Year of the Demon

HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22

(2010 CE)

16

Mariko jumped just before the oncoming car hit her in the knees.

The screech of tires on blacktop filled the air, overpowered by the stink of burning rubber. Mariko tucked and rolled just like the department’s aikido instructor taught her, somersaulting across the hood and coming down in a dead sprint.

Her quarry was ten meters ahead of her and gaining. His name was Nanami, a lanky twenty-two-year-old with frosty blond highlights in his hair, a long history of drug priors, and a distinct height advantage that left Mariko and her shorter legs struggling to keep up with him.

Adrenaline and sheer dumb luck took Nanami through four lanes of traffic without so much as a bump. Mariko’s only edge was that his mad dash had panicked oncoming drivers enough to slow them a bit. She skimmed across a taxicab’s hood in a feet-first Ichiro Suzuki slide that gained her a precious fraction of a second.

Nine meters now. Nanami cut a diagonal across the flagstone courtyard of a Shinto shrine three hundred years older than the high-rises that flanked it. Mariko cut a sharper angle and closed the gap.

Eight meters. She dogged Nanami into the narrow alley between the shrine and one of the apartment buildings. It was a dead straightaway. In seconds he widened the gap to ten meters, then twelve.

And then Han blindsided him. Just as Nanami cleared the corner of the apartment complex, Han hit him in the knees with a perfect double-leg takedown. The two men hit the ground in a rolling skirmish that saw Han take a flailing haymaker to the jaw before Mariko tackled Nanami and laid him out flat.

“Good morning again,” Han said, rubbing his cheek and kneeling on the back of Nanami’s neck. “You should have listened the first time, Nanami-san. All we wanted to do was talk.”

Mariko cuffed Nanami’s wrists behind his back. His highlighted hair sponged up a lingering pool of early morning rainwater. “Sweet double-leg,” she said.

“Thanks,” said Han. “Sorry I was a few seconds late on the cutoff.”

“Don’t worry about it. Your jaw okay?”

Han stretched it out a bit. “Yeah,” he said, “but I think I chipped a tooth. See, Nanami-san? All you had to do was talk and we wouldn’t have to bring you in. But now I need to file an injury report, and that means we have to arrest you.”

“Shit,” Nanami said, “if I’da known you had all this pincer movement shit, I wouldn’ta lit out like that.”

Mariko felt him relax in her grip. It was only the repeat offenders that did that. First-timers always struggled a while, straining in vain against the cuffs. There was a bit of a learning curve before a perp could get comfortable in this situation, but Nanami was an old hand at this.

Mariko wished she could be as calm. The break-in this morning still had her rattled, and the theft of her sensei’s sword—her most prized possession—left her feeling bereft. Even her endorphin high wasn’t enough to distract her from her worries. All the more reason not to file an official report on the burglary; if Lieutenant Sakakibara thought she was distracted, he could bench her. She blinked hard, wiped the sweat off the back of her neck, and got her head back in the game.

“Speed,” she said. “You buy from the Kamaguchi-gumi, neh?”

“You know I do.” Nanami sighed it as much as said it, his tone sullen. He wasn’t wrong. They did know it, and that’s why Han had chosen to pay him a visit in the first place. Han had scores of street contacts. Developing a network was inevitable after eight years in Narcotics, but Han was the master: he seemed to have an informant for any given occasion. When they left post that morning, Mariko had said she wanted to talk to someone with Kamaguchi-gumi connections and who also knew where to score top-shelf speed. Han’s reply was inevitable: “I know just the guy.”

“So how’s their product?” Han asked Nanami.

“Kamaguchi? Used to be shit. Now it’s good. You wanna get off my head now?”

Han transferred some weight out of the knee on Nanami’s neck, but he didn’t let him go. “I heard the Kamaguchis have been last in the league,” he said. “Are you saying my intel is bullshit?”

Nanami tried to shake his head, but he couldn’t do it with his chin pressed into the concrete. “Damn, Han, you gotta treat me right. I’m talking, neh? Why you gotta get all police brutality on me?”

Mariko felt her heart rate surge at that—brutality was a serious charge, and it pissed her off when people threw it around like it was nothing—but Han just laughed it off. “You resisted arrest and assaulted an officer. Consider yourself lucky you don’t have a face full of pepper spray.”

Mariko’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it. “The sooner you talk, the sooner he can let you up,” she said.

“Used to be the Kamaguchis were way behind,” said Nanami. “In the market, neh? Now they’re killing it. They got the Daishi. New shit. Kamaguchi’s the only ones who got it.”

“Daishi?” Mariko had never heard of it. She looked at Han, who shrugged. Evidently he didn’t know any more than she did. “Any good?”

“Don’t get any better.”

Her phone stopped buzzing, only to start anew a couple of seconds later. Mariko guessed it was her mother, the only person she knew who would keep calling until Mariko picked up, so she thumbed a button through the fabric of her pocket to let her voice mail pick it up. She looked to Han and silently—with no more than a glance to Nanami, a slight tilt of the head, and a quick raise of the eyebrows—asked what they should do. Han replied by standing up, letting all the pressure off Nanami’s neck. Once again Mariko felt thankful to have a partner whose stream of thought aligned so closely with her own. For one thing, it allowed such acts of near telepathy, which was very handy when neither of them wanted to reveal to a street connection that they’d never heard of this Daishi. For another, thinking like a good narc meant she was a good narc.

She pointed to her jawline and gave Han a querying look, and he replied with a nod and a thumbs-up: in response to her unasked question, he confirmed that his jaw and his tooth were fine, and they wouldn’t need to arrest the kid after all. “Next time when we say we just want to talk,” she said, unlocking the cuffs, “maybe you should consider the possibility that we just want to talk.”

Nanami got to his feet. He knew his part in this unspoken conversation too: he hadn’t seen any of Mariko’s communication with Han, but the fact that they let him stand of his own accord meant he wasn’t going to jail this morning. He gave them a short, contrite, professional bow and left.

Once again the phone buzzed in Mariko’s pocket. “Hold on,” she told Han. “My mom’s having a fit.” She answered the call with an exasperated “Yeah?”

“That’s not a tone you want to take with me,” said a rasping male voice. “You don’t want to ignore my calls either.”

Mariko looked at the caller ID and couldn’t believe her eyes. KAMAGUCHI HANZO, it said. The Bulldog. Son of Kamaguchi Ryusuke, underboss of the Kamaguchi-gumi. Former confederate of Fuchida Shuzo, the yakuza enforcer Mariko had killed in her now-famous swordfight. As the Kamaguchi-gumi’s equalizer, the Bulldog had the contract on Mariko’s life, and unless Mariko missed her guess, the Bulldog had passed up a chance to kill her this morning. He’d stolen Glorious Victory instead—though the question of why was a mystery that was never far from her thoughts.

She almost put the Kamaguchi on speakerphone, then thought better of it and just beckoned Han to listen in with her. “Bulldog-san,” she said, more for Han’s benefit than anything, “you want to tell me how you got this number?”

“Heh. Not by asking politely.”

Mariko would not be intimidated by this man—or at least not let him know she was scared. “I’m beginning to think you’ve got the hots for me,” she said. “First you break into my apartment. Then you beat up some poor guy to get my phone number. I’m flattered.”

“What? Break into—? Ah, fuck it. Where are you at? I’m sending a car for you.”

