by Barry Lancet
“Who are you?” Akihiro asked.
“I’m a friend of Jim Brodie. I work for Brodie Security.”
The boy’s mouth gaped open. “They sent people in disguise?”
Mari was insulted. “I signed up last spring. They only asked me to help after you disappeared.”
He relaxed. “That’s different. So you know Brodie-san?”
“Of course.”
He exchanged a look with his girlfriend. “Well, tell him I appreciate what he is doing for my family, but I don’t need looking after.”
The pride of a man-boy. Grandstanding for his girl.
“Of course you don’t.” She cast her eyes down, hesitating. “It’s just that against real weapons it’s hard for anyone . . . alone.”
He frowned at her, fingering the plastic saber at his belt. “I know the difference. And I can take care of myself and my girl.”
“Why don’t you tell Brodie that yourself?”
Akihiro looked around in panic. “He’s here?”
“He’ll be here in thirty minutes.”
Relief washed over both faces.
He said, “We’re planning to get engaged as soon as my father returns, you know.”
She hadn’t known. Not that their intention justified his irresponsible run from their protection.
“Congratulations,” Mari said.
“Thank you,” they both said, again in unison, before Akihiro added, “so we have some alone time planned for tonight.”
He gave the girl a meaningful look and she flushed.
Mari said, “After the ball is over, right? So you’ll have time to talk to Brodie-san. Your mother would be very relieved to know you’re okay.”
“I am okay. Tell her that. Tell Brodie too.”
He took a step back.
“Please, don’t go.”
Mari sent him a pleading look she hoped would seem needy and sisterly and anything but motherly. The look bounced off him without effect, but the girl hesitated.
Mari offered an engaging smile. “What could it hurt?”
Akihiro’s smile was sly. “Nice try. If Brodie wants to meet up, tell him to stop by the Manga Museum tomorrow afternoon at three.”
“Just a little longer and you—”
“Sorry, but tonight’s our night,” he said, linking his hand in the girl’s and melting back into the crowd.
Watching the couple’s retreat, Mari shuddered as she recalled Noda’s last words when dishing out the assignment: “He’s nineteen and full of himself,” the chief detective had told her. “He’ll resist. Try the girl.”
“What’ll happen if we can’t bring him in?”
Noda’s features had darkened. “A killer like the Steam Walker won’t miss the chance.”
DAY 6
FRIDAY
FULL-FORCE PURSUIT
CHAPTER 32
AKIHIRO’S vanishing act had us all on edge.
Every moment Ken’s son was out from under our protection increased the level of danger, so we dragged a fresh crop of five affiliate operatives from their futons and continued the search through the night. We weren’t going to risk waiting until the next afternoon.
If you knew where to look, Kyoto wasn’t that big, especially when hunting for an errant couple in heat. We targeted Kyoto’s hotels, hotspots, and hideaways. None of us slept. None of us stopped. But despite herculean efforts and insider knowledge of the city, we couldn’t unearth Akihiro’s love nest.
Calling off the search at noon the next day, we grabbed some sleep, then hailed a taxi to the Manga Museum thirty minutes before the appointed time. In the cab, Noda mentioned that our Asian affiliates had tagged three potential suspects: an Indonesian rebel group of ill-defined origin, a Taiwanese mob faction who supported the president’s opponent, and a Muslim fundamentalist group in Malaysia receiving surreptitious funding from the Middle East.
At the museum, Noda took up a post in the café fronting the property. Mari and I headed indoors and paid the entrance fee.
“Maybe he’s already here,” Mari said.
“Have you ever known a teenager to be on time?”
“Responsible ones, yes. Man-boys, no.”
We strolled the halls to get a feel for the place. Originally a public school, the large, three-story, L-shaped building had fallen into disuse as families abandoned pricey properties in the city center. The conversion was minimal but effective, with a gift shop, exhibition halls, and endless shelves of manga comics to peruse.
