Fallen Angel (9781101578810)

by Patrick, Jonelle

Yumi colored at the bold compliment, then caught herself, remembering that Shinya didn’t mean it; it was his job to say stuff like that. She had to concentrate on her mission and get out of there.

  Coco gave Hoshi her phone and he began navigating to something, intent on the screen.

  Another perfect set of prints. Too bad they were on Coco’s phone.

  “This is the place I was talking about,” Hoshi said, turning the screen so Yumi and Shinya could see the picture of lights shining up into trees with brilliantly colored autumn leaves. Yumi recognized it as Rikugi-en, the famous garden across from Komagome Station. “Shinya, why don’t you get Yumi’s number and maybe the four of us can go see the leaves together sometime before the end of the month?”

  Shinya pulled out his phone, saying, “That’d be fun. What do you think?” He turned to her expectantly.

  Yumi realized that Hoshi had just solved her problem. “Sure,” she said, fishing her own phone from her handbag, quickly polishing the case on her dress. She fumbled with it, pretending to have trouble activating the feature that would allow her and Shinya to point their phones at each other to exchange numbers.

  “Sorry, sometimes I’m such a klutz.” She looked at Hoshi. “Do you think you could get it to work?”

  Hoshi handed Coco’s phone back and took Yumi’s, deftly keying his way through the commands and pointing it at Shinya’s to trade numbers.

  Right thumb and three fingers. Mission accomplished.

  He smiled and handed it back to her.

  “Thanks!” She grinned, taking the phone by the edges and slipping it back in her purse.

  Chapter 25

  Monday, November 11

  8:30 A.M.

  Kenji

  Kenji shoveled in another bite of breakfast rice as the “Bloody Monday” theme blared from his phone. His checked the caller ID. Tommy Loud.

  “Ohayo, Rowdy-san,” he said, dolloping another helping of gooey fermented soybeans into his bowl. “What are you doing at the office so early?”

  “Racking up time-and-a-half goodwill points on your account,” the crime tech told him. “The cups were clean, but I found prints on the teapot.”

  “And?” Kenji scooped up another bite.

  “Five fingers and a thumb match the victim’s prints, but the ones on the lid overlap what looks like a partial thumb and the side of an index finger that didn’t belong to either the victim or her roommate. Nothing on the handle but smears.”

  “What about the prints from the door?”

  “Some from the vic, some from the roommate, some of yours…and four fingers plus a thumb from the same person who lifted the teapot lid the night Cherry Endo died.”

  Kenji sat back in his chair. “So you’re telling me she invited her killer into her apartment and he—or she—made a pot of tea before pushing Cherry down the stairs?”

  “He. The thumb is too wide to be a woman’s.”

  “I don’t suppose I won the lottery and the prints matched somebody already in the system?”

  “Sorry, you’re not that lucky.”

  They ended the call and Kenji tossed a few takuan radish pickles into his mouth, crunching them as he considered the possibilities.

  Whose fingerprints? The Zombie’s? Hoshi’s? Or the boyfriend Cherry met on Friday nights?

  Half an hour later he was at his desk, stapling the copy he’d made of Cherry’s file before handing off the original to Section Chief Tanaka, when Detective Oki arrived.

  “Happy Monday. Tea ready yet?” the big detective asked, shrugging off his jacket and scooping up his cup with an oversized paw.

  Kenji slapped the case notes into a folder. “Should be. Just let me drop this in the section chief’s box.” They made their way to the staff lounge, where Oki poured for himself, then filled Kenji’s cup.

  “Was that the report on your accidental death?” Oki asked as they made their way back toward their desks.

  “Yeah. I worked it over the weekend and uncovered some good leads, but Tanaka-san made me shut it down. He released the body on Saturday without warning me.” He told Oki how the section chief had insisted the case be closed, even though he’d produced three viable suspects.

  “Well, you know Tanaka-san,” Oki commiserated. “An accidental death in hand is worth two unsolved homicides in the bush.”

