Michael Crichton - Rising Sun

"And you think that's okay?"

"I think it's the way the world works."

"Do you think it's corrupting?"

Connor looked at me and said, "Do you?"

I took a long time to answer. "Yes. I think maybe so."

He started to laugh. "Well, that's a relief," he said. "Because otherwise, the Japanese would have wasted all their money on you."

"What's so funny?"

"Your confusion, kohai ."

"Graham thinks it's a war."

Connor said, "Well, that's true. We are definitely at war with Japan. But let's see what surprises Mr. Ishiguro has for us in the latest skirmish."

As usual, the fifth-floor anteroom of the downtown detective division was busy, even at two o'clock in the morning. Detectives moved among the beat-up prostitutes and twitching druggies brought in for questioning; in the corner a man in a checked sport coat was shouting, "I said, shut the fuck up !" over and over to a female officer with a clipboard.

In all the swirl and noise, Masao Ishiguro looked distinctly out of place. Wearing his blue pinstripe suit, he sat in the corner with his head bowed and his knees pressed together. He had a cardboard box balanced on his knees.

When he saw us, he jumped to his feet. He bowed deeply, placing his hands flat on his thighs, a sign of additional respect. He held the bow for several seconds. Then he immediately bowed again, and this time he waited, bent over, staring at the floor, until Connor spoke to him in Japanese. Ishiguro's reply, also in Japanese, was quiet and deferential. He kept looking at the floor.

Tom Graham pulled me over by the water cooler. "Holy Christ," he said. "It looks like we got a fucking confession happening here."

"Yeah, maybe," I said. I wasn't convinced. I'd seen Ishiguro change his demeanor before.

I watched Connor as he talked to Ishiguro. The Japanese man remained hangdog. He kept looking at the floor.

"I never would have figured him," Graham said. "Not in a million years. Never him."

"How is that?"

"Are you kidding? To kill the girl, and then to stay in the room, and order us around. What fucking nerves of steel. But look at him now: Christ, he's almost crying ."

It was true: tears seemed to be welling up in Ishiguro's eyes. Connor took the box and turned away, crossing the room to us. He gave me the box. "Deal with this. I'm going to take a statement from Ishiguro."

"So," Graham said. "Did he confess?"

"To what?"

"The murder."

"Hell, no," Connor said. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, he's over there bowing and scraping– "

"That's just sumimasen ," Connor said. "I wouldn't take it too seriously."

"He's practically crying," Graham said.

"Only because he thinks it'll help him."

"He didn't confess?"

"No. But he discovered that the tapes had been removed, after all. That means he made a serious mistake, with his public blustering in front of the mayor. Now he could be accused of concealing evidence. He could be disbarred. His corporation could be disgraced. Ishiguro is in big trouble, and he knows it."

I said, "And that's why he's so humble?"

"Yes. In Japan, if you screw up, the best thing is to go to the authorities and make a big show of how sorry you are, and how bad you feel, and how you will never do it again. It's pro forma, but the authorities will be impressed by how you've learned your lesson. That's sumimasen : apology without end. It's the Japanese version of throwing yourself on the mercy of the court. It's understood to be the best way to get leniency. And that's all Ishiguro is doing."

"You mean it's an act," Graham said, his eyes hardening.

"Yes and no. It's difficult to explain. Look. Review the tapes. Ishiguro says he brought one of the VCRs, because the tapes are recorded in an unusual format, and he was afraid we wouldn't be able to play them. Okay?"

I opened the cardboard box. I saw twenty small eight-millimeter cartridges, like audio cassette cartridges. And I saw a small box, the size of a Walkman, which was the VCR. It had cables to hook to a TV.

"Okay," I said. "Let's have a look."

The first of the tapes that showed the forty-sixth floor was a view from the atrium camera, high up, looking down. The tape showed people working on the floor, in what looked like an ordinary office day. We fast-forwarded through that. Shadows of sunlight coming through the windows swung in hot arcs across the floor, and then disappeared. Gradually, the light on the floor softened and dimmed, as daylight came to an end. One by one, desk lights came on. The workers moved more slowly now. Eventually they began to depart, leaving their desks one by one. As the population thinned, we noticed something else. Now the camera moved occasionally, panning one or another of the workers as they passed beneath. Yet at other times, the camera would not pan. Eventually we realized the camera must be equipped for automatic focusing and tracking. If there was a lot of movement in the frame – several people going in different directions – then the camera did not move. But if the frame was mostly empty, the camera would fix on a single person walking through, and track him.

"Funny system," Graham said.

"It probably makes sense for a security camera," I said. "They'd be much more concerned about a single person on the floor than a crowd."

As we watched, the night lights came on. The desks were all empty. Now the tape began to flicker rapidly, almost like a strobe.

"Something wrong with this tape?" Graham said, suspiciously. "They fucked around with it?"

"I don't know. No, wait. It's not that. Look at the clock."

On the far wall, we could see the office clock. The minute hands were sweeping smoothly from seven-thirty toward eight o'clock.

"It's time lapse," I said.

"What is it, taking snapshots?"

I nodded. "Probably, when the system doesn't detect anybody for a while, it begins to take single frames every ten or twenty seconds, until– "

"Hey. What's that?"

The flickering had stopped. The camera had begun to pan to the right, across the deserted floor. But there was nobody in the frame. Just empty desks, and occasional night lights, which flared in the video.

"Maybe they have a wide sensor," I said. "That looks beyond the borders of the image itself. Either that, or it's being moved manually. By a guard, somewhere. Maybe down in the security room."

The panning image came to rest on the elevator doors. The doors were at the far right, in deep shadow, beneath a kind of ceiling overhang that blocked our view.

"Jeez, dark under there. Is someone there?"

"I can't see anything," I said.

The image began to swim in and out of focus.

"What's happening now?" Graham said.

"Looks like the automatic focus is having trouble. Maybe it can't decide what to focus on. Maybe the overhang is bothering the logic circuits. My video camera at home does the same thing. The focus gets screwed up when it can't tell what I am shooting."

"So is the camera trying to focus on something? Because I can't see anything. It just looks black under there."

"No, look. There's someone there. You can see pale legs. Very faint."

"Christ," Graham said, "that's our girl. Standing by the elevator. No, wait. Now she's moving."

A moment later, Cheryl Austin stepped from beneath the ceiling overhang, and we saw her clearly for the first time.

She was beautiful and assured. She moved unhesitatingly into the room. She was direct, purposeful in her movements, with none of the awkward, shuffling sloppiness of the young.

"Jesus, she's good-looking," Graham said. Cheryl Austin was tall and slender; her short blond hair made her seem even taller. Her carriage was erect. She turned slowly, surveying the room as if she owned it.