by Barry Lancet
From the start, the firm my father founded offered personal security and investigative services, the former taking up the bulk of the workload. Protection details involved guarding foreign CEOs, visiting dignitaries, and incoming movie or rock stars of all ranks. We also coordinated overseas bodyguard services for traveling Japanese VIPs. For the most part, investigations encompassed blackmail, missing persons, and recovery of stolen goods. But we handled any situation a criminal mind might imagine, or to which a client could succumb. And in Japan the variations were endless, unique, and invariably tangled.
Inside the office and out, things never waxed dull.
“Hi,” Mari said, trotting out of a back room with a smile. “So you made good time from the airport.”
Mari Kawasaki was a twenty-three-year-old who, like most Japanese women, looked years younger than her actual age. Unlike most of them, when she entered the workforce she continued to dress for her crowd.
We indulged her because she was a bona-fide genius on the computer and also happened to be plugged into Japan’s counterculture, talents Brodie Security coveted. Her interests expressed themselves not only at the keyboard but also in her wardrobe. Mari was as likely to show up at work sporting Hello Kitty overalls as a subdued homage to Lady Gaga. Today’s outfit was a flamboyant purple tuxedo jacket coupled with snow-white pants and cummerbund. The plum-colored tuxedo was cut away below the ribs at the front but stretched in the back to luminous tails that hung down to her ankles. A violet hairpiece with tendrils falling to her hips completed the costume.
“Haven’t seen this one,” I said. “New?”
“Finished it over the weekend.”
I nodded. Mari was debuting a fresh ensemble in her growing cosplay collection. Cosplay is a mash-up of “costume” and “play,” referring to a popular dress-up activity of the anime-and-manga crowd in Japan and, increasingly, in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.
“Should I ask?”
She smiled. The purple hairpiece bracketed a small face, a small nose, and a slim body. Her walnut-brown eyes had green flecks and were shimmering and watchful and caring. There was mischief there, too.
“Kamui Gakupo. He’s like the coolest vocaloid.”
“Got it.”
Originally synthetic voice programs, vocaloids soon morphed into holographic rock stars. With a live band of actual musicians backing them, these fictitious bundles of light gyrated onstage to sophisticated choreographic dance moves for hordes of adoring fans. The young crowd paid good money to see a headliner that was nothing more than a projected cartoon image in human form, albeit a very convincing one. Vocaloids sang and pranced and were backed up by million-watt light shows and fireworks displays. At the end of a tune, they disappeared in a burst of stardust or some other flashy display and reappeared seconds later in a new costume, ready to charge into the next song. The live performances of these make-believe music stars posted on YouTube were as hypnotizing as those of their flesh-and-blood counterparts.
“Looks like a male character with crossover appeal,” I said.
“Yes, I’m stretching out. This is for a big cosplay event in Kyoto tonight.”
Mari did a little shuffle and syncopated body wave.
I smiled. “Impressive. What does your boyfriend think?”
She blushed. “He likes it a lot.” Regaining her composure, she added, “By the way, I was very sorry to hear about Nobuki-san. The shooting’s all over the news. Is it as bad as they say?”
We have to give the brain someplace to go. The only way to do that and prevent more brain damage is to perform a large craniectomy, which means removing a large portion of the skull.
“Worse,” I said. “But thanks.”
I nodded goodbye and threaded my way through the maze of desks to my office, offering more greetings as I passed.
Closing the door behind me, I sat in what had once been my father’s office, behind what had once been his desk, and looked at the token items he’d left behind—a Japanese short sword, an Old Bizen saké flask, and his LAPD marksmanship award. To this collection, I’d added a large framed photograph of Jenny and a certificate for “exemplary services rendered” from the Japanese government.
In this room was a slice of my family’s history. And the firm’s. Each of the items had a story. The walls held the secrets about the decades of PI work my father had overseen. The desk might be worn, the chair wobbly, but they’d seen things too, as had the people manning the desks out front. The sense of time’s passage, of people’s problems mended, of desperate situations salvaged—all seeped from the walls.
To this secret history would be added, today, the launch of an investigation involving the Nobuki family.
An urgent inquiry.
Who had shot Ken Nobuki and killed his son, and why? Who had sent the gunman to Napa and put the sniper on a San Francisco rooftop? These were heady matters to be treated with care. I felt the weight descend.
As it always did.
Then the phone memo caught my attention. The time stamp told me the call had come during my ride in from the airport. From a man. He’d neglected to give his name, and our system had captured no caller ID. But he’d left a succinct message:
“Tell Brodie to stay put until I call again.”
We have to give the brain someplace to go. The only way to do that and prevent more brain damage is to perform a large craniectomy, which means removing a large portion of the skull.
CHAPTER 24
BEFORE I could put possible names to the call, my office phone buzzed. I glanced at the phone panel, which in Japanese read Undisclosed source.
“Yeah?” I said, my nerves on edge.
A gruff voice forever imprinted in my memory rumbled across the wire. “You got big problems.”
“How could you already know?”