She and Han looked at each other in disbelief. Mariko had to take a second look at her phone, as if to verify that it was still in her hand, that she’d actually dragged herself out of bed, that this whole god-awful morning hadn’t been some terrible dream. “And what makes you think I would voluntarily get in a car with you?”

“I got a bargain for you. I think you’re going to like it.”

She gave the phone another quizzical look. “A bargain?”

“You heard me. You get me something I want and I’ll give you something you want.”

Mariko couldn’t tell which she felt more: confusion or fury. Two seconds ago he seemed to have no idea about her break-in this morning. Now it sounded like he was offering Glorious Victory as a bargaining chip.

In the end, fury won out. “Now listen here, you son of a bitch. I’m not going to be dragged into some kind of bullshit bartering game for my own property. You bring my sword back; then we can talk.”

“I got no idea what you’re talking about, you loopy—”

“Go to hell,” Mariko said. Then she hung up.

Han gawped at her in amazement. “Was that really Kamaguchi Hanzo?”

“Yeah.” Her phone rang again. She clicked the call directly to voice mail.

“The Kamguchi Hanzo? Like, the Bulldog crazy guy Kamaguchi Hanzo?”

“Yeah.”

“And you told him to go to hell?”

“I guess so.” Her phone chirped again. She clicked to ignore it again.

“Mariko, this is a golden opportunity. You need to take that call.”

“What?” Mariko shot him a you-need-to-go-back-to-the-loony-bin sort of look. “You’re kidding me. ‘Golden opportunity’?”

Her phone buzzed in her fist again, and Han nodded toward it. “Think about it. What’s the one thing a detective needs more than anything else to work narcotics?”

The look on Mariko’s face didn’t change. “A partner who doesn’t want to see her shot dead by a yakuza?”

“Come on. What am I always telling you need to develop?”

“A network of contacts.” She answered him as if she were answering a teacher’s rhetorical question in grade school.

“Exactly. And who could be a better contact than Kamaguchi Hanzo? This dude’s probably got access to everything the Kamaguchi-gumi is running. Dope, guns, extortion, racketeering, you name it.” Han was so excited he couldn’t stand still. “I’m telling you, Mariko, this is amazing. I’ve been in this division for eight years and I’ve never had the chance to develop a high-level connection like this.”

“I bet you never had any of them put a price on your head either.”

“I don’t think he wants to shoot you. I really think he wants to talk.”

Mariko looked down at her phone, which was vibrating in her hand like a fly trapped in a jar. She was tired of feeling unsafe. She wanted to answer the phone and challenge the Bulldog to a shoot-out at high noon. Clint Eastwood antics weren’t her cup of tea, and she still wasn’t all that confident in her marksmanship left-handed, but at least a good old-fashioned shoot-’em-up would see her problems resolved once and for all.

And yet Han was right. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and every indication said Kamaguchi didn’t intend to kill her. First, he seemed to be honestly confused about the sword theft. Second, he wasn’t the type to call in advance to schedule a drive-by.

Damn it all, she thought. Then she answered her phone.

“Bitch, you hang up on me again, I’ll make you regret it.”

Mariko rolled her eyes and almost hung up. Only a panicked gesture from Han made her think twice. She sighed and said, “What do you want?”

“I told you. A bargain. Tell me where to pick you up.”

“Metropolitan Police HQ,” she said. “Chiyoda-ku.”

“Fine. Half an hour.” And the line went dead.

The silence made Mariko’s heart race. She’d just made a date with the man who was hired to kill her. And he had just agreed to meet the target of his assassination order in front of a high-rise full of cops. More to herself than anyone, she said, “I can’t believe I’m going to go through with this.”

“You’re not going alone,” Han said. He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll be right behind you in an unmarked car, with two others on a rolling tail.”

“I’m not scared,” she said. It was only a little lie. “It’s just . . . the guy’s a gangster, Han. He makes a living destroying other people’s lives. Do I really want to get into bed with him?”

“This is Narcotics, Mariko. We deal with bad people. It’s part of the job.”

“Yeah, I get that. It’s just . . .”

She didn’t know how to finish her own thought. Fortunately she and Han shared a telepathic wavelength. “It’s a gamble,” he said. “I know. You’re on first base and you’re thinking of stealing second. That’s just one of the risks you take sometimes if you want to win the ball game.”

17

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters looked like a giant concrete book, standing on end and opened slightly, with a three-story drink twizzler for a bookmark. The building’s eighteen floors of unadorned, wedge-shaped, postmodern concrete loomed over the heart of Chiyoda City, Tokyo’s governmental district, right across the street from the Ministry of Justice and right across the moat from the Imperial Palace gardens. A phallic red-and-white tower stood atop the building, complete with three observation decks full of various antennae, dish-shaped and mini-phallus-shaped, whose arcane purposes Mariko couldn’t begin to guess at.

The mere sight of the HQ building still sent a thrill rippling over Mariko’s skin. She’d worked so hard to get onto the TMPD, harder still to make detective and sergeant, and seeing the department’s headquarters through the windshield of a squad car confirmed for her what still seemed unreal: that at last she’d made her way to her dream assignment in Narcotics. Moreover, HQ’s overlook of the Imperial Palace stirred memories heavily laden with happiness and grief. She’d only been in the palace once, and it was the murder of her beloved sensei that had prompted her visit. Thinking of Dr. Yamada was enough to make her want to cry, but since that was something she could never let a coworker see, she had to suppress the urge every time she showed up to work.

And that was on days when no gangsters came calling. Talking to Kamaguchi on the phone had shaken her to the core, and she hadn’t been herself even before she saw his name on the caller ID. If Kamaguchi wasn’t responsible for the break-in, who was? And if he didn’t have Glorious Victory, what could he possibly offer as a bargaining chip? And what did he want in return?

Han was pretty shaken up too. He tried not to show it, but he was already on his third cigarette, and he paced back and forth in front of the HQ building like a panther in a cage. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call Sakakibara in on this? We could have snipers on all these rooftops in ten minutes flat.”

“You were the one who said this was a good idea.”

“Yeah, but that was before I knew I was going to be waiting on the sidewalk with you. If he shoots at you, he might hit me by mistake.”

“You know, Han, you can be a real asshole.”

“Just trying to lighten the mood a little.” He smiled from behind his cigarette, but Mariko wasn’t laughing. “Okay, okay, guilty as charged,” he said. “But seriously, shouldn’t we call the LT?”

“Come on, you know what he’s going to say. ‘Frodo, you’re a sergeant; think for yourself and do your damn job.’” Mariko caught herself short. “Holy shit.”

“What?” said Han, his shoulders suddenly stiff. His eyes darted this way and that, clearly on high alert. “You see Kamaguchi?”

“No. Frodo.”

“Huh?”

“The nickname. Frodo. I think I just figured it out. The hobbit part’s easy, neh? I’m short. But who’s the only hobbit who winds up with nine fingers?”

She waved her maimed right hand at him. Han puffed at his cigarette and shook his head. “You’re insane. How can you be thinking about that right now?”

Mariko shrugged. “Honestly, I’m just kind of surprised Sakakibara’s nerd trivia runs that deep. Didn’t figure him for a Tolkien fan.”

“Great. Mystery solved. Now all we need to know is—”

Just then a big red Land Rover came to a sudden stop in front of them. Traffic swerved around it like a flock of doves fleeing a hawk. The rear door opened automatically, like a taxi’s, and a big man stepped out. It wasn’t the Bulldog; this guy was bigger. He obviously spent a lot of time at the gym, and maybe some time with a steroid needle too. Mariko wondered where they ever found enough pin-striped fabric to make a suit that would fit him. Tailoring a suit for a guy with no neck couldn’t have been easy in the first place.