  Kenji grunted and took a sip, promptly burning his tongue. He always forgot that the malfunctioning staffroom hot pot made tea that was painfully hotter than the ideal temperature. “The chief told me you could use some help with your gray-market vendor shakedown. He said someone’s been extorting those guys who deliver questionable brand goods to the cut-rate shops.”

  “Did he sound like he was getting impatient?”

  “He said it didn’t seem to be moving forward very quickly.”

  Others were starting to arrive, so the big detective beckoned him into an empty interview room, nudging the door shut behind them. “The truth is, it’s dead in the water. Tanaka-san just doesn’t know it yet.” Oki perched on the small table used for questioning suspects. “Every one of the victims forked over cash or merchandise to the extortionist face to face, but when I asked them what he looked like, they all developed sudden memory loss. Not that I blame them—if we catch the guy, whoever ratted him out will get a beating from the asshole’s gang.”

  “No other witnesses?”

  “All the incidents took place between two and four in the morning, not exactly rush hour.”

  “When are you going to tell the chief?”

  “Not anytime soon, if I can help it. Last time there was a crime lull, I found out the hard way that Tanaka’s a genius at finding busywork with my name on it. For the past week I’ve been making myself scarce and hoping some less successful criminals get back to work soon.”

  Kenji gingerly tried the tea again and found it marginally less painful. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Look busy. Why don’t you keep hammering away at that accidental death? Maybe you’ll find something that’ll convince the chief to reopen it. As lead investigator on the extortion, I’ll report our regrettable lack of progress to Tanaka every few days until something better comes along.”

  “Done. Thanks, Oki-san.”

  “You need any help?”

  Kenji thought for a moment. “You grew up in Kabuki-chō, right? Do you think you could ask around, see if anybody knows who Cherry was meeting on Friday nights? The only thing we know about him is that he gave her gifts—fancy makeup, handbags, stuff like that—and there’s some reason she didn’t talk about him. Her roommate thought he might be married.”

  “Sure,” Oki said. “You have any idea where they meet up?”

  “No. I’ll ask her roommate; maybe she knows. I have to call anyway to find out when Cherry’s funeral’s going to be. I thought I’d go pay my respects, on the off chance her killer shows up.” Kenji took a gulp of now-tepid tea. “This morning I’m going to visit Cherry’s astrologer and ask if she saw anything in her crystal ball that might help us.”

  “Now there’s a technique I haven’t tried.”

  Kenji laughed. “Actually, I want to ask Madame Lily why Cherry suddenly started consulting her again last week. I wondered if it was because she’d discovered she was pregnant. I tried to see her yesterday, but she doesn’t work Sundays.”

  The big detective nodded. “Okay. Let’s touch base again at the end of the day.”

  Kenji followed him out the door, pulling out his phone to call Cherry’s roommate.

  Chapter 26

  Monday, November 11

  10:00 A.M.

  Kenji

  Tasteful script letters on a sign outside Ladies’ Fashion Shirayuki spelled out:

  Madame Lily, Horoscopes

  Marriage • Business • Personal

  2nd floor

  Her waiting room was empty when Kenji pushed through the door on the second-floor landing at 9:55. He’d checked Madame Lily’s online appointment schedule
, and saw that she had an open slot at 10:00 A.M.

  The cheaply furnished, white-walled waiting room looked like it belonged to a dentist who was relying more on divine intervention than his skill with a drill for business success. On a corner shelf near the ceiling, white paper zigzag charms were swagged across an antique Shinto shrine. The miniature wooden building had been recently dusted, and the pyramids of salt, flasks of sake, and branches of sasaki leaves were fresh.

  In the opposing corner, a knee-high multicolored figure of the jolly Chinese god of good fortune was enshrined between two glowing electric candles with red bulbs. A pyramid of oranges and a Ming reproduction pot sprouting joss sticks sat before it.

  A magnificent Buddhist altar stood between them, its black lacquer overlaid with gilded lotus flowers. The doors were open, revealing an old-fashioned brass statue of Kannon flanked by framed photos, including a vivid studio portrait of an imposing older woman in a red cheongsam, her jet-black hair pulled back severely and secured with an elaborately carved jade comb.