“I always ‘already know.’ ”
Who was I to argue? He usually did. It was a talent that explained why he knew I’d just arrived on a rescheduled flight. On the other end of the line was one of the deadliest men in Japan—Big Haga, aka Tokyo no Tekken. TNT for short. He was the top lieutenant of a local branch of Japan’s most powerful yakuza group. Half of his job was to know more than the other guy; the other half was to dispose of anyone who crossed his boss.
“So tell me what’s happening to my clients.”
A pause. “Not that problem.”
“Which you don’t know about?”
“Might be related. Other than that, don’t know, don’t need to know, so don’t care.”
“Right. Forget what I said. What have you got for me?”
I had more than a passing acquaintance with Big Haga, whose moniker, Tokyo no Tekken, translated as the “Iron Fists of Tokyo,” and was a tribute to his sledgehammer mitts, which, if rumor were to be believed, had put any number of men in the ground. He was arguably the best bagman in the land.
“Had drinks with a guy. We need to talk.”
“Why?”
“Because the guy’s a friend and jabbers more than he should. You’ve got a bigger problem than what’s happening to your clients.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah, but maybe not for long.”
“Why’s that?”
“Once you’re dead it ain’t a problem no more.”
“So talk,” I said.
“Not over the phone.”
He gave me an address.
“Can this wait?”
“Till the end of time, all I care,” the yakuza enforcer said. “You got maybe a week, maybe a couple of days. After that you’re a dead man. Take all the time you need.”
I inhaled deeply to steady the chorus of nerve endings now popping and tingling in every part of my body. “Okay. You gonna give me a hint to hold me over until I get there?”
“You got anyone watching your back yet?”
“No.”
“Bring someone but leave ’em outside. And try not to get aced on the way over.”
CHAPT
ER 25
JINBOCHO DISTRICT, CENTRAL TOKYO, 10:45 A.M.
TWO soldiers had died at his hand before I arrived. A third bottle of Kirin Lager was on its last leg.
Quart bottles.
At ten-plus in the morning.
I pushed open the door of a coffee shop down an alleyway in Jinbocho, where Haga’s gang held “interests.” At the closest table, a pair of construction workers were unwinding from the graveyard shift. Each had a five o’clock shadow. A scattering of empty plates and beer bottles littered the table between them.
The proprietor motioned me into the back room, where behind a curtain I found TNT waiting alone at one of four small tables. The yaki enforcer was the only customer in the room. He held up three fingers and the owner, a stooped silver-headed old man in his seventies, dove through a second curtain into what I imagined was the pantry.
I took a seat and our server reappeared with three more bottles.
While we waited for him to set down the beer and pop the caps, Haga stared at me with his gangland deadpan and I stared back with an equally neutral expression. Neither stare was hostile. What lay between us, despite any edgy banter, was a mutual respect.
Our eyes locked and stayed that way. Mine were blue, with a few flecks of green, or hazel in a certain light, I’d been told. His were obsidian, under hooded eyelids, and stark and cold. They gave away nothing. Neither did his six-foot-four, two-hundred-forty-pound bulk. Big Haga was stillness itself, but any experienced fighter understood his muscular frame could fly out of the chair in a flash if irritated. I’d experienced his quickness on one singular occasion. The Iron Fists had played a role. His nickname, though cheesy, was no exaggeration.
The old man uncapped the final bottle then turned to my silent tablemate and said, “You need me gone?”
The big man nodded.
“The guests out front?”
He nodded again.
“Your tab?”
A third nod.
The shopkeeper bowed and shuffled through the curtain to the front of the store, keys jangling in his hand. He stopped at the occupied table and spoke softly to the two men with the five o’clock shadows. I bent back in my chair and peered through a breach in the curtain. The two guests stood, pivoted toward the rear of the shop, then bowed in our direction and departed. They couldn’t see Haga, but when TNT requests you leave and picks up your tab, you pay your respects and exit in haste, no questions asked.
I heard the shop buzzer in the kitchen announce their departure, then the owner’s. His keys rattled as he locked up. He flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED.
I was impressed. Throughout the whole process the aged owner expressed no curiosity about my presence. His gaze remained on the floor or the bottles, with tentative birdlike glances at TNT when necessary. Never did his eyes stray in my direction or linger on the yakuza hitman.
There was a reason the proprietor had lived to seventy among the clientele in this neighborhood.
I looked at the beer. I looked at the clock on the wall. Ten fifty-one.
“Guess there’s no coffee brewing.”
“This late, we’re gonna drink.”
I knew that was coming. The Japanese mafia were nocturnal creatures.
“Fair enough.”
He poured my drink into one of the complimentary glasses the Japanese beer companies spread everywhere, then refilled his own. We bumped glasses and drank. TNT drained his in one long gulp. I did the same.
My taste buds got an unwelcome wakeup call. As did my stomach. This early in the a.m. the beer tasted brassy and sour, but my yakuza associate was doing me a favor, so drinking with him as he closed down his day seemed the least I could do.
