Daughter of the Sword: A Novel of the Fated Blades

by Steve Bein

  Yamada smiled. “You’ll enjoy it. They play Mahler as well as anyone, but…well, one can only listen to so much Mahler, neh?”

  “I’m more of a White Stripes girl myself.”

  “Pah! You should listen to something Japanese.”

  Mariko laughed. “And what about you? The last time I looked, Dvořák wasn’t a Japanese name.”

  “Hmph. That’s what I get for associating with a police detective. Never misses a detail, this one.”

  Mariko laughed again, and Yamada chuckled with her. “You ought to be happy I don’t miss much,” said Mariko. “Otherwise I might not have a car ready to take you where you need to go.”

  “Oh, come now. I’m no invalid. I’ll take the train.”

  “It’s not safe,” Mariko said with a cluck of her tongue. She walked with him into the house, where she found a pen and a sheet of paper. “Call this number,” she said as she wrote. She paused, then flipped the page over and rewrote the telephone number in script large and dark enough for him to read if he held it close. “You’ll reach one of the officers in the house across the street. He’ll come in a taxicab and honk four times. Two quick beeps, twice.”

  Yamada raised a white eyebrow. “Clever. Your idea?”

  “It was, as a matter of fact. Not that my lieutenant notices. Anyway, you need to go somewhere, anywhere at all, you call this number, neh?”

  “I feel as safe as a baby in diapers.” Yamada grunted, his tone a blend of annoyance and amusement. “You take good care of me, don’t you, Inspector?”

  “Of course. Who else do I have that can identify Fuchida on sight?”

  Yamada laughed, his laugh lines deep and plentiful. “Too bad for you I can’t see.”

  Mariko laughed back and patted him on the shoulder. “Call me if you need anything. And if not, I’ll see you tomorrow at seven.”

  “Until then, Inspector.”

  52

  This time, Fuchida promised himself, he would be more careful. He’d taken too much pleasure in the last three. They were sloppy kills. Perhaps the frustration had gotten to him. And now with the American breathing down his neck, he was feeling frustrated again. There was still one more to deal with, and a good killing would ease his mind. But no, he told himself. This time he would be more discreet.

  But why? a part of him asked. Gruesome killings sent a message. Having heard it, dealers would be more likely to mind their tongues.

  Fuchida had been hearing a lot from this voice lately. He even gave it physical characteristics: it was a high, singing voice, beautiful and hypnotic and therefore not to be trusted. In this case, however, it remained convincing. As he parked his car under the streetlights’ glow, he wondered what to make of his dilemma.

  Stepping out of the car, his beautiful singer in hand, he assayed the neighborhood. There was serious wealth here. Not the kind that would ever enable the people who lived here to buy a house, but the kind of wealth that would let them buy a parking spot within walking distance of home. In the neighborhood where Fuchida was hiding these days, renters paid sixty thousand yen a month for a parking spot and were happy to take an hour’s train ride to reach it. Another sixty thousand would lease a flat three times the size of the bed those people slept on, a flat the size of the living rooms in this neighborhood.

  Everything—asphalt, parked cars, concrete and glass—was lit in the sodium glow of the streetlights, colors washed out, the lights buzzing like cicadas. The smallest building here was twelve stories high. There might have been a thousand windows looking down on him as he tucked the sword within his overcoat.

  Fuchida made up his mind. He would deal with Bumps more judiciously, but he would not regret killing the others. Kamaguchi Ryusuke said he wanted to hear no more rumors of Fuchida and narcotics. He would certainly hear nothing from those three.

  But what if Kamaguchi heard of their deaths? It was the calmest, most rational part of Fuchida’s mind that asked the question this time. Ordinarily an underboss in the Kamaguchi-gumi would not concern himself with anything some newspaper reporter might have to say in the police blotter, but there was a formal ban now on violent theatrics. If Kamaguchi Ryusuke caught wind of the dead dealers, he might be persuaded to give a shit. If the mood struck him, he might even be moved to investigate. Fuchida did not need the full weight of the Kamaguchi-gumi falling on him now, not when things with the American were so heated and yet so near to closure.