  Kenji tried to ignore the way the portrait’s eyes followed him as he took a seat on the tweedy sofa. A bored goldfish regarded him from its blue-rimmed bowl, motionless except for languidly rippling fins.

  9:59. He flipped through last month’s Kateigaho magazine until 10:03, and when no client emerged from the fortune-teller’s consulting room, he knocked on the inner door labeled “Private.”

  A small, ordinary-looking woman appeared, a faint spray of freckles peppering her nose. She was the kind Kenji might have stood behind in line at the grocery store every week and not recognized when he encountered her again on the street. She didn’t look much older than thirty, though her oval, wire-framed glasses gave her an owlish appearance and her brown calf-length skirt would serve her well into her dotage. Shoulder-length hair was pulled back with a plastic Snoopy clip.

  “I’m sorry, did you have an appointment?”

  “No. Please excuse me for dropping by without calling. Are you Madame Lily?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m Detective Nakamura, from the Komagome Police Station,” Kenji said, displaying his police ID.

  “A detective?” she said. “I’m sorry, I don’t do police consultations. I’m an astrologer; I can’t help with missing persons and such.”

  “I didn’t come for that. I need to talk to you about Cherry Endo.”

  “I can’t discuss my clients.”

  “You can discuss Cherry. She’s dead.”

  Madame Lily blanched. “That’s not possible. I just saw her last week.” She searched his face, looking for a sign he wasn’t telling the truth, then rubbed a spot between her eyes as if she were getting a migraine. “I guess you’d better come in.”

  In the room beyond, a mini refrigerator hummed next to a desk with a laptop computer and a stack of astrological charts. An ancient dust-clogged air conditioner slumbered in the lower half of the single window, hibernating after a long summer of working overtime. Above it, old-fashioned venetian blinds sliced the midday sunlight into strips. The astrologer led him to a cloth-covered card table and seated herself opposite.

  Kenji removed his notebook and pen from his inside pocket. “Before we begin, would you mind telling me your real name?”

  “It’s Lily. Lily Kanno. At school they called me Yuri—the Japanese version—but my mother was from Macao and she always called me Lily.”

  “So you inherited your ‘gifts’ from her, I presume?” Fortune-tellers from Macao were legendary. “Maybe I ought to ask if you ‘saw’ who killed Cherry Endo.”

  He’d intended it as a joke, but Lily stiffened. “If you want me to help, you need to understand what I do. And what I don’t do. Astrology is a complex set of calculations, based on the exact time and place of your birth. I can hold up a lamp to show you the path you started along the moment you were born, but I can’t predict what you’ll encounter on that path. I can help you pick a wedding day that sets you up with the greatest probability of success, but I can’t tell you whether you’ll be happy or not. I can show you the landscape ahead, but it’s up to you to figure out how to navigate it. I don’t tell the future, not the way you think.” She fell silent, then asked, “How did Cherry die?”

  “She fell down the stairs at her apartment building.”

  “And it wasn’t an accident?”

  “I’m here because I’m not sure. Do you know of anyone who wanted her dead? Someone who had a grudge against her? Someone who hated her?”

  Lily shook her head. “Cherry’s problem wasn’t that she was hated; it was that she was loved. Maybe a little too much.”

  “Jealous boyfriend?”

  “I was thinking of one of her customers. Six months ago she came to me and asked for a complete life chart. One of the things it predicted was that her job success in the near future would continue to depend on one person. She seemed to know whom the chart was referring to, and she wasn’t happy about it.”

  “Was she worried she’d lose him?”

  “No. The opposite—she was worried he wouldn’t let her go. But she needed him. Even though she hated him, she needed him.”

  “Why?”

  Lily was silent.

  “Cherry’s dead,” Kenji said. “If someone killed her, help me find him.”

