Second Night

1

   The sun was setting on the sekitei. The shadows of the rocks rippled over the concentric circles of raked sand. I sat and stared at the patterns. Connor was somewhere inside, still watching television. I could faintly hear the newscast. Of course, a Zen temple would have a television set on the premises. I was starting to become accustomed to these contradictions.
   But I didn’t want to watch TV any more. I had seen enough, in the last hour, to know how the media was going to play it. Senator Morton had been under a great deal of stress lately. His family life was troubled; his teenage son had recently been arrested for drunk driving, after an accident in which another teenager had been seriously injured. The senator’s daughter was rumored to have had an abortion. Mrs. Morton was not available for comment, although reporters were standing outside the family townhouse in Arlington.
   The senator’s staff all agreed that the senator had been under enormous pressure lately, trying to balance family life and his own impending candidacy. The senator had not been himself; he had been moody and withdrawn, and in the words of one staffer, “He seemed to have been troubled by something personal.”
   While no one questioned the senator’s judgment, one colleague, Senator Dowling, said that Morton had “become a bit of a fanatic about Japan lately, perhaps an indication of the strain he was under. John didn’t seem to think accommodation with Japan was possible anymore, and of course we all know that we have to make an accommodation. Our two nations are now too closely bound together. Unfortunately, none of us could have known the strain he was really under. John Morton was a private man.”
   I sat watching the rocks in the garden turn gold, then red. An American Zen monk named Bill Harris came out and asked me if I wanted tea, or perhaps a Coke. I said no. He went away. Looking back inside, I saw flickering blue light from the tube. I couldn’t see Connor.
   I looked back at the rocks in the garden.
   The first gunshot had not killed Senator Morton. When we kicked open the bathroom door, he was bleeding from the neck, staggering to his feet. Connor shouted “Don’t!” just as Morton put the gun in his mouth and fired again. The second shot was fatal. The gun kicked out of his hands and went spinning across the tile floor of the bathroom. It came to rest near my shoes. There was a lot of blood on the walls.
   Then people started screaming. I had turned back and I saw the makeup girl in the doorway, holding her hands to her face and screaming at the top of her lungs. Eventually, when the paramedics came, they sedated her.
   Connor and I had stayed until the division sent Bob Kaplan and Tony Marsh. They were the detectives in charge, and we were free to go. I told Bob we’d give statements whenever he wanted them, and we left. I noticed that Ishiguro had already gone. So had Eddie Sakamura.
   That had bothered Connor. “That damn Eddie,” he said. “Where is he?”
   “Who cares?” I said.
   “There’s a problem with Eddie,” Connor said.
   “What problem?”
   “Didn’t you notice how he acted around Ishiguro? He was too confident,” Connor said. “Much too confident. He should have been frightened and he wasn’t.”
   I shrugged. “You said it yourself, Eddie’s crazy. Who knows why he does what he does.” I was tired of the case, and tired of Connor’s endless Japanese nuances. I said I thought Eddie had probably gone back to Japan. Or to Mexico, where he had said earlier that he wanted to go.
   “I hope you’re right,” Connor said.
   He led me toward the rear entrance to the station. Connor said he wanted to leave before the press arrived. We got into our car and left. He directed me to the Zen center. We had been there ever since. I had called Lauren but she was out of the office. I called Theresa at the lab but her line was busy. I called home, and Elaine said that Michelle was fine, and the reporters had all gone. She asked if I wanted her to stay and give Michelle dinner. I said yes, that I might be home late.
   And then for the next hour, I watched television. Until I didn’t want to watch any more.

   It was almost dark. The sand was purple-gray. My body was stiff from sitting, and it was growing chilly. My beeper went off, I was getting a call from the division. Or perhaps it was Theresa. I got up and went inside.
   On the television set, Senator Stephen Rowe was expressing sympathy for the bereaved family, and talking about the fact that Senator Morton had been overstressed. Senator Rowe pointed out that the Akai offer had not been withdrawn. The sale was, so far as Rowe knew, still going through, and there would not now be any serious opposition.
   “Hmmm,” Connor said.
   “The sale is back on?” I said.
   “It seems it was never off.” Connor was obviously worried.
   “You don’t approve of the sale?”
   “I’m worried about Eddie. He was so cocky. It’s a question of what Ishiguro will do now.”
   “Who cares?” I was tired. The girl was dead, Morton was dead, and the sale was going forward.
   Connor shook his head. “Remember the stakes,” he said. “The stakes are huge. Ishiguro isn’t concerned about a sordid little murder, or even the strategic purchase of some high-tech company. Ishiguro is concerned about Nakamoto’s reputation in America. Nakamoto has a large corporate presence in America, and it wants it to be larger. Eddie can damage that reputation.”
   “How?”
   He shook his head. “I don’t know, for sure.”
   My beeper went off again. I called in. It was Frank Ellis, the watch officer at division headquarters for the evening.
   “Hey, Pete,” he said. “We got a call for Special Services. Sergeant Matlovsky, down at vehicle impound. He’s asking for language assistance.”
   “What is it?” I said.
   “He says he’s got five Japanese nationals down there, demanding to inspect the wrecked vehicle.”
   I frowned. “What wrecked vehicle?”
   “That Ferrari. The one in the high-speed pursuit. Apparently it’s pretty ragged: the impact crushed it, and there was a fire. And the body was cut out with torches by the VHDV teams this morning. But the Japanese insist on inspecting the vehicle anyway. Matlovsky can’t tell from the paperwork whether it’s okay to let somebody look at it or not. You know, whether it’s material to an ongoing investigation or not. And he can’t speak the language to understand the Japanese. One of the Japanese claims to be related to the deceased. So, you want to go down there and handle it?”
   I sighed. “Am I on tonight? I was on last night.”
   “Well, you’re on the board. You traded nights with Allen, looks like.”
   I dimly remembered. I had traded nights with Jim Allen so he could take his kid to a Kings hockey game. I had agreed to it a week ago, but it seemed like something from my distant past.
   “Okay,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”
   I went back to tell Connor I had to leave. He listened to the story and suddenly jumped to his feet, “Of course! Of course! What was I thinking of? Damn!” He pounded his hand in his fist. “Let’s go, kōhai.”
   “We’re going to impound?”
   “Impound? Absolutely not.”
   “Then what are we doing?”
   “Oh, damn it, I’m a fool!” he said. He was already heading for the car.
   I hurried after him.


* * *

   As I pulled up in front of Eddie Sakamura’s house, Connor leapt from the car, and raced up the steps. I parked and ran after him. The sky was deep blue. It was almost night.
   Connor was taking the steps two at a time. “I blame myself,” he said. “I should have seen it earlier. I should have understood what it meant.”
   “What what meant?” I said. I was panting a little, at the top of the steps.
   Connor threw open the front door. We went inside. The living room was exactly as I had last seen it, earlier in the day, when I had stood there talking to Graham.
   Connor went quickly from room to room. In the bedroom, a suitcase lay open. Armani and Byblos jackets lay on the bed, waiting to be packed. “The little idiot,” Connor said. “He should never have come back here.”
   The pool lights were on outside. They cast a green rippling pattern on the ceiling. Connor went outside.

