Second Skin (58 page)

The apartment was larger than Tanaka Gin had expected – three bedrooms, plus another room Kanagawa had turned into his sanctuary. And it was expensively furnished. Kanagawa’s wife served them green tea and soybean sweets, then departed as silently as she had arrived. Through the walls of the study, painted a pleasingly serene green-gray, they could hear the muffled voice of the television.

Kanagawa
had filled his sanctuary with books, and the walls were festooned with degrees and awards of merit from Tōdai – Tokyo University, the country’s most prestigious institute of learning. Also, photos of Kanagawa with a vast array of dignitaries and VIPs. Some of them – former prime ministers, the new emperor – Tanaka Gin recognized, others he did not.

They sat and had tea. After the rituals of niceties had been dispensed with, Kanagawa said, ‘In your phone call you said your business was of some urgency. May I inquire what the Bank of Japan could want with me?’

This had been Tanaka Gin’s cover story. He had not wanted to alert Kanagawa to the true nature of the interview by prematurely giving away his identity.

Nicholas crossed his arms over his chest as Tanaka Gin flipped open his notebook. ‘You are head bursar for Tōdai, Kanagawa-san.’

‘Yes.’

‘And how long have you had this position?’

‘Fifteen years.’

‘And before that?’

‘I was assistant bursar.’ Kanagawa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Look here, all this is a matter of public record. I imagine you knew it before you came here.’

‘Indeed.’ Tanaka Gin looked around him. ‘And how much do you pay in rent for this apartment?’

‘Pardon me?’

A look of alarm had dawned on Kanagawa’s face. Tanaka Gin would have felt sorry for him under other circumstances. His life had no doubt been placid as a calm lake before tonight. Too bad.

‘And all these furnishings,’ Tanaka Gin continued relentlessly, ‘very expensive, I imagine. Tell me, what do you earn as chief bursar?’ He flipped closed his notebook and stared hard into Kanagawa’s flushed and astonished face. ‘Never mind, I already know.’ He displayed his credentials, and when Kanagawa’s eyes dropped to read them, he said, ‘I’m afraid you’re in serious trouble, Kanagawa-san.’

The older man looked back at him, frightened. Tanaka Gin imagined he could see all Kanagawa’s sins fluttering in his eyes, coming back to haunt him.

‘How serious?’ Kanagawa managed to say. His eyes, betraying him completely, strayed to the door to his sanctuary, beyond which his wife and grandchild sat, oblivious to the darkness that had suddenly crept into the apartment.

‘That depends,’ Nicholas said sharply, ‘on how willingly and completely you are prepared to help us.’

‘And if I plead ignorance?’

Tanaka Gin leaned forward. ‘Let me lay it all out for you, Kanagawa-san. You have been systematically taking money from Tetsuo Akinaga in exchange for admitting certain young men to Tokyo University who, over the years, Akinaga has sent to you. In addition, you have seen that these people have graduated, falsifying their grades if and when necessary. This is not speculation on my part; I have obtained records, transcripts. I have gained access to your bank accounts – all six of them. Over and above the obvious penalties for tax evasion, serious criminal charges can and will be filed against you for aiding and abetting a known Yakuza
oyabun.’
Tanaka Gin very deliberately looked around the room. ‘All this, Kanagawa-san – your comfort, security, and standing in the academic community – will be stripped from you.’

Kanagawa shuddered. He seemed on the verge of tears. Tanaka Gin could very well understand. For a man like him, comfort, security, and especially his reputation were everything.

‘You made a stupid mistake,’ Nicholas said in that same hard and commanding tone of voice. ‘Don’t compound it now by making another one.’

‘What is it you wish to know?’

‘There is a man within my own office,’ Tanaka Gin said, ‘who, like you, is on Tetsuo Akinaga’s payroll. Tell me who he is.’

‘And then?’

‘Don’t try to bargain with us,’ Nicholas snapped. ‘It is beginning to smell bad in here.’

Kanagawa’s eyes swung away from Nicholas and he licked his lips. ‘You must understand, Prosecutor, this... information is the only thing I have of value. Give me something for it. Please.’

‘Give me the name.’

‘Hatta.’ Kanagawa spat it out almost convulsively. ‘The man you want is Takuo Hatta.’

