The Toyotomi Blades (3 page)

Sitting at the bar was the person he was looking for, nineteen-year-old Yasuo Ishibashi. The young man was nursing a beer, and he seemed to be sitting at the far end of the bar to avoid company. Ishibashi looked troubled, and his gaze was focused on his beer mug.

The older man strode over to the open stool next to Ishibashi and sat down. Ishibashi looked up briefly, and morosely returned to staring at his beer. When the older man caught the bartender’s attention, he ordered a Johnnie Walker Black Label, an expensive drink in Tokyo. When the drink was served, he sipped it and smacked his lips in appreciation. Then he started talking to Ishibashi. “Do you come here often?”

Ishibashi looked offended that his solitude had been disturbed, but politeness forced him to answer. “Pretty often.”

Given a wedge, the older man continued, “Are you a student?”

“Waseda,” Ishibashi said, naming an expensive private university.

“Waseda!” the older man said. “My brother went to Waseda. I’m a great admirer of your school.” The man gave Ishibashi a toothy grin, revealing a row of badly aligned teeth highlighted by a prominent gold front tooth.

Ishibashi gave the rumpled man next to him a surprised look. The thought of any relative of this disheveled character going to Waseda seemed to startle him. Before Ishibashi could say anything, the man offered, “Let me buy you a drink.”

“No, thank you. That’s very nice of you, but you don’t have to buy me a drink.”

“Nonsense!” the older man insisted. He waved at the bartender, who came over to the end of the bar. “Bring my young friend a drink,” the older man said. “Do you like Johnnie Walker or Chivas?” he asked Ishibashi.

Nonplussed, Ishibashi said, “Johnnie Walker is fine, thank you, but you don’t have to buy me a drink.”

“Nothing is too good for a Waseda student,” the older man said. “You’re the future hope of our country.”

Ishibashi waved his hand as if to brush off both the compliment and the drink, but the bartender was already pouring. Sighing, he picked up the drink and poured it down. Johnnie Walker Black, which was far above his drinking budget, did taste good. Before he could finish the first drink, the weird fellow next to him was already waving for another round.

A few hours later, the older man was checking into one of Tokyo’s many love motels. In a land famed for its scarcity of space and privacy, love motels exist to provide amorous couples with both, at any time of the day or night. No desk clerk handled the check-in, because all transactions at this motel were handled discreetly by credit card and computer, with no humans to interfere with anonymity and secrecy.

The man inserted a recently stolen credit card into the check-in machine, and a video monitor flashed a polite greeting in
kanji
on its screen and directed him to room 116 with a little map. A magnetically encoded key was extended from a slot, and as he took the key, an admonition appeared on the screen reminding him to return the key when he was done because the room was being charged to the credit card by the hour.

The man returned briefly to the underground parking lot that served the motel. He looked around to assure himself that he was still alone before he opened the door to his Toyota. Sleeping soundly on the back seat was Ishibashi, drunk and snoring loudly. The man reached into the back of the car and took out a small bag. Then he rousted the sleeping student and helped him out of the car. With the drunk Ishibashi leaning against his shoulder and weaving unsteadily, the man and the youth made their way to room 116.

The magnetic key unlatched the door and they entered the room. The windowless room contained a bed covered with a garish red cover, a television, two doors along one wall, and an enormous mirror mounted on another wall to reflect any activity on the bed. The man dumped Ishibashi on the bed and chained the door behind them.

Placing the bag on the floor he walked over to the doors on the opposite wall and opened one. It was a toilet. He closed the door and opened the second door. It was a Japanese-style bathroom with a large heart-shaped tub. The room had a drain in the tile floor, low-set faucets on the wall, and two small stools. He took one of the stools out of the bathroom and positioned it by the bed.

He then perched on the edge of the bed and looked at the youth for a few moments, contemplating his next actions. While he sat there he noticed the sounds of a couple in the next room coming through the too-thin walls. They were moaning and groaning and occasionally the woman was shouting terms of endearment in both Japanese and French. He couldn’t decide if it was an office lady who thought speaking French during love-making was sexy, or a hooker who was entertaining a visiting French tourist. Either way, the woman speaking French during sex seemed to symbolize everything he hated about what Japan had become. Her voice spoiled what he had come for.

He turned on the TV, twisting the sound knob savagely to maximum volume. Before the picture came on there was a notice on the screen that the television would be an extra charge to the credit card. When the notice disappeared, the screen dissolved into a soft-core Japanese porno film showing a scene with a young girl running naked on a beach. Because Japanese censors don’t allow frontal nudity, a blue dot floated on the screen to cover her crotch. He wasn’t interested in the girl, but he was grateful that the booming music that accompanied the girl’s capering on the beach drowned out the sounds from the next room.

He turned his attention to his bag and unzipped the top. He took a length of rope from the bag. He placed the bathroom stool directly under the light fixture in the room’s ceiling and stood on the stool. Reaching up, he was able to tie the rope around the fixture. He stepped off the stool and went over to Ishibashi. The young man had fallen into a drunken stupor again, and a line of drool was dripping down his face.

The older man roused Ishibashi and got him off the bed. He led him over to the stool and tried to hoist the drunken youth onto the stool.

“What’re you doing?” the young man asked.

“Just cooperate for a moment,” the older man said.

“Cooperate?”

“Don’t you want to end your troubles? I have a way for you to do it.”

“What do you know about my troubles?” the youth mumbled.

“I know all about them and I’ve decided to help you out of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll explain in a minute. For now, just cooperate and stand on the stool.”

The youth was clearly puzzled, but in his drunken state he couldn’t fathom what was happening and docilely did as he was asked to.

“What are you doing?” Ishibashi protested as the older man tied the rope around his neck. As the young man raised his hands to his neck to remove the rope, the older man quickly kicked the stool away.

