Tokyo Enigma (13 page)

She said she didn't have any names. As for repeat customers,
she'd seen only a few men two or three times. No one more than that.
She gave a physical description of six clients.

"Anything ever happen that might have made someone
angry at Maho, or afraid, or jealous? How did she get along with
Ito?"

I shouldn't have added that last question. Yuri scowled
slightly. She didn't translate, but just the mention of Ito's name set
Sayoko on edge. It was clear who she suspected of wrecking her
apartment.

"Tell her the more we know, the better we can protect her."
I wasn't sure I believed that myself, but I hoped it was true.

So far, Sayoko had described her experience in the "water
trade,"
mizu shobai
, without apparent embarrassment, but
now she looked down at her hands and spoke softly. Yuri
translated.

"I don't know. There was one time. We went to a villa in Izu.
We were going to be paid a hundred thousand yen each. Ito-san said
it was role-play. She didn't say what kind. It was a lot of money, so
we didn't ask enough questions. The main room was big. It was dark
except for spotlights on a futon on the floor. There were four or five
men. They wanted to watch Maho-san and me.

"I didn't like it, but I thought, it's acting. We were lying
together. One of the men came close. He told me to stop pretending.
He said he would pay me more if I could make Maho-san have an
orgasm. She didn't seem to care. I couldn't do that. I said I was sick
and left. I was afraid they would be angry. I was afraid Ito-san would
be angry. She wasn't, but she paid me only a little. I never talked to
Maho-san about it. She never mentioned it. I don't know if she ever
saw those customers again, but..." Sayoko took a handkerchief out of
her purse and pressed it against her nose.

"She changed. She was cool. It wasn't as though she didn't
like me anymore. She was just aloof. The way a celebrity might treat
a fan or a boss might treat a worker. She started spending a lot of
money. She moved to a bigger apartment bought expensive things. I
envied her."

"Did the police ever interview you about the murder?"

She shook her head.

Why bother? It looked like the Metropolitan Police
Department's only strategy was to grab the guy at the scene and
wring a confession out of him.

"Do you have any idea who was in your apartment or what
they were looking for?" I already knew part of the answer.

"Maybe Ito-san sent someone, but I don't know what they
were looking for."

"Is she the girl on the audio tape?" I asked Yuri directly.

"Yes, I told her about the bug and the conversation. She
remembered it."

"You said Ito was asking her who she talked to about 'that
thing.' Was Ito referring to the night she just described?"

"Sayoko isn't sure herself what Ito meant. That was part of
the problem and why she got slapped. She thinks it might be, but she
isn't sure. That's the only time she'd had any difficulty with a
client."

"Would she recognize any of the men if she saw them
again?"

Sayoko didn't answer immediately. She was still looking at
her hands and extended one finger at a time until her right hand was
fully opened.

"There were five men. Two I never saw well. I'd recognize
the one who told me to stop pretending. The two others I might
recognize, but I can't remember their faces well right now."

I had a question for Yuri. "Do you have your photos of Ito
and the secretary?"

"I'll get them."

Sayoko looked at the electronic images for a long time, but
she shook her head. "
Mita koto wa nai
." Never seen him.

That was all right. No reason for her to see the bagman. I
needed a picture of the FTC commissioner himself. Protect Agency
didn't have any. I called Will. He said he would pull one from
Reuters' photo morgue, but he wanted an interview with the girl in
exchange.

"Okay with me, but it's her decision."

I covered the phone's mouthpiece with my hand. "This is a
reporter who will ask you for an interview. Tell him no."

She did.

I took the phone back. "She's scared, Will. She has reason to
be. Could you help us anyway?"

He wouldn't send an electronic image by e-mail, but he
would show us a picture if we went to Reuters' offices. He wanted to
at least meet the girl and see if she'd say anything off the record. On
the way to meet Will, I tried to coach Sayoko on what not to say in
front of him. It was okay to talk, but it was also okay to refuse to
answer a question. Just don't lie.

Yuri said, "no problem" several times. I couldn't tell if she
was trying to reassure me or just wanted me to be quiet.

