city blues 02 - angel city blues (42 page)

“What if he’s in?”

My turn to shrug. “We’ll kick his ass, and
then
plunder his office.”

I reached under my suit jacket and laid my hand on the butt of the Miroku at the small of my back. Vivien reached under her own jacket and gripped the Nambu.

When I saw that she was ready, I opened the door to Jiro’s office and stepped inside.

The door led to an anteroom with the posh desk and furnishings of a high-roller’s administrative assistant. Weapons drawn, we paused only long enough to ensure that the assistant in-question was nowhere to be seen. Then we were through a second door and barging into Jiro’s inner sanctum.

My first sweep of the room was a fast visual scan for human occupants and threats. No obvious signs of either, but I did spot a closed door in the left hand wall.

I motioned for Vivien to keep an eye on the unknown door while I gave the place a more careful once-over.

The word ‘office’ seemed like an awfully pale description. The floor was oiled slate, buffed to a glow that rivaled obsidian. The desk was the size of my Pontiac, and appeared to have been hand-carved from some richly dark old-growth heartwood. Maybe teak or camel thorn. The floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk were photoactive matrices, relaying a flawlessly-realistic view from the penthouse level of some Tokyo skyscraper. No measly eleventh-floor view here. The designer of this room had achieved an ambiance that was somewhere between top-echelon corporate honcho, and nineteenth-century robber baron.

There were at least ten meters of open floor between the door and the desk, with cozy groupings of furniture sprinkled around the room at carefully-calculated locations. The walls were hung with a collection of paintings that would have made some museums proud. Sumi-e ink washes on rice paper and silk. A single-leaf woodcut on papyrus. A couple of tasteful impressionist oils, and a small portrait that had the feel of the pre-Renaissance masters.

I didn’t have to look closer to know that these were not reproductions. A man who needed this much ego-infusion would probably not be willing to settle for imitations.

I looked around, prepared to give Vivien further instructions. There was no need. She was standing with her back to the desk, her body angled so that she could keep an eye on both doors at the same time. She had a two-handed grip on the Nambu, her arms lowered and relaxed. The muzzle of the weapon was pointing toward the floor, but she was prepared to snap it up to firing position in the blink of an eye.

I started with the desk. The upper right hand drawer was locked. I went through the others quickly.

The top center drawer held a compact SCAPE deck with a wireless headset, a cylinder of molecular epoxy, and three flat-pack batteries for some unidentified electrical gadget.

In the lower left drawer was something I’d never seen before: a gray plastic device that resembled a police-grade shock rod, fused into the body of a heavy duty flashlight. Where the flashlight’s lens should have been was a flared housing with an ovoid nozzle, its leading curve perforated by thousands of tiny funnel-shaped channels. Ten rectangular groves were spaced around the perimeter of the nozzle, as if this object was intended to plug into something larger. I picked the device up and hefted it. The thing weighed at least three kilos, and maybe four. It was a lot denser than it looked, and a curved portion of the plastic fit so smoothly into my palm that I was sure it had been engineered as a handle. Aside from an alphanumeric serial number or model number, there were no markings.

I laid the thing on the desk top for future examination. I had no clue as to what it might be.

The rest of the drawers contained nothing of particular interest. A few thousand yen in bills of various denominations, an animated brochure for a Chicago nightclub I’d never heard of, and the usual desk clutter: pens, pencils, and the like. Whatever Jiro did at his desk, it didn’t seem to be business.

The locked drawer had a circular lozenge of black crystal set flush into the drawer facing. A thumbprint scanner, or something similar. I pulled out the drawer below and dropped to my knees to examine the locked drawer from underneath. If the bottom surface had been wooden, I would have hunted for some kind of tool to carve my way in. Unfortunately, it wasn’t wooden. The underside of the drawer was sheathed in some kind of metalized carbon that looked only a shade or two short of armor.

