Flashback

“Why?” said Nick. “Why kill me if I’ve done what he hired me to do? Why not just pay me—or don’t pay me? I guess I screwed the pay-me option when I took a tiny advance against that payment to get my ass out here to L.A., but why not just let me go back to my little flashback-riddled life?”

Omura looked at him in silence for a long moment. “I believe you know the answer to that already, Nick.”

Nick did, and knowing it brought him nothing but nausea. “I know too much,” he said at last. “I’ll be a danger to Nakamura and his plans to become Shogun.”

“Hai,” agreed the old man.

“What can I do?” asked Nick and immediately despised the desperate whiny undertone in his own voice. He’d always hated perps, witnesses, or even victims who whined like that. The pathetic squeak of a rat in a trap.

“You can stay in Los Angeles,” said Omura, still watching him carefully. “Under my protection.”

“Nakamura would send assassins—like Sato—until I was finally killed.”

“Yes,” said Omura. “You could flee—New or Old Mexico. South America. Canada.”

“Someone like Sato would find me within months. Weeks.”

“Yes.”

“And I can’t leave Val and his grandfather behind… to the mercy of… whomever.”

“But you have no assurance your son and father-in-law are even alive, Nick.”

“No, but… still…,” said Nick. Everything he said sounded pathetic to him.

Both men had finished their Scotch. Advisor Omura did not offer to refill the glasses. Outside the amazing window wall, the sun moved lower toward the Pacific Ocean and a late-September sunset.

Nick felt no rush to leave since Dale Ambrose had promised to get him to the John Wayne Airport in time. Nick had already dumped the Nissan Menlo Park, leaving it at the curb in South Central L.A. with the keys in the ignition. It had been a racist move and the best one. The interview with the California–Oregon–Washington Advisor must be over, Nick knew, but between the Scotch and his exhaustion—and the comfortable room with its beautiful view—Nick decided he’d get up only when Omura reminded him that the interview was over.

“Did you know, Nick,” said Omura at last, “that Hideki Sato had, for years, an American-born mistress… no, mistress is not the right word. Consort or concubine is closer to the meaning of our word sobame.”

“Oh?” said Nick. Why is the old man telling me this?

“By all accounts he loved her very much. His own wife of many years, Sato sees only twice a year upon formal family occasions.”

“Yes?”

Omura said nothing else. Nick felt the way he had in junior high school when he’d attempted a conversation with a pretty girl and simply ran out of things to say.

“You said Sato had a concubine… a relationship with her… for many years, Omura-sama. Had, past tense. It’s over?” Nick tried to imagine Sato feeling and showing love for anyone or anything. He failed.

“Hai,” Omura said with Japanese harshness on the syllable, slashing it like a blade. “She died some years ago.”

“Died… violently?” asked Nick, trying to find a handle on this line of discussion.

“Oh, no. Of leukemia. It was said that Sato-san was devastated. His own two sons, by his wife, both died in battle in the last decade, died as military advisors early in the Chinese civil war. It is said that Sato mourned his boys, but that his mourning for his… concubine… was deeper, darker, and continues to this day.”

“What was her name, Omura-sama?”

The Advisor looked at him. “I forget her name, Nick.” The old man seemed to be saying I’m lying with his gaze and tone… but why?

“They had a child together,” continued Omura. “A daughter. She was, by all reports, quite beautiful. And almost completely Western-looking, with only the slightest hint of the Japanese race in her appearance.”

Nick was totally lost. He found it hard to believe that Sato could love anyone, but especially not a child that didn’t look Japanese. Was this some sort of riddle he was supposed to solve?

“You used the past tense again, Omura-sama,” Nick said softly. “Is the daughter born to Sato’s late concubine also dead?”

“Hai.”

“Also from natural causes?” Nick heard his old detective voice working: stomp all around the missing piece with a thousand stupid questions until all the vegetation is flattened and what you’re looking for stands out.

Or doesn’t.

Omura leaned forward. He didn’t answer the question, at least not directly. “Hideki Sato, as you know, Nick, is a daimyo in his own right, with vassals and soldiers and keiretsu interests of his own. But Hiroshi Nakamura is his liege lord. Sato is Nakamura’s vassal.”

“Yes?”

“So when daimyo Hideki Sato’s own powers and influence became too great for Nakamura’s comfort, he demanded—in the best feudal Nipponese tradition from our own Middle Ages, you understand—that Colonel Sato hand over his beloved daughter to be held as a sort of captive, a hostage to Sato’s continued loyalty and service, as it were.”

“Jesus,” whispered Nick.