Chapter One

Chapter One

Setsura stopped at the first phone booth he spotted after leaving Magic Town. He made two calls in ten minutes. The third number he dialed was the direct line to the mayor’s office.

“Kajiwara speaking.” The mayor answered the phone promptly and warmly.

“This is Aki.”

“Hey, what’s up?” the mayor boomed genuinely. He must be doing well, avoiding any inconvenient cabinet coups and the odd assassination attempt.

“Oh, same-old, same-old,” Setsura lied. “I wanted to ask you the same thing. But first, I need to get in touch with Chief Kumagaki. Make it your top priority. If that’s not possible, then you need to strip him of his authority and take steps to revoke any orders he’s issued.”

“What, did they get to him?” The warmth disappeared from his voice.

“That’s what it looks like,” Setsura calmly replied. “Mayor, when you were first attacked, your secretary was physically abducted. Why weren’t we informed about this earlier?”

The mayor fumbled for a reply. “Well—ah—it must have slipped my mind at the time. I ordered the Chief to launch a search right away. I thought that should suffice.”

“Complacency is our greatest enemy. And by now we may only be shutting the barn doors. I contacted the police and the Chief’s residence. No one knows where he’s been the last two days. Or rather—and this is only a hypothesis—he set off for work the next day and also came home. But at night.”

The mayor mulled this over.

“At night, anybody who saw him wouldn’t have thought there was anything amiss. Last night as well, he would have awoken after sunset, said he was going to the office, and left.”

“Then where is he now?”

“He hasn’t returned home. He must have a retreat somewhere out of the bright light of day.”

“I find all this hard to believe. Do you have any other evidence?”

“Isn’t what I just told you enough?”

“No—it’s sufficient.”

“However, there’s something else I need to ask you.”

“What’s that?”

“Contact all the important players in the ward and find out who among them is sleeping during the day, and where.”

“So you suspect others?” the mayor asked coldly.

“I don’t know. We must avoid harboring unnecessary expectations and unjustified suspicions. If worst comes to worst, they must be treated the same as the Chief. Any encountered while asleep should be wrapped in something opaque and taken to Mephisto Hospital without exposing their bodies to the sun. There are doctors there who know how to handle them.”

“Doctor Mephisto—surely no one else would know better.” The mayor let out a long sigh. “How do I get hold of you?”

“I’ll be in touch.”

“Understood. What are you doing after this?”

“There are some things I need to take care of.”

“I understand. Aki—Setsura-kun—” Warmth returned to the mayor’s voice.

“Yes.”

“I trust you. I know you’ll have my back.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could have a dossier on your secretary—name and photo and personal details—sent over to my place.”

“Will do. It’ll be there ASAP.”

Setsura said goodbye and hung up. From the telephone box he turned onto Waseda Boulevard. It was a relatively safe street, packed with people and cars. And more than anything else, the hustle and bustle of life filled with light.

Setsura stopped in his tracks, as if stunned by the sheer volume of light. Several seconds later, a shadow of discomfort passed across his comely face, gleaming there in the middle of the day. But then he set off down the street as if nothing was amiss.

During the day, this city was at rest. From a window somewhere came the cry of a bird.

He came to the end of the sidewalk and raised a hand, intending to take a taxi to Mephisto Hospital.

“Hey, you there,” said a hard voice behind him.

Setsura smiled—half grimaced—as he turned around. The bad vibe striking him on the back contained a strong element of fear.

Two uniformed police officers. They looked at him as they might a wanted outlaw. Their right hands rested on the grips of their guns. There wasn’t a police box in sight. They must have chanced upon him during a beat patrol.

“What the problem, officers?” Setsura asked quietly. Things were coming to a boil.

“Are you Setsura Aki?” asked the fifty-something cop.

“Yeah.”

“You’re under arrest. Come with us please.”

“Fine with me. But what’s the charge?”

“You’re on the wanted list. Don’t know the reason.”

“And if I refuse?”

The faces of the two grew hard. Setsura didn’t think he had that kind of a reputation. The all-points bulletin must have made him out to be a real bad guy. They pulled out their Magnum revolvers and flipped off the safeties. Their trigger fingers twitched. The trigger fingers of Shinjuku cops itched a lot more than those in the outside world.

These Magnums had a double-action trigger pull of seven pounds, with four pounds in single action. Like the cops who carried them, it didn’t take much to send the bullets flying.