  “She had debts,” Lily said. “Big ones. Her chart showed she was going to have serious family problems in her twenties and they’d already begun. When her father turned fifty last year, he suddenly quit his job at the electronics factory and took out a loan to buy a fishing boat. Commercial fishing turned out to be a lot harder than weekend fishing, though, and he didn’t make enough to keep up with the payments. He got further and further behind, and in order to keep from losing the boat, he borrowed from a loan shark to pay off the bank.

  “The family started getting threatening phone calls around the clock. Cherry found out about it when she went home for the weekend last January and two thugs with baseball bats had put her father in the hospital. Cherry paid them off by borrowing from someone she knew in Kabuki-chō, figuring she was making enough as a hostess to pay back the loan before it pulled her under. But I think she was pretty dependent on this one customer to keep spending if she wanted to stay in the top five at her club and keep making the payments. She came to me, trying to figure out what her options were.”

  “And did she have options?”

  “Apparently she had a boyfriend, but she never said a word about him until last Monday. She called and asked how fast I could work up a marriage compatibility chart. I told her it would take a couple of days. She dropped off his birth information that afternoon so I could get started, and picked the chart up Thursday morning.” Lily stared down into her tea, blinking rapidly. “I guess I’ll never find out if things would have worked out for them or not.”

  “Did she mention his name? This guy she was thinking of marrying?”

  “No. But…” Lily paused to think. “I noticed his birthday was on a holiday, a romantic holiday.”

  “Valentine’s Day? Christmas Eve?”

  “Valentine’s Day, I think.”

  “Can you make me a copy of the chart?”

  “Sorry,” she admitted sheepishly, “my hard drive failed over the weekend and I haven’t been very good about backing up. I had to send it out to have the data retrieved.”

  “Was there anything in the chart she might have been arguing with someone about?”

  “Arguing?”

  “Right before she died, her next-door neighbor heard two people fighting about astrology.”

  Lily frowned and thought for a moment, then said, “On the whole it looked pretty promising. There was just one troublesome area.”

  “Which was?”

  “His job.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think he was in a line of work that was dangerous. It could have been dangerous to him or dangerous to her or dangerous to a successful marriage.”

  “Dangerous to a suc
cessful marriage”—like having a husband who made his living as a gigolo? If Cherry had been pressuring Hoshi to marry her because she was having his baby, the danger to his job might easily have translated into danger to her life.

  “Do you know if she was pregnant?”

  “Pregnant? That didn’t occur to me. But it would explain why she was in such a hurry. She told me if the marriage chart worked out, it would solve all her problems.”

  Chapter 27

  Monday, November 11

  11:00 A.M.

  Kenji

  Kenji set his teacup on the small coffee table and dropped the copies of Cherry’s case file in front of the least uncomfortable-looking chair. Interview room 3 was set up to resemble a lounge, but the atmosphere was anything but relaxing. Fluorescent lights blazed overhead, mercilessly illuminating the nicks and scars on the furniture. Steam from Kenji’s cup wafted over the struggling philodendron, doomed to live out its life in the bare, white room. His phone vibrated.

  “Nakamura desu.”

  “Hi, it’s Yumi. I just dropped off a Seibu bag for you at the front desk. Hoshi’s fingerprints are on my phone.”

  “Wow, you work fast,” he said.

  “Um, the thing is…I kind of need my phone. How soon do you think I can get it back?”

  “Since it won’t be entered into official evidence, I think I can get it back to you today,” Kenji said. “I’ll take it to the lab myself, and ask my colleague to lift the prints this afternoon. Stop by anytime after four. Give me a call and I’ll bring it down.”

  Maybe she’d go have a drink with him afterward. Or dinner…

  Detective Oki appeared at the door, followed by an extraordinarily cheerful Suzuki. Remembering how disappointed his kohai had been when Cherry’s death was ruled an accident, this morning Kenji had asked the chief to add the assistant detective to their gray-market vendor extortion case. Afterward, Suzuki had finally admitted to Kenji where he’d been for the past month. Assigned to wear the mildewed Pipo-kun big-eared police mascot suit, he’d been barking safety tips at roomfuls of disrespectful schoolchildren. The assignment was so despised it was legendary.