He nodded at her. “You Oshiro?”

“Yeah,” said Mariko.

“Get in.”

Mariko nodded as nonchalantly as she knew how, then sauntered in her summoner’s direction. She would not be seen to be scared. On cue, Han jogged to the unmarked car idling at the curb. No point in having an invisible tail; they wanted the Kamaguchis to know Mariko was never out of sight.

She waited until Han was in the car before she got within arm’s reach of the Land Rover. “Where’s Kamaguchi?” she said.

“Waiting for you.” The bodybuilder climbed into the backseat, taking up most of it. Under his suit jacket Mariko saw the telltale lines of an antiknifing vest—all the rage in yakuza couture ever since a certain cop got herself all over the news with her samurai showdown. Tokyo had seen a rash of sword and knife attacks since then, mostly among yakuzas who thought it was gokudo, extreme, hard-core, to duke it out old-school. Evidently Kamaguchi’s errand boy didn’t care to become a statistic. “Come on,” he said, “get in.”

The seat he offered her was on the left side of the vehicle. Mariko didn’t know whether this was a calculated tactical choice, but if it was, it was a good one. Most cops wore their holsters on the right hip, and if Mariko had worn hers there, her pistol would have been in easy reach for him. But Mariko shot left-handed now, so when she got into the car, her weapon was safely between her left hip and the door. “Let’s go,” she said.

The drive seemed to take forever and no time at all. The muscle man had no qualms about discussing business in front of a cop, and so over the course of a couple of phone calls Mariko learned that he went by “Bullet,” that one of his errands today was to collect a lot of something, and that the code he and his fellow yakuzas had developed for speaking about their criminal activities left Mariko utterly clueless about whether Bullet was supposed to collect weapons, protection money, or baseball cards. It could have been anything, and it left Mariko wondering whether she’d even pick up on it if he decided to turn the conversation to the subject of where to dump her body after he killed her.

Bullet had a private parking spot in the parking garage under an Ebisu high-rise, and a pass code for the elevator’s keypad that admitted him to the penthouse floor. So much for backup. This wasn’t good.

The elevator doors opened onto a wide vista of Ebisu and Roppongi, two of Tokyo’s wealthier districts. Mariko presumed this was Kamaguchi Hanzo’s apartment, since if it were not, she could hardly make sense of the ostentation. Most penthouse apartments would have a foyer with a locked door separating the home from the elevator—the better to keep out riffraff such as, say, police officers, or the pizza boy, or neighbors’ kids goofing off in the fire exit stairwell—but if Kamaguchi wanted to overwhelm his guests straightaway, the best way to do it was to flaunt the view. His furniture was too obviously expensive to be elegant. The same went for the carpeting, the paneling, the fireplace ignited by remote control. There was more artwork on the walls than Mariko would have expected from a gangster, but the collection was eclectic, probably selected by price tag more than by taste. It was an observation deck, not a living room, and the intended subject of observation was Kamaguchi’s personal wealth. Mariko noted that Glorious Victory Unsought was not in his collection.

Neighboring Roppongi had a nefarious reputation as a haven of the most powerful yakuzas, and Mariko wondered how it felt for a gangster of Kamaguchi’s stature to live so close to real power and still be removed from it. Ebisu was gauche by comparison, a Harley parked next to a sleek Ducati, expensive but without the class.

“There she is,” said Kamaguchi Hanzo, and as soon as she laid eyes on him she understood why his street name was the Bulldog. His underbite was more pronounced than his father’s, even more pronounced than the mug shots let on. His belly was as round as a barrel and his broad shoulders were sloped, as if his skull were so heavy it weighed them down. He had a thick head of jet-black hair, but otherwise he looked older than he really was. His rap sheet—which Mariko read as soon as she’d learned the hit from the Kamaguchi-gumi had fallen to him, and had read umpteen times since then—said he was only thirty-eight, but his wrinkles marked him at least ten years older than that. Just part of the territory, Mariko guessed, for one born into the high-stress life of criminal middle management. She wondered whether his moonlighting as a street enforcer caused him more stress or served as stress relief. As soon as the question struck her, intuition told her it was the latter. Not a comforting thought.

“The hero cop,” he said. “The dragon slayer. The girl who doesn’t know when she’s overstepped her limits.” He spoke with a slight rasp, as if he were just getting over laryngitis, or as if he’d been shouting all night the night before.

Mariko felt oddly cold. She’d expected her heart to race at the sight of this man, but instead she only flexed her fingers, calculating the exact distance between them and the grip of her SIG Sauer. She was still scared, but it was a sullen, brooding fear, not nervous jitters. “What do you want?” she said.

“To show you something.” He beckoned her over with a meaty hand. “Come on. I’m making kebabs.”

Given the sheer pretentiousness of the apartment, Mariko was surprised to learn Kamaguchi cooked for himself, but she had no interest in seeing him in the act—or rather, more pragmatically, no interest in following him into a roomful of knives. But she reminded herself that if he wanted to kill her, his own home would be the last place he’d do it, so she forced a cocky, relaxed deportment and followed him.

The Bulldog’s kitchen smelled of onion and peppers. He had a little pile of each heaped on his marble countertop, alongside a few other vegetables and a big steel bowl with chunks of beef marinating in it. He also had a laptop sitting on the counter, on the opposite end from where he was preparing his food, and given the sheer size of the kitchen, the opposite end was pretty far away. His fingers swept up a big chef’s knife in a reverse grip, spun it around in a motion that looked like he’d spent a lot of time with a blade in his hands, and gestured at the laptop with it. Mariko hated playing games like this—he was trying to boss her around—so she sat on a stool and waited.

At last Bullet woke the laptop, turned it toward her, and fired up its media player. What followed was a silent video feed from what looked like a closed-circuit security camera. It took Mariko a moment to recognize the room, since she hadn’t seen it from the camera’s perspective before, but soon enough she identified it as the salesman’s office from the packing and shipping company that she and Han had raided the night before.

A cop walked into the frame wearing full SWAT armor, including helmet, goggles, and Nomex mask. No part of his face was visible. He walked with a bit of a limp—not from a recent injury, Mariko guessed. He wasn’t hobbling; he just had a rolling gait. He took something off the shelf that Mariko remembered well, the one with the eclectic collection of antiques and trinkets. The feed was just clear enough that Mariko could make out a mask-shaped blob in the SWAT cop’s hands.

It was the most brazen theft she’d ever heard of. Stealing from the Kamaguchi-gumi was suicidal, and doing it in the middle of an active crime scene was a whole new level of crazy. Or maybe not, she thought. It was only crazy if you thought anyone was going to see you. If you were a modern-day ninja—the sort of person who could steal a huge sword from a seventeenth-floor apartment, for instance, even with all the doors and windows locked from the inside—then you could probably pull it off. She hit the PLAY button again, and watched a grainy image of the thief who, if her hunch was right, had also stolen Glorious Victory Unsought.

“You let those idiots take my stuff,” said Kamaguchi. “Now you’re going to get it back.”

