Читать книгу Enzan - John Donohue - Страница 9

Chapter 2

We rode in a limousine. I always feel uncomfortable lounging in the back of one of those cars. My formative years had been spent ranged along the bench-like seats of a series of overloaded station wagons with my brothers and sisters. Those vehicles rocked and swayed on shock absorbers that were almost as exhausted as my parents. The cars were white or green or blue, depending on the year, filthy and mottled with rust. They all burned oil in the same way and were the type of lumbering gas-guzzlers preferred by the Burke clan.

Ito’s limo was night black and shone from meticulous attendance. I leaned back in the leather seats and watched the traffic. It was cold on the streets; my breath fogged the window for a brief second until the cabin heater wiped it away with luxurious efficiency. We were hermetically sealed, protected from the winter cold. The tinted windows prevented the riffraff from looking in at us. The ride was quiet and smooth and distinctly unreal. Ito stretched out in an opposite corner of the car, comfortable in this environment, and watched me.

I looked over and nodded at his thick hands. “Kyokushinkai?” It’s a karate school renowned for its devotion to breaking techniques.

He smiled and corrected me. “Shotokan.” His voice had a self-satisfied tone, as if the idea that he’d study the Kyokushinkai style was beneath him. It figured. Shotokan was a much more mainstream karate style, and Kyokushinkai’s founder had, after all, been a Korean. They’re big for pedigree in the service of the Imperial House, even down to the details of work out partners. Shotokan was the right choice for someone like Ito. And someone like Ito had probably made the right step every day of his life—going to the right school, developing the right connections. He was cultivated for a life of service in the vast governmental bureaucracy of Japan. If I had thought about it, I would have realized there was no way he was going to spoil his prospects by studying with a renegade group of Kyokushinkai board breakers, no matter how much he might have wished he could. It wasn’t particularly surprising. Duty trumps desire almost every time in Japan.

I wondered whether someone like Ito even felt any struggle between duty and desire anymore. Think of a bonsai tree, bound into a shape not of its own choosing. Does the tree dream of another, wilder form? Probably not. The gardener dreams. The tree simply bends to his will.

I sometimes yearn for that type of surrender, the placid numbness of unquestioning obedience. But it’s just not in me. One of the great ironies of my life is that I’m always trying to avoid being controlled, and yet I have yoked myself to studying an art that demands total surrender. I like to think it’s my choice and I can break free whenever I wish. But I’m not so sure anymore. After all, there I was. I had no real interest in getting involved with these people. I’d dealt with them before, and they always seemed to get what they wanted and then faded back into the shadows while the rest of us were left to clean up the pieces and nurse our wounds. This wasn’t going to end well. But even as it chafed, the yoke compelled me. I had a duty of sorts to perform. I needed to protect Yamashita. From them.

That two-word conversation about karate styles was it for Ito and me. We were both comfortable with silence and it’s not a long trip from Red Hook to Gotham anyway. I sniffed the leather upholstery appreciatively, listened to the tires hum along the road surface, and watched as we popped up out of the Battery Tunnel and arrived in Manhattan. I tried not to speculate too much about what was going to happen. It’s a waste of energy. But deep down, I must have been anticipating certain things and so I felt a spurt of surprise when we slipped past 299 Park Avenue. I hadn’t been consciously aware of it, but I suppose I had thought Ito was taking me to the Japanese Consulate. Instead, we continued down Park Ave. and across East Forty-Ninth to the Waldorf Astoria hotel. I nodded to myself in appreciation. Conveniently close. Yet nicely separate. They think of everything.

We took an elevator and, in the foyer of an elegant hotel suite, another flat-eyed, fit young man in a dark suit frisked me before letting me in. I wondered if the Japanese were simply cloning them. “Tell him I left my throwing stars at home,” I said. Ito smiled in apology, but the pat down proceeded. It struck me then: They think I’m dangerous. This was not something I usually gave a great deal of thought to. I do what I do, and the rarefied little world Yamashita has created has grown familiar and unexceptional to me. But looking at it from the outside, my teacher and I must have seemed like strange beasts. And with that realization, another thought came to me: Dangerous? Well, I suppose I am.