  To hell with the Kamaguchis, that other part of his mind said. No one is so powerful that he can turn a deaf ear to the message you sent. Those pushers died like dogs. No—they died like dogs died a thousand years ago. There was something in a sword killing that recalled ancient fears. Underboss or not, even Kamaguchi Ryusuke would think twice about throwing his weight around if he saw Inazuma steel in Fuchida’s hand.

  Fuchida walked west along a street so narrow that car traffic could only pass one way. The sidewalk was narrow too, scarcely more than shoulder width. Fuchida thought of the old days when commoners would scramble into the lane rather than occupy the same walk as a samurai, lest they bump his scabbard with their filthy bodies and invite him to cut them down where they stood. He knew the name of Fuchida had no such lineage, but he wondered what it must have been like to be born into a caste where calling debts in blood was a birthright.

  At the end of the narrow street he found a busy avenue six lanes wide. Headlights flashed by in both directions. The whole city was like this: quiet neighborhoods abutting screaming thoroughfares, miniature highways with computer-controlled lights intersecting tortuous, claustrophobic lanes whose names were already ancient when Tokyo was still an insignificant fishing village. Contradiction heaped upon contradiction. Zones, wards, subdivisions: they were all attempts at containment. Pathetic, Fuchida thought. These people thought that because their world was controlled, it was safe. But the illusion of control only helped the predators draw closer to the prey.

  Fuchida turned, walked to the nearest crosswalk, and crossed to the other side. This was the shopping district. All the housewives on the far side of those six lanes would spend their time here, and their husbands’ money, buying trinkets and kitchen gadgets and romance novels whose leading men could sweep them out of their lives and into a life that might mean something. It was just after six o’clock now. They had another three hours of shopping to do, another four or five hours before their sarariman husbands would come home, maybe smelling of cigarettes and whiskey, maybe expecting their obligatory weekly rut. Fuchida could not imagine enduring even a week of such a life before putting his sword through his belly.

  He walked into Tokyu Hands and boarded the steep and slender escalator. He rose above picture frames and scrapbooks, calligraphy paper and flower arranging tools, colored pens and modeling clays, fully seven floors’ worth of salvation in the form of distraction. As he neared the eighth floor he could smell coffee and stale pastry. The smooth glide of the escalator carried him up into view of the snack lounge, full of chattering women and the occasional table of schoolgirls. The crowd did nothing to improve Fuchida’s general opinion of women. Not one in twenty of these would be worth even five minutes’ conversation, and of those, fewer than half would be worth seeing naked.

  The only men to be seen wore white cloth hats and white-buttoned jackets, and worked behind the food counters—with one exception. Shaggy peroxide hair and a rumpled gray suit jacket identified Bumps Ryota even from behind, even from across the cafeteria crowd.

  Fuchida made his way over to Bumps, who was sitting with a frightfully skinny woman with cute hair but bad teeth. “Come on, one bump,” she was saying to him. “Just one. Why not?”

  “You see that panini grill back there?” Bumps pointed; the girl turned to look. “Your sister would fry my balls in it if I sold to you. Besides, I’m into E now. I don’t even have what you’re looking for.”

  “But you know someone who does,” the girl said. She hadn’t noticed Fuchida standing over Bumps’s right shoulder.
Neither had Bumps, for that matter, but the fact that the girl hadn’t noticed him bespoke a focus only seen in jonesing addicts.

  And swordsmen, Fuchida realized. With his beautiful singer in hand it was easy to lose himself. Even in the midst of a forest, he would be blind to every leaf; there was only the sword and its target.

  “No,” said Bumps. “I give you a name, I’ll be in a world of shit. Not just with cops either. Your sister, she’ll talk to my people too. I can’t help you.”

  “You heard him,” Fuchida said. “Get lost.”

  Bumps jumped. The skinny woman shot the kind of glare Fuchida would expect from a cornered rat, all anger and vulnerability. He gave her a look in return: the look of the eighty-kilo Akita that cornered the rat.

  Strange, he thought as she got from her chair. He’d gone so long without police detection, and yet even ordinary people had instincts enough to know a killer on sight. “Good girl,” he said, and fixed his glare on her until she made her way shakily to the down escalator.

