Back in the car, Takamatsu said, “You must have missed something at the crime scene.”
“You’re right,” Hiroshi said. “We missed figuring out who the murderer was and what the connection to the two missing girls must be.”
Takamatsu turned around in the front seat to Hiroshi. “What I meant was, let’s go take a look.”
“We should talk to Patrick’s friend first.” Hiroshi scrolled through his phone for the address Miyuki had given them in the lawyer’s office.
Takamatsu cracked the window and lit a cigarette.
Surprised Takamatsu gave up so easily, Hiroshi gave the address to Ishii who put it in the GPS and pulled west toward the on-ramp for the Shuto Expressway.
Hiroshi called Akiko back at headquarters.
“Wait a minute.” Hiroshi could hear her walking out to the hallway. “There’s so much to do to find the girls and calling the hotels won’t help.”
“I’ll call Sakaguchi again, but the chief is adamant. He wants to solve this in the most headline-friendly way.”
Overhearing Hiroshi mention “headline-friendly,” Takamatsu leaned over to Ishii. “Whatever the chief suggests, do the opposite.”
Ishii made the gesture of putting on a Borsalino hat. Takamatsu laughed.
Calling the hotels was wasting time and resources. The girls had to be somewhere else, at the friend, Kyle’s place, or on the move through some transportation hub. And Takamatsu was right that the crime scene itself must have something they missed.
When they pulled up at Kyle’s apartment in Tsukishima, they looked at the sharp, straight lines of the recently built apartment building, its neatness a sort of emptiness. In the new areas in east Tokyo, residents adapted to the buildings, not the other way around.
In the tangled, mismatched area of Kagurazaka where he and Ayana lived, sidewalks darted in all directions and the old cobblestone stairs were so irregular you couldn’t walk without paying attention. Buildings started at mismatched levels along the slopes and rose to their own height.
Takamatsu got out of the car and leaned over again to Ishii. “I don’t think we’ll have hand-to-hand combat here, so why don’t you wait in the car.”
“My baton and I will be right here if you need me,” she said.
Takamatsu laughed. “Our hero over there always forgets his. He’ll get his lesson someday.”
“That’s not a lesson anyone wants.” Ishii smiled and settled in to wait.
They waited nonchalantly for someone to exit, slipped in, and headed for the elevator. Hiroshi promised himself never to live in a place that required an elevator, or a parking garage. Trains and stairs were what kept Tokyo sane.
In the upper hallway, Takamatsu whistled at the view over Tokyo Bay. They found Kyle’s apartment, knocked on the door, and rang the bell.
Takamatsu pulled out his multitool, flipping through the choices for the right one to pop the lock.
Hiroshi put out his hand to hold Takamatsu back. “Give them a minute.”
Takamatsu stared at him, gesturing with his multitool. “Don’t you want to be the one who finds the girls? Let’s go in.” Takamatsu stepped forward and put it to work.
Hiroshi hammered the door with his fist.
Takamatsu picked a different blade, trying to slip one of the blades into the gap beside the lock, but it wouldn’t go in. “It’s a damn shame some Japanese company doesn’t make these. Japan used to be better than that.” Takamatsu wedged a different blade in, moving it back and forth, but it fell out. “This is a country of swords and knives, but lock picks are needed too.” Takamatsu smacked the back of the tool with the heel of his palm.
“Looks like the locks are better than they used to be.”
“They put a plate inside the door.” Takamatsu stared at the lock.
“You’ve left some nice scratches on the door.” Hiroshi pointed at them. “Want to call the superintendent to let us in?”
“Let’s come back later. We would have heard movement if they were in there.” Takamatsu folded up his multitool and slipped it back in its small leather holder and put it back in his camel hair coat. He eyed the door again, and turned to follow Hiroshi back down the hall to the elevator. They rode down in frustrated silence.
“No luck?” Ishii asked.
“Takamatsu got some lock picking practice.” He turned to Ishii. “You remember where Nine Dragons is?”
“Of course.” Ishii pulled out and headed west and then south on the expressway.
In Shinagawa, she drove quickly through the streets. The stoplights were few and most pedestrians used the overhead walkways. She pulled into the underground parking lot of the Nine Dragons’ office building.
They rode the elevator up and two uniformed officers checked their IDs and stepped aside for them to enter.
The cavernous space was quiet, dark, and empty. Sunset was coming earlier and shadows fell by late afternoon. Takamatsu found the switch and flipped all the lights on. Hiroshi and Ishii winced at the brightness.
“The crime scene’s over there.” Hiroshi pointed to the half-circle office at the end.
“Who’s that?” Takamatsu asked, looking back through the layers of glass dividers.
Mehta stood up and bowed awkwardly. He grimaced, waiting for them to work their way through the maze of glass.
