Diplomatic Immunity (9 page)

For a minute, maybe longer, I hold Moriko tight.

At last she lifts her head, tries for no understandable reason to apologize for her tears, and I squeeze her shoulder, I speak soft words. When she has finally regained some measure of self-control, I help her up from the bench and guide her over to the guardhouse by the gates, where I slip one of the guards forty bucks. I instruct him to radio Mike for authority, then to hail a taxi and go with Moriko. The only thing I can think of. To get Moriko back to her family. To see Toshio’s grief-stricken sister home safely.

10

“I
S JUAN AROUND?
”
I ASK RACHEL, LIFTING OPEN
THE
trunk of my car.

“I didn’t tell him,” she replies, instantly defensive. “I didn’t tell anyone. He just seemed to find out. It’s like everyone knows already, not just Juan.”

One hand on the bulging suitcase, I tell my daughter that it’s okay, that I’m not blaming her. Word of Toshio’s death was probably spreading through Turtle Bay even as I was issuing my stern warning to her up in my office this morning. Grunting, I heave the suitcase out onto the sidewalk.

“So he’s here?”

“Practicing,” she says, taking a hand from her parka, waving across the street to the No Name bar from which she emerged to greet me. The exterior of the No Name is lit by a single strip of scarlet neon. The security grille is up but the doors, covered in graffiti, are closed. “So what all’s the story with Hatanaka?” she asks. “Has anyone figured out what happened?”

In response, I transfer a pile of folded dresses from the trunk into Rachel’s arms. Then I close the trunk, pick up the suitcase, and stagger toward the No Name bar as Rachel shoots more questions at me that I continue to ignore.

Juan Martinez, Rachel’s new landlord, has been identified from last night’s security tapes as one of the people Toshio Hatanaka spent time conversing with at the NGO reception. A few others have been identified, but not many; without laboratory enhancement, the definition on the film isn’t clear enough to recognize most of the faces. But when Mike showed me the tape, the figure of Juan Martinez was unmistakable. A tall, rangy type. Lots of hand-waving when he speaks. And the clincher: a white linen suit, a sartorial affectation Juan adopted a year ago to get himself noticed. After viewing the tape, I volunteered to come down here to Alphabet City to deliver Rachel’s stuff and to pick Juan’s brain and find out what I can about the last hours of Toshio’s life.

Besides, I needed to get away from the office. All through the afternoon, people have been stopping me in the corridors, phoning me, asking me if it really is true. Between turning aside the intently curious and the genuinely shocked, Mike and I have somehow managed to interview nearly all the UN guards who were around last night or early this morning, and most of the Secretariat staffers who attended the NGO reception. We have come up dry. A big zero. When I glanced out my window half an hour ago and saw the evening drawing in, I had an overwhelming desire to get away. I told Mike I’d be back within the hour.

“Just leave it here,” Rachel tells me now, shouldering open the door into a poorly lit passage. She continues on to the stairs at the rear, and when I suggest that it might be easier if I take the suitcase straight up, she tells me not to. So I deposit my burden in the passage and watch as she climbs the stairs with an armful of clothes, up to her new home, a sanctuary into which I have not yet been invited. “Juan’s in the bar,” she calls back over her shoulder. “Go on in.”

The bar is even darker than the passage, the brightest light coming from an overhead spot that illuminates the tiny stage in the far corner. At the edge of the stage, an acoustic guitar propped on one thigh in the classical manner, sits Juan. He is wearing his white linen suit. He has his head down, concentrating hard as his fingers flicker across the strings. He hasn’t seen me come in, so I cross quietly to the bar and sit down. Music fills the place, something restrained but filled with yearning. I feel the tension in my shoulders slowly ease as I lean back against the bar.

Juan Martinez has a gift. The first time I heard him play was at the memorial concert, the fund-raiser Juan arranged as a tribute to his father. Juan’s father, José, was the senior doctor in the medical team of UN volunteers who were abducted from the refugee camp on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, then slain. José’s body was found next to Sarah’s. At the time, Juan was just twenty-one years old, a recent graduate of Juilliard. You couldn’t help but be impressed by the kid. He put together that concert from scratch, raised about twenty thousand dollars, and used the money to found Lighthouse, the anti-drug-trade NGO he still runs. And all that while dealing with the loss of his father. In those days it was all I could do to get Rachel off to school each morning, myself in to work. Juan played the final piece at the concert alone onstage, head down, just as he is now. Like so many others there, I had to bow my head to hide the tears.

