Tokyo Vice (17 page)

“He’d be a great guy to know.”

“Why don’t you go visit him? He won’t bite. Just be polite. Don’t tell him I sent you, though.”

“What should I tell him?”

“Tell him someone in homicide leaked his name to your boss. He hates working with those homicide guys anyway, so you won’t have to give up any names because you can blame your boss. Tell him that the homicide guys gave his name to your boss.”

“What’s his name?”

“Sekiguchi.”

Yamamoto was extremely pleased to hear I’d found a new source. We were still on the police shit list, so every little bit helped.

“You did good, Adelstein. But if you’re going to get this cop to talk, you need a strategy. Does he have kids?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I think somebody said something about daughters.”

“Good. Take ice cream.”

“Weather’s warming up. Ice cream will get all messy.”

“Buy some dry ice, idiot.”

“Why ice cream? Just because kids are supposed to like it?”

“No, no, no. It’s a Trojan horse, Adelstein. It gets you in the door. If the cop’s not home, you can say to the wife, ‘Oh, I brought this ice cream for him. Could you please put it in the freezer so it doesn’t melt?’ If he’s home, he may take the ice cream and invite you in. If the kids see the ice cream, they’re going to want some. They may decide they like you. If they do, you’ve nailed the wife.”

“You want me to have sex with the wife?”

“No, get on good terms with the wife. Work on your Japanese, Jake. Trust me. If you’re going to take something with you, ice cream is good. Remember, you’re imposing on these cops. They aren’t obligated to
talk to us at all. So acknowledge this. No good police reporter shows up empty-handed, not the first time and not the last time.”

“Uhh, can I expense it?”

“This comes out of your own pocket. Everybody pays their own sources.”

The curse of the police beat: the
Yomiuri
raises your pay, but it never matches the hours you work. You have a very limited expense account, and the better you get at your job, the more you spend on wining, dining, and gifts to the cops. Even the Yomiuri Giants baseball tickets, which everyone thought we got for free, we paid for out of pocket. The more sources you had, the more expenses you had. So it went.

But I followed Yamamoto’s advice to the letter. I went to the supermarket and bought the biggest tub of Häagen-Dazs chocolate I could find and arrived at the interrogator’s house at seven in the evening. It was at the back of an empty field, and it looked more like a shack than a house, with a little porch. The night was pitch-black. After living in the city for months, it was a shock to see the night sky and hear the sounds of leaves rustling. The smell of vegetation and damp leaves wafted through the air like raw incense.

I had the driver wait far out of sight. As I approached the house, I felt nervous, as I always did on a first yomawari, which was worse when you’d never even met the guy you were going to cuddle up to. I likened it to a blind date with a female kickboxer.

As I rang the doorbell, I could hear children laughing. Perfect. Mrs. Sekiguchi came to the door and turned on the porch light. Two little girls materialized on either side of her, sticking their heads out, full of curiosity at the apparition standing before them.

“I apologize for coming so late in the evening. My name is Jake Adelstein, with the
Yomiuri Shinbun,”
I said in perfectly polite Japanese and handed her my card.

She looked confused. “Umm, we already subscribe to the
Yomiuri.”

“Thank you,” I said, bowing as a good company man should. “Actually, I’m a reporter. I was hoping for the chance to speak with your husband.”

“Oh? Let me see if he’ll talk to you.”

She ducked indoors as the two girls stepped out onto the porch.
“What
are you?” asked the littler one.

“Don’t you mean
who
are you?” I corrected her.

She stood her ground. “No, I mean
what
are you? You’re obviously not human.”

“He might be human,” her sister said.

I didn’t know how to respond to this line of conversation. “Why do you think I’m not human?”

The little sister answered immediately. “You have pointed ears and a nose so big that you can’t be human.”

“Well, then,” I asked, “what am I?”

Little Sister came closer and stared up at my face. “You have a big long nose and pointed ears and big round eyes too. You are pretending to speak Japanese like a human being. You must be a
tengu
[Japanese goblin].”

Big Sister shook her head. “Chi-chan, he has only one pointed ear. And his skin isn’t bright red. Just pink. But definitely he has a tengu nose.”

