Daughter of the Sword (19 page)

“No problem. I don’t relish being near that smelly bastard anyway.”

Mariko stormed across the street, Ino’s long striding footfalls right behind her. Bumps gave her a glazed-over look, then stiffened up when he finally figured out who she was.

“Uh…hi, Officer,” he said. “I’m so glad to see you.”

He wasn’t. He looked nervous enough to wet himself, in fact, and Mariko was upset enough to punch him in the bladder just to see if it would happen.

Instead she grabbed him by the sleeve, dragged him to the panel truck, and shoved him inside. Her ribs bit her like a pissed-off Doberman as she hauled herself up into the truck. Ino closed the door behind her, leaving Mariko and Bumps alone in the van.

Bumps Ryota blinked hard, maybe trying to shake off sunspots. He took two steps and collided with a small aluminum table jutting out from the right-hand wall. He bounced from that to a stool, which he caught with his shins and tripped over. “Hey,” he said, palms flat on the floor, “this isn’t like the movies.”

“You’re a movie star now?”

“No. The truck. I figured you guys had video and phone taps and all that. Isn’t this a surveillance van? Only thing in here is a microwave.”

Surveillance, she could have told him, was mostly eating, drinking, and watching nothing happen. She could have told him that in circumstances like that, the only thing more important than a microwave was a toilet. Instead she said, “Nothing in a cop’s life is like the movies, Bumps. Now where is she?”

“Who?”

“Saori. She’s missing. Where is she?”

Bumps slid from his prone position to sit upright in the corner. “How should I know anything about her? You told me to get something on that coke dealer of yours.”

“You were her pusher, Bumps. Did she come to you? Is she using again?”

He blinked hard at her. “How did I get on the floor?”

“Is she using, Bumps?”

“You think I’m an idiot? We got a deal, Officer. I sell your sister so much as a Tylenol, you rat me out to the guys I get my shit from. Why would I have anything to do with her?”

Mariko blew her breath out through her nose. She had a pounding headache, and Bumps Ryota’s dirty-laundry smell wasn’t helping one bit. “Addicts are creatures of habit,” she said. “If she’s using again, she’ll go to people she knows.”

“Well, not me.”

He was telling the truth. Mariko listened to a lot of people’s lies in her line of work, enough of them that she wasn’t often wrong about them. She pressed her fingers to her temples to relieve pressure.

“So,” Bumps said, “did you, you know, want me to tell you what I found out about your coke dealer?”

“Frankly, I don’t give a shit,” Mariko said, not even meaning to say it aloud. She didn’t have time to think about the cocaine trail. Saori was the sole priority.

No. Mariko wanted that to be true—at the moment she wished more than anything that it could be true—but reality was harder and colder than that. Pushing any harder on the search for Saori would only serve to draw Ko’s attention, and even if Mariko found her, she couldn’t help Saori anyway. Saori had made it all of eight days into rehab before falling off the wagon. Even if Mariko got lucky and found her again, all she could do was take her back to a detox program that didn’t work.

“Fine, Bumps, go ahead. Tell me about your dealer.”

She heard herself say the words, and heard Bumps blather on too, but she didn’t even bother getting out her notepad. As soon as he said, “I don’t have a name for you yet,” Mariko tuned out the rest. “Tall guy” and “ponytail” and “tattoos” did her little good without a name. Mariko felt powerless. The only two things she could muster the energy to care about were her sister and the cocaine threat, and she had no leads on either of them. Yamada’s sword case had grown interesting, but she had no leads there either. She was sure Dr. Yamada knew more about the would-be thief than he was letting on, but he was strangely reticent about revealing details.

“Detective Oshiro?”

“Huh?”

Bumps was staring at her. “Are you listening to me? I’m telling you, this is one dangerous son of a bitch. Gives you the feeling he could snap at any moment, you know what I mean?”

“Uh-huh. This from the guy who needs a minute or two to realize he’s tripped and fallen on the floor. I’m sure your instincts about him are spot-on, Bumps.”

“I’m telling you—”

“What? What are you telling me? That life as a CI isn’t as safe and comfy as you thought? Bumps, you’re a drug dealer. Did you think the biggest risk in your profession was not having a pension?”

