The glass doors of Nine Dragons Wealth Management slid open with a soft whoosh. Sanjay Mehta, office manager, put away his passcard and reminded himself to change his key code for that week, as required by the security director.
Mehta grumbled to himself about forgetting to take home the new accounts, but he only had himself to blame. He’d forgotten to upload the new ones.
As office manager, his main responsibility was to keep such things in order. Nine Dragons had become the fastest-growing wealth management firm in Tokyo, and he wanted to keep it that way. If that took a little extra effort at times, so be it.
His apartment was only a short walk from the office along a raised walkway over the roads, shops, and ground floor sidewalks of Shinagawa. Coming back in the middle of the night still meant getting dressed. With all the surveillance cameras, it wasn’t a good look if someone decided to check. At least he could dress nicely.
The doors shut behind him and Mehta turned toward his space at the back of the twentieth floor. The office design featured waist-high walls with glass dividers to the ceiling so everyone could see everyone else. Everyone used tables, desks had no drawers, files were online, so the space felt uncluttered and orderly.
The building was located in a prime spot near Shinagawa Station, an area where the post-war tangle of old-style drinking spaces and pipe-frame eateries had been transformed into a hub for high-end tourists and international business. The station marked the southern tip of the Yamanote Line that circled the interior of Tokyo. An express train ran directly to Haneda Airport and high-speed Shinkansen trains left every fifteen minutes.The whole Shinagawa area had become as clearly marked and easy to get around as an airport.
For Mehta, it was the first time to live outside Hong Kong where he grew up and Singapore where he got his MBA. He had settled in quickly to Shinagawa’s globalized familiarity, its predictable conveniences.
Since he moved to Tokyo, he hadn’t seen much of the city other than the Nine Dragons office. A few weekend outings to temples and tourist sites had broken the routine, along with once-a-week dinners at Michelin-starred restaurants, for which he hired a companion who spoke enough English to avoid confusion during dinner, and after.
But mostly what he’d done was keep things running smoothly as the company expanded. As soon as the deluge of new clients eased up, he promised himself more nights out. Tokyo felt like a city set up for adventures. He wasn’t going to miss that.
Nine Dragons had set up its offices in Shinagawa because of Joseph Leung, its CEO. For most of the company’s mission, Mehta considered him visionary, but questioned the high outlay for office space. Leung had just smiled and explained his idea of feng shui. The right geographic location tapped into earth’s energy forces and stimulated the currents of monetary value.
The feng shui worked. Overseas investment and wealth management had taken off. Nine Dragons had a waiting list of moneyed Japanese unused to waiting for anything. Some called daily and others gave up angrily, but high-end investors, trust funds, and surprisingly flush pension plans kept coming. Mehta was just glad to be on board the team helping make Leung’s vision a reality.
Inside the office, it was quiet. It was true that in the daytime, the office felt cheery and bright, but at night, the ambient glow from the streets and shops below, and from nearby buildings, ricocheted through the glass dividers at distorted angles.
A faint bluish light trickled from Leung’s office, the commanding space where he met clients and planned strategy. Leung’s desk faced inward from his slice of the oval. The glass gave the feeling of everyone being on the same team, and Leung could see the whole team at once.
Mehta stepped into his office at the other end from Leung’s and clicked on his desk light. He was in the job of a lifetime, and he was lucky to have it, so he wanted to make it work. Attention to detail, he reminded himself, was key. Practiced habits were key too. He’d read all the books on business, leadership, and productivity he had time for. Sometimes he read abridged versions with basic summaries because he wanted the main points quickly.
Mehta spun his ergonomic chair around and sat down to upload the files on new clients to access outside the office. The new security system would record his login, though, which he would have to explain at the morning meeting. All the info was on a flash drive, the one by his headphones. That was less secure, but OK this one time. He wanted to prep for Leung’s daily morning meeting.
He tossed the flash drive up, caught it in his other hand, and headed back toward the elevators.
The outer doors to the elevator area glided open. Before he could press the elevator button, though, he noticed something wrong with the long ceramic mural, the proud symbol of Nine Dragons that dominated the entryway wall. The nine differently colored dragons writhing in fierce flight with poised talons and menacing eyes always impressed clients.
But now, the head of the dragon closest to the elevator had been knocked to the floor. Heaps of chips were strewn across the carpeting.
Why hadn’t he seen that on the way in? Because he was looking at his cellphone?
Mehta leaned down and picked up the chunk of heavy, glazed ceramic. The thin whiskers and square jaw were intact. One eye stared up at him. He held the dark blue dragon head up to its place on the wall at the end. Maybe the night-time cleaners accidentally knocked it off and fled, or didn’t even see it. No one else could get into the office.
He turned it over in his hands. Where would he put the head until morning?
Strictly speaking, vandalism was a security issue, which was the domain of James Tran, the security specialist. But larger problems were all his, as office manager. A broken mural was serious.
He should notify Tran, but he’d never really bonded with Tran. They rarely even spoke. Tran’s English wasn’t too good, even though the official language of the company was supposed to be English. He spoke some dialect of Chinese with Leung, but Tran’s communicative competence was entirely in the realm of computer code. He ran security with strict efficiency.
So, where should he put the dragon head until morning? He couldn’t leave it on the floor. He hovered his passcard over the reader, keyed in his code, and the doors whooshed open again.
He stepped inside with the head in both hands. From the far office, a steady glow of bluish light came from Leung’s computer. Mehta hesitated to interrupt him, but it was maybe best to take this in to Leung right away. If he wasn’t there, he could set the dragon on his desk and leave a note of explanation.
A few steps away from Leung’s office, he stopped and stared at the front glass of his workspace. The blue light from the two computer monitors outlined a dark splash across the glass.
Not only had the cleaning crew bashed the expensive dragon mural, but they had somehow not cleaned a stain from the window—the window of the head of the company.
Granted, there were a lot of windows to clean, but leaving the boss’s office messy like that was a serious oversight. Tran had vetted the cleaning company as part of his security update, but Mehta would get this issue on that morning’s agenda.
Mehta turned from the glass to Leung’s black lacquer desk and closed his eyes.
He looked back at the glass again and blinked. The splatter was not cleaning fluid.
Leung’s tall, thin body was slumped in his chair, his face badly smashed. One arm dangled limp by his side.
Mehta backed toward the door, but the raw, stagnant air followed him.
Two meeting chairs rested on their sides. The single, locked cabinet Leung kept in his otherwise pristine office had been ransacked. Papers spilled out from Leung’s briefcase, crumpled and stained brownish-red. The screens of both monitors were cracked and his cellphone screen was in shards.
Mehta shook his head and walked back to the desk. He set the dragon head down and placed his hand on Leung’s neck and then held it over his nose which had been smashed flat into his face.
No pulse and no breath.
Mehta backed to the door and pulled out his cellphone. He called the security office of the building.
None of the internal security guards spoke English, but he managed “Kite kudasai. Ni-ju-kai” three times to get them to come to the twentieth floor.
He stepped away from the office into the glass hallway. The reflection of the grisly scene on the windows started to fade, and the reality of it sharpened.