The Moving Blade

by Michael Pronko

  “It was those kindergarten kids that really got me,” Ayana said. “Teachers led them in the wrong direction. No emergency plan.”

  “And it’s far from over,” Akiko added.

  Ayana shook her head in disgust.

  Hiroshi interrupted them. “Did Mattson ask for newspaper articles or legal records or…?”

  “I’m sure it’s all in his folder. He was meticulous.” Ayana unlocked his room and the three of them went in. The USB and the notebook were in the center of the table.

  The notebook pages were divided into four columns, date requested, title of material, date returned, evaluation, all written in a neat, tidy hand. The entire hardbound notebook was filled top to bottom about two-thirds of the way through. After the last requested material, one day before his death, he had drawn three thick straight lines.

  Hiroshi leaned back, staring as he flipped the pages back, then forward again through Mattson’s list. “Last time we were here, I thought he was researching the military bases, with all the documents from 1958 and 1959, and the Occupation in 1951 and 1952.”

  “What was he really looking for?” Akiko asked.

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.” Hiroshi took the laptop Akiko had carried with them and turned it on. Worrying briefly that the files would again be nothing but shunga erotica prints, he slid the USB into the side of the computer.

  Akiko took over and sat down to click open the first file.

  All three of them bent down towards the screen to see what was on the USB Mattson intentionally kept safe.

  Chapter 32

  The computer whirred and the large, heavy file slowly opened. It was a long string of PDFs, scans and photos of documents, cables, internal memos and official orders all connected to the Occupation. Akiko scrolled down, skimming the endless flow of images.

  “Skip to the very end,” Hiroshi said, pointing down, trying to hurry her.

  Akiko sped up so the images didn’t fully open. Finally, she reached the last files—documents from late 2011 that seemed like invoices for work orders and shipment manifests.

  “Try the other two files.” Hiroshi leaned back and stretched, embarrassed to hear his back pop and crack. Dry eyes and a stiff back, but still better than if he hadn’t gotten the couple hours of sleep in his office.

  The next file opened: “American Military Bases in Japan, from Occupation to Radiation.”

  Ayana twiddled the coiled key chain. “Is that the book?”

  Hiroshi said, “It’s 30,000 words. Must be the shorter, simplified version the Endo brothers were going to publish first. Let’s open the other one and hope it’s the full, unabridged version.”

  Akiko closed the file and opened the third one.

  The title was the same, and the file size larger.

  “That’s it!” Akiko shouted.

  The three of them leaned towards the screen. The table of contents covered everything from the origins of the Occupation to problems with the military bases, cooperative efforts, types of agreements, limitations and environmental surveys. There were chapters on crime, pollution, violations, protests, cost estimates and interviews with soldiers. He wondered how any of this research could lead to his murder.

  “We need to take this to Yokosuka,” Hiroshi said.

  The two women looked at him.

  “I wish I knew what it all meant, but I don’t. My professor, Eto Sensei, will. He’ll see the crucial junctures we might miss. Somewhere in here is the reason Mattson and the other two were killed.”

  Akiko stood up and started gathering the papers and the laptop, putting them all in order.

  Ayana said, “We don’t have murder investigations here very often. Ever, in fact. Though I suppose in one sense the archives hold a vast history of murder.”

  “All well-recorded.” Hiroshi looked at Ayana. “Is it OK to leave everything else here? No one can get in here, can they?”

  Ayana said, “Not without permission. But you know, a foreign guy came to the desk asking about Mattson’s research.”

  “When was that?” Hiroshi asked.

  “Yesterday.”

  “What time?”

  “Just before closing.”

  Hiroshi dug in his cellphone for the photo of Trey. “Is this the guy?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Did you let him in?”

  “When I showed him the application forms, he said he forgot his ID and would come back again.”

  “If he comes back, call me, and the local police, right away, OK? And do not let him in.”

  “OK,” Ayana said. “Let me walk you out.”

  Akiko took the computer bag and walked ahead.