   The body lay face down in the water, naked, floating in the center of the pool, a dark silhouette in the glowing green rectangle. Connor got a skimmer pole and pushed Eddie toward the far edge. We hauled him up onto the concrete lip.
   The body was blue and cold, beginning to stiffen. He appeared unmarked.
   “They would be careful about that,” Connor said.
   “About what?”
   “About not letting anything show. But I’m sure we can find the proofs…” He got out his penlight and peered inside Eddie’s mouth. He inspected the nipples, and the genitals. “Yes. There. See the rows of red dots? On the scrotum. And there on the side of the thigh…”
   “Alligator clips?”
   “Yes. For the electric shock coil. Damn!” Connor said. “Why didn’t he tell me? All that time, when we were driving from your apartment to the television station to see the senator. He could have said something then. He could have told me the truth.”
   “About what?”
   Connor didn’t answer me. He was lost in his own thoughts. He sighed. “You know, in the end, we are just gaijin. Foreigners. Even in his desperation, we’re excluded. And anyway, he probably wouldn’t tell us because…”
   He fell silent. He stared at the corpse. Finally, he slid the body back into the water. It floated out again.
   “Let somebody else do the paperwork,” Connor said, standing up. “We don’t need to be the ones who found the body. It doesn’t matter.” He watched Eddie drift back to the center of the pool. The head tilted down slightly. The heels bobbed on the surface.
   “I liked him,” Connor said. “He did favors for me. I even met his family when I was in Japan. Some of his family. Not the father.” He watched the body rotate slowly. “But Eddie was okay. And now, I want to know.”
   I was lost. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t think I should say anything. Connor looked angry.
   “Come on,” he said finally. “We have to move fast. There’s only a couple of possibilities. And once again, we have fallen behind events. But if it’s the last thing I do, I want to get that son of a bitch.”
   “What son of a bitch?”
   “Ishiguro.”

2

   We were driving back to my apartment. “You take the night off,” he said.
   “I’m going with you,” I said.
   “No. I’ll do this alone, kōhai. It’s better if you don’t know.”
   “Know what?” I said.
   We went on like this for a while. He didn’t want to tell me. Finally he said, “Tanaka went to Eddie’s house last night because Eddie had the tape. Presumably, the original.”
   “Right…”
   “And Tanaka wanted it back. That’s why they had an argument. When you and Graham came, and all hell broke loose, Eddie told Tanaka the tape was in the Ferrari. So Tanaka went down there, panicked when he saw the police, and drove the car away.”
   “Right.”
   “I always assumed the tape was destroyed in the crash, and the fire.”
   “Yes…”
   “But obviously it wasn’t. Because Eddie wouldn’t dare be so cocky around Ishiguro unless he still had a tape. The tape would be his ace in the hole. He knew it. But he obviously didn’t understand how ruthless Ishiguro would be.”
   “They tortured him for the tape?”
   “Yes. But Eddie must have surprised them. He didn’t tell them.”
   “How do you know?”
   “Because,” Connor said, “otherwise, there wouldn’t be five Japanese nationals asking to inspect the wreck of a Ferrari in the middle of the night.”
   “So they’re still looking for the tape?”
   “Yes. Or evidence of the tape. They may not even know how many are missing, at this point.”
   I thought it over.
   “What are you going to do?” I said.
   “Find the tape,” Connor said. “Because it matters. People are dying for that tape. If we can find the original…” He shook his head. “It’ll put Ishiguro in deep shit. Which is just where he belongs.”
   I pulled up in front of my apartment building. As Elaine had said, all the reporters were gone. The street was quiet. Dark.
   “I still want to go with you,” I said again.
   Connor shook his head. “I’m on extended leave,” he said. “You’re not. You’ve got your pension to think of. And you don’t want to know exactly what I am going to do tonight.”
   “I can guess,” I said. “You’re going to retrace Eddie’s steps from last night. Eddie left his house and went to stay with the redhead. Maybe he went somewhere else, too—“
   “Look,” Connor said. “Let’s not waste more time, kōhai. I have some contacts and some people I can lean on. Leave it at that. If you need me, you can call me on the car phone. But don’t call unless you have to. Because I’ll be busy.”
   “But—“
   “Come on, kōhai. Out of the car. Spend a nice night with your kid. You did a good job, but your job is finished now.”
   Finally, I got out of the car.
   “Sayonara,” Connor said, with an ironic wave. And he drove off.

   “Daddy! Daddy!” She ran toward me, arms outstretched. “Pick me up, Daddy.”
   I picked her up. “Hi, Shelly.”
   “Daddy, can I watch Sleeping Beauty?”
   “I don’t know. Have you had dinner yet?”
   “She ate two hot dogs and an ice cream cone,” Elaine said. She was washing dishes in the kitchen.
   “Jeez,” I said. “I thought we were going to stop feeding her junk food.”
   “Well, it’s all she would eat,” Elaine said. She was irritable. It was the end of a long day with a two-year-old.
   “Daddy, can I watch Sleeping Beauty?”
   “Just a minute, Shelly, I’m talking to Elaine.”
   “I tried that soup,” Elaine said, “but she wouldn’t touch it. She wanted a hot dog.”
   “Daddy, can I watch Disney channel?”
   “Michelle,” I said.
   Elaine said, “So I thought it was better that she eat something. I think she was thrown off. You know, the reporters and everything. All the excitement.”
   “Daddy? Can I? Sleeping Beauty?” She was squirming in my arms. Patting my face to get my attention.
   “Okay, Shel.”
   “Now, Daddy?”
   “Okay.”
   I put her down. She ran into the living room and turned on the TV, pushing the remote without hesitation. “I think she watches too much television.”
   “They all do,” Elaine said, shrugging.
   “Daddy?”
   I went into the living room and plugged in the cassette. I fast-forwarded to the credits, then let it run.
   “Not this part,” she said impatiently.
   So I fast-forwarded to the beginning of the action. Pages turning in a book.
   “This part, this part,” she said, tugging at my hand.
   I let the tape run at normal speed. Michelle sat in the chair and started sucking her thumb. She pulled her thumb out of her mouth and patted the seat beside her. “Here, Daddy,” she said.
   She wanted me to sit with her.
   I sighed. I looked at the room. It was a mess. Her crayons and coloring books were scattered over the floor. And the large Tinkertoy windmill.
   “Let me clean up,” I said. “I’ll be right here, with you.”
   She popped her thumb back in her mouth, and turned to the screen. Her attention was total.
   I cleaned up the crayons and put them back in the cardboard box. I folded up her coloring books and set them on the shelf. I was suddenly tired and sat down for a minute on the floor next to Michelle. On the screen, three fairies, red, green, and blue, were flying into the throne room of the castle.
   “That’s Merryweather,” Michelle said, pointing. “She’s the blue one.”
   From the kitchen, Elaine said, “Can I fix you a sandwich, Lieutenant?”
   “That’d be great,” I said. I found I just wanted to sit there and be with my daughter. I wanted to forget everything, at least for a while. I was grateful that Connor had dropped me off. I sat and watched the TV dumbly.
   Elaine brought in a salami sandwich with lettuce and mustard. I was hungry. Elaine looked at the TV, shook her head, and went back into the kitchen. I ate my sandwich, and Michelle insisted on a few bites. She likes salami. I worry about the additives in it, but I guess it’s no worse than hot dogs.
   After I had the sandwich, I felt a little better. I got up to finish cleaning up the room. I picked up the Tinkertoy windmill and started taking it apart, putting the sticks back into the cardboard tube. Michelle said, “No this, no this!” in a pained voice. I thought she didn’t want me to take apart the windmill, but that wasn’t it at all. She was cupping her hands over her eyes. She didn’t like to see Maleficent, the bad witch. I fast-forwarded past the witch, and she relaxed again.
   I dismantled the Tinkertoy windmill and put everything back into the tube container. I put the metal cap on the tube and set it on the lowest shelf of the bookcase. That was where it always went. I like to keep the toys low, so Michelle can get to them herself.
   The tube fell off the shelf, onto the carpet. I picked it up again. There was something on the shelf. A small gray rectangle. I knew at once what it was.
   It was an eight-millimeter video cassette, with Japanese writing on the label.

