Year of the Demon

and considered Mariko collateral damage.

“You two have to understand,” Mariko said. “Seriously, you can’t talk about this. To anyone. Okay?”

“But what if—?” Saori began.

“If anyone asks you about it, tell them your sister thought the assailant was a direct threat to his hostage’s life. You don’t have to have a knife or a baseball bat to kill somebody. Crushing the guy’s windpipe does the job just fine.”

She flapped her cards on the table. “Oh,” she added, “and I’m out.”

Again Mariko found herself receiving a punishment she didn’t deserve—a round of boos this time, though she supposed this was a whole lot better than the thrashing she was taking in the press. Those stories would lose their shine before the week was out, passing out of public memory just as quickly, though for the moment they really did sting. And unlike the press corps and the radio harpies, Mariko’s mom followed up with another round of dessert.

“Okay, girls,” she said after they finished their cherry cobbler, “one more game and then this old woman has to get to bed.”

“Sorry, I can’t,” Mariko said. “I’ve got someone I still have to meet tonight.”

“Oooh,” Saori said. “A date! Is he hot?”

“No. Most definitely not.”

“Who, then?” Saori said. At the same moment, their mom frowned and said, “It’s someone from work, isn’t it?”

“Sort of.” The whole truth was complicated. She was looking forward to ending her professional relationship with this man, but she didn’t particularly look forward to being in the same room with him.

•   •   •

She spent most of her train ride thinking about Han, about what to do with him, about where the moral lines lay. One way or another, her partner was going to stand before Internal Affairs. Her gut told her to stick up for him. Ten seconds of reflection on that told her she had a stronger obligation to stick up for the law. If a citizen broke the rules and got away with it, that was just a fact of life, but if a cop broke the rules and got away with it, that chipped away at the rules themselves. Law enforcement without accountability was a police state, not a police department.

What if Sakakibara decided to back Han’s play? What if he found a way to wriggle around the fact that one of his officers ignored a suspect’s civil liberties? Did it matter that the very next day the same suspect tried to murder Mariko and fifty-two other people? No. In civilian life it would matter, but legally, rights were rights.

The Americans had a good word for them: inalienable. A right that could be stripped depending on the situation wasn’t a right at all. Sakakibara respected that. He was good police, and he was a real hard-ass when it came to playing it by the book. But he always said it was to protect his unit’s conviction rate. What if, just this one time, he could boost Joko Daishi’s prison time by covering for a detective who strayed outside the lines and then came right back in? If he defended Han, Mariko would be left with the choice of crossing her CO and betraying her partner, or else looking the other way on a moral question that just wasn’t up for negotiation.

With all of that on her mind, she walked up to the building she didn’t want to walk up to and rang the doorbell she didn’t want to ring.

When the steel doors slid open, Bullet was waiting for her inside, taking up half the elevator. Ever his chatty self, he said nothing on their ride up to Kamaguchi Hanzo’s apartment.

“There she is,” the Bulldog said with a sharp-toothed grin, “my hot little gokudo cop.” He got up from his sofa, a huge Western-style block of black leather, tossed his TV remote aside and picked up a sweating bottle of beer. “Get your tight little ass in here and tell me what you got for me.”

“Everything you want,” Mariko said. She remained just outside the elevator, standing her ground just to show the Bulldog she wouldn’t follow his orders. “We claimed your mask as evidence.”

“So? Where is it?”

“A phone call away.” She pulled a smartphone from her pocket and held it out as if to offer it to him. “If I deliver your mask, you’ll call off the bounty on my head?”

“That’s the deal, honey.”

“And your dad? I’m square with him too?”

“He gave the contract to me. I’m the only guy you have to worry about.”

“Then I’ve got you on record admitting to conspiracy to commit homicide.” She came closer, showing him the phone’s little screen.

Bullet took a menacing step forward. “Taking this phone from me won’t do you any good,” she told him, never taking her eyes off the Bulldog. “I’m not the one recording this. My department is. You getting all this, sir?”

“Loud and clear,” Sakakibara said. He sounded gruff and authoritative even through the tiny speaker.

“Have a good night, sir.” She dropped the phone back in her pocket. “So here’s the deal: I’ll give your mask back anyway, since it’s yours, but you’re going to call off the hit on me one way or the other. You do understand how this works, neh? We don’t just come after you, we come after your dad. And yeah, I can’t touch him, and yeah, there’ll be blowback to cops in this city for a while to come, but at the end of the day cops and yakuzas are going to settle back into their old ways, and the only thing different is going to be you, implicating your old man on record. How well do you see that working out for you at the next family function?”

Kamaguchi rose from the couch, switching his grip on the beer bottle as if to use it as a weapon. He fixed her with a glare that said he might just chuck her phone off the balcony anyway, and her with it. Then his gaze flicked down to her left hand, which without her knowing it was resting on the heel of her SIG Sauer.

“You’re not afraid to use that, are you?” he said. His tone was almost congratulatory.

“Nope.”

“Heh. I heard about that. You and the guy in the subway. He’s the one who stole my mask?”

“One of them, yeah.”

“And the other one?” His grip on the bottle hadn’t changed yet. There was still a tension in his knees and shoulders, harnessed there but ready to explode, like a dog pulling at an invisible chain.

“In custody. He’ll see some serious time.”

Kamaguchi snorted a laugh and set down the bottle. “Then we’re square, sugar. Hell, I couldn’t’ve killed you anyway. You’re too much fun to fight. Come on, sit, have a beer.”

Mariko shook her head and took as step back toward the elevator. “About your mask—”

“Don’t worry about it. Get it to me when you get it to me. I know you’re good for it.” He snorted again and settled back into place on the huge black sofa.

“I am,” Mariko said, “but that’s not what I’m getting at. This guy, Joko Daishi, he thinks the mask gives him divine power. He’s a terrorist, plain and simple, and if he gets the mask back he’s going to cause all kinds of harm.”

“Blah, blah, blah.” Kamaguchi flapped the back of his hand at her, as if shooing a fly away from his food. “It’s my property, neh? I’ll do what I want with it.”

“That’s just it,” Mariko said. “He stole it from you once. He can do it again. I can’t force you to melt it down, but I’m telling you, unless you want people on the street to think you can’t protect your own property, you need to keep that thing under lock and key—”

“Already sold it.” Kamaguchi flipped the channel.

“You what?”

“I already sold it to him. It’s done.”

“You sold it to Joko Daishi?”

“Was that his name?” He settled on some sports channel covering a motorcycle race. “Yeah, I figured he wants it that bad, he’ll pay a good price for it.”

Mariko’s balled her hands into fists. She heard her breath coming loud and angry and she had half a mind to reach for her pistol again. “Do you have the slightest idea what this man intends to do with that mask?”

“Honey,” he said, twisting around to look at her, “I’m a gangster. This is what I do.” Then the TV reclaimed