by Barry Lancet
I glanced at the map. “Isn’t there a turnoff for Kanbara coming up?”
Mari said yes, and seconds later we saw a sign for the village, then a turnout, then the warehouse—low and long and the length of two houses stacked back to back. A fourteen-foot semitrailer truck with a discreet Komeki logo on its side panel had backed into a small loading bay.
“That’s got to be it,” I said.
Noda slammed on the brakes.
CHAPTER 58
WE barreled through the warehouse door.
In a small office directly behind the reception area, the driver and a seventy-year-old caretaker huddled around a kerosene room heater, sipping green tea.
They both looked our way, startled.
“Open the truck,” Noda called as we charged into the room.
“You can’t come back here,” the caretaker said.
He wore a standard workman’s uniform of matching gray pants, shirt, and cap. The uniform that spelled conformity throughout the country. The other man had on a long-distance driver’s vest bristling with energy bars, cigarette packs, and his mobile phone, all stuffed into the various pockets.
“We’re detectives. Open the truck.”
The trucker eyed us doubtfully. Squaring his shoulders, Noda stepped closer and the driver said, “Okay, okay, you can look, but don’t touch nothing.”
His face was sallow, and his body sagged as if he’d logged a million miles and was burdened with a million more yet to go. He circled around to the loading bay, slid back a double bolt on heavy metal doors, and pulled open the left-hand door.
“You look,” Noda said to me. “I’ll stay out here and watch things.”
Meaning he’d keep an eye out for the sudden appearance of weapons, reinforcements, or a move to lock me in.
“You got a badge?” I heard the driver ask Noda as I stepped into the cavernous truck bed.
Stacks of boxes with the Komeki logo were secured along the front and sides of the trailer. They were all small and manageable and of the type no doubt shipped to Komeki shops around the nation.
Nothing large enough to hold a body. Unless . . .
I shook my head, refusing to go there. I returned to the loading dock, saying, “Nothing here.”
Eyebrows diving, Noda scowled at the anemic driver. “You drop anything off on the way here?”
The two men were inspecting Noda’s business card.
“You’re private cops,” the trucker said, ignoring the chief detective’s question. “We don’t need to answer you.”
I pushed into the man’s personal space. “You’re absolutely right. We’re dealing with assault, kidnapping, and multiple murders on an international level. Maybe we get the local police involved. And Komeki, Inc. Maybe you played a role. Maybe you both get suspended while they investigate.”
In Japan, official investigations stretched on for months. The men fidgeted where they stood, and caved.
Noda repeated his query about an earlier delivery and the long-hauler replied in the negative.
“Anyone make a pickup here?”
“Yeah. A couple minutes before you arrived.”
“Komeki goods?”
“No, his own. He subcontracts delivery with the head office. We haul stuff out here for him sometimes.”
Tad had mentioned voices, plural, which made sense. The Steam Walker couldn’t be everywhere. Sounded like others had accosted Tad and Naomi, then sent Naomi—all bundled up—straight into the Walker’s hands.
“What’s the guy’s name?” Noda asked.
“Don’t know. I’m not local.”
Noda’s stormy features swung in the caretaker’s direction. The old man quickly shook his head. “I don’t know him, either.”
“You’re local.”
“But he’s not. Only see him when he comes in for a pickup.”
“Ever talk to him about anything?”
The Komeki warehouseman shrugged. “The fellow don’t encourage talk. Picks up his package and scats.”
“What kind of truck?”
“White delivery van. Looks like all the other ones on the road.”
“Make? Year?”
“It’s white.”
We’d hit a dead end.
I said, “Did the guy wear a hat?”
“Baseball cap.” The old man thought for a moment. “Always has a hat, but not always the same one. Always covers a lot of his face, though.”
“Talk in a low voice? Sometimes a whisper?”
“That’s the guy.”
We had a lock.
The Steam Walker had been and gone. And we’d missed him by minutes.
“You help him carry the package?”
“No.” The driver stretched his hands as wide as they would go. “Too long. Guy wheeled them away on a furniture dolly.”
“Them?”
“Yeah. There were two this time.”
Noda and I exchanged puzzled looks.
Two packages meant two bodies. Who was the second one? Perhaps Stockton’s missing bodyguard had made it to this side of the Pacific after all.
CHAPTER 59
OUR window for finding Naomi was rapidly closing.
“Nearly had him,” I said.
Nodding, Noda drew in a mouthful of chilled soba noodles. “Matter of minutes.”
Back at the warehouse, we’d gone through the motions of eyeballing the paperwork for the delivery. The client section of the form listed a company called Asama Industries, a PO box fifty miles away, and a telephone number that went straight to voice mail. A typical professional cover—and dead end.
I snagged some cold noodles with my chopsticks and dipped them into the accompanying sauce. Hunger pangs had forced us to stop for food. True to form, Noda had sought out the nearest purveyor of buckwheat noodles. Like any soba fiend, he was on a perpetual prowl for the next perfect eighty-twenty noodle—eight parts buckwheat flower to two parts wheat. We’d passed a pair of soba shops on the way down Mount Asama, so hit the more promising one on the way back.
