Michael Crichton - Rising Sun

Graham pointed to the pictures. "There's our girl. Cheryl Austin from Texas. She's cute. Fresh. Good figure. She's an actress, sort of. She does a few commercials. Maybe a Nissan commercial. Whatever. She meets some people. Makes some contacts. Gets on some lists. You with me?"

"Yes," I said to Graham. Connor was staring intently at the pictures.

"One way or another, our Cheryl's doing well enough to be wearing a black Yamamoto gown when she gets invited to the grand opening of the Nakamoto Tower. She comes with some guy, maybe a friend or a hairdresser. A beard. Maybe she knows other people at the party, and maybe not. But in the course of the evening, somebody big and powerful suggests they slip away for a while. She agrees to go upstairs. Why not? This girl likes adventure. She likes danger. She's cruising for a bruising. So she goes upstairs – maybe with the other guy, maybe separately. But anyway, they meet upstairs, and they look around for a place to do it. A place that's exciting. And they decide – him, probably, he decides – to do it right on the fucking boardroom table. So they start doing it, they're whanging away but things get out of hand. Her loverboy gets a little too worked up, or else he's kinky, and . . . he squeezes her neck a little too hard. And she's dead. You with me so far?'"

"Yes . . ."

"So now loverboy has a problem. He's come upstairs to fuck a girl, but unfortunately he's killed her. So what does he do? What can he do? He goes back down, rejoins the party, and since he is a big samurai cocksman, he tells one of his underlings that he has this little problem. He has unfortunately snuffed out the life of a local whore. Very inconvenient for his busy schedule. So the underlings run around and clean up the boss's mess. They clean up incriminating evidence from the floor upstairs. They remove the videotapes. They go to her apartment and remove evidence there. Which is all fine, except it takes time. So somebody has to stall the police. And that's where their smoothie suckass lawyer Ishiguro comes in. He delays us a good hour and a half. So. How does that sound?"

There was a silence when he had finished. I waited for Connor to speak.

"Well," Connor said, at last. "My hat is off to you, Tom. That sequence of events sounds correct in many respects."

"You're damned right it does." Graham puffed up. "Damn fucking right."

The telephone rang. The lab technician said, "Is there a Captain Connor here?"

Connor went to answer the phone. Graham said to me, "I'm telling you. A Jap killed this girl, and we are going to find him and fucking flay him. Flay him."

I said, "Why do you have it in for them, anyway?"

Graham gave me a sullen look. He said, "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how you hate the Japanese."

"Hey, listen," Graham said. "Let's get something straight, Petey-san. I don't hate anybody. I do my job. Black man, white man, Japanese man, it makes no difference to me."

"Okay, Tom." It was late at night. I didn't want to argue.

"No, hell. You fucking think I'm prejudiced."

"Let's just drop it, Tom."

"No, hell. We're not going to drop it. Not now. Let me tell you something, Petey-san. You got yourself this fucking liaison job, isn't that right?"

"That's right, Tom."

"And how come you applied for it? Because of your great love of Japanese culture?"

"Well, at the time, I was working in the press office– "

"No, no, cut the shit. You applied for it," Graham said, "because there was an extra stipend, isn't that right? Two, three thousand a year. An educational stipend. It comes into the department from the Japan-America Amity Foundation. And the department allows it as an educational stipend, paid to members of the force so that they can further their education in Japanese language and culture. So. How're those studies going, Petey-san?"

"I'm studying."

"How often?"

"One night a week."

"One night a week. And if you miss classes, do you lose your stipend?"

"No."

"Fucking right you don't. In fact, it doesn't make any difference if you go to classes at all. The fact is, buddy, you got yourself a bribe. You got three thousand dollars in your pocket and it comes right from the land of the rising sun. Of course, it's not that much. Nobody can buy you for three grand, right? Of course not."

"Hey, Tom– "

"But the thing is, they aren't buying you. They're just influencing you. They just want you to think twice. To tend to look favorably upon them. And why not? It's human nature. They've made your life a little better. They contribute to your well-being. Your family. Your little girl. They scratch your back, so why shouldn't you scratch theirs? Isn't that about it; Petey-san?"

"No, it isn't," I said. I was getting angry.

"Yes, it is," Graham said. "Because that's how influence works. It's deniable. You say it isn't there. You tell yourself it isn't there – but it is. The only way you can be clean is to be clean , man. If you got no stake in it, if you got no income from it, then you can talk. Otherwise, man, they pay you and I say, they own you."

"Just a fucking minute– "

"So don't you talk to me about hating , man. This country is in a war and some people understand it, and some other people are siding with the enemy. Just like in World War II, some people were paid by Germany to promote Nazi propaganda. New York newspapers published editorials right out of the mouth of Adolf Hitler. Sometimes the people didn't even know it. But they did it. That's how it is in a war, man. And you are a fucking collaborator."

I was grateful when, at that moment, Connor came back to where we were standing. Graham and I were about to square off when Connor said calmly, "Now, just so I understand, Tom. According to your scenario, after the girl was murdered, what happened to the tapes?"

"Oh, hell, those tapes are gone ," Graham said. "You're never going to see those tapes again."

"Well, it's interesting. Because that call was the division headquarters. It seems Mr. Ishiguro is there. And he's brought a box of videotapes with him, for me to look at."

Connor and I drove over. Graham took his own car. I said, "Why did you say the Japanese would never touch Graham?"

"Graham's uncle," Connor said. "He was a prisoner of war during World War II. He was taken to Tokyo, where he disappeared. Graham's father went over after the war to find out what happened to him. There were unpleasant questions about what happened. You probably know that some American servicemen were killed in terminal medical experiments in Japan. There were stories about the Japanese feeding their livers to subordinates as a joke, things like that."

"No, I didn't know," I said.

"I think everybody would prefer to forget that time," Connor said, "and move on. And probably correctly. It's a different country now. What was Graham going on about?"

"My stipend as a liaison officer."

Connor said, "You told me it was fifty a week."

"It's a little more than that."

"How much more?"

"About a hundred dollars a week. Fifty-five hundred a year. But that's to cover classes, and books, and commuting expenses, baby-sitters, everything."

"So you get five grand," Connor said. "So what?"

"Graham was saying I was influenced by it. That the Japanese had bought me."

Connor said, "Well, they certainly try to do that. And they're extremely subtle."

"They tried it with you?"

"Oh, sure." He paused. "And often I accepted. Giving gifts to ensure that you will be seen favorably is something the Japanese do by instinct. And it's not so different from what we do, when we invite the boss over for dinner. Goodwill is goodwill. But we don't invite the boss over for dinner when we're up for a promotion. The proper thing to do is to invite the boss early in the relationship, when nothing is at stake. Then it's just goodwill. The same with the Japanese. They believe you should give the gift early, because then it is not a bribe. It is a gift. A way of making a relationship with you before there is any pressure on the relationship."