I said, “He’s picked a lousy time to rebel.”
On the first floor, we glided past the gift shop, a Hall of History, an auditorium, and a children’s playroom.
There was no sign of Akihiro or his girlfriend.
Climbing the stairs to the next level, we found another large exhibition hall. A forest of two-panel screens had been set out, wings spread. They stood five feet tall and eight feet wide. Each had been covered with multicolored manga illustrations from a different artist.
“This is wonderful,” Mari said, watching manga fans wander freely in and around the works in stunned silence. “These are all from famous cartoonists.”
Outside the exhibition space we found more bookshelves, and alcoves with benches and chairs in which visitors could curl up with a comic book of choice. But no sign of the youngest Nobuki sibling or his girlfriend.
We mounted a staircase to the third floor and crossed a skywalk over an atrium. From our perch, we looked out on an Astroturf-covered courtyard and had a close-up view of a giant phoenix, the main character from pioneering cartoonist Osamu Tezuka’s story of the same name. The sculpture was resplendent in yellow plumage, sky-blue eyes, and a sparkling red cockscomb.
We turned a corner.
Ten feet away a woman in her early twenties had settled on a cushioned chair with a manga. Luxurious reddish-brown hair cascaded over her shoulders. She looked up as we approached. Her eyes alighted on Mari and she smiled.
Mari started.
“Someone you know?” I asked, instantly alert, glancing first at the woman, then back the way we had come, then into every corner and the hall beyond.
No unfriendlies. No one advancing on us.
“Akihiro’s girlfriend.”
“Ah,” I said.
Ken’s son was not as naive as I had hoped. He’d sent an emissary.
CHAPTER 33
AKIHIRO’S girlfriend introduced herself as Yumiko Watanabe. She was slim, with quick chestnut eyes bracketed by long, tastefully colored reddish-brown hair.
“You know,” she said, “Akihiro’s smarter than you think.”
“I’m relieved to hear that,” I said.
“His family’s worried,” Mari added.
“He knows there’s danger. But he’s staying off the streets. And we were in costume most of the evening, remember?”
“The key word being most,” I said.
“The rest of the time we’ve been . . .” She blushed and looked down.
I thought of my interrupted date with Rie and almost sympathized.
“Mari tells me you’re engaged.”
“Nearly,” Yumiko said, her head bobbing up with a refreshed smile. “We’re waiting to tell the family when Akihiro’s father returns.”
It was my turn to look away, plagued by what had gone down on my watch. But she’d given me an idea. A workable solution loomed. If Mrs. Nobuki knew about the couple’s plans, she might not be averse to the two of them staying under her roof.
I gave Yumiko a verbal nudge. “Sounds like another reason Akihiro should go home. Comfort his mother. Besides, it’s dangerous. For both of you.”
Yumiko stiffened. “He’s not coming in.”
“You’re looking at this all wrong,” I said. “He’s not a criminal.”
Her look was triumphant. “Akihiro calls it ‘house arrest.’ ”
“Wordplay distorts the idea. He’s taking a huge risk bypassing our protection. Protection his parents requested.”
<
br /> “We can take care of ourselves.”
“Like his brother and father?”
She gave me a chastening look. “We’re dug in where no one can find us. Don’t try to follow me when I leave.”
“If you care for him,” I said, “you should convince him to go home.”
Yumiko twisted her hands in her lap.
“Or at least,” I added, “let me send some men to guard the both of you. They’d stay out of the way. You’d never see them.”
She popped out of her chair, alarmed, her face flushed. “I . . . we . . . can’t . . . couldn’t . . . have that. That would be . . . no, no, sorry, I have to go.”
She bowed hurriedly, the strands of her long hair billowing out, then snapping back, and she scuttled off at a fast clip. The young lady’s modesty was acute.
“That went well,” I said.
“Did you expect it would?”
“Not really.”
