Year of the Demon

congratulations; Mariko thought he seemed grimly pleased with the ruling. Afterward he offered to buy Mariko and Han a cup of coffee—or rather, he ordered them to sit down to coffee with him; lieutenants did not offer invitations to their subordinates. All the same, sitting down to coffee outside of their post felt like Mariko’s father taking her out for ice cream after she’d run hard in a track meet and still finished second. That marked it as another fatherly gesture from Sakakibara, both the second Mariko had seen from him this morning and the second one she’d seen from him, period.

They sat down and Mariko and Han waited for Sakakibara to speak. Coffee shop or not, this wasn’t exactly a social call. “Han, I don’t want you coming in to clear out your desk until second shift. Wait until the unit’s down to a skeleton crew. Save yourself that embarrassment, all right? Hell, save me the embarrassment.”

Han swallowed. Mariko gave him an “it’s okay” sort of nod, the kind no one really meant, the kind oncologists everywhere gave their patients when the news wasn’t good but the prognosis wasn’t terminal. “I worked general patrol for a long time, Han. It’s a good job. An important job.”

“And it’s not Narcotics.” He sighed and gave a defeated shrug. “At least one of us still has a spot in the lineup, neh? I’m really, really glad they didn’t drag you down with me.”

“I am too,” said Sakakibara. “I’m shorthanded enough as it is. But you two need to learn a lesson from this whole fiasco. When you do the right thing and you break the rules, sometimes you need to ask yourself what that says about the rules.”

“Sir?” said Han.

“Sometimes you admit you’re in the wrong. Like your hearing today. You did your job. You did the right thing. But sometimes the rules aren’t what they should be.”

Han’s eyes flicked between Sakakibara and Mariko, and Mariko felt her face go sour when she met his gaze. “What?” Han said. “Oh, hell. You went to Joko Daishi’s indictment, didn’t you?”

Mariko had a decent poker face, but not for Han. She tried to hold his stare but couldn’t. “No,” he said, and in that incredulous, angry tone it came out as a curse word. “He’s going to walk?”

“On most of it,” Mariko said. “They didn’t even bother to charge him with Shino’s murder.”

“Because he murdered the only eyewitness who can put him on the scene.”

“Yep.”

Han was crestfallen. “So the same circumstantial shit that lets me keep my badge—”

“Gets Joko Daishi off the hook, yeah,” said Mariko. She broke down the rest of the details for him. “In the end, we’re thinking—hoping—the terrorism charges will stick, but that’ll be a federal thing, out of our reach.”

Mariko hadn’t thought it possible for Han to deflate any further. His color drained from him; he seemed to diminish in his chair.

Mariko knew the feeling.

Somehow, through heroic effort, Han mustered the energy to speak. “So what the hell did we accomplish?”

“A lot,” Sakakibara said, “and don’t you dare lose sight of it. You’ve both been at this far too long not to have figured this out by now: we don’t have the luxury of total victories in this profession. You think we’re in Narcotics so we can put a stop to illegal drugs? No. We stop one dealer. Then we go stop another one. If the first guy’s out on the streets already, we go back and get him again. This is the game, boys and girls—the game you signed up to play. And you know what happens next?”

Han’s gaze shifted from Sakakibara to Mariko and back, wavering, just as unstable as his own resolve. But Mariko felt steadier. She’d lost her composure when she couldn’t pull the trigger on Joko Daishi, felt it crumble, shot through with a million fractures. Even her victory over Akahata wasn’t enough to restore it. But Sakakibara’s words were like glue, seeping into the cracks, bleeding deeper into them, finding more, binding it all together, making her stronger.

“I do,” she said. “I know what happens next. Their team gets the ball back. They try to get one by us again. And we block it, again and again.” She looked at her partner. “Narcs, patrolmen, paper pushers, it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same job. We’re goalkeepers, Han. This is what we do.”

Han slumped. “And I was always a baseball guy. I guess I’m not cut out for soccer.”

“Han,” Mariko said, “you know that’s not what I mean. I’m trying to say—”

“I get what you’re saying. But the truth is, this goalie got benched, and now he’s getting reassigned to direct traffic in the parking lot. It’s fine. Seriously. It’s no more than I deserve.”

“Han—”

“No, Mariko. I’m out of the game for a little while. But I guess there are traffic violations in the parking lot too. I don’t know how important they are, but someone’s got to crack down on them.”

“Take the rest of the morning off,” Sakakibara said, as abrupt as ever. He stood up to leave. “Get your heads clear. Then put all this crap behind you. Get it out of your mind so you can do your damn jobs. Frodo, I’ll see you at noon. Han, I guess I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Yes, sir,” Han said. He stood up and gave the lieutenant a deep bow. “Thank you, sir. You taught me everything worth knowing about being a cop.”

“Don’t get weepy on me.”

“Sorry.” Han gathered himself and bowed again. “It’s been an honor, Lieutenant.”

Sakakibara gave him a curt nod and walked out.

Mariko finished her coffee and set it on the table with a loud clack. “Let’s go to my place,” she said. “I have something I want to show you.”

•   •   •

Han prodded Glorious Victory’s pommel with a single cautious finger. “Whoa. Are you sure you should keep this thing hanging over your bed?”

“What’s the big deal? You’ve been here before. You saw my sword rack.”

“Yeah, but not with the sword in it. I mean, look at the size of that thing.”

Mariko rolled her eyes at him. “That’s not really what I invited you over to see.”

He craned his head under the rack like a plumber peeking under a kitchen sink. “You’re sure these screws can take the weight?”

“What are you, a carpenter now? Just read this, okay?”

She handed him one of Yamada-sensei’s notebooks, with her thumb marking a page referring to Joko Daishi’s iron mask. He reached for it blindly, his eyes still on Glorious Victory Unsought. “Aren’t you afraid it . . . I mean, earthquakes and all . . . seriously, Mariko, hang it somewhere else.”

“Where? Look around this great big penthouse of an apartment and show me another wall long enough to mount that sword.”

Han didn’t have to be a detective to see her point. “Well, I don’t know . . . prop it up in a closet or something.”

“Just look at the notes, will you?”

She explained who Yamada was—who he was to her, who he was to the study of history—and then explained about his notebooks. “See, none of this stuff ever makes it as far as the public eye,” she said, “but I’m telling you, that mask is important.”

“Even though I won’t see a word about it in any history book?”

“Especially because you won’t see it in any history book. I think Yamada-sensei’s Wind and Joko Daishi’s Divine Wind are the same thing, and if I’m right, then they’ve been around for a long, long time. We haven’t seen the last of them, and we haven’t seen the last of that mask.”

Han leafed through the notebook. “Are you for real? A five-hundred-year-old ninja clan in Tokyo?”

“Maybe, yeah.”

Han’s face lit up. “That is so cool.”

“Men,” she said, accidentally reverting to English. “It doesn’t matter how old you get; you’re all just eight- year-old boys.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” Exasperation clung to her like a wet cloth. At least he was studying the notebook a little more