by Steve Bein
Mariko suppressed a growl. “Yes. Sir.”
“How nice. Then I’m sure you’ll be forgetting any aspirations of commanding a citywide manhunt for this suspect of yours. I don’t expect to hear any more wild fantasies of yakuza involvement either. The next time you come in here with nothing but circumstantial evidence—”
His phone interrupted him. It was his cell, not his desk phone—the ringtone, oddly, was a Thee Michelle Gun Elephant riff, something she’d have expected to hear from Saori’s phone—and Ko’s own policy placed an absolute ban on personal calls during official meetings. He flipped the phone open anyway. “Speak,” he said.
Mariko watched his eyebrows jump as high as they could toward his hairline. He looked at the phone; whether he was verifying the caller’s ID or the existence of the phone itself, Mariko couldn’t tell. Ko’s face went slack. He dragged on his cigarette, then cut off his drag midway, as if the speaker on the other end of the line had scolded him for smoking.
“Yes, sir,” he said. Then, “I understand, sir.” Then, “I will, sir, right away.” Then he folded the phone shut and slid it into his pants pocket.
“You should know,” Lieutenant Ko told her, “generally it’s not considered a wise move to go over your superior’s head with a request. Politically, that is. A record of that sort of thing tends to hold a person back from promotion, if you know what I mean.”
“Sir, I have no idea what you mean,” said Mariko, sincerely in the dark.
“Really?” Ko frowned; his eyes narrowed at her. “Well, then, let’s say I’ve had a change of heart. This Yamada case you’re on—how much did you say that sword is worth?”
“I didn’t. But Dr. Yamada says it could fetch upwards of five million dollars at international auction.”
Ko blinked at her.
“Sir,” she added.
“Indeed. My change of heart tells me that a national treasure of this ilk deserves greater attention from the department. I’m authorized to devote as many resources as you need to catch your thief, Oshiro.”
Mariko looked at him, gobsmacked. At last she said, “You’re…you’re making me lead on the manhunt?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Your manhunt’s an overreaction. You’ll live with a stakeout. Yamada’s house, your suspect’s usual haunts, whatever you need to do.”
It wasn’t enough, Mariko thought, but it was still ten times more than she expected from him. “And this is to be my command, sir?”
Ko fumed. The cigarette smoke seemed to rise from him as if he were a brooding volcano. “Do you expect me to do your job for you? See this case to a close, Oshiro, and do it soon.”
Mariko couldn’t have been more surprised if Lieutenant Ko had sprouted wings and flown out the window. He couldn’t bring himself to say the words aloud, but Mariko didn’t care; he’d actually given her command of a major operation.
She even considered thanking him, but then she got hold of her senses: this was not Ko’s doing. Someone had bullied him into this. She wished she could take his cell from him and see who had called.
Then she realized she didn’t need to check the cell. She knew the one she could ask. “I’ll get right on it, sir,” she said, and left the smoky room with purpose in her stride.
43
Mariko heard the sledgehammer long before she reached Dr. Yamada’s house. Her feet were sore—she wouldn’t ever wear these shoes on duty again—and the hammering was an oddly pleasant distraction.
When she rounded the corner onto Yamada’s street, she saw the construction crew and the concrete wall they were working on. The last time she’d seen the wall, there had been a toothy maw in it the width of a car—precisely the width, in fact, of the Mercedes that had punched the hole. That was where Yamada’s assailant had died, probably seeing spots well before impact, sitting in a warm pool of his own blood. Now the gap in the wall was half again as wide, and getting wider as a man went to work on it with the sledgehammer.
Mariko couldn’t tell which one of the construction workers was the cop. That was good. It wouldn’t be the hammering one; he was too distracted by his work to keep an eye on the house. There were four men in the crew, three of them idle at the moment, one of whom would never do any work apart from watching Yamada’s house. All four of them had explicit instructions to make the job take as long as possible. Mariko could not have asked for a better opportunity to put an invisible officer in plain view of the house. She had every intention of leaving him there for as long as the crew could drag out the work.