Haga downed the next cup in one swallow. I drained mine at a slower pace but that did not prevent my host from pouring yet another round, which he made disappear before slapping down his glass, his thirst finally sated.
“I’m hearing things,” he said.
“What sort of things?”
“You working those killings in California? The art guy out of Kyoto?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m a good friend of the artist and his family.”
“Tough luck. Papers say Brodie Security is involved too.”
“That’s right.”
TNT drank, I drank, and he splashed more beer into our glasses. The morning booze got easier.
“Tell me about Napa and San Francisco.”
It wasn’t a request. TNT’s stare grew more disbelieving with each new twist in my tale. The end of the story found him shaking his head as he topped off our drinks.
Big Haga said, “You’re in another mess. How’s that happen so often?”
“Nature of the work.”
“Naw, that ain’t it. You got some negative karma thing going.”
“Thanks a lot.”
He snorted, then his black eyes narrowed. “ ’Bout thirty seconds from now you ain’t gonna be thanking me any which way.”
The big man held the third bottle up to the light. It was empty. He stood and glided into the back room for fresh supplies.
CHAPTER 26
TNT retook his seat and poured another round. “You got a problem I never want to have.”
His comment startled me and my heart bucked in protest. The yaki lieutenant before me was shrewd and fearless, and had once fought on the professional boxing circuit in Asia. After that, he’d handled any kind of problem that came down the pike for his mafia boss. Big Haga had been so successful that the Tokyo PD started a file cabinet dedicated solely to his work. All of it suspected, none proven.
The dark eyes zeroed in on me. They remained distant and unreadable, but no longer cold.
“I owe you for two lives,” Haga said.
I grew still.
He didn’t move.
I said, “You saying what I think you’re saying?”
Eleven months ago I’d been in the position to spare his life, and that of his younger brother, and I had. What TNT seemed to be offering was information of such value that it would clear a major portion of his debt.
He nodded.
I reached for my glass and drained it. “Let’s have it.”
“You got people watching your back now?”
“Right outside.”
“Keep ’em there.”
“You going to tell me why?”
“You working with Noda again?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep him close. He’s the best you got.”
“I’m not liking this.”
“Ain’t gonna get better. You ever hear of the Steam Walker?”
“No.”
“Guy’s a ghost.”
“What kind of ghost?”
“The kind nobody’s heard of or seen. The kind that kills and disappears.”
I thought of the fight in Ken’s hospital room. If it hadn’t been for the scented hair oil, the killer would have slipped in and out of the medical complex without notice and my friend would be dead.
“Know what he looks like?” I asked.
The yaki enforcer shook his head. “Nope. Nobody’s ever seen him long enough to talk about it.”
A coldness crept into my veins. I braced myself against his next words.
“What exactly do you have?” I asked.
“Only thing that matters. The Steam Walker’s next kill order. And as far as I know, he’s never left a kill order unfilled.”
“So who’s his next job?”
“I’m having a beer with him.”
* * *
I had just settled in behind my desk when Noda plowed through the door without knocking. He collapsed into the guest chair and targeted me with shrewd brown eyes that gave away nothing.
Brodie Security’s head detective was a bulldog of a man. A thick waist, barrel chest, and broad shoulders blocked out a stocky five-foot-six frame. Knowing eyes looked out from under bushy eyebrows, one of them long ago bisected by a yakuz
a’s blade. After the ensuing scrimmage, Noda was still standing. Reports on the knife-wielding thug’s condition all came back negative.
“Give me everything,” Noda said. “San Francisco first.”
Straight to it. No hello. No welcome back. But there was no questioning his loyalty—to me, or to my father before me.
After I’d brought the man of few words up to date about Napa and City Hall, he said, “You have a takeaway?”
The detective had few tells, but chief among them was the scar. When he was angered, it flared. Now it was neutral.
“Too early. Only laid out direction. Is the Nobuki family covered?”
“Of course.”
“Anything on who might be out to get them yet?”
In my follow-up message from San Francisco, I’d asked Noda to root out any possible enemies Ken or the family might have, public or private, old or new, in the art world or otherwise. A tall order.
“Going to take some time,” he said.
“Tell me you have at least one name.”
The most obvious lead usually turned out to be the best—and often the guilty party.
He shook his head. “Nothing from sources. Even less from the wife.”
“She should know something, even if they’re only shadow threats. You get his financial worth?”
“Wife didn’t know that either.”
But Noda would.
I said, “And?”
“One-point-four billion yen.”
Fourteen million dollars. Ken had set himself apart with his distinctive Oribe ceramics, and risen to even greater prominence when he’d made a strategic decision to move from his native Gifu, the home of Oribe ceramics, to the outskirts of Kyoto. His work now fetched top prices. No “crock pots” here.
During my preflight huddle with Renna, we’d narrowed the search for suspects to three areas—a personal assault on the Nobuki family, a backlash for Naomi’s inflammatory activities on the Fukushima nuclear front, or a political response at home or abroad to Mayor Hurwitz’s Pacific Rim cultural exchange.