But now the music stops abruptly.

“Hi,” says Juan, peering at me through the gloom, one hand resting on the strings. “I think Rachel’s upstairs.”

“I’ve seen her.”

He nods, then cocks his head, so I explain that I have just dropped off the last suitcase from home. “Not letting yourself get rusty,” I remark, indicating the guitar.

He shrugs. He knows my opinion: A guy with his musical gift should not be wasting his time on NGO campaigns, however laudable the cause. He rests the guitar on its stand and comes down from the stage.

“What’s the latest on Mr. Hatanaka?” he asks me. “Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

Unbelievable, I agree.

“I mean, they’re saying it happened like right there in the UN basement.”

“We don’t know that yet.”

“Jesus.” He goes behind the bar and reaches into the display refrigerator. I refuse his offer of a drink, and he takes out a Perrier, rings it up on the cash register, and drops some coins into the drawer. “I keep waiting for it to hit me,” he says. “You know. Like it’s not quite real? Like someone’s gonna come along, say how it was all some big mistake or something?”

“I wish I could.”

He takes a swig, then replaces the bottle on the bar and stares at it, his glance finally cheating up to me. “There’s a lot of rumors.”

“I can imagine.”

“Some people are saying it was suicide.”

“That’s possible.”

“Some others saying maybe not suicide. And maybe not natural causes either. Wild stuff.”

“You want to just ask me, Juan?”

The corners of his mouth turn down, he lifts his goateed chin. And he asks me, “Was he murdered?”

Looking him straight in the eye, I tell him the truth. That we don’t know. That we’re still trying to figure the whole thing out. “And right now that means pinning down what Toshio was doing last night. Last night after nine.”

Juan’s brow creases. “He was at the reception. The big NGO thing. You didn’t know that?”

“You saw him?”

“Sure. Even talked with him for a while. I guess that’s why it seems so crazy, him being dead. I mean, we were talking about the session, what was on the Assembly agenda. Resolutions that seemed like they might be important, stuff for like in the future?” He shakes his head. “Jesus, the future.”

“How did he seem?”

“You mean like his state of mind?”

When I nod, Juan recaps the bottle of Perrier and returns it to the refrigerator.

“Okay.” He shoots a glance at the crates stacked on the floor, then asks if I mind if he does a few things while we speak. “Some of the senior NGO reps are coming over shortly. For a kind of strategy meeting about the UN Assembly session. Put our heads together, figure out where we might be able to push things along some. Now”—he lifts a hand—“now, you know, I guess it’ll be more like a wake.”

Juan lifts a crate of beer and proceeds to restock the refrigerator behind the bar. I trail a finger through the circle of water on the counter.

“Toshio seemed okay,” I prompt.

“Far as I could tell. The vote for the Security Council seat, that was driving him nuts.”

“He mentioned that last night?”

Juan considers. “Not last night. But, you know, it was like no secret the way he wanted it to go. End of last month he was even asking around, seeing who had what on Asahaki.”

Asahaki, the Japanese ambassador to the UN. I lift my head.

“Actually, I don’t know who else he asked, maybe it was just us,” Juan says.

“Lighthouse?”

“Right.”

I ask Juan to elucidate, to tell me what Toshio said.

He takes the empty crate to the end of the bar and returns with a full crate and begins transferring more bottles into the refrigerator. “It was a couple of weeks back, we were at some ECOSOC thing. Mr. Hatanaka just came out with it, wondering aloud to me if we ever had any problems with Asahaki. Like if Asahaki had ever put any pressure on us over the reports we were doing on the drug trade in Afghanistan.” Looking at me over his shoulder, Juan makes a face. “It was nothing really, I guess.”

I turn that one over. “You thought Toshio might have been digging for dirt on Japan? Something to use against them?”

He shakes his head, dismissing this whole line of conversation. “It wasn’t just Asahaki, he was asking about some others too. Honestly, it really was nothing.”

“So what were you discussing with him last night?”

“At the reception?” Juan smiles crookedly. “That was just me being a pain, trying to get him to speak to some people on the Third Committee.” Juan mentions some names, big hitters who have the power to set the committee’s agenda. This kind of last-minute lobbying is the only real influence the NGOs can exert now that the General Assembly is in session. “He was pretty good about it,” Juan says, referring to Toshio’s response. “Anyway, he said he’d do it, you know, speak to them.”