Chi-chan asked me to bend down so she could touch my nose. I did. Without a moment’s hesitation she stuck a finger in each of my nostrils and pulled down hard; I almost fell over. She wiped her fingers on her jeans and scratched her head. Then she clapped her hands. “I know! You’re half tengu and half human. What do you think, Yuki-chan?”

Before Yuki-chan could offer her informed judgment on the state of my being, Mrs. Sekiguchi returned. “My husband doesn’t want to talk to any reporters. I’m sorry,” she said apologetically.

“I understand,” I replied. “I usually cover organized crime for the newspaper, and I know a lot of police are not comfortable talking with the press. Sometimes, believe it or not, I personally can be useful to them.”

Mrs. Sekiguchi laughed. “Well, maybe next time.”

I handed her my bag of ice cream. “This will never survive the trip back to Urawa, so please take it. It’s already starting to melt. I’m sure Chi-chan and Yuki-chan will like it.”

I said good-bye to the kids, wiggling my half-tengu ear at them, and walked slowly back to where the car was parked. I was halfway across the field when I heard a deep booming voice call out, “Yomi-san [as in “Mr. Yomiuri”], wait up!”

I turned around to see a tall, imposing figure in jeans and T-shirt standing on the porch. It was Sekiguchi. I headed back his way.

“Thanks for the ice cream,” he said as he shook my hand firmly.
“There’s too much for four people. You might as well come in and have some.”

Sekiguchi had deep-sunken eyes with solid black irises, high cheekbones, and a pronounced nose that you could see had been broken. He had his hair cut short, a little longer on top, giving him the appearance of a fifties biker. He motioned me inside.

The kids and Mrs. Sekiguchi were sitting on the living room floor with their feet under the blanket of a low table. Mrs. Sekiguchi had my meishi out before her, and the two girls had what looked like homework spread out over the table. Sekiguchi brought in five bowls of ice cream and set them on the table.

I handed him the beer I’d brought as backup.

“Oh, thanks!” he said, taking the beer into the kitchen. He sat down and then, as if he’d just remembered something, asked, “I’m sorry, did you want a beer?”

“I’m fine, thank you. But you don’t drink beer?” I asked.

“No, not at home. It sets a bad example for the kids.”

He lit a cigarette and offered me one too. I gladly accepted, needing to do something with my hands.

“I thought the typical American didn’t smoke anymore?” he said.

“I’m not a typical American.”

“I noticed.”

“How did you know I’m American?”

He took a drag. “I remember you. You were there taking photos when we busted that Sumiyoshi-kai fake political organization.”

“Yeah, I was there. I don’t remember seeing you, though,” I said, then dared to say what came out of my mouth next. “Maybe I thought you were another yakuza.”

Happily for me, he laughed. “Yeah, I get that a lot. In this town, I could have gone either way.”

From then on, Sekiguchi controlled the conversation, asking questions about me and my background, my life up to entering the
Yomiuri
. He was a good listener. He was either really interested or really good at feigning interest. After we finished the ice cream, he thanked me again.

“That was delicious. Your technique is good, and your approach is decent. You figured this would get you in the door, and you were right. The question that remains is: can I trust you, and should I trust you?”

“Yes, that is the question, isn’t it?”

“How did you get my name?”

I had to think about how to answer. I didn’t want to come off false, but I didn’t want to give everything away. “You know that I cover organized crime. That’s my beat within the police beat.”

“But you’re here because I’m working the dog breeder case.”

I nodded. “That’s right. I cover organized crime, and you’re handling the missing yakuza guy, or so I hear.”

He nodded, then said, “But you aren’t answering my original question. How did you get my name and address?”

“If I tell you, how can you trust me? How can you know that I won’t drop your name with the wrong person? Conversely, even if I tell you, how do I know you won’t flush out my source and get him in trouble for leaking information?”

Sekiguchi laughed. “Good answer. You’re well trained. All right. I won’t ask for a name. But give me a hint. I promise you that I won’t hold it against you, and I won’t go looking for who told you about me. I’m just curious.”

“So you’re asking me to trust you?”

“It’s a mutual thing.”

