Returning

(March 2020)

I returned to Japan (or should I say I was returned to Japan), to find Chief Inspector Yuni Ichihara in a state of deep funk. I had called him with the news, of course, so when I came back with the photos I had been allowed to take of a few key pages of the notebook he was interested, but not as intensely as I had expected. The shine of novelty of them, it appears, had worn thin as I flew across Asia.

“I don’t understand why they do that,” DK asked later than night. “Or even how.”

“What do you mean,” I said then.

“The Russian mob men … why give their info to you? And, how they even know about professor san in first place?”

So I explained what was obvious to me. They were sharing information because they thought we had the best chance of catching Charlie Cooper, aka Mr. Slimeball.

As to how they came to understand what was in the professor’s notebook I told him nothing, but here in Ichihara’s office I described the glances that the Director of Academics had shared with the mob men, glances that showed me just how deeply crime lords could slip into society if one let them, and glances that let me know exactly how afraid Director Alexander Ivanov had been.

And I replayed for Ichihara the conversation I had in the car on the way to the university.

“Things no change.”

I would probably hear the tone of that voice echoing in my mind every time a political issue rose up for the rest of my life.

My briefing did not seem to make Yuni feel any better. If anything it made the cloud of gloom over him even more perceptible.

But I was tired, and I needed a shower and some decent sleep.

So away I went.

When I left, Ichihara was seated at his desk, sipping coffee, and staring intently at the bobble-head doll on his desk, a bobble-head that I had learned was of a third baseman named Shojiro Sano, and one he had kept there for a very long time.