Reuters was housed in the Akasaka Biz Tower separated
from the street by an expansive tiled plaza in a part of town that was
partly trendy and partly old-school hostess bars.

Will took us through the checkpoints and into an interview
room. He chatted with Sayoko for a while. I couldn't understand
everything he said, but Yuri didn't look concerned, so no
problem.

Finally Will showed us the photograph. Sayoko made no
immediate reaction. After a minute or so, she said she couldn't be
sure if she had seen him or not. As soon as she made that decision, I
hustled her and Yuri out before Will had a chance to ask any more
questions.

Intellectually, I'd learned long time ago not to trust hunches,
but that didn't stop my gut from having them anyway. I was so sure
about this one that I'd almost told Sayoko that she must have made a
mistake. It didn't prove the FTC commissioner wasn't somehow tied
in. It just meant I was disappointed.

When we got back to Protect Agency's interview room,
Sayoko laid her head on the table. Yuri said they hadn't gotten much
sleep last night and offered her one of the cots that the company kept
for staff who ended up working around the clock. She accepted. After
Sayoko went to lie down, I asked Yuri to fill me in on what she had
learned from her last night.

It wasn't much. Sayoko didn't know anything about Dorian
specifically, although Hosoi had mentioned a foreign customer. She
also knew nothing about the source of Hosoi's sudden wealth. In
short, she knew nothing of value to the case. Someone, however, was
surely afraid she did.

"Maybe she knows something she isn't aware of, and we
aren't asking the right questions," I said when Yuri had finished.

"Could be, but I've asked everything I can think of."

"I saw Dorian this morning. He's holding up all right."

"Did you go with the lawyers?"

"No, it was just a hand-holding session with someone from
the embassy. Set up by political string-pullers in the U.S. I told him
we were getting closer, which seemed to make him feel better."

"I bet it did, but you ought not lie."

"I didn't say we were getting close, just closer."

"All I can see we're doing is collecting puzzle pieces that
don't fit together."

"We just don't have all the pieces yet." I told her about
Kuroda and his suggestion to cooperate. "I think it's worth
considering, but I told him I'd have to talk it over with you."

"I think he's trying to jerk you around. Police serve the
prosecutors, not the other way. They have a guy they think is guilty.
They have a good case. Why would they want to dig up evidence that
he's innocent?"

"He said he wants justice."

Yuri laughed. "Mick Sanchez came all the way to Japan to
locate the world's only humanitarian cop."

"There might be others."

"Personally, I think he's just fishing for information, so he
can make his own case stronger."

"What would it do for his career if..."

"If he single-handedly found evidence to free Dorian and
maybe land the real killer in jail? That would make his superiors look
incompetent or lazy. It might make him a hero in U.S. news, but it
might get him busted to clerk in the department."

Yuri cocked her head and pressed her thumb against her
right eyebrow. "Still, weird stuff happens. You want me to talk to him
to get a better idea of what he has in mind?"

"Couldn't hurt."

Yuri was still baby-sitting Sayoko, so I had supper alone and
made another trip to the Tipness fitness center. When I got back to
the hotel, I had messages from Yuri and from Abe. I called Yuri first.
She didn't even bother to say "hi."

"Do you remember the night Sayoko told us about? She said
she got sick."

"Yeah, she walked out on some perverts."

"She remembered the day of the week, but not the date, until
I started asking her about it. We got a calendar and she could relate
that night to other events including a national holiday."

"And she pinned down the date?"

"Yep, so then I checked the FTC commissioner's schedule.
His office said he was giving testimony to a Diet committee that
night. I verified it with another source. He wasn't at the villa,
Mick."

"Maybe Sayoko made a mistake."

"That's not impossible, but she said she was positive."

Not trusting a hunch is one thing. Having one blow up in
your face is another.

"Thanks for the call."

"That's all right. I just didn't want you to waste any more
energy barking up that tree."

I wouldn't. There are plenty of other wrong trees to bark up.
I called to check in with Abe. It was early afternoon his time.