“All right. I have no loyalty to the homicide squad. They aren’t my beat. Someone on the case gave your name to my boss. He won’t tell me who it was, and I would never ask.”

Sekiguchi curled his lip and stubbed out his cigarette, chuckling.

“Those guys spend eighty percent of their time trying to figure out how to keep the press off the scent and from fucking up the investigation. Of course, they’re all leaking information right and left to their favorite reporters, especially to the cute female ones. So what do you want to know?”

I wasn’t expecting this. Actually, I’d never been grilled like this by a cop before. This was new territory for me.

“What can you tell me about Endo?” I started. “And what can you tell me about Gen Sekine?”

“What do you know about Endo?”

I told him everything I knew. Sekiguchi offered me another cigarette, and we both lit up again.

“What should I call you? I’m sure as hell not going to call you
Aderusutain
every time.”

“Jake works.”

“Jake-san? Jake-kun?”

“Just Jake is fine.”

“Okay. Well, it’s getting late. So I’ll tell you what I know, with a caveat.”

“Name it.”

“A lot of this information is ground level. If you take it and run it past the guys at the top, they won’t know it since they don’t have it yet, but they’ll be puzzled that you have it and they’ll go down the food chain looking for the leak. If you don’t know this already, you should. You have to wait for information to go all the way up to the top before double-checking it. Otherwise, you burn your sources. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. I’ll tell you what I know, but how you handle the information will be a litmus test of your reliability. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“There’s no question that Sekine killed Endo, and it’s our strongest case. I think we should bust him on charges of murder right from the start; no fucking around. He’ll break quickly. I know that. Obviously, since I’m not a member of the killer-catcher elite, no one is listening to me, but they will eventually.

“From the investigation so far, I would say that Sekine has killed eight people. The murder of Endo is the one with the strongest circumstantial evidence and hearsay. We have witnesses who can testify, after a fashion, that Endo met Sekine right before he vanished and that on that day Sekine ‘injured’ him. I won’t elaborate.” Sekiguchi was full of confidence.

I asked how a dog breeder like Sekine had become so well entrenched with the yakuza.

“Before Sekine came to Konan, he got in big trouble with the Yamaguchi-gumi over money. He himself used to be in another yakuza group, the Kyokuto-kai. When he got here, a customer introduced him to the Takada-gumi, who put him under its wing. As a gesture of thanks, he gave Takada, the boss, an incredibly expensive dog. That was the beginning of his connections with the Inagawa-kai crime group. He proceeded to become the exotic pet supplier to the yakuza, selling vicious dogs and wild beasts to any yakuza who had the money. They love that kind of crap. It heightens their image as tough guys. He sold a lion—a goddamn lion—to one group. It’s still alive. But this Kennel guy, which everybody calls him, doesn’t
like
animals; he admires them, sort of, and he uses them.

“I’ll give you an example. A couple months ago, Kennel and this customer were arguing over the price of a dog. The negotiations were going nowhere. So picture this: They are standing there in Kennel’s store. At their feet, tongue hanging from its mouth, is a pure-bred Alaskan malamute. The customer won’t budge. He tells Sekine he’s not going to pay the one and a half million yen the breeder wants; he asks once more to have a half million yen taken off the price.

“‘You want a five hundred thousand yen discount?’ Sekine mutters, smiling as he strokes the dog in front of him. Then he picks up a pair of grooming scissors from his desk, cuts off the dog’s left ear in one snip, and tosses it at the feet of the customer. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘you win. I’ve taken it off.’ The guy paid the price and took the dog and left. Because I’m sure he was thinking, The next ear lying at my feet might not be the dog’s.

“Is that something a normal person would do? Kennel has this thing for animals because he thinks they have no conscience and they act purely on instinct. He wants to be an animal like that.”

The evening having had its share of startling revelations, Sekiguchi walked me to the door. As I was preparing to leave, he put a firm hand on my shoulder, stopping me. I turned around. Had I made some kind of terrible faux pas?

He looked me in the eyes and pointed down at my feet. “Your socks don’t match; do you know that?” he asked.

I got back to Saitama around midnight. Yamamoto was waiting for me.