The Moving Blade

by Michael Pronko

  Takamatsu blew smoke out the window. “She’s had a long-running feud with the Katsumuras. Lawsuits back and forth.”

  “You want us to set up a scoop for a tabloid?” Hiroshi shook his head in the front seat, and even Ueno cleared his throat.

  “She gets the scoop. We get the killer.” Takamatsu shrugged, and then added, in badly accented English, “Win-win.”

  Hiroshi started to correct his English pronunciation, but let it go.

  Takamatsu said, “This Saori Ikeda isn’t afraid of anyone. She’s provoked libel lawsuits from the Katsumuras and every corrupt family business in Japan. Her reporters get a bonus if their story results in legal action. She’s lost every case so far but writes great retractions.”

  Sakaguchi growled. “And she’s certain this American will be there?”

  “The Katsumura family’s publishing house is trying to buy Bernard Mattson’s work to not publish it,” Takamatsu explained. “Saori Ikeda found that out from a disgruntled former employee of Katsumura Publishing.”

  “I know that already,” Hiroshi said. He could feel his bruises swelling and muscles tightening.

  “Saori Ikeda wants the Silkworm Weekly to print Mattson’s stuff as a serial exposé.”

  “We’re not publishers. We’re detectives,” Hiroshi said.

  Takamatsu leaned forward and laughed. “Oh, I thought you were just an accountant? Now, you’re a detective? That street fight seems to have brought you around.”

  Hiroshi squirmed, too tired to quibble. “Trey can’t get out of the base and all the way up to the Diet offices without being seen. Jamie left me a message she was supposed to meet Trey at the airport this afternoon for a flight to Guam.”

  “He’s a busy guy,” Takamatsu said.

  Hiroshi’s cellphone rang. He fumbled, stiffly, for the phone. He listened for a few seconds as Ueno accelerated though the light, early morning traffic. “Drop me off in Ginza,” Hiroshi said. “I’ll catch up with you before the meeting.”

  “That the Mattson girl?” Takamatsu chuckled.

  Hiroshi frowned. “Things are more complicated than one girl.”

  “If that guy really is military, it gets complicated,” Sakaguchi interrupted. “We’ll go to the office, then to the airport. After that, we look for the girl. Maybe before then Hirano will call and give us a real tip.” Sakaguchi rolled his coat up, put it under his head and went to sleep.

  Takamatsu flicked his cigarette butt out the window. Once the smoke cleared, no one rolled their windows up, letting the air continue whipping through the car fast and cold.

  ***

  Ueno let Hiroshi out in front of a department store in Ginza. Without even a wave, Jim Washington headed along the elevated train tracks at a quick pace. The small restaurants, bars and eateries under the tracks were all closed. Hiroshi’s body was aching too much to catch up with Washington, who waited under the arched brickwork of a passageway. “Amazing the brick has held up all these years. Look at the ironwork bolted in. Great craftsmanship.”

  Hiroshi said, “Can we talk here? I’m worn out.”

  “Not enough sleep?”

  “Sword fight.”

  “Really? I don’t see you as a street fighter.”

  “I’m definitely not.”

  “Swords. Well, Japan always impresses me. But that kind of thing is all the more reason you need to come over to Interpol. You have a talent for getting things done in the office—out of harm’s way.”

  “That sounds really good right now.” Hiroshi looked down along the closed store fronts to see if anyone was following or not.

  “This story will give you some street cred. Slip it in during your interview. My guy in Singapore found a whole lot of nothing on Trey Gladius.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “More nothing than any one person has a right to, so we changed tack. It’s hard to expunge everything. We figured his records were missing for a reason.”

  “Which was…?”

  “To cover up a smuggling operation through the military bases.”

  “Drugs?”

  “You’re thinking too small. Found a notice in Stars and Stripes that Gladius was supervisor of waste disposal.”

  “Waste? Disposal?” Hiroshi tried to stifle his confusion as he twisted this new piece around to see where it fit.

  “The military keeps extensive, detailed records in multiple places. We also found his name as a military contractor.”

  “Contractor? For what?”

  “Record keeping.”

  “Records? He’s an accountant?”

