Year of the Demon

“Don’t be so touchy,” the Bulldog said. “No wonder Fuchida-san felt like killing you. Fucking women, neh?”

“Yeah. Women. Have a nice day.”

“Look, those cult types, they’re the ones who wanted to buy the mask. That’s what the dope was for. Get it? Last night was all because of the mask.”

Mariko came back and sat on her stool. “Keep going.”

Kamaguchi’s knife dealt the finishing blow to a long, slender zucchini and tore into the next one. “They wanted the mask. Wanted it right fucking now. Offered me way more than it was worth. So I okayed it. But then they told me you assholes were coming to crash the party, so they wanted to hurry things up. I told them to fuck off. But no, they show up anyway, and then everything goes to shit. Heh. I don’t need to tell you that, neh? You’re the ones who made it go to shit. And right after you’re done, right in the middle of your cleanup operation, their boy walks right in, takes my property, and walks out. Right under your goddamn noses.”

“So?”

“So get it back. It’s your fault.”

Mariko smirked. “Let me get this straight. TMPD’s to blame because you went through with a dope deal, didn’t pay up, and then your supplier came by to get what you said you’d pay him?”

Kamaguchi chopped into a pineapple, angry enough that his blade banging on the countertop made Mariko’s ears hurt. “I don’t owe them shit. I told them not to deliver. They delivered anyway, and then you showed up to seize it all. No. I don’t owe them a damn thing.”

“Yeah,” Mariko said, “you’re right. Poor you. Nobody ever gives you what you want.”

“Heh.” Again the knife cut through the pineapple with a bang. “Look at you, giving me shit in my own place. You think you’re pretty gokudo, don’t you?”

Mariko smirked. She had to admit she was feeling quite the badass at the moment. It made her feel powerful, sparring with this man, getting him to open up about his business dealings. Han had been exactly right in his assessment: if she could figure out a way to make this a regular occurrence, Kamaguchi Hanzo could prove to be one of the most valuable informants she’d ever find. That was assuming he didn’t go through with having her killed, but that too was empowering. Better to confront him head-on than to look in every shadow waiting for his hit man to strike.

“Well, maybe I could use some gokudo,” he said. Again the knife cut through the pineapple with a bang. “Besides, I got an in with you. You get the mask, I call off the hit. Deal?”

Mariko ignored that. She wasn’t about to start trusting a contract killer. “What is this mask anyway?”

“Nothing. Some antique. I collect that stuff.”

“You shouldn’t. You’ve got shit for taste.”

“Heh.” Kamaguchi motioned toward the living room/observation deck with the tip of his knife. “In my line of work you want things that’ll appreciate in value, neh? Art. Real estate. That kind of thing.”

“Because it’s handy for laundering money?”

“Bingo.”

Mariko was begrudgingly impressed. It took guts to talk business so openly with a cop. And the Bulldog wasn’t done. “So I got my front companies. A chemical supply place down by the harbor. A couple of travel agencies. That packing company whose door you knocked in.”

“Let me guess,” said Mariko. “You decorate every office with your art collection.”

“Heh. See, Bullet? We got her thinking like a criminal already.”

Idiot, she thought. Thinking like a criminal was in her job description. It was how she knew the mask thief was also the one who had stolen her sword. Kamaguchi’s mask wasn’t the only antique on that shelf. If the thief had been in it for the money, he’d have stolen everything valuable. And since he didn’t, the mask had special significance for him.

“There’s more going on here. Your friends—what did you call them? Pansies? They wanted the mask for a reason. You bought it for a reason. What was it?”

“Who knows? Sometimes I go on streaks. For a while there I was collecting samurai shit. Armor. Weapons. Your kind of thing, neh?”

Mariko didn’t care to be reminded of her samurai showdown. “That isn’t a mempo,” she said, pointing at the demon mask glowering back at her from the screen of his laptop.

“Huh?”

“Mempo. Face mask. As in armored. The samurai used to wear them. I thought you said you were a collector.”

He shrugged. Mariko shrugged back, aping him. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had a wine cellar somewhere with a few hundred bottles whose names he couldn’t pronounce and whose nuances he couldn’t distinguish from a cheap lager. “This mask you bought is decorative,” she said. “Maybe for kabuki or something. It’s useless for combat.”

Another shrug. “I don’t give a shit what it is. I just want to know when you’re going to get it back for me.”

“Right. Because it was stolen by those mean boys you were playing with after school, neh?”

Kamaguchi finished off his pineapple, his hands and blade sticky with the juice. He licked one of his knuckles clean with his too-fat tongue. “Look at the balls on you. I ought to make you drop your pants. Make sure you’re a chick.”

Mariko hopped off her stool and headed for the door. “Have a nice day, Kamaguchi-san.”

“All sass, no patience. You’re a chick, all right.”

She heard his knife drop on the countertop, felt his heavy footfalls behind her. Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, she stabbed the elevator’s down button with the stub that had once been her right forefinger. But her left hand was ready to reach for her gun.

“Okay, fine, you win,” the Bulldog said. When he saw her turn away from the elevator, his shoulders sagged in relief. “I ought to put you on my payroll. That way you’d have to listen to me.”

Mariko gave him her most insolent smile. “You couldn’t afford me. Now, you want me to look into these people, you’ll have to give me something.”

“I don’t have to give you shit. This is my house, girl.”

“Well, then you’re out of luck, because you don’t know where these guys are, and neither do I.”

“What makes you think I don’t—?”

“Please. If you knew where to find the people you’re looking for, would you be talking to me? No. So you lost them. So start talking.”

Kamaguchi frowned, exaggerating his underbite and making his lower teeth stick out. “You’re an annoying little—”

“We can start with why they were so insistent on getting the mask last night. Why did they risk showing up when they knew we were going to launch a raid?”

“Who knows? We’re talking religious nuts here, not businessmen.”

“What makes you say they’re religious?”

“Heh.” He shook his head in disgust and licked off another finger. “They call themselves the Divine Wind, for one thing. Sounds pretty gokudo at first, naming themselves after kamikaze dive- bombers, but with these guys you get the feeling it’s more about the divinity and less about the ‘fuck it, let’s go down fighting’ thing.”

“How can you tell?”

“You want to tell me you can’t tell the difference between some guy ringing your doorbell and some missionary ringing it? It’s the way they dress, the way they talk—all this ‘there is no place the wind cannot reach’ horseshit. Why can’t they just threaten you like a normal criminal? I swear, this is the last time I’m doing business with a bunch of cultists.”

Mariko wasn’t a fan of making assessments based on others’ gut feelings—especially not people with