operator helped the handcuffed cop to his feet, and together they ushered him into the room outside. Kusama ordered an escort for him, first to the emergency room, then to a holding cell. He told everyone else to disperse, and all but one of them did. Junko, strangely territorial all of a sudden, refused to turn her back on Joko Daishi. “You’re my boss” was the only explanation she offered.
Kusama lacked the energy to fight her, so he just shut the huge office door in her face. He needed time to think. “Fucking hell, Sakakibara, what are we going to do?”
“Down the freight elevator, straight to the motor pool. We stick him in the back of an SUV and we drop him off anywhere he wants to go. And you, Bullet Magnet, you’re going to comply, because otherwise I can’t vouch for your safety.”
Joko Daishi craned his neck to look back at him. “Oh, but I can. I have foreseen the hour of my death. My time has not yet arrived.”
Sakakibara snorted. “How nice for you.”
The lunatic turned back to Captain Kusama. “May I ask a favor of you?”
Kusama almost choked on his breath. “You have to be kidding.”
“No.” He glanced at his fallen attorney. “Hamaya-san has escaped the fetters of this deluded world. I rejoice for him, but I do not know your laws as he did. Tell me, can you legally force me to leave this building only on your terms?”
Kusama and Sakakibara exchanged a glance. Sakakibara closed his eyes and shook his head. “No,” Kusama confessed.
“Then I believe I shall leave through the front door.”
Kusama strangled the air. The opportunity for a disorderly conduct charge dangled right in front of him. The mere sight of Joko Daishi was sure to get civilians alarmed and disturbed. But that meant the only way to arrest him was to wait until he got into the public view, and today wasn’t the day to raise questions about whether the TMPD was trampling civil rights. Could they rearrest him every time another human being laid eyes on him? If not, then why arrest him this time? Was it just because they could get away with it? Was it because he didn’t have legal counsel anymore? Kusama was sure he could spin Hamaya’s death as the accidental discharge of a firearm, but that would get sticky if the TMPD used this as an opportunity to hold Joko Daishi without representation.
The terrorist stood up from his chair, and none of the cops in the room did a damn thing to stop him. He presented his back to Sakakibara, who had no choice but to uncuff him. “I have one more favor to ask,” he said. “Would you pass a message to the swordswoman for me?”
Kusama sighed angrily. “One of your sermons?”
“A benediction. Tell her she must forgive herself for what is to come.”
25
“Please, Detective Oshiro.” Furukawa pressed his long-fingered hands together as if he were praying to her. Maybe he was doing just that. “Shoot me or arrest me as you will; I am powerless to stop you. But allow me to observe that neither one will advance your interests.”
“Justice,” Mariko said. “That’s my interest. You’re a murderer.”
“So you say. But you are not so naive as to think I will go to prison.”
Mariko didn’t need to think about that for long. This was a man who could change the face of government with a single phone call. He had the kind of money it took to rent a Shinjuku penthouse large enough to have a pool table. That, or else he was backed by that kind of money, which meant there was a hell of a lot more where that came from. Middle management, he’d said. How powerful would the upper management be, if a middleman was capable of all this?
That realization only made Mariko tighten her grip on her pistol. “Oh, come now,” Furukawa said. “You won’t shoot me. Not if you want to leave this suite alive.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I don’t need to. It is a simple truth: the Wind will not abide the assassination of one of its chunin. But that is irrelevant, since you have no intention of pulling that trigger. You want Joko Daishi, and I am the one who can give him to you.”
Mariko focused on the Glock’s sights, then on Furukawa’s skinny, sunken chest. She wasn’t going to pull the trigger. He was right.
“You see, Detective Oshiro, this is how the Wind operates. What need is