3

   Elaine said, “Lieutenant? Do you need anything else?” She had her coat on; she was ready to go.
   “Hang on a minute,” I said.
   I went to the phone, and called the switchboard downtown. I asked them to connect me to Connor in my car. I waited impatiently. Elaine looked at me.
   “Just another minute, Elaine,” I said.
   On the TV, the prince was singing a duet with Sleeping Beauty while birds chirped. Michelle was sucking her thumb.
   The operator said, “I’m sorry, there is no answer from the car.”
   “Okay,” I said. “Do you have a forwarding number for Captain Connor?”
   A pause. “He’s not on our active roster.”
   “I know that. But did he leave a number?”
   “I don’t have anything, Lieutenant.”
   “I’m trying to find him.”
   “Wait a minute.” She put me on hold. I swore.
   Elaine stood in the front hallway. She was waiting to go.
   The operator came back on. “Lieutenant? Captain Ellis says that Captain Connor has gone.”
   “Gone?”
   “He was here a while ago, but he’s gone now.”
   “You mean he was downtown?”
   “Yes, but he’s gone now. I don’t have a number for him. I’m sorry.”
   I hung up. What the hell was Connor doing downtown?
   Elaine was still standing in the front hallway. “Lieutenant?”
   I said, “Just a minute, Elaine.”
   “Lieutenant, I have a—“
   “I said, just a minute.”
   I started pacing. I didn’t know what to do. I was suddenly overwhelmed with fear. They had killed Eddie for the tape. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill anybody else. I looked at my daughter, watching television with her thumb in her mouth. I said to Elaine, “Where’s your car?”
   “In the garage.”
   “Okay. Look. I want you to take Michelle and I want you to go—“
   The phone rang. I grabbed it, hoping it was Connor. “Hello.”
   “Moshi moshi. Connor-san desu ka?”
   “He’s not here,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I cursed myself. But it was too late, the damage was done.
   “Very good, Lieutenant,” the voice said, heavily accented. “You have what we want, don’t you?”
   I said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
   “I think you do, Lieutenant.”
   I could hear a faint hiss on the line. The call was coming from a car phone. They could be anywhere.
   They could be right outside.
   Damn!
   I said, “Who is this?”
   But I heard only a dial tone.
   Elaine said, “What is it, Lieutenant?”
   I was running to the window. I saw three cars double-parked in the street below. Five men getting out of them, dark silhouettes in the night.

4

   I tried to stay calm. “Elaine,” I said. “I want you to take Michelle, and both of you go into my bedroom. Get under the bed. I want you to stay under there and be very quiet, no matter what happens. Do you understand?”
   “No, Daddy!”
   “Do it now, Elaine.”
   “No, Daddy! I want to watch Sleeping Beauty.”
   “You can watch it later.” I had taken out my gun and was checking the clip. Elaine’s eyes were wide.
   She took Michelle. “Come on, honey.”
   Michelle squirmed in her arms, protesting. “No, Daddy!”
   “Michelle.”
   She went silent, shocked at my tone. Elaine carried her into the bedroom. I loaded another clip, and put it in my jacket pocket.
   I turned off the lights in the bedroom, and in Michelle’s room. I looked at her crib, and the covers with little elephants sewn into it. I turned off the lights in the kitchen.
   I went back into the living room. The TV was still playing. The wicked witch was instructing her raven to find Sleeping Beauty. “You are my last hope, my pet, do not fail me,” she said to the bird. The bird flew away.
   I stayed low. I moved toward the door. The phone rang again. I crawled back to answer it.
   “Hello.”
   “Kōhai.” It was Connor’s voice. I heard the static hiss of the car phone.
   I said, “Where are you?”
   “You have the tape?”
   “Yes, I have the tape. Where are you?”
   “At the airport.”
   “Well, get here. Right away. And call for backup! Jesus!”
   I heard a sound on the landing, outside my door. A soft sound, like footsteps.
   I hung up the phone. I was sweating.
   Christ.
   If Connor was at the airport, he was twenty minutes away from me. Maybe more.
   Maybe more.
   I was going to have to handle this on my own.
   I watched the door, listening intently. But I didn’t hear anything else on the landing outside.
   From the bedroom, I heard my daughter say, “I want Sleeping Beauty. I want Daddy,” I heard Elaine whispering to her. Michelle whimpered.
   Then it was quiet.
   The phone rang again.
   “Lieutenant,” the heavily accented voice said, “there is no need for backups.”
   Christ, they were listening to the car phone.
   “We want no harm, Lieutenant. We want only one thing. Will you be so kind, to bring the tape out to us?”
   “I have the tape,” I said.
   “We know.”
   I said, “You can have it.”
   “Good. It will be better.”
   I knew I was on my own. I was thinking fast. My sole idea was: Get them away from here. Get them away from my daughter.
   “But not here,” I said.
   There was a knock at the front door. Quick, insistent rapping.
   Damn!
   I could feel events closing in around me. Things were happening too fast. I was crouched down on the floor, with the phone pulled down from the table above. Trying to stay below the windows.
   The knock came again.
   I said into the phone, “You can have the tape. But first call off your boys.”
   “Say again, please?”
   Christ, a fucking language problem!
   “Call your men away. Get them out in the street. I want to see.”
   “Lieutenant, we must have tape!”
   “I know that,” I said. “I’ll give it to you.” While I talked, I kept my eyes on the door. I saw the knob turning. Someone was trying to open the front door. Slowly, quietly. Then the knob was released. Something white slid under the door.
   A business card.
   “Lieutenant, please cooperate.”
   I crawled forward and picked up the card. It said: Jonathan Connor, Captain, Los Angeles Police Department.
   Then I heard a whisper from the other side.
   “Kōhai.”
   I knew it was a trick. Connor said he was at the airport, so it had to be a trick—
   “Perhaps I can be of assistance, kōhai.”
   Those were the words he had used before, at the start of the case. I was confused to hear them.
   “Open the fucking door, kōhai.”
   It was Connor. I reached up and opened the door. He slipped into the room, bent over. He was dragging something blue: a Kevlar vest. I said, “I thought you were—“
   He shook his head, and whispered, “Knew they must be here. Had to be. I’ve been waiting in the car in the alley behind the house. How many are there in front?”
   “I think, five. Maybe more.”
   He nodded.
   The accented voice on the phone said, “Lieutenant? You are there? Lieutenant?”
   I held the receiver away from my ear so Connor could listen while I talked. “I’m here,” I said.
   On the TV, there was a loud witch’s cackle.
   “Lieutenant, I hear something with you.”
   “It’s just Sleeping Beauty,” I said.
   “What? Sreeping Booty?” the voice said, puzzled. “What is this?”
   “Television,” I said. “It’s the television.”
   Now I heard whispers at the other end of the line. The rush of a car going by on the street. It reminded me that the men were in an exposed position outside. Standing there on a residential street lined with apartment buildings on both sides. Lots of windows. People that might look out at any time. Or people walking by. The men would have to move quickly.
   Perhaps they already were.
   Connor was tugging at my jacket. Signaling me to undress. I slid out of my coat as I spoke into the phone.
   “All right,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”
   “You bring tape to us.”
   I looked at Connor. He nodded. Yes.
   “All right,” I said. “But first get your people back.”
   “I am sorry?”
   Connor made a fist. His face turned to a snarl. He wanted me to be angry. He covered the phone and whispered in my ear. A Japanese phrase.
   “Pay attention!” I said. “Yoku kike!”
   At the other end, there was a grunt. Surprise.
   “Wakatta. The men come away. And now, you come, Lieutenant.”
   “Okay,” I said. “I’m coming.”
   I hung up the phone.

