17

   Phillip Sanders was spinning like a top. “The lab is shut down,” he said. He threw up his hands in frustration. “And there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing.”
   Connor said, “When did it happen?”
   “An hour ago. Buildings and Grounds came by and told everybody in the lab to leave, and they locked it up. Just like that. There’s a big padlock on the front door, now.”
   I said, “And the reason was?”
   “A report that structural weakness in the ceiling has made the basement unsafe and will invalidate the university’s insurance if the skating rink comes crashing down on us. Some talk about how student safety comes first. Anyway, they closed the lab, pending an investigation and report by a structural engineer.”
   “And when will that happen?”
   He gestured to the phone. “I’m waiting to hear. Maybe some time next week. Maybe not until next month.”
   “Next month.”
   “Yeah, Exactly.” Sanders ran his hand through his wild hair. “I went all the way to the dean on this one. But the dean’s office doesn’t know. It’s coming from high up in the university. Up where the board of governors knows rich donors who make contributions in multi-million-dollar chunks. The order came from the highest levels.” Sanders laughed. “These days, it doesn’t leave much mystery.”
   I said, “Meaning what?”
   “You realize Japan is deeply into the structure of American universities, particularly in technical departments. It’s happened everywhere. Japanese companies now endow twenty-five professorships at M.I.T., far more than any other nation. Because they know—after all the bullshit stops—that they can’t innovate as well as we can. Since they need innovation, they do the obvious thing. They buy it.”
   “From American universities.”
   “Sure. Listen, at the University of California at Irvine, there’s two floors of a research building that you can’t get into unless you have a Japanese passport. They’re doing research for Hitachi there. An American university closed to Americans.” Sanders swung around, waving his arms. “And around here, if something happens that they don’t like, it’s just a phone call from somebody to the president of the university, and what can he do? He can’t afford to piss the Japanese off. So whatever they want, they get. And if they want the lab closed, it’s closed.”
   I said, “What about the tapes?”
   “Everything is locked in there. They made us leave everything.”
   “Really?”
   “They were in a hell of a rush. It was gestapo stuff. Pushing and prodding us to get out. You can’t imagine the panic at an American university if it thinks it may lose some funding.” He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe Theresa managed to take some tapes with her. You could ask her.”
   “Where is she?”
   “I think she went ice skating.”
   I frowned. “Ice skating?”
   “That’s what she said she was going to do. So you could check over there.”
   And he looked right at Connor. In a particularly meaningful way.

   Theresa Asakuma wasn’t ice skating. There were thirty little kids in the rink, with a young teacher trying in vain to control them. They looked like fourth graders. Their laughter and yells echoed in the high ceiling of the rink.
   The building was almost deserted, the bleachers empty. A handful of fraternity boys sat up in one corner, looking down and punching each other on the shoulder. On our side, up high, near the ceiling, a janitor mopped. A couple of adults who looked like parents stood at the railing, down near the ice. Opposite us, a man was reading a newspaper.
   I didn’t see Theresa Asakuma anywhere.
   Connor sighed. Wearily, he sat on the wooden bleachers and leaned back. He crossed his legs, taking his ease. I stood there, watching him. “What are you doing? She’s obviously not here.”
   “Have a seat.”
   “But you’re always in such a rush.”
   “Have a seat. Enjoy life.”
   I sat down next to him. We watched the kids skating around the perimeter of the ice. The teacher was shouting, “Alexander? Alexander! I’ve told you before. No hitting! Don’t you hit her!”
   I leaned back against the bleachers. I tried to relax. Connor watched the kids and chuckled. He appeared entirely at ease, without a care in the world.
   I said, “Do you think Sanders is right? The Japanese squeezed the university?”
   “Sure,” Connor said.
   “And all that business about Japan buying into American technology? Buying professorships at M.I.T.?”
   “It’s not illegal. They’re supporting scholarship. A noble ideal.”
   I frowned. “So you think it’s okay?”
   “No,” he said. “I don’t think it’s okay at all. If you give up control of your own institutions you give up everything. And generally, whoever pays for an institution controls it. If the Japanese are willing to put up the money—and if the American government and American industry aren’t—then the Japanese will control American education. You know they already own ten American colleges. Own them outright. Bought them for the training of their young people. So that they can be assured of the ability to send young Japanese to America.”
   “But they already can do that. Lots of Japanese go to American universities.”
   “Yes. But as usual, the Japanese are planning ahead. They know in the future it may get tougher. They know that sooner or later, there will be a backlash. No matter how diplomatically they play it—and they are in the acquisition phase now, so they’re playing it very diplomatically. Because the fact is, countries don’t like to be dominated. They don’t like to be occupied—economically or militarily. And the Japanese figure some day the Americans will wake up.”
   I watched the kids skating in the rink. I listened to their laughter. I thought of my daughter. I thought of the four o’clock meeting.
   I said, “Why are we sitting here?”
   “Because,” he said.
   So we sat there. The teacher was rounding the kids up now, leading them off the ice. “Skates off here. Skates off here, please. That means you too, Alexander! Alexander!”
   “You know,” Connor said, “if you wanted to buy a Japanese company, you couldn’t do it. The people in the company would consider it shameful to be taken over by foreigners. It would be a disgrace. They would never allow it.”
   “I thought you could. I thought the Japanese had liberalized their rules.”
   Connor smiled. “Technically. Yes. Technically, you can buy a Japanese company. But as a practical matter, you can’t. Because if you want to take over a company, you first have to approach its bank. And get the agreement of the bank. That’s what is necessary, in order to proceed. And the bank doesn’t agree.”
   “I thought General Motors owns Isuzu.”
   “GM owns a third of Isuzu. Not a controlling interest. And yes, there are isolated instances. But overall, foreign investment in Japan has declined by half in the last ten years. One company after another finds the Japanese market just too tough. They get tired of the bullshit, the hassles, the collusion, the rigged markets, the dangō, the secret agreements to keep them out. They get tired of the government regulations. The run around. And eventually they give up. They just… give up. Most other countries have given up: Germans, Italians, French. Everybody’s getting tired of trying to do business in Japan. Because no matter what they tell you, Japan is closed. A few years ago, T. Boone Pickens bought one-fourth of the stock of a Japanese company, but he couldn’t get on the board of directors. Japan is closed.”
   “So what are we supposed to do?”
   “The same thing the Europeans are doing,” Connor said. “Reciprocity. Tit for tat. One of yours for one of mine. Everybody in the world has the same problem with Japan. It’s just a question of what solution works best. The European solution is pretty direct. Works well, at least so far.”
   On the rink, some teenage girls began to do warmups and a few tentative leaps. Now the schoolteacher was leading her charges along the corridor past us. As she went by, she said, “Is one of you Lieutenant Smith?”
   “Yes, ma’am,” I said.
   One kid said, “Do you have a gun?”
   The teacher said, “That woman asked me to tell you that what you’re looking for is in the men’s locker room.”
   “It is?” I said.
   The kid said, “Can I see it?”
   The teacher said, “You know, the Oriental woman? I think she was Oriental.”
   “Yes,” Connor said. “Thank you.”
   “I want to see the gun.”
   Another kid said, “Quiet, stupid. Don’t you know anything? They’re undercover.”
   “I want to see the gun.”
   Connor and I started walking away. The kids trailed after us, still asking to see our guns. Across the rink, the man with the newspaper looked up curiously. He watched us leave.
   “Nothing like an inconspicuous exit,” Connor said.

   The men’s locker room was deserted. I started going through the green metal lockers, one after another, looking for the tapes. Connor didn’t bother. I heard him call to me, “Back here.”
   He was in the rear by the showers. “You found the tapes?”
   “No.”
   He was holding open a door.

   We went down a flight of concrete stairs to a landing. There were two doors. One opened onto a below-grade truck entrance. The other went into a dark hallway with wooden beams. “This way,” Connor said.
   We went down this hallway, crouched over. We were underneath the rink again. We passed throbbing stainless-steel machinery, and then came to a series of doors.
   “Do you know where we’re going?” I said.
   One of the doors was ajar. He pushed it open. The room lights were out, but I could see that we were in the lab. Off in a corner, I saw a faint monitor glow.
   We walked toward it.