Mariko ignored him and closed the media player, the better to look at a PDF that Kamaguchi had open in another window. It was an insurance appraisal—a big one, over two hundred pages long, but the page that was displayed showed a familiar antique half mask. Its rust-brown skin was pitted with age, and the blacksmith who forged it clearly had a gift, for the mask was astonishingly expressive, its anger as genuine as any living creature’s. Seen up close, its stubby horns looked cruel. Unlike the sketch in Yamada’s notebook, Kamaguchi’s mask had one broken fang, its tip sheared off in a perfectly straight line. Otherwise Yamada’s sketch was a pretty good likeness—though unlike the sketch, the PDF also included the mask’s appraised value. It was more than Mariko would make in the next ten years.

She tried to remember what Yamada’s notes said about her sword and the mask. They were related somehow. The mask had a connection to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of Japan’s founding fathers, but Glorious Victory did not. That cold, sullen fear wouldn’t let her remember any more than that. It wanted her undistracted.

“Hey!” Kamaguchi said. “Are you listening to me?”

“Sort of.” She was provoking him and she knew it. “Who are ‘those idiots’?”

“Huh?”

“You said we let ‘those idiots’ steal your mask. That means you’re assuming the guy in the video isn’t a cop, neh? Why? He doesn’t look coplike enough to you?”

Kamaguchi chuckled. “Heh. You guys aren’t dumb enough to take my shit. No, this was those religious pansies.”

“Who?”

“Cult types. Nut jobs. They’re the only ones who could have stolen it.”

“So why coming whining to me?” Mariko said, feeling her false bravado fade away, gradually being replaced by the real thing. It felt good to stand up to this guy. “Go kick their asses. Get your toy back.”

“You don’t want me to do that. I lost my patience with these sissies a long time ago. I go after them now, there’s going to be blood.”

He was bullshitting her and she knew it. Kamaguchi Hanzo wasn’t the type to shrink away from a little bloodshed. He was hiding something, but she wasn’t sure what yet.

So she took a gamble and headed for the door. “I’ve got things to do. You want to start talking straight, be my guest. Otherwise I’m—”

“Don’t be so touchy,” the Bulldog said. “No wonder Fuchida-san felt like killing you. Fucking women, neh?”

“Yeah. Women. Have a nice day.”

“Look, those cult types, they’re the ones who wanted to buy the mask. That’s what the dope was for. Get it? Last night was all because of the mask.”

Mariko came back and sat on her stool. “Keep going.”

Kamaguchi’s knife dealt the finishing blow to a long, slender zucchini and tore into the next one. “They wanted the mask. Wanted it right fucking now. Offered me way more than it was worth. So I okayed it. But then they told me you assholes were coming to crash the party, so they wanted to hurry things up. I told them to fuck off. But no, they show up anyway, and then everything goes to shit. Heh. I don’t need to tell you that, neh? You’re the ones who made it go to shit. And right after you’re done, right in the middle of your cleanup operation, their boy walks right in, takes my property, and walks out. Right under your goddamn noses.”

“So?”

“So get it back. It’s your fault.”

Mariko smirked. “Let me get this straight. TMPD’s to blame because you went through with a dope deal, didn’t pay up, and then your supplier came by to get what you said you’d pay him?”

Kamaguchi chopped into a pineapple, angry enough that his blade banging on the countertop made Mariko’s ears hurt. “I don’t owe them shit. I told them not to deliver. They delivered anyway, and then you showed up to seize it all. No. I don’t owe them a damn thing.”

“Yeah,” Mariko said, “you’re right. Poor you. Nobody ever gives you what you want.”

“Heh.” Again the knife cut through the pineapple with a bang. “Look at you, giving me shit in my own place. You think you’re pretty gokudo, don’t you?”

Mariko smirked. She had to admit she was feeling quite the badass at the moment. It made her feel powerful, sparring with this man, getting him to open up about his business dealings. Han had been exactly right in his assessment: if she could figure out a way to make this a regular occurrence, Kamaguchi Hanzo could prove to be one of the most valuable informants she’d ever find. That was assuming he didn’t go through with having her killed, but that too was empowering. Better to confront him head-on than to look in every shadow waiting for his hit man to strike.

“Well, maybe I could use some gokudo,” he said. Again the knife cut through the pineapple with a bang. “Besides, I got an in with you. You get the mask, I call off the hit. Deal?”

Mariko ignored that. She wasn’t about to start trusting a contract killer. “What is this mask anyway?”

“Nothing. Some antique. I collect that stuff.”

“You shouldn’t. You’ve got shit for taste.”

“Heh.” Kamaguchi motioned toward the living room/observation deck with the tip of his knife. “In my line of work you want things that’ll appreciate in value, neh? Art. Real estate. That kind of thing.”

“Because it’s handy for laundering money?”

“Bingo.”

Mariko was begrudgingly impressed. It took guts to talk business so openly with a cop. And the Bulldog wasn’t done. “So I got my front companies. A chemical supply place down by the harbor. A couple of travel agencies. That packing company whose door you knocked in.”

“Let me guess,” said Mariko. “You decorate every office with your art collection.”

“Heh. See, Bullet? We got her thinking like a criminal already.”

Idiot, she thought. Thinking like a criminal was in her job description. It was how she knew the mask thief was also the one who had stolen her sword. Kamaguchi’s mask wasn’t the only antique on that shelf. If the thief had been in it for the money, he’d have stolen everything valuable. And since he didn’t, the mask had special significance for him.

“There’s more going on here. Your friends—what did you call them? Pansies? They wanted the mask for a reason. You bought it for a reason. What was it?”

“Who knows? Sometimes I go on streaks. For a while there I was collecting samurai shit. Armor. Weapons. Your kind of thing, neh?”

Mariko didn’t care to be reminded of her samurai showdown. “That isn’t a mempo,” she said, pointing at the demon mask glowering back at her from the screen of his laptop.

“Huh?”

“Mempo. Face mask. As in armored. The samurai used to wear them. I thought you said you were a collector.”

He shrugged. Mariko shrugged back, aping him. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a wine cellar somewhere with a few hundred bottles whose names he couldn’t pronounce and whose nuances he couldn’t distinguish from a cheap lager. “This mask you bought is decorative,” she said. “Maybe for kabuki or something. It’s useless for combat.”

Another shrug. “I don’t give a shit what it is. I just want to know when you’re going to get it back for me.”

“Right. Because it was stolen by those mean boys you were playing with after school, neh?”

Kamaguchi finished off his pineapple, his hands and blade sticky with the juice. He licked one of his knuckles clean with his too-fat tongue. “Look at the balls on you. I ought to make you drop your pants. Make sure you’re a chick.”

Mariko hopped off her stool and headed for the door. “Have a nice day, Kamaguchi-san.”

“All sass, no patience. You’re a chick, all right.”

She heard his knife drop on the countertop, felt his heavy footfalls behind her. Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, she stabbed the elevator’s down button with the stub that had once been her right forefinger. But her left hand was ready to reach for her gun.

“Okay, fine, you win,” the Bulldog said. When he saw her turn away from the elevator, his shoulders sagged in relief. “I ought to put you on my payroll. That way you’d have to listen to me.”

Mariko gave him her most insolent smile. “You couldn’t afford me. Now, you want me to look into these people, you’ll have to give me something.”

“I don’t have to give you shit. This is my house, girl.”

“Well, then you’re out of luck, because you don’t know where these guys are, and neither do I.”

“What makes you think I don’t—?”

“Please. If you knew where to find the people you’re looking for, would you be talking to me? No. So you lost them. So start talking.”

