city the size of Tokyo. Every building in sight was the same height, nine or ten stories before disappearing into the haze. The sole exception was the mall, with its roof like rows and rows of mannequin tits, the drumming of fat, heavy raindrops beating against them, loud as a low-flying 747 that wouldn’t leave Mariko’s airspace.

  Bumps was still wheezing, his eyes pinched shut and all his yellow teeth visible, when Mishima and Toyoda approached with a handcuffed Saori. The sunglasses in Toyoda’s black hair were off-kilter, and Mishima had his tie undone, his jacket slung over one shoulder. A crowd of bystanders formed a wide semicircle, centered on Mariko as if choreographed that way, their formation stopping at the border between wet and dry pavement.

  “Is it true?” said Toyoda. “Is she your sister?”

  Mariko looked up at the glowing sky and the domes of Plexiglas. Rain pounded the mall’s roof, not half as loud as Mariko’s thundering heart. “Give her to me,” Mariko said.

  “Wait!” Bumps said as Mariko passed him off. “I’m useful to you! I got information!”

  “Sure you do,” said Mariko, then nodded for Mishima and Toyoda to leave. Both men stood their ground, their gazes flicking between Mariko and Saori. “That guy you’re holding is a suspect,” Mariko said. “Customarily we take them down to post and book them.”

  Mishima’s chubby face sank, and Toyoda gave Mariko the evil eye, but at last they did as they were told. Mariko shook her head. She didn’t know what it would take to earn these boys’ respect, but apparently running down a fleeing perp single-handedly wasn’t sufficient.

  “Miko,” Saori said, “you have to get me out of this.” Her teeth were like her pusher’s, gray where they were not yellow. She’d lost weight since Mariko had seen her last; her cheeks seemed hollow, her lips thin like an old woman’s. Her face was flushed, but not with shame; Mariko could only see indignance there.

  “I don’t know how to help you anymore, Saori.”

  The sallow face hardened. “Are you kidding? What are you doing, staking me out now? Those guys came out of nowhere.”

  “Well, that makes one thing that’s gone right tonight.” Mariko’s laugh sounded forced even to her. “Shit, Saori, if you had any idea how bad this thing went down, you’d know how bad you’re tweaking.”

  “I’m not tweaking.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Mariko took Saori by the joint between the cuffs and gave her a gentle shove in the direction the other two had taken Bumps Ryota, toward the pair of squads they had waiting in the mall’s shipping doc
k. She hated being put in this position. Ever since Saori had started using, all Mariko had ever wanted to do was help. Saori was the reason she’d put in for Narcotics in the first place: to bust the shitheads who would sell to her sister, yes, but also to try to get an understanding of addiction itself. The only understanding she’d gleaned so far was that an addict had to hit rock bottom before recovery. Was getting arrested by her own sister rock bottom enough? Was Mariko helping at all? She couldn’t be sure.

  As she ushered Saori along, she found the mall had become a breeding ground for shoppers, mostly high school girls still in uniform; their numbers seemed to have tripled in the last minute or so. Text messages had summoned them like a wizard’s incantation, exorcising them from every corner of the mall and drawing them all to this one place. Gawking faces passed judgment from every direction, and at least a dozen cell phones had their tiny black bug eyes trained on the fabulous Oshiro sisters. Within the hour every teenager in Tokyo would have received the image from a friend.

  Saori fussed at her cuffs, twisting her bone-thin arms. “You know what, Miko? This is bullshit. You want to stake me out, fine. Just don’t lie about it. Be the overprotective bitch you’ve always been; just come right out and say it.”

  “We were staking out your pusher. It’s not my fault you came to buy tonight.”

  “Whatever. I’m not even carrying.”

  Mariko stopped. “Is that true?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Saori, did the other officers find anything on you?”

  “No.”

  Mariko rolled her eyes. She didn’t know why she bothered asking questions anymore; when she was using, Saori would lie to anyone about anything. The only question now was, would she pat Saori down in front of the high schoolers and their phones, or could she find a quieter place?

  The quieter place was on the opposite side of a tan steel service door, in a long yellow hallway whose fluorescent tube lights hummed and droned and flickered. As Mariko patted down Saori’s ribs and back and belly, the question she really wanted to ask was, Why are you making me do this? Tomorrow’s conversation with their mother was sure to be a hoot. Now that conversation would have to include Big Sister Miko picking on Poor Little Saori by searching her for contraband. No matter how bad things got, Saori always found a way to make them worse.

  But this time, thankfully, she was clean. Mariko had to run her fingers over Saori’s underwear to make sure, and she wanted to smack Saori for putting her in a position to have to grope her own sister, but Mariko had pulled the trigger just right. They had Bumps and, owing as much to sheer luck as good judgment, they didn’t have anything on Saori.

  “Do you have any idea how lucky you are?” Mariko said, pushing a brown service door open and ushering Saori through it. A vicious diatribe from Saori echoed throughout the long, narrow hallway, mostly in Japanese but with the choicest words in English. It had always been Saori’s favorite language for cursing. Mariko didn’t listen to a word of it. She was still thinking about fate. She’d had no way of knowing Saori was buying from Bumps, and yet she’d felt drawn to this case—and now, lo and behold, she was perfectly placed to save her family a lot of shame and grief. Mom would have said it was meant to be. Mariko still didn’t buy it, but neither could she deny the compulsion she’d felt.

  She walked to the end of the hall, pushing Saori along in front of her. When she reached the door at the far end, she opened it and took Saori into the mall’s shipping and receiving room. It was a cavernous space, with undressed lightbulbs dangling from a ceiling high enough to admit a tractor-trailer. Two squads were parked in the loading dock just outside the huge open door. Bumps was already inside the nearest one. Mishima and Toyoda leaned against the driver’s-side doors, smoking, the lightbulbs gleaming like a string of stars in the sunglasses atop Toyoda’s head.

