The Nicholas Linnear Novels (170 page)

If this was a self-serving revision, it was not wholly so. Senjin knew that before Ieyasu Tokugawa, the first shogun, Japan was a wholly feudal nation, prey to constant internecine warfare between regional warlords known as
daimyo.
Ieyasu Tokugawa changed all that, uniting by blood and battle an entire nation, and thus immeasurably strengthening it.

But on the other hand, Japan’s absolute dependence on the rigid caste system began with the Tokugawa shogunate, who saw this, too, as a way of effectively controlling the majority of the population.

In a way, Senjin mused, not for the first time, the Tokugawas were control freaks. Just like me.

He heard a discreet cough, and swiveling around to face the door to his cubicle, he saw Tomi Yazawa standing on the threshold. He beckoned. “Come in, Sergeant.” It was Senjin’s habit never to refer to any of his staff by their name, only by their rank. To his way of thinking, it gave him the proper degree of control, while making it clear to his people where they stood not just with him, but within the family of the police department.

“How are you progressing with that murder-rape case? Mariko something.”

“Poor abandoned thing. No one at the strip club seemed to know her last name,” Tomi said.

“Quite so.” Senjin did not ask her to sit down. It was his feeling that subordinates should stand in his presence. He drummed his fingers on the top of his steel desk. “Have you any progress to report?”

“No, sir.”

“None at all?”

“I know you have read the master file as well as my weekly updates.”

“And the message found on the corpse, ‘This could be your wife’? Have you made any progress with that?”

“Some. I’ve determined that the victim was unmarried, and that she dated. Her men friends never came to the club, and in interviews with the other dancers it became clear that Mariko had no confidantes there. In fact, the dancers did not much care for her. They said she thought that, essentially, they were dirt. Mariko was apparently filled with high-flying dreams.”

He granted. “She was in the wrong business, then.”

“Apparently so, sir.”

Senjin regarded Tomi Yazawa. She was a small, powerful woman, yet with all the requisite female curves. She had a strong face, dominated by large, glossy black eyes, more uptilted than most. Her hair was long, also glossy under the office lights, pulled back tightly from her face, wrapped in an elaborate knob atop her head. Senjin knew from experience that she was very smart, which was why he had assigned her to Mariko’s murder. If she didn’t find anything, no one would.

“It’s been, what? Eight months? I think it’s time to close the file on the Mariko murder,” Senjin said.

“Sir, may I point out that I have been the only officer assigned to the case.” Tomi was staring at a point on the wall approximately a foot above and to the left of where Senjin sat. “I know what it’s like to be alone in the world. The victim Mariko may seem like no one to you, to the department, but she was a human being in many ways no different from me. I would very much like to continue on the case until it is solved.”

“The Metropolitan Police Department does not care what you would like, Sergeant,” Senjin said. “It has its procedures and its manpower problems irrespective of your desires.” He watched with satisfaction as a deep flush crept up Tomi’s cheeks. “Do I have to remind you who it was who allowed you these months free rein on a homicide we both suspected was unsolvable from day one? Be grateful for the time I have given you on your own private crusade.”

“Yes, sir,” Tomi said. “I appreciate your understanding. It’s just that when she was alive, Mariko had no one to help her. I wanted her to know that she had someone now.”

“You’ve done what you could, Sergeant. You have your duty now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Senjin suddenly stood up, moved so that he was directly in Tomi’s line of sight. “The men don’t like me much, do they, Sergeant?” he said.

“Sir?”

“Is it my age?” Senjin asked in a tone of voice that precluded an answer. “In just over six weeks I will be twenty-nine. Am I too young in their eyes to be commander of the homicide division?”

“Age is irrelevant to talent, sir.”

Senjin was looking directly into Tomi’s eyes when she said this, and he had a sudden premonition. He had the uneasy sense of having allowed another predator into his territory, and he wondered whether he had misjudged Tomi Yazawa’s intelligence. Senjin prided himself on not underestimating his enemies. But then again, this detective sergeant was not his enemy. At least, not quite yet.

“Is it their perception, perhaps, that despite the department’s findings, I lack the talent to run this division, Sergeant?”

“No, sir, it isn’t.”

Senjin nodded. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He waited a moment. “Well, speak your mind, Sergeant. There are only the two of us here.”

“What about listening devices?”