Kamaguchi frowned, exaggerating his underbite and making his lower teeth stick out. “You’re an annoying little—”

“We can start with why they were so insistent on getting the mask last night. Why did they risk showing up when they knew we were going to launch a raid?”

“Who knows? We’re talking religious nuts here, not businessmen.”

“What makes you say they’re religious?”

“Heh.” He shook his head in disgust and licked off another finger. “They call themselves the Divine Wind, for one thing. Sounds pretty gokudo at first, naming themselves after kamikaze dive-bombers, but with these guys you get the feeling it’s more about the divinity and less about the ‘fuck it, let’s go down fighting’ thing.”

“How can you tell?”

“You want to tell me you can’t tell the difference between some guy ringing your doorbell and some missionary ringing it? It’s the way they dress, the way they talk—all this ‘there is no place the wind cannot reach’ horseshit. Why can’t they just threaten you like a normal criminal? I swear, this is the last time I’m doing business with a bunch of cultists.”

Mariko wasn’t a fan of making assessments based on others’ gut feelings—especially not people with nicknames like “the Bulldog”—but in this case she guessed he was probably right about the mask thief being religious. For one thing, anyone who deliberately crossed the Kamaguchi-gumi would have to be pretty optimistic about the afterlife. For another, walking through an active crime scene dressed as a SWAT operative took a certain kind of lunatic fearlessness, one Mariko thought she was more likely to find among religious extremists than the dope slinger set.

And then there was the mask itself: an expensive trinket, yes, but the street value of the speed seizure was more than double what Kamaguchi’s insurance assessment said the mask was worth. Apart from religious fanaticism, Mariko couldn’t imagine what could tempt anyone to pay double its value and risk being caught in a police raid. It was a sure bet that the cops wouldn’t have seized the mask. It wasn’t contraband. The only reason Mariko had noticed it at all was that she’d half remembered that sketch of it in Yamada’s notebook.

So why not wait a few days to steal it? Someone could have recognized the perp wasn’t SWAT. He might have been masked and armored, but that limping, rolling gait was distinctive. It only made sense for the thief to come for the mask if he had to have it right then, at that appointed time for some appointed purpose, and that suggested a very weird belief set. Very weird, very specific, very strongly held—all of it pointed to a cult.

It pointed to the break-in at her apartment too. Centuries ago, the mask had some kind of connection to Inazuma steel. Last night, Kamaguchi’s mask and Mariko’s sword were stolen within hours of each other. It couldn’t be coincidence.

Now that Mariko thought about it, she wondered how the perp had stolen authentic SWAT armor too. Apart from the military, only SWAT could legally own fully automatic weapons, and so to say they kept their gear under lock and key was a gross understatement. Better to say it should have been as easy to steal a tank as to steal a bulletproof vest with SWAT’s label on it. Yet somehow this perp had the full getup.

Did these Divine Wind guys have an inside man? Was that how they’d known the raid was coming in advance? Or were they really modern-day ninja? Had they stolen the SWAT gear just as they’d stolen her sword? By passing through walls? It was impossible, and Mariko didn’t believe in the impossible. She was a detective; she believed what the evidence led her to believe. And faced with evidence of the impossible, a detective’s only choice was to reconsider what she meant by “possible.” In this case, that might mean a ninja clan operating in twenty-first-century Tokyo.

But that was something she’d have to sort out later. For now, she had a yakuza hit man bullshitting her. “So let’s pretend you don’t know why they want the mask,” she said.

“I’m telling you—”

“Never mind. How did they find out you have it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on. If you were an art collector, then yeah, maybe they’d come looking for you specifically. But you’re not. You just like to buy expensive toys that make you feel like you’re actually upper class instead of just pretending to be.”

“This is my house,” he said, slapping his chef’s knife down on the counter. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to—”

“Sure you are. You don’t know where to find the guys you’re looking for. You need me, neh? To save face. You lost your little plaything, and you’d better get it back before the street finds out you lost a mountain of speed too. As soon as word gets out that the Bulldog can’t protect his own doghouse . . . well, how long have you got before someone puts you to sleep?”

He glared at her with a raw, animalistic fury she’d only seen once before—in the eyes of his enforcer, Fuchida Shuzo, as Fuchida was trying to hack her to pieces. Kamaguchi would have strangled her then and there if he didn’t need her. She had no doubt of that. What she did have doubts about was his capacity for anger management. If she pushed him too far, he might kill her and figure out how to fix that little problem afterward. But backing down wasn’t a great option either. For bulldogs and yakuzas alike, fighting was all about posturing. To back down was to invite an immediate attack.

So Mariko took a gamble and just glared back at him.

If anything, he got angrier. “You’re walking pretty fucking close to the edge, girl.”

“You want to be gokudo, that’s where you walk.”

For a moment she thought she pushed him too far. He inhaled noisily, deeply, expanding his broad shoulders—maybe fueling up for a short but deadly fight that would cost Mariko her life. Then hung his head back and laughed. “You got some fire in you, that’s for sure. I can’t tell if I want to fight you or fuck you.”

“I can tell you what happens if you try either one. Now what’s it going to be? Are you going to tell me what I need to know?”

18

“They played him,” Mariko said. “The light’s green, by the way.”

“Who played him?” said Han. “What the hell happened up there?”

“Green means go,” she said.

At last he managed to direct some of his concentration away from her and back to driving. “Mariko, come on.”

“I told you already: those cult fanatics. The Divine Wind.”

“I thought you said he played them.”

“That’s what Kamaguchi thinks. He says a buyer approached him maybe six months ago through one of his front companies, some chemical supply place down in Odaiba. The buyer was a front man for this Divine Wind. The guy’s been buying hexamine by the barrel, making payment in Daishi. Kamaguchi says he conned the guy into paying double the volume he should have. But I think the buyer marked him as the owner of the mask from the beginning and wanted to play dumb.”

“Wait a minute,” Han said. “Did you say hexamine?”

“Yep.”

“So our buyer’s making MDA?”

“Looks like it,” said Mariko, happy to hear Han was thinking along the same lines. A boutique amphetamine like MDA fit in perfectly with Mariko’s mental profile of the cultist fanatic clientele. They were more likely to go for stimulants than depressants. MDA was both an upper and a hallucinogen, a religious experience in tablet form. Hexamine might have had a hundred industrial uses Mariko had never heard of, but in narcotics circles it was only known as a key ingredient in MDA.

“So his buyer’s got to be a hell of a cook,” said Han. “MDA’s rare, but this Daishi is something else. It’s not just the best speed on the street; it’s also cheap enough that these dudes can afford to sling it around by the truckload.”

“You’re thinking they’re gaijin?”

“Maybe. Or sourcing their precursor chemicals from out of country, anyway. Someplace cheap; it’s obvious they don’t need the cash. This mask, is it the only antique they’re interested in? Or have they been trading for a lot of stuff like that?”

“Kamaguchi says it was just the mask, just this one time. Otherwise it’s always the hexamine. But I think the mask thief and my sword thief are the same guy.”

Han’s eyebrows popped halfway up his forehead. “Seriously? That’s a hell of an inference.”

Mariko explained her logic. Han gave her a dubious look. “Twenty-first-century ninja clan, huh? Maybe you need to go back to the drawing board with that one.”

“Okay, fine,” she said, “the last part might be a little imaginative. But you have to admit it’s a hell of a coincidence, these two artifacts being stolen on the same night.”

Han agreed, his long hair flopping as he nodded. “Point taken,” he said, “but how does that help us make an arrest?”

