Japantown (6 page)

At ten thirty, the apartment superintendent reported in. Considering the matter urgent, he’d contacted all the residents, either at home or work. No one had been expecting a person of Homeboy’s description and no one had laid eyes on an unknown Asian, period.

Thanking him for the effort, I hung up, wondering what Homeboy was hiding. I thought about his speed and his fighting skills, and I soon found myself quivering with an undefined rage. Who the hell was he and why was he coming after us? What lurked behind the street pose? And even more troubling, what was behind his cryptic comment?
She’s in it. Way in it. And so are you. More than you know.

In what?

Aber’s stuck his head in the door. “I know you have enough on your mind, but I can’t hold off anymore. We had another burglary attempt.”

My pulse jumped. Every penny I owned was locked up in the store, so I paid a high premium for a private security service, which I’d recently upgraded after a break-in six months ago.

“Just an attempt, right?”

Abers nodded soberly. “I didn’t mention it earlier because you seemed distracted, but this one is different.”

Dread edged my voice. “How close did they get?”

“Not close.
In.
”

The room seemed to fall away around me. “That’s not possible,” I managed in a small voice.

My head throbbed. I tried to think. After the first break-in, I’d opted for the next level of protection, which attached enough additional bells and whistles to my state-of-the-art alarm system to discourage even the most determined B&E artist. Until now the setup had been magical, scaring one potential burglar away and allowing the private security team to bag an experienced pair of two-story men while they were still tinkering with the locks.

Homeboy.
During the three years we’d occupied the cave of an apartment in East Pacific Heights, I had never heard any reports of unknowns wandering the halls. The security was that tight. Double doors, top-notch locks on the entrance. Cameras in the halls and at all the exterior doors. My shop system was even better. Yet both had been breached within the last twelve hours.

“Did the rent-a-cops get here in time?”

“The alarm didn’t go off.”

“What? You set it, right?”

“Do bushbucks have horns? Of course I set it. The service claims there was no alert last night, but I
know
someone was here. I leave tells. Hair, bits of paper. A trick from the old days. They came, they looked, they left. They deactivated the alarm first, then reactivated it. That’s the only explanation.”

“You sure?”

“I’ve been here two years, Brodie. I’m sure.”

“Did they take anything?”

“No. Which tells me they were some seriously slick intruders.” He nodded at my leg. “You ready to fess up yet? My money’s on a new assignment from Tokyo.”

Abers was probing. He heartily disapproved of my handling any job from Brodie Security. He raved about my perfect eye for art. “You have a magic touch most would kill for,” he’d say time and time again. “Why
are you wasting time with the PI stuff? Think of your talent. Think of Jenny. Sell that damn place in Tokyo before it gets you killed.” After the wave of violence that he’d barely survived in Pretoria, he was nothing if not protective.

“I got nothing from Brodie Security,” I said, hedging my answer for Renna’s sake.

Clearly confounded, Abers scratched his head. “I know I shouldn’t intrude, but considering how you came slogging in this morning, I need to ask. Have you been involved in anything stroppy lately? Anything unusual?”

Japantown. Homeboy. A break-in. What
hadn’t
I been involved in? The swirl of events was bewildering. And none of it made any sense whatsoever. Could this all be connected to Japantown? One part of me thought,
Unlikely. It was too much too soon.
I’d only come on board as Renna’s consultant last night, and by the time I left there’d been
sixty
cops on the scene.

There should be no reason to single me out.

On the other hand I
was
the only Japan expert. And the victims were Japanese. As was Homeboy. Could that be it? Was Japan the link? If so, it raised one hell of a question: Under what circumstances would I be more of a threat than the entire San Francisco police force?

CHAPTER 9

TYRRHENIAN SEA, ITALY

H
ENRI
Bertrand gazed out over the moonlit ocean waves. What was it about Manuel Castore that disturbed him so? No, be
honest,
he told himself. What was it about Castore that
scared
him?