Running away would be simple enough. And in another five minutes or so, they’d get the mayor’s orders to countermand the Chief of Police. More than that, though, Setsura was curious.

He held up his hands. “Don’t worry. I’ll come along quietly.”

The cops relaxed considerably. The younger of the two thumbed his mike and called for a patrol car. They didn’t search him. Police procedures went differently in this city. Weapons could be hidden inside of bones and hair could turn into knives. Patting down a suspect was the height of stupidity. Claws and fangs might be bared, and clothes and skin could spout poison.

The citizens of Shinjuku streamed past, emotionless, without rubbernecking. On top of it being an everyday occurrence, there was the added wisdom of minding one’s own business. Sightseers who stopped and gawked were caught up in the flow. And what they were staring at, of course, were Setsura’s good looks.

The patrol car arrived in five minutes. It wasn’t an ordinary street vehicle, but a mobile police armored personnel carrier. Flanked by two cops, Setsura sat down in the back.

As the vehicle raced down Waseda Boulevard, Setsura asked, “So what was in that APB?”

“No talking,” the young cop said in a brusque voice.

“Ah, give it a break,” interjected the commando cop next to him. “You won’t make any friends in this town being such a hardass. If you don’t lighten up, a greenie like you won’t make it through the first weekend. Don’t you think, Aki-san?”

The older man furrowed his brows. “You know each other?”

“I heard about him from my old squad leader. Found him this morning in Kabuki-cho, his head clean cut off. Even though he was decapitated at night, the medical examiner put the time of death at three hours later. It may have been some new species of monster, but he was still a colleague. I’m Endou. Kusama-san was the one who showed me the ropes. Nice to meet you.”

“Same here.”

“As for the charges. Pretty serious stuff. Comes down to bumping off five brokers in Arakimachi and bombing a daycare center in Kamiochiai.”

“That is pretty serious stuff,” Setsura conceded, staring up at the ceiling of the car.

Six months before, a certain “Mr. T,” a currency broker, was gunned down in Arakimachi along with four of his associates. It seemed cult-related. Their bodies were riddled with 9 mm parabellum rounds and then devoured—except for the heads. The corpses—or rather, the leftovers—were scattered across the interior of the business like a carpet of red roses.

The wise guys in Shinjuku’s Nichome—”crime central”—offered up a healthy reward for the thugs who’d bombed the daycare center. If word got out that Setsura had voluntarily turned himself in, even as a suspect, the hundreds of bounty hunters on the case would be mad enough to spit fire.

“It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be a homicidal maniac,” Setsura observed blandly.

Endou laughed in a hoarse voice. “Yeah, you keep your nose clean. Threw me for a loop too. And yet you climbed in here without a fuss. But I figured that’s because you and the squad leader go way back.”

“Thanks.”

Endou addressed his fellow officers. “I hate to keep harping on this, but you’ve got the wrong guy.”

“The idea didn’t just pop into our heads,” the younger of the uniformed cops said. “The Chief authorized the APB himself. Just following orders.”

“It’s not like it’s our job to go around picking up innocent people.” Endou patted him on the shoulder with his club-like fist, hard enough to wrinkle the cop’s body armor.

“Yeah, that’s enough,” said the driver, who’d been quiet until now. “We’re almost there. But I’ve never heard the Chief give a direct order like that, not in the last ten years. Still, strange things have been going on lately.”

“What kind of strange things?” Setsura leaned forward.

The driver glanced up at the rearview mirror and coughed. He did his best to mask his state of mind when looking at Setsura’s face. “Oh, this and that.”

“What kind of this and that?” Setsura asked again, looking at the driver in the rearview mirror.

“Hey!”

Endou reached over and grabbed the steering wheel. The vehicle was riding up on the shoulder of the road. The driver tore his eyes away from the rearview mirror.

“Sorry.”

“No problem. I’m not surprised, what with this lady-killer in the back.”

“Yeah.”

These two were rugged and battle-tested. The two in the back, holding onto their seats for dear life, looked like they were about to lose their lunches. That kind of lily-livered reaction disqualified them as candidates for the mobile police. They had to have the nerves to blow away a water demon passing as an exact replica of a human, based only on gut instincts only. The kind of savoir faire to take a smoking break in a room full of dynamite and casually flick away the burning match.

Before Setsura could resume his questioning, the shadow of a rectangular building eclipsed them on the right. The closest police station, Totsuka Station.