  “Like you. Or rather the opposite of you. Remember all that stuff that went missing in Iraq? Hundreds of thousands of weapons, shrink-wrapped stacks of cash, large weapons. Seems Gladius knows how to clean up the records—sales, supply stock, shipments, whatever needs to disappear. Including his past, apparently.”

  “I know the game. Deliver it, sell it, erase the record, move the cash, cover the trail.”

  “All with plausible deniability—accounting error, auditing oversight. The army doesn’t want to be embarrassed by acknowledging that taxpayers’ money, and the expensive military stuff it buys, can just disappear. Not a headline they want.”

  “But the stuff has to be somewhere.”

  “It disappears inside military bases.”

  “Disappears?”

  “The records disappear. That’s enough.”

  “Anything else you found?”

  “We checked juvenile police records in Japan and Korea. Hits on both. He was an army brat. Yokosuka in Japan and Osan in Korea. Long police record for juvie stuff near Subic Bay. Quite a list there, assault, weapons sales, drugs. Maybe where he learned to street fight.”

  “He learned more after that.”

  “Martial arts?”

  Hiroshi touched his aching body. “He must have learned Japanese and Korean when his father was stationed all around.”

  “Mother. I found a record for a lieutenant colonel, a single mother, Theresa Gladius. No record of anyone else with that last name. You say he killed someone?”

  “Three people. And tried to kill me.”

  “That’s why I want you over at Interpol. Use your brain, not your body.”

  Hiroshi followed Washington’s gaze towards Shinbashi and back towards Ginza.

  “One more thing. If he’s military intelligence with a high clearance, there’s not much you can do about him.”

  Hiroshi’s cellphone buzzed. He patted his pocket but let it ring through.

  “Asian Interpol chief’s arriving from Singapore tomorrow. We’ve got your interview all set.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “You’ll be a shoo-in,” Washington said and walked off along the tracks, the only person moving towards Shinbashi in the cold winter streets before dawn.

  Chapter 41

  When Hiroshi got back to the car parked near the Diet building, he saw Ueno walking back from a convenience store with a plastic shopping bag. Even at a distance in the foggy morning, he could see the bag was full of onigiri rice balls and hot cans of tea. Hiroshi felt suddenly, immensely hungry. Ueno plopped the bag on the hood of the car and went back to the convenience store. He came out carrying three large instant noodle cups, steam rising from them into the humid air.

  Hiroshi helped arrange them on the hood of the car and dug through the rice balls, pulled out his favorite flavor, salmon, and opened the layered plastic wrap. He stirred the boiled water in one of the noodle cups and bent the top back down to let it simmer, wrapping his hands around the cup to warm up.

  Sakaguchi tumbled out of the back seat of the car, rubbed his face and stretched muscle group by muscle group in the middle of the empty street. Squatting and rising, he performed a few shiko leg stomps, slapping his thick thighs, until sweat beaded on his brow. Finished with his routine, he plucked a pair of chopsticks out of the bag, nodded thanks to Ueno and dug into the noodles, slurping loudly in the early morning silence.r />
  Takamatsu returned from a nearby glass-partitioned smoking area, but didn’t even look at the food, instead frowning at how rumpled and wrinkled everyone was. Takamatsu’s European suit and tailored shirt were clean and pressed, his camelhair coat pristine.

  Sakaguchi took the last onigiri rice ball, dunked it in and slurped down the rice-broth in big gulps. Ueno gathered the trash and threw it out in the convenience store trash bins.

  Sakaguchi opened the trunk and took out a small side-handle baton, a jutte sword catcher, and kevlar gloves, then set them back.

  “What if he has a sword?” Takamatsu asked.

  Sakaguchi said nothing but handed Ueno and Hiroshi telescoping batons and handcuffs.

  “Wish I had these with me the other day,” Hiroshi mused.

  Takamatsu patted his coat to check on his baton.

  All four of them looked at the two New Nambu .38 special pistols holstered in a locked rack.

  “You’re going to call the chief?” Ueno asked.

  Takamatsu shook his head. “He’ll have the whole department over here.”

  Hiroshi said, “I’ve never passed my shooting certification.”

