Japantown (4 page)

—

“Simple,” Renna reminded me.

I raked my fingers through my hair. “After the fire, I talked to everyone, Frank. I went everywhere, even Taiwan, Singapore, and Shanghai, on the chance the kanji was a Chinese offshoot. I got nothing. No one’s
ever
seen it. If it weren’t for that old man in Kagoshima, I’d have lost my mind.”

Renna rolled his marbles as he listened. “But you did have
something
. And if this turns out to be the same, we’ve got another shot at it.”

“I can’t imagine it being different.”

“All right. You know the M&N Tavern on Fifth?”

“Sure.”

“Early dinner around four? I’ll bring you the kanji after the labbies run it under the scope.”

“Works for me.”

“Think it’ll clean up?”

I nodded. “If standard calligraphy ink was used, it’ll come through undamaged. Once the ink dries, it resists most liquids. That’s why so many old scroll paintings have come down intact.”

Renna’s eyes sparkled at what I imagined was the first encouraging news of the night. “Good to hear,” he said.

“Good and bad. If we get a match, we get big trouble.”

He nodded unhappily. “You’re talking about the multiple vics in both places, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Not promising, I know. But I signed on for the full tour. The old guy let slip about a body count at either of the Japan sites?”

“No. But he did have his suspicions.”

“Which were?”

“A very methodical serial killer.”

CHAPTER 6

6:38 A.M.

W
HEN
the knock came, I was whipping up some scrambled eggs and toast while listening to
Zen II,
an early album by Katsuya Yokoyama, one of Japan’s bamboo flute virtuosos. In this piece he played soulful tunes with a knowing calm. In others he stretched his notes to the throaty hoarseness of a mountain wind. He could make the
shakuhachi
wail or mourn, his inflection teetering on the edge, straining for a hard truth. All things I knew something about.

I unlocked the door and Jennifer Yumiko Brodie, my six-year-old daughter, skipped into the room with a “Morning, Daddy,” and reached out toward me expectantly. She was returning from a sleepover with Lisa Meyers, a classmate who lived upstairs.

I scooped her up in a swift hug, then raced back to the kitchen, cradling her in the crook of one arm while I attended the eggs with my free hand. Jenny kissed my cheek. As her long black pigtails swung across her face, she yawned and gave me a sleepy grin. Looking longingly at the gap where her central incisors would emerge and fill out the smile, I wished she could stay six forever. If not for her sake, then for mine.

Wrinkling her nose Jenny said, “What’s that smell?”

“Lacquer from a tea bowl I’m repairing.”

The lacquer build on the bowl needed two more days to dry before I applied the gold finish, so I left it on the mantel under an impromptu tent of plastic wrap to keep dust off.

Jenny was looking at me strangely. “Daddy, are you okay?”

My daughter didn’t miss much. After Japantown, I’d worked my way through the remaining bottles of Anchor Steam in the fridge, then topped them off with a good measure of a Niigata saké brewed with some of the best rice in Japan. I drank long and hard to my utter failure to decipher the kanji that most likely put my wife in the ground—and now an entire Japanese family in the city morgue. Japantown should have scared the hell out of me, but instead it fueled a dormant rage that uncoiled from the darker regions of my mind like a snake unwinding itself after an overlong hibernation.

I set my daughter down. “Sorry, Jen. I didn’t sleep much.”

She pointed at the kitchen wall. “What’s that hole?”

Somewhere between the third or fourth shot of saké, I’d cursed the kanji and slammed my fist through solid plaster. Only my martial arts training prevented me from pulverizing a dozen bones in my hand with the stunt. But none of my defensive skills equipped me to deal with the sharp mind of my daughter.

I colored slightly. “My anger got away from me last night.”

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“I’m six, Daddy. I can understand.”

“I know you can, Jen, but later, okay?”

“Okay, but I won’t forget,” she said, and gave me her I’m-not-a-little-kid-anymore look, then ceremoniously handed over the
Chronicle
before flopping down on her pink- and yellow-striped monstrosity of a beanbag, webbing her hands behind her head, shutting her eyes, and sighing in pleasure. Bliss in my daughter’s universe.