18

   Theresa Asakuma leaned back from the table, pushed her glasses up on her forehead, and rubbed her beautiful eyes. “It’s okay as long as we don’t make much noise,” she said. “They had a guard outside the main door earlier. I don’t know if he’s still there.”
   “A guard?”
   “Yeah. They were serious about shutting down the lab. It was spectacular, like a drug bust. It really surprised the Americans.”
   “And you?”
   “I don’t have the same expectations about this country.”
   Connor pointed to the monitor in front of her. It showed a freeze-frame image of the couple, embracing as they moved toward the conference room. The same image, seen from other camera angles, was reproduced on other monitors on the desk. Some of the monitors had superimposed red lines, radiating out from the night lights. “What have you learned from the tapes?”
   Theresa pointed to the main screen. “I’m not certain,” she said. “To be completely certain, I would have to run 3-D modeling sequences to match the dimensions of the room and keep track of all the light sources, and the shadows cast by all the sources. I haven’t done that, and I probably can’t with the equipment in this room. It would probably require an overnight run on a mini. Maybe I could get time next week from the astrophysics department. The way things are going, maybe not. But in the meantime, I have a strong feeling.”
   “Which is?”
   “The shadows don’t match.”
   In the darkness, Connor nodded slowly. As if that made sense to him.
   I said, “Which shadows don’t match?”
   She pointed to the screen. “As these people move around the floor, the shadows they cast don’t line up exactly. They’re in the wrong place, or the wrong shape. Often it’s subtle. But I think it is there.”
   “And the fact that the shadows don’t match means…”
   She shrugged. “I’d say the tapes have been altered, Lieutenant.”
   There was a silence. “Altered how?”
   “I’m not sure how much has been done. But it seems clear that there was another person in that room, at least part of the time.”
   “Another person? You mean a third person?”
   “Yes. Someone watching. And that third person has been systematically erased.”
   “No shit,” I said.
   It was making my head spin. I looked at Connor. He was staring intently at the monitors. He seemed completely unsurprised. I said, “Did you already know this?”
   “I suspected something of the sort.”
   “Why?”
   “Well, early in the investigation it seemed likely that the tapes were going to be altered.”
   “Why?” I said.
   Connor smiled. “Details, kōhai. Those little things we forget.” He glanced at Theresa, as if he was reluctant to talk too much in front of her.
   I said, “No, I want to hear this. When did you first know the tapes were altered?”
   “In the Nakamoto security room.”
   “Why?”
   “Because of the missing tape.”
   “What missing tape?” I said. He had mentioned it before.
   “Think back,” Connor said. “In the security room, the guard told us that he changed the tapes when he came on duty, around nine o’clock.”
   “Yes…”
   “And the tape recorders all had timers, showing an elapsed time of about two hours. Each recorder started about ten or fifteen seconds later than the previous one. Because that was the time interval it took him to change each tape.”
   “Right…” I remembered all that.
   “And I pointed out to him one tape recorder that didn’t fit the sequence. Its tape was only running for half an hour. So I asked if it was broken.”
   “And the guard seemed to think it was.”
   “Yes. That’s what he said. I was letting him off the hook. Actually, he knew perfectly well it was not broken.”
   “It wasn’t?”
   “No. It was one of the few mistakes that the Japanese have made. But they only made it because they were stuck—they couldn’t get around it. They couldn’t beat their own technology.”
   I leaned back against the wall. I looked apologetically at Theresa. She looked beautiful in the semidarkness of the monitors. “I’m sorry. I’m lost.”
   “That’s because you are rejecting the obvious explanation, kōhai. Think back. If you saw a line of tape recorders, each one running a few seconds later than the one before, and you saw one recorder way out of sequence, what would you think?”
   “That someone had changed the tape in that one recorder at a later time.”
   “Yes. And that’s exactly what happened.”
   “One tape was switched later?”
   “Yes.”
   I frowned. “But why? All of the tapes were replaced at nine o’clock. So none of the replacements showed the murder, anyway.”
   “Correct,” Connor said.
   “Then why switch one tape after that?”
   “Good question. It’s puzzling. I couldn’t make sense of it for a long time. But now I know,” Connor said. “You have to remember the timing. The tapes were all changed at nine. Then one tape was changed again at ten-fifteen. The obvious assumption was that something important happened between nine o’clock and ten-fifteen, that it was recorded on the tape, and the tape was therefore taken away for some reason. I asked myself: what could this important event be?”
   I thought back. I frowned. I couldn’t think of anything.
   Theresa began to smile and nod, as if something had just amused her. I said, “You know?”
   “I can guess,” she said, smiling.
   “Well,” I said. “I’m glad everyone seems to know the answer except me. Because I can’t think of anything important being recorded on that tape. By nine o’clock, the yellow barrier was up, isolating the crime scene. The girl’s body was on the other side of the room. There were a lot of Japanese standing by the elevators, and Graham was calling me on the phone for help. But nobody actually began an investigation until I got there at about ten. Then we had a lot of back and forth with Ishiguro. I don’t think anybody crossed the tape until almost ten-thirty. Say ten-fifteen at the earliest. So if somebody looked at a recording, all it would show is a deserted room, and a girl lying on the table. That’s all.”
   Connor said, “Very good. Except you have forgotten something.”
   Theresa said, “Did anybody cross the room? Anybody at all?”
   “No,” I said. “We had the yellow barrier up. Nobody was allowed on the other side of the tape. In fact—“
   And then I remembered. “Wait a minute! There was somebody! That little guy with the camera,” I said. “He was on the other side of the barrier, taking pictures.”
   “That’s right,” Connor said.
   “What little guy?” she said.
   “A Japanese guy. He was taking pictures. We asked Ishiguro about him. He said his name was, ah…”
   “Mr. Tanaka,” Connor said.
   “That’s right, Mr. Tanaka. And you asked Ishiguro for the film from his camera.” I frowned. “But we never got it.”
   “No,” Connor said. “And frankly, I never thought we would.”
   Theresa said, “This man was taking pictures?”
   “I doubt that he was actually taking pictures,” Connor said. “Perhaps he was, because he was using one of those little Canons—“
   “The ones that shoot video stills, instead of film?”
   “Right. Would there be any use for those, in retouching?”
   “There might be,” she said. “The images might be used for texture mapping. They’d go in fast, because they were already digitized.”
   Connor nodded. “Then perhaps he was taking pictures, after all. But it was clear to me that his picture-taking was just an excuse to allow him to walk on the other side of the yellow line.”
   “Ah,” Theresa said, nodding.
   I said, “How do you know that?”
   “Think back,” Connor said.

   I had been standing facing Ishiguro when Graham yelled: Aw, Christ, what is this? And I looked back over my shoulder and saw a short Japanese man about ten meters beyond the yellow tape. The man’s back was turned to me. He was taking pictures of the crime scene. The camera was very small. It fitted into the palm of his hand.
   “Do you remember how he moved?” Connor said. “He moved in a distinctive way.”
   I tried to recall it. I couldn’t.
   Graham had gone forward to the tape, saying: For Christ’s sake, you can’t be in there. This is a goddamned crime scene. You can’t take pictures! And there was a general uproar. Graham was yelling at Tanaka, but he continued to be entirely focused on his work, shooting the camera and backing toward us. Despite all the yelling, Tanaka didn’t do what a normal person would do—turn around and walk toward the tape. Instead, he backed up to the yellow stripe and, still turned away, ducked his head and went under it.
   I said, “He never turned around. He backed up all the way.”
   “Correct. That is the first mystery. Why would he back up? Now, I think, we know.”
   “We do?”
   Theresa said, “He was repeating the walk of the girl and the killer in reverse, so it would be laid down on videotape and he would have a good record of where the shadows in the room were.”
   “That’s right,” Connor said.
   I remembered that when I protested, Ishiguro had said to me: This is our employee. He works for Nakamoto Security.
   And I had said: This is outrageous. He can’t take pictures.
   And Ishiguro had explained: But this is for our corporate use.
   And meanwhile the man had disappeared in the crowd, slipping through the knot of men at the elevator.
   But this is for our corporate use.
   “Damn it!” I said. “So Tanaka left us, went downstairs, and removed a single tape, because that tape had a record of his own walk across the room, and the shadows he cast?”
   “Correct.”
   “And he needed that tape to make changes in the original tapes?”
   “Correct.”
   I was finally beginning to understand. “But now, even if we can figure out how the tapes were altered, they won’t stand up in a court of law, is that right?”
   “That’s right,” Theresa said. “Any good lawyer will make sure they’re inadmissible.”
   “So the only way to go forward is to get a witness who can testify to what was done. Sakamura might know, but he’s dead. So we’re stuck unless we can somehow get our hands on Mr. Tanaka. I think we better get him in custody right away.”
   “I doubt that will ever happen,” Connor said.
   “Why not? You think they’ll keep him from us?”
   “No, I don’t think they have to. It is very likely that Mr. Tanaka is already dead.”


   Connor immediately turned to Theresa. “Are you good at your job?”
   “Yes,” she said.
   “Very good?”
   “I think so.”
   “We have little time left. Work with Peter. See what you can extract from the tape. Gambatte: try very hard. Trust me that your efforts will be rewarded. In the meantime, I have some calls to make.”
   I said, “You’re leaving?”
   “Yes. I’ll need the car.”
   I gave him the keys. “Where are you going?”
   “I’m not your wife.”
   “I’m just asking,” I said.
   “Don’t worry about it. I need to see some people.” He turned to go.
   “But why do you say Tanaka is dead?”
   “Well, perhaps he’s not. We’ll discuss it when there is more time. Right now, we have a lot to finish before four o’clock. That is our true deadline. I think you have surprises in store for you, kōhai. Just call it my chokkan, my intuition. Okay? You have trouble, or something unexpected, call me on the car phone. Good luck. Now work with this lovely lady. Urayamashii ne! “
   And he left. We heard the rear door close.
   I said to Theresa, “What did he say?”
   “He said he envies you.” She smiled in the darkness. “Let’s begin.”
   She pressed buttons on the equipment in rapid succession. The tape rolled back to the beginning of the sequence.
   I said, “How are we going to do this?”
   “There are three basic approaches to learn how video has been doctored. The first is blur and color edges. The second is shadow lines. We can try to work with those elements, but I’ve been doing that for the last two hours, and I haven’t gotten very far.”
   “And the third method?”
   “Reflected elements. I haven’t looked at them yet.”
   I shook my head.
   “Basically, reflected elements—REs—are portions of the scene that are reflected within the image itself. Like when Sakamura walks out of the room, and his face is reflected in the mirror. There are almost certainly other reflections in that room. A desk lamp may be chrome, and it may show the people, distorted, as they pass. The walls of the conference room are glass. We may be able to pull a reflection off the glass. A silver paperweight on a desk, with a reflection in it. A glass vase of flowers. A plastic container. Anything shiny enough to make a reflection.”
   I watched her reset the tapes, and prepare to run forward. Her one good hand moved quickly from one machine to the next as she talked. It was odd to stand next to a woman so beautiful, who was so unselfconscious of her beauty.
   “In most images, there is something reflective,” Theresa said. “Outside, there are car bumpers, wet streets, glass windowpanes. And inside a room there are picture frames, mirrors, silver candlesticks, chrome table-legs… . There’s always something.”
   “But won’t they fix the reflections, too?”
   “If they have time, yes. Because now there are computer programs to map an image onto any shape. You can map a picture onto a complicated, twisted surface. But it takes time. So. Let’s hope they had no time.”
   She started the tapes forward. The first portion was dark, as Cheryl Austin first appeared by the elevators. I looked at Theresa. I said, “How do you feel about this?”
   “What do you mean?”
   “Helping us. The police.”
   “You mean, because I am Japanese?” She glanced at me, and smiled. It was an odd, crooked smile. “I have no illusions about Japanese. Do you know where Sako is?”
   “No.”
   “It is a city—a town, really—in the north. In Hokkaido. A provincial place. There is an American airfield there. I was born in Sako. My father was a kokujin mechanic. You know that word, kokujin? Niguro. A black man. My mother worked in a noodle shop where the air force personnel went. They married, but my father died in an accident when I was two years old. There was a small pension for the widow. So we had some money. But my grandfather took most of it, because he insisted he had been disgraced by my birth. I was ainoko and niguro. They are not nice words, what he called me. But my mother wanted to stay there, to stay in Japan. So I grew up in Sako. In this… place…”
   I heard the bitterness in her voice.
   “You know what the burakumin are?” she said. “No? I am not surprised. In Japan, the land where everyone is supposedly equal, no one speaks of burakumin. But before a marriage, a young man’s family will check the family history of the bride, to be sure there are no burakumin in the past. The bride’s family will do the same. And if there is any doubt, the marriage will not occur. The burakumin are the untouchables of Japan. The outcasts, the lowest of the low. They are the descendants of tanners and leather workers, which in Buddhism is unclean.”
   “I see.”
   “And I was lower than burakumin, because I was deformed. To the Japanese, deformity is shameful. Not sad, or a burden. Shameful. It means you have done something wrong. Deformity shames you, and your family, and your community. The people around you wish you were dead. And if you are half black, the ainoko of an American big nose…” She shook her head. “Children are cruel. And this was a provincial place, a country town.”
   She watched the tape go forward.
   “So I am glad to be here. You Americans do not know in what grace your land exists. What freedom you enjoy in your hearts. You cannot imagine the harshness of life in Japan, if you are excluded from the group. But I know it very well. And I do not mind if the Japanese suffer a little now, from my efforts with my one good hand.”
   She glared at me. The intensity turned her face to a mask. “Does that answer your question, Lieutenant?”
   “Yes,” I said. “It does.”
   “When I come to America, I think the Americans are very foolish about the Japanese—but never mind. Here is the sequence now. You watch the top two monitors. I will watch the bottom three. Look carefully for objects that reflect. Look closely. Here it comes.”

