Tokyo Enigma

by Sam Waite

  He took the steel key and held it like it was gold. Hundreds of blanks were strung on wire over a workbench, but without checking, he shook his head. He pulled out a stack of vinyl-bound books and began leafing through them. After about ten minutes, he handed the key back. "Kashi-kinko."

  "Safe deposit box." Yuri shook her head. "The manufacturer won't help us with this."

  "I know he doesn't have a blank, but ask him to cut a copy as close as he can get to the original and to stamp in the serial number if he can."

  Yuri sounded like she was trying to be persuasive while she translated, but the locksmith crossed his forearms in an "X" sign.

  "He says it wouldn't fit, and he doesn't want to try to copy a key for a safe deposit box. It could get him blacklisted with bank customers."

  I doubted he had any orders from banks, but what did I know. "Tell him to put in any imperfection he wants to make sure the key doesn't work. I just need for them to look basically the same."

  With that logic, an earnest plea and thirty thousand yen for a custom job, he accepted the risk.

  It was a long wait, but we stayed until he finished. The copy was too thick and the lateral grooves weren't right, but it was close enough. With the manufacturer's name and the imitation key, maybe Morimoto could find out what bank the safe deposit box belonged to. I would lock the original in the hotel safe until we found out.

  "Of course, we could also do it legally." Yuri said after I finished explaining my plan. "We could turn the key over to the attorneys and they could subpoena the manufacturer to identify the customer."

  "Then the contents of the safe deposit box becomes the property of Maho's estate and goes to her parents. They might not want to give us the goods."

  "We subpoena them for material evidence."

  "Evidence can get lost or destroyed. That bothers me."

  "Theft doesn't?"

  "Not when I'm the thief."

  * * * *

  Morimoto accepted his new task with no comment except that he would do his best to find the safe deposit box that fit the key. I didn't like his response. "I tried" is too often an excuse for failure.

  Yuri called Sayoko to make sure she was okay. She was.

  I met Nozaka to go over details for his meeting with Yokoyama, the Kamio investigator. Nozaka would carry a recorder, and a young apprentice from Protect Agency would take pictures.

  I wanted to see things first hand, so I tagged along.

  The meeting was at a Japanese restaurant on the top floor of a Shinagawa skyscraper. The inside was dimly lit and the décor was dark and oaky. Tables were made from rough-hewn planks, stained deep brown and varnished. The effect was a sprawling country inn from a long-past era. Each table was enclosed on three sides for privacy. The set up wasn't ideal for surveillance, but it was the kind of place I'd pick to see a private investigator about a spouse's infidelity.

  Nozaka had gone in first and taken a table that was across from two empty stalls. The apprentice went in next and got the best angle on Nozaka. I followed and took the hindmost, which wasn't too bad. If a panel didn't block my view, I'd be able to see Yokoyama's face. We had fifteen minutes to show time, and I'd have to order on my own.

  The menu was in Japanese, but no problem, it had photographs of the food. I pointed to oysters on the half shell and to grilled yellow tail. The waitress wasn't happy with that. She suggested that I observe the peculiar ideal of mixing food from the sea with food from the mountains. I swapped out the yellow tail for marinated bamboo shoots and cold tofu with grated ginger. After I reordered, the waitress looked worried that she'd been too pushy. If I really wanted the yellow tail, it was okay.

  I made a mental note to ask Yuri how to say, "I'm on a stakeout, miss. Leave me alone and bring the food." Maybe I was telepathic, the waitress did just that.

  The tofu was easy nibbling while we waited for Yokoyama. He arrived precisely on time. His shirt cuffs extended one-quarter inch past his coat sleeves. His hair just touched his collar, and his shoes would have passed Marine Corps muster.

  I talked into my mobile-phone set to camera mode and pointed it in his direction as he sat down. He glanced at me and moved out of my line of sight.

  Nozaka's original story was that he wanted to find out if his wife was having an affair. While he was at it, he'd try to find out what he could about Kamio Investigations. Yokoyama left the table briefly and didn't look my way when he passed, either going or returning. About fifteen minutes later, he left again, this time for good. He had bowed to Nozaka after he stood up.