I scanned the front page for news of the killings. Nothing. To give the SFPD time to work the case without the pressure of public scrutiny, city officials had clamped the lid down tight. Amazingly, they’d managed to dodge the newshounds. The reprieve wouldn’t last long, but even a few hours without the dogs snapping was a blessing.

Behind closed eyes, Jenny said, “I wish I could see Mommy like I can see the China guy.”

I stopped reading. “What China guy?”

“The funny man in the hallway with the twitchy eye. I think he was gonna steal our paper but I surprised him.”

After one of the residents complained about Jenny’s constant pounding up and down the stairs between our place and Lisa’s, my daughter had perfected the art of navigating the route in silence. Obviously, her sudden appearance had startled someone. While I didn’t think anyone was out to spirit away our newspaper, the “funny” part raised my parental antennae.

“Did he say anything?”

“He asked my name.”

A coldness surged through me. “Did you tell him?”

“Sure.”

My whole body turned to ice. “And?”

“He said my name was pretty and asked if I knew whatever floor Ms. Colton lived on.”

Mental alarms blared. No one by the name of Colton lived in our building.

“When did this happen?”

“Right before I knocked.”

I ran to the window. The building’s single elevator was notoriously slow, and our view not only gave us a grand sweep of the Golden Gate Bridge but also overlooked the street from four floors up. Jenny joined me, and not five seconds later an athletic Asian male wearing baggy pants, an oversize T-shirt, and a baseball cap with the bill riding the back of his neck hit the sidewalk and headed north. Narrow airfoil sunglasses obscured his eyes.

“Is that him?”

“Uh-huh.”

My jaw clenched. “Stay here and lock the door. I’ll be right back.”

Jenny’s eyes pooled with worry. “Where are you going?”

“To have a chat with the China guy.”

“Can I come?”

“No.” I headed for the door.

Jenny grabbed my arm. “Don’t leave me, Daddy.”

She meant,
Don’t go out there
, with a subtext of
Don’t leave me alone.

“I can’t let this pass, Jen. That man shouldn’t have been in our building talking to you.”

“That’s Mr. Kimbel’s job, not yours.”

“Once the China guy asked your name, it became my job, not the super’s. Do you want to wait at Lisa’s?”

“No, I’ll wait here. But come back soon, okay?”

“Don’t worry. I’m only going to talk to him.”

I hugged my daughter, then hustled out the door, feeling guilty for leaving her but knowing I’d feel a hell of a lot worse if Homeboy reappeared later because I neglected to scare him off now.

I hoped the confrontation would end with a verbal warning, but if it turned physical I was ready. My martial arts training stood me in good stead. After seventeen years in crime-free Japan, my life on the edge of South Central had been anything but restful. While my mother worked as a freelance art curator, supplementing her spotty income with cashier jobs at Rite Aid and the like, I sparred at a pair of local dojos to keep up my karate and judo.

When the riffraff started sniffing around, I flattened a few noses with the heel of my foot and they scurried away. But I knew I’d need more to handle the big hitters, should they ever appear. Help came in the form of our next-door neighbor, a former special-ops soldier with the South Korean army. He took me under his wing to train with his teenage son, and I added tae kwon do to my skill set. Under his tutelage my awareness redoubled and my instincts grew sharper.

I trotted down the street, considering the angles, all of them bad. Double doors and quality deadbolts secured our building and kept lowlifes out. However, if you were adept, the place wasn’t impregnable. Homeboy dressed like lazy street but moved like a man on a mission. When he exited our building, he’d kept his head down. His was the experienced stealth of a burglar, or maybe a pedophile.

I caught up with Homeboy two blocks later. A set of car keys dangling from his index finger told me he’d parked nearby. I grabbed his shoulder. The instant I touched him, powerful muscles shifted under my grasp and my prey slipped loose with fluid ease, whirling to face me.

“Can I help you?”

Not exactly the lingo of his look. He spread his weight in a balanced
stance, his hands relaxed but ready at his side. The keys had disappeared into a side pocket.

I said, “What were you doing outside my door?”

“Wasn’t at no one’s door. Just passing by.”

