Disciple of the Wind (49 page)

Most of the kids hadn’t been yanked screaming off the streets. That much was clear. There were trusted adults involved here, coconspirators, but Mariko couldn’t let her thoughts wander that way. That was police thinking. There would already be over a hundred detectives tasked with identifying the kidnappers and figuring out how they were connected. It would take weeks to reach the conclusion Mariko already had in hand: they were all members of the Divine Wind. What she needed to know was where the hell they went, and that was where she was drawing a blank.

Furukawa was right: Mariko was in a position unlike any of his other operatives. Very few people could move as fluidly between the police and the criminal element. Any cop who knew of Mariko’s suspension also knew it was a major indiscretion to keep her up to date on the details of the kidnapping investigations, but Han didn’t care about rules like that. She had connections he didn’t, so for him it was a simple quid pro quo. At the same time, she wasn’t handcuffed by everything that usually limited a detective on duty. She could harass CIs with open-ended questions that had nothing to do with a real live case. She could even coerce them if she felt like it, and most importantly, if she broke any laws she could only be charged as a civilian. It was impossible to charge her with official misconduct, the felony that would end her career.

She pulled the Beemer into the parking garage of a posh Ebisu high-rise and slid it on squealing tires next to a giant red Land Rover. A hulking, sour-faced man was waiting for her. His arms were big
enough to test the tensile strength of his ill-fitting suit jacket, and his chest was even bulkier. Mariko saw not just muscles there but also the outlines of an armored vest under his shirt. She got out of the car and said, “Hi, Bullet. Where’s your boss?”

A darkly tinted window rolled down in the backseat of the Land Rover, revealing the broad, square-jawed face of Kamaguchi Hanzo. It was his ruthless tenacity, not just his sharp teeth and pronounced underbite, that had earned him the nickname the Bulldog. He maintained that reputation by never backing down from a fight, and by ripping people’s throats out when they crossed him. Even by yakuza standards he was a bloodthirsty brute.

“Well, look at you,” he said. “My little
gokudo
cop. Someone kick your ass, honey? You look beat to hell.”

“Thanks.”

“Come around this way. Let me see if you been keeping that tight little ass in shape.”

There was a reason Mariko kept her car between herself and the man she’d come to see. The Bulldog was unpredictable, prone to fits of anger. She wouldn’t get within arm’s reach if she didn’t have to. The fact that he couldn’t ogle her as easily was just an unexpected perk.

“You know why I’m here,” she said. “Kidnapped children. I want to know where they went.”

“Depends. What are they worth?”

“What?”

“Can I buy them? Can I sell them? No. So I don’t give a shit where they are.”

Lovely. He was every bit as charming as she remembered. “Don’t be naive,” she said. “Thirteen hundred kids is a hell of a lot. You want to tell me not one yakuza’s kid is in there? I thought you people took care of your own.”

“Not my kid, not my problem. Plus, your friend did his homework. He didn’t touch anyone who shouldn’t be touched.”

Go figure, Mariko thought. Joko Daishi had planned for
everything. And he probably used the Wind’s resources to do it. She still couldn’t believe she’d gotten into bed with Furukawa.

“Look,” she said, “you have a lot of people in this town. Someone has to have seen something. Help me this one time.” Hating herself for saying it, she added, “I’ll owe you one.”

“Owe me one? What do you think you got? I hear you’re on the outs with the cops.”

Mariko flashed her badge. “I’m back in. Why else would I be investigating the kids?”

“Beats me. Maybe it’s got something to do with those sweet wheels.” His mouth widened into a smile, a hideous expression on such a cruel face. “Is that a real badge? Get over here and give me a closer look.”

“Go fuck yourself, Bulldog.”

“Heh. Still think you’re pretty
gokudo
, huh?”

Not today, Mariko thought. She could use a little badass mojo. But when dealing with a bulldog, if you didn’t have it, you had to fake it. “You know what I think? I think you’re not holding out on me at all. I think you don’t know shit. All those cons you’re running, all those front companies, all the sharks you’ve got collecting protection money, and what are they good for? Not one of them has seen a damn thing.”

The Bulldog snarled. “Honey, this is a dangerous game you’re playing.”

“Is it? Prove me wrong. Show me the Kamaguchi-gumi can still get it up.”