Tanaka Gin sat very still for several moments, then uncoiled like a tightly wound spring as he stood. He waited for Nicholas to join him. ‘Very well, Kanagawa-san. As of this moment, you will sever all ties with the
oyabun
Tetsuo Akinaga. You will have no contact with him whatsoever. If you do, I will know and I will expose your connection with him and you will be ruined.’

‘But –’ Kanagawa looked up at the two men with terror. ‘If I break off now, he will know what I have done.’

‘By then it will be too late for him,’ Tanaka Gin said. ‘Those are my terms, take them or leave them.’

‘I want my life back,’ Kanagawa said softly.

‘Then take possession of it,’ Nicholas said as they went to the door. ‘And think about how you almost lost it.’

The staircase smelled of concrete dust and rain. They followed many damp footprints down concrete stairs.

‘What do you think?’ Tanaka Gin asked. ‘Is he sufficiently frightened to put his past behind him?’

‘I think he’d rather cut off his arm than talk to Akinaga again.’

Outside, the street was splattered with rain. A large black Toyota sedan was sitting at the curb. When Nicholas and Tanaka Gin emerged from Kanagawa’s building, all four car doors opened simultaneously and out came four men: two uniformed policemen, one plainclothes detective, and Ginjirō Machida, chief prosecutor and Tanaka Gin’s boss.

‘Machida-san!’

Tanaka Gin’s greeting was almost a martial salute. Nicholas, positioned just behind and to the right of his friend, could see that Tanaka Gin had taken in the entire scene with a single glance.

‘Gin-san.’ Machida bowed perfunctorily. The uniforms spread out on either side of him, the detective immediately behind. This man had the hungrily expectant aspect of a second in an old-fashioned western duel.

Machida spread his hands, as if apologetically. ‘I waited as long as I could.’ A car went hissing by behind them, but there was a silent space between them, deep as a chasm. ‘Tetsuo Akinaga is no longer in custody. His lawyers destroyed your brief against him.’ With a sinking heart Tanaka Gin noted that he had said ‘your brief’ not ‘our brief.’ Machida was here on damage control, no doubt about it.

‘Gin-san, will you come voluntarily with me?’

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘To police headquarters.’ It was the plainclothes detective who spoke, and as he did so, the two uniformed cops took one step forward.

‘Certainly. But what for?’

The detective was about to answer, but a small motion from Machida silenced him. ‘There are suspicions, Gin-san. And more – allegations that someone in
my
department is on Akinaga’s payroll.’

Two more cars went by with the benign sounds of a woman’s skirt swishing. Between the men, the chasm only deepened.

At last, Tanaka Gin said softly, ‘You believe
I
am guilty?’

‘It is the errors in your brief that got Akinaga sprung.’ Machida shrugged. ‘You see how it looks.’

‘But I was the one who arrested him in the first place.’ Even as Tanaka Gin said it, he knew how foolish it sounded. He saw contempt in the detective’s eyes, and Machida was looking at a point just past his left shoulder, and ignoring Nicholas completely.

‘A case is pending against you,’ Machida said. Then he walked to the far side of the black Toyota, as if disassociating himself from what was to come.

‘Would you step into the car, please, Gin-san,’ the detective said in a neutral tone. Tanaka Gin glanced at his boss. He had not even offered the tiniest expression of confidence.

Nicholas, sensing Tanaka Gin was about to move, hooked two fingers into the prosecutor’s right rear pocket, deftly lifted his wallet. It looked as if Tanaka Gin wouldn’t need it anytime soon, and where Nicholas was headed, he might be in need of an official identity.

‘Stand tall,’ Nicholas whispered in Tanaka Gin’s ear, but the prosecutor did not reply. Rain began to drum across the top of the Toyota as Tanaka Gin ducked inside. The uniforms were already flanking the car, waiting for the detective.

‘I know you,’ he said to Nicholas. But there was nothing in his voice. Nothing at all.

When Margarite heard the gunshot, she screamed and jumped out of the chair in which she had been sitting.