   Connor whispered, “Thirty seconds,” and disappeared out the front door. I was still buttoning up my shirt around the vest. Kevlar is bulky and hot. Immediately I started to sweat.
   I waited thirty seconds, staring at the face of my watch. Watching the hand go around. And then I went outside.

   Someone had turned the lights out in the hallway. I tripped over a body. I got to my feet, and looked at a slender Asian face. It was just a kid, surprisingly young. A teenager. He was unconscious, breathing shallowly.
   I moved slowly down the stairs.
   There wasn’t anybody on the second-floor landing. I kept going down. I heard canned laughter from a television, behind one of the doors on the second floor. A voice said, “So tell us, where did you go on this first date?”
   I continued down to the ground floor. The front door of the apartment building was glass. I looked out and saw only parked cars, and a hedge. A short section of lawn in front of the building. The men and the cars were somewhere off to the left.
   I waited. I took a breath. My heart was pounding. I didn’t want to go out there, but all I could think was to get them away from my daughter. To move the action away from my—
   I stepped out into the night.
   The air was cold on my sweating face and neck.
   I took two steps forward.
   Now I could see the men. They stood about ten meters away, beside their cars. I counted four men. One of them waved to me, beckoning me over. I hesitated.
   Where were the others?
   I couldn’t see anybody except the men by the cars. They waved again, beckoning me. I started toward them when suddenly a heavy thumping blow from behind knocked me flat onto my face on the wet grass.
   It was a moment before I realized what had happened.
   I had been shot in the back.
   And then the gunfire erupted all around me. Automatic weapons. The street was lit up like lightning from the gunfire. The sound echoed off the apartment buildings on both sides of the street. Glass was shattering. I heard people shouting all around me. More gunfire. I heard the sound of ignitions, cars roaring down the street past me. Almost immediately there was the sound of police sirens and tires squealing, and the glare of searchlights. I stayed where I was, face down on the grass. I felt like I was there for about an hour. Then I realized that the shouts now were all in English.
   Finally someone came and crouched over me and said, “Don’t move, Lieutenant. Let me look first.” I recognized Connor’s voice. His hand touched my back, probing. Then he said, “Can you turn over, Lieutenant?”
   I turned over.
   Standing in the harsh light of the searchlights, Connor looked down at me. “They didn’t penetrate,” he said. “But you’re going to have a hell of a sore back tomorrow.”
   He helped me to my feet.
   I looked back to see the man who had shot me. But there was nobody there: just a few shell casings, glinting dull yellow in the green grass, by the front door.

Third Day

1

   The headline read:


Vietnamese Gang Violence Erupts on Westside.

   The story reported that Peter Smith, an L.A.P.D. Special Services officer, was the target of a vicious grudge attack by an Orange County gang known as the Bitch Killers. Lieutenant Smith had been shot twice before backup police units arrived on the scene to disperse the attacking youths. None of the suspects had been apprehended alive. But two had been killed in the shooting.
   I read the papers in the bathtub, soaking my aching back. I had two large, ugly bruises on either side of my spine. It hurt to breathe.
   I had sent Michelle to stay with my mother in San Diego for the weekend, until things were sorted out. Elaine had driven her down, late last night.
   I continued reading.
   According to the story, the Bitch Killers was thought to be the same gang that had walked up to a black two-year-old boy, Rodney Howard, and shot the child in the head while he was playing on his tricycle in the front yard of his Inglewood home a week earlier. That incident was rumored to be an initiation into the gang, and the viciousness of it had touched off a furor about whether the L.A.P.D. was able to handle gang violence in southern California.
   There were a lot of reporters outside my door again, but I wasn’t talking to any of them. The phone rang constantly, but I let the answering machine take it. I just sat in the tub, and tried to decide what to do.
   In the middle of the morning I called Ken Shubik at the Times.
   “I wondered when you’d check in,” he said. “You must be pleased.”
   “About what?”
   “About being alive,” Ken said. “These kids are murder.”
   “You mean the Vietnamese kids last night?” I said. “They spoke Japanese.”
   “No.”
   “Yes, Ken.”
   “We didn’t get that story right?”
   “Not really.”
   “That explains it,” he said.
   “Explains what?”
   “That was the Weasel’s story. And the Weasel is in bad odor today. There’s even talk of firing him. Nobody can figure it out, but something’s happening around here,” he said. “Somebody high in editorial all of a sudden has a bug up his ass about Japan. Anyway, we’re starting a series investigating Japanese corporations in America.”
   “Oh, yeah?”
   “Of course you’d never know it from today’s paper. You see the business section?”
   “No, why?”
   “Darley-Higgins announced the sale of MicroCon to Akai. It’s on page four of the business section. Two-centimeter story.”
   “That’s it?”
   “Not worth any more, I guess. Just another American company sold to the Japanese. I checked. Since 1987, there have been a hundred and eighty American high-tech and electronics companies bought by the Japanese. It’s not news any more.”
   “But the paper is starting to investigate?”
   “That’s the word. It won’t be easy, because all the emotional indicators are down. The balance of payments with Japan is dropping. Of course it only looks better because they don’t export so many cars to us now. They make them here. And they’ve farmed out production to the little dragons, so the deficits appear in their columns, not Japan’s. They’ve stepped up purchases of oranges and timber, to make things look better. Basically, they treat us as an under-developed country. They import our raw materials. But they don’t buy our finished goods. They say we don’t make anything they want.”
   “Maybe we don’t, Ken.”
   “Tell it to the judge.” He sighed. “But I don’t know if the public gives a damn. That’s the question. Even about the taxes.”
   I was feeling a little dull. “Taxes?”
   “We’re doing a big series on taxes. The government is finally noticing that Japanese corporations do a lot of business here, but they don’t pay much tax in America. Some of them pay none, which is ridiculous. They control their profits by overpricing the Japanese subcomponents that their American assembly plants import. It’s outrageous, but of course, the American government has never been too swift about penalizing Japan before. And the Japanese spend half a billion a year in Washington, to keep everybody calmed down.”
   “But you’re going to do a tax story?”
   “Yeah. And we’re looking at Nakamoto. My sources keep telling me Nakamoto’s going to get hit with a price-fixing suit. Price-fixing is the name of the game for Japanese companies. I pulled a list of who’s settled lawsuits. Nintendo in 1991, price-fixing games. Mitsubishi that year, price-fixing TVs. Panasonic in 1989. Minolta in 1987. And you know that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
   “Then it’s good you’re doing the story,” I said.
   He coughed. “You want to go on record? About the Vietnamese who speak Japanese?”
   “No,” I said.
   “We’re all in this together,” he said.
   “I don’t think it would do any good,” I said.