19

   I watched the monitors in the darkness.
   Theresa Asakuma was feeling bitter about the Japanese, but so was I. The incident with Weasel Wilhelm had made me angry. Angry the way somebody who’s scared can be angry. One sentence he had said kept coming back to my mind, again and again.
   Under the circumstances, don’t you think the court made a mistake in granting you custody of your young daughter?
   I never wanted custody. In all the turmoil of the divorce, of Lauren moving out, packing up, this is yours, this is mine—in all that, the last thing I wanted was custody of a seven-month-old baby. Shelly was just starting to move around the living room, holding onto the furniture. She would say “Mama.” Her first word. But Lauren didn’t want the responsibility and kept saying, “I can’t handle it, Peter. I just can’t handle it.” So I took custody. What else could I do?
   But now it was almost two years later. I had changed my life. I had changed my job, my schedule. She was my daughter now. And the thought of giving her up was like twisting a knife in my stomach.
   Under the circumstances, Lieutenant, don’t you think…
   On the monitor, I watched as Cheryl Austin waited in the darkness for the arrival of her lover. I watched the way she looked around the room.
   The court made a mistake…
   No, I thought, the court didn’t make a mistake. Lauren couldn’t handle it, and had never been able to handle it. Half the time, she skipped on her weekends. She was too busy to see her own daughter. Once after a weekend she returned Michelle to me. Michelle was crying. Lauren said, “I just don’t know what to do with her.” I checked. Her diapers were wet and she had a painful rash. Michelle always gets a rash when her diapers aren’t changed promptly. Lauren hadn’t changed her diapers often enough during the weekend. So I changed her, and there were streaks of shit in Michelle’s vagina. She hadn’t cleaned her own daughter properly.
   Don’t you think the court made a mistake?
   No, I didn’t.
   Under the circumstances, don’t you think—
   “Fuck it,” I said.
   Theresa stabbed a button, stopped the tapes. The images froze on the monitors all around us. “What is it?” she said. “What did you see?”
   “Nothing.”
   She looked at me.
   “I’m sorry. I was thinking of something else.”
   “Don’t.”
   She started the tape again.
   On multiple monitors, the man embraced Cheryl Austin. Images from the different cameras were coordinated in an eerie way. It was as if we could see all sides of the event—front and back, top and sides. It was like a moving architectural blueprint.
   And it felt creepy, to watch,
   My two monitors showed the view from the far end of the room, and from high above, looking straight down. Cheryl and her lover were small in one monitor, and in the other one, I saw only the tops of their heads. But I watched.
   Standing alongside me, Theresa Asakuma breathed slowly, regularly. In and out. I glanced at her.
   “Pay attention.”
   I looked back.
   The lovers were in a passionate embrace. The man pressed Cheryl back against a desk. In my top view, I could see her face, looking straight up as she lay back. Beside her, a framed picture on the desk fell over.
   “There,” I said.
   Theresa stopped the tape.
   “What?” she said.
   “There.” I pointed to the framed picture. It lay flat, facing upward. Reflected in the glass, we could see the outline of the man’s head as he bent over Cheryl. It was very dark. Just a silhouette.
   “Can you get an image from that?” I said.
   “I don’t know. Let’s try.”
   Her hand moved swiftly across the controls, touching them briefly. “The video image is digital,” she said. “It’s in the computer now. We’ll see what we can do with it.” The image began to jump, growing larger in increments as she zoomed in on the picture frame. The image moved past Cheryl’s frozen, grainy face, her head thrown back in an instant of passion. Moved down from her shoulder, toward the frame.
   As the picture enlarged, it became more grainy. It began to decompose into a pattern of dots, like a newspaper photo held too close to your face. Then the dots themselves enlarged, formed edges, turned into small blocks of gray. Pretty soon I couldn’t tell what we were looking at.
   “Is this going to work?”
   “I doubt it. But there’s the edge of the frame, and there’s the face.”
   I was glad she could see it. I couldn’t.
   “Let’s sharpen.”
   She pressed buttons. Computer menus dropped down, flashed back. The image became crisper. Grittier. But I could see the frame. And the outline of the head.
   “Sharpen again.”
   She did that.
   “All right. Now we can adjust our grayscale…”
   The face in the frame began to emerge from the gloom.
   It was chilling.
   Enlarged so much, the grain was severe—each pupil of the eyes was a single black spot—and we really couldn’t see who it was. The man’s eyes were open, and his mouth was twisted, distorted in passion, or arousal, or hate. But we couldn’t really tell.
   Not really.
   “Is that a Japanese face?”
   She shook her head. “There’s not enough detail in the original.”
   “You can’t bring it out?”
   “I’ll work on it later. But I think, no. It won’t ever be there. Let’s go on.”
   The images snapped back into full movement. Cheryl suddenly shoved the man away, pushing his chest with the flat of her hand. The face disappeared from the picture frame.
   We were back to the original five views.
   The couple broke and she complained, pushing him repeatedly. Her face looked angry. Now that I had seen the man’s face reflected in the frame, I wondered if she had become frightened of what she saw. But it was impossible to tell.
   The lovers stood in the deserted room, discussed where to go. She was looking around. He nodded his head. She pointed toward the conference room. He seemed to agree or accept.
   They kissed, clinched again. There was a familiarity in the way they joined and parted, joined again.
   Theresa saw it, too. “She knows him.”
   “Yes. I’d say.”
   Still kissing, the couple moved awkwardly toward the conference room. At this point my monitors were no longer very useful. The far camera showed the whole room, and the couple moving laterally across it, from right to left. But the figures were tiny, and difficult to see. They were moving between the desks, heading toward—
   “Wait,” I said. “What was that?”
   She went back, frame by frame.
   “There,” I said.
   I pointed to the image. “See that? What’s that?”
   As the couple moved across the room, the camera tracked past a large Japanese calligraphy scroll hanging on the wall near the elevator. The scroll was encased in glass. For a brief moment, there was a glint of light in the glass. That was what had caught my eye.
   A glint of light.
   Theresa frowned. “It’s not a reflection from the couple,” she said.
   “No.”
   “Let’s look.”
   She began zooming again. The image jumped toward the hanging scroll, growing grittier with each step. The glint enlarged, broke in two fragments. There was a fuzzy spot of light in one corner. And a vertical slit of light, running almost the length of the picture.
   “Let’s rock it,” she said.
   She began to make the image go forward and back, one frame at a time. Flipping from one to the other. In one frame, the vertical slit was missing. In the next frame, it was there. The vertical bar lasted for the next ten frames. Then it was gone, never to reappear. But the fuzzy spot in the corner was always present.
   “Hmmm.”
   She pushed in on the spot. Under ever-increasing magnification, it disintegrated until it looked like a cluster of stars from an astronomy picture. But it seemed to have some kind of internal organization. I could almost imagine an X shape to it. I said so.
   “Yes,” she said. “Let’s sharpen.”
   She did that. The computers worked on the data. The fuzzy cluster resolved itself. Now it looked like Roman numerals.


I IXΞ

   “What the hell is that?” I said.
   She kept working. “Edge trace,” she said. The outline of the Roman numerals appeared more clearly.
   Theresa continued to try and resolve it. As she worked, in some ways the image seemed to get better, and in some ways, less clear. But eventually we could recognize it.


TIX

   “It’s the reflection of an exit sign,” she said. “There’s an exit at the far end of the room opposite the elevators, is that right?”
   “Yes,” I said.
   “It’s being reflected in the glass of the scroll. That’s all it is.” She flipped to the next frame. “But this vertical bar of light. That’s interesting. See? It appears, and is gone.” She ran it back and forth several times.
   And then I figured it out.
   “There’s a fire exit back there,” I said. “And a staircase going downstairs. That must be the reflection of the light from the stairwell as someone opens the door and closes it again.”
   “You mean someone came into the room,” she said. “From the back stairs?”
   “Yes.”
   “Interesting. Let’s try and see who it is.”
   She ran the tapes forward. At this high magnification, the grainy image spattered and popped like fireworks on the screen. It was as if the smallest components of the image had a life of their own, their dance independent of the image they assembled to make. But it was exhausting to watch. I rubbed my eyes. “Jesus.”
   “Okay. There.”
   I looked up. She had frozen the image. I couldn’t see anything but erratic black-and-white dots. There seemed to be a pattern but I couldn’t tell what it was. It reminded me of the sonograms when Lauren was pregnant. The doctor would say, The head is here, that’s the baby’s stomach there. ... But I couldn’t see anything. It was just abstract. My daughter still in the womb.
   The doctor had said, See? She wiggled her fingers. See? Her heart is beating.
   I had seen that. I had seen the heart beating. The little heart and the little ribs.
   Under the circumstances, Lieutenant, don’t you think—
   “See?” Theresa said. “That’s his shoulder. That’s the outline of the head. Now he is moving forward—see him getting larger?—and now he is standing in that far passageway, looking around the corner. He is cautious. You can see the profile of his nose for a moment as he turns to look. See that? I know it’s hard. Watch carefully. Now he is looking at them. He is watching them.”
   And suddenly, I could see it. The spots seemed to fall into place. I saw a silhouetted man standing in the hallway by the far exit.
   He was watching.
   Across the room, the lovers were wrapped up in their kiss. They didn’t notice the new arrival.
   But someone was watching them. It gave me a chill.
   “Can you see who he is?”
   She shook her head. “Impossible. We are at the limits of everything. I cannot even resolve eyes, a mouth. Nothing.”
   “Then let’s go on.”