Here he was on his yacht anchored off Capri with a French-Irish supermodel slumbering in the cabin, and he was obsessing over Castore.

As the top real estate developer in Europe for the last two decades, Bertrand had a net worth north of three billion dollars. His architecture and development firm had project billings of $800 million for the next fiscal year. He owned homes in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Dubai, and Florence. He mingled with the elite and as a
favor
designed their summer homes on the Riviera.

The Riviera—that was the problem.

Castore coveted Bertrand’s latest coup. The greedy Spaniard had offered him twice the purchase price for the half-mile stretch along the Italian coast, then plan-B’ed him with a proposal for a joint partnership. Bertrand had refused both offers and in an instant knew he’d made an enemy for life. But the Italian find was too precious to forfeit even a sliver of its worth—it was Europe’s next Riviera in the making. When the property came on the market, Bertrand saw the potential in an instant, as did Castore a week later. After Bertrand had refused Castore’s offer of a joint partnership, the whites of Castore’s dark, calculating eyes seemed to flash red with anger.

Shaking off the memory, Bertrand went through a series of breathing exercises to expand his lungs, then dove into the crystal-clear waters. He sluiced fifteen feet down through the brine before arching up to the surface.

He relished his midnight swims. On the cobalt sea, the world seemed endless, the possibilities infinite. When he returned to France, he would crush that scheming Spanish rodent, and he knew exactly how. It was not his style to be so vulgar or ruthless, but instinct told him Castore was the exception that proved the rule.

As a feeling of satisfaction overtook him and he smiled to himself, powerful arms encircled his waist and then vanished, leaving in their wake a strange heaviness at his hips.

Had he really felt arms around him? In the Tyrrhenian at midnight?

Unexpectedly, his head slipped underwater and he began to sink. He stretched for the surface, managing to snatch a mouthful of air before being drawn under again by an inexplicable weight.

His hands went to his waist and what he found shocked him. Strapped to his midsection was a diver’s belt loaded with weights for a man twice his size. He clawed at the buckle and pulled. Nothing. His eyes bulged in surprise.

In a pinch, Bertrand could hold his breath for as long as three minutes. He had that much time, minus what—the five seconds he’d just lost? His fingers scrambled over the buckle. The belt had been modified to include a lock and a slot for a key.

Ten seconds.

Bertrand had never seen such a belt. Diver safety required instant release.
This was a custom-made death trap.
He was now ten feet below the surface and sinking fast. His ears popped. He stretched his jaw to relieve the pressure.

Twenty seconds.

Don’t panic, he told himself. There’s always a way out. The cove, he knew, was thirty feet deep, no more.

Thirty seconds.

Get to the bottom,
a voice in his head advised.
You know what to do
. He brought his knees to his chest, tucked, rolled, and swam downward. The bluish-gray light of the moon washed over the grainy ocean
floor. The extra weight at his waist worked in his favor, accelerating his descent and saving him precious seconds. Bertrand moved along the bottom until he found what he sought.

Fifty seconds.

Obsidian peppered the sandy floor of the cove. As a builder, Bertrand knew his geology.

He grabbed a specimen the size of his fist, found a sharp edge, and began sawing the swatch of nylon near the buckle. The material was stringy, maybe an eighth of an inch thick, but it frayed easily under his volcanic razor.

Seventy seconds.

The work went quickly. He reached the halfway point.

Ninety seconds.

Maybe he could rip the material now, save a few seconds. He tucked the rock under his arm and tugged—the material resisted. He tugged again. Again, resistance—and then disaster. The abruptness of his movement jarred the rock loose from its nesting place under his arm and he watched in horror as it drifted lazily to the bottom.

One minute, forty.

Bertrand scrambled to retrieve his tool and set to work again.

Two minutes.

He should have stayed with what was working. Fool! Wasting valuable time!

Calm down. Focus.

He stilled his doubts and began sawing again.

A shadow passed overhead. A milk shark, he thought. Suppressing the urge to flee, he stayed intent on his task.

