at all. I think you don’t know shit. All those cons you’re running, all those front companies, all the sharks you’ve got collecting protection money, and what are they good for? Not one of them has seen a damn thing.”
The Bulldog snarled. “Honey, this is a dangerous game you’re playing.”
“Is it? Prove me wrong. Show me the Kamaguchi-gumi can still get it up.”
Even Bullet bristled at that, and usually he was about as expressive as a meat cleaver. Kamaguchi flung his door open and stepped out of the Land Rover. By the sound of it, his door left a pretty good dent in the side of Mariko’s BMW. He wore a silver-gray suit, and brushing his jacket aside, he jerked a stubby stainless steel revolver out of a hip holster. “You’re an annoying little cunt, you know that? I ought to blow your fucking brains out.”
That was when Mariko knew she was safe. The Bulldog wasn’t long on self-control. If he was going to fly into a rampage, he would have pulled the trigger already. The fact that he was talking, not shooting, meant this was pure theater. So Mariko played her role too. “Come on. Shooting a cop in your own parking garage? You’re smarter than that.”
It was the exit he needed to back down and still save face in front of his bodyguard. “Smarter? Yeah, this time. Next time you come around here, don’t press your luck.”
“Have a nice day, Kamaguchi-san.”
He got back in the car and slammed the door. Bullet drove him away, leaving Mariko in a stinking haze of diesel fumes. Neither of them decided to shoot her on their way out, and exactly that much had gone right today.
Her phone vibrated irritably in her pocket. She knew who it was before she even looked at the screen. “Yeah?”
“Status report.” Furukawa sounded tense.
“The same as it was half an hour ago. Except now I’ve exhausted all of my best leads, not just most of them. Oh, and I pissed off the most violent man in Tokyo. And now I’m a big fat oh-for-twenty, instead of oh-for-sixteen or seventeen or whatever I was the last time you called. What about on your end?”
“About the same.”
“So much for all your ‘no place we cannot reach’ crap.”
“That’s precisely the trouble, Detective. We have too much data and not enough filters. That’s what you’re for: to narrow the search parameters. Find me someone who has seen something.”
Mariko slipped into the Beemer, put Furukawa on speakerphone, and dropped him in the passenger seat. Then she massaged her eye sockets with her thumbs. She’d already tapped all her best resources. She was running out of ideas and those kids were running out of time. In a kidnapping case, the most important events usually happened within the first three hours: a kidnapper was identified, probable destinations were targeted, and most crucially, the kidnapper decided whether or not to kill the child. The great majority of abductors were family members, they usually stuck to their regular hangouts, and they almost never resorted to murder. But when they did, they almost always killed within three hours of the abduction.
Nothing was typical about this case, but Mariko had a gut-chilling feeling that the three-hour rule still applied. These kids had been gone for just over two hours. If they were still alive, and if Joko Daishi meant to kill them, all the statistics suggested he’d do it soon.
Mariko’s heart fluttered so erratically that it made her feel queasy. She feared Joko Daishi had left himself no choice but to kill the children. The longer he kept them alive, the more likely they were to royally fuck up his plans. His people might have signed on for some screaming and crying, but by now they’d have piss and shit to deal with too. They’d had time to build a bit of sympathy for the kids, and maybe for their families as well. The initial adrenaline rush would have given way to exhaustion, unless he dosed his people with uppers to keep them alert; either alternative could lead to a moment’s inattention. With the whole city looking for them, Joko Daishi couldn’t afford to let even one child slip away. Mass murder was his safest option.
Though it horrified her to think about it, her mind immediately leaped to modus operandi: how would he go about killing thirteen hundred children? The Nazis could teach him a thing or two. He knew his chemistry; building a gas chamber was well