“You can’t blow me off like this. You’re supposed to protect me.”

“So help me protect you. You got a name for me?”

“Uh. No. But—”

“Don’t bother calling until you do. Unless you can tell me who your coke dealer is or where my sister is, as far as I’m concerned all you hoppers and dealers can swindle each other and kill each other all you like.”

Then something clicked for her. Scum associated with scum. Dealers with dealers. Cops with cops. Everyone associated with their own kind.

She pulled her cell from her pocket, cycled through the recent calls, and rang one of them back. If she couldn’t make any headway on Saori or the coke case, at least she could make progress on the other thing. “Dr. Yamada?” she said. “We need to talk. I’ll be at your place in half an hour.”

27

Yamada’s front door was unlocked. Strange, Mariko thought, given the attack the other night. It was a remnant of a more peaceful era. She opened the door to be greeted by the familiar scent of green tea. Yamada was in the sitting room, kneeling beside his low table and facing her.

“It’s me, Dr. Yamada. Detective Oshiro. You really shouldn’t leave your door unlocked. You just had a break-in, you know.”

“As polite as ever,” Yamada said. His wrinkled hand gestured at the table, where two steaming teacups were waiting. The tatami mats were still stained brown where his assailants had bled on them, though it appeared he’d taken pains to clean up what he could. “Do come in, won’t you?”

“I’m sorry,” Mariko said. “I shouldn’t tell you how to run your own house.”

She stepped out of her shoes, bowed curtly to the professor, and sat across the table from him. The battered left side of her rib cage protested every step of the way. “My sister’s missing, so I’ve been rude with everybody. I was looking into her case when I had an insight into yours. Well, not so much into your case as into you, sir. This Fuchida Shūzō, the one who’s trying to steal your sword, you’ve met him personally,
neh
?”

“Of course.”

There it was again: that maddening capacity of his to make her feel like a twelve-year-old version of herself. How could that possibly be an “of course” kind of question?

She forced herself to take a deep breath. Then another. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

He shrugged. “It didn’t seem relevant.”

“How could it not be—?” This time it took two deep breaths to keep herself from screaming. “Dr. Yamada, you could have told me his name the first day I came out here. What took you so long?”

“All things in due time. Come now, Inspector, you’ve done some research on him by now. What have you learned?”

“Nothing.” Mariko didn’t appreciate the fact that he just assumed he knew how she’d go about doing her job, and she liked it even less that he was dead right. She’d pulled up files from every police database she could find, and filed a dozen warrants to search the files of mortgage lenders, car dealerships, banks, and governmental services for any records on a Fuchida Shūzō. The warrants had yet to yield any fruit, and just when she’d started delving into the police records, Saori had disappeared, and it seemed she’d taken Mariko’s ability to concentrate with her.

“Now, now,” said Yamada, “you’re brighter than that. I think you’ve already deduced rather more about him than the fact that he and I have met. Why don’t you tell me what you know?”

Mariko felt the bile burning in her stomach. Her ribs pained her too, and neither was as painful as the effort it took to restrain her frustration. “All right. He’s involved with the
bōryokudan
, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know. What makes you ask?”

“Tattoos. The fat man had them. The others who broke in the other night, they had them too. A lot of yakuzas do. If this Fuchida sent those four the other night, he’s probably a yakuza himself. Hm. I can’t say I ever spent much time cultivating contacts in the
bōryokudan
, but I’ll ask the yakuzas I know and see if they’ve heard of him.”

A look of shock spread across Yamada’s face. “You know yakuzas personally?”

“Sure.”

“And you
speak
to these people?”

Mariko laughed. “Of course. I’m a cop, Dr. Yamada; it’s almost impossible
not
to get to know a yakuza or two. Besides, they’re handy; they know what’s happening on the streets long before we do, and there’s nothing they love more than showing off to cops. I’ll ask my guys. If they know him, believe me, they’ll brag about it.”

Yamada’s eyebrows slowly sank back to their customary place; his mouth relaxed its O shape as the stunned look evaporated from his face. “I’m sorry, Inspector. It never occurred to me that police officers and criminals would be so…so…well, so
friendly
.”

