The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction, page 23
She didn’t have to wait long to find out. She saw him at the end of the bar, propped on a stool in the shadow beneath a fin-shaped wall-lantern, drinking Sapporo beer from the bottle with a glass of what looked like whisky parked by his elbow. He smiled crookedly at her and winked.
He was the old man who’d lured her to Endo’s apartment, now sporting a leather jacket that she took to be his attempt to blend with the crowd. Wada was tempted for a moment simply to walk out. She couldn’t imagine anything valuable emerging from a conversation with the man she suspected of murdering Yamato and very possibly Endo as well. But, then again, she couldn’t have imagined him wanting to talk to her in the first place. Talking had never seemed to be his objective.
He beckoned her towards him and she took a few paces, stopping well short of the vacant bar-stool next to his. ‘Konnichi wa,’ he said in his sandpapery voice. ‘You came alone, then. That’s good. So did I.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to listen to me, that’s all. Don’t worry. I’m no threat to you. I wouldn’t try anything in front of all these witnesses. My name is Yagami. Rokuro Yagami. Here’s my driver’s licence.’ He held out the card for her to see. It bore his name and photograph, along with his date of birth, which put his age at seventy-three – long in the tooth for what she suspected his line of work was. ‘OK? That really is my name.’
Wada nodded curtly in acknowledgement. ‘All right. You are Yagami. You work for Goro Rinzaki?’
‘Not any more.’
‘When did you stop working for him?’
‘Yesterday, since you ask.’
Wada took a step closer and placed her glass on the bar. She was determined to show Yagami she wasn’t frightened of him. And she wasn’t. He didn’t have a heavy with him. He was seventy-three years old. He looked if anything older than that. And bone weary with it. Also, if he was to be believed, he no longer worked for Goro Rinzaki. ‘Why did he fire you?’
He beckoned for her to draw closer still. ‘We should keep our voices down,’ he said, Wada barely catching his words. ‘You’ll want this to stay between us.’
She propped one hip on the vacant bar-stool and lowered her head, the better to hear him. ‘Apparently,’ he continued, ‘I’ve been … getting sloppy. Showing my age. Which is ironic, coming from a guy twenty years older than me.’
‘Did you kill Daiju Endo?’ She matched the pitch of her voice to his.
‘I solved the Endo problem, as instructed. And I solved the Yamato problem as well, though there … I improvised. As I saw it, he’d served his purpose after luring you to Endo’s apartment. But the boss didn’t approve. So, after nearly forty years, I’m out. On the scrap heap.’
‘He did instruct you to eliminate Endo, though?’
‘You’re here to listen, Wada, not question me. This is how it is. On top of everything else the boss thinks I got rid of Manjiro Nagata. That plus the Yamato thing was what led him to fire me. But I never laid a hand on Nagata. I have no idea where he is. Well, I have an idea, but that’s all it is. A theory. Which the boss wouldn’t listen to.’
‘Where do you think Nagata is?’
‘We’ll come to that. Stop interrupting. Whatever you think you can wheedle out of me by way of evidence to use against me you won’t get, because no one’s ever going to find Endo and no one’s ever going to doubt that Yamato killed himself. When I rig things, they stay rigged. But that doesn’t apply to things I didn’t rig, like Nagata.’
‘What about Daniel Perlman? Did you “rig” his suicide?’
‘I told you to stop interrupting. I’m not here to talk about Perlman. I’m here to warn you. You’re clever, Wada. The muscleman who rescued you? I never saw him coming.’ Wada saw no need to point out that she hadn’t seen him coming either. ‘And I never thought you’d work your way through from Nagata to Yamato and Endo. But cleverness isn’t enough. You’ve got the boss’s attention now. That only ends one of two ways. The quick and the slow. The quick you can guess. The slow? Well, that’s why I suggested meeting here. It seemed … fitting. It was Kodaka’s favourite watering hole, wasn’t it?’