He answered on the first ring. "Have you turned on your
computer yet?"

"No."

"Do it. You've got mail, the Dorian report you asked for. It's
encrypted. Any problems, call me back."

The report was fourteen pages single-spaced. Someone had
been busy.

Kyle Solutions was the seventh company Dorian had worked
for. He specialized in overseas operations, especially hard-case
situations like takeovers and start-ups in countries where rule of law
was not the order of the day. His services came at a premium, which
might explain why companies didn't keep him on after the dirty
work was done. There might have been other reasons. He'd been
charged in the U.S. with bribing officials in a Latin American country
to put down a labor movement. The officials had used deadly force,
but Dorian's case never went to trial. The charges were subsequently
dropped.

It didn't fit. Japan had its fair share of scoundrels, but in
general, the law held sway. Why would Kyle Solutions need a cowboy
like Dorian to take over a Japanese start-up that was actively
shopping itself? I didn't see anything falling into place yet, but I
might if I could answer that last question. The trouble was, I needed
help from Lance Allworth right after I'd done my best to scare him
off. That was all right. At least now I had a plan.

Spotlights shone on Yuri and Sayoko. They were asleep on a
blanket on the floor. The shadows of men drifted toward them, gaining
substance as they closed in. Dorian stood in the light beckoning them.
Yuri began moaning and writhing in her sleep. I tried to warn her, but
couldn't speak. My body was too heavy to move. The bellow of a
wounded beast erupted from Dorian's chest.

I awoke to the sound of my own voice. My pulse raced. A
sheet wrapped tightly around my chest and my right arm was damp
with sweat. It was 3:30 a.m. With no hope of going back to sleep, I
dressed and went downstairs. The hotel was on the outskirts of
Yurakucho, a honeycomb of bars, beer halls, restaurants and
coffeehouses. Most of the city shut down around midnight when the
trains stopped running, but a few places were still open. In Tokyo's
nightlife, the most raucous groups were office parties that generally
broke up between 10:00 p.m. and midnight. The few people on the
street now were couples or small quiet groups subdued by
alcohol.

A young woman knelt at a curb and vomited in the gutter.
Two others squatted next to her. One rubbed her back, while the
other tried to keep her friend's skirt pushed down. On another
street, a young man was less fortunate. He was alone, lying on a dark
sidewalk with his back against a wall, easy game for theft or worse.
His eyeglasses lay lens-down on the concrete.

I rubbed my thumb along a scar on my right hand. It was red
and ragged and covered a lump on a knuckle that I'd broken when I
was twenty-eight. I had hit a friend in the mouth and remembered
none of it. He had lost a tooth, but the greater injury to both of us
was emotional. I suffered the worst of that. He had been betrayed by
a drunk, who he could write off as undeserving of his friendship. I
had betrayed my friend and myself.

I picked up the man's glasses and put them in his pocket. He
was mostly dead weight, but I pulled his arm over my shoulder and
dragged him to the entrance of a bar that was still open. I put him
next to the door and went inside to tell the bartender. He came out
with me, looked at the man and shrugged.

The bartender went back inside. I continued walking. We
left him on the sidewalk, but there was light there. Maybe he was
safer. Crime was not rife in Japan, but it was a long way from
nonexistent.

The sun was rising by the time I got back to the hotel. I
showered, shaved and had breakfast before I called Yuri.

"How's Sayako?"

"She's doing okay. No revelations, though."

"You remember the Spanish restaurant?"

"With the charming owner?"

"Yeah, that one. Do you think you can find out the name of
the man he saw with Maho? The one who gave her money."

"We have the name of his agency. Maybe we could pull off
another Nozaka maneuver."

"What? Call up and ask for the investigator who was paying
the girl murdered in the Dorian case. Don't you think that might raise
alarms?" It was probably a response to Nozaka's name, but my voice
was tinged with anger that I didn't intend.

Yuri picked it up and snapped back. "I don't know, Mick.
Give me some time to think. I'll get back with you, unless you have
any more orders."