   I had lunch with Connor at a sushi bar in Culver City. As we were pulling up, someone was placing a CLOSED sign in the window. He saw Connor, and flipped it to say OPEN.
   “They know me here,” Connor said.
   “You mean they like you?”
   “It’s hard to know about that.”
   “They want your business?”
   “No,” Connor said. “Probably Hiroshi would prefer to close. It won’t be profitable for him to keep his people on, just for two gaijin customers. But I come here often. He is honoring the relationship. It doesn’t really have to do with business or liking.”
   We got out of the car.
   “Americans don’t understand,” he said. “Because the Japanese system is fundamentally different.”
   “Yeah, well, I think they’re starting to understand,” I said. I told him Ken Shubik’s story about price-fixing.
   Connor sighed. “It’s a cheap shot to say the Japanese are dishonest. They’re not—but they play by different rules. Americans just don’t get it.”
   “That’s fine,” I said. “But price-fixing is illegal.”
   “In America,” he said. “Yes. But it’s normal procedure in Japan. Remember, kōhai: fundamentally different. Collusive agreements are the way things are done. The Nomura stock scandal showed that. Americans get moralistic about collusion, instead of just seeing it as a different way of doing business. Which is all it is.”
   We went into the sushi bar. There was a lot of bowing and greeting. Connor spoke Japanese and we sat at the bar. We didn’t order.
   I said, “Aren’t we going to order?”
   “No,” Connor said. “It would be offensive. Hiroshi will decide for us what we would like.”
   So we sat at the bar and Hiroshi brought us dishes. I watched him cutting fish.
   The phone rang. From the far end of the sushi bar, a man said, “Connor-san, onna no hito ga matteru to ittemashita yo.”
   “Dōmo,” Connor said, nodding. He turned to me, and pushed back from the bar. “Guess we won’t eat, after all. Time for us to go to our next appointment. You brought the tape with you?”
   “Yes.”
   “Good.”
   “Where are we going?”
   “To see your friend,” he said. “Miss Asakuma.”

2

   We were bouncing along the potholes of the Santa Monica freeway, heading downtown. The afternoon sky was gray; it looked like rain. My back hurt. Connor was looking out the window, humming to himself,
   In all the excitement, I had forgotten about Theresa’s call the night before. She had said she was looking at the last part of the tape, and she thought there was a problem.
   “Have you talked to her?”
   “Theresa? Briefly. I gave her some advice.”
   “Last night, she said there was a problem with the tape.”
   “Oh? She didn’t mention that to me.”
   I had the feeling he wasn’t telling me the truth, but my back was throbbing and I wasn’t in the mood to press him. There were times when I thought Connor had become Japanese himself. He had that reserve, that secretive manner.
   I said, “You never told me why you left Japan.”
   “Oh, that.” He sighed. “I had a job, working for a corporation. Advising on security. But it didn’t work out.”
   “Why not?”
   “Well, the job was all right. It was fine.”
   “Then what was it?”
   He shook his head. “Most people who’ve lived in Japan come away with mixed feelings. In many ways, the Japanese are wonderful people. They’re hardworking, intelligent, and humorous. They have real integrity. They are also the most racist people on the planet. That’s why they’re always accusing everybody else of racism. They’re so prejudiced, they assume everybody else must be, too. And living in Japan… I just got tired, after a while, of the way things worked. I got tired of seeing women move to the other side of the street when they saw me walking toward them at night. I got tired of noticing that the last two seats to be occupied on the subway were the ones on either side of me. I got tired of the airline stewardesses asking Japanese passengers if they minded sitting next to a gaijin, assuming that I couldn’t understand what they were saying because they were speaking Japanese. I got tired of the exclusion, the subtle patronizing, the jokes behind my back. I got tired of being a nigger. I just… got tired. I gave up.”
   “Sounds to me like you don’t really like them.”
   “No,” Connor said. “I do. I like them very much. But I’m not Japanese, and they never let me forget it.” He sighed again. “I have many Japanese friends who work in America, and it’s hard for them, too. The differences cut both ways. They feel excluded. People don’t sit next to them, either. But my friends always ask me to remember that they are human beings first, and Japanese second. Unfortunately, in my experience that is not always true.”
   “You mean, they’re Japanese first.”
   He shrugged. “Family is family.”
   We drove the rest of the way in silence.

3

   We were in a small room on the third floor of a boardinghouse for foreign students. Theresa Asakuma explained it was not her room; it belonged to a friend who was studying in Italy for a term. She had set up the small VCR and a small monitor on a table.
   “I thought I should get out of the lab,” she said, running the machine fast forward. “But I wanted you to see this. This is the end of one of the tapes you brought me. It begins right after the senator has left the room.”
   She slowed the tape, and I saw the wide view of the forty-sixth floor of the Nakamoto building. The floor was deserted. The pale body of Cheryl Austin lay on the dark conference table.
   The tape continued to roll.
   Nothing happened. It was a static scene.
   I said, “What are we looking at?”
   “Just wait.”
   The tape continued. Still nothing happened.
   And then I saw, clearly, the girl’s leg twitch.
   “What was that?”
   “A spasm?”
   “I’m not sure.”
   Now the girl’s arm, outlined against the dark wood, moved. There was no question about it. The fingers closed and opened.
   “She’s still alive!”
   Theresa nodded. “That’s the way it looks. Now watch the clock.”
   The clock on the wall said 8:36. I watched it. Nothing happened. The tape ran for two more minutes.
   Connor sighed.
   “The clock isn’t moving.”
   “No,” she said. “I first noticed the grain pattern, on a close scan. The pixels were jumping back and forth.”
   “Meaning what?”
   “We call it rock and roll. It’s the usual way to disguise a freeze-frame. A normal freeze is visible to the eye, because the smallest units of the image are suddenly static. Whereas in a regular picture, there’s always some small movement, even if it’s just random. So what you do is you rock and roll, cycling three seconds of image over and over. It gives a little movement, makes the freeze less obvious.”
   “You’re saying the tape was frozen at eight thirty-six?”
   “Yes. And the girl was apparently still alive at that time. I don’t know for sure. But maybe.”
   Connor nodded. “So that’s why the original tape is so important.”
   “What original tape?” she said.
   I produced the tape I had found in my apartment the night before.
   “Run it,” Connor said.

   In crisp color, we saw the forty-sixth floor. It was from the side camera, with a good view of the conference room. And it was one of the original tapes: we saw the murder, and we saw Morton leave the girl behind on the table.
   The tape ran on. We watched the girl.
   “Can you see the wall clock?”
   “Not in this angle.”
   “How much time do you think has gone by?”
   Theresa shook her head. “It’s time lapse. I can’t say. A few minutes.”
   Then, the girl moved on the table. Her hand twitched, and then her head moved. She was alive. There was no question about it.
   And in the glass of the conference room, we saw the shape of a man. He walked forward, appearing from the right. He entered the room, looking back once to make sure he was alone. It was Ishiguro. Very deliberately, he walked to the edge of the table, placed his hands on the girl’s neck, and strangled her.
   “Jesus.”
   It seemed to take a long time. The girl struggled toward the end. Ishiguro held her down, long after she had stopped moving.
   “He’s not taking any chances.”
   “No,” Connor said. “He’s not.”
   Finally, Ishiguro stepped back from the body, shot his cuffs, straightened his suit jacket.
   “All right,” Connor said. “You can stop the tape now. I’ve seen enough.”

   We were back outside. Weak sunlight filtered through the smoggy haze. Cars roared by, bouncing in the potholes. The houses along the street looked cheap to me, in disrepair.
   We got in our car.
   “What now?” I said.
   He handed me the car phone. “Call downtown,” he said, “and tell them we have a tape that shows Ishiguro did the murder. Tell them we’re going to Nakamoto now, to arrest Ishiguro.”
   “I thought you didn’t like car phones.”
   “Just do it,” Connor said. “We’re about finished, anyway.”
   So I did it. I told the dispatcher what our plan was, where we were going. They asked if we wanted backup. Connor shook his head, so I said we didn’t need backup.
   I hung up the phone.
   “Now what?”
   “Let’s go to Nakamoto.”