He’d known Kodaka. That wasn’t something Wada had bargained for. It was disquieting, as Yagami must have intended. He had the advantage now. ‘Didn’t you know about Kodaka’s dealings with the boss?’ he asked with the faintest of smiles. ‘I suppose not. It’s hardly something he’d have boasted to you about. But you should know. Because it tells you how this is likely to play out. In Heisei seven Kodaka was hired by your ex-client Fumito Nagata’s brother-in-law, Teruki Jinno, chairman of Jinno Construction, to find out why his father Arinobu, who’d died the previous year, had regularly paid the boss large sums of money since way back in Showa twenty-two.’ That was a long time, Wada conceded, by anyone’s reckoning.
‘We closed the case down by giving Kodaka an explanation that would stop Jinno asking any more questions: a fictitious mistress for his strait-laced father. It was all carefully arranged to look genuine. The boss had actually taken steps to substantiate the mistress story years before, just in case he needed to use it. He’s a far-sighted man – you can’t take that away from him. Anyway, Jinno backed off.
‘As for Kodaka … the boss hired him to investigate something else altogether, which ensured he’d stop looking for the truth about the Jinno payments. That’s what he’ll do with you. Some time next week, I’d guess, he’ll ask to meet you. And when you meet him, he’ll offer you a job. If you make the mistake of accepting it, he’ll have you exactly where he wants you. Working for him, not for his enemies.’
‘What did he hire Kodaka to investigate?’ Wada asked, eager to know what the case had been about. By Yagami’s account, Kodaka had taken it on in 1995, the year Wada had joined the agency.
Yagami lowered his voice still further. ‘The whereabouts of the Kobe Sensitive.’
‘Really?’ It was strange Kodaka had never mentioned the case.
‘What did Kimber tell you about Yukari Otonashi? That Grant Braxton hired her as a consultant at BISRI last year on the boss’s recommendation? That the rumour is she’s the Kobe Sensitive, who gave a warning not just of the Kobe earthquake in Heisei seven but the tsunami in twenty-three? The only evidence for the second warning is Endo’s claim to have a recording of her call to the Kantei the day before it happened. That claim was crucial to the boss persuading Braxton to take her on. The recording’s never been heard and has since disappeared along with Endo. Which looks like a government cover-up if that’s what you want to see. But it’s not a government cover-up. It’s a fiction, like Arinobu Jinno’s mistress. It gets the boss a spy inside BISRI, better still a spy in Grant Braxton’s house – in his bed, so I’m told. Kodaka never found the real Kobe Sensitive. It turned out she was already dead. So, the boss has invented her all over again. Otonashi’s real name is Zaizen. Her mother is the woman who claimed to be Arinobu Jinno’s mistress. In reality, she was the boss’s mistress. Still is. Her daughter – Rinzaki’s daughter as well, I’ve always assumed – is just as good as her mother at playing a part, maybe better. She’s certainly convinced Grant Braxton she’s what she claims to be. But what’s it all for? What does the boss want her to do? That’s the really big question. What has he sent her over there for?’
Yagami paused to finish his beer. He signalled to the barman for another bottle and waited for it to be delivered, along with a small bowl of dried squid strips, several of which he immediately munched before washing them down with a swig of beer.
‘Are you going to tell me?’ Wada asked when it seemed to her he’d been silent long enough.
‘He’s sent her there to find something. Something the boss entrusted to Clyde Braxton but never got back after Braxton’s death. Something that earned both of them enough money in the post-war years to set them up for life. And it went on earning them money, in regular payments from people like Arinobu Jinno. Blackmail money, obviously. But what were they blackmailing those people with? The answer has to be in what the boss hopes Otonashi can recover for him. What is it? I only know how the boss referred to it once in a conversation I overheard between him and Clyde Braxton the last time Braxton visited Japan, in Heisei ten. He called it the Matsuda asset.’
‘Matsuda?’
