8

The Imperial Arms was an apartment building on a tree-lined street a kilometer from Westwood Village. Its fake Tudor beams needed a paint job, and the whole building had a run-down appearance. But that was not unusual in this middle-class section of apartments inhabited by graduate students and young families. In fact, the chief characteristic of the Imperial Arms seemed to be its anonymity: you could drive by the building every day and never notice it.

“Perfect,” Connor said, as we walked up the steps to the entrance. “It’s just what they like.”

“What who likes?”

We came into the lobby, which had been renovated in the most bland California style: pastel wallpaper with a flower print, overstuffed couches, cheap ceramic lamps, and a chrome coffee table. The only thing to distinguish it from a hundred other apartment lobbies was the security desk in the corner, where a heavyset Japanese doorman looked up from his comic book with a distinctly unfriendly manner. “Help you?”

Connor showed his badge. He asked where Cheryl Austin’s apartment was.

“I announce you,” the doorman said, reaching for the phone.

“Don’t bother.”

“No. I announce. Maybe she have company now.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t,” Connor said. “Kore wa keisatsu no shigoto da.” He was saying we were on official police business.

The doorman gave a tense bow. “Kyugo shitu.” He handed Connor a key.

We went through a second glass door, and down a carpeted corridor. There were small lacquer tables at each end of the corridor, and in its simplicity, the interior was surprisingly elegant.

“Typically Japanese,” Connor said, with a smile.

I thought: a run-down, fake Tudor apartment building in Westwood? Typically Japanese? From a room to the left, I heard faint rap music: the latest Hammer hit.

“It’s because the outside gives no clue to the inside,” Connor explained. “That’s a fundamental principle of Japanese thinking. The public facade is unrevealing—in architecture, the human face, everything. It’s always been that way. You look at old samurai houses in Takayama or Kyoto. You can’t tell anything from the outside.”

“This is a Japanese building?”

“Of course. Why else would a Japanese national who hardly speaks English be the doorman? And he is a yakuza. You probably noticed the tattoo.”

I hadn’t. The yakuza were Japanese gangsters. I didn’t know there were yakuza here in America, and said so.

“You must understand,” Connor said, “there is a shadow world—here in Los Angeles, in Honolulu, in New York. Most of the time you’re never aware of it. We live in our regular American world, walking on our American streets, and we never notice that right alongside our world is a second world. Very discreet, very private. Perhaps in New York you will see Japanese businessmen walking through an unmarked door, and catch a glimpse of a club behind. Perhaps you will hear of a small sushi bar in Los Angeles that charges twelve hundred dollars a person, Tokyo prices. But they are not listed in the guidebooks. They are not a part of our American world. They are part of the shadow world, available only to the Japanese.”

“And this place?”

“This is a bettaku. A love residence where mistresses are kept. And here is Miss Austin’s apartment.”

Connor unlocked the door with the key the doorman had given him. We went inside.

It was a two-bedroom unit, furnished with expensive oversized rental pieces in pastel pink and green. The oil paintings on the walls had been rented, too; a label on the side of one frame said Breuner’s Rents. The kitchen counter was bare, except for a bowl of fruit. The refrigerator contained only yogurt and cans of Diet Coke. The couches in the living room didn’t look as if anybody had ever sat on them. On the coffee table was a picture book of Hollywood star portraits and a vase of dried flowers. Empty ashtrays scattered around.

One of the bedrooms had been converted to a den, with a couch and a television, and an exercise bike in the corner. Everything was brand-new. The television still had a sticker that said DIGITAL TUNING FEATURE diagonally across one corner. The handlebars of the exercise bike were covered in plastic wrap.

In the master bedroom, I finally found some human clutter. One mirrored closet door stood open, and three expensive party dresses were thrown across the bed. Evidently she had been trying to decide what to wear. On the dresser top were bottles of perfume, a diamond necklace, a gold Rolex, framed photographs, and an ashtray with stubbed-out Mild Seven Menthol cigarettes. The top dresser drawer, containing panties and undergarments, was partially open. I saw her passport stuck in the corner, and thumbed through it. There was one visa for Saudi Arabia, one for Indonesia, and three entry stamps for Japan.

The stereo in the corner was still turned on, an ejected tape in the player. I pushed it in and Jerry Lee Lewis sang, “You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain, too much love drives a man insane.…” Texas music, too old for a young girl like this. But maybe she liked golden oldies.

I turned back to the dresser. Several framed color enlargements showed Cheryl Austin smiling in front of Asian backgrounds—the red gates of a shrine, a formal garden, a street with gray skyscrapers, a train station. The pictures seemed to be taken in Japan. In most of the pictures Cheryl was alone, but in a few she was accompanied by an older Japanese man with glasses and a receding hairline. A final shot showed her in what looked like the American West. Cheryl was standing near a dusty pickup truck, smiling beside a frail, grandmotherly woman in sunglasses. The older woman wasn’t smiling and looked uncomfortable.

Tucked in beside the dresser were several large paper rolls, standing on end. I opened one. It was a poster showing Cheryl in a bikini, smiling and holding up a bottle of Asahi beer. All the writing on the poster was in Japanese.

I went into the bathroom.

I saw a pair of jeans kicked in the corner. A white sweater tossed on the countertop. A wet towel on a hook by the shower stall. Beads of water inside the stall. Electric haircurlers unplugged by the counter. Stuck in the mirror frame, photos of Cheryl standing with another Japanese man on the Malibu pier. This man was in his midthirties, and handsome. In one photograph, he had draped his arm familiarly over her shoulder. I could clearly see the scar on his hand.

“Bingo,” I said.

Connor came into the room. “Find something?”

“Our man with the scar.”

“Good.” Connor studied the picture carefully. I looked back at the clutter of the bathroom. The stuff around the sink. “You know,” I said, “something bothers me about this place.”

“What’s that?”

“I know she hasn’t lived here long. And I know everything is rented… but still… I can’t get over the feeling that this place has a contrived look. I can’t quite put my finger on why.”

Connor smiled. “Very good, Lieutenant. It does have a contrived look. And there’s a reason for it.”

He handed me a Polaroid photo. It showed the bathroom we were standing in. The jeans kicked in the corner. The towel hanging. The curlers on the counter. But it was taken with one of those ultra-wide-angle cameras that distort everything. The SID teams sometimes used them for evidence.

“Where did you get this?”

“From the trash bin in the hall, by the elevators.”

“So it must have been taken earlier tonight.”

“Yes. Notice anything different about the room?”

I examined the Polaroid carefully. “No, it looks the same… wait a minute. Those pictures stuck in her mirror. They aren’t in the Polaroid. Those pictures have been added.”

“Exactly.” Connor walked back into the bedroom. He picked up one of the framed pictures on the dresser. “Now look at this one,” he said. “Miss Austin and a Japanese friend in Shinjuku Station in Tokyo. She was probably drawn to the Kabukichō section—or perhaps she was just shopping. Notice the right-hand edge of the picture. See the narrow strip that’s lighter in color?”