Disciple of the Wind (62 page)

Mariko managed not to blush. She was afraid he’d say something like that.

His frown took a slightly different shape—puzzled, not annoyed. “You got a problem with getting a commendation, Frodo?”

“No sir. Why would I?”

“Damned if I know. You get that uniform yet?”

“It’s supposed to arrive tomorrow, sir.”

The grumpy frown came back. “You didn’t pull any bullshit with the order, did you? Just the pants, not the jacket? Nothing like that?”

“No, sir.” She wished she’d thought of that.

“Then it comes with a cap. So put your damn cap on, cover up your damn hairdo, and show up tomorrow to receive your damn commendation. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

*   *   *

She invited her mom and her sister to come to the award ceremony, but Han was the only one she asked to come to her apartment first.
She wouldn’t admit it to him, but she didn’t want to be alone when the uniform arrived.

It was only polite to come bearing a gift, and Han brought what he always brought: cold beer in a six-pack. Bottles this time, for a change of pace. He would have been a gentleman and picked up the big cardboard box waiting on her doorstep, but he couldn’t manage the beer and the box with one hand. His right arm was still in a sling.

His “little train ride,” as he called it, had sprained, strained, or dislocated pretty much everything in his right arm. On the positive side, his physical therapist was hot, and he got to see her three days a week. “But only so she can hurt me,” he said. “Does it make me a sicko if I kind of like it?”

“Yes.” She took the drinks first, opening one for him because he couldn’t manage it one-handed. She took a swig of her own before returning to the hallway for the box. It ended up on her kitchen table, which wasn’t much bigger than the box itself. That was as close as she’d get to opening it for now.

They drank the first two beers talking about nothing. The big news in Han’s life was that a former Chicago Cub named Matt Murton broke Ichiro Suzuki’s single season hit record, which Han thought was relevant to Mariko because she used to live in Illinois and in his geographically challenged mind Illinois and Chicago were more or less synonymous. Mariko didn’t really care about baseball, but she found his enthusiasm entertaining nonetheless. For the first time in two weeks, she laughed.

“It’s about time,” he said. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Can I ask you something? When you shot Joko Daishi’s tire out, do you ever think about what would have happened if you hit him instead? I mean, that was a hell of a long shot.”

“I was aiming for him.”

“Huh?”

Han shrugged, an asymmetrical gesture given the state of his right shoulder. “You think that was an amazing shot? It wasn’t. I missed. I was trying to hit
him
.”

“Doesn’t that mess with your head? I mean, you could have killed somebody. What if you hit a civilian?”

“I didn’t.” When he saw that answer didn’t do anything for her, he said, “I don’t know what to tell you. I spend as much time on the range as anyone. Well, okay, maybe not as much as you, but as much as any sane person. If I thought I was going to hit a civilian, I wouldn’t have taken the shot.”

“But you just said you missed.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t think about it a lot. I guess I’m lucky I don’t have to. What’s this all about? What’s eating at you?”

She closed her eyes, steeled herself, and took the plunge. “You saw the medical examiner’s report on Joko Daishi?”

“I sure did. ‘Cause of death: massive blunt force trauma.’ Score one for the good guys.”

“Han, you and I both know what happened down there.”

“Yeah. We do. Is that what’s got you bent out of shape?”

Mariko didn’t expect to see legitimate surprise in his face. “Of course it is. That and everything that led up to it. All that shit with Furukawa, with the Wind . . .” She’d given him most of the general outlines by now. “Did I tell you about the Bulldog’s girlfriend?”

“No.”

“They killed her. Get this: I go to the Bulldog, looking for information about the kidnapped kids. He tells me to go fuck myself. Not his kids, not his problem, that’s what he says.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Neh?”
Mariko cracked open another drink. “Except half an hour later, he calls me back. He’s the one who gave me the tip on the kids in Terminal 2. If not for him . . . I mean, we don’t know what would have happened, but it could have been pretty bad.”

“So why the change of heart?”

“He said his girlfriend was the latest case of ricin poisoning. Said she was pregnant and didn’t want to keep it, so she went to St. Luke’s.”

“Hm.” Han wrinkled up his face at that. “Pretty convenient timing.”

“Right. Ricin takes, what, four or five days to kill? She’s sick for
days
and he never hears about it until the minute I need him to?”