The suite had a conference area: a highly polished wooden table and well-padded chairs. A credenza along one wall featured a silver coffee service and some fruit. An old man, his face blotchy with age spots, was in a wheelchair to my left at the far end of a table. He had a narrow, pointed jaw and a broad forehead. Sparse strands of iron grey hair were plastered over his pate. The pronounced skin of his epicanthic fold made his eyes appear sleepy, but a closer look showed me an old reptile, alert and ready for a meal. The long fingers of his hands were gnarled with arthritis—they rested on the polished wood of the table like old claws.

A second Japanese man sat at the long side of the table. He was middle aged and growing stout, a compact man with flat cheekbones and short salt and pepper hair. He rose from his seat as I approached, came around the table, and extended a hand.

“Dr. Burke, thank you for coming. I am Miyazaki Tokio.” He bowed in the direction of the man in the wheelchair. “This is my father.” The old lizard remained motionless.

Miyazaki ushered me to a seat across from him at the table. I could sense Ito and the other guard watching from a discrete distance while my host fussed with the coffee service. “You prefer your coffee black, neh? As do I.” There were manila file folders arrayed before his place at the table, but they were ignored for a time as he served us and we both made a show of sipping the coffee with polite appreciation. Miyazaki inquired about my trip. The health of my master. He was obviously tense, but etiquette is etiquette, and he did a good job of playing the host. His father said nothing. I could hear the faint phlegmy rattle of his breathing, but other than that, he seemed to play no part in the meeting and showed no overt interest.

Finally, I decided this had gone on long enough. One of the nice things about being a gaijin, a foreigner, is that the Japanese don’t expect good manners from you. If I had known these people or wanted to somehow impress them, I might have played along. But I didn’t. I set my cup down on its translucent saucer and leaned back in the chair.

“Excellent coffee, Miyazaki-san.” I thought it interesting that he seemed to know how I liked my coffee. That he knew when Yamashita was going to be away. They were facts I’d ponder later. “But you haven’t gone to all this trouble just to invite me over for a drink.” I looked directly at the father and arched my eyebrows quizzically. It was very un-Japanese of me. You never make a direct inquiry like that, especially to the senior person present. The whole reason the old man sat at the far end of the table was so he could watch me but I could not watch him. At least that’s the theory. I was expected to talk to the younger Miyazaki, sitting across from me, but all the real power was really in the clawlike hands of the old thing sitting to my left. So I decided to refuse to play along and rattle them with my lack of couth.

But the younger Miyazaki merely blinked and smiled, unruffled. He looked at me mildly, as if studying an exotic animal in the zoo. He nodded. “Indeed, Dr. Burke. Please excuse me. I understand your desire to get to the point.” He smiled again, as if the use of the colloquialism was a way to show off his language skill. But the Japanese nod and smile for many reasons. Sometimes they are agreeing with you. Other times they are simply indicating they have heard what you have said. Sometimes, it’s because they are deeply uneasy. I wondered which reason made Miyazaki smile.

I gestured at the files. “The point, I suppose, is in there?”

Again the smile. But it was tight and fleeting, more a grimace than anything else. Miyazaki took a breath, as if bracing himself. One hand pressed on the pile of folders, an unconscious expression of a wish to keep them forever closed. But he couldn’t.

I sensed movement on the periphery of the room and Ito appeared at the table. He silently asked for permission to join us and, for once, Miyazaki’s facade cracked and he nodded wearily in acquiescence. Ito sat next to me on the right and reached over for the files.