  “Which one of you searched this suspect?” Mariko said.

  Mishima and Toyoda looked at each other.

  “Damn it, guys, you have to have a reason to put handcuffs on somebody.” She fished for her key, and with a few clicks Saori was rubbing her red, unshackled wrists together.

  “Mishima,” Mariko said, pointing at Bumps in the backseat, “take him back to post and process him. Toyoda, go with him. By the time I get there, I want to see a report on my desk explaining why you weren’t in position to take down our suspect and why you left me without backup in running him down.”

  Toyoda scowled at her as if she’d called his mother a whore. “Come on, Oshiro, there were only three of us. I had to leave somebody without backup.”

  “That’s Detective Oshiro, and yes, you could have left Mishima without backup. Instead, you chose to help him cuff a woman who wasn’t fleeing, a woman who ultimately can’t even be charged with anything—”

  “A woman who’s your sister.”

  “That’s beside the point. You showed bad judgment tonight—all night long, as far as I’m concerned—and I’m giving you a chance to write down your side of it before I talk to Lieutenant Ko about your suspension. So give me a heartfelt ‘thank you’ and get the hell out of here.”

  Toyoda’s scowl deepened. “What about her?” he said.

  Mariko turned to look Saori in the eye. Quietly, somberly, she said, “I’m taking her to detox. Again. Unless she wants to face charges of conspiracy to traffic narcotics.”

  The charge would never stick, but Saori didn’t have to know that. She looked at Mariko, then at the floor. “Fine,” Saori said, “let’s go.”

  Tomorrow’s conversation with their mother was looking better and better all the time.

  3

  Fuchida Shūzō rode the train to Hongodai station, leaning against the white wall at the back of the car so that no one would jostle the package slung over his shoulder. At Hongodai, he was last out of the car, and he took his time in joining the stream of passengers as it flowed down the concrete stairs. Elbow to elbow with uniformed schoolgirls and businessmen knocking off early, he followed the herd into a long corridor of off-white ceramic tile, fluorescent light, and posters selling liquor, cigarettes, and the newest cells from SoftBank. The tunnel, cooler than the platform above, smelled of rain and tobacco smoke.

  Despite his black suit and white shirt, Fuchida knew he could not be mistaken for the average sarariman. There was the lack of a tie, a dead giveaway. Fuchida’s hair was longer, slicker, and more stylish than corporate offices would allow, and his trim mustache and short black beard would have been equally unacceptable. And then, instead of a briefcase, there was the package, as long as a rifle and wrapped in dark blue cloth.

  That was to say nothing of the tattoos. Only a close observer might have noted the fact that his lips were a bit darker than they should have been, as were the lines rimming his eyes. The fad of men’s makeup was still in full swing, but Fuchida’s adornment was far subtler than that of the metrosexuals, and far more painful as well. Fuchida knew full well that it gave him a sinister look. His skin was pale, and coupled with the tattoos it looked as if his face were both flushed with anger and as calm as a stalking tiger’s. Those few who saw the tattoos for what they were tended to shudder. The very thought of the pain would frighten them, and that was without even guessing at the full extent of his adornment.

  Fuchida emerged from the ceramic-tiled tunnel onto a rain-slicked Yokohama intersection, the moon a perfect circle of white behind the gray clouds, the crosswalk signal glowing blue-green and droning its little melody. This kind of place could never feel like home to him. It was too calm, too domesticated. The buildings stood in their ranks and files just like everywhere else, but they were all too short, and there was too little traffic, too few neon lights. Unlike Fuchida’s regular haunts, this neighborhood gave the impression that there might be times when it was actually quiet. He crossed the street with the other passengers, and as he did so, a young man hurried past him and knocked Fuchida’s parcel with his elbow.

  Fuchida caught up to him in two paces and, w
ith a deft and imperceptible sweep, kicked aside the young man’s foot just as he was about to weight it. It was the move boys used in junior high schools the world over—and also in judo, where Fuchida had practiced it—and it sent the young man to the sidewalk just as if he had tripped. “Let me help you,” Fuchida said, and as he crouched down, he dropped his knee into the nerve cluster at the base of the young man’s inner thigh.

  He was a college student, Fuchida guessed, his jeans torn across the thighs and his T-shirt so tight that Fuchida could almost see his frightened heart pounding through it. The kid opened his mouth to scream or curse, but a glare from Fuchida stifled him. “You should show some respect,” Fuchida said, so softly that only the kid could hear him. “It’s expensive, this thing I’m carrying.”

  The kid clearly had no idea how to respond. His assailant’s tone was imperturbably calm, totally incongruous with the piercing pain he was feeling in his thigh. A grimace sealed the kid’s lips, and his cigarette breath came quick and shallow with adrenaline and fear.

  “Do you know what happened in the old days if you bumped into a samurai’s sword? He’d cut you down right in the middle of the street.”

  Fuchida gave the kid just long enough to look around, to confirm that he was in fact lying in the middle of the street. He took the kid’s hand and twisted it into a wristlock. “Imagine that,” he said, “me killing you just for bumping into this parcel of mine.”

  Keeping the bent wrist too close to his chest for anyone else to see, he pulled it tight, yanking the kid back up to his feet with it. The kid showed enough sense not to yelp. “I’m going to let you go now,” Fuchida said. “You so much as turn around and look at me and I’ll tear this hand off and feed it to you. Understand?”

  The kid nodded as a cornered rabbit might have. Fuchida released his prey and went on his way, eyeing the nearby pedestrians as he went. They all went about their business, blissfully ignorant of what had transpired.