‘That’s right. The previous owner of the boss’s villa. I don’t know anything about him. I think the boss worked for him during the war. But he doesn’t talk about what he did back then and trying to find out’s a dangerous game. So, what is the asset and how can it be used for blackmail over so many years? I don’t know. But that’s what he’s sent Otonashi to California to get her hands on if she can. I reckon that’s where Manjiro Nagata has gone as well. He must have worked out what was going on after talking to Endo, who by then was proving himself dangerously unreliable. If I’m right, Nagata and Otonashi are there for the same reason. They’re both looking for the asset, whatever it is. Something physical, though. Something you can actually hold. If you can find it.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because the boss sacked me, without a moment’s hesitation, after nearly forty years. Because he showed me no loyalty. I’ve been loyal to him, all that time, and now I know …’ Yagami took a deep swallow of whisky. He was angry. That was clear. Angry that Rinzaki thought he could treat him like dirt and suffer no consequences. ‘I was a fool to believe I was more to him than an employee to be disposed of when he decided I was no longer up to the job. He’s replaced with me with that idiot Koga, who proved himself useless when your strongman friend showed up at Endo’s apartment. But, apparently, that doesn’t matter. He’s younger. He’s the future. So, I’m out … discarded … ignored … forgotten. Well, that means I owe him nothing now. He didn’t even listen when I tried to explain my theory about Manjiro Nagata. He kept insisting I’d obviously got rid of him on my own initiative. Big mistake. That’s why I’m giving you the chance to uncover the truth, Wada. Maybe you can use it to bring him down.’
‘I take all the risks – and you get all the satisfaction?’
‘Ignore me if you want to. Forget everything I’ve said. Take your fee from Fumito Nagata and file away the case in your archives. You can do that.’ Yagami looked hard at her. ‘Or can you? I don’t read you that way. You don’t like how easy it was for the boss to pressure Nagata into calling you off. You want the truth, whether someone’s paying you to go after it or not. And then there’s Kodaka, of course. The boss outmanoeuvred him. And now he’ll outmanoeuvre you. If you let him. But I don’t think you will. It’s not in your nature. You want to put right what Kodaka got wrong.’
‘I don’t believe he got it wrong.’
‘Fine. Prove he didn’t if you can. I don’t mind.’
‘How did Manjiro Nagata find out about the asset? Rinzaki would never have told Endo about it. I assume he just bribed him to broadcast his claim about the Kobe Sensitive, then had you dispose of him once he became a liability.’
‘It’s unclear. But Yamato said Endo had been in contact with Nagata and I can’t make any better sense of his disappearance. His father obviously doesn’t know where he is, but I reckon his mother does. She probably put him up to this, though exactly what they stand to gain from the asset …’ Yagami shrugged. ‘I don’t have all the answers, Wada. If I did I wouldn’t need you to unearth them. Kimber trusts you, doesn’t he? You can use him to get inside the Braxton household. Tell him about the asset if you like. Tell him whatever you need to. You can probably persuade him to hire you. Then you can get paid for doing what I know you badly want to do anyway.’
‘Maybe I should just wait for that call from Rinzaki you seem certain is going to come – and tell him how many of his secrets you’ve betrayed to me.’
‘If you do that, he’ll come after me, for certain. Although he’ll have his work cut out finding me. I’m planning a long holiday in foreign parts. But you’ll be a threat to him as well. You’ll be someone else who knows too much. And you don’t want to be that, believe me.’ Yagami shaped a grim smile. ‘Telling the boss would be a seriously stupid thing to do. And you’re not stupid. You only have two choices. Walk away from the whole thing. Or back yourself to get at the truth. Well, you know as well as I do which of those it’s going to be.’
After leaving the Blue Fin, Wada walked slowly back towards Nihombashi through the crowded streets of Ginza. The shops were still open and the salarymen – and women – were out in force. Lights danced and sparkled in the Tokyo night. She moved through it all like a wraith, her mind whirling. She’d originally been hired to find Manjiro Nagata and maybe she should have concentrated on that, instead of allowing herself to be sidetracked into the Endo mystery. They were related, of course, but Nagata, absent and unknowable, was actually the more important figure, because he was still alive and in pursuit of the key to the entire conspiracy.
She should also have made more of Fumito Nagata’s remark that Kodaka had once worked for his brother-in-law, Teruki Jinno. It had been all too easy to assume the cases were unrelated. But in her experience such connections were never meaningless. Why hadn’t she checked Kodaka’s files? He threw nothing away. His records of the Jinno case – and the subsequent case he’d taken on for Goro Rinzaki – should be in one of the boxes stored in the agency’s cage in the basement of the Kono Building.
