Flashback

“Hiroshi Nakamura had a problem with one of his vassal-daimyos becoming too popular with the people and with Nakamura’s own soldiers as a warrior-prince in China. Your daimyo’s loyalty was never in question, Mr. Nakamura—you knew he’d die for you or commit seppuku if you demanded it—but such popularity in an underling is a dangerous thing all by itself. So you—and Yoritsugo, Yamahsita, Yoshiake, Morikune, Omura, Munetaka, and Toyoda—began doing the same thing Japanese liege lords and their liege-lord counterparts in Europe’s Middle Ages did as insurance for such loyalty…

“You took the popular warrior-daimyo’s child as a sort of hostage. Not the two grown sons of this popular daimyo by his real wife—one of those sons had already died in battle in China and another soon would—but, rather, this daimyo’s beloved daughter by his American-born courtesan.

“Thus Kumiko Catherine Catton—who we were told was a sex worker named Keli Bracque—entered your household. She was not treated as a prisoner, Mr. Nakamura. Just as in feudal Europe during the Middle Ages, you raised Kumiko as if she were an honored member of your own family.

“But the unthinkable happened. Kumiko Catherine Catton fell in love with your only son. When Keigo came to the United States to shoot his documentary, fourteen months before you were appointed Advisor by your emperor—before you arranged to be appointed as a Federal Advisor in Colorado—Kumiko, aka Keli Bracque, came with him. She wasn’t Keigo’s sex toy. They were passionately in love.”

Nick paused.

Nakamura cleared his throat and said softly, “May I ask how you came by this information, Mr. Bottom?”

“You hired me to find it,” said Nick. “But I didn’t. I never would have followed up on Ms. Keli Bracque’s background. I was too stupid.

“But Keli—Kumiko—became alarmed for her beloved Keigo Nakamura’s safety. Your wastrel son was pretty bright after all, wasn’t he, Mr. Nakamura? Thrown out of Tokyo University, but not because he was stupid… because he was a born rebel. In the States, we have the expression The squeaky wheel gets the grease. In Japan, you say The nail that stands up gets hammered down.

“Well, Mr. Nakamura, I don’t have to tell you that Keigo was the nail that stood up. He was a rebel in a society devoted as never before to blind obedience. The video documentary he was shooting wasn’t about how pathetic Americans were for getting hooked on the drug flashback… it was about where flashback had come from, Japan. And it was about the damage that the deliberate and premeditated introduction of this addictive drug had done to human beings here who used it—from pathetic Israeli survivors of the Second Holocaust to hopeless inner-city blacks to suburban housewives.”

“Prove it, Mr. Bottom,” said Nakamura.

Nick did not smile. “I don’t have to. I’ve seen several hours of his footage, Mr. Nakamura. And pretty soon, so will millions of other Americans. Keigo Nakamura will show the damage you and the other Japanese warlords have done to this nation.”

Nakamura said nothing.

“Kumiko Catherine Catton didn’t give a damn about any of the politics of the issue,” said Nick. “She just was afraid that someone would whack her beloved Keigo. Like her mother, Kumiko had grown up in Japan—had seen the changes there in the past twenty years. She knew that the daimyos weren’t going to allow Keigo to show and distribute his quixotic documentary. She knew that someone would stop Keigo… and stop him hard.

“So in Kumiko’s naïveté—she was still more used to the way things worked in Japan than in her mother’s birthplace of the United States—she went to local officials for help. Her thinking was that if the shocking information behind Keigo’s little movie went public first, there’d be no reason for the daimyos to harm the boy.

“Kumiko went to Denver’s district attorney—an ambitious but moronic political appointee named Mannie Ortega. Not even understanding what the girl was offering to give him, Ortega handed it off to a mere assistant district attorney—a poor, hardworking but unlucky sonofabitch named Harvey Cohen—who, with his assistant, my wife, Dara, began interviewing Keli Bracque, aka Kumiko Catherine Catton, and just what they learned about the origins of flashback was astounding.

“Ortega was an idiot, but Harvey and Dara knew what they were dealing with. They insisted, over Mannie Ortega’s insistence that it was no big deal, that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security be brought in.

“Both the FBI and DHS were brought in. They carried out their own ‘complete investigations.’ Then they assured District Attorney Ortega, Assistant District Attorney Cohen, and Cohen’s research assistant, Dara Fox Bottom, that Keli Bracque was a stone liar, that the girl was indeed an ambitious sex worker and a drug addict—heroin—and that there was no such person as Kumiko Catherine Catton.