  We stayed to give him time to get out of the building. I was about to leave when two men with bad haircuts and rumpled suits stopped at Nozaka's table. They flanked him when he stood up, then they came my way.

  Nozaka looked nervous. "They are police. They want us to go with them."

  When I stood, I saw a uniformed patrolman standing near the entrance.

  I asked Nozaka for an explanation, but he didn't have any. He said he didn't think we were being arrested, but they wanted to talk to us outside the building. They took us to a parking area near the train station. The two plainclothes and the patrolman boxed us in against a car.

  One of the plainclothes faced me and extended his hand. "Passport."

  The guy studied my picture and name and ports-of-entry stamps. There were a lot of them. It took a while to find the one for Narita. He made notations in a pad and finally handed it back. Then they searched us and took my mobile phone and clicked on the photo viewer.

  The policeman said something to Nozaka. "He wants to know why you were taking pictures inside."

  "Tell him I'm a restaurant critic."

  The guy must have wanted more information. He scowled and removed the memory card.

  "You can't do that. Tell him he can't do that." I reached for his hand, and the uniformed cop rapped my arm with a wooden truncheon.

  "Don't resist." Nozaka was waving his hands in front of his chest.

  Good advice. I kept myself out of jail and got the phone back minus the memory card with Yokoyama's pictures. The police left us with no explanation, no threats and no how-do-you-do-sir. Maybe they figured the visit was message enough. I just wasn't sure yet what it meant. When Nozaka and I headed back to his car, I saw our young apprentice moving through a crowd toward the train station.

  "Why did you lead them to me instead of him?" I wasn't angry. I was just curious.

  "I didn't." Nozaka said. "They already knew."

  Before we found Yokoyama's business card, I had considered trying to use the police to help us identify him. It turns out we located Yokoyama and he led the police to me. Fate was a mean comic, and I'd crashed its act.

  * * * *

  Nozaka believed in survival of the paranoid. He had taped the voice recorder to the small of his back. The police hadn't done a thorough search and missed it. The apprentice had followed us out on the next elevator and had pictures of Yokoyama and the three policemen. He'd gone unnoticed. Beginner's luck.

  We checked his pictures at Protect Agency. Yokoyama looked like he was in his early forties. He had angular features and thin lips. When I saw him in the restaurant, I had put him at about five feet nine. He was lean and moved in straight lines and sharp angles that matched his face. There was nothing round or soft about him.

  Nozaka said Yokoyama had excused himself to use the restroom. That was probably when he phoned the police. Later he'd received a call, and then left.

  Even if Nozaka's story had stunk, he hadn't had time to deliver it before Yokoyama had made the call from the washroom. The guy had only glanced at me, with no sign of recognition. How did he know?

  It was still early in the evening, and I hadn't had a proper dinner. I called Yuri as I walked to the train station, but no answer. I bought a ticket and wondered what she might be doing. Was she with friends? Did she eat alone? Did she sometimes sing her to goldfish when she was happy?

  Did she think of Mick?

  Chapter 18
>
  Kuroda refused to meet me in his office. I didn't want to talk to him where someone could overhear, so I asked him to recommend a private spot.

  "You like parks," he said.

  That wasn't exactly private, but he had a point. Hardly anywhere in Tokyo was private, except smack dab in a crowd. No one paid attention to individuals.

  A gravel path led most of the way to the station. Sycamore and gingko leaves had turned dry and were strewn along it like puffs of colored powder. The crunch of stones underfoot covered the sound of their disintegration.

  To kill time, I counted crows. I had lost count and started over when I saw Kuroda headed my way.

  "You changed your mind." Kuroda had a lot to tell me about myself.

  "Maybe."

  "I told you about the man on the bench. What do you have for me?"

  "Would you like pictures of your friends?"

  Kuroda grinned. "I don't have any friends, just like you."

