that ours is a secret society? You two are loud enough to wake the dead. Detective Oshiro, be a dear and unlock the door, won’t you?”
“No, sir.”
He reacted as if she’d poked him with a pin. “Excuse me?”
“I said no, sir.” Mariko was surprised to hear herself speak so formally. Something about this man engendered respect. “I’d rather keep your hired muscle on the other side of the door, if it’s all the same to you.”
He pushed his glasses back up the ridge of his nose with one thin finger. “Oh, come now. They won’t hurt you.” Raising his voice, he said, “Do you hear that? You’re not to hurt her.”
“With all due respect,” Mariko said, “the last time that woman tried to not hurt me, she damn near killed me. She is the one I chased through Tokyo Station, neh?”
He gave her a jolly but guilty shrug, as if she’d caught him stealing from the cookie jar. “Yes.”
“And she was under orders to make sure I ended up with the mask?”
“Oh, very good, Detective.”
Mariko pointed at the bruised half of her face. “This is what she calls restraint.”
“And you? What do you call restraint? You may have noticed you’ve got a rather large club in hand.”
Mariko aped his guilty shrug-and-grin. “Are you kidding? I’m the model of self-control.”
It was true. Mariko could have shattered the woman’s kneecap but chose to take her in the shin instead. She could have crushed every bone in her hand, but hit the pistol instead. She held back when she could have beaten the woman’s brains out. And she could have taken the bat to Endo while he was down. But Mariko didn’t feel like explaining any of that. Instead she just hollered, “Tell him, honey. Tell him how easy I went on you.”
“You broke my fucking finger, bitch.” The woman’s voice was strained, squeaking like a rope under too much tension.
“See?” Mariko gave the ageless gentleman a broad smile. “A model citizen, that’s me. Now if you want those two to come in and join us, you’ll have to ask them to pass the pistol in here first.”
He sighed. “I do think we got off on quite the wrong foot, Detective Oshiro.”
“The pistol. Then my stun gun. Then their key cards. Oh, and tell them to go fetch my purse while you’re at it.”
“You are quite the intractable one, aren’t you? Your file certainly wasn’t wrong about that.” He gave her an imploring look, and when that failed, another sigh. “Do as she says, Norika-san.”
Mariko heard a catty harrumph in the corridor. Then came a heavy thump on the carpet, and the pointed toe of a patent leather pump pushed a Glock Model 27 through the narrow gap allowed by the door chain.
The Pikachu and two key cards followed. Squishing the purse through the gap was harder, but Endo made it happen. “There,” the big ex-ballplayer said. “Happy now?”
“Almost,” said Mariko. She bumped the door shut with her hip and relocked the deadbolt. Keeping her eye on the ageless man, she picked up the Glock. Her kote strike had knocked the weapon out-of-battery, which was to say the slide wasn’t sitting right and the first round wasn’t seated right in the chamber. It was a common malfunction that took all of five seconds to fix. She kept the Glock, returned the Pikachu to her pocket, and tossed the baseball bat in the corner.
“That’s better. Now then, what did you say your name was?”
“Furukawa,” he said. “Furukawa Ujio, at your service. I’ll thank you not to point that pistol at me.”
“No problem. I’ll just need you to assume the position and let me pat you down.”
“Oh, come now. Is that really necessary?”
“Afraid so.”
He looked at her as if she’d just asked him to squat down and take a dump on the carpet. With great reluctance, he turned around and put his palms on the wall. “I must tell you, Detective, I’ve conducted a great many employment interviews in my day, but I daresay this is the worst yet.”
“Employ . . . ? Huh? What do you mean, interview?”
“Well, of course. Why else did you think you were here? Detective Oshiro, I’ve arranged to see you today because I’d like to offer you a job.”
23
Furukawa’s suite was twenty times the size of Mariko’s apartment. The dining table sat eight—or would have, if it weren’t covered in computer equipment. Mariko didn’t have a single room that would seat eight. The ceilings here were nearly three meters