There was another, she knew, in the Toyota Grand Saloon she passed two doors before reaching Yamada’s, though the officer inside was doing well at his job too, for the van seemed empty. These narrow residential streets were no place for something as conspicuous as a panel truck; even the parked Grand Saloon straitened the lane for through traffic. Neighbors might complain about that; she’d have to look into another place to put that pair of eyes.
It was strange, not having room for a van on a modern city street, but after the firebombing Tokyo had been reconstructed right onto its former footprint. She remembered finding that strange even when she’d learned it in high school history class. Chicago had burned to the ground once too, but there they’d remapped before they rebuilt. The whole city was built on a grid, but the streets of Tokyo’s neighborhoods looked like nests of tangled snakes.
In effect, the people in this neighborhood lived in a three-dimensional representation of Japan’s attachment to the past. There were days when Mariko loved that brand of traditionalism and days when she despised it. The cultural forces that allowed Lieutenant Ko to be a sexist prick were the same forces that allowed a martial art based on the sword to endure into the twenty-first century, hundreds of years after the sword lost any real battlefield relevance.
No matter how she was feeling about traditionalism, Mariko knew she was going to have to find a better solution than that van. Even so, Mariko explained the van to Dr. Yamada as soon as they exchanged hellos. She also explained why she’d be replacing it, and why the construction crew across the way was going to take forever with a fairly straightforward repair job. “I see,” Yamada said. “And you’ve come to relieve your comrades?”
“Not quite. The officer at your neighbor’s wall will leave in a few minutes. The one in the van just got here at five. He’ll stay until midnight, and then he gets relieved. And across the street we have at least one officer around the clock.”
“Across the street? In Aihara-san’s house?”
Mariko nodded. “Your neighbor’s getting twenty thousand yen a week to lodge a surveillance team in her second bedroom. We’ve trained hidden cameras on every window and door in your house.”
Yamada nodded thoughtfully. “You seem to have everything covered,” he said. “So why are you here?”
“Sword practice,” she said with a smile. “And to ask you a question.”
“Practice first,” he said. Then he led her to his backyard.
Her bare feet were thankful for the cool grass of Yamada’s small lawn. She wondered how he kept it so neatly trimmed. Not a single blade strayed out of the lawn’s boundaries and into the flower beds. For a man who couldn’t see more than a hand’s breadth beyond his nose, managing that must have been a chore.
He was teaching her footwork this evening. The sword was heavy, and she had to hold it in the same position for the first hour. Her shoulders and triceps blazed. She felt like he could cut her at will, despite the fact that his blade was two-thirds the length of hers. His was of WWII vintage—a relic in Mariko’s eyes, a mere zygote in comparison to the Inazuma.
“Remember your ready stance,” he scolded. “This is an art, not a quiz show; what you learned yesterday matters today.”
“It’s hard,” Mariko said. It sounded stupid as soon as it came out of her mouth.
“My sensei must be rolling over in his grave,” Yamada said. “It’s breaking tradition, you know, teaching a woman these things. Nag
inata fighting was always the way for women. In the old days they would have stripped me of my belt for such an offense.”
Mariko wanted to say it wasn’t because she was a woman that it was hard; it was hard because in her entire life she’d spent all of three or four hours with a sword in her hands. “I told you already,” she said, “this sword is too heavy for me.”
“And I’ve told you: that sword is too heavy for anyone. It carries within it the full weight of Bushido itself.”
“Then why make me use it? Why not give me a different weapon?”
“What other sword would suffice? You are steel in a forge, Inspector. This weapon is your blacksmith. It will forge you into a weapon as no other weapon can.”
Mariko opened her eyes. “What about Fuchida’s?” she said. “Beautiful Singer. It transforms people too, neh?”