  Funny guy. "Man named Yokoyama plus two plainclothes policemen and a uniformed patrolmen, as yet unidentified."

  Kuroda lost the smile. "What are you talking about? Who is Yokoyama?"

  "Uh-huh. How did you know about our park meeting with Allworth?"

  "I won't say, but I wasn't the only one watching you."

  "Stop sparring. Let's back off, level lances and charge."

  "What?"

  "Talk straight, answer honest. Did you put listening devices in Lance Allworth's office."

  "No."

  "Did you know about them before you found out about the park meeting?"

  "No, I didn't know about them at all."

  Kuroda might hedge or bluff, but I didn't think he'd lie in response to a simple, direct question. I decided to talk to him, starting with how we found Sayoko's apartment torn apart and ending with our plan at the park to draw out the people who planted the bugs in Lance's office.

  "You didn't expect to meet those men?" he said.

  "Actually, I'd have given good odds that you would show up."

  He didn't react to my attempt to bait him.

  "By the way, the man's name is Yamazaki."

  Kuroda's left cheek twitched. "I know. What was he looking for?"

  I shrugged. "That's why we gave him a deck of cards."

  "You didn't know then, but do you know now? What did he say?"

  Yuri wouldn't like this. "Between you and me, right? He's looking for a tape."

  "A tape of what?"

  "We don't know."

  "I asked you who Yokoyama is. You haven't answered."

  "Kamio Investigators. First name's Naoto." I also told him about Nozaka and I meeting him and the follow-up by the police.

  Kuroda shoved his hands into his coat pockets and stared past me. "What else do you know?"

  I wasn't ready to tell him about the safety deposit box key. "That's it for today, Kuroda-san. Anything else comes up, I'll call." I started to walk away.

  "Sanchez-san, you know the Arabic expression, 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend?'"

  "I don't think much of it."

  "That's too bad. We might have the same enemies."

  Chapter 19

  Knowing that Yokoyama worked for Kamio Investigators didn't answer the question of who he was. Yuri called Sayoko and asked her to look at our pictures of him. She might have seen the guy with Maho. While we waited for her, I filled Yuri in on my conversation with Kuroda. She still didn't like the idea of giving him information, but she agreed that it was probably the best way to deal with him. He wasn't going away.

  By the time Sayoko arrived, we had loaded the photos and had set up a computer in an interview room. She said she'd had stayed with the student motorcyclist for a couple of days then moved on to another friend. Hard life. The strain was showing in her complexion and darker skin around her eyes.

  Yuri brought her fruit juice and a shrink-wrapped package of deep-fried sweet bread.

  We had set up a computer in an interview room and loaded the photos. A technician had brightened the pictures of Yokoyama to compensate for the restaurant's dim lighting, but they still weren't very good. Sayoko studied each photo carefully. We had twenty-two shots, about half of which were from the same angle. Three showed him standing, and one of those showed his backside as he bowed goodbye to Nozaka. We ran through them twice. After about fifteen minutes, my right arm started to cramp. I'd been concentrating so hard that I hadn't moved it except to click a mouse. "I need a break."

  Yuri followed me out.

  "I may never use this shoulder again."

  "That's a nerdy complaint, for a tough guy." Yuri started at my wrist and squeezed one hand over the other until she got halfway up my bicep. Then she mashed her thumb into the back of my neck and along my shoulder.

  "You can keep doing that as long as you want."

  "How about once more."

  She had just grabbed my wrist again when we heard Sayoko's voice. She sounded like a Valkyrie wailing through a wad of wet gauze. Yuri got to the door first. Sayoko was talking and pointing to the computer screen.

  Yuri translated rapid fire. "It's him, at the inn in Izu with Maho-san. The man who said he'd pay more if she—"

  If she got serious in her role-play with Maho.

  I thought it had taken her a little too long to identify the guy to be believable, until I looked at the screen. We had loaded everything, but I hadn't thought to show her the pictures taken in the parking lot near the train station. The one of me wasn't very good, but you could clearly see the face of the man she pointed to. It was the plainclothes policeman who'd asked me for my passport.