When Ishibashi’s weight hit the rope, the light fixture gave way and partially pulled out of the ceiling. This was a development the older man had not planned for. He had expected Ishibashi’s neck to snap, but instead, with the failed light fixture absorbing some of the shock, Ishibashi was hanging from the rope by his neck with his feet barely brushing the floor.

Tremendous pain shot through the young man’s body, sobering him up as the rope jerked at his neck, crushing his windpipe. In the large mirror Ishibashi could see himself dangling from the rope with the half-pulled-out light fixture above. His toes skimmed the floor, but he wasn’t low enough to relieve the pressure on his neck by standing on his tiptoes. He reached out to the older man standing next to him, trying to grab him for support. The older man stepped back.

Ishibashi clawed at the rope and tried to pull himself up to release the pain and tension from his neck. He was partially successful and tried to croak out a yell for help. From his crushed larynx a hoarse sound emerged and the effort caused him even more pain. Hanging from his neck and hands, Ishibashi tried to ignore the new pain and continued to shout. His feeble shouting made no impression on the older man or the couple in the next room. Even if the couple could be distracted from their passion, the loud sound of the television drowned out Ishibashi’s weakening croaks for help.

Gradually, while watching himself strangle in the big mirror on the opposite wall, Ishibashi felt himself succumbing to pain and weakness. His strength gave out and he could no longer suspend himself hanging from the rope. The noose tightened. His toes frantically scratched at the surface of the carpeting in the room trying to support his weight. It was incomprehensible to Ishibashi that the older man had done this to him. He had just met him in the bar. He tried to curse the man, but the rope was too tight around his neck and he could only make a weak gurgling noise. Finally, Ishibashi lost bodily control before slipping into unconsciousness and death.

When the older man was sure the youth was dead, he briefly thought about retying the rope to hoist the body higher. But the growing brown stain on the young man’s pants made the older man reluctant to make a neat job of the faked suicide. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and decided he didn’t want to do more.

“If you were a tough guy, you wouldn’t be here,” the older man said with contempt to the dangling body. In Japanese slang a tough guy is someone who can hold his liquor. The older man inspected the room, wiping down doorknobs and the stool with a handkerchief to get rid of fingerprints. Then, after turning down the volume on the TV while using the handkerchief as a glove, he quietly left.

3
      

W
hile things that would directly affect my life were happening literally around the world, I was sitting in Los Angeles feeling fat, dumb, and happy.

Well, I guess fat isn’t totally accurate, although I do have that extra five to ten pounds that seem to attach themselves to your body around your fortieth birthday. Dumb isn’t totally accurate either, although I felt pretty dumb when I lost my computer programming job as part of what is euphemistically known as corporate downsizing. I felt dumb about devoting countless hours to a corporation that was willing to cut hundreds of employee jobs without cutting a single executive. But despite the weight and the lack of a job, happy was a totally accurate description.

I was sitting in the living room of my apartment in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles sharing good news with my girlfriend, Mariko Kosaka. I held up a letter that had been delivered by DHL, the next-day overseas courier service, and asked Mariko, “Do you want me to read it to you?”

“Of course, Ken. You dragged me down here just so you could read it, so don’t play coy with me now,” Mariko answered.

With a sheepish grin, I looked at the letter and started reading.

“Dear Mr. Tanaka. I am the foreign guest booking producer for the Japanese television program
News Pop. News Pop
is a blend of current news stories and live interviews, and it’s very popular in Japan. We noted with interest your participation in solving the murder of Mr. Matsuda, as reported in the
Asahi Shim-bun
newspaper. We feel this story would also be of interest to our viewers and we would like you to appear on our television show either next weekend or the weekend following. We realize this is short notice, but I’m sure you can appreciate that our program likes to present stories while they are still topical and in the public’s mind. If you can appear on either show, please contact me by fax or at the number listed on our letterhead. If you would like, please feel free to reverse the telephone charges. If you can appear on the program, we will pay your airfare to Japan and food and lodging expenses for a period of up to five days. You will stay at the luxurious Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and fly business class to Japan via ANA. I hope you will be able to accept our invitation, and I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest possible convenience. Yours truly, Buzz Sugimoto, Foreign Guest Booking Producer.”

I looked at Mariko. “Well, what do you think?”

“What kind of Japanese name is Buzz?”

I sighed. “I don’t care if his name is Alphonse. Weren’t you listening? They’re offering me a free trip to Japan and a chance to be on Japanese television.”

“I was listening quite carefully and I noticed the offer was only for you. It should have been for you and your incredibly glamorous actress girlfriend.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Damn right I’m jealous. It sounds like a fabulous invitation and I’m going to be envious of every glorious moment you’re going to have on this trip.”

“Why don’t you join me?”

Mariko held up her hand and rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “I’m broke. You should know that’s a natural state for a struggling actress. Your trip is free, but mine would cost a fortune.”

“When I call them I could ask them if they’d pay for your trip, too.”

“Don’t be crazy. This is a great deal and you shouldn’t screw it up. Besides, I like the idea of you getting more recognition for solving Matsuda’s murder. It got just a small piece in the L.A.
Times.
I was glad the
Rafu Shimpo
and
Tozai Times
picked up the story, and even more gratified when the papers in Japan picked it up.”

After I solved the murder of a Japanese businessman in a Los Angeles hotel, Mariko was my biggest booster. Most of the press coverage I got was due to her efforts. She hunted down any press mention of the case and contacted the Los Angeles Japanese language newspapers, the
Rafu Shimpo
and
Tozai Times,
urging them to feature the story, which they did. From these stories, I was interviewed by Los Angeles-based reporters for several Japanese newspapers, including the
Asahi Shimbun,
which is Japan’s largest newspaper.