In fact, I had a backup plan in place. As soon as Yumiko was out of sight, I phoned Noda with her description. Dragging Akihiro home seemed an unlikely outcome, but we could guard his love nest without him knowing, despite his girlfriend’s reluctance. Noda would tail Yumiko, then ring me with the location and we’d put a team on the lovebirds.
Noda called seven minutes later.
I picked up on the first ring. “That was quick. They must be close.”
“She hasn’t showed.”
“What? There’s only one way out of this place.”
“Check the halls, the restrooms.”
Mari and I did a quick canvass of all the floors and restrooms, but Yumiko was nowhere to be found. When I queried an employee about a rear exit, he confirmed a second way out for employees and VIPs.
Damn. Duped by a pair of kids.
I rang Noda.
“Bad break,” he said when he heard.
Words that would prove prophetic sooner than any of us could have imagined.
CHAPTER 34
THE EASTERN FOOTHILLS OF KYOTO, 11:00 P.M.
YUMIKO gasped.
She’d never seen such a thing. When Akihiro had removed the blindfold, she found the whole of Kyoto spread out below her. The ancient capital was awash in a luminous moonlight and a sprinkling of city lights that stretched below her like a vast, glittering carpet.
“Oh, Akihiro. It’s magical.”
In her heart of hearts, she was still a simple country girl from a little hamlet two hundred miles west of Kyoto. She’d taken up cosplay and all the city affectations only after she’d met Akihiro.
“Didn’t I tell you I knew a special place?”
“You did.”
He’d hailed a taxi, and with her permission blindfolded her as soon as they were settled. Then he’d directed the driver through the streets to an access road that ran up the side of the hill along the Kiyomizu-dera compound, one of the city’s most beloved temples. He had mentioned no names, so Yumiko had not the slightest clue as to their final destination other than their slow ascent into the foothills.
“Tonight is for you,” Akihiro said.
“It’s wonderful,” she said, awe edging her voice. “We’re alone. How did you manage it?”
Famously, the four-hundred-year-old temple building rose up five stories into the air on an open-air crosshatch of interlinking pillars and beams without the use of a single nail—only intricate Japanese joinery techniques. Thousands of tourists flocked to the “pure water” temple compound every day, crowding its walkways and lookouts. But this evening the two of them had the well-trampled veranda of the Innermost Temple—acclaimed for its panoramic view—all to themselves.
“One of my buddies tends the grounds,” Akihiro said. “I asked him for a onetime favor.”
When the taxi had arrived, he’d led her, still blindfolded, along a paved walkway, then to a gate. She heard him insert a key. Secretly, her heart thrilled. Yumiko expected something special, but not this special. Her Akihiro was such a romantic.
“It’s spectacular,” she said. “I couldn’t think of a better birthday present.” Her eyes drank in the whole of the sparkling cityscape below.
“Couldn’t you?” he said.
The tenor of his voice drew her gaze from the glittering city lights to his gleaming dark eyes, then followed them as they dropped to his palm, where she saw an open ring box.
Yumiko gasped for the second time that night.
“Would you marry me?” he asked with what was the silliest, most adorable grin she had ever seen.
Her upbringing impressing itself on her, she began to bow. Then she hesitated.
“Is something wrong?” Akihiro asked.
“No. Everything’s perfect.”
She flung her arms around him. It was a gesture far too intimate for a public place, but they were, after all, alone.
Akihiro clutched the jewelry box in a panic, almost losing the ring over the side. He did not relish the idea of searching for the ring case in the dark after a sixty-foot drop. With an embarrassed laugh at his girl’s impulsiveness, Akihiro slipped his arms around her waist.
Yumiko pulled herself away. “I thought we were going to ask your father first?”
“I couldn’t wait. Do you mind?”
“Oh no, no. Never!”
“I have another surprise. I just sold my first manga story to Shokusha. The money’s small, but it’s a start. With that and some savings we can go on a honeymoon. I was thinking Thailand.”