She was still in the same room where Paul Chiaramonte had tied her spread-eagle on the bed. She had slept fitfully for several hours following Caesare’s first interrogation. He untied her, had allowed her to use the facilities as often as she needed, even let her take a shower. God, how she had stunk. It sickened and humiliated her to smell the stench of terror on her, and she had soaped herself as obsessively as Lady Macbeth had washed her hands to rid herself of imaginary blood. But then it was back to the interrogation – though not, thank God, the bed and the ropes binding her at wrists and ankles. And, though she begged him for it, not even an instant’s glimpse of Francine. Her heart ached with a black and awful pain. Her baby. Was Francine all right? If it came down to choosing between her child and giving up the secrets of the Nishiki network, she knew what she would do. She could delay a certain amount of time, but then Caesare would run out of patience and when he brought Francie in and put a gun to her head, she would tell him everything.

She had begun to cry. Maybe Dominic would have handled it differently. No doubt, he would have found a way out of this bind, but she was a mother, and her first – and only – imperative was to save her daughter’s life.

In the night, in between her bouts of fitful sleep, she had chafed in the clothes Caesare had brought for her after her shower, not new clothes, someone else’s – his current mistress’s? That would be ironic. But there was something familiar here in the darkness, not the clothes themselves – they were of colors better suited to a blonde than someone with her dark hair. But something definitely was familiar about them. What?

Her nostrils had flared wide. The scent. Whose? Someone she knew, someone close to her. Who? She could not think, though she spent the early-morning hours racking her brain. But her thoughts felt encased in a lead-lined box marked
PANIC.

Then, in the morning, Caesare had come himself with food and coffee, and humiliated again, she had eaten like the starving animal she was becoming. She was aware of him watching her like a trainer will his charge in a zoo.

Then, with her sitting unbound in a chair, they had begun the interrogations again, and he had quickly come to the end of his patience. Throwing the coffeepot across the room, he had stormed out.

And a moment later, she had heard the single pistol shot.

She had leapt up and stupidly, irrationally, had rattled the locked doorknob like a berserk gorilla. All she could think of was him putting the gun to Francie’s head. Then, crying, ‘No! No! No!’ she had begun to slam her shoulder into the door, shuddering painfully at each impact, but keeping at it nonetheless. Until she had heard the key in the door turning and she had stepped back, had, in one last lucid moment, sat back down in the chair where he had left her, her body coiled as tightly as a spring, her shoulder and ribs white with pain.

But the moment Caesare appeared in the open doorway, a gun in his hand, she lost it completely, hurtling from the chair with such speed and ferocity he had no chance to sidestep her. She barreled into him, heedless of the weapon, and together they crashed back into the living room. She clawed at him, pummeled him, and at last got her knee between his legs and drove it up into his crotch.

She was up and running as his breath came out of him in a
whoosh!
– her eyes wide and staring, screaming, ‘Francie! Francie!’ – bounding through the house, frantically searching every room, finding them all empty, blessedly devoid of her body. Until at last she found herself, sweat-streaked and panting, back in the living room, staring at a newly made bullet hole in one of the sofas.

She swung around to where Caesare, disheveled, holding on to a chairback with one hand, while pressing his groin with the other, stood staring darkly at her.

‘You
bastard!’
She wanted to scream but she had no strength left. The adrenaline fit of terror that had ripped through her when he had made her think he had shot Francie had run its course, leaving her weak and shaken. She collapsed onto the sofa, her head in her hands.

‘Oh, dear God,’ she whispered.

‘You’re playing in the wrong arena,’ Caesare said. ‘Foolish, really, to think you could keep the family together after I whacked Tony. You should have raised the white flag.’

‘When should I have done that,’ she asked without looking at him, ‘before or after your wiseguys whacked my driver right in front of my face?’

‘Fuck you talkin’ about? It was your call to bring in the cop. And Paul tells me you blew away one of my men yourself. I think he admires you for that.’

Her head came up and Caesare was momentarily startled by the dark, feral look in her eyes. ‘Stop dicking me around. You had your campaign against me planned well before you knew whether I would give up or not. You stole my company out from under me.’

‘That was business, Margarite.’ He shrugged. ‘I saw a good opportunity and I took it.’

‘Bullshit.’ She swiped her hair from her face. ‘You knew what that company meant to me. I built it from the ground up.’

He spread his hands. ‘It’s only a company, for chrissake.’

‘It was my fucking
legs,
you moron.’ Her hands closed into fists. ‘It defined me, made me what I was. Besides my daughter it was the only thing in my life I’ve ever been proud of.’ She waved a hand. ‘Oh, why am I bothering? You wouldn’t understand in a million years.’