  “Bumps,” Fuchida said, sitting in the chrome-and-pleather chair opposite him. The seat was still warm. The girl must have been nearly feverish for Fuchida to feel that through his clothing.

  He laid the sheathed sword across his lap. Bumps eyed it nervously. A few other customers noted it too, but this was one of the few places in Yokohama where carrying a sword might be excusable. Stores like this still sold the cords and washi paper and wood lacquer needed for traditional sword displays. Police wouldn’t allow the weapon, of course, but in neighborhoods like this the police didn’t need to patrol much.

  “H-hello,” Bumps said at length.

  “Surprised to see me?”

  A nervous smile flickered across Bumps’s lips. Fuchida found the man’s graying teeth disgusting.

  “Still selling to the housewife set, are you, Bumps?”

  “It’s good business. They got plenty of money, and nobody wants to lose face if they get caught. No risk of husbands pressing charges.”

  “Nice. Sell much E to these broads?”

  Bumps swallowed. Fuchida wasn’t supposed to know about that, and until this moment Bumps hadn’t been sure how much Fuchida had overheard. He was certain now, though. Fuchida could see the color draining from his face.

  “Some,” Bumps stammered. “Their, uh, daughters. They buy too.”

  “Oh. Good.” Fuchida smiled. “And cops? How much are they good for?”

  Bumps’s thin fingers gripped the tabletop. “Uh—I don’t really know, Fuchida-san.”

  “Seems like you should. Seems like you talk to them an awful lot. Neh?”

  “That girl,” Bumps said, “the one who was here a second ago, she’s a pain in the ass. I just told her that stuff to get her off my back.”

  “Really? Seemed to me maybe you said all that stuff because her sister’s a cop. Neh? That’s what I gathered from your riveting conversation. But I guess you must be playing the family angle just to get rid of her, huh?”

  “Uh. Yeah.”

  “Their family named Oshiro by any chance?”

  “I—” Bumps said. “I, uh, I don’t know, Fuchida-san.” The knuckles on the table grew pale.

  “The reason I ask,” Fuchida said, leaning forward to rest on his elbows, “is that there’s a lady cop in Tokyo named Oshiro. Lady cops are pretty rare, neh?”

  Bumps shrugged. He smelled like dirty laundry, even over the smells of the kitchen. “I don’t know, Fuchida-san.”

  “Too bad. I was hoping you could help me out. See, I’ve got this lady cop on my ass. Oshiro. She went and crawled so far up my ass I find myself thinking about her every time I have to take a shit. And when I think about her, you know what I think, Bumps?”

  “N-no.”

  “I think, how in the hell did this lady cop get on to me in the first place? So I called my guy in the TMPD and I asked him. You know what he told me? He said this Oshiro that’s up my ass is the same Oshiro that busted your ass for possession a couple of weeks back.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Bumps gave him a nervous laugh and a meth-mouth smile. He couldn’t seem to decide whether to look Fuchida in the eye or to look at the sword in his lap. “Uh, yeah, I remember her. Major bitch, neh?”

  Fuchida laughed. Bumps said it like he was afraid of her. Fuchida couldn’t imagine living a life like that, being afraid of people who weren’t even in the room.

  He toned his laughter down to a thin, polite smile, and even that caused Bumps to flinch in fear. Fuchida relished it. People knew what to do with a madman swinging a sword. No need to come to grips with fright; all they had to do was run screaming. A gentleman with a sword, though—that was an enigma. It was hard to know whether to placate him or to make a mad dash for the door. Fuchida enjoyed watching the indecision play on Bumps’s sallow face.

  At last Fuchida broke the silence. “Is she a bitch? I haven’t had a chance to get to know her. But I suppose she’d have to be if she was going to fry your balls in a panini grill. This Oshiro, she is the one you were talking about a minute ago, neh? The tweaker’s sister?”

  Bumps shook his head. The stink of unwashed hair blended with his dirty laundry smell. “Fuchida-san, I got no idea—”

  “That’s all right. I can just go downstairs and ask your friend the tweaker. Hell, I can hook her up with some meth, since she’s having trouble getting that from you. She’ll probably be more than happy to talk to me then. But here’s the thing, Bumps. I had my mind all made up that I was going to go easy on you. Dealers in this town, they’re dropping like flies these days. It’s some crazy fucker with a sword that’s killing them. Maybe you heard about that.”