“Well . . . it doesn’t. It’s still true, though.”

Mariko was embarrassed, but at least she got a sympathetic smile out of Han. “Chalk up a point for Oshiro,” he said. “Back to the other thing, I have to tell you I just don’t get it. Why are these guys trading speed just to make MDA? Why not just cook the MDA themselves? Cut Kamaguchi out completely?”

Mariko shrugged. “Maybe they can’t. Maybe the hexamine’s too hard to come by wherever they’re from.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Han went silent, frowning and looking out the windshield for a long time. At length he said, “Something’s not adding up. How much product are we talking about here? How much hexamine has Kamaguchi been selling them?”

“A barrel every few weeks,” said Mariko.

“So why haven’t we seen any arrests? If a new wave of psychedelic speed hit the streets, I’d have heard of it.”

“The Daishi got past you.”

“Yeah,” said Han, “and I’m mighty pissed off about that. My people are letting me down. But in a daily log it wouldn’t say ‘Daishi’; it would just say ‘amphetamine.’ We should have seen log entries with ‘MDA’ on them by now.”

“Maybe they’re selling it overseas? No. Never mind.”

Han shook his head too. Japan was expensive. Dealers here imported from Thailand, North Korea, Cambodia—the cheap markets. Export the other way didn’t make sense. Mariko wished she’d reached that conclusion a few seconds earlier, before she’d said the stupid thing she’d said. She supposed she should be glad she caught her mistake before Han had to correct her, but she was embarrassed nonetheless. It was the years of perfectionism that did it, the fear of her male counterparts seeing her as a girl instead of a policewoman. That wasn’t a big concern with Han, but still, even the little failures burned, lingering, like droplets of hot oil spat from a frying pan.

“So this Daishi,” she said, “what are the chances it’s the same stuff we seized from that packing company last night? I mean, it’s got to be, neh?”

“Got to be,” Han said. “We should set up a couple of buy-busts just to be sure, get ourselves a sample to compare it to—but I’m getting sidetracked. Get back to your meeting on the mound with Kamaguchi.”

“Okay,” Mariko said, “so our buyer marks Kamaguchi, plays to his ego by overpaying for the hexamine, then says he wants the mask and hints that he’ll overpay again—”

“So Kamaguchi thinks he’s got a live one, because this dumb-ass has been overpaying for months.” Han laughed in disbelief. “You’d think a career criminal would have seen that con before.”

“Yeah, these guys never made sense to me. Kamaguchi’s not a moron. He’s not even lazy. You wouldn’t believe how much work he puts into keeping his money off the books. If he worked half as hard as a car salesman as he does as a yakuza, he’d still be able to rent a place in Ebisu and none of his clients would ever try to play him the way he just got played.”

“Maybe so, but nobody pays for cars in amphetamines.”

“Antique masks either.”

“Touché.” He stopped to think for the space of about half a block—which wasn’t long, because he was driving a lot faster than Mariko usually saw him drive. “Wait. Why pay him at all?”

“Who? The Divine Wind?”

“Yeah. I mean, I get why he wants to be paid in Daishi instead of cash. His own product is shit, and it’s expensive to boot. The Daishi’s better all around. But why should these dudes pay at all? They’re obviously willing to steal from him; why not start there? Just waltz in and steal the mask from the get-go?”

“Would you piss off the Bulldog if you didn’t have to?”

“Well, no, now that you put it that way.” Han gunned it through an intersection to make a yellow light. “So you’re thinking what? They tried to play it straight at first, but then he strung them along—”

“Longer than they could wait.” Mariko nodded. “I think last night is just them running out of time and getting desperate.”

They sat in silence for a while, Han driving, Mariko watching the city fly by, both of them mulling over the idea. “All right,” Han said at last, “I’ll buy it. Still, the whole thing looks too good to be true for Kamaguchi-gumi, doesn’t it? They get better product, and more of it, and all they have to part with is a chemical sitting around some warehouse, a precursor chemical for a drug they don’t even cook.”

“So what? This is breaking news? Dealer tries to get top-quality dope for bargain basement prices? Not much of a headline, Han.”

“No, I’m asking, what’s in it for the Divine Wind? If a deal’s too good to be true on one side, then the other side’s getting the shaft, neh? And they had six months to think about this. They’ve got to be the dumbest bunch of drug dealers I’ve ever heard of.”

“You’re thinking like a narc. The way to solve this is to think like a cultist.”

“Huh.” Han thought for a second, then shook his head. Laughing at himself, he said, “See, this is what we need you for, Mariko. You know how you’re riding yourself all the time for being the new recruit in Narcotics? Well, stop. I’ve been swimming in this pool so long I forget there’s such a thing as dry land. We need you. You’re amphibious.”

“Gee, you really know how to make a girl feel good about herself.”

“Come on, you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I do. Amphibious. Very sexy. That line’s got to kill on the speed dating scene.”

At last she got the blush she wanted out of him. “Fine,” he said, “so I’m a Neanderthal. Guilty as charged. Will you teach me how to think like a cultist now?”

Mariko indulged in a self-satisfied smile. “The MDA’s a hallucinogen, neh? Perfect for tripping at, you know, prayer meetings or whatever. So maybe . . . maybe the priest wears the mask to heighten the trip.”

“So what are you saying? These guys are devil worshippers? Please don’t tell me they stole your sword to make human sacrifices.”

“I don’t know. I’m just spitballing here. But fanatics are willing to risk a lot for their faith, neh? It goes a long way toward explaining why they’re taking such awful risks to get a mask and a sword. Maybe they need them for some ritual that happens on a certain day—”

“Or when Venus is aligned with Jupiter or whatever.” Han thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, could be. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

“How do you figure that?”

“We’re on our way to Intensive Care. One of our suspects lawyered up.”

19

Mariko didn’t care for hospitals. She supposed nobody actually liked hospitals, especially when, like Mariko, they’d recently been confined to one. She was laid up for a solid week after her sword fight with Fuchida, but that wasn’t why she had a hang-up about hospitals. It was her father’s death that made her so uneasy.

It wasn’t an easy thing to explain. There was no drama to it. She hadn’t carried him bleeding into the emergency room. She wasn’t in the room for his death rattle. She hadn’t been there at all. She’d known he was sick when she went off to school, but her parents hadn’t revealed how sick. He’d been weak for a long time by then, long enough that the daily fear of death had subsided. It was disturbing how quickly a family could return to business as usual even when one of their number was dying. Get the groceries, do your homework, clean the dishes, Dad’s got cancer. So Mariko went off to college with her father’s blessing, and then—in her memory it had only been a matter of days—her mom called to tell her he was dead.

For years after that, Mariko had wished she could have been in that hospital room. At a minimum, she wished she’d been the one to make the choice of whether or not to come. At eighteen she hadn’t had it in her to make that choice unemotionally; she would have dropped everything, no matter the effect on her GPA, and that was precisely why her parents hadn’t called. They knew their daughter well.

All the same, Mariko still thought she should have had the right to make the choice herself. Now and again, even all these years later, she tried to imagine the room where he died. There were no photographs. It wasn’t the sort of event you broke out the cameras for. Mariko had never asked her mom to describe it—nor her sister, now that she thought about it, though Saori was younger, so she’d been there until the end. For all Mariko knew, the room where her dad had died looked exactly like the room she was standing in now.