4

   After seeing the forty-sixth floor so many times on videotape, it was strange to find myself there again. Although it was Saturday, the office was busy and active, secretaries and executives were hurrying about. And the office looked different during the day; sunlight poured in through the large windows on all sides, and the surrounding skyscrapers looked close, even in the L.A. haze.
   Looking up, I saw that the surveillance cameras had been removed from the walls. To the right, the conference room where Cheryl Austin had died was being remodeled. The black furniture was gone. Workmen were installing a blond wood table and new beige chairs. The room looked completely different.
   On the other side of the atrium, a meeting was being held in the large conference room. Sunlight streamed in through the glass walls on forty people sitting on both sides of a long table covered in green felt. Japanese on one side, Americans on the other. Everyone had a neat stack of documents in front of them. Prominent among the Americans, I noticed the lawyer, Bob Richmond.
   Standing beside me, Connor sighed.
   “What is it?”
   “The Saturday meeting, kōhai.”
   “You mean that’s the Saturday meeting Eddie was talking about?”
   Connor nodded. “The meeting to conclude the MicroCon sale.”
   There was a receptionist seated near the elevators. She watched us staring for a moment, then said politely, “Can I help you, gentlemen?”
   ‘“Thank you,” Connor said. “But we’re waiting for someone.”
   I frowned. From where we were standing, I could clearly see Ishiguro inside the conference room, seated near the center of the table on the Japanese side, smoking a cigarette. The man to his right leaned over to whisper something to him; Ishiguro nodded and smiled.
   I glanced over at Connor.
   “Just wait,” Connor said.
   Several minutes passed, and then a young Japanese aide hurried across the atrium and entered the conference room. Once inside, he moved more slowly, circling the table unobtrusively until he was standing behind the chair of a distinguished, gray-haired man seated toward the far end of the table. The aide bent and whispered something to the older man.
   “Iwabuchi,” Connor said.
   “Who is he?”
   “Head of Nakamoto America. Based in New York.”
   Iwabuchi nodded to the young aide, and got up from the table. The aide pulled his chair out for him. Iwabuchi moved down the line of Japanese negotiators. As he passed one man, he brushed him lightly on the shoulder. Iwabuchi continued to the end of the table, then opened the glass doors and walked outside, onto a terrace beyond the conference room.
   A moment later, the second man stood to leave.
   “Moriyama,” Connor said. “Head of the Los Angeles office.”
   Moriyama also went outside onto the terrace. The two men stood in the sun and smoked cigarettes. The aide joined them, speaking quickly, his head bobbing. The senior men listened intently, then turned away. The aide remained standing there.
   After a moment, Moriyama turned back to the aide and said something. The aide bowed quickly and returned to the conference room. He moved to the seat of another man, dark-haired with a mustache, and whispered in his ear.
   “Shirai,” Connor said. “Head of finance.”
   Shirai stood up, but did not go onto the terrace. Instead, he opened the inner door, crossed the atrium, and disappeared into an office on the far side of the floor.
   In the conference room, the aide went to still a fourth man, whom I recognized as Yoshida, the head of Akai Ceramics. Yoshida also slipped out of the room, going into the atrium.
   “What’s going on?” I said.
   “They’re distancing themselves,” Connor said. “They don’t want to be there when it happens.”
   I looked back at the terrace, and saw the two Japanese men outside moving casually along the length of the terrace, toward a door at the far end.
   I said, “What are we waiting for?”
   “Patience, kōhai.”
   The young aide departed. The meeting in the conference room proceeded. But in the atrium, Yoshida pulled the young aide over and whispered something.
   The aide returned to the conference room.
   “Hmmm,” Connor said.
   This time the aide went to the American side of the table, and whispered something to Richmond. I couldn’t see Richmond’s face, because his back was to us, but his body jerked. He twisted and leaned back to whisper something to the aide. The aide nodded and left.
   Richmond remained seated at the table, shaking his head slowly. He bent over his notes.
   And then he passed a slip of paper across the table to Ishiguro.
   “That’s our cue,” Connor said. He turned to the receptionist, showed her his badge, and we walked quickly across the atrium toward the conference room.

   A young American in a pinstripe suit was standing in front of the table and saying, “Now, if you will direct your attention to Rider C, the summary statement of assets and—“
   Connor came into the room first. I was right after him.
   Ishiguro looked up, showing no surprise. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” His face was a mask.
   Richmond said smoothly, “Gentlemen, if this can wait, we’re in the middle of something rather complicated here—“
   Connor interrupted him. “Mr. Ishiguro, you are under arrest for the murder of Cheryl Lynn Austin,” and then he read him his Miranda rights, while Ishiguro stared fixedly at him. The others in the room were entirely silent. Nobody moved at the long table. It was like a still life.
   Ishiguro remained seated. “This is an absurdity.”
   “Mr. Ishiguro,” Connor said, “would you please stand?”
   Richmond said softly, “I hope you guys know what you are doing.”
   Ishiguro said, “I know my rights, gentlemen.”
   Connor said, “Mr. Ishiguro, would you please stand?”
   Ishiguro did not move. The smoke from his cigarette curled up in front of him.
   There was a long silence.
   Then Connor said to me, “Show them the tape.”
   One wall of the conference room consisted of video equipment. I found a playback machine like the one I had used, and plugged the tape in. But no image came up on the big central monitor. I tried pushing various buttons, but couldn’t get a picture.
   From a rear corner, a Japanese secretary who had been taking notes hurried up to help me. Bowing apologetically, she pushed the proper buttons, bowed again, and returned to her place.
   “Thank you,” I said.
   On the screen, the image came up. Even in the bright sunlight, it was clear. It was right at the moment we had seen in Theresa’s room. The moment where Ishiguro approaches the girl and holds the struggling body down.
   Richmond said, “What is this?”
   “It’s a fake,” Ishiguro said. “It’s a fraud.”
   Connor said, “This is a tape taken by Nakamoto security cameras on the forty-sixth floor Thursday night.”
   Ishiguro said, “It’s not legal. It’s a fraud.”
   But nobody was listening. Everybody was looking at the monitor. Richmond’s mouth was open. “Jesus,” he said.
   On the tape, it seemed to take a long time for the girl to die.
   Ishiguro was glaring at Connor. “This is nothing but a sensational publicity stunt,” he said. “It is a fabrication. It means nothing.”
   “Jesus Christ,” Richmond said, staring at the screen.
   Ishiguro said, “It has no legal basis. It is not admissible. It will never stand up. This is just a disruption—“
   He broke off. For the first time, he had looked down to the other end of the table. And he saw that Iwabuchi’s chair was empty.
   He looked the other way. His eyes darted around the room.
   Moriyama’s chair was empty.
   Shirai’s chair.
   Yoshida’s chair.
   Ishiguro’s eyes twitched. He looked at Connor in astonishment. Then he nodded, gave a guttural grunt, and stood. Everyone else was staring at the screen.
   He walked up to Connor. “I’m not going to watch this, Captain. When you are through with your charade, you will find me outside.” He lit a cigarette, squinting at Connor. “Then we will talk. Kicchiirito na.” He opened the door and walked onto the terrace. He left the door open behind him.
   I started to follow him out, but Connor caught my eye. He shook his head fractionally. I remained where I was.
   I could see Ishiguro outside, standing at the railing. He smoked his cigarette and turned his face to the sun. Then he glanced back at us and shook his head pityingly. He leaned against the railing, and put his foot on it.
   In the conference room, the tape continued. One of the American lawyers, a woman, stood up, snapped her briefcase shut, and walked out of the room. Nobody else moved.
   And finally, the tape ended.
   I popped it out of the machine.
   There was silence in the room. A slight wind ruffled the papers of the people at the long table.
   I looked out at the terrace.
   It was empty.
   By the time we got out to the railing, we could hear the sirens faintly, on the street below.

