Tokyo Heist (11 page)

Kenji takes a photo out of the envelope and passes it around. It’s the three van Gogh drawings, spread out on a table. “He enclosed this picture of the drawings as proof that his associates have them.”

“Monday? That’s six days from now!” my dad explodes. “You’re going to find a painting that’s been lost for decades and what, hand it over in six days?”

“And who is this fellow?” Margo asks.

Kenji folds the letter and replaces it in the red-and-yellow international courier envelope. “Hiroshi Fujikawa is chairman of the Fujikawa-gumi.”

“One of the
yakuza
’s most notorious gangs,” Agent Chang elaborates for us. “And we believe the two men who assaulted Julian Fleury—and who presumably took the van Gogh drawings—are working for Fujikawa himself.”

“You mean your brother bought art for a mob boss?” my dad asks.

Kenji emphatically shakes his head. “My brother loved to attend art auctions, and he occasionally bought art for me, or for friends, on his travels. He had a great talent for finding treasures. But I believe Fujikawa is lying. He just wants the painting for himself.”

“What does he mean by ‘drastic measures’?” I ask.

Kenji pauses a moment before he speaks. “I can guess. Fujikawa has extorted money from our business from time to time over the years. He left us alone for a while. But after I found the drawings in my Tokyo office four months ago, he began contacting me about the drawings. When I ignored his requests for them, we began to experience some difficulties at our construction sites. Accidents. We suspect sabotage. So it is possible he is planning a more drastic action at a site or a building if I do not come up with the painting.”

I have serious chills. I think back to the articles I read last week—the explosions, the broken scaffolding, the collapsed bridge. If those accidents weren’t really accidents, who knows what this guy is capable of? Maybe Tomonori’s suicide in 1987 wasn’t really a suicide. Maybe someone
pushed
him off that subway platform! I wonder if this Fujikawa guy knew that the drawings and painting were real van Goghs long before they were authenticated.

“And you really don’t know where that painting is?” Agent Chang persists.

“I wish I did,” Kenji says. “As I have already explained to you, my brother died before he could tell me where he put it. Over the years, I have searched our office building and my brother’s house. I interrogated his late wife, his friends, and his connections at various museums. Eventually, I had to give up.”

“He didn’t leave a single clue?” Margo asked. “Not even a note or something?”

“No note. Not even a suicide note,” Kenji says. “Well, not a proper note. On the subway platform were his shoes and socks, which is why we knew it was suicide.”

“No autopsy?” Agent Denny asks, pausing from taking notes.

“They were seldom performed in Japan back in the 1980s,” Kenji says. “Especially when all signs pointed to suicide. Well, beside his shoes was his briefcase. And inside the briefcase was a drawing of two
ayu
. No business papers. Just this pen-and-ink drawing.”

“Ayu?”
my dad asks. “What’s that?”

Ayu.
It sounds familiar, but I’m not sure why.

“It’s a kind of fish. A river trout. It’s very popular in Japan,” Mitsue explains.

Maybe I saw
ayu
on a sushi menu or something. “Who did the drawing?” I ask him.

“My brother, I am sure. It was his characteristic style, intricate line drawings. It was—” Kenji’s voice breaks. He looks down at his hands in his lap and falls silent.

Mitsue pats his arm. “Tomo was a talented artist, but the Yamada family was unsupportive of his dream. They pressured him to go into the family business. It is why he consoled himself with collecting art. We interpreted the
ayu
as a symbolic message, his way of explaining his decision. It was all we had to comprehend his mind-set. Such a happy person, with everything going for him—a thriving business, a healthy young son. I suppose there are disturbances in some people, beneath the surface, that are too deep to create even a ripple. Things you never know until it is too late.”

“So he was basically a misunderstood artist,” my dad says.

Kenji nods. “And since he left no message about the whereabouts of his most recent art purchases, we were looking for needles in haystacks. Which is why finding the painting and handing it over six days from now is, well, problematic.”

“Wait, why would your brother have hidden the painting separately from the drawings?” I ask Kenji. “Especially if an appraiser said these weren’t even van Goghs?”

“He planned to seek a second opinion on the appraisal at some point,” Kenji explains. “He had an instinctive feeling that the drawings and the paintings were authentic. He wished to keep the art safe until it could be proven. And since the painting was potentially so much more valuable than the drawings, he thought it best to hide them in separate locations.”