   The tapes snapped back, full speed. I was jarred by the sudden return to normal size and normal movement. I watched as the lovers, kissing passionately, continued to cross the room.
   “So now they are being watched,” Theresa said. “Interesting. What kind of a girl is this?”
   I said, “I believe the term is torigaru onnai.”
   She said, “She is light in her bird? Tori what?”
   “Never mind. I mean she is a loose woman.”
   Theresa shook her head. “Men always say things like that. To me, it looks like she loves him, but she is troubled in her mind.”
   The lovers were approaching the conference room, and Cheryl suddenly twisted away, attempting to break free from the man.
   “If she loves him, she’s got a strange way of showing it,” I said.
   “She senses something is wrong.”
   “Why?”
   “I don’t know. Perhaps she hears something. The other man. I don’t know.”
   Whatever the reason, Cheryl was struggling with the lover, who now had both arms around her waist and was almost dragging her into the conference room. Cheryl twisted once more at the door, as the man tried to pull her in.
   “A good chance here,” Theresa said.
   The tape froze again.
   All the walls of the conference room were glass. Through the outer walls, the lights of the city were visible. But the inner walls, facing the atrium, were dark enough to act as a black mirror. Since Cheryl and her lover were near the inner glass walls, their images were rejected in the glass as they struggled.
   Theresa ran the tape forward, frame by frame, looking for an image that might hold up. From time to time, she zoomed in, probed the pixels, zoomed back out. It was difficult. The two people were moving quickly, and they were often blurred. And the lights from the skyscrapers outside sometimes obscured otherwise good images.
   It was frustrating. It was slow.
   Stop. Zoom in. Slide around in the image, trying to locate a section that had enough detail. Give up. Go forward again. Stop again.
   Finally, Theresa sighed. “It’s not working. That glass is murder.”
   “Then let’s keep going.”
   I saw Cheryl grab the door frame, trying to keep from being pulled into the conference room. The man finally pulled her free, she slid backward with a look of terror on her face, and then she swung her arms back to hit the man. Her purse went flying. Then they were both inside the room. Silhouettes moving quickly, turning.
   The man shoved her back against the table, and Cheryl appeared in the camera that aimed straight down on the conference room. Her short blond hair contrasted with the dark wood of the table. Her mood changed again, she stopped struggling for a minute. She had a look of expectation. Excitement. She licked her lips. Her eyes followed the man as he leaned over her. He slid her skirt up her hips.
   She smiled, pouted, whispered in his ear.
   He pulled her panties away, a quick jerk.
   She smiled at him. It was a tense smile, half-aroused, half-pleading.
   She was excited by her own fear.
   His hands caressed her throat.

20

   Standing in the darkened laboratory, with the hiss of skaters on the ice above, we watched the final violent act, again and again. It played on five monitors, different angles, as her pale legs went up, onto his shoulders, and he crouched over her, hands fumbling at his trousers. With repetition, I noticed small things not seen before. The way she slid down the table to meet him, wiggling her hips. The way his back arched at the moment of penetration. The change in her smile, catlike, knowing. Calculating. How she urged him on, saying something. Her hands around his back, caressing. The sudden change in mood, the flash of anger in her eyes, the abrupt slap. The way she fought him, first to arouse him, and then later, struggling in a different way, because then something was wrong. The way her eyes bulged, and she had a look of real desperation. Her hands pushing his arms, shoving his coat sleeves up, revealing the tiny metallic sparkle of cuff links. The glint of her watch. Her arm falling back, palm open. Five fingers pale against the black of the table. Then a tremor, the fingers twitching, and stillness.
   His slowness to understand something was wrong. The way he went rigid for a moment, then took her head in his hand, moved it back and forth, trying to arouse her, before he finally pulled away. Even looking at his back, you could almost feel his horror. He remained slow, as if in a trance. Pacing around the room in aimless half steps, first this way, then that. Trying to recover his wits, to decide what to do.
   Each time I saw the sequence repeated, I felt a different way. The first few times, there was a tension, a voyeuristic sensation, itself almost sexual. And then later, I felt progressively more detached, more analytical. As if I was drifting away, moving back from the monitor. And finally, the entire sequence seemed to break down before my eyes, the bodies losing their human identities altogether, becoming abstractions, elements of design, shifting and moving in dark space.
   Theresa said, “This girl is sick.”
   “It looks that way.”
   “She is not a victim. Not this one.”
   “Maybe not.”
   We watched it again. But I no longer knew why we were watching. Finally I said, “Let’s go forward, Theresa.”

   We had been running the sequence to a certain point on the tape counter, and then going back to run again. So we had seen a part of the tape again and again, but we hadn’t gone farther. Almost immediately as we went forward, something remarkable happened. The man stopped pacing and looked sharply off to one side as if he had seen something, or heard something.
   “The other man?” I said.
   “Perhaps.” She pointed to the monitors. “This is the area in the tapes where the shadows do not seem to match up. Now, we know why.”
   “Something was erased?”
   She ran the tape backward. On the side monitor view, we could see the man look up, in the direction of the exit. He gave every appearance that he had seen someone. But he did not appear frightened or guilty.
   She zoomed in. The man was just a silhouette. “You can’t see anything, can you?”
   “Profile.”
   “What about it?”
   “I am looking at the jaw line. Yes. See? The jaw is moving. He is talking.”
   “Talking to the other man?”
   “Or to himself. But he is certainly looking off. And now see? He has sudden new energy.”
   The man was moving around the conference room. His behavior purposeful. I remembered how confusing this part had been, when I saw it the night before at the police station. But with five cameras, it was clear. We could see exactly what he was doing. He picked up the panties from the floor.
   And then he bent over the dead girl, and removed her watch.
   “No kidding,” I said. “He took her watch.”
   I could only think of one reason why: the watch must have an inscription. The man put the panties and the watch in his pocket, and was turning to go, when the image froze again. Theresa had stopped it.
   “What is it?” I said.
   She pointed to one of the five monitors. “There,” she said.
   She was looking at the side view, from the overall camera. It showed the conference room as seen from the atrium. I saw the silhouette of the girl on the table, and the man inside the conference room.
   “Yeah? So?”
   “There,” she said, pointing. “They forgot to erase that one.” In the corner of the screen, I saw a ghostly form. The angle and the lighting were just right to enable us to see him. It was a man.
   The third man.
   He had come forward, and now was standing in the middle of the atrium, looking toward the killer, inside the conference room. The image of the third man was complete, reflected in the glass. But it was faint.
   “Can you get that? Can you make it out?”
   “I can try,” she said.
   The zooms began. She punched in, saw the image decompose. She sharpened it, heightened contrast. The image streaked, and went dull, flat. She coaxed it back, reconstituted it. She moved closer, enlarging it. It was tantalizing. We could almost make an identification.
   Almost, but not quite.
   “Frame advance,” she said.
   Now, one by one, the frames clicked ahead. The image of the man was alternately sharper, blurred, sharp.
   And then at last, we saw the waiting man clearly.
   “No shit,” I said.
   “You know who he is?”
   “Yes,” I said. “It’s Eddie Sakamura.”

21

   After that, we made swift progress. We knew, without a doubt, that the tapes had been altered and the identity of the killer had been changed. We watched as the killer came out of the room, and moved toward the exit, with a regretful look back at the dead girl.
   I said, “How could they change the killer’s face in just a few hours?”
   “They have very sophisticated mapping software,” she said. “It’s by far the most advanced in the world. The Japanese are becoming much better in software. Soon they will surpass the Americans in that, as they already have in computers.”
   “So they did it with better software?”
   “Even with the best software it would be daring to try it. And the Japanese are not daring. So I suspect this particular job was not so hard. Because the killer spends most of his time kissing the girl, or in shadow, so you can’t see his face. I am guessing they had the idea very late, as an afterthought, to make a change of identity. Because they saw that they only had to change this part coming up… . There, where he passes the mirror.”
   In the mirror, I saw the face of Eddie Sakamura, clearly. His hand brushing the wall, showing the scar.
   “You see,” she said, “if they changed that, the rest of the tape could pass. In all the cameras. It was a golden opportunity, and they took it. That is what I think.”
   On the monitors, Eddie Sakamura went past the mirror, into shadow. She ran it back. “Let’s look.”
   She put up the reflection in the mirror, and step-zoomed in to the face until it broke into blocks. “Ah,” she said. “You see the pixels. You see the regularity. Someone has done some retouching here. Here, on the cheekbone, where there is a shadow beneath his eye. Normally you get some irregularity at the edge between two gray scales. Here, the line is cleaned up. It has been repaired. And let me see—“
   The image spun laterally.
   “Yes. Here, too.”
   More blocks. I couldn’t tell what she was looking at. “What is it?”
   “His right hand. Where the scar is. You see, the scar has been added, you can tell from the way the pixels configure.”
   I couldn’t see it, but I took her word for it. “Then who was the actual killer?”
   She shook her head. “It will be difficult to determine. We have searched the reflections and we have not found it. There is a final procedure which I did not try, because it is the easiest of all, but it is also the easiest to change. That is to search the shadow detail.”
   “Shadow detail?”
   “Yes, We can try to do image intensification in the black areas of the picture, in the shadows and the silhouettes. There may be a place where there is enough ambient light to enable us to derive a recognizable face. We can try.”
   She didn’t sound enthusiastic about the prospects.
   “You don’t think it will work?”
   She shrugged. “No. But we might as well try. It is all that is left.”
   “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
   She started to run the tape in reverse, walking Eddie Sakamura backward from the mirror toward the conference room, “Wait a minute,” I said. “What happens after the mirror? We haven’t looked at that part.”
   “I looked earlier. He goes under an overhang, and moves away, toward the staircase.”
   “Let’s see it anyway.”
   “All right.”
   The tape ran forward. Quickly, Eddie Sakamura went toward the exit. His face flashed in the mirror as he went past it. The more often I saw it, the more fake that moment looked. It even seemed as if a small delay, a tiny pause, had been added to his movement. To help us make the identification.
   Now the killer walked on, into a dark passage leading toward the staircase, which was somewhere around the corner, out of view. The far wall was light, so he was silhouetted. But there was no detail visible in the silhouette. He was entirely dark.
   “No,” she said. “I remember this part. Nothing here. Too dark. Kuronbō. What they used to call me. Black person.”
   “I thought you said you could do shadow detail.”
   “I can, but not here. Anyway, I am sure this part has been retouched. They know we will examine the section of tape on either side of the mirror. They know we will go in with pixel microscopes and scan every frame. So they will have fixed that area carefully. And they will blacken the shadows on this person.”
   “Okay, but even so—“
   “Hey!” she said suddenly. “What was that?”
   The image froze.
   I saw the outline of the killer, walking away toward the white wall in the background, the exit sign above his head.
   “Looks like a silhouette.”
   “Yes, but something is wrong.”
   She ran the tape backward, slowly.
   As I watched, I said, “Machigai no umi oshete kudasaii.” It was a phrase I had learned from one of my early classes.
   She smiled in the darkness. “I must help you with your Japanese, Lieutenant. Are you asking me if there has been a mistake?”
   “Yes.”
   “The word is umu, not umi. Umi is ocean. Umu means you are asking yes or no about something. And yes, I believe there may have been a mistake.”
   The tape continued backward, the silhouette of the killer coming back toward us. She sucked in her breath, in surprise.
   “There is a mistake. I cannot believe it. Do you see it now?”
   “No,” I said.
   She ran the tape forward for me. I watched as the man walked away in silhouette.
   “There, do you see it now?”
   “No, I’m sorry.”
   She was becoming irritable. “Pay attention. Look at the shoulder. Watch the shoulder of the man. See how it rises and falls with each step, in a rhythmic way, and then suddenly… There! You see it?”
   I did. Finally. “The outline seemed to jump. To get bigger.”
   “Yes. Exactly. To jump bigger.” She adjusted the controls. “Quite a lot bigger, Lieutenant. They tried to blend the jump into the up-step, to make it less conspicuous. But they did not try very hard. It is clear anyway.”
   “And what does that mean?”
   “It means they are arrogant,” she said. She sounded angry. I couldn’t tell why.
   So I asked her.
   “Yes. Now it pisses me off,” she said. She was zooming in on the image, her one hand moving quickly. “It is because they have made an obvious mistake. They expect we will be sloppy. We will not be thorough. We will not be intelligent. We will not be Japanese.”
   “But—“
   “Oh, I hate them.” The image moved, shifted. She was concentrating on the outline of the head, now. “You know Takeshita Noboru?”
   I said, “Is that a manufacturer?”
   “No. Takeshita was prime minister. A few years ago, he made a joke about visiting American sailors on a Navy ship. He said America is now so poor, the Navy boys cannot afford to come ashore to enjoy Japan. Everything is too expensive for them. He said they could only remain on their ship and give each other AIDS. Big joke in Japan.”
   “He said that?”
   She nodded. “If I was American, and someone said that to me, I would take this ship away, and tell Japan to go fuck itself, pay for its own defense. You didn’t know Takeshita said this?”
   “No…”
   “American news.” She shook her head. “Such nothing.”
   She was furious, working quickly. Her fingers slipped on the controls, the image jumped back, lost definition. “Shit fuck.”
   “Take it easy, Theresa.”
   “Fuck, take it easy. We’re going to score now!”
   She moved in on the silhouetted head, isolating it, then following it, frame by frame. I saw the image jump larger, distinctly.
   “You see, that is the join,” she said. “That is where the changed image goes back to the original. Here on, it’s original material on the tape. This is the original man walking away from us, now.”
   The silhouette moved toward the far wall. She proceeded frame by frame. Then the outline began to change shape.
   “Ah. Okay. Good, what I hoped for…”
   “What is it?”
   “He is taking a last look. A look back at the room. See? The head is turning. There is his nose, and now, the nose is gone again, because he has turned completely. Now he is looking back at us.”
   The silhouette was dense black.
   “Lot of good it does us.”
   “Watch.”
   More controls.
   “The detail is there,” she said. “It is like dark exposure on film. The detail has been recorded, but we cannot see it yet. So.… Now I have enhancement. And now I will get the shadow detail.… Now!”
   And in a sudden, shocking moment, the dark silhouette blossomed, the wall behind flaring white, making a kind of halo around the head. The dark face became lighter, and we could see the face for the first time, distinctly and clearly.
   “Huh, white man.” She sounded disappointed.
   “My God,” I said.
   “You know who he is?”
   “Yes,” I said.
   The features were twisted with tension, the lip turned up in a kind of snarl. But the identity was unmistakable.
   I was looking at the face of Senator John Morton.