  Sakaguchi looked longingly at the pistols. “If Gladius is in there, we can’t shoot up the office. If he isn’t in there, we’ll have a major violation to explain. Sword or not, batons and handcuffs only.” He shut the trunk with the pistols inside and the four detectives walked to the front door of the Diet Office Building.

  Hiroshi, Sakaguchi, Takamatsu and Ueno flipped their badges and walked straight through the metal detector. It sounded off—loud—and Takamatsu told the guards, “It’s just our badges. Don’t worry.”

  The guards followed them to the elevator, flustered, demanding they sign in, but Sakaguchi pressed the button and held up his badge. One of the guards called his superior on his headset, but when the elevator arrived, the four detectives got on. Upstairs, the carpet-muffled hall was quiet and empty in the early morning.

  At Shinobu Katsumura’s office, Sakaguchi flashed his badge at the secretary, who stood up from her desk in the high-ceilinged waiting room, waving her hand for them to stop. Sakaguchi breezed past the startled secretary and pulled open the large oak door into the office. The other detectives came in after him, ready.

  Shinobu Katsumura disguised her surprise at the four detectives with a look of poised contempt.

  The other woman in the room—publisher, magazine owner and recent divorcée, Saori Ikeda—tried to look surprised. Her chic suit and knit sweater fit tight over her compact, well-toned body. Hiroshi thought Takamatsu had, for once, understated a woman’s attractiveness. He snapped back to surveying the room, but there was no sign of Trey Gladius.

  In the politest Japanese, Sakaguchi said, “Katsumura san, we are from the Tokyo Metropolitan Homicide Division and we have a few questions.”

  Shinobu straightened herself and said, “Homicide? That’s a new one.”

  Saori Ikeda glanced at Takamatsu with apology in her eyes that Gladius was not there.

  “Ikeda-san,” Shinobu said. “Could we continue our conversation another time? The secretary will show you out.”

  “I think I’ll stay. As you just told me, you don’t have anything to hide.” Saori Ikeda straightened up and looked interested.

  Shinobu’s tight lips forced a thin smile. She took Sakaguchi’s name card, read it and invited them to sit down with a polite wave of her hand. “What is this about, detectives?”

  The four detectives remained standing and instinctively spread out a step or two. Hiroshi stepped forward, letting Sakaguchi and Takamatsu stand to the side, a little behind, with Ueno by the door.

  In the most formal Japanese, Hiroshi asked, “Could you tell us the nature of your relationship with Trey Gladius?”

  “Trey Gladius works with several ministries and Diet members finding materials and translating them for Diet members. He’s fluent in Japanese. It’s rare to find an American like him.”

  “He may be involved in serious crimes. Trey Gladius introduced you to Jamie Mattson for what purpose?” Hiroshi asked, though he knew the answer, or thought he did.

  “My uncle’s publishing firm is going to publish Bernard Mattson’s works. Jamie signed over her father’s work for publication. Maybe she just wanted the money, but my impression was she wanted to do something good for her father, and for Japan. Gladius is, was, helping with that.”

  Hiroshi cleared his throat and straightened his jacket, wondering if his clothes looked as bad as he felt. “We have to examine every possibility related to Mattson.”

  Shinobu’s eyebrows peaked to a “V” and she shook her head. “Such a loss to both countries, his death. Have you found who did it?”

  “We’re looking at why.” Hiroshi paused, staring at Shinobu. “Mattson uncovered evidence of collusion and corruption at the American bases. He was going to reveal what really happened after the Fukushima meltdown.”

  Shinobu looked unperturbed. “It seems you must be reading Ikeda-san’s scandal magazine! I haven’t read what Mattson wrote, so I’m not able to say, but I can’t understand why you’re coming to my office so early in the morning to ask about this.”

  “We believe that Mattson, and two other people, were killed,” Hiroshi paused to let the words sink in. “To suppress his book. Buying the rights to his work means you could be in danger.”

  “Now you’re saying you’re here to protect me?” Shinobu’s voice went up a pitch. “All I know is that my uncle’s publishing house planned to edit and publish the work. You said someone else was also killed in connection to this?”