Even Bullet bristled at that, and usually he was about as expressive as a meat cleaver. Kamaguchi flung his door open and stepped out of the Land Rover. By the sound of it, his door left a pretty good dent in the side of Mariko’s BMW. He wore a silver-gray suit, and brushing his jacket aside, he jerked a stubby stainless steel revolver out of a hip holster. “You’re an annoying little cunt, you know that? I ought to blow your fucking brains out.”

That was when Mariko knew she was safe. The Bulldog wasn’t long on self-control. If he was going to fly into a rampage, he would have
pulled the trigger already. The fact that he was talking, not shooting, meant this was pure theater. So Mariko played her role too. “Come on. Shooting a cop in your own parking garage? You’re smarter than that.”

It was the exit he needed to back down and still save face in front of his bodyguard. “Smarter? Yeah, this time. Next time you come around here, don’t press your luck.”

“Have a nice day, Kamaguchi-san.”

He got back in the car and slammed the door. Bullet drove him away, leaving Mariko in a stinking haze of diesel fumes. Neither of them decided to shoot her on their way out, and exactly that much had gone right today.

Her phone vibrated irritably in her pocket. She knew who it was before she even looked at the screen. “Yeah?”

“Status report.” Furukawa sounded tense.

“The same as it was half an hour ago. Except now I’ve exhausted
all
of my best leads, not just most of them. Oh, and I pissed off the most violent man in Tokyo. And now I’m a big fat oh-for-twenty, instead of oh-for-sixteen or seventeen or whatever I was the last time you called. What about on your end?”

“About the same.”

“So much for all your ‘no place we cannot reach’ crap.”

“That’s precisely the trouble, Detective. We have too much data and not enough filters. That’s what you’re for: to narrow the search parameters. Find me someone who has seen something.”

Mariko slipped into the Beemer, put Furukawa on speakerphone, and dropped him in the passenger seat. Then she massaged her eye sockets with her thumbs. She’d already tapped all her best resources. She was running out of ideas and those kids were running out of time. In a kidnapping case, the most important events usually happened within the first three hours: a kidnapper was identified, probable destinations were targeted, and most crucially, the kidnapper decided whether or not to kill the child. The great majority of abductors were family members, they usually stuck to their regular hangouts, and
they almost never resorted to murder. But when they did, they almost always killed within three hours of the abduction.

Nothing was typical about this case, but Mariko had a gut-chilling feeling that the three-hour rule still applied. These kids had been gone for just over two hours. If they were still alive, and if Joko Daishi meant to kill them, all the statistics suggested he’d do it soon.

Mariko’s heart fluttered so erratically that it made her feel queasy. She feared Joko Daishi had left himself no choice but to kill the children. The longer he kept them alive, the more likely they were to royally fuck up his plans. His people might have signed on for some screaming and crying, but by now they’d have piss and shit to deal with too. They’d had time to build a bit of sympathy for the kids, and maybe for their families as well. The initial adrenaline rush would have given way to exhaustion, unless he dosed his people with uppers to keep them alert; either alternative could lead to a moment’s inattention. With the whole city looking for them, Joko Daishi couldn’t afford to let even one child slip away. Mass murder was his safest option.

Though it horrified her to think about it, her mind immediately leaped to modus operandi: how would he go about killing thirteen hundred children? The Nazis could teach him a thing or two. He knew his chemistry; building a gas chamber was well within his expertise. In fact, he’d built one already; Mariko and Han had stumbled across it out in Kamakura. It was a bona fide sex dungeon that doubled as a hermetically sealed suicide chamber for the Great Teacher and his closest disciples. Could that have been just a maquette? Was the full-scale model lying in wait? Or—she could hardly forgive herself for thinking it—was it already jam-packed with frightened kids?

The mental image sickened her, but it also gave her an idea. “What if we’re going about this the wrong way?” she said. “We’ve been thinking about finding someone who saw something. What if we turn it around? He can’t keep these kids just anywhere. He needs a hell of a lot of space.”

“And?”

“He needs to minimize exposure,
neh
? That rules out a bunch of smaller locations. He’ll want one big location, two at most. Somewhere remote, but easily accessible for vehicle traffic.”

“Not remote. We’re already looking at schools.”

“What? Why?”

