Daughter of the Sword (5 page)

“What have you got for me, Bumps?”

“Huh?”

“You said you’re valuable to me,” Mariko said. “Right now that’s true: you’re another arrest I can tell my LT about. Unless you’ve got something else for me, I’ll just book you and call it a night.”

“No. I got information. Good information.”

“Well?”

Bumps shook his head, his stiff blond hair following a half second behind. “No way. I want a deal first. I don’t want to go to jail.”

“Neither do I,” said Mariko. “That’s why I don’t walk around with twenty-two grams of crystal methamphetamine on me. That’s an intent to distribute charge, Bumps. You’ve also been selling that shit to my sister, and that makes me want to kick you in the nuts and throw you in the worst prison we’ve got. So spill this info you say you have before I come to my senses and start kicking.”

“Uh,” said Bumps. “Okay. Well, word is there’s a new mover in town. Not dealing yet—just testing the market, if you know what I mean.”

“Not good enough. I can find a dealer under any sewer grate in Tokyo.”

“Not like this guy. Says he’s going to sell cocaine. Says it’s going to hit Japan like Godzilla, and he wants to know who’s in line to be his distributors.”

Mariko didn’t let it show, but for a brief moment she felt gratitude toward Bumps Ryota. Until now he’d only inspired feelings of revulsion and vengeance in her, but this was big. “You got a name for me?”

“No, but I do know he rolls with the Kamaguchi-gumi.”

“You’re high, Bumps. Yakuzas don’t go in for coke.”

“Like I said, he’s not selling yet. Laying the groundwork, though, I’m telling you.”

He looked at her expectantly, the bags under his eyes a curious shade of purple in the light of the ceiling’s twin fluorescent tubes. Mariko thought about her service weapon, about how she’d only ever drawn it once in her four years on the force, about how much she’d enjoy drawing it now and giving Bumps a good long look right down the barrel. It was the wrong thing to feel. Not because he didn’t deserve it—he did, and so did everyone else in his profession—but she wanted to hurt him because of what he did to Saori, and at the end of the day she knew the one who did it to Saori was Saori. Even if Mariko shot him right here and now, Saori would find another dealer.

Shove her pistol in his face. Cram the Cheetah right in his gray, wasted mouth and pull the trigger. Those were the urges she suppressed as she withdrew her hand from her purse, slipped it into her jacket pocket, and passed Bumps Ryota a thin stack of folded papers held together by the clippy-thing of a ballpoint pen. “These are CI papers. You know what a CI is?”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what? You’d prefer to face charges of possession? Intent to distribute? Evading arrest? I don’t think so. I think you and I both win if you sign on as a confidential informant. You’re never selling meth again; those days are over. Your choices now are to start selling blowjobs while you’re in prison or to start selling information to me.”

Bumps’s shoulders slumped. He unfolded the sheaf of papers and looked over the cover sheet.

“Better,” said Mariko. “Here’s the rules. One, you ever sell meth again, we prosecute to the full extent of the law. Okay?”

Bumps sighed. “Okay.”

“Two, you provide a steady stream of information leading to arrests. You’re going to buy the dope, we’re going to set up stings on the guys you buy from. It’ll look like it’s unrelated to you, so no one’s going to put a target on your head. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Three, you ever so much as look at my sister again and you’re never going to have the luxury of seeing a prison cell. I will personally see to it that every arrest we make knows you’re the shithead who dimed him out. From there it’s just a matter of who gets lucky in the office pool: do we find your body floating in the harbor or splattered all over the subway? Are we clear?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.” Mariko stood in front of the interrogation room’s mirror and primped her jacket and hair. “On that coke thing,” she said, leaving the room, “have a name for me next time or it’s your ass.”

“All righty.”

Mariko left him looking like a kid who’d just found out he wouldn’t be getting a puppy after all. But for her part, she couldn’t restrain a smile. Cocaine. From the Kamaguchi-gumi. This was huge—terrible, yes, but huge. The first words her new lieutenant would hear from her would be about what promised to be the biggest drug bust of the year. Perhaps he’d take her more seriously. He might even give this the funding and manpower it deserved. She had two months to close this case—two months before her probation was up and they’d decide whether to accept her application to Narcotics. Two months wasn’t a lot of time, but with the right commanding officer and the right backing, Mariko knew she could make it happen.