She’d never seen the man in this room before, but she’d seen plenty of battery victims in her time. He seemed to sink into his bed. Both eyes were blacked. A huge swollen dome dominated the right side of his face from eyebrow to hairline, obviously the result of some massive blunt force trauma; it looked like someone had managed to shove a hamburger bun up under one of his eyelids. A neck brace squished wrinkles into his unshaven cheeks. Both lips were punctuated with cuts. His forearms were nothing but knotted, swollen bruises—almost certainly defensive wounds—but neither was broken. In short, by the standards of the Kamaguchi-gumi, he’d gotten off light. He’d stay under observation for a few days, but he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

The suspect’s mouth moved constantly. At first Mariko thought he was delirious, but after a while she saw he was chanting the same words over and over again. A mantra. His eyes blazed at her, the whites as brilliant as the full moon, unnaturally bright thanks to the red and purple contusions that surrounded them. Mariko could barely hear him, but given the way he stared at her, it seemed he meant to speak directly to her. And that wasn’t what she found weird; the weird part was her sneaking suspicion that this man looked at everyone with that same thousand-yard stare. It made her not want to get close enough to hear that mantra of his.

The only other person in the room was SWAT’s tactical medic, who was so obviously exhausted that Mariko wasn’t sure he’d be safe to drive himself home. “He’s been spouting that same line ever since we put him in the ambo,” the tac medic said. “Never stops, never sleeps.”

“That’s speed for you,” Han said.

Mariko had reached the same conclusion. Staying up for days on end was probably just another day at the office for a cult that cooked massive quantities of amphetamines. On the other hand, selling that much product probably left a good amount of cash on hand for legal fees.

The lawyer was already reaching into his pocket for his business card as he walked into the room. “Officers,” he said, giving Mariko and Han a short bow. His tone was a little too familiar, his dress a little shy of the immaculate benchmark set by the rest of his profession. His shirt was pressed to perfection, but he hadn’t quite tucked it all the way in. His suit was of second-best quality, which was to say far more expensive than anything Mariko or even Lieutenant Sakakibara could ever justify putting in their rotation, yet not quite up to snuff in the scrutinizing glare of the courtroom spotlight. If he were a gaijin businessman, no one would ever have noticed these details, but in a Japanese defense attorney they bespoke pride, swagger, even gall.

But it was understated swagger, swagger by implication, just like the quality of the business card he proffered with both hands, one to Han and then one to Mariko. The card was not paper but wood, a veneer thinner than cardstock and smoother than silk. HAMAYA JIRO, it read, ATTORNEY AT LAW.

It was an implicit request for Mariko and Han to offer their own cards, and to be professional they had no choice but to oblige. Hamaya had already set the terms of their relationship. “I’m sure you’ll agree,” he said, “that Akahata-san is not yet in any condition to endure a police interrogation.”

Mariko eyed the man in the bed, whose eyes still blazed like a madman’s. His lips still moved in their playback loop, chanting their mantra. “Akahata, is it? He looks ready to talk to me, Counselor.”

Hamaya gave her an insouciant bow. “He speaks, yes, but not to anyone in this room. He prays for Joko Daishi to liberate our souls.”

Han and Mariko shared a knowing glance. It was the second time they’d across the word daishi this morning. Without seeing the kanji, there was no way of knowing what daishi meant—with these two characters it meant “nun,” with those two, “cardboard”—and so when Nanami had said the Kamaguchi-gumi was slinging Daishi these days, there wasn’t much for a narc detective to do with the information. Daishi could have been a nickname, an ingredient, anything. But in context, Joko Daishi could only be Great Teacher Joko, the same daishi as Kobo Daishi, whose name was known to everyone. Kobo Daishi was the sobriquet given to Kukai, the eighth-century monk who had contributed as much to Buddhism as anyone in Japanese history. No doubt the name Joko Daishi was meant to evoke images of Kobo Daishi, earning credibility by association.

“Joko Daishi, huh?” Mariko eyed the tweaker in the hospital bed. “Let me guess: he’s the leader of your Divine Wind?”

“The very same,” said Hamaya, bowing, his eyes closing, his voice full of reverence. Akahata’s chanting went from a silent mouthing to a barely audible whisper. His lips redoubled their pace.

Not seeing the kanji for Joko, Mariko couldn’t do anything with the name. It would have been nice to have something to plug into a search engine. She’d have liked to wheedle the name the old-fashioned way too, but somehow she didn’t think it would fly if she suddenly expressed interest in joining the Divine Wind and asked Hamaya to write down his whack-job leader’s name and home address.

The latter might well have been a psychiatric ward. There was no doubt in her mind that this Joko Daishi was a loony and an extremist. It took an extremist to command such loyalty from Akahata, a brand of loyalty that was almost literally undying: that head trauma might easily have killed him, and if it had, he’d have gone to his grave with Joko Daishi’s name on his lips. Nor did Mariko harbor any doubt that the Daishi pills that Nanami was popping these days were directly connected to the man called Daishi that Akahata prayed to. One glance at Han told her he was thinking the same thing.

“Good to know,” Han said. “Now let me take a wild guess and say the way Joko Daishi liberates our souls is to get us all high.”

Hamaya admitted the smallest of smirks. “That would be illegal, Detective.”

“Now, what if the thing he was using to do the liberating was MDA?” Mariko said, making Hamaya shift his attention to her. She and Han made a habit of speaking in turns. They had a good rapport that way, each anticipating where the other was going, riffing off each other, always redirecting a suspect’s focus, never letting him feel settled. It worked on suspects’ lawyers too. “A nice high with some gentle hallucinations—good spiritual stuff, that. Pass enough of that around and you could probably start a cult.”

“Maybe so,” said Han. “Of course, he’d need a steady supply to make enough MDA for a whole cult to take part.”

“But wait,” said Mariko, “hasn’t your client been making deals with the Kamaguchi-gumi for whole barrels of hexamine?”

“That’s right,” said Han. “He’s been doing that for months, hasn’t he? Do you know what you can make with hexamine, Hamaya-san?”

“I’m sure I have no idea.”

“Well, your client does,” said Mariko. “I mean, he’d have to. He knows how to cook speed, after all. Lots of it. Enough to make himself very rich—rich enough to purchase expensive antiques, for instance. Masks, swords, that kind of thing. If he didn’t feel like stealing them, of course.”

Han poked Hamaya on the shoulder and whispered, “This is the part where you say, ‘Allegedly.’”

“Now, why would a guy who likes to cook amphetamines give a whole bunch of his product away?” said Mariko, laying claim to Hamaya’s most obvious legal riposte. She figured they might as well get a good look at it now, before the case went to court. Urano Soseki, the capo that oversaw the Kamaguchi-gumi’s shipping and packing plant, had claimed the same defense right from the outset, just minutes after Mariko had blasted him through that door: there was never any dope deal. No money had changed hands. In court Hamaya could make a mirroring claim on Akahata’s behalf: since the speed was in the Kamaguchi-gumi’s possession, it clearly belonged to them. A buy wasn’t a buy until someone paid for something.

That wouldn’t wash for Urano’s crew. Just having the speed on the premises was more than enough to convict them. But Akahata was innocent until proven guilty. Unless Mariko and Han could prove he’d been involved in the deal—and holding a big wad of dope money was the usual proof in these cases—Akahata’s only criminal activity that night had been as the victim of aggravated battery. She and Han always had the option of getting Urano to dime out Akahata, but Urano’s credibility as a witness wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny. Mariko could take her turn on the stand, but she’d have a hard time convincing a jury why Akahata would use fifty or sixty kilos of speed to buy an old rusty mask, and an even harder time explaining how she’d discovered that information while hanging out in Kamaguchi Hanzo’s kitchen. Unless Akahata admitted to felony possession, Hamaya would see him walk.