  Sayoko looked shaky. Yuri and I took her for a late lunch and an early bottle of wine. We talked about a lot except inns on the Izu peninsula. She said she was estranged from her parents and couldn't go home, even if she wanted to. She looked like she did. After Maho was killed, she'd called. Her mother had answered and wouldn't speak to her. Her parents had expected her to stay, marry a local and take care of them in their old age. She'd had other ideas and said some nasty things to them before she left for the big city. Apparently unforgivable things.

  A child's spite, I figured, was a piece of the natural order. Either Sayoko's folks were sad cases, or she'd left something out. Whichever, it was a family affair, and I wasn't kin.

  After more promises to call daily, Yuri and I left Sayoko and headed back to the agency.

  "How far do you want to go with Kuroda?" I said.

  "I know what you're thinking, and that's a big risk. We can't be sure that Kuroda didn't send those men himself."

  "He said we might have the same enemies."

  "He might also be lying like a two-headed snake. Maybe we do have a lot to gain, if we can trust Kuroda, but those people are dangerous. Don't lose sight of that, Mick."

  I was willing to take the risk, but I wouldn't unless everyone agreed. "You're right. What if we put it to a vote, you, me, Morimoto and Nozaka. If anyone says 'no,' we don't show Kuroda the pictures."

  Everyone agreed. Nozaka was the most enthusiastic. He wanted revenge for the embarrassment of being hustled out of the restaurant by police. Yuri was stoic and practical. She admitted that bringing in Kuroda would be our smartest move. Morimoto voted with the prevailing wind.

  I was sure we were on the brink of a major move, but we couldn't make it immediately. Kuroda was out for the weekend. That gave me time to tie up a loose thread, a trip to a certain inn in Izu. Yuri managed to get enough information from Sayoko to identify the place she had gone with Maho. Whether we got anything that directly affected the investigation, at least I could get a feel for the place and scratch off an itch in mind.

  The Izu peninsula wasn't exactly the South Seas, but the vegetation was tropical, and the atmosphere was warm, even if the air wasn't. Geologists figured it had been an island that had ridden continental drift from the south into Japan's mainland. The soil and plants were different from those in the rest of Honshu.

  The inn was a sm
all place with only five rooms up narrow winding roads into the mountains. It was off-season, and we were the only guests. The mom and pop proprietors had sake and supper ready for us when we arrived. "Mom" brought the first course and poured sake for us, and then I poured for her when she stayed at the table a while and chatted. Yuri asked her if she ever got large groups.

  "One company rents the whole inn for an office outing every year," she said.

  "How about parties for guests that don't stay over?"

  The woman cocked her head without answering.

  Yuri asked about the night Sayoko cited. It was around the autumnal equinox holiday.

  "Mom" said she couldn't remember, tittered and decided she needed to help "Pop."

  "What do you think?" I said.

  "I think they just run the place. It would be interesting to know who owns it."

  "Can we find out?"

  "I expect so. I'll call Morimoto."

  "It's Saturday night."

  Yuri was too busy punching in numbers to answer.

  After she rang off, she said, "He'll get on it, but there's not much he can do until Monday."

  "I wonder what he does on a Saturday: practice go and read classics or watch game shows and visit cosplay clubs."

  "Who cares? I know what I'm going to do." Yuri led the way to the inn's bath, a small rock-lined pool fed by a natural hot spring. The bathroom was paneled in cedar and overlooked a small garden enclosed by a beige stucco wall. We helped each other wash with lavender soap and Yuri shaved my face with a tiny plastic razor. She was good, no nicks, no stubble.

  In our room, a futon had been laid out on the tatami and covered in lightly starched linen and feather-soft comforters. The tatami was new. The reeds had an aroma of freshly mown grasses. It was musky, like Yuri.

  We loved with the languid flow of a warm spring. No rutting bull this time.

  Our train didn't leave until the afternoon, so Sunday morning we walked along the shore and talked about music and books and what we might have been, if we'd done something else with our lives.