“That it does. But it does not strengthen. Fuchida-san will be brittle steel before the end.”
With some effort, Mariko stood. A light breeze cooled the sweat on her neck. The evening was getting cooler. “We should just sit back and let the sword destroy him,” she said. “It’d save us a lot of trouble; he’ll be easier to find once he’s dead.”
Yamada clicked his tongue. “And how many would die while we waited?”
“I know.” Mariko took her ready stance, firmed her grip on Glorious Victory Unsought, and practiced the footwork he’d taught her. It seemed stupid to her, stepping forward and backward over and over. She wanted to learn how to fight, not how to walk. She wondered how much time the ancient samurai ever spent just walking backward and forward in straight lines, holding their swords instead of actually striking and counterstriking.
As if he’d read her mind, Yamada assumed his ready stance and stepped toward her. Mariko had to jump sideways or else be cut. His sword might have been older than he was, but he kept it razor sharp.
He stepped toward her again and again she jumped away. This time she landed badly, stumbling to one knee. She stiff-armed the ground with her left hand so she would not fall, and with a disdainful slap he knocked her weapon from her grip.
“Why did you retreat?”
“You were going to cut me,” she said, instantly regretting the defensive tone in her voice. She realized now that she’d been at no risk. Despite his blindness, he’d disarmed her with ease. Somehow he knew exactly where her sword was. In fact, he seemed to have more control of it than she did; his control over his own blade was not something she’d question again.
“What attack did I use?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, come now,” he said. “A thrust? An overhead strike? You’re the one who dodged it. Tell me.”
“You didn’t attack. You just stepped forward.”
“So why did you retreat?”
“Because—” You were going to cut me, she was about to say, but that was the answer she’d given last time, and Yamada wasn’t the type to ask the same question twice. He was pushing for something else.
It only took her a moment to understand. “You stepped toward me because I wasn’t holding my sword right.”
“Very good. Pick it up.”
She did as she was told. This time she held it exactly as he’d taught her, with the tip of her weapon pointed right at the notch between his collarbones. He trained his own weapon on her throat too. She stepped forward, and this time he had no choice but to retreat. Hers was the longer reach.
“Better now,” he said. “Understand this, Oshiro-san: in sword combat, everything is attacking. Standing still, you threaten my throat. Stepping forward, you aggress me. If you learn nothing else but to stand still and step forward, you are already dangerous.”
Mariko thought of the photos from the ME’s report: Saga’s baby face splattered with red, severed fingers lying in the grass, spilled intestines, pools of blood pink with oxygen. Drug dealing being a dangerous profession, most of Fuchida’s victims had been armed; even so, they never stood a chance. Maybe in the States, where there were more guns than people, he wouldn’t have been such a terror, but in Japan pistols were hard to come by, and even then most people couldn’t hit a target beyond six or seven meters. At that range Fuchida would only need a step or two to be in striking distance.
“He’s a nightmare, isn’t he?” she said. “Fuchida, I mean. You say I’m dangerous just from holding my sword the right way. He’s an expert. If I ever get in the same room with him, he’ll cut me apart.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that sucks.”
Mariko made a mental note not to even look for Fuchida without a Taser and a pistol handy. She made another note to tell everyone on her stakeout team the same thing. Then she renewed her concentration on her footwork. With every step forward she envisioned stabbing an opponent through the gullet. It was a horrific image in her mind, but it did wonders for her focus.
“There is a grim air about you, Inspector,” said Yamada. “Has he killed again?”
“Three times. A drug dealer last night, and two more the night before that. The medical examiner says all three were killed with an edged weapon at least half a meter long.”
“Why do you suspect Fuchida?”
“Who else? I don’t see why he’d target pushers, though. They haven’t got anything to do with ancient swords.”
“I can see no connection either. Fuchida-san would have no interest in them. When I knew him, he did not even drink alcohol. He said being drunk made him feel paranoid. I’ve known many in the martial arts to say the same: when you are accustomed to being in control of your body, losing that control leaves you feeling unsafe.”