“Hey, Mishima,” she said. “Is Lieutenant Ko in tonight?”

“Nah. I think he pulled a double shift this morning. I wouldn’t call him if I were you; I never met an LT yet who wasn’t pissy after pulling a double.”

“No problem. I’ll find him tomorrow.”

Mariko left the precinct house with a bounce in her step. Tomorrow was going to be a good day.

5

“Come in, Oshiro. Come in.”

Lieutenant Ko had an overlarge mouth flanked by deep creases like gills. What hair he had left was graying, and clutching only to the sides of his head. His black eyes were barely visible behind large square glasses, and the word around the precinct was that no one had ever seen him without a cigarette in his mouth. He sat behind his desk, his smoky office oppressively hot and lined with beige steel filing cabinets. Papers were stacked on top of them here and there, with more stacks decorating his desk as well, though there was a clear space in the middle for him to work and to park his ashtray.

It had taken Mariko three days to get an appointment with him—an appointment in the ass end of the morning, no less; the sky was still dark when Mariko’s alarm went off. Ko was new to the station and surely had a great deal of catching up to do, but even so, Mariko felt three days was excessive. Her new lead was too important.

“Be a dear,” Ko said through his cigarette, “and get me a cup of coffee before we get started, would you?”

“No, sir,” said Mariko.

His big fish mouth frowned, cigarette hanging down from his broad lips. “Excuse me?”

“It’s not in the job description, sir. I’m a detective, not an OL.”

The frown deepened, as did the deep wrinkles framing it. “Close the door, Oshiro.”

She did so, then resumed her attention stance, hands clasped behind her back.

“We’re new to each other,” Ko said, tapping ashes into the glass ashtray. “It’s to be expected that we’ll all have a breaking-in period around here. That’s all right. I just want to make sure everyone understands which way the wind’s going to blow.”

Mariko nodded. Ko sucked on his cigarette and the end glowed red. “I understand,” he said, “that my predecessor cut you a lot of slack. That will cease. I’d cut you from the detective squad if I could, but as you’ve undoubtedly figured out, I need cause for dismissal to do that. So far you haven’t provided it. So far you’ve been a good little girl.”

Mariko felt like a lizard on a rock. Her eyes stung, her skin was so hot she thought it might crackle, and somewhere far overhead there circled a hawk that liked feeding on lizards.

“I see here that you destroyed department property Wednesday night,” said Ko. “A stun gun.”

“Destroyed and paid for, yes, sir. It’s not cause for dismissal.”

“Indeed not.” Ko sucked on the cigarette and exhaled a thin jet of smoke. “Patrolman Toyoda reports that you were abusive with your power.”

“Toyoda’s a whiner who doesn’t like being outrun by a girl. You saw my request that he be suspended and censured?”

“I did. You’ll address me as ‘sir’ when you’re in my office.”

Mariko balled two fists behind her back. “Yes, sir.”

“You’re way off base on this ridiculous cocaine story,” he said. “The
bōryokudan
don’t sell cocaine. Nor do they stand for anyone else selling it on their turf. Period.”

“Until now, sir.”

“Excuse me?”

“I have reason to believe one of the yakuzas is looking to change the game. Sir.”

Ko snorted. “Why would he do that? They keep the hard stuff out of the country, we go easy when they sling more pedestrian fare. That’s the truce. We don’t like it but we live with it. You think they want to change that?”

“I’m a detective, sir. I go where the evidence leads me.”

“Evidence?” Another snort, this one jetting two cones of smoke from his nostrils. They bloomed up as they hit his desk and made Mariko think of an anime dragon. “All you have is the word of some tweaked-out speed freak.”

“With all due respect, sir, the dealers know a lot more about what’s happening on the street than we do.”

“Hardly a ringing endorsement of your police work. Tell me, have you cultivated any yakuza contacts in all your long years of service?”

“Of course, sir.”

“More than I have?”

Mariko hated rhetorical questions. She hated people who asked them, and hated it even more when they sat and stared and waited for an answer. At last she rolled her eyes and said, “No, sir.”

“And why not?”

Again with the rhetorical questions. “Because you’ve been on the force a hell of a lot longer than me. Sir.”

Ko gave her a sickening little grin. Despite all her years in the States, Mariko had never quite figured out exactly what they meant by
shit-eating grin
, but she wondered if this was it. In any case, it was the kind of patronizing little grin that made her want to shove Ko’s face in a pile of shit.

