like old claws.
A second Japanese man sat at the long side of the table. He was middle aged and growing stout, a compact man with flat cheekbones and short salt and pepper hair. He rose from his seat as I approached, came around the table, and extended a hand.
“Dr. Burke, thank you for coming. I am Miyazaki Tokio.” He bowed in the direction of the man in the wheelchair. “This is my father.” The old lizard remained motionless.
Miyazaki ushered me to a seat across from him at the table. I could sense Ito and the other guard watching from a discrete distance while my host fussed with the coffee service. “You prefer your coffee black, neh? As do I.” There were manila file folders arrayed before his place at the table, but they were ignored for a time as he served us and we both made a show of sipping the coffee with polite appreciation. Miyazaki inquired about my trip. The health of my master. He was obviously tense, but etiquette is etiquette, and he did a good job of playing the host. His father said nothing. I could hear the faint phlegmy rattle of his breathing, but other than that, he seemed to play no part in the meeting and showed no overt interest.
Finally, I decided this had gone on long enough. One of the nice things about being a gaijin, a foreigner, is that the Japanese don’t expect good manners from you. If I had known these people or wanted to somehow impress them, I might have played along. But I didn’t. I set my cup down on its translucent saucer and leaned back in the chair.
“Excellent coffee, Miyazaki-san.” I thought it interesting that he seemed to know how I liked my coffee. That he knew when Yamashita was going to be away. They were facts I’d ponder later. “But you haven’t gone to all this trouble just to invite me over for a drink.” I looked directly at the father and arched my eyebrows quizzically. It was very un-Japanese of me. You never make a direct inquiry like that, especially to the senior person present. The whole reason the old man sat at the far end of the table was so he could watch me but I could not watch him. At least that’s the theory. I was expected to talk to the younger Miyazaki, sitting across from me, but all the real power was really in the clawlike hands of the old thing sitting to my left. So I decided to refuse to play along and rattle them with my lack of couth.
But the younger Miyazaki merely blinked and smiled, unruffled. He looked at me mildly, as if studying an exotic animal in the zoo. He nodded. “Indeed, Dr. Burke. Please excuse me. I understand your desire to get to the point.” He smiled again, as if the use of the colloquialism was a way to show off his language skill. But the Japanese nod and smile for many reasons. Sometimes they are agreeing with you. Other times they are simply indicating they have heard what you have said. Sometimes, it’s because they are deeply uneasy. I wondered which reason made Miyazaki smile.
I gestured at the files. “The point, I suppose, is in there?”
Again the smile. But it was tight and fleeting, more a grimace than anything else. Miyazaki took a breath, as if bracing himself. One hand pressed on the pile of folders, an unconscious expression of a wish to keep them forever closed. But he couldn’t.
I sensed movement on the periphery of the room and Ito appeared at the table. He silently asked for permission to join us and, for once, Miyazaki’s facade cracked and he nodded wearily in acquiescence. Ito sat next to me on the right and reached over for the files.
“Dr. Burke,” Ito began, “what we are discussing here is highly confidential. The Miyazaki family would ask for your utmost discretion.” I just nodded. Across from me Miyazaki raised a hesitant finger. The younger man paused for a fraction of a second, then slid a piece of typescript in front of me. “With respect, Miyazaki-san asks you to sign this nondisclosure agreement.” Ito’s voice was distant and formal, a sign of just how uncomfortable he was with the request.
I pushed it away, back toward Miyazaki. “Don’t be ridiculous. You asked me to come here. If you want to talk with me, talk, otherwise I’m leaving.” I stood up.
The old man croaked something: a name perhaps, or a command. I didn’t catch it, but the man who had frisked me at the door appeared by my side and put a restraining hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t a light touch, and I felt my core tightening and the anticipation of a fight spiraling up within me. It’s a familiar feeling. I wonder sometimes whether I like it too much. I leaned in toward Miyazaki.
“Tell him to get his hand off me, Miyazaki. I’m only going to say it once. If you can’t trust me, you wouldn’t have invited me up here. Don’t insult me with a piece of paper.”
He sighed, closed his eyes, opened them, and nodded at the goon at my side. The hand came off my shoulder. But I didn’t sit down.
“Please, Dr. Burke,” Miyazaki said, and his voice was small and tight, like a man being choked. “We need your help.”
I looked at Ito. He was standing as well, and watching me with tremendous interest, his eyes lit up with anticipation. Part of him wanted me to sit down; it was his duty to make that happen. But part of him would have liked to see me tussle with the man standing by my shoulder. He was the only honest person in the room. I don’t know whether I liked him for it, but at least I understood him.
“Please,” Miyazaki begged, gesturing to my chair. And there was something familiar in the tilt of his head, in the cast of his eyes. So I sat down, if only to try to figure out what was creating that sense of familiarity.
Ito sat down, too, and arranged the files in front of him. He took out some color photos of a striking young Japanese woman. Wide eyes, long black hair that shimmered with highlights that seemed almost blue. She had a playful smile that almost made you feel she was mocking the camera. But it was subtle and it could have been my imagination. “Miyazaki-san’s daughter Chie,” Ito told me.
“How old?”
“Twenty-three,” he said. “After graduating from Tokyo Daigaku, she came last year to New York for graduate work.” I nodded. Tokyo University is Japan’s most prestigious school. A child of someone like Miyazaki would have gone there. But there’s an allure to study in the United States, and it’s not unusual for people to come west for grad school. I looked across at Miyazaki, his face once more impassive. I wondered how he’d felt about his daughter slipping her chain and getting loose among the barbarians. Probably like most fathers, I realized. Then Ito passed me another picture.
In this one, the mocking smile was more fully in place. The eyes seemed narrower and her long hair had been cut shorter in a choppy style and was streaked with pink and green. It wasn’t a formal posed shot. It was taken outside and the blurry background of building and people made me wonder if it was a surveillance photo taken with a long lens.
“Nice nose ring,” I said to Ito, then regretted it as soon as the words popped out. I was getting the picture: child of privilege running amok. Miyazaki didn’t wince at my comment, but it must have been hard for him. Sorry, Dad.
“She has taken to her new environment,” Ito ventured an understatement. The old man at the end of the table snorted.
“We have,” Miyazaki began, then cleared his throat, “I have deep concerns about my daughter and the people she is associating with, Dr. Burke.”
I sighed inwardly. The daughter-gone-wild-in-grad-school story is as common as it is sad. Kids breaking free. Parents holding on. Lots of room for hurt feelings. But the sheer grind of life imposes a type of conformist gravity. Most people eventually fall out of orbit. It takes a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll to hit escape velocity. The probability was that she’d be OK. But I’m not a parent; maybe probable isn’t good enough to let you sleep at night.
How