“Hiding in plain sight, Detective. It’s his way—or rather, it’s our way, and he learned it all too well. This country has been coping with negative population growth for decades. We’ve closed over a hundred schools in Tokyo alone. Every one of them is specifically designed to contain large groups of children.”

“Come on. Aren’t the locals going to notice a bunch of screaming kids at a school that’s been deserted all year?”

“Dead children don’t scream.”

The thought froze Mariko’s heart. What a perfect image for Joko Daishi’s next sermon: an ordinary school, ordinary classrooms, ordinary little desks, with a dead child sitting at each one. Then logic kicked in: how would he move the children there? Toss the bodies in the back of a van? One of those police choppers would have spotted them by now: a logjam of vans leading straight to an abandoned school. No, don’t go there, she thought. Don’t try to figure it out. Joko Daishi thought all of this through already. You don’t need to understand his logistics; you just need to find the kids.

She started the car. “I’m in Ebisu. Text me an address and I’ll—”

“Don’t bother,” said Furukawa. “We’ve already eliminated all the schools in your area. Continue to work your contacts. What did you hear from Kamaguchi, by the way?”

“Nothing useful. He doesn’t give a shit. Not his kids, not his problem. That’s what he said.”

“Hm. Disappointing.”

“That’s it? ‘Disappointing’?” Mariko picked up the phone and turned it off speaker. “Why don’t
you
have insiders in the Kamaguchi-
gumi? You’re in the king-making business,
neh
? The yakuzas have kings too. Why don’t you make another magic phone call?”

“Oh, but I have. Detective Oshiro, if you think I am sitting back enjoying a fine whisky and waiting for you to solve all my problems, you’re very much mistaken. You are not alone in this. You are not even very important in this. Please, do your part and I will do mine. Are you certain you can glean nothing more from Kamaguchi?”

“Yes. He left.”

“Then I suggest you visit whoever is next on your list.”

He hung up, leaving Mariko with a dead phone.
Not very important,
he said. She’d see about that.

42

D
espite being a general scumbag, Bumps Ryota had a special place in Mariko’s heart. He wasn’t the first perp she’d converted into a confidential informant, but he was her first
narcotics
CI, and since Narcotics was her dream job, he was a merit badge of sorts. He’d also leaped to the defense of Mariko’s sister, Saori, in a desperate attempt to prevent the yakuza enforcer Fuchida Shuzo from taking her hostage. Bumps got only partial credit for that; it was brave, but it didn’t offset the fact that he’d sold meth to Saori for years. That said, he’d taken a through-and-through to the gut from Fuchida’s sword, and since Mariko had suffered an identical wound, she supposed that made them scar buddies.

With all of that in his favor, it still had to be said that he lived in a shithole. Mariko found him just as he was leaving a dingy elevator in the dingy lobby of his dingy apartment building. The instant he saw Mariko, he turned and ran. Since he was tweaking, he didn’t think it through, which didn’t work out all that well for him. He spun face-first into the elevator door just as it was sliding shut. Mariko saw blood and guessed he’d broken his nose. Not to be daunted, and capitalizing on the fact that the impact with his face triggered the door’s retraction reflex, he stumbled into the elevator and stabbed the
DOOR CLOSE
button with the relentless speed of a sewing machine. It didn’t help him. Mariko calmly walked the three or four meters to the elevator, stepped in beside him, and said, “What floor?”

“Oh. Um. Nine?”

“Nine it is. Looks like you broke your nose, Bumps.”

He touched a bleeding nostril with one hand while the other rubbed absently over his long, perm-stiffened, peroxide-orange hair. Mariko guessed the elevator wouldn’t smell great empty, but standing next to Bumps it stank like the bottom of a sweat-moistened laundry hamper. “Bumps, when’s the last time you changed your clothes?”

“Uh . . . I’m not for sure on that.”

Mariko shook her head in disgust. As far as she knew, Bumps was playing by the rules of their CI arrangement: he provided regular intelligence leading to arrests and he wasn’t dealing hard stuff on the side. But nothing about their agreement said he had to stay sober.

“Fuck this, we’re getting off here.” She hit the
THREE
button just in time for the elevator to stop there and open up. The musty carpet in the hallway didn’t smell any better than the cockroach spray in the elevator, but both of them smelled a whole lot nicer than Bumps.