She was tempted to go straight there and begin searching for them. But for the moment something else – someone else – had to take priority.
She stopped near the ornate frontage of the Kabuki-za Theatre, where patrons were streaming in for an evening performance, and phoned Troy Kimber.
He answered almost instantly. ‘Wada. Got any news?’
‘You are still in Tokyo?’
‘Oh yeah. I fly home tomorrow night.’
‘Can we meet? Now?’
‘So, you have got news.’
‘Can we meet?’
‘I’m at my hotel. Meet me in the bar.’
The bar of the Imperial Hotel, populated by slick-suited Japanese businessmen and wealthy tourists, featured subdued lighting, rich leather upholstery and a soundtrack of soft jazz – a considerable contrast with the Blue Fin. Kimber was at a corner table, slick-suited himself, sipping red wine and nibbling nuts. A half-empty cocktail glass was whisked away from beside him as Wada approached. She ordered a gin and tonic without really wanting another.
‘Did I interrupt something?’ she asked as she sat down.
‘You’re sharp, aren’t you?’ Kimber smiled. ‘I’d arranged some entertainment for myself to brighten my last night in Tokyo. Then … you cropped up.’
‘Why did you choose the Imperial to stay in?’
‘Oh, the Frank Lloyd Wright associations, I guess. His building survived the 1923 earthquake, didn’t it?’
‘It did. But it did not survive the modernizers.’ She glanced around. ‘How do you like this version?’
‘It’s comfortable. I have no complaints. And I’m sure it’s just as earthquake-proof as its predecessor.’
‘Would you be happy to find out? If the Kobe Sensitive told you the big one was about to hit Tokyo, would you just … stay in your chair?’
‘Probably not. But that’s never going to happen, even if my stepfather flies over with Yukari Otonashi on his arm. Because she isn’t the Kobe Sensitive, whatever he chooses to believe.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because it’s just too convenient. Rinzaki’s using her to get some kind of hold over Grant. And she’s got that for him all right.’
‘A hold you want to dislodge?’
‘For sure.’
‘Well, maybe I can—’
She broke off as her gin and tonic and another glass of wine arrived. Kimber eyed Wada thoughtfully as the waiter departed. ‘Maybe you can help me do that? Is that what you were about to say?’
Wada bowed her head and lowered her voice. Kimber bent forward to listen. ‘The man who followed us from Matsuda Sanso has been fired by Rinzaki for … exceeding his authority.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because he has decided to punish his employer for getting rid of him after many years of loyal service … by confiding in me.’
‘Has he though?’
‘His name is Yagami. I have just come from meeting him. He told me that Otonashi has been sent to California to recover … an asset … held by Clyde Braxton, which Rinzaki believes to be rightfully his following Clyde’s death but which Grant has retained. Or else Clyde concealed it somewhere and never left any instructions with Grant concerning what he was to do with it. Whatever the exact circumstances, recovering the asset is Otonashi’s primary objective. Which, obviously, she has not yet accomplished.’
‘And this asset is … what?’
‘Yagami does not know. Rinzaki has only entrusted Otonashi with the information.’
‘Why her?’
‘It appears she may be his daughter.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? She’s certainly inherited his devious nature.’
‘I suspect Manjiro Nagata is also looking for the asset.’
‘Ah. Your missing man. So, he’s on the trail as well, is he?’
‘I think so.’
‘What put him on to it?’
‘Hard to say exactly. His grandfather, Arinobu Jinno, paid Rinzaki a lot of money over a period of many years. It may well have been blackmail money. And it may have been shared with—’
‘Good old Clyde.’
‘Very possibly. They worked together during the American occupation. The asset is linked to a man called Matsuda, original owner of Matsuda Sanso. Rinzaki worked for him during the war. I know nothing of Matsuda or what Rinzaki did for him.’
‘But the asset is basically dirt Rinzaki and Clyde had on Jinno and maybe others as well. Clyde kept hold of it. And Rinzaki’s been trying to recover it ever since Clyde’s death.’