The heavy slugs of my 12mm Blackhart might have been able to punch through that stuff. The frangible bullets of the Miroku and the Nambu wouldn’t have a chance. The safety rounds would shatter like glass on impact.

I tried to check behind the paintings for a safe or a hidey-hole, but the frames were affixed so firmly to the walls that I couldn’t move them.

Five more minutes of dedicated searching uncovered a concealed wet bar, and not much else. Jiro’s office was turning out to be a bust.

I caught Vivien’s eye, and nodded toward the only door we hadn’t tried yet. When we got within a meter or so, we could hear a low hissing sound. White noise, like frying bacon, or… a
shower
. Maybe our buddy, Jiro, wasn’t gone after all.

I opened the door slowly, following the Miroku into a large changing room with an adjoining wardrobe area, and an open doorway leading to what was obviously a bathroom.

The sound of running water was louder now, and the floor was strewn with pieces of discarded clothing. I poked through the scattering of garments with the toe of my shoe, revealing the vest, blouse, and skirt of an Office Lady’s uniform and a black silk business suit.

I could hear two voices, one male, the other female—their words nearly drowned out by the low roar of the shower.

Vivien touched my elbow and nodded for me to go ahead.

I walked through into a bathroom that was larger than my loft back home. Against one wall was an enormous glass-enclosed shower, the sides nearly opaque with condensation. Through the translucent barrier, I could barely see the silhouettes of two human forms.

The man said something, and the woman giggled.

I interrupted their conversation by rapping on the glass door of the shower with the muzzle of the automatic.

His shout of surprise was as abrupt as her scream, and damned near as loud.

“Come on out of there, Jiro-san,” I said. “We need to talk.”

CHAPTER 36

Ten minutes later the hysterical Office Lady was dressed, and locked (still quietly crying) in the changing room/bathroom area. I didn’t understand enough Japanese to know what Vivien said to her, but the young woman became instantly compliant and utterly silent, aside from occasional sobs that she couldn’t completely suppress.

Jiro got a somewhat different treatment. I allowed him to towel himself off, but I kept his clothes in my left hand, well out of his reach. I didn’t object when he wrapped the towel around his waist. I had no desire to humiliate the man. I just wanted to keep him a little off balance.

With his Office Lady playmate tucked out of the way, we led him back out to his office and gestured for him sit on one of the couches.

He gave me a tough guy stare with about thirty gigawatts of malice behind it. “I don’t know who you are,” he said in perfect English, “but this is the last mistake you will ever make. You fuck with me, and my friends will come after you. Even if you walk out of here alive, which I very much doubt, you’ll be hunted down like an animal. And not just you. Your family, your friends, and everyone you ever cared about.”

I tossed his bundle of clothes on the floor and racked the slide of the Miroku. “That’s an amazing coincidence,” I said. “I was just about to give you the same little speech, with one minor difference.
You’re
the one who made the mistake. You fucked with my friends. And that’s definitely going to be the last mistake you every make.”

I sighted in on his forehead. “I’ve got news for you, shithead. You’re
not
the hunter this time. You’re the animal.
I’m
the hunter.”

My finger tightened on the trigger.

I felt a flicker of fear that he was going to call my bluff.

He didn’t. His carefully-cultivated mask of aristocratic privilege evaporated like a drop of water on hot iron, revealing the face of a terrified man-child who was not accustomed to finding himself on the wrong side of danger.

I knew in that instant that he was a poser. His muscle-punks—Nine-fingers, Arm-twister, and Messenger-boy—might be the real thing, but Jiro was a phony. Another spoiled rich kid, playing at being a badass.

His hands flew up to protect his face, as though they could somehow stop bullets from puncturing his beloved flesh. His voice was a whimper of unmodulated terror. “Don’t!
Please
don’t… I don’t know… I don’t even know… who you
are
… what you
want
…”

Vivien plopped into the chair behind his desk. She saw the thread of my bluff, and she went with it. “Just shoot him,” she said. “He doesn’t have the answers we need.”