“You went and checked St. Luke’s, didn’t you?”

Mariko nodded. “I went to Organized Crimes first, and asked them for all the Bulldog’s known associates. They gave me the complete list: girlfriends, exes, all of them. I ran every name through St. Luke’s. No hits.”

“So what are you saying?”

Mariko’s hands were shaking now. “Furukawa killed her. He killed her and made the Bulldog think it was ricin. He didn’t even bother forging a medical record, Han. He could have hacked St. Luke’s computers but he didn’t bother, because he only needed Kamaguchi to believe the story long enough to help us.”

“Holy shit.” He thought about it a minute, scratching unconsciously at his cheek. “So what are we going to do about it?”

“What can we do? The guy is a ghost in the machine. Not just him; his whole damn organization.”

“There’s got to be something—”

“What? Call the cops? He
is
the cops, Han. He’s whoever he wants to be. I’ve seen how these people work. They can make and break people with a phone call. I have half an idea that they’re the ones who toppled Kusama.”

“Seriously?”

“Look at how it went down. Kusama’s as slick as they come. He dodged everything the media threw at him. No, he did more than just dodge it. They pelted him with shit and he turned it into snowflakes. He came away as clean as can be. And
then
the top brass push him out?”

“Mariko, I don’t know—”

“Okay, fine, I don’t know either. Call it a theory.” She took a drink. Focusing on how cold it was helped cool her flaring temper too. “But
if that’s how it happened, it might be Furukawa’s way of thanking me. He knows I think Kusama was a sexist prick.”

“He
was
a sexist prick. Good riddance.” Han raised his beer in a toast.

Mariko obliged him; they clinked their bottles together. “You see what I’m saying, though,
neh
? I don’t think we have what it takes to burn down Furukawa.”

“We know he exists. That’s a start.”

“Okay, good point.” Mariko allowed herself a wry laugh. “It might be more than a start.”

“Uh-oh. What did you do?”

“I might have visited the Bulldog in prison.” Kamaguchi would be behind bars for a long time. That was what you got when you fired an AK-47 in a public park. It didn’t matter where the bullets went or how many soldiers you had to stand tall and plead guilty for you. “I might have let Furukawa’s name slip. Along with his description. And everything else I know about him.”

Han grinned. “You’re a bad girl.”

“See?” She smacked him. “This is what I’m worried about. We shouldn’t laugh about this. I shouldn’t feel good about it. I should feel guilty as hell.”

“Why? Because one bad guy is going to fuck over another bad guy? Let them. It’s what they do.”

“
I
helped, Han. Don’t you get that? I helped.”

She scowled at the brown cardboard box that contained her new class A’s. “This is why I don’t want that damn medal, Han. You were there when I broke into that strip club. That was criminal trespassing at best. Felony burglary as soon as I walked out the door with that printout. And that was
before
I fell in with the Wind. Since then . . .” She pinched her eyes shut and took a long drink. “Han, I lie awake at night listing all the crimes I committed for these people. It’s dozens. Maybe fifty, maybe a hundred. I’m too scared to write them all down.”

“Mariko—”

“We took an oath. That’s the difference between a cop and a civilian, you know? You swear an oath, and then all of a sudden you’re different. But I’m not. Not anymore. And now I don’t have the guts to open that stupid box.”

“Mariko, you
are
different—”

“Han, I killed a man. Not in self-defense. He was just lying there, and I killed him, and then you and I covered it up.”

He tried to put an arm around her. She shoved him away. Instantly she regretted it; jostling him shot pain through his ruined right arm. “Dammit, sorry,” she said. “You see my point,
neh
? We got away with it. ‘Cause of death: massive blunt force trauma.’ And now I’m supposed to accept a medal for heroism in the line of duty.”

Mariko finished her drink; Han didn’t give her a new one. “You know what the worst part is, Han? The worst part is I’ve been here before. But Fuchida was different. Akahata was different. Those guys . . . I mean, they train us to take down guys like that. But this . . . this was
cold
, Han.”

“Good.”

It was the last thing she expected him to say. She couldn’t even think of anything to say in response. He’d short-circuited her brain.

Han met her gaze head-on. “Why did you do it? Because he deserved it?”

“No.”

“Because you were pissed off?”

“No.”