22

   I sat back, staring at the frozen image. I heard the hum of the machinery. I heard water dripping into buckets, somewhere in the darkness of the laboratory. I heard Theresa breathing alongside me, panting like a runner who has finished a race.
   I sat there and just stared at the screen. Everything fell into place, like a jigsaw puzzle that assembled itself before my eyes.
   Julia Young: She has a boyfriend who travels a lot. She’s always traveling. New York, Washington, Seattle… she meets him. She’s madly in love with him.
   Jenny, in the TV studio: Morton has a young girlfriend that’s driving him crazy. Makes him jealous. Some young girl.
   Eddie: She likes to cause trouble, this girl. She likes to make turmoil.
   Jenny: I’ve seen this girl hanging around at parties with some of the Washington types for about six months now.
   Eddie: She was a sick girl. She liked pain.
   Jenny: Morton heads the Senate Finance Committee. The one that’s been having hearings about this MicroCon sale.
   Cole, the security guard, in the bar: They have the big guys in their pocket. They own ‘em. We can’t beat ‘em now.
   And Connor: Somebody wants this investigation to be over. They want us to give it up.
   And Morton: So your investigation is formally concluded?
   “Hell,” I said.
   She said, “Who is he?”
   “He’s a senator.”
   “Oh.” She looked at the screen. “And why do they care about him?”
   “He has a powerful position in Washington. And I think he has something to do with the sale of a company. Maybe other reasons, too.”
   She nodded.
   I said, “Can we print a picture of this?”
   “No. We don’t have equipment for hard copies. The lab can’t afford it.”
   “Then what can we do? I need something to take with me.”
   “I can take a Polaroid for you,” she said. “Not great, but okay for now.” She started poking around the lab, stumbling in the dark. Finally she came back with a camera. She moved close to the screen and shot several copies.
   We waited for them to come out, standing in the blue light from the monitors.
   “Thanks,” I said. “For all your help.”
   “You are welcome. And I’m sorry.”
   “Why?”
   “I know you expected it would be a Japanese man.”
   I realized she was speaking for herself. I didn’t answer her. The pictures darkened. They were good quality, the image clear. As I slipped them in my pocket, I felt something hard there. I brought it out.
   “You have a Japanese passport?” she said.
   “No. It’s not mine. It’s Eddie’s.” I put it back in my pocket. “I have to go,” I said. “I have to find Captain Connor.”
   “All right.” She turned back to the monitors.
   “What are you going to do?” I said.
   “I will stay, and work more.”
   I left her, went out the back door, and made my way down the dark passageway to the outside.

   Blinking in the harsh daylight, I went to a pay phone and called Connor. He was in the car.
   “Where are you?” I said.
   “Back at the hotel.”
   “What hotel?”
   “The Four Seasons,” Connor said. “It’s Senator Morton’s hotel.”
   “What are you doing there?” I said. “Do you know that—”
   “Kōhai,” he said. “Open line, remember? Call yourself a taxi and meet me at 1430 Westwood Boulevard. We will meet there in twenty minutes.”
   “But how—“
   “No more questions.” And he hung up.

   I looked at the building at 1430 Westwood Boulevard. It had a plain brown facade, just a door with a painted number. On one side was a French bookstore. On the other side was a watch repair place.
   I went up and knocked on the door. I noticed a small sign in Japanese characters beneath the numbers.
   Nothing happened, so I opened the door. I found myself in an elegant, tiny sushi bar. It had only four seats for customers. Connor was alone there, sitting at the far end. He waved to me. “Say hello to Imae. The best sushi chef in Los Angeles. Imae-san, Sumisu-san.”
   The chef nodded and smiled. He put something on the shelf before my seat. “Kore o dōzo, Sumisu-san.”
   I sat down. “Dōmo, Imae-san.”
   “Hai.”
   I looked at the sushi. It was some kind of pink fish eggs, with a raw yellow egg yolk sitting on top. I thought it looked revolting.
   I turned to Connor.
   He said “Kore o tabetakoto arukai?”
   I shook my head. “Sorry. You lost me.”
   “You’ll have to work on your Japanese, for your new girlfriend.”
   “What new girlfriend?”
   Connor said, “I thought you would thank me. I gave you all that time with her.”
   “You mean Theresa?”
   He smiled. “You can do much worse, kōhai. And I gather you have, in the past. Anyway, I asked you if you knew what that was.” He pointed to the sushi.
   “No, I don’t.”
   “Quail egg and salmon roe,” he said. “Good protein. Energy. You need it.”
   I said, “Do I have to?”
   Imae said, “Make you strong for girlfriend.” And he laughed. He said something quickly in Japanese to Connor.
   Connor replied, and the two had a good laugh.
   “What’s funny?” I said. But I wanted to change the subject, so I ate the first of the sushi. If you got past the slimy texture, it was actually very good.
   Imae said, “Good?”
   “Very good,” I said. I ate the second one, and turned to Connor. “You know what we found on those tapes? It’s unbelievable.”
   Connor held up his hand. “Please. You must learn the Japanese way to have relaxation. Everything in its place. Oaisō onegai shimasu.”
   “Hai, Connor-san.”
   The sushi chef produced the bill, and Connor peeled off money. He bowed and there was a rapid exchange in Japanese.
   “We’re leaving now?”
   “Yes,” Connor said. “I’ve already eaten, and you, my friend, can’t afford to be late.”
   “For what?”
   “For your ex-wife, remember? We’d better go to your apartment now, and meet her.”

   I was driving again. Connor was staring out the window. “How did you know it was Morton?”
   “I didn’t,” Connor said. “At least, not until this morning. But it was clear to me last night that the tape had been altered.”
   I thought of all the effort that Theresa and I had gone to, all the zooming and inspection and image manipulation. “You’re telling me you just looked at the tape, and you could tell?”
   “Yes.”
   “How?”
   “There was one glaring error. Remember when you met Eddie at the party? He had a scar on his hand.”
   “Yes. It looked like an old burn scar.”
   “Which hand was it on?”
   “Which hand?” I frowned. I thought back to the meeting. Eddie in the cactus garden at night, smoking cigarettes, flicking them away. Eddie turning, moving nervously. Holding the cigarettes. The scar had been on… “His left hand,” I said.
   “That’s right,” Connor said.
   “But the scar appears on the tape, too,” I said. “You see it clearly when he walks past the mirror. His hand touches the wall for a moment—“
   I stopped.
   On the tape, his right hand had touched the wall.
   “Jesus,” I said.
   “Yes,” Connor said. “They made a mistake. Maybe they got confused about what was a reflection and what wasn’t. But I imagine they were working hastily, and they couldn’t remember which hand it was, and they just added the scar anyway. Mistakes like that happen.”
   “So last night, you saw the scar on the wrong hand…”
   “Yes. And I knew at once that the tape was changed,” Connor said. “I had to prepare you to analyze the tape in the morning. So I sent you to SID, to get names of places that would work on the tape. And then I went home to bed.”
   “But you allowed us to arrest Eddie. Why? You must have known that Eddie wasn’t the killer.”
   “Sometimes, you have to let things play out,” Connor said. “It was clear we were meant to think that Eddie killed the girl. So: play it out.”
   “But an innocent man died,” I said.
   “I wouldn’t call Eddie innocent,” Connor said. “Eddie was in this up to his neck.”
   “And Senator Morton? How did you know it was Morton?”
   “I didn’t, until he called us in for that little meeting today. Then he gave himself away.”
   “How?”
   “He was smooth. You have to think about what he actually said,” Connor said. “Wedged in between all the bullshit, he asked us three times if our investigation was finished. And he asked us if the murder had anything to do with MicroCon. When you think about it, that’s a very peculiar question.”
   “Why? He has contacts. Mr. Hanada. Other people. He told us that.”
   “No,” Connor said, shaking his head. “If you take away all the bullshit, what Senator Morton told us was his train of thought: Is the investigation over? And can you connect it to MicroCon? Because I am now going to change my position on the MicroCon sale.”
   “Okay…”
   “But he never explained a crucial point. Why was he changing his position on the MicroCon sale?”
   “He told us why,” I said. “He had no support, nobody cares.”
   Connor handed me a Xerox. I glanced at it. It was a page from a newspaper. I gave it back. “I’m driving. Tell me.”
   “This is an interview Senator Morton gave in The Washington Post. He repeats his stand on MicroCon. It’s against the interest of national defense and American competitiveness to sell the company. Blah blah. Eroding our technology base and selling off our future to the Japanese. Blah blah. That was his position on Thursday morning. On Thursday night he attends a party in California. By Friday morning, he has a different view of MicroCon. The sale is fine with him. Now you tell me why.”
   “Jesus,” I said. “What are we going to do?”
   Because there is a thing about being a policeman. Most of the time, you feel pretty good. But at certain points, it comes back to you that you are just a cop. The truth is, you’re pretty far down the ladder. And you are reluctant to take on certain kinds of people, certain kinds of power. It gets messy. It gets out of control. You can have your ass handed to you.
   “What do we do?” I said again.
   “One thing at a time,” Connor said. “Is this your apartment building up here?”