“He doesn’t speak Japanese? Let me know what he says.” Avoiding English, Takamatsu wandered off to examine the office of Joseph Leung. Ishii went with him.
Hiroshi strode back to Mehta’s office. Hiroshi said, “I know something’s wrong here at Nine Dragons, and I think you know what it is.”
Mehta cocked his head.
“Why did you come here tonight?”
Mehta rocked his head back and forth.
“If they didn’t get what they wanted from Leung, they’ll come back to get it from you.”
“I can’t stop thinking that. I am staying in an undisclosed hotel, as you recommended.”
“If they killed once over this, it won’t be hard to do it again.”
Mehta nodded, frowning, moving from foot to foot.
“So, why was business expanding in Tokyo? New clients?”
Mehta slumped. “There were lots of new clients.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Leung brought them in.”
“What kind of people were they? What kind of wealth?”
Mehta frowned. “Tokyo has loads of underperforming assets. Real estate portfolios, unused business lines, treasury shares, cross-held portfolios, that kind of thing. In the old economy, before globalization, those were part of building relationships. One company held assets of another. That might be good for old-school connections, but not for growth.”
“Growth?”
“Many individuals and companies in Tokyo fell behind the curve. Some of them wanted to catch up to world standards but didn’t know how. That’s where Nine Dragons comes in. We help our Japanese clients find the hidden value in their holdings and put that to work.”
“In so-called offshore accounts. That’s what Patrick Walsh was doing in Wyoming?”
Mehta continued. “If the Japanese government won’t help with reinvesting Japan’s wealth, someone has to. The government encouraged it, but we actually did it. Patrick was a genius at finding what could be developed inside a portfolio—”
“Personal portfolios or business portfolios?” Hiroshi asked.
“Both. In Japan, many small and mid-sized businesses are single owner. They let everything sit earning nothing. They’re often too busy to take care of what money they do have. It’s a real pity.”
“What did Patrick do for these accounts?”
Mehta clasped his hands together and cocked his head. “He would find foreign bond issues and mortgage-backed securities, anything really. Leung told me Patrick had the knack of finding the safest and most lucrative investments. That appealed to Japanese customers. He was a whiz with all that. His shell companies in Wyoming were airtight.”
Mehta’s phrases echoed those on the Nine Dragons’ website video. Hiroshi peered through the glass at Takamatsu and Ishii in Leung’s office. Takamatsu was surveying the scene from every angle. Ishii was asking questions. He turned back to Mehta. “You promised to give me a list of your clients.”
“I believe I am ahead of you on that one, sir.” Mehta fidgeted and tapped the top of his computer. “It is in the secure file I was just opening when you detectives arrived. I need to restart the security procedure since it timed out. I was only half finished when you came in.” Mehta sat down at his computer. “May I?”
Hiroshi nodded OK. “What kind of security procedure?”
“We have a complicated verification system.” Mehta typed in codes and checked his cellphone, then inputted the code.
“Complicated like what?”
“Very complicated.” Mehta breathed deeply and verified it on his phone before confirming again. “There were leaks.”
“What leaks?”
“Passcodes, server information, account numbers.”
“So your system had holes in it?”
“Or someone made holes. We couldn’t decide.” Mehta nodded at the screen, sat forward and scrolled, the blue and white from the computer lighting his face from below. “That is what Tran, the security specialist, and I were trying to find out.”
“I should talk to Tran.”
“Unfortunately, he’s in Shanghai.”
“Can you get that set up?”
“I can try. I’m not sure if he knows, though. Client information was compromised, which would have ruined our reputation. So, we’re trying to figure out what happened.”
“Nine Dragons was hacked?”
“Hacking is from outside, this was from inside.”
“And was any money moved?”
Mehta shook his head. His printer lit up and started printing. “We changed all the passwords, made our clients change their passwords. Clients complained, but we insisted. Even employees complained. I, too, got tired of using three devices every time I needed some information. We set up encrypted vaults to protect the passwords and added on a program to match passwords with URLs. We set up multifactor verification. And then we restricted full verification credentials to just five people—Leung, Tran, myself, Patrick and the office manager, Arisa. Arisa quit, so we took her out of the system, redid all settings, and waited.”
Hiroshi looked at him. “And…?”
“And then Leung was killed.” Mehta picked up the printout, stapled it, and handed it to Hiroshi. “Here’s our client list.”
Hiroshi took it and left him to whatever he was doing when they arrived. It would be better to get into the accounts himself, but Sakaguchi, or the chief, was working on that.
Takamatsu turned off the lights and he and Ishii walked back to where Hiroshi stood in the dim light of the office holding a dozen sheets of paper with Nine Dragons’ client list.
Takamatsu nodded at the list. “At least you got something. We found nothing.”
Takamatsu walked over to the ceramic wall mural of Nine Dragons, flipping his lighter, examining the remaining eight dragons.