“Okay, so you weren’t playing vigilante and you weren’t a hormone-raging PMS monster. That’s what Captain Kusama thought of you,
neh
? Turns out he’s full of shit.”

Mariko nodded reluctantly. “I guess.”

“No, you don’t. You know. Now tell me, what’s the real story? Why did you kill Joko Daishi?”

Mariko didn’t want to tell him about Shoji, or about psychic links and foreseeing the future. She felt too weak. Instead she said, “This is
kind of hard to believe, but I know his mom. Joko Daishi’s, I mean. She’s a friend of my old sensei, Yamada.”

“Whoa. Weird.”

“You could put it that way. Anyway, I figured I owed it to her. He was her son. I mean, you saw the ME’s report. You saw the photos. How could I just leave him like that? I couldn’t do that to her.”

“So you . . .” He looked at Glorious Victory Unsought, which hung in its wall-mounted rack above her bed.

Mariko nodded somberly. She couldn’t speak. As soon as her thoughts ventured toward what happened in that tunnel she flinched away, as viscerally as if she’d touched a hot stove.

Han was dumbstruck too, at least for a while. Finally he said, “You’re amazing.”

“Huh?”

“You’re face-to-face with a guy who killed over a hundred people—a guy who tried to kill
you
—but you, your first response is compassion.”

Mariko hadn’t thought of it like that.

Leave it to Han to show her what was going on in her own brain. She supposed he was right. He had to be; all the evidence supported his conclusion, and Mariko believed what the evidence told her to believe. She was a detective, after all.

She
was
a detective. She’d never stopped being one, not even in her darkest hours—not when she was wiping her prints off a pistol and a padlock, not even when she let her friend wipe a dead man’s blood off her sword. The unnerving truth was that being a detective made her better at being a criminal. Everything she’d done for the Wind she was just as capable of doing on her own. But compassion had to count for something, didn’t it?

It did. She saw that now. Furukawa tried three times to recruit her. What tipped the balance wasn’t some new argument on his part: it was hundreds of kidnapped children.

Would she do it all over again? She didn’t want to think about that.
She wasn’t afraid of a yes; she was afraid of what it might mean if the answer was no. Now wasn’t the time to think about it anyway. She was in too fragile a state for that. Besides, she had things to do.

She sniffed, wiped her nose, and got up to open the box. The cap was on top. She plopped it on her head, covering her ridiculous mostly bald spot, and held the jacket up in front of her as if to imagine herself wearing it in front of a mirror. “Well? What do you think?”

“I think you’re fucked. You’re not planning on wearing that to the ceremony, are you?”

“Um . . . yeah?”

“Right out of the box? Mariko, you’re supposed to have it dry-cleaned.”

Mariko thought about that for a second. No one had ever worn this uniform. It wasn’t dirty. It didn’t stink. She was missing something.

“Wrinkles!” Han said. He’d have thrown his hands up in despair if only he had two good hands. Instead he managed a kind of flailing motion. “It’s a dress uniform. It’s supposed to look, you know,
dressy
.”

“I don’t really do dressy.”

“No shit.” He flailed again. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I thought you said I was amazing.”

“You’re a jackass is what you are.”

Mariko laughed out loud. It had been a long time since she’d done that. “You think Sakakibara will give me one more day?”

“Are you kidding? He’ll skin you, stuff you, and use you as a punching bag. His words. He said he’d hang you in the police academy gym so all the new recruits could whale on you.”

Mariko laughed again. “Okay, so what now?”

Han shoved the last of the beers in her hand. “Drink this. Fast.”

“Han, I can’t show up drunk to the ceremony.”

“Trust me, you’ll sober right up when you find out how much one-hour dry cleaning costs.”

*   *   *

“It’s about damn time,” Sakakibara said when Mariko showed up in her spotless, wrinkle-free uniform. Mariko’s eyes flicked frantically to the wall clock, afraid she was late. Then, seeing she was five minutes early, she realized he meant she should have done this two weeks ago.

It hadn’t occurred to her how many people would be involved in this ceremony. She figured the usual: someone getting pinned, someone to do the pinning, maybe a photographer or two. Her mother, Saori, and Han should have doubled attendance. The department’s pressroom wasn’t big, just a nice little stage and a few dozen seats. Most of those seats should have been empty.