  Hiroshi lowered his voice and said to Ayana, “What can I do to repay you?”

  “It’s just good to see you again.” Ayana pulled the strap of the reading glasses around her neck before letting them drop.

  “I’ve got to run,” Hiroshi said again.

  “Call me?”

  “I will.” Hiroshi turned and repeated, “I will.”

  Outside on the steps of the archive, Hiroshi looked carefully in all directions, hurrying Akiko along. “I hope Eto Sensei can work quickly.”

  “Your professor and I can get started. You better go find Jamie.”

  “She’s fine. I’m going with you.”

  “No need,” Akiko said.

  Hiroshi moved towards the street and put his hand up for a taxi, keeping a close eye on the traffic in the nearest lane. In the taxi, he called Eto Sensei to tell him when Akiko would arrive. They rode to Tokyo Station and when they got out, Hiroshi hurried them inside and through the ticket gate. As they walked, he thought of what Takamatsu told him, that sometimes it’s necessary to go outside the department to get things done. He couldn’t be in two places, much less three. So, he called Suzuki, the sword dealer. The stillness of the shop, and of the man, seemed to flow through the phone, canceling out the bustle of Tokyo Station around him.

  “Suzuki san, I want to ask what you do about the illegal export of valuable swords.”

  Suzuki said, “Sword dealers can’t do anything without the help of the police and customs officers. We have to stand by and watch national treasures disappear like sand from the shoreline.”

  “If you know something is being taken out, what do you do?”

  “When we get suspicious about one buyer or another, we contact authorities. But nothing ever happens. Why are you asking?”

  “I’ll let you know later, but for now, I need your help.”

  Silence for a moment before Suzuki asked, “Help with swords?”

  “I’m wondering whether you can disarm someone carrying a sword.”

  “Few people needing disarming have attained a high level of swordsmanship. But for those that have, it’s very difficult.”

  Hiroshi thought about that for a minute. Anyone who reached a high enough level should have—must have—taken in the ethical, spiritual elements of swordsmanship. He knew the police practiced a group method for capturing someone with a knife or sword, but he had never done that training.

  Hiroshi asked, “Can you tell the level of someone with a sword in hand?”

  “Yes, usually, but swords are dangerous in anyone’s hands, whatever their level of training.”

  “I need your help, then.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Hiroshi explained what he needed Suzuki to do. At the end of his explanation, Suzuki paused and said, “You’re starting to act like Takamatsu.”

  “I’m starting to feel like him.”

  As Hiroshi walked Akiko down to the Yokosuka Line platform, he thought of the speed with which Suzuki had cut the tameshigiri practice target into three pieces.

  Akiko turned towards Hiroshi as the train pulled in. “Listen, Takamatsu used to take me out in the field all the time. I know how to handle myself. It’s just one train from here. I’ll get a taxi from the station directly to Eto Sensei’s house.”


  “I’m going with you.” Hiroshi looked at the train pulling in, then up at the signboard.

  “The other night, when you didn’t sleep in your office…look, go find her and come to Yokosuka after that. I’ve carried bags on a train before.” Akiko reached for Hiroshi to hand her the other bag.

  He handed her the bag as the train pulled in. Akiko rolled her eyes and lined up by the door.

  From the platform, Hiroshi watched her get on the train and sit down, pulling the bags onto her lap and settling in for the hour-long ride. When the boarding bell rang, Akiko waved once, the doors shut and Hiroshi watched her go. When the train was gone, he walked up the escalator checking for messages from Jamie.

  As soon as Hiroshi went out the ticket gate, he stopped and turned around. Above him, over the row of ticket machines, was an intricate map of Tokyo’s trains and subways. The map’s multicolored lines, boxed transfer points and rounded rectangles webbed in all directions, a schema for navigating Tokyo’s countless interconnections, the city’s endless choices. Around him, commuters bustled in crisscrossing trajectories, each of them making a decision, a thousand decisions, through a single day’s commute. He turned around in the center of the hall, watching people deciding where to go and how to get there.