Two minutes, twenty.

He was nearly done. His chest began to ache. Focus, focus. Another half inch. He could feel the weight begin to sag off his hips, listing toward the bottom.

There! The last thread snapped and the belt fell away.

Two minutes, forty.

He crouched, paddling in reverse to force himself closer to the ocean floor, then launched himself off the hard sand with a powerful thrust, rocketing upward.

His lungs were burning now. He wanted to draw a breath. He was twenty feet from the surface.

Two minutes, fifty.

He began to choke. His mouth opened.

No!

Drawing on the steely willpower that had fueled his rise to the top of his field, he clamped his jaw shut, but immediately the physical necessity to open his mouth overrode his internal command. He swallowed water.

Ten feet.

His chest heaved from the lack of oxygen and his body snorted more water in through his nose.

No!

Five feet.

Salt water coursed through his nasal passages and he felt the sting of foreign liquid entering his system.

He broke the surface, coughed up seawater, then vomited. Once, twice, three times.

His lungs purged, he released a triumphant shout into the moonlit night and the echo rolled over the gentle Mediterranean swells into the distance. Air, fresh air! He had never come so close!

Then strong fingers grabbed his ankle and pulled him under.

He kicked but the grip held.

His head was three feet below the surface.

A second belt snaked around his waist.

Oh God, no!

He kicked, but his strength had been siphoned off by the exertions of his first escape. He needed oxygen to fuel his efforts, and he’d been dragged under at the exhale. His lungs were empty. His chest ached to draw in air. Salt water seeped in. He tried to expel the invading fluid, but there was no air pressure left in his lungs. More water shot down his throat. He gagged and kicked violently. The belt dragged him steadily downward. His lungs began to fill.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement and turned his head. A diver! And behind the mask a curiously passive Asian face.

Sinking lower, he clawed desperately for the surface, his arms
swinging wildly. He thrust powerfully with his muscled legs and was propelled upward. His fingertips touched air, then he felt a cool sensation near his lower ribs as his lung sacs were swamped with seawater. He lost muscle control, and when the sea brine hit his brain, he lost consciousness.

He stopped struggling, and slowly, drifting with the languid motion of the sea, his corpse sank to the bottom of the cove.

Out of the dark waters, a black shadow in a wetsuit and diving gear glided over, inserted a key into the belt, and released the weights. Bertrand’s body began to rise. A minute later it bobbed to the surface while below a second diver swooped along the bottom of the cove and scooped up the other belt.

Twin bubble trails rose behind the divers as they swam away with the only evidence of murder.

CHAPTER 10

E
VEN
with the news blackout, he found me.

After lunch I had locked myself in the office to nail down the purchase of the seventeenth-century Buddhist temple statues. But before I could lift the receiver, Abers rapped on the door. “You’re up, mate,” he said, and strolled away. Usually that meant one of my regulars was asking for me.

I wobbled to the front of the shop and froze.

Disbelief clutched my chest.

Standing at a glass counter and fingering a sixteenth-century Japanese sword guard was Katsuyuki Hara, renegade Tokyo communications mogul and poster boy for the new Japan. He’d broken all the rules and still prospered, in the process becoming a local hero. He was the nail that couldn’t be hammered down, the exception to a strict social code that preferred conformity and discouraged independence. As a barrier-breaking rebel, he became a public figure revered for the hope he inspired in young entrepreneurs even as he headed for the financial stratosphere. As a newly minted billionaire, he groomed himself accordingly: face tanned, skin lotioned, hands manicured. He wore an expensive French suit of charcoal gray with a faint maroon line, the kind of item ordered from Benz-owning tailors who pulled down six-figure incomes.

The choking feeling in my chest was not because the mogul stood in my parlor but because there was no plausible reason for him to pass through my front door. He’d obviously taken a wrong turn. Yes, he collected art, but on a higher plane. If memory served, he’d last been
spotted at the Christie’s auction in New York, where he bought a Hockney and a Pollock.