Senjin cocked his head and smiled to himself. Yes, he thought, she’s not only smart, she’s quick. He liked that. It was going to be a treat running her.

Senjin came around from behind his desk. He stood so close to her that he could hear her breathing, smell the perfume of her skin. “There are none in this cubicle.” He searched her eyes. “Are there any on your person?”

“I’m clean, sir.”

“Well, then,” Senjin said, “by all means proceed.”

Tomi took a deep breath, but the intake of oxygen seemed to do little good. His proximity had flustered her. She had suddenly become very aware of him as a human being—a
male
human being. She liked watching him from a distance. Up close, he had the effect of making her feel drunk. Her nostrils flared, filled with his musk. With an effort she pulled herself together. “Begging the commander’s pardon, does he know the origin of his name, Omukae?”

Senjin grinned without warmth. “Pretend I don’t.”

Tomi nodded. “An
omukae
is a messenger from another world. A kind of demon.”

“Or an angel.”

“Yes,” Tomi said, trying to get moisture into her mouth. “Or an angel. But either way, an
omukae
is not of this world.” By “not of this world,” Senjin knew she meant Japan. “It is the opinion of some of the staff that the commander…” She paused, mired in the rigid social structure that made it something of a sin to criticize one’s superior.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Senjin said in a voice of steel. “As I have said, you have my permission to speak your mind.”

“It is the opinion of some of the staff,” Tomi began again, “that the commander sometimes performs his duty as if he were, indeed, an
omukae.
As if he cares more about himself than he does the division or the department itself.”

“Tell me, Sergeant, is that your opinion as well?”

Tomi was disconcerted. This juxtaposition of formal conversation and close proximity, intimate eye contact, was leaving her breathless. Don’t let him see—“To give you a perfectly honest—”

“Wait,” Senjin said sharply, silencing her. “That was an unfair question. I withdraw it. You see, Sergeant, you and I share something. We are, each in our own ways, outcasts in the department. The series of unfortunate and untimely deaths of division commanders combined with the rapid advancement of my career in the field to bring me into prominence in Homicide. Perhaps unwanted prominence, as far as some are concerned, hm?”

Tomi said nothing. She was immensely grateful that her commander had omitted discussing her own plight inside the department, knowing that they both understood its inherent nature. She was also thinking of the incident that, as Senjin had indicated, had brought him into prominence. For months a clan of particularly homicidal Yakuza seemed to be operating right under the noses of the Tokyo police. All efforts to apprehend the members of this clan had been unsuccessful.

Until Senjin Omukae had gone clandestinely undercover. Clandestine, meaning unknown to the department. He had discovered an astonishing web of graft, extortion, cover-up, and ultimately, murder being perpetrated by certain officers of the homicide division who were conspiring with the
oyabun—
the boss—of the Yakuza clan. Senjin had, virtually single-handedly, brought them all down.

The department owed him an enormous debt. Because of his work, the affair was handled internally. The intrusive media never got wind of the scandal, and thus no further loss of face was incurred. As it was, Tomi knew, many resignations were tendered within the department.

Senjin broke away from their intimate orbit, went back behind his desk. Tomi felt a mixture of relief and loss, which further disturbed her.

Senjin thought a moment, pulling languidly on his cigarette, which was almost finished. “Individualism in the pursuit of justice,” he said at length, “is no longer a social crime. That is
my
considered opinion, and you are free to repeat that to the staff.”

Senjin took a last puff, ground out the butt in an ashtray. “But since you’ve brought up the subject, I might as well enlighten you. Our duties here are varied, but more or less our most vital function is to keep Tokyo as free as possible of terrorist incursion. Unless you were asleep through your orientation courses, you know that terrorists don’t think like the rest of our citizenry. They act in a chaotic fashion; they are anarchic—which means that they think like individuals. My duty—
our
duty, Sergeant—is to apprehend these terrorists before they can do any damage. I have found that by far the best way to do this is to learn to think like one. And my record—and the record of this division since I joined it five years ago—bears out the wisdom of my strategy.” His gaze met Tomi’s again. “Have I made myself clear?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“Good,” Senjin said. He swung away, stared out the window again. “Now that the Mariko case is closed, I have another assignment for you. Have you heard of a man named Nicholas Linnear?”

“Yes,” Tomi said. “I think everyone in Tokyo has.”

