Disciple of the Wind (27 page)

Mariko was well aware of his views. He’d acquired them during the war years and showed no sign of surrendering them. On her first day he tried to persuade her to give up. On her second day he explained that the woman’s weapon was the
naginata
, and that Tokyo was home to several excellent
naginata
dojos. But when Mariko proved too stubborn to quit, Hosokawa-sensei had no choice but to capitulate. He and Mariko had a sensei in common: Yamada Yasuo. Hosokawa was one of Yamada-sensei’s first students and Mariko was his last. The fact that Yamada had spent his final days with Mariko, not with his more established students, made her important in a way that Hosokawa’s seventh-degree black belt could not trump.

So Hosokawa-sensei had to put up with her, and if he wanted to
persist in his bullheaded attempt to drum her out, Mariko would show him the meaning of bullheadedness. On this particular morning she needed someone to put her through her paces. She knew he’d work her twice as hard as everyone else, hoping she’d quit the art out of sheer physical misery. Today that was just what she needed.

By the end of class she felt her arms might fall out of their sockets. But at least her head was clear. All the nervous energy Captain Kusama had worked up in her was utterly spent. The only downside was that her fingers barely had the strength to button her blouse.

Her phone rumbled in her pocket. Fishing it out, she was surprised to see the caller ID said
OSHIRO MARIKO
.

“Huh,” she said. She couldn’t remember bumping the phone, and she didn’t even know it was possible to call herself. She idly wondered which button she’d hit, then hung up on herself.

The phone buzzed again almost instantly.
ANSWER YOUR PHONE
, said the caller ID.

A chill ran down her spine. This couldn’t get any weirder if it was Morpheus from
The Matrix
calling her. Then she remembered: she did have a Morpheus of sorts, an observer keeping tabs on her using methods she couldn’t understand.

As if on cue, the caller ID changed to
ANSWER YOUR PHONE NOW
. Who the hell were these people?

There was only one way to find out.

“Hello?”

“Detective Oshiro,” a man’s voice said. “We should meet.”

“Who are you?”

“I am To Whom It May Concern. You left a note for me to find.”

Holy shit, Mariko thought, they found that thing already? Her e-mail draft wasn’t three hours old. She managed not to say any of that aloud. “I want a name.”

“I’ll give you one: Yamada Yasuo. He was an old acquaintance of mine.”

That was the last name she expected to hear. Yamada-sensei was never far from her thoughts, least of all when she was in the dojo. Her
morning meeting with Captain Kusama had her wondering what advice her sensei might have given on coping with an obstinate commanding officer. She hardly imagined one of Yamada’s old pals would ring her up.

“How do I know you’re not conning me?”

“You’re the one who invited me, Detective. Now, would you like a fresh change of clothes, or shall I pick you up from the dojo?”

She looked around furtively, then realized that was a forehead-smackingly stupid thing to do. She was holding a cell phone. A phone company tech on his first day could triangulate her location. These people could probably tell her which pocket she’d pulled the phone from and how much lint was in the pocket.

“I’ll go home and change.” After a moment’s thought she added, “Do me a favor and don’t watch me while I’m in the shower.”

“Very droll, Detective Oshiro. When you are ready, go downstairs. A man will be waiting for you. You’ll have no trouble recognizing him, as he’ll be carrying a baseball bat.”

“You’re kidding. I figured you guys for the silenced Walther PPK types.”

“Never in public, Detective Oshiro.”

The line went dead. Mariko caught herself studying her phone as if it were a piece of alien technology she’d never seen before. On a hunch she checked her recent call history, and sure enough, there was no record of the call.

“Oh, what the hell,” she said, and she took the next train home.

*   *   *

The order of events was eat; shower; change; find favorite purse for undercover work; find cigarette case used for undercover work; hide Pikachu in cigarette case; hide Cheetah in purse’s concealed pocket; toss cigarette case, cigarette lighter, tampons, gum, wallet, phone, keys, pepper spray, peppermints, compact, pack of tissues, second pack of tissues, little detective’s notebook, pen, lipstick, lip balm, hand
towel, hand lotion, hand sanitizer, and boot knife in the purse, all in plain sight; and go downstairs.