  “Surely, you know the name, Higa?”

  “He was a worthy adversary, misguided as he was on the issues. He published articles with your magazine, too, didn’t he?” Shinobu looked at Saori Ikeda.

  Saori Ikeda smiled. “He always wrote under a pseudonym. He was a bit paranoid.”

  Hiroshi said, “Higa was going to be Mattson’s editor. It would seem the publisher might be next on the list.”

  “That seems fanciful,” Shinobu said. Her voice rose higher. “How does this connect to Trey Gladius?”

  Hiroshi held her gaze without replying.

  Shinobu frowned and shook her head. “As for Trey Gladius, if he broke laws, arrest him. For us, he was a translator and go-between. I don’t know much about him other than that.”

  “Oh, there’s more you might know,” Hiroshi said. “You are involved with the renegotiation of the American bases and treaties next week.”

  “It’s one of my duties in the Diet,” Shinobu said.

  “With the protests gaining steam, the Americans must be willing to offer something new, something more, to keep the bases in Japan.”

  Shinobu stood with her hand on the top of the leather chairs in the center of the room, her face unrevealing. “The negotiations are always smooth.”

  “But with Mattson’s death so close to the conference, it might be different this time. For you, I mean. And for your family’s businesses.”

  “As the Silkworm Weekly always reminds everyone, my family runs a diverse range of businesses. But I’m in the Diet, not in business.”

  Hiroshi continued, “Your family’s waste management company bid on a contract to transport and store waste from Fukushima. That’s billions of yen.”

  Shinobu laughed. “Well, I see the police conspiracy theories are as absurd as those silly protesters. At least the scandal magazines make a profit from speculation.” Shinobu took a breath and recomposed herself. “Look, every politician helps with contracts that benefit Japan. All of this is public record.”

  “Gladius helped negotiate many of the contracts,” Hiroshi knew he was moving away from what he knew for sure but pushing her was important. “If he’s involved, and he’s connected to you, it’s not going to look good for your political career, or for your family’s reputation.”

  Shinobu’s penciled eyebrows, delicate features and refined gestures closed down.
“The status quo is more powerful in Japan than in any country in the world. Japanese tend to change their ideas slowly.”

  “But they change,” Hiroshi added.

  Saori Ikeda, who had been listening quietly and attentively to all this, spoke up. “When Mattson’s work comes out in print, people will be able to decide for themselves.”

  Shinobu patted the top of the leather chair she was standing behind. “Well, you’ll have to find what he wrote, because I don’t have it. His daughter, Jamie, didn’t give us anything more than her father’s sketches.”

  Hiroshi looked confused. He felt sure the Katsumura’s had the work, rightly or wrongly. But maybe they didn’t. Maybe they’d been tricked. But by Gladius, or by Jamie?

  Sakaguchi’s phone rang. He picked it up and his stony sumo face broke into a barely concealed grin. He hung up and nodded for them to go.

  “Trey Gladius told me he was catching a late afternoon flight to Guam,” Shinobu said.

  There it was. Finally. Takamatsu was right again, Hiroshi had to admit. With the right pressure, she coughed up a scapegoat to put distance between her and trouble. She was old-school politics, survival of the safest.

  Shinobu smiled confidently. “We nominated Mattson for the honorary Japanese Order of the Rising Sun. Sad that it’s posthumous, but he deserves it. I heard he’ll receive a Japan Foundation award too. The media will be all over this story.”

  “Japanese do love happy endings,” Saori Ikeda agreed with a shrug. “Maybe because there’s so few of them.”

  “Can you tell me where Jamie went after she talked to you last night?” Hiroshi asked.

  “How do you know she talked with me?” Shinobu frowned.

  Hiroshi waited for Shinobu’s answer since she was dispensing information so freely to keep herself insulated from trouble.

  Shinobu leaned forward on the leather chair propping her up. “Jamie told me she was going to Kyoto. She must be there already. She left last night.”

  Sakaguchi turned to the door, his thick arm waving them out.

  “It must be hard in politics to know who to trust,” Hiroshi said, as Sakaguchi tugged him and the others towards the door. “But it’s even harder as a detective.”