Steve Bein: Year of the Demon

She winced at the thought of what damage she’d done to the spine of the notebook, leaving it sit open like that for hours. It was the most trivial concern imaginable, and yet it niggled at her, so she reached down to close the book. As she did so, the next page flopped over, and on the overleaf she saw Yamada’s handwriting running like a banner at the top of the page: What is the connection between the mask and Glorious Victory Unsought?

She sat heavily on the bed. Kamaguchi Hanzo—the man who had a contract on her life, the man whose drug den she’d raided the night before, the man whose brutality on the streets had earned him the name Bulldog—owned an ancient mask that was somehow related to her sword. A sword that was now missing. A sword that had been taken by someone standing over her bed as she slept.

“Oh, hell,” she said.

“What?” Han said.

“It was the Bulldog. I think he’s sending me a message.” Mariko handed Han the notebook, opened to the page with the mask. “Remember the shelf of antiques in his office? All medieval stuff, most of it related to the samurai. My sword would fit right in.”

“So what, last night he decided to expand his collection?” Han thought about it for a second. “I don’t like it. I mean, there’s a hit out on you, right? If he’s going to take all the trouble to break into your place, why not just shoot you?”

“Gee, thanks. You really know how to help a girl feel safe.”

Han winced as if he just felt the squish of dog crap under his shoe. “Sorry. But you know what I’m getting at. Why not collect a double payday? The sword plus the bounty?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I think he’s trying to send me a message. But I’m damned if I know how to read it.”

Han looked back at the door, then at the windows, his boyish face scrunched up in thought. “There’s something else: that message of his is in the wrong language. I mean, the dude’s got a list of priors going back twenty, twenty-five years, almost all of them violent crimes. Now picture a guy like that breaking into your apartment. How is he going to do it?”

Mariko thought of the Bulldog’s photo on the top sheet in his file. Broad shoulders, ferocious eyes, an underbite like a wild boar’s. Not the type to run a stealth mission. “Good point,” she said. “Kicking down the door and shoving a shotgun in your mouth is more his speed.”

“Exactly. This ninja stuff is just weird.”

“So is his dope deal.” Mariko ticked off each point on her fingers: “No cash on hand for the buy. A dealer who knows there’s a sting and shows up anyway. Kamaguchi-gumi enforcers who don’t mind beating the hell out of their supplier but somehow grow a conscience when it comes to killing him—”

“I don’t know about that,” Han said. “Last time I checked, the dude was still in surgery.”

“Yeah, but you know what I mean. They could have killed him, but instead they just roughed him up. We’ve got a drug deal with no money and no logical motives for the buyers or the sellers. And now the buyer just happens to break into my apartment on the very same night? Why wait this long? If Kamaguchi knows where I live, he could have aced me weeks ago.”

“And if he wanted to hock your sword for drug money, he could have kicked in your door whenever he wanted.”

“Exactly. But instead he waits until the very night I’m involved in a raid on his speed operation, and then he does all of this elaborate ninja shit.”

Han shook his head. “I don’t get it. You?”

“Not a clue.”

“But you’re interested, aren’t you?”

“Ten percent interested, ninety percent pissed off.” Mariko clenched her fists in frustration. “This guy broke into my home , Han. And from the look of it, he can do it whenever he wants. Can you understand what that means to a woman who lives alone? Where the hell am I supposed to sleep tonight?”

Han took a deep breath, as if he were getting ready to jump off a cliff. Then, just before offering the invitation Mariko knew was coming, he deflated. He couldn’t put her up at his place. That was a line male and female partners couldn’t cross, and both of them knew it. The department’s prohibition against “fraternization between officers” was admittedly old-fashioned, and Han had no qualms about bucking bullshit regulations when he had a mind to, but Mariko didn’t stray outside the lines. She counted herself lucky to have a commanding officer who was willing to let her kick down doors instead of pushing paperwork, and she wasn’t about to jeopardize that.

Besides, the real problem wasn’t Mariko’s accommodations; it was the break-in, the upside-down drug bust, the price on Mariko’s head. Somehow they’d all become interconnected. Whatever the connection was, it had Mariko feeling so vulnerable that she hadn’t even mustered the courage to take a shower. The thought of trapping herself in a tiny room, naked and cornered, was too unsettling.

She pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans and checked the time. She and Han had half an hour before Lieutenant Sakakibara would bust their asses for being late to work. No time for a shower now. She stepped past Han, poked her head into the bathroom, and studied her reflection in the mirror. Her short, choppy, bed-head hair stuck out in a hundred different directions.

“That’s just great,” she said, cranking on the hot water. She’d have to run her head under the faucet and call it good. “Han, do me a huge favor and stand guard outside my door for two minutes, would you? If you see any ninjas in the hallway, shoot to kill.”

Han grinned. “You got it.” He made a show of racking the slide on his pistol for dramatic effect.

She forced a laugh, pushed him into the hallway, and locked the door. It wasn’t even six thirty yet and it was already shaping up to be one hell of a day.

AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA PERIOD, THE YEAR 21

(1588 CE)

Shichio sat in his writing room with three scrolls sprawled before him, wholly covering the lacquered red top of his knee-high desk. One showed a map of Suruga, Kai, and Shinano—northern provinces, nuts as yet uncracked. One was a map of Kyushu, dotted with personnel deployments. The third listed all the fortifications and garrisons in the Kansai, along with their troop strengths. Tonight’s puzzle was sorting out which regiments to disband in order to replace the casualties across all the other wounded divisions. It was taxing work, but Shichio was only too happy to leave his battlefield days behind him. He was far better suited to solving logistics problems than to all those sweaty, dirty, bloody days in the field.

It was late and the hallway on the opposite side of his shoji door had been dark for hours. Now something in the hall glowed like a foxfire, hovering at chest height, indistinct through the rice-paper windows. The shining orange ball bobbed right and left, up and down, making its way slowly to his study. It swelled in both size and brightness, then settled near the floor, close enough to the shoji now that Shichio could make out the blurry outlines of a dancing candle flame. He sighed and laid down his writing brush. “Must you disturb me yet again?” he said.

“Begging your pardon, General,” said a voice so meek it could only belong to Jun, his adjutant. “There’s someone here you should see.”

“Do you plan to tell me this someone’s name?”

“I don’t know it, sir.”

Shichio saw through the shoji as a kneeling shadow bowed low. “Jun, am I usually in the habit of answering summons from unidentified callers? No. Go away.”