In an ideal world, when it came time for the guy with the baseball bat to search her for weapons, he’d find the boot knife and pepper spray, figure she was hiding something else, assume he’d found it when he found the Cheetah, conclude that he was smarter than she was, and overlook the Pikachu. That was the ideal world. In a less than ideal world, he’d disarm her completely, and to arm herself she’d have to kick the guy’s ass and take his bat.

When she reached the sidewalk in front of her building, she was surprised to find a familiar face. His name was Endo Naomoto, and he was known in Narcotics circles. Endo was an ex-baseball player who still got to swing his bat now and again, but not at baseballs anymore. If it weren’t for his choice of profession, Mariko would have found him kind of cute. He’d graduated from hero of the minor leagues to major-league disappointment, and after a much-too-early retirement he became a slugger on the black market. He didn’t last long with the violent stuff, not because he couldn’t hack it but because he quickly showed a knack for the financial end of the biz. Narcotics hadn’t picked him up in several years, so either he was a hell of a lot smarter than most guys slinging dope—which was true—or else he’d gotten out of the business entirely—which was possible, given that he was currently serving as chauffeur and hired muscle for some very shady individuals.

As promised, he had the bat with him, and also a baseball, which he was idly bouncing on the end of the bat. When he saw her, he knocked the ball into his free hand. “Detective Oshiro?”

“Hi, Endo-san. You always walk around town with a baseball bat?”

He shot her a double take at the mention of his name. She was glad to put him on his heels already, because that stunned look he was giving her was the same look she’d given her phone not half an hour ago.

He tried to play it off. “Hey, as far as you know, I’m just going to the batting cages.”

“Uh-huh. Let’s go see your boss.”

He ushered her to a stately BMW sedan—white, she noted. She also noticed that the driver’s seat was all the way back, and that if she’d been sitting in it, she’d need it all the way forward to be able to reach the pedals. It was the sort of detail Mariko collected routinely, apropos of nothing, but it was worth remembering his reach advantage if it came to blows. His bat would be longer than average too, and heavier to boot. She hadn’t forgotten his baseball as a potential weapon, either.

He drove her to the Shinjuku Park Tower, a posh downtown icon that Mariko knew primarily as the sort of place her sister, Saori, would love to have her wedding in, if only the Oshiros were billionaires. (Or, as Saori would have been quick to point out, if she snagged a billionaire of her own.) When it was first designed, its three majestic white towers might have been likened to steps on the stairway to heaven, but today the first thing anyone would think of was three bars of cellular reception. At fifty-two stories, it was the tenth-tallest building in Japan, a distinction Mariko had always found utterly depressing. She remembered her grade school field trip to Chicago, and the jaw-dropping view from the observation deck of the Sears Tower. She also remembered her disappointment when she learned how tiny Japanese skyscrapers were in comparison. “They don’t have typhoons in Chicago,” she remembered her father saying. “No earthquakes, either.”

Diminutive or not, Shinjuku high-rises were among the most expensive real estate on the planet. When Endo parked in the Park Tower’s underground garage, Mariko felt underdressed just stepping out of the car.

It said something about Mariko’s lifestyle that this wasn’t the first time she’d been in a dimly lit parking garage with a known violent offender. Last time it was Kamaguchi Hanzo’s enforcer, a bodybuilder named Bullet, leading her to an elevator not so different from the one Endo was approaching now. The difference was that last time the department knew where she was going—they even had a rolling tail on her—and Kamaguchi had every reason not to kill her. This time she was on her own.

As the elevator doors closed in front of her, Mariko tried to
convince herself that Endo had no reason to hurt her. It didn’t work. Endo was a lot nicer than Bullet, but Mariko’s mind was too good at imagining possibilities, stories, worst-case scenarios. Cute, yes, but maybe he had a penchant for throwing women off tall buildings. She’d seen weirder MOs in her career.

They emerged on the fiftieth floor, in a corridor of warm lighting and deep, soft carpet. A long, slender, marble-topped table faced the elevators, home to an
ikebana
arrangement whose flowers were real, not plastic. Apart from the elevator the hallway was perfectly silent.