“Dr. Burke,” Ito began, “what we are discussing here is highly confidential. The Miyazaki family would ask for your utmost discretion.” I just nodded. Across from me Miyazaki raised a hesitant finger. The younger man paused for a fraction of a second, then slid a piece of typescript in front of me. “With respect, Miyazaki-san asks you to sign this nondisclosure agreement.” Ito’s voice was distant and formal, a sign of just how uncomfortable he was with the request.

I pushed it away, back toward Miyazaki. “Don’t be ridiculous. You asked me to come here. If you want to talk with me, talk, otherwise I’m leaving.” I stood up.

The old man croaked something: a name perhaps, or a command. I didn’t catch it, but the man who had frisked me at the door appeared by my side and put a restraining hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t a light touch, and I felt my core tightening and the anticipation of a fight spiraling up within me. It’s a familiar feeling. I wonder sometimes whether I like it too much. I leaned in toward Miyazaki.

“Tell him to get his hand off me, Miyazaki. I’m only going to say it once. If you can’t trust me, you wouldn’t have invited me up here. Don’t insult me with a piece of paper.”

He sighed, closed his eyes, opened them, and nodded at the goon at my side. The hand came off my shoulder. But I didn’t sit down.

“Please, Dr. Burke,” Miyazaki said, and his voice was small and tight, like a man being choked. “We need your help.”

I looked at Ito. He was standing as well, and watching me with tremendous interest, his eyes lit up with anticipation. Part of him wanted me to sit down; it was his duty to make that happen. But part of him would have liked to see me tussle with the man standing by my shoulder. He was the only honest person in the room. I don’t know whether I liked him for it, but at least I understood him.

“Please,” Miyazaki begged, gesturing to my chair. And there was something familiar in the tilt of his head, in the cast of his eyes. So I sat down, if only to try to figure out what was creating that sense of familiarity.

Ito sat down, too, and arranged the files in front of him. He took out some color photos of a striking young Japanese woman. Wide eyes, long black hair that shimmered with highlights that seemed almost blue. She had a playful smile that almost made you feel she was mocking the camera. But it was subtle and it could have been my imagination. “Miyazaki-san’s daughter Chie,” Ito told me.

“How old?”

“Twenty-three,” he said. “After graduating from Tokyo Daigaku, she came last year to New York for graduate work.” I nodded. Tokyo University is Japan’s most prestigious school. A child of someone like Miyazaki would have gone there. But there’s an allure to study in the United States, and it’s not unusual for people to come west for grad school. I looked across at Miyazaki, his face once more impassive. I wondered how he’d felt about his daughter slipping her chain and getting loose among the barbarians. Probably like most fathers, I realized. Then Ito passed me another picture.

In this one, the mocking smile was more fully in place. The eyes seemed narrower and her long hair had been cut shorter in a choppy style and was streaked with pink and green. It wasn’t a formal posed shot. It was taken outside and the blurry background of building and people made me wonder if it was a surveillance photo taken with a long lens.

“Nice nose ring,” I said to Ito, then regretted it as soon as the words popped out. I was getting the picture: child of privilege running amok. Miyazaki didn’t wince at my comment, but it must have been hard for him. Sorry, Dad.

“She has taken to her new environment,” Ito ventured an understatement. The old man at the end of the table snorted.

“We have,” Miyazaki began, then cleared his throat, “I have deep concerns about my daughter and the people she is associating with, Dr. Burke.”

I sighed inwardly. The daughter-gone-wild-in-grad-school story is as common as it is sad. Kids breaking free. Parents holding on. Lots of room for hurt feelings. But the sheer grind of life imposes a type of conformist gravity. Most people eventually fall out of orbit. It takes a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll to hit escape velocity. The probability was that she’d be OK. But I’m not a parent; maybe probable isn’t good enough to let you sleep at night.

How was I supposed to change this for him? “I don’t see any role I can play in this problem, Miyazaki-san. Have you spoken with her?”

He looked down at the polished surface of the table. “Numerous times. And each conversation is worse than the last.”