Jiro perked up at this. “Yes! I do! I can tell you whatever you want… Anything! Company secrets… Bank accounts… Passwords…
Anything
!”

I allowed the barrel of the Miroku drop a few degrees. “Tell me what happened to Rhiarra Dancer.”

He tried to put on an innocent expression. “
Who
?”

“Rhiarra Dancer. Forensics tech for LAPD. You raped her, and then you broke her neck.”

Jiro shook his head violently. “No! That wasn’t me! I didn’t lay a finger on her.”

“You’re lying,” I said. “And I don’t have the patience to play games with you.”

I raised the pistol and began tightening the trigger.

“I have
proof
!” Jiro blurted. “I promise you. I do!”

“What kind of proof?”

“I SCAPEd it,” he said quickly. “I was there. I got a clip of whole thing. You’ll see. It wasn’t
me
. I didn’t
touch
that woman.”

I lowered the Miroku, trying to keep the interest out of my voice. “Where is this supposed SCAPE clip?”

“Top drawer of my desk,” Jiro said. “You need my thumbprint to open it.”

“Let me cut off his thumb,” Vivien sneered. “That way, we get the drawer open with no tricks.”

“We’ll worry about the drawer in a minute,” I said. “If I play this SCAPE recording, what am I going to see?”

Jiro swallowed. “Aoki, Masami, and Toju.
They
did it. You’ll see. It’s all on the clip.”

I recognized the first name. Yoshida Aoki was the bogus identity being used by the man I knew as Nine-fingers. The other two names weren’t familiar. Presumably, they were the two rapists-murderers that Dancer had tracked down and killed.

I shook my head slowly. “You know Jiro, for a guy whose life depends on answering questions, you’re not exactly impressing us. I’m going to overlook the fact that you just gave us three fake names, and get straight to the point. The assholes who work for you are zeroes. Sidewalk soldiers. They don’t scratch their balls without your orders. But you act like these knuckle-draggers woke up one morning, and picked Rhiarra’s name out of a hat at random. And you just
happened
to be in the neighborhood when they went after her.”

Vivien snorted. “I’m telling you, this is a waste of time. We’re never going to get the truth out of this fucker. Let’s just shoot him in the head and get on with business.”

“Wait,” Jiro said in a near stammer. “You’re right. I gave the order. I told them to do it.”

“We already know that,” I said. “We even know
why
you did it. Rhiarra’s large data set algorithm was going to reveal the perpetrator of every SCAPE crime ever committed. And sometime shortly after her algorithm went into widespread use, you and the members of your vicious little FANTASCAPE club were going to find yourselves arrested and brainlocked.”

The look in Jiro’s eyes was pure surprise.

I decided to capitalize on his moment of confusion by bulling ahead. “Were you also doing your voyeur routine the night that Leanda Forsyth was murdered? Making a SCAPE recording for your private collection? Or did you actually get blood on your hands that time?”

I was on shakier ground with this. We hadn’t seen proof that Leanda was dead, but in light of all we had learned, it seemed like a fairly safe bet.

I could see my words strike home with Jiro. At the same time, I caught a stiffening in Vivien’s posture. She had come here to learn the truth about her daughter. That didn’t necessarily mean she was ready to hear it.

Jiro seemed to be losing his inclination to respond, so I backhanded him with the barrel of the Miroku to refocus his attention.

Lightweight composites or not, the impact of a hard object slamming into the fleshy part of your face is almost as stunning as it is painful. His head snapped around, and when he looked back around at me, there was a trickle of blood running down his cheek.

There was an almost palpable sense of incredulity about him, as if he honestly couldn’t believe that things like this could happen to him. To other people? Of course. But never to Akimura Jiro. Never to the son of the great Akimura Hideaki, the heir to fortune and power. Suffering and death were for the rabble. Not for the privileged elite.