“Not just in Tokyo,” Senjin said cryptically. He turned to look at her. “Well, Linnear-san is your new assignment. Surveil him at close range. Protect him.”

“Sir?”

“Wipe that look of astonishment off your face, Sergeant,” Senjin said, approaching her again. “This morning we intercepted a coded Red Army transmission. Twenty minutes ago the code was broken. Here’s the message.” He handed her a sheet of flimsy, and when Tomi reached for it, her fingers brushed his. Momentarily their eyes met. Then, hurriedly, Tomi concentrated on reading the message typed on the paper. While she was doing that, Senjin went on. “It seems as if Linnear-san is the target of a Red Army termination directive. As you see, he is scheduled to be assassinated in one week’s time.”

The Shakushi
furo
was in Roppongi, that glittering section of Tokyo where the foreigner could feel not quite so alien and any Japanese over the age of eighteen was distinctly uncomfortable. The bathhouse was, at least by Tokyo standards, not far from Nangi’s office, along a side street bristling with avant-garde cafés and discos which by midnight would become the throbbing heart of the city. On the corner, across the street, was an audio-video department store whose fifteen-foot windows were made up entirely of synched television screens on which a pair of talentos were posturing in the manner that these days passed for a performance. Talentos were that peculiar form of modern-day Japanese media star who had many talents but were master of none. They were like fads in clothing and hairstyle; they came and went in the blink of an eye.

Inside the bathhouse Nangi bought a numbered key on an elastic band, then proceeding to the interior, began slowly to undress. This was not as easy for him as it was for most people. During the war something had happened to the nerve synapses in his legs, making their movement jerky, seemingly semicoordinated. Using his dragon-head cane, he carefully lowered his whippet-thin body onto the polished wooden bench that ran in front of the line of metal lockers.

As he undressed he wondered how Kusunda Ikusa would react to his face. No doubt Ikusa had been fully briefed. He would know about Nangi’s right eye, the lid forever frozen half open over a useless orb, clouded a milky blue-white. He might even have been shown a photograph of Nangi’s face. But it would be that first moment when Nangi peered with his good eye into Kusunda Ikusa’s face that Nangi would know what this man was made of, and whether he could be bested in a psychological contest.

Nangi sat very still for a moment. He longed for a cigarette. But on the day Seiichi Sato had been buried, Nangi had given up smoking. Not as a penance, but as an eternal reminder—like a flame above a brave soldier’s grave—of his friend’s spirit. Every time he longed for a smoke, he remembered Seiichi all over again. It had been Seiichi’s older brother who, during the war, had sacrificed himself to save Nangi. Now, with Seiichi dead, no one other than Nangi himself knew that, not even Nicholas.

Nangi remembered the Buddhist ceremony, hollow for him, said over Seiichi’s grave, necessary in this land of Buddhists and Shinto spirits. He remembered saying a silent prayer in Latin as the joss sticks were lighted and the priests began their singsong litany.

Afterward, emptying his silver cigarette case into a nearby trash bin, Nangi had taken the train back into Tokyo, and had found himself at his church instead of at his office.

The war had changed Nangi in many ways—it had lost him an eye, the full use of his legs; it had cost him his best friend—but no outcome was more profound than his conversion to Catholicism. Drifting alone on a raft in the middle of the Pacific, with the sight of Gotaro’s death still a fresh wound in his mind, he had cast about for solace and had found his own spirit wanting. God was not a concept recognized by either Buddhist or Shintoist, but God was what Nangi had needed during that time, and it was to God he had prayed. After the war the first item he had sought out was a bible.

Years later, when Seiichi’s funeral was over, Nangi had entered his church, sat in the confessional.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

He had felt calm then, composed. He had been sad, but God was with him, and he took solace in that thought. But sometimes, as now in the steam-filled bathhouse, Nangi had his doubts. He did not know whether Catholicism had made him stronger or weaker. It was true that in times of trial his faith in God had buoyed him. But at other moments, as now, he had begun to be concerned by his reliance on the rote of Catholic litany, the adherence to the gospel according to Rome. These things, too, had taken on a hollow ring. On the one hand, he understood that part of his faith meant subservience to God’s will and to the dictates of the Church; on the other hand, he sometimes felt much as a self-aware addict does, faced with the ascendancy of the outside force of the drug, that his own will was slowly seeping away. This frightened him.