   The TV minivans were lined up along the street. There were several sedans with PRESS signs behind the windshield. A knot of reporters stood outside the front door to my apartment, and along the street. Among the reporters I saw Weasel Wilhelm, leaning against his car. I didn’t see my ex-wife.
   “Keep driving, kōhai,” Connor said. “Go to the end of the block and turn right.”
   “Why?”
   “I took the liberty of calling the D.A.’s office a while ago. I arranged for you to meet your wife in the park down here.”
   “You did?”
   “I thought it would be better for everybody.”
   I drove around the corner. Hampton Park was adjacent to the elementary school. At this hour of the afternoon, kids were outside, playing baseball. I drove slowly along the street, looking for a parking place. I passed a sedan with two people inside. There was a man in the passenger seat, smoking a cigarette. There was a woman behind the wheel, drumming her fingers on the dashboard. It was Lauren.
   I parked the car.
   “I’ll wait here,” Connor said. “Good luck.”

23

   She always favored pale colors. She was wearing a beige suit and a cream silk blouse. Her blond hair was pulled back. No jewelry. Sexy and businesslike at the same time, her particular talent.
   We walked along the sidewalk on the edge of the park, looking at the kids playing ball. Neither of us said anything. The man who had come with her waited in the car. A block away, we could see the press clustered outside my apartment.
   Lauren looked at them and said, “Jesus Christ, Peter. I can’t believe you, I really can’t. This is very badly handled. This is very insensitive to my position.”
   I said, “Who told them?”
   “Not me.”
   “Someone did. Someone told them you were coming at four o’clock.”
   “Well, it wasn’t me.”
   “You just happened to show up with full makeup on?”
   “I was in court this morning.”
   “Okay. Fine.”
   “Fuck you, Peter.”
   “I said, fine.”
   “Such a fucking detective.”
   She turned, and we walked back the way we had come. Moving away from the press.
   She sighed. “Look,” she said. “Let’s try and be civil about this.”
   “Okay.”
   “I don’t know how you managed to get yourself into this mess, Peter. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to give up custody. I can’t permit my daughter to be raised in a suspect environment. I can’t allow that. I have my position to think of. My reputation in the office.”
   Lauren was always preoccupied with appearances. “Why is the environment suspect?”
   “Why? Child abuse is an extremely serious allegation, Peter.”
   “There’s no child abuse.”
   “The allegations from your past must be dealt with.”
   “You know all about those allegations,” I said. “You were married to me. You know everything about it.”
   She said stubbornly, “Michelle has to be tested.”
   “Fine. The exam will be negative.”
   “At this point, I don’t really care what the exam shows. It’s gone beyond that, Peter. I’m going to have to get custody. For my peace of mind.”
   “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
   “Yes, Peter.”
   “You don’t know what it’s like to raise a child. It’ll take too much time away from your career.”
   “I have no choice, Peter. You have left me no choice.” Now she sounded long suffering. Martyrdom was always one of her strong suits.
   I said, “Lauren, you know the past accusations are false. You’re just running with this thing because Wilhelm called you.”
   “He didn’t call me. He called the assistant D.A. He called my boss.”
   “Lauren.”
   “I’m sorry, Peter. But you brought it on yourself.”
   “Lauren.”
   “I mean it.”
   “Lauren, this is very dangerous.”
   She laughed harshly. “Tell me. You think I don’t know how dangerous this is, Peter? This could be my ass.”
   “What are you talking about?”
   “What do you think I’m talking about, you son of a bitch?” she said, furiously. “I’m talking about Las Vegas.”
   I was silent. I didn’t follow her line of thought at all.
   “Look,” she said. “How many times have you been to Las Vegas?”
   “Just once.”
   “And the one time you went, you won big?”
   “Lauren, you know all about that—“
   “Yes, I do. Clearly I do. And what is the timing of your big winning trip to Las Vegas, and the accusations against you of child abuse? A week apart? Two weeks apart?”
   So that was it. She was worried that somebody could put those two things together, that it could be traced back, somehow. And that it would implicate her.
   “You should have made another trip, last year.”
   “I was busy.”
   “If you remember, Peter, I told you to go every year, for the next couple of years. Establish a pattern.”
   “I was busy. I had a child to raise.”
   “Well.” She shook her head. “Now we’re here.”
   I said, “What’s the problem? They’ll never figure it out.”
   That was when she really exploded. “Never figure it out? They’ve already figured it out. They already know, Peter. I’m sure they’ve already talked to Martinez or Hernandez or whoever that couple is.”
   “But they can’t possibly—“
   “For Christ’s sake. How do you think somebody gets a job as Japanese liaison? How did you get the job, Peter?”
   I frowned, thinking back. It was more than a year ago. “There was a posting of the job in the department. A list of candidates applied for it…”
   “Yes. And then what?”
   I hesitated. The truth was, I wasn’t sure exactly what happened administratively. I had just applied for the job and had forgotten all about it, until it came through. I had been busy in those days. Working in the press section was a hectic job.
   “I’ll tell you what happens,” Lauren said. “The chief of Special Services for the department makes a final determination of appropriate candidates, in consultation with members of the Asian community.”
   “Well, that’s probably true, but I don’t see—“
   “And do you know how long the members of the Asian community take to review the list of candidates? Three months, Peter. That’s long enough to learn everything about the people on that list. Everything. They know everything from the size of your shirt collar to your financial status. And believe me, they know about the allegations of child abuse. And your trip to Las Vegas. And they can put it together. Anybody can put it together.”
   I was going to protest, when I found myself remembering what Ron said earlier in the day: Now they watch the backhaul.
   She said, “You’re going to stand there and tell me you don’t know how all this works? That you weren’t paying attention to the process? Christ, Peter, come on. You understood what was involved in that liaison job: you wanted the money. Just like everybody else who has anything to do with the Japanese. You know how they make their deals. There’s something for everyone. You get something. The department gets something. The chief gets something. Everybody gets taken care of. And in return they get to pick exactly the kind of person they want as a liaison. They know they have a handle on you going in. And now they have a handle on me, too. All because you didn’t take your goddamn trip to Las Vegas last year and establish a pattern, the way I told you to.”
   “So now you think you have to get custody of Michelle?”
   She sighed. “At this point, we’re just playing out our roles.”
   She glanced at her watch, and looked toward the reporters. I saw that she was impatient to get on with it, to meet the press and make the speech she had already prepared for herself. Lauren had always had a strong sense of drama.
   “Are you sure what your role is, Lauren? Because it’s going to get very messy around here in the next few hours. You may not want to be involved.”
   “I am involved.”
   “No.” I took the Polaroid out of my pocket and showed it to her.
   “What’s this?”
   “That’s a video frame from the Nakamoto security tapes, taken last night. At the time of the murder of Cheryl Austin.”
   She frowned at the picture. “You’re kidding.”
   “No.”
   “You’re going with this?”
   “We have to.”
   “You’re going to arrest Senator Morton? You’re out of your fucking mind.”
   “Maybe.”
   “You’ll never see daylight, Peter.”
   “Maybe.”
   “They’ll bury you so fast and so deep you’ll never know what hit you.”
   “Maybe.”
   “You can’t make this work. You know you can’t. In the end, it’s only going to harm Michelle.”
   I didn’t say anything to that. I found I liked her less all the time. We walked along, her spike heels clicking on the sidewalk.
   Finally she said, “Peter, if you insist on following this reckless course of action, there’s nothing I can do. As your friend, I advise you not to. But if you insist, there is nothing I can do to help you.”
   I didn’t answer. I waited and watched her. In the hard sunlight, I saw she was starting to get wrinkles. I saw the dark roots of her hair. The fleck of lipstick on her tooth. She took off her sunglasses and glanced at me, her eyes worried. Then she turned away, looking toward the press. She tapped the sunglasses in the palm of her hand.
   “If this is really what’s happening, Peter, I think maybe I had better hold off a day and let events take their course.”
   “All right.”
   “You understand: I’m not dropping my concerns, Peter.”
   “I understand.”
   “But I don’t think the question of Michelle’s custody should be mixed up in some other, crazy controversy.”
   “Of course not.”
   She put her sunglasses back on. “I feel sorry for you, Peter. I really do. At one time you had a promising future in the department. I know you’ve been mentioned for a position under the chief. But nothing can save you if you do this.”
   I smiled. “Well.”
   “You have anything besides photographic evidence?”
   “I don’t know if I should give you too many details.”
   “Because if you only have photographic evidence, you have no case, Peter. The D.A. won’t touch it. Photographic evidence doesn’t fly anymore. It’s too easily doctored. The courts know it. If all you have is a picture of this guy doing the crime, it won’t wash.”
   “We’ll see.”
   “Peter,” she said. “You are going to lose everything. Your job, your career, your child, everything. Wake up. Don’t do it.”
   She started back toward her car. I walked with her. We didn’t say anything. I waited for her to ask how Michelle was, but she never did. It wasn’t surprising. She had other things to think about. Finally we arrived at her car, and she went around to the driver’s side to get in.
   “Lauren.”
   She looked at me over the top of the car.
   “Let’s keep it clean for the next twenty-four hours, okay? No well-placed calls to anybody.”
   “Don’t worry,” she said. “I never heard any of this. Frankly, I wish I never heard of you.”
   And she got in the car and drove off. As I watched her go, I felt my shoulders drop, and a tension leave me. It was more than the fact that I’d done what I set out to do—I had talked her out of it, at least for a while. It was more than that. There was something else, finally gone.

