Authors: Sam Waite
Tags: #Hard-Boiled, #Japan, #Mystery, #Mystery & Suspense, #Political Corruption, #Private Investigators
Tokyo Enigma (25 page)
Ueno returned Yuri's slight of not standing by trying to
ignore her.
No good. She spoke first. "Interesting video."
We had a laptop computer set up with the video on it. Yuri
turned it so the screen faced Ueno. She pressed PLAY.
Ueno didn't react. Maybe he'd already seen it.
Yuri translated as I told him about the girl. I talked about my
trip to her hometown, her funeral, the bone ceremony and her
brother's despair. I gave him Morimoto's report of the money trail
that linked him to Maho.
Kuroda stepped in and asked if he knew the names of the
two plainclothes cops who were arrested.
He didn't answer, but the fact that he didn't say no indicated
that he did know.
Kuroda laid out two scenarios. One had Ueno in prison for a
very long time. The other had him cooperating fully, with a slap on
the wrist.
Ueno held out against the pressure for a long time. I don't
think it was toughness. I think it simply took a while for him to
realize that he was no longer above the fray, cloistered in the
ethereal realm of top-level bureaucracy.
Amakudari
, descent
from heaven, retirement, a golden parachute, a nest proffered by a
controlled industry. Ueno didn't have much of a parachute, now. His
descent was fast and hard. He gave us everything he knew and was
meticulous in details.
One of the most interesting of his recollections was the
name and workplace of a young European man who had been hired
to have a sexual encounter with Maho, and thus accommodate a
coroner's report of sexual stimulation and the statement of the
hotel's desk clerk. He had left the room to be replaced by Dorian who
had been rendered unconscious by drugs.
Ueno gripped his hands together. "No one expected for the
girl to die. I have no idea how that happened."
There were a lot of players and some things had taken odd
turns. It'd take a while to find out who knew what. There was time.
When Ueno finished, Kuroda took him to his MPD office to commit
the story to legal proceedings.
In the evening, all four of us met again and went to a
nightspot in Roppongi. A bartender asked what we'd like. I gave the
name of the European man we'd gotten from Ueno.
"That would be me," he said.
"This is Mr. Kuroda from the Metropolitan Police
Department. He'd like to talk to you."
Except for his paid encounter with Maho, the young man
said he didn't know anything about what had happened, but he
confirmed what Ueno had told us. That gave us a little more pressure
to tighten the screws on the thumbs of those who did know.
The two plainclothes cops started to crack the next day.
They were talking in a trade-off to escape the gallows in the deaths
of Panther and Yokoyama. They told Kuroda where Yokoyama's
body was. He had been stabbed several times in the body.
Kuroda had accepted my story that I had stabbed him once
in the neck in self-defense. I wouldn't be arrested. The man Yuri had
kicked was still unaccounted for, but regardless of that outcome, her
action was also self-defense.
Murder charges against Dorian were sure to be dropped.
However, there was the matter of blackmail. Kuroda sounded
apologetic when he said it. I told him I hoped Dorian got the heaviest
sentence possible and recommended that he investigate Lance
Allworth for obstruction. He said he would.
I stuck around a few days to give affidavits, but I had more
on my mind than bad guys. Yuri and I spent most of that time
together. I cherished each moment and didn't think about much else,
until I saw it coming to an end.
What to say? How to say it? Don't think, just talk. That was a
lifelong strategy that had gotten me nowhere so far. It was all I
had.
Yuri said that Sayoko was being considered for a job at
Protect Agency. She was smart and innovative, lots of possibilities.
That was good news for her, and it gave me an opening.
"She could take your place," I said, "if you were to move to
the States or somewhere else."
Yuri reached over and ran her fingers across the back of my
hand.
"I don't have a job now. But I have enough to get by for a
while. Something will come up. I have a lot of contacts. We could
start our own agency. You're bilingual, aggressive, street smart.
You're wasting your talent here, Yuri. Since I single-handedly
tarnished GRIM's reputation, we could hire their staff, steal their
clients."
I listened for a laugh that didn't come.
"We could live anywhere," I tried again, "Europe, South
America, Japan."
She shook her head.
"It isn't now or nothing. There's a world of options. Let's
think about what they are."
"I have thought about it."
"But I just asked."
"You didn't have to ask. I've been thinking about it since our
first drink together. The ride in the taxi, we didn't say much, but it
felt good just being next to you. It felt right." She closed her
eyes.
I don't know what she saw in the privacy of her mind, but I
knew there were scars. "I wouldn't walk out on you, Yuri."
"Do you think I'm still punishing my father? Maybe I am, but
he wasn't the only one who abandoned my mother. I did too. You
can't blame that on youth. I was wild and selfish. I might not..." Her
voice trailed off, and she squeezed her eyelids tighter.
"Might not what?"
"Be able to forgive myself, if I were happy, if I had someone.
Little bit crazy, right?"
"Yeah, and not just a little."
The left corner of her mouth dipped in a Yuri smile.
"Thanks."
There was a lot of deep-seated darkness rumbling through
Yuri's psyche. I already knew she had been hurt in more ways than
she told me.
Whatever it was, I'd hoped I could overcome it. "It's wrong
to think that way. You already know that it's wrong, but you haven't
accepted it." I covered her hand in mine. "You'll let me know if you
do?"
"I most surely shall. But just now, I can't pick up and change.
Maybe someday we'll cross paths, or I'll track you down and knock
on your door."
"I don't have a whole lot of time left, Yuri."
"Neither do newborns. They just don't know it yet."
"Tell me you'll try."
She nodded.
Do you know, Yuri, what you gave me the strength to
sacrifice? A ticket to South Padre dunes, the wind, the sea, the gulls at
dawn. In a clash of principles, I told Abe to take his job and shove it.
When I did, I saw you. If I hadn't, I might have followed orders like a
good soldier.
I kissed her hair and told myself that someday the knock
would come, even though I knew better. I'd doubled down in life and
love and lost.
That should be a lesson for a wise man, but as for me, would
I do it again?
If I have the chance, oh yeah.
And after that, again, from now till evermore.
The next day, I boarded a plane, not so much to go home, but
to leave this place, to rid myself of East Asia, and most especially
Japan.
Sam Waite has worked in financial journalism for most of his
career, including stocks editor at Bloomberg's Tokyo bureau and
financial and economics editor at Nikkei. He also worked as a
communications specialist at McKinsey & Co. in Japan. His
training in martial arts and Asian studies led to his move to Japan,
where he has lived for the past 30 years. His first exposure to Asia
was in March 1967, Vietnam, courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps. After
that tour was done, he was granted a request for a year's duty at
USMC airbase Iwakuni, Japan.
He is the author of the Mick Sanchez mystery
Dollar
Down
, which involves a multinational attack on the U.S. currency
and is set in Paris. His website is sambwaite.com.
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