Homeboy had walnut-brown skin and shoulder-length hair. A large gold chain with a miniature Arabian dagger hung around his plowman’s neck. The chain was a part of his street costume, and the stout neck went with beefy shoulders and well-toned biceps. A solid two hundred ten pounds on a six-foot frame gave me an inch in height but handed him a twenty-pound weight advantage. His face was flat, sun-darkened, and Asian. I couldn’t place the country.

“Who were you visiting?”

His right eye twitched. “None of your business.”

Homeboy’s cap wasn’t set at a cocky angle or even the subtle in-the-know tilt that broadcast attitude. His shirt and pants still bore their original shop newness. Not the clean and cool look street punks often sported but an hour-off-the-store-shelf look most sought to erase as soon as they walked out the door with their purchase. If he was street, I was the Little Mermaid.

“Nice guy that I am, I want to believe you, but if you can’t give me a name, we’re going to have a hard time.”

“One last time—it’s none of your business.”

“But it is. You were talking to my daughter.”

“Fuck you,” he said, and turned away.

Bottom line was he was lurking in our hallway, near my door,
near my daughter.
For that alone I wanted him whipped and cowed. I wanted to give him plenty to think about before he set foot in our apartment block again.

“Not so fast.”

When I reached for him a second time, he pivoted on his left foot with the same elegant fluidity, then his right hand shot out at my throat. A martial arts move. Inches away from crushing my larynx, I batted the hand away with an arm sweep.

I followed with a punch to his chin. Once he committed to blocking it, I clubbed him on his blind side, a brutal street move he wouldn’t expect. Martial arts without street works on the mats, but in the real
world it can get you killed. Combine the two, however, and you owned a forceful edge if your instincts were good. Something my dad clued me in to when I began lessons in Tokyo.

The blow staggered him but his recovery was alarmingly swift. He countered with a foot-and-hand maneuver that wasn’t karate or judo and nearly lost me an eye.

I backed off. “Stay away from my house, scumbag.”

“You’re in over your head, asshole. Walk away now and I’ll let you live.”

My ears perked up. A faint foreign intonation edged his last remark. Not Chinese or Malay or the choppier Korean.
Japanese.

Which meant he was neither thief nor pedophile. He was in my building for
me.
My Japan connections ran deep—right up to last night’s crime scene.

“What do you want?” I said.

“I want you gone. Or mangled.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

I heard the rip of Velcro. The next moment metal glittered in his right hand.

A knife.

Alarm tripped down my spine and adrenaline flooded my system. I hate steel. It’s the favored weapon of sleaze. Homeboy’s blade was double-edged and serrated on one side, with custom-molded finger grooves on the handle that spoke of special fighting skills. A serrated edge does more than slice—it chews you up without mercy.

I dropped into a semicrouch, my limbs loose, my shoulders hunched, my eyes locked on the cutter. Homeboy circled to his right and feigned a stab. Fear brushed the back of my neck. Master the fear, you might live. Discount it, you die fast. I’d seen it on the streets a dozen times.

I glided away from his feint, looping around in the opposite direction, watching the weapon and his feet.

My assailant’s lips twisted in a grin. “What’s the matter? Not so talkative now?”

Eyes glued to the metal, I ignored the taunt. Didn’t return the sneer. Didn’t toss back my own barb.

And that one act of single-minded concentration saved my life.

He was counting on an answer. Had I given into the temptation, I’d be dead.

Jenny’s China guy snapped his wrist as I circled away and the weapon flew from his right palm to his left and ended up far too close to where I was headed. I’d never seen the move before. Or anything like it. It was as if the knife itself were tracking me.

Homeboy’s execution was perfect. In one step, he was on me, the blade closer than it had any right to be. I twisted my upper body back and away from the sweep of the weapon, feeling the faint whisper of disturbed air under my chin, the steel tip millimeters from my throat.

His next thrust was an extension of the first, the glistening steel never slowing, the move brilliantly conceived. Flicking the weapon to his other hand had forced me to stop with a suddenness that threw me off balance and exposed my throat area, which could only be protected by whipping the upper half of my body away at the last second, as I’d done. But this left my lower limbs in an unprotected forward position, a target a blind man couldn’t miss.