24

   Connor and I went up the rear stairs of my apartment building, avoiding the press. I told him what had happened. He shrugged.
   “This was a surprise to you? How the liaisons are chosen?”
   “Yeah. I guess I never paid attention.”
   He nodded. “That’s how it happens. The Japanese are very skilled at providing what they call incentives. Originally, the department had qualms about letting outsiders say anything about which officers would be chosen. But the Japanese said they simply wanted to be consulted. Their recommendations wouldn’t be binding. And they pointed out that it made sense for them to have some input in the choice of liaisons.”
   “Uh-huh…”
   “And just to show they were even-handed, they proposed a contribution to the officers’ relief fund, to benefit the whole department.”
   “How much was that?”
   “I think half a million. And the chief was asked to come to Tokyo and consult on criminal record-keeping systems. Three-week trip. One-week stopover in Hawaii. All first class. And lots of publicity, which the chief loves.”
   We got to the second-floor landing. Went up to the third.
   “So,” Connor said, “by the time it’s all finished, it’s rather difficult for the department to ignore the recommendations of the Asian community. Too much is at stake.”
   “I feel like quitting,” I said.
   “That’s always an option,” he said. “Anyway, you got your wife to back off?”
   “My ex-wife. She got the point right away. She’s a finely tuned political animal, Lauren is. But I had to tell her who the murderer was.”
   He shrugged. “There’s not much she can do in the next couple of hours.”
   I said, “But what about these pictures? She says they won’t stand up in court. And Sanders said the same thing: the day of photographic evidence is over. Do we have any other evidence?”
   “I’ve been working on that,” Connor said. “I think we’re all right.”
   “How?”
   Connor shrugged.
   We came to the back entrance to my apartment. I unlocked the door, and we went into the kitchen. It was empty. I went down the corridor to the front hall. My apartment was quiet. The doors to the living room were closed. But there was the distinct smell of cigarette smoke.
   Elaine, my housekeeper, was standing in the front hall, looking out the window at the reporters on the street below. She turned when she heard us. She looked frightened.
   I said, “Is Michelle all right?”
   “Yes.”
   “Where is she?”
   “Playing in the living room.”
   “I want to see her.”
   Elaine said, “Lieutenant, there’s something I have to tell you first.”
   “Never mind,” Connor said. “We already know.”
   He threw open the door to the living room. And I had the biggest shock of my life.

25

   John Morton sat in the makeup chair at the television studio, a Kleenex tucked around his collar, while the girl powdered his forehead. Standing at his side, his aide Woodson said, “This is how they recommend you handle it.” He handed a fax to Morton.
   “The basic through-line,” Woodson said, “is that foreign investment invigorates America. America is made stronger by the influx of foreign money. America has much to learn from Japan.”
   “And we aren’t learning it,” Morton said gloomily.
   “Well, the argument can be made,” Woodson said. “It’s a viable position and as you can see, the way Marjorie shaped it, it doesn’t read as a change of position so much as a refinement of your previous view. You can skate on this one, John. I don’t think it is going to be an issue.”
   “Is the question even going to come up?”
   “I think so. I’ve told the reporters you are prepared to discuss a modification of your position on MicroCon. How you now favor the sale.”
   “Who’ll ask it?”
   “Probably Frank Pierce of the Times.”
   Morton nodded. “He’s okay.”
   “Yeah. Business orientation. Should be fine. You can talk about free markets, fair trade. Lack of national security issues on this sale. All that.”
   The makeup girl finished, and Morton stood up from the chair.
   “Senator, I’m sorry to bother you, but could I have your autograph?”
   “Sure,” he said.
   “It’s for my son.”
   “Sure,” he said.
   Woodson said, “John, we have a rough assembly of the commercial if you want to see it. It’s very rough, but you might like to give comments. I’ve set it up for you in the next room.”
   “How much time have I got?”
   “Nine minutes to airtime.”
   “Fine.”
   He started out the door and saw us. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “You need me for anything?”
   “Just a short conversation, Senator,” Connor said.
   “I’ve got to look at a tape,” Morton said. “Then we can talk. But I’ve only got a couple of minutes…”
   “That’s all right,” Connor said.
   We followed him into another room, which overlooked the studio below. Down there, on a beige-colored set that said NEWSMAKERS, three reporters were shuffling through their notes and being fitted with microphones. Morton sat in front of a television set, and Woodson plugged in a cassette.
   We saw the commercial that was shot earlier in the day. It had a timecode running at the bottom of the frame, and it opened with Senator Morton, looking determined, walking over the golf course.
   The basic message was that America had lost its economic competitiveness, and that we had to get it back.
   “It’s time for all of us to pull together,” Morton said, on the monitor. “Everyone from our politicians in Washington, to our leaders of business and labor, to our teachers and children, to all of us in our homes. We need to pay our bills as we go, and cut the government deficit. We need to increase savings. To improve our roads and education. We need a government policy of energy conservation—for our environment, for our children’s lungs, and for our global competitiveness.”
   The camera moved close to the senator’s face, for his closing remarks.
   “There are some who say that we are entering a new era of global business,” he said. “They say it no longer matters where companies are located, or where things are made. That ideas of national economies are old-fashioned and out of date. To those people, I say—Japan doesn’t think so. Germany doesn’t think so. The most successful countries in the world today maintain strong national policies for energy conservation, for the control of imports, for promotion of exports. They nourish their industries, protecting them against unfair competition from abroad. Business and government work together to look after their own people and their jobs. And those countries are doing better than America, because those economic policies reflect the real world. Their policies work. Ours don’t. We do not live in an ideal world, and until we do, America had better face the truth. We had better build our own brand of hard-nosed economic nationalism. We had better take care of Americans. Because nobody else will.
   “I want to make it clear: the industrial giants of Japan and Germany are not the cause of our problems. Those countries are challenging America with new realities—and it is up to us to face those realities, and meet their economic challenge head on. If we do so, our great country will enter an era of unparalleled prosperity. But if we continue as we are, mouthing the ancient platitudes of a free market economy, disaster awaits us. The choice is ours. Join me in choosing to meet the new realities—and to make a better economic future for the American people.”
   The screen went blank.
   Morton sat back. “When does this run?”
   “It’ll start in nine weeks. Test run in Chicago and the Twin Cities, associated focus groups, any modifications, then the national break in July.”
   “Long after MicroCon…”
   “Oh, yes.”
   “Okay, good. Go with it.”
   Woodson took the tape, and left the room. Morton turned to us. “Well? What can I do for you?”
   Connor waited until the door had closed. Then he said, “Senator, you can tell us about Cheryl Austin.”


* * *

   There was a pause. Morton looked at each of us. A blank expression came over his face. “Cheryl Austin?”
   “Yes, Senator.”
   “I’m not sure that I know who—“
   “Yes, Senator,” Connor said. And he handed Morton a watch. It was a woman’s gold Rolex.

   “Where did you get this?” Morton said. His voice was low now, icy.
   A woman knocked on the door. “Six minutes, Senator.” She closed the door.
   “Where did you get this?” he repeated.
   “Don’t you know?” Connor said. “You haven’t even looked at the back. At the inscription.”
   “Where did yet get this?”
   “Senator, we’d like you to talk to us about her.” He took a glassine bag from his pocket, and set it on the table next to Morton. It contained a pair of women’s black panties.
   “I have nothing to say to you gentlemen,” Morton said. “Nothing at all.”
   Connor took a videotape from his pocket, and set it next to the senator. “This is a tape from one of five different cameras which recorded the incident on the forty-sixth floor. The tape has been altered, but it was still possible to extract an image that shows who the person with Cheryl Austin was.”
   “I have nothing to say,” Morton said. “Tapes can be edited and changed and then changed again. It doesn’t mean anything. This is all lies and baseless allegation.”
   “I’m sorry, Senator,” Connor said.
   Morton stood up and began to pace. “I want to impress upon you gentlemen the severity of the charges that you are considering. Tapes can be altered. These particular tapes have been in the custody of a Japanese corporation which, it could be argued, has a wish to exert influence over me. Whatever they may or may not show, I assure you they will not stand up to scrutiny. The public will clearly see this as an attempt to blacken the name of one of the few Americans willing to speak up against the Japanese threat. And as far as I am concerned, you two are pawns in the hands of foreign powers. You don’t understand the consequences of your actions. You are making damaging allegations without proof. You have no witnesses to anything that may allegedly have happened. In fact, I would even say—“
   “Senator.” Connor’s voice was soft but insistent. “Before you go any farther, and say anything you may regret, would you look down at the studio? There’s somebody there you need to see.”
   “What is the meaning of this?”
   “Just look, Senator. If you would, please.”
   Snorting angrily, Morton strode to the window and looked down at the studio. I looked too. I saw the reporters swiveling in their chairs, laughing and joking with each other as they waited to ask questions. I saw the moderator, adjusting his tie and clipping on his mike. I saw a workman wiping the shiny sign that said NEWSMAKERS. And in the corner, standing right where we had told him to stand, I saw a familiar figure with his hands in his pockets, looking up at us.
   Eddie Sakamura.

