Michael Crichton - Rising Sun

She slipped it into the hip pocket of her shorts, twisting her body. "I like talking to you, Peter."

"Yes. Okay."

I walked down the corridor. When I got to the end I looked back. She was standing in her doorway, waving good-bye.

Connor was using the phone in the lobby while the doorman stared sullenly at him, as if he wanted to stop him, but couldn't think of a reason why.

"That's right," Connor was saying. "All the outgoing calls from that phone between eight and ten p.m. That's right." He listened for a moment. "Well, I don't care if your data isn't organized that way, just get it for me. How long will it take? Tomorrow? Don't be ridiculous. What do you think this is? I need it within two hours. I'll call you back. Yes. Fuck you, too." He hung up. "Let's go, kohai ."

We walked outside to the car.

I said, "Checking your contacts?"

"Contacts?" He looked puzzled. "Oh. Graham said something to you about my 'contacts.' I don't have any special informants. He just thinks I do."

"He mentioned the Arakawa case."

Connor sighed. "That old thing." We walked toward the car. "You want to know that story? It's simple. Two Japanese nationals get killed. The department puts detectives on the case who can't speak Japanese. Finally, after a week, they give the case to me."

"And what did you do?"

"The Arakawas were staying at the New Otani Hotel. I got the phone records of the calls they made to Japan. I called those numbers, and spoke to some people in Osaka. Then I called Osaka and talked to the police there. Again, in Japanese. They were surprised to hear we didn't know the whole story."

"I see."

"Not quite," Connor said. "Because the police department here was very embarrassed. The press had gone out on a limb, criticizing the department. All sorts of people had sent flowers. There had been a big show of sympathy for what turned out to be gangsters. A lot of people were embarrassed. So the whole thing became my fault. I had done something underhanded to solve the case. Pissed me off, I can tell you."

"That's why you went to Japan?"

"No. That's another story."

We came to the car. I looked back at the Imperial Arms, and saw Julia Young standing at the window, staring down at us. "She's seductive," I said.

"The Japanese call women like that shirigaru onna . They say she has a light ass." He opened the car door, and got in. "But she's on drugs. We can't trust anything she told us. Even so, there's starting to be a pattern I don't like." He glanced at his watch, and shook his head. "Damn. We're taking too long. We'd better go to the Palomino, to see Mr. Cole."

I started driving south, toward the airport. Connor sat back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest. He stared at his feet, looking unhappy.

"Why do you say there's a pattern you don't like?"

Connor said, "The wrappers in the waste basket. The Polaroid in the trash. Those things shouldn't have been left behind."

"You said yourself, they're in a hurry."

"Maybe. But you know the Japanese think American police are incompetent. This sloppiness is a sign of their disdain."

"Well, we're not incompetent."

Connor shook his head. "Compared to the Japanese, we are incompetent. In Japan, every criminal gets caught. For major crimes, convictions run ninety-nine percent. So any criminal in Japan knows from the outset he is going to get caught. But here, the conviction rate is more like seventeen percent. Not even one in five. So a criminal in the States knows he probably isn't going to get caught – and if he's caught, he won't be convicted, thanks to all his legal safeguards. And you know every study of police effectiveness shows that American detectives either solve the case in the first six hours, or they never solve it at all."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that a crime occurred here with the expectation that it won't be solved. And I want to solve it, kohai ."

Connor was silent for the next ten minutes. He sat very still, with his arms folded and his chin sunk on his chest. His breathing was deep and regular. I might have thought he had fallen asleep, except his eyes were open.

I just drove the car, and listened to him breathe.

Finally, he said: "Ishiguro."

"What about him?"

"If we knew what made Ishiguro behave as he did, we'd understand this case."

"I don't understand."

"It's hard for an American to see him clearly," Connor said. "Because in America, you think a certain amount of error is normal. You expect the plane to be late. You expect the mail to be undelivered. You expect the washing machine to break down. You expect things to go wrong all the time.

"But Japan is different. Everything works in Japan. In a Tokyo train station, you can stand at a marked spot on the platform and when the train stops, the doors will open right in front of you. Trains are on time. Bags are not lost. Connections are not missed. Deadlines are met. Things happen as planned. The Japanese are educated, prepared, and motivated. They get things done. There's no screwing around."

"Uh-huh . . ."

"And tonight was a very big night for the Nakamoto Corporation. You can be sure they planned everything down to the smallest detail. They have the vegetarian hors d'oeuvres that Madonna likes and the photographer she prefers. Believe me: they're prepared. They have planned for every exigency. You know how they are: they sit around and discuss endless possibilities – what if there's a fire? What if there's an earthquake? A bomb scare? Power failure? Endlessly going over the most unlikely events. It's obsessive, but when the final night arrives, they've thought of everything and they're in complete control. It's very bad form not to be in control. Okay?"

"Okay."

"But there is our friend Ishiguro, the official representative of Nakamoto, standing in front of a dead girl, and he's clearly not in control. He's yoshiki no , doing Western-style confrontation, but he isn't comfortable – I'm sure you noticed the sweat on his lip. And his hand is damp; he keeps wiping it on his trousers. He is rikutsuppoi , too argumentative. He's talking too much.

"In short, he's behaving as if he doesn't really know what to do, as if he doesn't even know who this girl is – which he certainly does, since he knows everybody invited to that party – and pretending he doesn't know who killed her. When he almost certainly knows that, too."

The car bounced in a pothole, and jolted back up. "Wait a minute. Ishiguro knows who killed the girl?"

"I'm sure of it. And he's not the only one. At least three people must know who killed her, at this point. Didn't you say you used to be in press relations?"

"Yes. Last year."

"You keep any contacts in TV news?"

"A few," I said. "They might be rusty. Why?"

"I want to look at some tape that was shot tonight."

"Just look? Not subpoena?"

"Right. Just look."

"That shouldn't be a problem," I said. I was thinking I could call Jennifer Lewis at KNBC, or Bob Arthur at KCBS. Probably Bob.

Connor said, "It has to be somebody you can approach personally. Otherwise the stations won't help us. You noticed there were no TV crews at the crime scene tonight. At most crime scenes, you have to fight your way past the cameras just to get to the tape. But tonight, no TV crews, no reporters. Nothing."

I shrugged. "We were on land lines. The press couldn't monitor radio transmissions."

"They were already there," Connor said, "covering the party with Tom Cruise and Madonna. And then a girl gets murdered on the floor above. So where were the TV crews?"

I said, "Captain, I don't buy it."

One of the things I learned as a press officer is that there aren't any conspiracies. The press is too diverse, and in a sense too disorganized. In fact, on the rare occasions when we needed an embargo – like a kidnapping with ransom negotiations in progress – we had a hell of a time getting cooperation. "The paper closes early. The TV crews have to make the eleven o'clock news. They probably went back to edit their stories."