   Down on ground level, the air was dusty and we heard the deafening sound of jackhammers. Nakamoto was building an annex next door, and construction was in full swing. A line of big cement trucks was pulled up along the curb. I pushed my way through the cluster of Japanese men in blue suits, and broke through to look down into the pit.
   Ishiguro had landed in a wet concrete pouring. His body lay sideways, just the head and one arm sticking above the soft concrete surface. Blood ran in spreading fingers across the gray surface. Workmen in blue hardhats were trying to fish him out, using bamboo poles and ropes. They weren’t having much success. Finally a workman in thigh-high rubber boots waded in to pull the body out. But it proved more difficult than he expected. He had to call for help.
   Our people were already there, Fred Perry and Bob Wolfe. Wolfe saw me and walked up the hill. He had his notebook out. He shouted over the din of the jackhammers. “You know anything about this, Pete?”
   “Yeah,” I said.
   “Got a name?”
   “Masao Ishiguro.”
   Wolfe squinted. “Spell that?”
   I started to try to spell it, talking over the sound of the construction. Finally I just reached in my pocket and fished out his card. I gave it to Wolfe.
   “This is him?”
   “Yeah.”
   “Where’d you get it?”
   “Long story,” I said. “But he’s wanted for murder.”
   Wolfe nodded. “Let me get the body out and we’ll talk.”
   “Fine.”
   Eventually, they used the construction crane to pull him out. Ishiguro’s body, sagging and heavy with concrete, was lifted into the air, and swung past me, over my head.
   Bits of cement dripped down on me, and spattered on the sign at my feet. The sign was for the Nakamoto Construction Company, and it said in bold letters:


Building for a New Tomorrow.

   And underneath:


Please Excuse the Inconvenience.

5

   It took another hour to get everything settled at the site. And the chief wanted our reports by the end of the day, so afterward we had to go down to Parker to do the paperwork.
   It was four o’clock before we went across the street to the coffee shop next to Antonio’s bail bond shop. Just to get away from the office. I said, “Why did Ishiguro kill the girl in the first place?”
   Connor sighed. “It’s not clear. The best I can understand it is this. Eddie was working for his father’s kaisha all along. One of the things he did was supply girls for visiting dignitaries. He’d been doing that for years. It was easy—he was a party guy; he knew the girls; the congressmen wanted to meet the girls, and he got a chance to make friends with the congressmen. But in Cheryl he had a special opportunity, because Senator Morton, head of the Finance Committee, was attracted to her. Morton was smart enough to break off the affair, but Eddie kept sending her in private jets to meet him unexpectedly, keeping the thing alive. Eddie liked her, too: he had sex with her that afternoon. And it was Eddie who arranged for her to come to the party at Nakamoto, knowing that Morton would be there. Eddie was pushing Morton to block the sale, so Eddie was preoccupied with the Saturday meeting. By the way, on the news-station tape you thought he said ‘no cheapie’ to Cheryl. He was saying nichibei. The Japanese-American relationship.
   “But I think Eddie just intended for Cheryl to meet Morton. I doubt he had any idea about the forty-sixth floor. He certainly didn’t expect her to go up there with Morton. The idea of going there must have been suggested during the party by someone from Nakamoto. The company left the floor accessible for a very simple reason: there’s a bedroom suite up there that executives sometimes use. Somewhere in the back.”
   I said, “How did you know that?”
   Connor smiled. “Hanada-san mentioned he had once used it. Apparently it’s quite luxurious.”
   “So you do have contacts.”
   “I have a few. I imagine Nakamoto was probably just being accommodating, too. They may have installed cameras up there with the idea of blackmail, but I’m told there were no cameras in the bedroom suite. And the fact that they had a camera right in the conference room suggests to me that Phillips was right—the cameras were placed to kaizen the office workers. Certainly they couldn’t have expected the sexual encounter to occur where it did.
   “Anyway, when Eddie saw Cheryl going off with Morton to another part of the Nakamoto building, it must have alarmed the hell out of him. So he followed them. He witnessed the murder, which I believe was probably accidental. And Eddie then helped out his friend Morton, calling him over, getting him out of there. Eddie went back to the party with Morton.”
   “What about the tapes?”
   “Ah. You remember we talked about bribery. One of Eddie’s bribes was to a low-level security officer named Tanaka. I believe Eddie supplied him with drugs. Anyway, Eddie had known him for a couple of years. And when Ishiguro ordered Tanaka to pull the tapes, Tanaka told Eddie.”
   “And Eddie went down and got the tapes himself.”
   “Yes. Together with Tanaka.”
   “But Phillips said Eddie was alone.”
   “Phillips lied, because he knew Tanaka. That’s also why he didn’t make more of a fuss—Tanaka said it was all right. But when Phillips told us the story, he left Tanaka out.”
   “And then?”
   “Ishiguro sent a couple of guys to clean out Cheryl’s apartment. Tanaka took the tapes someplace to get them copied. Eddie went to the party in the hills.”
   “But Eddie kept one.”
   “Yes.”
   I thought it over. “But when we talked to Eddie at the party, he told a completely different story.”
   Connor nodded. “He lied.”
   “Even to you, his friend?”
   Connor shrugged. “He thought he could get away with it.”
   “What about Ishiguro? Why did he kill the girl?”
   “To get Morton in his pocket. And it worked—they got Morton to change his position on MicroCon. For a while there, Morton was going to allow the sale to go forward.”
   “Ishiguro would kill her for that? For some corporate sale?”
   “No, I don’t think it was calculated at all. Ishiguro was high-strung, under great pressure. He felt he had to prove himself to his superiors. He had much at stake—so much, that he behaved differently from an ordinary Japanese under these circumstances. And in a moment of extreme pressure, he killed the girl, yes. As he said, she was a woman of no importance.”
   “Jesus.”
   “But I think there’s more to it than that. Morton was very ambivalent about the Japanese. I had the sense there was a lot of resentment—those jokes about dropping the bomb, all that. And having sex on the boardroom table. It’s… disrespectful, wouldn’t you say? It must have infuriated Ishiguro.”
   “And who called in the murder?”
   “Eddie.”
   “Why?”
   “To embarrass Nakamoto. Eddie got Morton safely back to the party, and then called in. Probably from a phone somewhere at the party. When he called, he didn’t know about the security cameras yet. Then Tanaka told him about them, and Eddie started to worry that Ishiguro might set him up. So he called back.”
   “And he asked for his friend John Connor.”
   “Yes.”
   I said, “So Eddie was Koichi Nishi?”
   Connor nodded. “His little joke. Koichi Nishi is the name of a character in a famous Japanese movie about corporate corruption.”
   Connor finished his coffee and pushed away from the counter.
   “And Ishiguro? Why did the Japanese abandon him?”
   “Ishiguro had played it too fast and loose. He acted too independently Thursday night. They don’t like that. Nakamoto would have sent him back pretty soon. He was destined to spend the rest of his life in Japan in a madogiwazoku. A window seat. Somebody who’s bypassed by corporate decisions, and stares out the window all day. In a way, it’s a life sentence.”
   I thought it over. “So when you used the car phone, calling the station, telling them what you planned… who was listening?”
   “Hard to say.” Connor shrugged. “But I liked Eddie. I owed him one. I didn’t want to see Ishiguro go home.”