“He wanted to keep the art safe from whom?” Agent Denny demands.

“Fumiko. His wife. He feared she would dispose of it. He was having marital problems. He had recently altered his will to leave his collection to Mitsue and me.”

“He didn’t want his
wife
to inherit his art? That’s harsh,” I remark.

“Violet,” my dad murmurs. “Please.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Violet is correct,” Kenji says. “It was harsh. But theirs was an unfortunate match. Fumiko and Tomo did not see eye to eye about art. She felt it distracted him from his focus on the company. ‘Gambling,’ she called it. She was always threatening to sell off his collection.”

“And where is Fumiko Yamada now?” Agent Denny asks.

“Deceased. She succumbed to pancreatic cancer nine years ago,” Kenji replies.

“When Kenji and I cleaned and closed up her house, we searched, but there was no sign of the painting. We do not believe it was hidden in their home,” Mitsue adds.

Would Kenji lie about the painting? To the FBI? To my dad and to Margo? He seems so sincere. Yet there’s a piece that doesn’t fit with him, too. Skye said he hit on her. That means he betrayed his wife in some way. He’s capable of deception.

While the adults keep talking, I take my sketchbook out of my backpack and draw some of the information I’ve picked up, adding it to other bits I’ve sketched out since Friday.

“Mr. and Mrs. Yamada, do the two of you have children or relatives who might have an interest in the art?” Agent Chang asks. “Or who might have some insight into the painting?”

“Mitsue and I were not blessed with children. My only heir is my nephew, Hideki. He was a child when his father hid the painting, though, and has no idea of its whereabouts now.”

“Fascinating history,” says Margo, “but I still fail to understand what any of it has to do with Julian being attacked and Glenn’s paintings being destroyed.”

I notice she’s looking at my sketchbook. I turn it to shield my work from her view. Then I look at the panels I’ve just drawn along a timeline, and suddenly a few things jump off the page. Things I never noticed before. It’s like playing the Frame Game, looking for that new angle on something you’ve looked at a million times. A pattern emerges, a sequence or story that almost makes sense. The image I keep staring at is the broken window at my dad’s house. I’d been assuming Skye dashed over there after their fight, but that window could have been broken any time between four, when my dad left for the art show, and nine, when we returned. I stand up so fast I knock my chair over. “I think I know what might have happened!”

“Violet,” my dad warns.

“It’s all right. Go ahead, Violet,” says Agent Chang, watching me with interest.

“Okay. Let’s say Fujikawa sent the two gangsters to find the painting. They broke into the Yamadas’ basement and took the drawings. But they couldn’t find the painting.” All eyes are on me. I look back at my sketched panels to steady myself. “So they followed Skye around. They thought she had some connection to the painting, since she did restoration work on the drawings. Maybe they followed her to my dad’s house one day, thinking she hid the painting there for safekeeping.”

“In my house? That’s absurd,” my dad says.

“I’m not saying Skye actually put a van Gogh painting there. I’m saying the
yakuza
thought
she might have. So when your window got broken the other night, after the art show—”

“Your window got broken?” Margo turns to my dad. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Just petty vandalism.”

“Sorry, Dad, but I don’t think so. I think the
yakuza
came that evening or maybe even before the art show. I think they broke in to look for a painting hidden in your house.”

Agent Chang stares at me. Agent Denny types furious notes.

I take a deep breath and wrap up my theory. “They were probably nearby today, watching the house. Maybe they thought Julian was crating the van Gogh painting along with your stuff. They followed him all the way to this gallery and saw their chance to get the van Gogh. When it wasn’t there, they got mad and took it out on Julian. And on your paintings.”

Everyone is quiet. I close my eyes. I feel kind of sick.

“But that is preposterous. Who would have led the
yakuza
to think Glenn, of all people, was harboring a stolen van Gogh?” Margo asks.

Agent Chang shuts her laptop. “That’s exactly what we need to find out. And we need to get these
yakuza
into custody and investigate their possible connection to the Yamadas’ break-in. But Violet’s theory gives us some fresh avenues of exploration. Good thinking, Violet. And with the license plate number, we can start making inquiries at car rental agencies right away.”