We look at each other across the bar. Toshio Hatanaka’s unfulfilled intentions seem to fall between us like a ghostly shadow.

“God,” says Juan, leaning back to elbow the refrigerator door closed. “What’s that song? ‘Turn Back Time’?”

“He seemed okay? He didn’t say anything about meeting anyone later?”

“No.”

“Did you notice who else he spoke to at the reception?”

“The place was crammed, I mean wall to wall. Once Suzi Yomoto buttonholed him, I drifted off. I never saw him again all evening.”

“Who’s Suzi Yomoto?”

“She’s with Greenpeace, I think. Someone like that.”

I ask if she is Japanese. I am wondering about that note we found in Toshio’s mailbox.

“Japanese-American,” Juan tells me. “From Hawaii. Why don’t you check the security tapes to see who he was with? Like from the cameras.”

“We are.”

“Cool.”

“Where can I find this Yomoto?”

“You won’t find her tonight. Not unless you feel like doing the dance clubs. If you wanna get ahold of her, there’s some protest tomorrow morning up at the Waldorf.” The Waldorf-Astoria, where the U.S. ambassador, James Bruckner, and his entourage are in residence. “She’ll be there for sure.”

He makes a wry face. I ask if there’s something about this Yomoto woman he does not like.

“Not much about her I do like. She’s been in here a few times. Big mouth. Last time she was in I had a friend here, he’s going to college out in Hawaii. He recognized her. Seems like her father owns most of the chemical industry over there. All kinds of pollutants being dumped at sea. Rich as hell on it, the whole family. She runs around playing like the black sheep.” He shrugs a shoulder. “Maybe some weird Freudian thing. Weird anyway.”

“How did Toshio know her?”

He shakes his head. He has no idea. I make a mental note of the name, Suzi Yomoto. One to check out on the security tapes, and maybe I might go see her in person tomorrow.

“Did you notice if Toshio had a briefcase with him last night?”

“Yeah,” Juan says after a moment, gesturing to the floor. “He had it kind of clamped between his feet while we were talking.”

“Did he open it? Maybe give someone some papers or a file?”

“Not that I saw. But hey, that doesn’t mean much. I only spoke with him five minutes. Maybe he opened it someplace else. Is that important?”

I shrug. Probably not.

Rachel enters, comes to the bar, and asks Juan what she can do. When he hands her a stack of coasters, she moves off to distribute them around the empty bar while I ask Juan some more questions. It is pretty clear that he saw nothing last night apart from the Yomoto woman that could help us. After a minute our conversation runs into the sand. When Rachel calls to Juan asking for ashtrays, he excuses himself, then digs the ashtrays out from beneath the bar and takes them over to her. He gives her half of them, then they part, distributing them among the tables. A pair of busboys. Juan and Rachel.

After that memorial concert Juan put together, some of the kids who’d lost a parent in the tragedy started hanging out together under the unelected leadership of Juan. One by one the others have gone off to college, moved, or simply lost touch, but Rachel and Juan remain close. The bond between them goes deep. When Rachel slipped into the nightmare world of anorexia and was finally hospitalized, Juan was the only one apart from me whom she would allow to visit. And though I cannot pretend to be overjoyed that Rachel has chosen Alphabet City as her first place of residence outside the family home, I am immeasurably reassured that Juan Martinez will be her first landlord and roommate. Twenty-four years old, but courtesy of his father’s life insurance he already controls the lease on the whole building: the living quarters upstairs and the two groundfloor sections, the No Name bar here, and the office of Lighthouse, the anti-drug NGO he runs next door. Though he has the organizational instinct of a born entrepreneur, so far he seems happy to direct that instinct toward greater ends than his own material gratification. A good kid.

Now, as Rachel places the last ashtray, Juan comes back to me. “There’ll be plenty of people here later. You know, the NGO crowd. Guys who liked Mr. Hatanaka a lot. I could put the word out, see if we can’t do some digging, maybe turn up something that might help?”

A well-intentioned proposal, but frankly the vision conjured by Juan’s offer is alarming. Every NGO from the hard-line eco-warriors to the Red Cross blundering through the same territory that Mike and I have to traverse, stomping across whatever faint trail of evidence might still remain.

“I’m not ungrateful for the offer, Juan, but I think we can manage.”

Rachel pipes up. “Juan just wants to help.”

I shoot her a look. She comes to stand beside me at the bar. “So have the police found anything yet? Clues like fingerprints and that?”