“I have to search you now,” Endo said.

“You’ll be gentlemanly about it, won’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Knock yourself out.”

She set her purse on the table next to the flowers and stood with her arms outstretched. He did as he promised and didn’t grope her. He was even polite enough to let her fish her cigarette case and lighter out of her purse before he searched it, which was exactly why she put the thought of being gentlemanly in his head in the first place.

He found the knife, the pepper spray, and the Cheetah. “No badge? No gun?”

“I’m off duty.”

“Well, we’re just going to leave your whole arsenal right here, okay?”

“Come on, my wallet’s in there—”

“We’ll send someone for it.”

“Seriously? My phone, all my pictures—”

“Come on.”

He steered her toward the end of the hall, where a floor-to-ceiling window opened onto a view of the city that rivaled Captain Kusama’s. To the southeast she saw the sprawling forest surrounding the Meiji Shrine, highlighted here and there with the first hints of autumn gold. Everywhere else she saw urban sprawl. Even from this remove she
could see her city was unusually quiet. The triathlete in her noted that it was a perfect day for biking; traffic was as light as she’d ever seen it. The cop in her saw the same evidence but reached a different conclusion: people were scared.

Just as they reached the last room, the door began to open. Mariko kicked it as hard as she could.

It flew away from her, hitting something almost instantly—something hard enough and heavy enough to bounce the door back toward her. A forehead, she guessed.

She didn’t wait to find out. Endo had just enough time to look down at the Pikachu before Mariko jammed it in his armpit and squeezed the trigger. His teeth clamped shut. The tendons stood out in his neck like the cables of a suspension bridge. Mariko kept up the pressure, driving him toward the window. His whole body went stiff as a board, and finally he teetered backward over his heels.

The door opened behind her. Mariko was already in motion, Endo’s bat in her hand. She turned to see a woman with a bleeding forehead coming straight at her. Mariko jabbed the Pikachu at her. The woman parried it expertly, knocking it to the floor. Mariko didn’t care. She brought the bat around low and fast. It caught the woman in the shin with a meaty thunk.

The woman cried out but she didn’t drop. Mariko got a good two-handed grip on the bat. The woman reached for a hip holster. Mariko timed a
kote
strike perfectly, smashing the pistol the instant it was visible. She probably broke some finger bones too, but she didn’t hang around long enough to find out. She faked a chop to the temple, forcing the woman to duck and cover. That was all Mariko needed. She stepped inside the hotel room, slammed the door, and locked every lock it had.

She stood with her back pressed to the door, facing a small foyer. She’d never seen a feature like this in a hotel room before. Then again, she’d never paid the kind of money it took to stay in a luxury suite. A pair of cube-shaped chairs faced her from the corners of the foyer, upholstered in suede. To her right was a wall with a mirror, shoe rack,
and coat hooks. To her left, an open doorway into the next room. Through the doorway she saw a shadow approaching.

She moved at once, but the man casting the shadow was too quick. He stood in the doorway, backlit. Mariko could see he had something in his right hand—a pistol, maybe. He held it the way Humphrey Bogart would hold it, parallel to the floor, his elbow tight against his ribs. He turned it toward Mariko.

She slapped it out of his hand. Whatever it was, it hit the carpet with a crystalline clink.

“Now
that
,” the man said, “was an eighteen-year single malt.”

He was a distinguished-looking gentleman, and if he found Mariko’s baseball bat threatening he showed no sign of it. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, a charcoal gray suit from an expensive foreign clothier, and a most disdainful look, which he cast not at Mariko but at the wet spot on the carpet. “I’m quite sure it did not spend all those years in the cask so that
carpet fibers
could drink it up. Really, Detective Oshiro, you must be more careful.”

“Uh, right . . .”

He looked up at her and blinked like a mole in the sun. He might have been Mariko’s height once, but age had bent his back. As soon as she registered that observation, she realized his age was difficult to guess. The crow’s-feet touching the corners of his eyes suggested mid-fifties, but judging by his liver spots he must have spent a hundred years in the sun. He was tan where he was not splotchy, with a high forehead and delicate hands. They were better suited for playing piano than assassinating wayward cops.