  The scam artists and con men he spent most days tracking knew how to make decisions. It amazed him, their ability to decide on the lies, repeat them, embellish them, make them seem real, waiting for that one moment—one mistaken, inattentive, confused moment—when the victims allowed the hook to sink in and they started wiggling on the line. He could use half their decisiveness, and much more of their persistence.

  Sakaguchi was right about Jamie. He would have to trust the detectives to watch her, to see if they could catch Trey, or whoever went after her. Someone would be near her, watching.

  But Hiroshi realized he was wrong to leave Akiko alone, to have let her and Mattson’s work out of his sight. If they’d followed Jamie—or him—once, they could do it again. They were as patient and practiced as scam artists. And more violent. They had to be. That was their scam—violence.

  Hiroshi went back inside the ticket gate, calling Akiko. She always picked up. Except now, after his decision to let her get on that train alone. He hung up without leaving a message and called again. If she got off at Shinagawa or Yokohama, one of the big, safe, crowded stations, she could wait for him at the koban police box inside the station. He called again. No answer. He tried again. No answer but left her a message.

  All he had left was Sakaguchi. “We need to get to Yokosuka,” Hiroshi blurted when Sakaguchi answered.

  “What’s there?”

  “Akiko, my professor and everything Mattson found.”

  Sakaguchi sounded as if he had just woken up. “You let Akiko go alone with all that?” Sakaguchi paused. “Tell her to get off at Shinagawa and go to the koban.”

  “She’s not answering.” The train arrived and Hiroshi got on, still talking.

  “Where are you?” Sakaguchi asked.

  “Tokyo Station.”

  Sakaguchi cleared his throat. “We’ll head down the Shuto Expressway and pick you up outside Shinagawa Station.”

  Hiroshi hung up. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking. He stared out the window, feeling as if the speeding train was barely moving.

  Chapter 33

  Jamie woke from her nap to the loud chants and tweet-thump of flute and drums coming from the matsuri festival outside. Women’s shrill shouts of “sa, sa” mixed with hard-blown whistles that pierced the steady slam and jump of festival rhythms. She uncurled herself from where she napped on the tatami and listened.

  From the time she could remember until she left for America, she helped carry the mikoshi portable shrine with the neighborhood children through the streets of Asakusa. A few parents had to help carry the end of the beams and steer them, but the kids liked to feel they did it themselves. After parading, they sat at tables on a side street eating fried takoyaki balls and shaved ice loaded with sweet adzuki and drenched in macha.

  In the afternoon, the streets filled with adults carrying the ornate gold towers of the adult mikoshi. Each one needed two dozen men and women to carry and even more to raise it overhead in front of the main shrine, the gold phoenix on top clinking and swaying to appease the gods. By evening, the crowds swelled and merged into a single exhilarated, drunken, human mass lifting, pushing, dancing, chanting and—though it was outlawed—riding on top.

  With portable shrines coming from every chome near Asakusa, the streets became so jammed with people that nothing—neither police, barricades, nor bullhorn pleas—could contain the pulsing, surging crowd. It was the perfect time to escape the detectives and get out of Asakusa—and out of Japan.

  Jamie slipped her father’s sport jacket over her thick white sweatshirt and pulled her hair into a ponytail under an old newsboy cap of her father’s. She balanced the backpack on top of the rolling suitcase, slung her travel bag over her shoulder and reset the USB in her bra. She’d have to reach in and pull it out in front of the Endo Brothers and Higa when she got there. The backpack would go to Shinobu Katsumura. The suitcase and travel bag would go with her on the bullet train.

  Jamie drank the last of the green tea and rinsed the cup and pot, setting them carefully on the drying rack in the kitchen, spreading the tea leaves in the sink to dry. She folded up the blanket and stacked the cushions neatly, double-checked her passport and cash for the train and plane. Then, she kneeled again in front of her father’s ashes, aching to speak with him, even for an instant. She would leave his urn on the shelf in the tatami room. He’d be fine.