“‘Friendly’ isn’t the word for it. Call it professional courtesy. Let’s hope they can come up with something better than I can get through official channels, because so far our databases don’t have shit.”

“Are all young ladies of your generation so well mannered?”

“Sorry.”

“Forget your databases. What have
you
discovered about him?”

Yet again she found herself feeling shortsighted and immature. Somehow he adopted the roles of grandfather, schoolteacher, and commanding officer in her mind. But now that he asked the question, in the simple way that he’d asked it, she found herself making connections she hadn’t consciously drawn.

“He’s an expert too, isn’t he? On swords, I mean. He’d have to be. You can’t break into houses at random in hope of stealing medieval weapons. Only an authority on the subject would know which ones to steal and where they were.”

“Keep going,” said Yamada.

“How many authorities on medieval swords can there be?” Now the connections were flashing like lightning, so fast Mariko could barely keep up with them. “You’re an academic. You go to conferences and such,
neh
? That’s it. You know him because he’s an academic like you. Is he another history professor?”

“No.”

“Then one of your students. A grad student? No. Not a lot of criminal types there. It’s one of your martial arts students, isn’t it?”

Yamada bowed deeply, his short silver hair shining like a million stars as it caught the light. “Very good, Inspector. In fact I did meet him at the university. That was before he started training in my dojo. You don’t see a fighter the likes of him more than once or twice in a lifetime.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

Yamada shrugged. “We met when he took my class in Heian era history. A bright young man. Driven. We spoke about sword combat quite a bit, and then he started training under me. I can’t recall anyone making
shodan
so quickly.”

“Why didn’t you tell me who he was the first time I came out here? I could have made a lot of progress on your case by now.”

“Destiny works at its own pace.”

“Oh, no. I’m not letting you off that easy. Look, what happened here the other night, the night of the break-in…well, I’ll grant you, that was weird. But whatever you think about destiny bringing us together that night, you can’t have known that was coming the first time we met.”

Yamada gave her an impish grin, his eyes twinkling. “You know a lot about destiny for someone who just started believing in it, Inspector.”

Mariko couldn’t decide whether to grin back or strangle him. He was cute in that sweet old man sort of way, but all his fate crap was wearing thin. “Come on,” she said, “you’re telling me you’ve been waiting for ages for a policewoman to come to your door?”

“A swordswoman, actually.”

“I’m not—” An exasperated laugh escaped Mariko’s lips. “You drive me nuts, you know that?”

“As polite as ever, Oshiro-san.”

“Listen, suppose you’re right. Suppose I really was destined to come here, and somehow you’re going to talk me into learning how
to sword-fight, and…assume all that stuff. If that’s really what destiny has in store for us, what difference would it have made if you’d told me Fuchida’s name from the beginning? We’d have ended up right here anyway, right?”

“Oh ho,” said Yamada. He raised his wrinkled hands as if she were holding a gun on him. “Not bad, Inspector. I think you’ve got me with my own logic.”

“Damn right I do. So answer the question. Why didn’t you tell me his name on day one?”

Yamada rubbed his face with his hands, then pressed his palms together, his forefingers resting against his lips. He looked like he might be about to pray. At last, peering over his steepled fingertips, he said, “Haven’t you deduced that already, Inspector? Why, it’s embarrassing. Fuchida-san was my
student
. What does it mean about a professor if his own student comes back to rob him?”

Mariko nodded, ashamed that she’d made him spell it out. Any properly Japanese person would have seen the connection. But Mariko had spent most of her childhood in the States, and she didn’t think of relationships in the way most Japanese did.

Mariko’s father had moved his family back to Tokyo so that his daughters could get into a good Japanese university, which they could never do without going to a good Japanese high school. When Mariko had asked him why, he’d explained
gakubatsu
to her. She’d tried to understand the word in English, her primary language in those days, but “school clique” didn’t come close to translating
gakubatsu
. The closest American equivalent was a Marine Corps tattoo:
gakubatsu
was a badge, a unifying force, a marker of something awfully close to family. It was out of
gakubatsu
that alumni from the same school hired each other, promoted each other, ran whole corporations and universities and political parties together. And because of
gakubatsu
, if one person tarnished the good name of the school, everyone else in the school’s family suffered.