I said, “Got any ideas after we eat?”
“None. You?”
“Not a one.”
I glanced at my phone for the tenth time. Nothing new from our digital whiz kid. I’d asked her to dive deeper into Komeki’s computers, but neither of us expected Mari to find anything useful within our time frame.
Noda took in another mouthful of noodles. Outside, gravel crunched as a vehicle pulled into the lot and drove through to the rear.
“We’ve got to get back on the road,” I said. “Thoughts?”
“Outlet shop’s our only choice.”
“Afraid you’d say that.”
It was a last-ditch effort unlikely to lead anywhere.
“Time’s running out,” I said.
Noda frowned into his food. “Might already be dead.”
As we gulped down the last of our meal, the server emerged from the back room.
“Here’s your soba-yu,” she said.
She set down a rectangular red-lacquer pitcher with a lid and pour spout unique to soba cuisine. It held hot cooking water, or soba-yu, into which many of the nutrients from the buckwheat noodles had seeped. Diners poured the steaming liquid into their remaining dipping sauce and spiced the mix with leftover condiments to make a savory soup that, today, in the rain and the gloom, would provide a welcome warmth.
“Thank you,” I said.
At the back of the shop a spring-loaded screen door creaked open and slapped shut, followed by the sound of a lot of weight on old floorboards.
“Delivery?” I asked the waitress.
“I suppose,” she said, confusion muddling her expression. “But most of them come in the morning before we start the noodle-making.”
A moment later, the cook called from the kitchen in the back: “Oi. You forgot something.”
Our server gave us a fractured smile, bowed, and retreated.
As she shuffled unhurriedly toward the kitchen, I glanced over
the tabletop. The soba-yu was the last of our order. The check was on the table. Our teacups were nearly full. We were the only customers.
There was nothing to forget.
Noda came to the same conclusion at the same instant.
We rose together and followed silently in the server’s wake. We moved quickly into the back dining room. As soon as she parted the doorway curtain and disappeared into the rear, we closed the distance and took up positions against the walls on either side of the curtain.
I flashed a look in the head detective’s direction and saw we were on the same wavelength: the trucker or the caretaker had tagged us.
The next instant four men charged through the doorway, their eyes forward, rushing right by us into the front dining area, where we’d eaten our meal.
“They’re not here,” the point man said. “Must have just gone out the door.”
“That ain’t right, you dumb ass. The bill’s still on the table,” a second one said. “Higuchi, check the front. The rest of us—”
He never finished because a moment later they all knew. It was instinctual. Primal.
They turned in unison.
The second speaker was clearly the man in charge—and the one to target. But we had to get through the others first. We hurtled toward them as they turned. I slammed the heel of my hand into the solar plexus of the man nearest me. Air burst from his lungs. As he doubled over, I brought clasped hands down on the back of his neck and he crumpled. The assailant closest to Noda was five inches taller than the beefy detective, so my partner kicked him in the crotch, then followed with one of his knockout punches, a merciless uppercut that met a plunging chin. The assailant’s eyes rolled up into his head and he toppled over backward, into oblivion.
The remaining two lunged at us. They were bigger and faster and moved like they knew their way around a fight. Noda’s man landed the first blow and I saw my partner fly back against the wall. Then I was consumed by my own problems.
My opponent—the leader—attacked with his right fist already in play. He snarled as I swept his looping roundhouse aside, then rammed my free hand into the soft joint of the jaw, just under the ear. It was a combination judo-street move that used his own momentum to slam him into a side wall. He bounced off the paneling, unfazed and furious, and scrambled back at me.
I looked for an entry to put him down, but he was an experienced street fighter with speed and power, which made him dangerous. We traded blows, each blocking the other, each seeking an opening. After several ineffectual exchanges, I backed away and circled.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Noda still engaged. My opponent raced in yet again. I circled away. When he advanced the next time, I threw a pair of staccato jabs with my left to keep him at bay, then launched a slow circular body blow with my right that I let him block. Which he did, his snarl turning into a smirk of superiority. In his newfound confidence, he missed the closed-fist thrust headed his way. It exploded into his chest and he flew across a tabletop before smashing headfirst into another wall and slipping to the floor.
Thoroughly pissed off, and still unfazed, he started to rise, fumbling under his jacket for something.
I was already rounding the corner of the table when what looked like a Smith & Wesson cleared his jacket. As his hand emerged, I kicked the weapon away.
Five things happened at once. His finger—caught in the trigger guard—snapped. The pistol discharged. He howled. The shot punched a hole in the ceiling. The gun flew from his grasp.
I rammed my knee into his stomach. He collapsed and this time stayed down.
I pivoted around in time to see Noda land another of his classic jawbreakers. His second target went down.
And out.
CHAPTER 60
WE had the leader’s wallet. His name was Toshiaki Baba.
“You will tell us,” I said.
Baba turned evasive. “Ya want Higuchi. But he’s out cold as a snapper.”