But Hamaya ignored that line of defense completely. “No one gives contraband away for free, Officer.”

“Oh?” said Han. If Mariko read him right, he, like her, was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Hamaya gave them a thin smile. “Please. This little back-and-forth game of yours might work on some poor, hapless purse snatcher you drag into your interrogation room, but we’re all professionals here. There’s no need to insult my intelligence.”

Han was at a loss, literally dumbstruck. His mouth worked, but he couldn’t make it say anything.

Mariko jumped in: “Just what are you suggesting, Hamaya-san? Are you admitting your client’s guilty of felony possession? Trafficking? Conspiracy? What?”

“I don’t wish to be presumptuous, Officers, but allow me to hazard a guess as to your intentions. You expected me to claim my client is innocent. Had no part in the drug transaction, or something like this, at any rate. Since you’re utterly lacking in evidence, you’ve considered trying to get one of your other suspects to testify against him. Being good at your jobs, in all likelihood you’d succeed, and then my client would be sentenced to a very long prison term. Was that your plan, more or less?”

Mariko had never been belittled so politely in all her life. “Uh,” she said.

“I guess you think you’re pretty smart,” said Han, whose tone suggested he didn’t take kindly to having his mind read. “Well, two can play this game. You’re not really Akahata’s lawyer, are you? You’re here for his boss, this Joko Daishi, whatever the hell that means—”

“Great Teacher of the Purging Fire,” said Hamaya.

“—who, by the way, we’ve already got by the balls. We know he’s been buying the hexamine, we know he’s been cooking, and we know there’s a new amphetamine on the street called Daishi that’s selling like pointy ears at a Star Trek convention. We also know it’s the Kamaguchi-gumi that’s slinging the Daishi, and it’s only a matter of time before we confirm that your client is their delivery boy. Now we’ve got your boy and you’ve got a jabber-mouth tweaker spouting gibberish all day long. The boss-man starts worrying that his disciple might spout something incriminating, so he sends you down here for damage control. How am I doing so far? Is that the plan, more or less?”

Hamaya’s laugh chilled Mariko to the bone. An “okay, you got me” laugh would have suited her just fine. She’d even have taken a derisive “you cops are so goddamn stupid” laugh or a haughty “I’m far too big for you to touch me” laugh—something to make it clear that Han had him dead to rights. A humorless grin. A little swallow. The tiniest flicker of guilt. Anything. But Hamaya’s laugh conveyed an entirely different subtext: Not only are you not in the ballpark, but you’re not even in the right sport. We have even less to fear from you than we thought. You haven’t got the slightest clue of what you’re dealing with here.

Han had missed something. Something big. And Mariko couldn’t spot it either.

She did what she always did in such circumstances: she started collecting details. She couldn’t help it; it was just a habit of mind. And the first datum she caught was a cold light in Han’s eyes. He wasn’t responding with a detached curiosity like Mariko’s. He was furious.

Immediately her detective’s mind started seeking connections. She’d seen Han angry before. Losing what should have been a win in court on a trivial technicality. This wasn’t like that. Losing what should have been a win because the perp’s lawyer was just too damn good at his job. This wasn’t like that kind of anger either. Losing big at Lieutenant Sakakibara’s Thursday night poker table, getting conned on a hand that should have been a sure thing. That’s what this was. Han didn’t like it when people got into his head. Or rather, he didn’t like it when they got in uninvited. Mariko could read his mind all she liked. They were partners. But when Hamaya did it, he’d violated the most sacred kind of privacy. He’d intruded the sanctum sanctorum. And Han was ready to throw down with him for that.

“Han,” Mariko said, interposing herself between her partner and Hamaya, “why don’t you step outside for a second?”

“This prick knows his client’s guilty.”

“I know.”

Han’s face was getting red. Staring Hamaya right in the eye, he said, “He’s going to tell his client to run. He’s going to aid and abet a known criminal. I’m not going to stand here and let him do it.”

“You don’t have a choice,” said Hamaya, thoroughly enjoying himself. “I’m afraid Akahata-san hasn’t been charged with anything at this point, and until you convince one of your other suspects to attest otherwise, you only have an innocent assault victim and his attorney.”

“You’ll want to do yourself a favor and shut the hell up,” Mariko said, shooting him a quick glare over her shoulder. “Han, you need to take a walk. Outside. Right now.”

“Fuck this guy—”

“Please. For me? I’ll handle him.”

Han paused for a moment, tense, as if coiling to spring. Mariko started thinking about which restraining holds worked best from her current position. Then Han turned and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

“I daresay that got the nurses’ attention,” said Hamaya.

“You’re an asshole,” said Mariko.

“And you, Sergeant, are in over your head. There’s nothing you can do to prevent my client from walking out of here—”

“Wheeling out of here.”

Hamaya conceded the point with a little tilt of the head. “As you like. He and I will be departing shortly. That leaves you in a position to consider your next move very carefully.”

Now it was Mariko’s turn to concede the point. She, Han, and Hamaya had all foreseen it: it was illegal to tail Hamaya or Akahata without a warrant. They weren’t suspects in a larger conspiracy—yet. That conspiracy, whatever it was, was just starting to take shape in Mariko’s mind. Joko Daishi was connected to the Daishi that dealers were slinging on the street. That much was clear. This lawyer and his lunatic cultist client were connected too. And Akahata wasn’t a weak link among the conspirators. That much Han had wrong. Akahata was an asset, not a liability, and he was important enough that Hamaya had to sweep him out from law enforcement’s grasp even before it was medically safe to do so.

The best course for Han and Mariko was to follow these two to Joko Daishi, and Han had foreseen that. That was part of why he was so pissed off: Hamaya had seen his move coming and outmaneuvered him. Given even a few more hours, Mariko and Han might have secured their warrant. With that in hand, tailing Akahata and his Teflon-coated lawyer would have been the easiest thing in the world. And now, because they couldn’t do this very simple thing, a dangerous man was going to go free, and he was going to do something very bad very soon.

He wasn’t her sword burglar. He’d been in the ICU when the theft took place. But there was no doubt in Mariko’s mind that Akahata was dangerous. For as long as she’d been in the room he’d been staring her down, chanting his mantra. This was a man with a mission, and he would not rest until he saw it done. His fanaticism was at least as powerful as the drugs running through his system. He did not sleep. His every waking breath was devoted to his cause. And whatever his mission was, it was much larger than swelling the ranks of his cult by getting a bunch of people high. That wasn’t the kind of “liberating souls” that was on Joko Daishi’s agenda. Mariko had no proof of that, but gut instinct allowed no other conclusion.

People in an altered state were malleable. Akahata and Joko Daishi were going to manipulate a lot of them, and Mariko wanted to know what for.

In a few minutes she would have a choice to make. She could abandon her duty, blow off the standards of probable cause, and shadow Hamaya and Akahata until they led her to this mysterious Joko Daishi. Or she could do what she knew was right and let her two best leads walk out into the endless streets of Tokyo, never to be seen again—or worse, not to be seen again until it was too late.

She walked out on Hamaya to look for Han, but there was no sign of him. Mariko would have to make her decision alone. A big part of her wished it was a hard choice, but in her heart she already knew exactly what she was going to do.