Mariko’s breath came heavily, but the sword was moving smoothly. Control was coming for her too, albeit slowly. She concentrated on her footwork as her blade cut the garden air. “Maybe there’s another connection between the victims,” she said. “Something I’m not seeing.”
“I hope there is, Inspector, and I hope you find it quickly. The sword has a hold on him now. Even brittle steel can cut to the quick.”
“I know.” Mariko reined in the heavy blade, turned to face Yamada, and took her ready stance. “Show me what I should have done before instead of almost falling on my ass.”
Yamada grinned a warrior’s grin, the kind Mariko had seen the Special Assault Team guys get when they practiced kicking down doors. He took his ready stance and said, “Come.”
She trained her weapon on his throat and stepped in. He stepped in too. Their swords crossed, and somehow it was hers that turned aside. She stopped short with his blade a centimeter from her skin.
“Do it again,” she said.
“‘Please do it again, Sensei,’” he chided, and they repeated the exchange. Again Mariko’s longer, heavier blade was turned aside.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“Again,” he told her.
So they did it once more, and Mariko tried to study him with her hands as well as with her eyes. She could feel him turn her blade aside, but the how of it eluded her. Three times, ten times more, and Mariko lost every one.
At last her forearms could not take any more; her sword was simply too heavy. This time when he advanced, she stepped back, keeping him at bay. “Yes!” he said. “You’ve got it.”
“Huh? I retreated.”
“Yes, but you didn’t lose your balance this time. That’s progress.”
“I failed. I’m trying to learn to do it the way you did it.”
Yamada laughed. “I’ve got seventy years’ more experience than you have. What makes you think you can do this the way I do it?”
Mariko grunted. She saw his point, but she couldn’t sort out how to apply it so long as her mind boggled over the other thing: Seventy years? That meant he’d been practicing swordsmanship for twenty-odd years before Mariko’s parents were born. Mariko didn’t know anyone who’d been doing anything for seventy years, except maybe breathing.
Overhead the stars had begun to come out, and Mariko took a moment to enj
oy them. This was the second time sword training had caused her to forget life’s tensions. It felt good. Even with the pain wracking her arms and shoulders, it felt good. She wondered what her mom would say about that—or a psychiatrist, for that matter. She wondered what they would say about the fact that this eighty-seven-year-old man was quickly becoming the person she most enjoyed spending time with.
Yamada snapped her mind back to the present. “You came here to ask me a question, neh? What was it?”
Mariko sheathed her weapon as Yamada lowered himself onto a bench of white stone, a heavy-looking slab held up by two statues of Kwannon. “You know,” she said, “a funny thing happened at work today. I was talking to my CO, and out of the blue he authorized all the surveillance on your house. Made me primary on the case, in fact. I don’t suppose you know why he had a sudden change of heart?”
Yamada’s face was pure innocence, the sort of look Mariko had seen on her grandfather’s face during her childhood when he’d conspired with Mariko or Saori to break their grandmother’s rules about sweets before dinner. “Why ask me?” he said.
“Because you said you’d see what we can do about Lieutenant Ko, and then Ko got a phone call. Took him down a few notches, that did. He looked like a fish who’d forgotten how to swim.”
Still the mask of innocence. “That made you happy, I should think.”
“It did. I know you weren’t the one who called him; when you came down to the precinct, it was clear he’d never seen you before. So whoever you know in the TMPD outranks Ko. Who is it?”
“You’re the only police officer I know, Oshiro-san.”
“Come on. This was your doing. I just want to know how you did it.”
“Does it matter?”
“Don’t get me wrong: whatever you did, I’m grateful for it. But I don’t like owing people favors, and I like it even less if I don’t know who I owe the favor to. So out with it: who do you know in the TMPD?”
“You don’t owe anyone any favors, Inspector.”