Two of the men were unconscious and Noda stood guard over the third. Baba was a bulky tree stump of a man in overalls, with a large head and intelligent, shifty eyes. A tough country thug who would be wily, loyal, and hard to break. He’d already put the broken finger behind him.
“Nice try,” I said. “It’s you we want and it’s you we’re going to put holes in if we don’t get answers we like.”
“I’m telling ya—”
I cut him off with a wave of the gun. “We’re not buying. Take us to the woman.”
In the brief tableau we’d witnessed before the fight, the other men had hung on Baba’s words. Shrewdly, he’d let them take the lead and only spoke up when he thought they were alone. Before he realized we were behind him. The remaining three were underlings, or pickup players hired for the day’s outing. The group hadn’t moved like a practiced unit.
Our captive sneered. “I ain’t who ya want. But even if I was, what you’re asking ain’t gonna happen.”
“You are and it is.”
When the dust had settled, the owner poked his head through the split curtain, flustered, ready to call the police. We waved the equivalent of two hundred dollars in his face, and persuaded him and his server to take a slow stroll down the road, assuring them we’d be gone by the time they returned. When they did circle back, they’d find another two hundred on our table.
He expressed concern about additional damage to the shop, so we topped off our offer and commandeered a battered shed behind the restaurant.
“You sure you’ll be gone?” the soba chef asked, even as he accepted the money.
“Count on it,” I said.
We’d better be. Our window was getting narrower by the minute.
“Take us to Naomi Nobuki,” I said again.
“Who?”
“The woman the Steam Walker grabbed.”
“Can’t.”
“Last chance,” I said.
He gave me a bored look.
I shot him in the leg and he bellowed. We let him. There were no neighbors to hear his howls of pain.
Noda squinted at our hostage. “He’s more afraid of the Steam Walker.”
“That true?” I asked.
“You’d be too, if ya knew as much as I do.”
“I might. I’ve met him a couple of times. And I’m extremely glad to hear you know so much.”
He reddened. “Didn’t mean it that way.”
“Too late.”
“No one meets the Walker more’n once and lives.”
“It was close,” I admitted, thinking of the poisoned meal that was most likely meant for me. “But I’m here, so keep that in mind. You give us what we want and you live.”
“I’m not saying a word about the Walker.”
“I’ll shoot you again.”
“Yeah, but he’ll kill me.”
“Your choice,” I said, and shot him a second time.
His outcry redoubled. Both times, I’d aimed for the meatier edges of his substantial calves, avoiding the major arteries. Maimed, our prisoner thrashed around on the floor like a wounded feral beast. His breathing came in snorts between waves of pain. His eyes teared up.
Something nebulous and undefined inside of me stirred in vague protest. I hated being forced to inflict serious pain, but time was short and words had no effect.
When his breathing evened out, the mulish leader said, “You can keep shooting till all the bullets are gone but I ain’t taking ya there.”
I smiled. The pain had clouded his thoughts. He’d dropped the pretense of not knowing.
I stared down at him with a hardened look of need. What I sought was leverage greater than the terror instilled by the Steam Walker’s formidable reputation.
“There’s three bullets left,” I said. “I could put one in each arm, which would send you to the hospital and then a wheelchair for a spell. Or I could put a round through your spine and you’d be glued to a wheelchair for life.”
No reaction. No fear. The Steam Walker’s hold was stronger. B
ut I had a backup plan that relied on an aversion so alarming and so primitive it was hot-wired into every male on the planet.
“Or maybe,” I said, “I could take out your third leg.”
I watched as my meaning slowly took hold. Baba’s gaze moved from my face to the gun. A light sweat appeared at his hairline. I edged the gun a few inches toward the intended target and a primitive dread seeped into his expression. He turned pale. He shook his head weakly. He said no but his protest was faint.
I moved the weapon a few inches more and he told us what we needed to know.
CHAPTER 61
WE loaded our captive into the backseat of our car, his legs wrapped in makeshift tourniquets.
He directed us back to Mount Asama, then onto a narrow back road used only by rangers, researchers, and, apparently, the Steam Walker. The road began to climb, then fed into a series of switchbacks edging up the mountain.
Our involuntary guide said, “You can’t follow the Walker. Not when he goes to the volcano.”
“Don’t bet on it,” I said.
“Don’t have to.”
After the eighth switchback, the access road came to an abrupt end. Above us towered Mount Asama. Gray-black clouds clustered around the peak and long, ghostly cloud fingers streaked its slopes. The mountain rose gradually, then jutted up dramatically as it neared the edge of the crater.
I wondered how the Steam Walker “goes to the volcano.”
There was a pullout at the end of the road. Beyond that, a shed. A covered pickup with an extra-long bed and a high roof rested in the pullout, its tailgate open, a ramp leading down to the ground set in place.
“That’s his?” I asked, and Baba nodded.
Smart. The Walker had changed vehicles. And unloaded something big.
“What was in it?”
Our guide pointed up the slope.