  “Uh. Yeah. I heard.” Bumps’s eyes flicked back to the sword in Fuchida’s lap.

  “Turns out they were talking too much, Bumps. The wrong ears were listening. Just like you, neh? But you were going to get lucky. I had my mind all made up that I wouldn’t lose my temper with you. I was going to play it nice and discreet. And now I find out you’ve been talking to cops.”

  Bumps’s eyes careened like pachinko balls. They gauged the width of the table, the distance to the escalator, maybe comparing these to the reach of Fuchida’s blade. “Fuchida-san…”

  “What’s good to eat here, Bumps?” Fuchida leaned back in his chair. “All this talk of panini is making me hungry.”

  Bumps burst from his chair, sending it clattering to the linoleum floor. With a shriek he dashed for the escalator, colliding with every shopper between him and it. He careened off a trash bin, then fought his way onto the up escalator and scrambled madly downward.

  Fuchida walked to the elevator and pressed the button with the curled knuckle of his forefinger. When diners looked at him, he shrugged, looking for all the world as if there wasn’t a sword in his left hand. He lost sight of Bumps’s wrinkled jacket as Bumps tumbled over the rubber handrail of the up escalator, landing gracelessly on the metal stairs gliding downward.

  The elevator dinged and opened. Stupid, Fuchida thought. Bumps was considerably safer in public. But Bumps’s judgment wasn’t what it should have been. He suffered from that problem all too common among dealers: he partook of his own product. Stupid.

  The button for the ground floor glowed under Fuchida’s knuckle and the burnished steel doors glided shut. He slid his beautiful singer a few inches out of her sheath, then slid her home again, drew her out and slid her home, enjoying the sound of her steel. It was a song he felt more than heard, vibrations in his palm as steel moved across wood. He slid her out and home again, only a few inches, just enough to feel her song in the bones of his fingers.

  The elevator opened on a crowd of undisturbed shoppers. Bumps hadn’t made it down yet. Perhaps good judgment had finally caught up with him. Perhaps he’d scampered off to a fire escape. Or perhaps he was hiding between aisles somewhere upstairs, still gripped by amphetamine-amplified fears of his own making, not foreseeing the futility of hiding in a store that was soon to close. It hardly mattered. Bumps was no longer Fu
chida’s primary target.

  Fuchida saw her half a block away, hugging herself, a cigarette glowing in her right hand. As he drew nearer, he could see her collarbones, the sharp corners of her hip bones. He’d seen her kind before. There was skinny, and then there was meth skinny. A lot of his girls went from the former to the latter, even though he always told them he wouldn’t have meth skinny dancing at his club. It wasn’t a moral principle. He just preferred a woman to have some jiggle to her, and besides, the meth made them jabber too much at the clientele.

  “What’s your name?” he said when he drew close enough.

  “Piss off,” she said, not bothering to look up from the sidewalk.

  “You’ve got some fight in you. I like that.”

  That made her look up, and when she saw the one she’d just told to piss off, she blanched. “You,” she said.

  “Me.” Fuchida bowed.

  “What do you want?”

  “I know some girls who like to party. They have what you’re looking for.”

  “No.” She took half a step back, her cigarette in front of her now, the world’s feeblest weapon of self-defense. “I need to go home.”

  “Who are you kidding? You’re a wreck, sweetheart. How long have you been wearing those clothes?”

  “Shut up. Go away.”

  Fuchida smiled, then did as he was told. On his fourth step, without bothering to turn around, he said, “You’ve got the wrong idea about me. These girls I know, they’ve got a hot shower. Laundry. But you don’t need any of that, right?”

  He made it another four steps before she spoke. “Why should I trust you?”

  “Don’t,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t care.” But he stopped where he stood. He pulled a small silver case from his pocket, and from the case he produced a business card. “My club,” he said. “You want to talk to the girls I know, you come by. Any business you might want to do, they’ll take care of you.”

  She came toward him with an air of feigned confidence, like she was ten years old and he was a dead animal her schoolgirl friends had dared her to touch. She took the card from his hand with a sassy snap of the wrist. “This is all the way in Akihabara.”