“She has stopped attending classes,” Ito added. “She hasn’t been in her apartment for weeks.”

I looked from one to the other. “If she’s been out of contact, you can file a missing-person report.” The old man snorted again.

Miyazaki was shaking his head. “She is in sporadic contact with us, Dr. Burke. But we do not know exactly where she is.” He was clearly uncomfortable but didn’t seem eager to explain.

I shrugged. “Cut off the money. That usually brings them back.” Miyazaki’s shoulders slumped. He looked at his father, whose eyes gleamed with anger. This is a conversation they’ve had before.

“I am afraid it is more complicated and delicate a situation than that,” Ito interjected. He paused and looked toward the two other men at the table. “It is a matter of the greatest delicacy and involves the family honor.” And now he seemed reluctant to continue. Miyazaki was silent. His face was stone.

“Honor,” the old man snapped. His Japanese was guttural and harsh, but the word makoto, honor, rang out in the room. “Look at him!” A claw waved in my direction. “What does this one know of honor?” He probably thought a barbarian like me wouldn’t understand him when he spoke Japanese.

I turned my head and stared at him. “Saya wa naku tomo mi wa hikaru,” I spat back at him. He looked shocked. Though the scabbard is lacking, the blade gleams. It’s an old samurai chestnut, and even now I’m amazed I was able to locate it in the dingy, cluttered storage space of my memory, but it seemed to stupefy them all. I was relieved I had come up with a somewhat elegant rejoinder. My original impulse had been to tell him to shove it.

Ito suppressed a wry smile. The old man seemed incensed: probably offended that I had the nerve to speak his language. His mottled face flushed and his lips grew wet with spittle as he spun himself up for a tantrum. Miyazaki rose in alarm. “Ito,” he said, “my father is not well.” He reached the old man and began to wheel him away. “Please continue with our guest,” he commanded over his shoulder as he pushed the old lizard out of the room.

Ito stood watching until the door shut firmly behind them. He sighed. “Perhaps it is just as well.” He moved to the table and sat down, his hands resting on the folders before him. “The rest of the story is not so pleasant. As a father, it would be distressing for Miyazaki-san to share these things about his daughter.”

I raised my eyebrows and sat down. Now at least I was getting somewhere. There was no reason I could see why a highly placed Japanese family would need my help in corralling a wayward daughter. I’ve got a degree in history, not social work. I give lots of advice in the dojo, but most of it is highly specialized: I don’t care about how you feel about your relationship with your father. I am concerned with proper hip placement and correcting that really bad grip you’re using on the sword.

But they knew that. They knew about me: my background, my likes and dislikes. My skills. So there had to be something more to the situation. Something that made them reluctant to go to the authorities.

“So,” I offered. “Let me guess. Drugs?”

Ito nodded solemnly. “In part. What you call party drugs. Ecstasy. Crystal meth.”

“Some party.”

“Yes,” he sighed. “And there is more.” He fished around in his files and spread out a series of black and white surveillance shots: Chie with an Asian man in wraparound sunglasses and spiky hair. Another picture of the same man without the shades, lighting a cigarette outside a bar. “Lim Ki-whan,” Ito said. “Her boyfriend.” He tried to be dispassionate, but I could hear the note of disdain creeping into his voice. The name was Korean, and even today there is a deep chauvinism among some Japanese regarding the Koreans. For a family like the Miyazaki, it would have been bad enough to have a daughter wander off the reservation in America. To do it with a Korean would be beyond the pale.

“He’s her drug connection as well, I suppose?” Ito nodded in response. “Love is a wonderful thing,” I told him.

He didn’t think I was funny. He was probably right.

“There is more, Dr. Burke. Chie has a troubled psychological profile … issues with behavior. Issues with authority.” Don’t we all. He rustled through some papers, dense with text. “And sex.” He paused for a moment, clearly uncomfortable.

