I said, “Beats me.”

“Come on. Fair is fair,” Dr. Tim said. “I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

“Why, Tim,” Connor said. “You made a joke.”

“Fuck you,” Tim said. “You guys owe me. Come on.”

“I’m afraid Peter is telling you the truth,” Connor said. “All we know is that this murder occurred at the time of a big public Japanese reception, and they are eager to get it cleared up right away.”

“That makes sense,” Tim said. “The last time the shit hit the fan around here, it was because of that thing involving the Japanese consulate. Remember, the Takashima kidnapping case? Maybe you don’t remember: it never made the papers. The Japanese managed to keep it very quiet. But anyway, a guard was killed under odd circumstances, and for two days, they put a hell of a pressure on our office. I was amazed what they could do. We had Senator Rowe calling us in person, telling us what to do. The governor calling in person. Everybody calling us. You’d think it was the president’s kid. I mean, these people have influence.”

“Of course they do. They’ve paid handsomely for it,” Graham said, coming into the room.

“Close the door,” Tim said.

“But this time, all their fucking influence won’t help,” Graham said. “Because this time, we have them by the short and curlies. We have a murder: and based on the lab results so far, we can say without question that the murderer was Japanese.”

17

The pathology lab next door was a large room lit by even banks of fluorescent lights. Rows of microscopes, neatly laid out. But late at night, only two technicians were working in the big space. And Graham was standing beside them, gloating.

“Look for yourself. Pubic hair comb-through reveals male pubic hair, moderate curl, ovoid cross section, almost certainly Asian in origin. The first semen analysis is blood type: AB, relatively rare among Caucasians, but much more common among Asians. The first analysis of protein in the seminal fluid comes up negative for the genetic marker for… what’s it called?”

“Ethanol dehydrogenase,” the technician said.

“Right. Ethanol dehydrogenase. It’s an enzyme. Missing in Japanese. And missing in this seminal fluid. And there’s the Diego factor, which is a blood-group protein. So. We have more tests coming, but it seems clear that this girl had forced sex with a Japanese man before she was killed by him.”

“It’s clear you’ve found evidence of Japanese semen in her vagina,” Connor said. “That’s all.”

“Christ,” Graham said. “Japanese semen, Japanese pubic hair, Japanese blood factors. We are talking a Japanese perp here.”

He had set out some pictures from the crime scene, showing Cheryl lying on the boardroom table. He started to pace back and forth in front of them.

“I know where you guys have been, and I know you’ve been wasting your time,” Graham said. “You went for videotapes: but they’re gone, right? Then you went to her apartment: but it was cleaned up before you ever got there. Which is exactly what you’d expect if the perp is Japanese. It lays right out, plain as can be.”

Graham pointed to the pictures. “There’s our girl. Cheryl Austin from Texas. She’s cute. Fresh. Good figure. She’s an actress, sort of. She does a few commercials. Maybe a Nissan commercial. Whatever. She meets some people. Makes some contacts. Gets on some lists. You with me?”

“Yes,” I said to Graham. Connor was staring intently at the pictures.

“One way or another, our Cheryl’s doing well enough to be wearing a black Yamamoto gown when she gets invited to the grand opening of the Nakamoto Tower. She comes with some guy, maybe a friend or a hairdresser. A beard. Maybe she knows other people at the party, and maybe not. But in the course of the evening, somebody big and powerful suggests they slip away for a while. She agrees to go upstairs. Why not? This girl likes adventure. She likes danger. She’s cruising for a bruising. So she goes upstairs—maybe with the other guy, maybe separately. But anyway, they meet upstairs, and they look around for a place to do it. A place that’s exciting. And they decide—him, probably, he decides—to do it right on the fucking boardroom table. So they start doing it, they’re whanging away but things get out of hand. Her loverboy gets a little too worked up, or else he’s kinky, and… he squeezes her neck a little too hard. And she’s dead. You with me so far?’”

“Yes…”

“So now loverboy has a problem. He’s come upstairs to fuck a girl, but unfortunately he’s killed her. So what does he do? What can he do? He goes back down, rejoins the party, and since he is a big samurai cocksman, he tells one of his underlings that he has this little problem. He has unfortunately snuffed out the life of a local whore. Very inconvenient for his busy schedule. So the underlings run around and clean up the boss’s mess. They clean up incriminating evidence from the floor upstairs. They remove the videotapes. They go to her apartment and remove evidence there. Which is all fine, except it takes time. So somebody has to stall the police. And that’s where their smoothie suckass lawyer Ishiguro comes in. He delays us a good hour and a half. So. How does that sound?”

There was a silence when he had finished. I waited for Connor to speak.

“Well,” Connor said, at last. “My hat is off to you, Tom. That sequence of events sounds correct in many respects.”

“You’re damned right it does.” Graham puffed up. “Damn fucking right.”

The telephone rang. The lab technician said, “Is there a Captain Connor here?”

Connor went to answer the phone. Graham said to me, “I’m telling you. A Jap killed this girl, and we are going to find him and fucking flay him. Flay him.”

I said, “Why do you have it in for them, anyway?”

Graham gave me a sullen look. He said, “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how you hate the Japanese.”

“Hey, listen,” Graham said. “Let’s get something straight, Petey-san. I don’t hate anybody. I do my job. Black man, white man, Japanese man, it makes no difference to me.”

“Okay, Tom.” It was late at night. I didn’t want to argue.

“No, hell. You fucking think I’m prejudiced.”

“Let’s just drop it, Tom.”

“No, hell. We’re not going to drop it. Not now. Let me tell you something, Petey-san. You got yourself this fucking liaison job, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right, Tom.”

“And how come you applied for it? Because of your great love of Japanese culture?”

“Well, at the time, I was working in the press office—“

“No, no, cut the shit. You applied for it,” Graham said, “because there was an extra stipend, isn’t that right? Two, three thousand a year. An educational stipend. It comes into the department from the Japan-America Amity Foundation. And the department allows it as an educational stipend, paid to members of the force so that they can further their education in Japanese language and culture. So. How’re those studies going, Petey-san?”

“I’m studying.”

“How often?”

“One night a week.”

“One night a week. And if you miss classes, do you lose your stipend?”

“No.”

“Fucking right you don’t. In fact, it doesn’t make any difference if you go to classes at all. The fact is, buddy, you got yourself a bribe. You got three thousand dollars in your pocket and it comes right from the land of the rising sun. Of course, it’s not that much. Nobody can buy you for three grand, right? Of course not.”

“Hey, Tom—“

“But the thing is, they aren’t buying you. They’re just influencing you. They just want you to think twice. To tend to look favorably upon them. And why not? It’s human nature. They’ve made your life a little better. They contribute to your well-being. Your family. Your little girl. They scratch your back, so why shouldn’t you scratch theirs? Isn’t that about it; Petey-san?”