   Back in the office there was an elderly woman waiting for me. She was dressed in black and she introduced herself as Cheryl Austin’s grandmother. Cheryl’s parents died in a car crash when she was four, and she had raised the little girl afterward. She wanted to thank me for my help in the investigation. She talked about what Cheryl had been like, as a little girl. How she had grown up in Texas.
   “Of course, she was pretty,” she said, “and the boys surely did like her. Always a bunch of them hanging around, you couldn’t shake them off with a stick.” She paused. “Of course, I never thought she was entirely right in the head. But she wanted to keep those boys around. And she liked them to fight over her, too. I remember she was seven or eight, she’d get those kids brawling in the dust, and she’d clap her hands and watch them go at it. By the time she was teenage, she was real good at it. Knew just what to do. It wasn’t real nice to see. No, something was wrong in the head. She could be mean. And that song, she always played it, day and night. About lose my mind, I’d think.”
   “Jerry Lee Lewis?”
   “Of course, I knew why. That was her Daddy’s favorite song. When she was just a little bit of a thing, he’d drive her to town in his convertible, with his arm around her, and the radio making that awful racket. She’d have her best sun-dress on. She was such a pretty thing when she was a child. The image of her mother.”
   Then the woman started to cry, thinking about that. I got her a Kleenex. Tried to be sympathetic.
   And pretty soon she wanted to know what had happened. How Cheryl had died.
   I didn’t know what to say to her.

   As I was coming out of the ground-floor entrance to Parker Center, walking out by the fountains, a Japanese man in a suit stopped me. He was about forty, with dark hair and a mustache. He greeted me formally, and gave me his card. It took a moment to realize that this was Mr. Shirai, the head of finance for Nakamoto.
   “I wanted to see you in person, Sumisu-san, to express to you how much my company regrets the behavior of Mr. Ishiguro. His actions were not proper and be acted without authority. Nakamoto is an honorable company and we do not violate the law. I want to assure you that he does not represent our company, or what we stand for in doing business. In this country, the work of Mr. Ishiguro put him in contact with many investment bankers, and men who make leveraged buy-outs. Frankly, I believe he was too long in America. He adopted many bad habits here.”
   So there it was, an apology and an insult in the same moment. I didn’t know what to say to him, either.
   Finally, I said, “Mr. Shirai, there was the offer of financing, for a small house…”
   “Oh, yes?”
   “Yes. Perhaps you didn’t hear of it.”
   “Actually, I believe I have heard something of that.”
   I said, “I was wondering what you intended to do about that offer now.”
   There was a long silence.
   Just the splash of the fountains off to my right.
   Shirai squinted at me in the hazy afternoon light, trying to decide how to play it.
   Finally he said, “Sumisu-san, the offer is improper. It is of course withdrawn.”
   “Thank you, Mr. Shirai,” I said.

   Connor and I drove back to my apartment. Neither of us talked. I was driving on the Santa Monica freeway. The signs overhead had been spray-painted by gangs. I was aware of how uneven and bumpy the roadway was. To the right, the skyscrapers around Westwood stood hazy in smog. The landscape looked poor and decrepit.
   Finally I said, “So is that all this was? Just competition between Nakamoto and some other Japanese company? Over MicroCon? Or what?”
   Connor shrugged. “Multiple purposes, probably. The Japanese think in those ways. And to them, America is now only an arena for their competition. That much is true. We’re just not very important, in their eyes.”

   We came to my street. There was a time when I thought it was pleasant, a little tree-lined street of apartments, with a playground at the end of the block for my daughter. Now I wasn’t feeling that way. The air was bad, and the street seemed dirty, unpleasant.
   I parked the car. Connor got out, shook my hand. “Don’t be discouraged.”
   “I am.”
   “Don’t be. It’s very serious. But it can all change. It’s changed before. It can change again.”
   “I guess.”
   “What are you going to do now?” he asked.
   “I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like going somewhere else. But there’s nowhere to go.”
   He nodded. “Leave the department?”
   “Probably. Certainly leave Special Services. It’s too… unclear for me.”
   He nodded. “Take care, kōhai. Thanks for your help.”
   “You, too, sempai.”
   I was tired. I climbed the stairs to my apartment and went inside. It was quiet, with my daughter gone. I got a can of Coke from the refrigerator and walked into the living room, but my back hurt when I sat in the chair. I got up again, and turned on the television. I couldn’t watch it. I thought of how Connor said everybody in America focused on the unimportant things. It was like the situation with Japan: if you sell the country to Japan, then they will own it, whether you like it or not. And people who own things do what they want with them. That’s how it works.
   I walked into my bedroom and changed my clothes. On the bedside table, I saw the pictures from my daughter’s birthday that I had been sorting when all this started. The pictures that didn’t look like her, that didn’t fit the reality anymore. I listened to the tinny laughter from the television in the other room. I used to think things were basically all right. But they’re not all right.
   I walked into my daughter’s room. I looked at her crib, and her covers with the elephants sewn on it. I thought of the way she slept, so trustingly, lying on her back, her arms thrown over her head. I thought of the way she trusted me to make her world for her now. And I thought of the world that she would grow into. And as I started to make her bed, I felt uneasy in my heart.


Transcript of:
March 15 (99)

   INT: All right, Pete, I think that about does it for us. Unless you have anything else.
   SUBJ: No. I’m done.
   INT: I understand you resigned from the Special Services.
   SUBJ: That’s right.
   INT: And you made a written recommendation to Chief Olson that the Asian liaison program be changed. You said the connection with the Japan-America Amity Foundation should be severed?
   SUBJ: Yes.
   INT: Why is that?
   SUBJ: If the department wants specially trained officers, we should pay to train them. I just think it’s healthier.
   INT: Healthier?
   SUBJ: Yes. It’s time for us to take control of our country again. It’s time for us to start paying our own way.
   INT: Have you had a response from the Chief?
   SUBJ: Not yet. I’m still waiting.

Afterword

   If you don’t want Japan to buy it, don’t sell it.
   Akio Morita

   “People deny reality. They fight against real feelings caused by real circumstances. They build mental worlds of shoulds, oughts, and might-have-beens. Real changes begin with real appraisal and acceptance of what is. Then realistic action is possible.”
   These are the words of David Reynolds, an American exponent of Japanese Morita psychotherapy. He is speaking of personal behavior, but his comments are applicable to the economic behavior of nations, as well.
   Sooner or later, the United States must come to grips with the fact that Japan has become the leading industrial nation in the world. The Japanese have the longest lifespan. They have the highest employment, the highest literacy, the smallest gap between rich and poor. Their manufactured products have the highest quality. They have the best food. The fact is that a country the size of Montana, with half our population, will soon have an economy equal to ours.
   But they haven’t succeeded by doing things our way. Japan is not a Western industrial state; it is organized quite differently. And the Japanese have invented a new kind of trade—adversarial trade, trade like war, trade intended to wipe out the competition—which America has failed to understand for several decades. The United States keeps insisting the Japanese do things our way. But increasingly, their response is to ask, why should we change? We’re doing better than you are. And indeed they are.
   What should the American response be? It is absurd to blame Japan for successful behavior, or to suggest that they slow down. The Japanese consider such American reactions childish whining, and they are right. It is more appropriate for the United States to wake up, to see Japan clearly, and to act realistically.
   In the end, that will mean major changes in the United States, but it is inevitably the task of the weaker partner to adjust to the demands of a relationship. And the United States is now without question the weaker partner in any economic discussion with Japan.
   A century ago, when Admiral Perry’s American fleet opened the nation, Japan was a feudal society. The Japanese realized they had to change, and they did. Starting in the 1860s, they brought in thousands of Western specialists to advise them on how to change their government and their industries. The entire society underwent a revolution. There was a second convulsion, equally dramatic, after World War II.
   But in both cases, the Japanese faced the challenge squarely, and met it. They didn’t say, let the Americans buy our land and our institutions and hope they will teach us to do things better. Not at all. The Japanese invited thousands of experts to visit—and then sent them home again. We would do well to take the same approach. The Japanese are not our saviors. They are our competitors. We should not forget it.