“These
bōryokudan
contacts of yours,” he said, his tone even more belittling than the grin, “have they spoken of an impending expansion into the cocaine trade?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Nor have mine. And, as you say, mine are rather more extensive
than yours,
neh
? You’ll forgive me if I take their silence more seriously than the word of some desperate junkie you managed to drag in.”

“Sir, if a lone yakuza were looking to build himself a bigger empire, the rest of the
bōryokudan
wouldn’t know about it—”

Ko gave her a dismissive wave of the hand. “Forget it. The fact that you were even given the chance to apply to Narcotics is just asinine. You ought to know your place. Grow your hair out. You look like a dyke.”

“Perps can grab long hair, sir.”

He went on as if she didn’t have a mouth. “Isn’t it enough for you that you made sergeant already? Isn’t it enough that you’re the only woman detective in Tokyo? Come to that, you’re the only woman detective I ever heard of, and I’ve been wearing the badge twenty-two years. And you’re practically
gaijin
to boot. You’re lucky you can get a job waiting tables in this country. You’re an alien in your own land, Oshiro. You’d think you’d know to be happy with what you’ve got.” He snorted two more jets of smoke at his desk. “Sergeant and detective after only four years on! How you made it that far is beyond my reckoning.”

“I’m a good cop, sir. That’s how I made it this far.”

“It’s not proper. Administration, yes, I could see that. Even upper administration. It’s not unheard of; I’m sure you can type as well as anybody. But if I had my way, your only role in this station would be to serve the rest of us tea and coffee on demand. Believe me, as soon as you give me cause, I’ll have you doing just that.”

Now Mariko’s face was sweating, not because of the office radiator but out of anger. “Go ahead,” Ko said, meeting her glare through a haze of smoke. “Say something. Give me cause to demote you. Or don’t. I can be patient. You look at me like I’m a cracked old man, but my ears are sharp. If there’s even a whisper that you’ve broken protocol, I’ll hear it. All I need is the allegation. In this department, that’s enough.”

Mariko’s jaw was set, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Don’t
expect to hear anything,” she said. “I’m going to keep on being a good little girl. Sir.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. What’s certain is, you won’t be making Narcotics under my command. You’ll serve out the remainder of your Narc probation. Then, rest assured, you will be denied your transfer, and I’ll have you working low-end property crimes for the rest of your career. And because you could do with some practice with cases like that…” He pulled a pale blue folder out from the middle of a stack of papers and dropped it on the front of his desk. The wind it stirred up scattered white ashes from the ashtray. “You’ll take the Yamada case. Old guy out near Machida. Says someone tried to steal his sword.”

“Sir, like it or not, I’ve got eight more weeks on Narcotics before you start handing me the shit cases. I’ve got a right to work legitimate drug busts until then.”

There was that shit-eating grin again. “Special request from Machida PD. Entitles me to pick anyone I like. Lucky you.”

Mariko said nothing. She picked up the folder and walked out.

6

Swords, Mariko thought.
Bōryokudan
violence is swelling, we’ve got a dead policewoman and no leads on who killed her, cocaine threatens to hit us like a typhoon, and my priority is supposed to be stolen swords.

No, she thought. One sword. An
almost
-stolen sword. A purported attempt at stealing a sword. Not only was this not a narcotics case, but Ko didn’t even have her investigating a
crime
. This was an aborted crime, a past possibility of a crime.

She took the train to Yamada’s place. She could have commandeered a ride in a squad, but even that might be seen as misappropriation of department resources, and Mariko didn’t want to risk it. She could be patient too. There were a lot of cops in the precinct; Ko would only get busier as time went on, and then she’d see if his ears were as sharp as he claimed.

The ride to Machida took almost an hour, the buildings neighboring the train tracks becoming ever shorter, ever smaller as the distance grew between Mariko and the city center. Within the first fifteen minutes the train car had so few people that she could move her elbows away from her ribs, and soon after that she could see from one end of the car to the other. While waiting on the platform for a transfer, she’d had time to make a phone call, during which she learned that Machida’s department was tiny, that they’d recently lost their lone
detective to retirement, and that as yet they’d found no one to replace him. Even better, Mariko thought. Now I’m playing spare tire to the investigation of an almost-crime.