This was curious. Japanese attitudes regarding sexual matters are considerably different than traditional Western ones. The same culture that has elevated tea making to an art form is also the largest producer of pornographic comics in the world. So I waited for Ito to say more. He sat there, arranging and rearranging the order of the folders in front of him. Finally, he simply slipped one folder across the table in front of me. He shrugged. “There. Please take a look.”

There were a great many photos of Miyazaki Chie with a variety of men. The pictures seemed to have been carefully posed to be both sexually graphic and to ensure she could be clearly identified. Many times, she was looking right at the camera, her eyes slightly unfocused, and I assumed that was from the drugs. But you clearly got the sense that she knew she was being photographed. That she knew someone was going to be looking at her in these photos. And that she liked it. I shuffled through the collection quickly and wondered once more at the human capacity for making something potentially good so deeply creepy.

Ito watched me, waiting for a comment.

“I see she’s gotten some tattoos as well,” I offered.

“She is a nymphomaniac,” he said curtly. “And a drug user.” His voice took on heat and speed as he continued. “She is the daughter of one of the most respected families in Japan and she is being exploited by this Korean thug.”

There are lots of ways you could exploit someone, so I pressed for more information. “Has he turned her out?” I said.

Ito cocked his head, taking a moment to make a mental translation of the phrase. “Ah, has he made her a prostitute? No, Dr. Burke.” He reached over and took possession of the photos, sliding the folder beneath the others.

I nodded. “At least there’s that.” But Ito didn’t seem comforted.

“She is with him, we believe. But we do not know where. We want her back, Dr. Burke.”

“I can understand that, Ito-san, but I don’t see why you need me to help.”

Ito rubbed his hands together as if he were thinking about using them to mangle Chie’s boyfriend. It seemed to calm him. He peered up at me. “You have resources that could help us find him.”

“True.” My brother had been a cop for twenty years before he retired to set up a security consulting firm. He’s widely connected, deeply cranky, and very busy. But he could probably find Chie in about twenty-four hours if I asked for his help. “But there are many people in New York who could help you do this,” I told him.

Ito nodded. “Just so. But as we have stated, there are complicating factors. The drugs. The prominence of the family. We would insist on the utmost discretion.”

I thought of the pictures I had just seen. “That would be refreshing.”

“We know of your past service to the Kunaicho,” he told me. The Kunaicho, the Imperial Household Agency, was deeply involved in matters relating to the Japanese royal family. At one time, in another life, Yamashita had been instrumental in training its security personnel. It was a complicated history, filled with good things and bad. Some of them had almost gotten us both killed.

I didn’t respond to his comment and Ito took a sipping breath. “We would be honored if you would help us, Dr. Burke.”

“I think,” I said as I stood up, “that you are not telling me everything, Ito-san. I think you’re looking for someone who can find her, sure, but you also know she’s not going to want to come home, and whoever finds her is going to have to knock some heads together.” He started to respond but I held up a hand to silence him. “And it wouldn’t look good to have some Japanese government agents involved in what would essentially be a kidnapping. So you figured I could do the scut work for you and take the heat. You know, for old times’ sake. Am I right?”

His eyes never wavered. “We will pay you generously.”

“Great. I can buy extra cigarettes in prison,” I told him. I headed toward the door.

“Wait,” Ito called. His partner, who had remained in the background during our discussion, moved to block my way out of the suite.

“Get out of my way,” I told him. But he didn’t move.

“Please, Dr. Burke,” Ito continued. “It is an extremely delicate situation. And extremely complicated.”

I turned my head back toward Ito. “Not half as complicated as your friend’s life is going to be if he doesn’t get out of my way.” I felt the early tremble of an adrenalin dump start to work its way through my muscles. Ito must have sensed it as well. He made a quick motion and the man by the door stood aside.

“Did I tell you how we got those pictures?” Ito called as I headed out into the hall. I kept moving, but his voice followed me.

“Chie sends them to her father.”