“Thanks.” I steal a glance at my dad, but he’s picking a hangnail instead of beaming at me with fatherly pride. I sink back into my folding chair.

The phone rings. Margo retreats to her office to take the call, apologizing to us for leaving. “It’s Julian’s mother,” she says. “She’s quite distressed about her son, as you can imagine. I’ll rejoin you all in a moment.”

The FBI agents confer in low voices, and then Agent Chang faces the rest of us. “Here’s how we’re going to handle this letter. We’ll stage a sting operation.” She explains: Kenji will write a response letter, promising to show up with the painting. In six days, an FBI agent will pose as Kenji and go to the
Hammering Man
, carrying a blank canvas wrapped in paper. At the handover, a team of undercover FBI agents, posing as tourists, will nab the two thieves and get the drawings.

“It would be helpful if you could all get out of town for a bit, while we take care of the situation,” Agent Denny says. “Might be a good time for you folks to take a little vacation.”

“Actually, we are all scheduled to travel to Japan on Thursday,” Kenji says.

“Hold on,” my dad says. “Isn’t Tokyo crawling with
yakuza
? I don’t think we should go.”

I chew my lip. After how close I’ve come, is he really going to call off our trip?

“Actually, I see no reason why you can’t keep your travel plans,” Agent Chang says. “
Yakuza
generally do not bother foreigners. They don’t want the interference of foreign governments investigating, or the media sniffing around.”

“I, too, see no great cause for alarm, Glenn,” says Kenji. “The museum and the mural site are both in our office building, which has security. Your hotel has excellent security as well. But if it would put your mind more at ease, I can arrange for Violet to have personal protection.”

“Wow! You mean like a bodyguard?” I exclaim.

“Precisely. We’ve worked with a personal security agency for years.”

“Oh, wow. That’d be so cool.” Reika will freak when she hears this.

My dad scratches his neck. “I don’t know. I’m uneasy about it.”

“Why don’t the two of you talk it over?” Agent Chang says. “Agent Denny and I have a few more questions for Mr. and Mrs. Yamada.”

Margo emerges from her office, and the FBI agents take the Yamadas in there to talk.

My dad doesn’t mention the sting to Margo, but he confesses he’s having second thoughts about taking me to Japan while the FBI sorts things out here in Seattle.

“Oh, take the child, Glenn,” Margo says. “Nobody’s going to trouble the two of you there. And it might do you good to have her along. You’re a lot more fun to be around ever since Violet showed up. You’re not quite as intense. And the Yamadas
like
her,” she adds. “They like that you’re a family man. Remember what I told you.” She waggles a ring-encrusted finger. “Keep the clients happy, they’ll come back for more.”

“I see your point. Keep the clients happy. I guess we’ll stick with the plan.”

While my dad and Margo continue selecting substitute paintings for the Tokyo show, I go look at the lone madrona painting.
Keep the clients happy
. Scowling, I shove my hands in my jeans pockets. It’s not like my dad actually wants me to come on this trip. I’m just part of a plan.

I should be happy, right? I’m still going to Japan in two days. The case is in the hands of professionals. My information was helpful. The
yakuza
almost certainly took the drawings. And there’s a good chance of getting the drawings back, assuming the sting works.

And if it doesn’t work?
I look at the clouded glass windows of Margo’s office. The agents and the Yamadas are silhouettes now. Silhouette Kenji rubs his forehead. Silhouette Mitsue pulls her wrap around her shoulders and sits hunched over, shaking her head.

I will be forced to employ drastic measures
. That might mean more sabotage on construction sites, more lives lost on the Kobe bridge project. Who could stop something like that from happening? That’s a job for Superman. Not for Kimono Girl. Not for me.

But as I pick up my sketchbook to put it away, it falls open to those copies I did of cormorants the other day. And suddenly I know why
ayu
sounded familiar. That’s what these diving birds eat in Asia. Or carry, I should say. They dive for the
ayu,
hold it in their throats, and deliver it to fishermen who hold them by a leash. One picture I copied shows a cormorant with a collar around its neck. The collar keeps the birds from swallowing. They can’t keep the rewards of their work. Maybe Tomonori Yamada was like a cormorant, and the art was like the
ayu
. Maybe that drawing he left in his briefcase the day he died is a clue to the painting.