Morino’s motionless face. His voice is absolute zero. ‘You are fucking Miriam. You are fucking my little girl.’
This is the crunch. I shake my head. ‘No, sir.’
Frankenstein rattles fry splinters in a cup.
Morino opens a grey document wallet. ‘So for your next trick, you will explain this photograph.’ The horn section pass it down to me. An A4 black-and-white picture of a shabby apartment building. The zoom lens focuses on the third floor, where a kid my age is handing something through a door. A dog with its head in a lampshade pisses in a flower box. I recognize Miriam’s apartment, and me. This is why I am here today. This is bad. No lie is going to get me out of here. But where will the truth get me? Morino clunks his knuckles out of their sockets. ‘My breath is bated. As they say.’ Morino clunks his knuckles into their sockets. My mouth is a sandpit. ‘Now. Why did you show your zit-pus face at the home of my little girl?’
I tell him everything from Shinobazu pond in Ueno park to the conversation with Miriam. The only bit I leave out is Suga – I claim to do the library hacking myself. Morino nicks the tip off a new cigar. I finish, and judgment hangs in the air. Lizard swivels on his chair. ‘Father?’ Morino nods. ‘It don’t sound right to me. Computer dorks just don’t lug suitcases around stations for a living.’ Mama-san shuts her laptop. ‘Father. I know Miriam matters to you very much, but we need to be in other places very urgently to keep the operation on track. This nondescript child from the beyond beyond who blundered on to private property is exactly what he appears to be. Nagasaki does not employ spies in diapers; his story fills the blanks in Daimon’s; and he hasn’t laid a paw on Miriam.’
Morino respects her. ‘How do you know?’
‘One – you had Miriam trailed by the best surveillance agent in Tokyo for the last two weeks. Two – I’m a woman.’
Morino narrows his eyes to read me. I lower my eyes. Frankenstein’s mobile phone beeps. He goes into the adjoining room to answer. An airship floats into view behind Morino’s head. Higher up, an airplane glints in high-altitude sunshine. Mama-san takes a disk from her computer and seals it shut in a case. ‘Soon,’ barks Frankenstein into his phone, ‘soon.’ He resumes his seat. Morino finishes reading me. ‘Eiji Miyake. The court finds you guilty. Guilty of being a dumbfuck who sticks his nose through wrong doors. The mandatory sentence is having your testicles cut off, dipped in soy, and placed in your mouth, which will be gaffer-taped until said member is chewed and swallowed by the detainee.’ I glance around at the jurors. Nobody is smiling. ‘However, the court will suspend this sentence on condition you observe an exclusion order. You will never go near Queen of Spades. You will never go near my little girl. Even if you see her in your dreams, I will discover your lapse, and the sentence will be executed. I make myself clear?’
I dare not taste the freedom I can smell. ‘Completely, sir.’
‘You will return to your pointless life. Without delay.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Mama-san stands, but Morino doesn’t dismiss me. ‘When I was a boy half your age, Miyake, my friends and I would capture dune lizards on the Shimane coast. Dune lizards are cunning. You grab one, they detach their tails and skitter away. How do I know you are not leaving us with a tail?’
‘Because you scare me.’
‘Your father is also afraid of me, but that man has left me with a zooful of tails in his time.’
The horn players nod. I hear Popsicle giggle.
‘Did you just say my father?’
Morino breathes smoke. ‘Ye-es. You know I did.’
‘My real father?’
‘Ye-es.’
‘As in . . .’
‘As in the flesh-and-blood man who banged up your mother, Mariko Miyake, twenty years ago. Who else would I mean?’
‘You know him?’
‘Not intimately. We meet professionally, on occasion. You seem surprised.’ Morino watches me flounder. ‘So, my operative hit the nail on the head. Again. My, she is good. You really don’t know who your father is, do you? To think, these things happen in real life. A semi-orphan comes to Tokyo in search of the father he has never met. So you thought the ATM messages I had my banking people send you were from your real father?’ His lips bulge slightly in lieu of a laugh. Lizard