  She eased out the kitchen door, and softly shut it behind her. Squeezing sideways, she yanked her suitcase up and shoved it through a divide in the hedges into the garden next door. She dropped her backpack after it, and with her travel bag over her shoulder, pulled herself over the low wall limb by limb, checking down the sightline of the house to be sure the detectives posted in front did not come around.

  In the neighbor’s yard, she hobbled along as stealthily as she could, the suitcase awkward over the dried out moss and gravel of their yard. She used to play there as a girl, but wondered if the neighbors would remember her, should they come out.

  A small door in the wall opened onto the street. She pulled the handle and pushed gently, then harder, but it was locked. She untwisted the push button latch, twisted it again, but it would not open. Holding the push button as she jiggled the handle, she cringed at the creaky noise it made, checking the house to see if anyone noticed. After another jiggle, the knob unlocked. She ducked through the door, set her bags in the small lane, and merged into the crowd.

  The festival streets were jammed. A flute could be heard from the Kaminarimon Gate, or maybe further away. The entirety of Asakusa bustled with people dressed in bright kimono, samurai-like kamishimo jackets and hakama trousers. Wooden geta sandals clonked like horses. A few barefoot men sprinted around with happi jackets over fundoshi, their butt cheeks hanging out around the cotton loincloth.

  With the colorful traditional outfits filling the streets, the two men in the alley outside her house stood out. Both were clad in black sports gear and leather coats. One had a mustache like dead grass, and the other smoked placidly, a night of cigarette butts crushed out at his feet.

  Jamie concentrated on jockeying through the crowd towards the main street where she could hail a taxi, at least when crowds had not taken over the streets and police not blocked off the roads. She was too busy moving forward with her plan to even turn around as the two men wormed their way through the crowd after her.

  Jamie waved down a taxi just as the police were setting up a wooden barrier to direct traffic away. She ran towards it, struggling with her luggage past the festival-goers, her body directed and tense. She put her bag in the trunk, thanked the driver, and settled in. She would come back to enjoy Tokyo when this was all over.

  She would have the house and every
thing would be settled. She’d hate leaving New York, but her friends could visit. She would explain to Hiroshi and they would go out again. She would get her Japanese back, find a job, join one of the neighborhood groups and carry the mikoshi again—with the adults—chanting and hopping and drinking and feeling alive.

  As the taxi pulled past the subway exit from which people kept emerging to join the festival, she finally thought to turn around and check behind her. She didn’t know what to look for, but for her own peace of mind, she needed to look. When she turned forward again, she noticed, in the rearview mirror, the worried expression in the driver’s eyes. She settled in to the seat and stared ahead.

  The taxi dropped her off in the bookstore neighborhood of Jinbocho, in front of the Endo Brothers Bookshop, she struggled her bags to the sidewalk. When she turned around, ready to walk in and turn over her father’s manuscript to the publishers, she gasped, bending over double, the wind knocked out of her by the scene.

  A huge blue tarpaulin was stretched over the front of the store, held tight by roped grommets. She walked up, pulled back the tarp and cupped her hands to peer inside. The damage and disorder were worse than at her father’s. Books were tossed thigh-high below the empty shelves. Stacks of woodblock prints lay in oddly-angled piles.

  She peeled her eyes away from the chaos and examined the street in both directions, pulling her bags close against her. She turned back searching for a phone number or note or map or something, but found nothing.

  And where would she find Higa? Her father left no contact info for him, saying only to go to the Endos. She hurried to the street corner, balancing the two bags on her shoulders and tugging the rolling suitcase behind her, thinking where to go. If they had been hurt, or killed, Hiroshi would have told her. But she hadn’t heard from him since his last call, which she had ignored.

  She hailed a taxi and told the driver, “Golden Gai.” Shibata would help. The driver looked at her, curious why a young woman would want to go there in the middle of the day with a suitcase and backpack. On the way, Jamie tried to mentally reconstruct the path to Shibata’s club through the small back streets.