26

   Of course Connor had put it all together. When he opened the door to my living room and saw my daughter sitting on the floor, playing with her Tinkertoys with Eddie Sakamura, he hadn’t even blinked. He just said, “Hello, Eddie. I was wondering how long it’d take you to get here.”
   “I’ve been here all day,” Eddie said. He sounded put out. “You guys. Never come here. I wait and wait. Have a peanut butter jelly sandwich with Shelly. You have nice girl, Lieutenant. Cute girl.”
   “Eddie is funny,” my daughter said. “He smokes, Daddy.”
   “I see that,” I said. I felt slow and stupid. I was still trying to understand.
   My daughter came over and held her arms up. “Pick me up, Daddy.” I picked her up.
   “Very nice girl,” Eddie said. “We made a windmill. See?” He spun the spokes of the Tinkertoy. “Works.”
   I said, “I thought you were dead.”
   “Me?” He laughed. “No. Never dead. Tanaka dead. Mess hell out of my car, too.” He shrugged. “I have bad luck with Ferraris.”
   “So does Tanaka,” Connor said.
   I said, “Tanaka?”
   Michelle said, “Daddy, can I watch Cinderella?”
   “Not right now,” I said. “Why was Tanaka in the car?”
   “Panicky guy,” Eddie said. “Very nervous guy. Maybe guilty, too. Must have got scared, I don’t know for sure.”
   Connor said, “You and Tanaka took the tapes.”
   “Yes. Sure. Right after. Ishiguro says to Tanaka: Get the tapes. So Tanaka gets them. Sure. But I know Tanaka, so I go along. Tanaka takes them to some lab.”
   Connor nodded. “And who went to the Imperial Arms?”
   “I know Ishiguro sends some men, to clean up. I don’t know who.”
   “And you went to the restaurant.”
   “Sure, yes. Then I went to the party. Rod’s party. No problem.”
   “And what about the tapes, Eddie?”
   “I told you. Tanaka takes them. I don’t know where. He’s gone. He works for Ishiguro. For Nakamoto.”
   “I understand,” Connor said. “But he didn’t take all the tapes, did he.”
   Eddie gave a crooked grin. “Hey.”
   “You kept some?”
   “No. Just one. Just a mistake, you know. In my pocket.” He smiled.
   Michelle said, “Daddy, can I watch Disney channel?”
   “Sure,” I said. I put her down. “Elaine will help you.”
   My daughter went away. Connor kept talking to Eddie. Slowly the sequence of events came out. Tanaka had gone off with the tapes, and at some point in the evening, apparently realized that one was missing. He figured it out, Eddie said, and he came back to Eddie’s house to collect the missing tape. He had interrupted Eddie with the girls. He had demanded the tape.
   “I don’t know for sure, but after I talk to you, I figure they set me up. We have a big argument.”
   “And then the police came. Graham came.”
   Eddie nodded slowly. “Tanaka-san shit a brick. Hey! He’s unhappy Japanese man.”
   “So you made him tell you everything…”
   “Oh yeah, Captain. He tells me very fast—“
   “And in return you told him where the missing tape was.”
   “Sure. In my car. I give him the keys. So he can unlock it. He has the keys.”
   Tanaka had gone into the garage to get the tape. The patrolmen downstairs ordered him to halt. He started the car and drove off.
   “I watch him go, John. Drives like shit.”
   So it had been Tanaka who was driving the car when it hit the embankment. It was Tanaka who had burned to death. Eddie explained that he hid in the shrubbery behind the swimming pool and waited until everybody left.
   “Cold as shit out there,” he said.
   I said to Connor, “You knew all this?”
   “I suspected. The reports of the crash said that the body was badly burned, and that even the glasses had melted.”
   Eddie said, “Hey, I don’t wear glasses.”
   “Exactly,” Connor said. “Even so, I asked Graham to check, the next day. He never found any glasses in Eddie’s house. So it couldn’t have been Eddie in the car. The next day, when we went to Eddie’s house, I had the patrolmen check the license plates on all the cars parked on the street. Sure enough: there was a yellow Toyota sedan, a short distance up the road, registered to Akira Tanaka.”
   “Hey, pretty good,” Eddie said. “Smart.”
   I said, “Where were you, all this time?”
   “At Jasmine’s house. Very nice house.”
   “Who’s Jasmine?”
   “Redhead number. Very nice woman. Got a Jacuzzi, too.”
   “But why did you come here?”
   Connor said to me, “He had to. You have his passport.”
   “Right,” Eddie said. “And me, I have your business card. You give me. Home address and phone. I need my passport, Lieutenant. I got to go now. So I come here, and wait. And holy shit, all the reporters. Cameras. Everything. So I stay low, play with Shelly.” He lit a cigarette, turned nervously. “So. What do you say, Lieutenant? How about you give me my passport? Netsutuku. No harm done. I’m dead anyway. Okay?”
   “Not just yet,” Connor said.
   “Come on, John.”
   “Eddie, you have to do a little job first.”
   “Hey. What job? I got to go, Captain.”
   “Just one job, Eddie.”

   Morton took a deep breath, and turned away from the studio window. I had to admire his self-control. He seemed completely calm. “It appears,” he said, “that my options at this moment are somewhat reduced.”
   “Yes, Senator,” Connor said.
   He sighed. “You know it was an accident. It really was.”
   Connor nodded sympathetically.
   “I don’t know what it was about her,” Morton said. “She was beautiful, of course, but it wasn’t… it wasn’t that. I only met her a short time ago. Four, five months ago. I thought she was a nice girl. Texas girl, sweet. But it was… one of those things. It just happened. She had this way of getting under your skin. It was crazy. Unexpected. I started to think about her all the time. I couldn’t… she would call me, when I was on a trip. She would find out when I was on a trip, somehow. And pretty soon, I couldn’t tell her to stay away. I couldn’t. She always seemed to have money, always had a plane ticket. She was crazy. Sometimes, she would make me so mad. It was like my… I don’t know. Demon. Everything changed when she was around. Crazy. I had to stop seeing her. And eventually I had the feeling she was paid for. Someone was paying her. Someone knew all about her. And me. So I had to stop it. Bob told me. Hell, everybody in the office told me. I couldn’t. Finally I did. It was over. But when I came to that reception, there she was. Shit.” He shook his head. “It just happened. What a mess.”
   The girl stuck her head in the door. “Two minutes, Senator. They’re asking for you downstairs if you’re ready.”
   Morton said to us, “I’d like to do this first.”
   “Of course,” Connor said.

   His self-possession was extraordinary. Senator Morton conducted a televised interview with three reporters for half an hour, without a trace of tension or discomfort. He smiled, cracked jokes, bantered with the reporters. It was as if he had no problems at all.
   At one point he said, “Yes, it’s true that the British and the Dutch both have larger investments in America than the Japanese. But we can’t ignore the reality of targeted, adversarial trade as practiced by Japan—where business and government make a planned attack on some segment of the American economy. The British and Dutch don’t operate that way. We haven’t lost basic industries to those countries. But we’ve lost many to Japan. That is a real difference—and that’s the reason for concern.”
   He added, “And, of course, if we want to buy a Dutch or English company, we can. But we can’t buy a Japanese company.”
   The interview continued, but nobody asked him about MicroCon. So he steered it: in reply to a question, he said, “Americans should be able to criticize Japan without being called racists or bashers. Every country has conflicts with other countries. It’s inevitable. Our conflicts with Japan should be freely discussed, without these ugly epithets. My opposition to the MicroCon sale has been termed racist, but it is nothing of the sort.”
   Finally, one reporter asked him about the MicroCon sale. Morton hesitated, then he leaned forward across the table.
   “As you know, George, I have opposed the MicroCon sale from the beginning. I still oppose it. It is time for Americans to take steps to preserve the assets of this nation. Its real assets, its financial assets, and its intellectual assets. The MicroCon sale is unwise. My opposition continues. Therefore, I am pleased to say that I have just learned Akai Ceramics has withdrawn its bid to purchase the MicroCon Corporation. I think this is the best solution all around. I applaud Akai for its sensitivity on this matter. The sale will not go forward. I am very pleased.”
   I said, “What? The bid was withdrawn?”
   Connor said, “I guess it is now.”

   Morton was cheerful as the interview drew to a close. “Since I’ve been characterized as so critical of Japan, perhaps you’ll let me express my admiration for a moment. The Japanese have a wonderful lighthearted side, and it shows up in the most unlikely places.
   “You probably know that their Zen monks are expected to write a poem close to the moment of death. It’s a very traditional art form, and the most famous poems are still quoted hundreds of years later. So you can imagine, there’s a lot of pressure on a Zen roshi when he knows he’s nearing death and everyone expects him to come up with a great poem. For months, it’s all he can think about. But my favorite poem was written by one particular monk who got tired of all the pressure. It goes like this.”
   And then he quoted this poem.

   Birth is thus,
   Death is thus,
   Poem or no poem
   What’s the fuss?

   All the reporters started laughing. “So let’s not take all this Japan business too seriously,” Morton said. “That’s another thing we can learn from the Japanese.”

   At the end of the interview, Morton shook hands with the three reporters and stepped away from the set. I saw that Ishiguro had arrived in the studio, very red-faced. He was sucking air through his teeth in the Japanese manner.
   Morton said cheerfully, “Ah, Ishiguro-san. I see you have heard the news.” And he slapped him on the back. Hard.
   Ishiguro glowered. “I am extremely disappointed, Senator. It will not go well from this point.” He was clearly furious.
   “Hey,” Morton said. “You know what? Tough shit.”
   “We had an arrangement,” Ishiguro hissed.
   “Yes, we did,” Morton said. “But you didn’t keep your end of it, did you?”
   The senator came over to us and said, “I suppose you want me to make a statement. Let me get this makeup off; and we can go.”
   “All right,” Connor said.
   Morton walked away, toward the makeup room.
   Ishiguro turned to Connor and said, “Totemo taihenna koto ni narimashita ne.”
   Connor said, “I agree. It is difficult.”
   Ishiguro hissed through his teeth. “Heads will roll.”
   “Yours first,” Connor said. “Sō omowa nakai.”
   The senator was walking toward the stairway going up to the second floor. Woodson came over to him, leaned close, and whispered something. The senator threw his arm around his shoulder. They walked arm in arm a moment. Then the senator went upstairs.
   Ishiguro said bleakly, “Konna hazuja nakatta no ni.”
   Connor shrugged. “I am afraid I have little sympathy. You attempted to break the laws of this country and now there is going to be big trouble. Eraikoto ni naruyo, Ishiguro-san.”
   “We will see, Captain.”
   Ishiguro turned and gave Eddie a frosty look. Eddie shrugged and said, “Hey, I got no problems! Know what I mean, compadre? You got all problems now.” And he laughed.
   The floor manager, a heavyset guy wearing a headset, came over. “Is one of you Lieutenant Smith?”
   I said I was.
   “A Miss Asakuma is calling you. You can take it over there.” He pointed to a living-room set. Couch and easy chairs, against a morning city skyline. I saw a blinking telephone by one chair.
   I walked over and sat in the chair and picked up the phone. “Lieutenant Smith.”
   “Hi, it’s Theresa,” she said. I liked the way she used her first name. “Listen, I’ve been looking at the last part of the tape. The very end. And I think there may be a problem.”
   “Oh? What kind of a problem?” I didn’t tell her Morton had already confessed. I looked across the stage. The senator had already gone upstairs; he was out of sight. Woodson, his aide, was pacing back and forth at the foot of the stairs, a pale, stricken look on his face. Nervously, he fingered his belt, feeling it through his suit coat.
   Then I heard Connor say, “Ah, shit!” and he broke into a run, sprinting across the studio toward the stairs. I stood up, surprised, dropped the phone, and followed him. As Connor passed Woodson, he said “You son of a bitch,” and then he was taking the stairs two at a time, racing upward. I was right behind him. I heard Woodson say something like, “I had to.”
   When we got to the second floor hallway Connor shouted “Senator!” That was when we heard the single, cracking report. It wasn’t loud: it sounded like a chair falling over.
   But I knew that it was a gunshot.