A voice neither of them recognized said, “You’ll be going on a trip a lot sooner than that. Shorter too.”
A man in a leather jacket and a baseball cap stepped from the shadows.
Akihiro straightened to his full height. “You’re not supposed to—”
The man charged, bending low and ramming Akihiro with his shoulder. When Akihiro doubled over in pain onto the attacker’s back, the stranger accepted the weight, wrapped his arms around the boy’s waist, straightened suddenly, and flipped the slight youth up and over the four-foot guardrail.
Akihiro’s earsplitting scream cut through the night as he plunged into the darkness. Three stories down, tree branches snapped. Two stories farther, his body smacked into a fern-covered slope with a stomach-turning thump.
Yumiko’s scream rose in tandem with her fiancé’s, then faded when the assailant produced a knife. Her eyes locked on the weapon. She backed against the rail. Tears streaked her face.
“You want to live, do you not?” he asked in an unearthly whisper.
Petrified, she nodded and found she couldn’t stop nodding.
“Your boyfriend had to die. But you can live if you want. Do you want to?”
“Yes,” Yumiko said.
The killer’s whisper was soft and soothing.
“Then I need you to calm down,” he said. “Can you do that for me?”
Yumiko continued to nod, frozen in place. She wanted to believe him. She needed to believe him. Seeing Akihiro fly over the rail was devastating, but a desire to live surged through her.
The man smiled. He slipped the weapon into a pocket. “Good. Now I’m going to walk away, but before I do—”
Without warning he drove a fist into her stomach. When she doubled over, her attacker threaded his arms into the hook of her body and hoisted her up and over the rail. The girl was thin and petite and offered no resistance.
Yumiko’s mouth opened in a scream. But, breathless from the blow, her lips could form only a silent circle of horror. In midair, she flailed her arms and lashed out with her feet.
Her body crashed through tree branches, then hit the fern-covered earth sixty feet below with the same nauseating thud.
In death, as in life, the two young lovers were aligned side by side.
DAY 7
SATURDAY
THE BLACKNESS BEYOND
CHAPTER 35
AT five thirty in the morning, Noda pounded on my door. The Kyoto PD had promised to keep him in the loop.
“Bad news,” he said. �
�The police found Akihiro.”
Exhausted and frustrated, we’d returned to our hotels only an hour earlier.
“How bad is it?” I called back, tearing off my yukata sleepwear and slipping into a pair of jeans.
“Took a one-way dive,” Noda said.
* * *
We’ll find him, I’d told Mrs. Nobuki.
We’d found him, but couldn’t hold him. Then he’d outfoxed us and now he was dead. I had no idea how I would face my friend once he woke from his coma, but in the meantime I had to break the news to a mother about the death of her youngest child just two weeks after the death of her eldest.
Minutes after hearing the news, I’d phoned our Kyoto affiliate to double the guard on the Nobukis. That made four men on duty each shift, twelve hours on, twelve hours off. Then I woke someone at our Tokyo office and asked him to relay the news to Naomi in Washington.
The pros at Brodie Security also recommended the highest level of containment, which I’d implemented as well. Over and above all the standard restrictions, the family members were now to remain indoors twenty-four/seven. No more brief excursions to the store, even with bodyguards. Any necessities—food, toiletries, medicine, whatever—would be brought to the house.
In short, total lockdown.
* * *
Noda pried loose one of the affiliates’ cars and the three of us drove out to the Nobuki homestead and studio workshop at top speed—in hopes of beating the Kyoto police.
“Oh, Brodie,” Mari said more than once during the drive.
Which said it all.
We’d signed on to protect the family, not hunt down a rogue member. Even so, we all felt miserable. Wanting to release Brodie Security’s newest field operative from the ordeal, I’d suggested that Mari wait back at the hotel, but Noda vetoed the idea.
“She comes with us,” he said shortly.
“Can’t we spare her the—”
“No baby steps.” The chief detective glared at the roadway without another word.
