"There's a stairwell at the far end," Graham said. "Fire exit."

"Why is he going there, instead of the elevator?"

"Who knows? I just want to see his face. Just once."

But now the man was to the far left of our camera, and even though he was no longer turned away, we could see only his left ear and cheekbone. He walked quickly. Soon he would be gone from our view, beneath the ceiling overhang at the far end of the room.

"Ah, shit. This angle's no good. Let's look at another tape.

"Just a minute," I said.

Our man was moving toward a dark passageway that must lead to the staircase. But as he went, he passed a decorative gilt-frame mirror hanging on the wall, right by the passage. He passed it just as he went under the overhang, into final darkness.

"There!"

"How do you stop this thing?"

I was pressing buttons on the player frantically. I finally found the one that stopped it. We went back. Then forward again.

Again, the man moved purposefully toward the dark passage, with long, quick strides. He moved past the mirror, and for an instant - a single video frame - we could see his face reflected in the mirror - see it clearly - and I pressed the button to freeze the frame -

"Bingo," I said.

"A fucking Jap," Graham said. "Just like I told you."

Frozen in the mirror was the face of the killer as he strode toward the stairwell. I had no trouble recognizing the tense features of Eddie Sakamura.

Chapter 19

"This one is mine," Graham said. "It's my case. I'm going to go bring the bastard in."

"Sure," Connor said.

"I mean," Graham said, "I'd rather go alone."

"Of course," Connor said. "It's your case, Tom. Do whatever you think best."

Connor wrote down Eddie Sakamura's address for him.

"It's not that I don't appreciate your help," Graham said. "But I'd rather handle it myself. Now, just so I have my facts straight: you guys talked to this guy earlier tonight, and you didn't bring him in?"

"That's right."

"Well, don't worry about it," Graham said. "I'll bury that in the report. It won't come back to you, I promise you." Graham was in a magnanimous mood, pleased at the prospect of arresting Sakamura. He glanced at his watch. "Fucking A. Less than six hours since the original call, and we already have the murderer. Not bad."

"We don't have the murderer quite yet," Connor said. "I'd bring him in right away, if I were you."

"I'm leaving now," Graham said.

"Oh, and Tom," Connor said, as Graham headed toward the door. "Eddie Sakamura is a strange guy, but he's not known to be violent. I doubt very much that he's armed. He probably doesn't even own a gun. He went home from the party with a redhead. He's probably in bed with her now. I think it would be advisable to bring him in alive."

"Hey," Graham said. "What is it with you two?"

"Just a suggestion," Connor said.

"You really think I'm going to shoot this little shithead?"

"You'll go out there with a couple of black and whites for backup, won't you?" Connor said. "The patrolmen might be excitable. I'm just giving you the background."

"Hey. Thanks for your fucking support," Graham said, and he left. He was so broad, he had to turn slightly sideways to go through the door.

I watched him go. "Why are you letting him do this alone?"

Connor shrugged. "It's his case."

"But you've been aggressive all night in pursuing his case. Why stop now?"

Connor said. "Let Graham have the glory. After all, what has it got to do with us? I'm a cop on extended leave. And you're just a corrupt liaison officer." He pointed to the videotape. "You want to run that for me, before you give me a ride home?"

"Sure." I rewound the tape.

"I was thinking we could get a cup of coffee, too," Connor said. "They make a good one in the SID labs. At least, they used to."

I said, "You want me to get coffee while you look at the tape?"

"That would be nice, kōhai," Connor said.

"Sure." I started the tape for him, and turned to leave.

"Oh, and kōhai. While you're down there, ask the night duty officer what facilities the department has for videotapes. Because all these need to be duplicated. And we may need hard copies of individual frames. Especially if there's trouble about Sakamura's arrest as Japan-bashing by the department. We may need to release a picture. To defend ourselves."

It was a good point. "Okay," I said. "I'll check."

"And I take mine black with one sugar." He turned to look at the monitor.

The scientific investigation division, or SID, was in the basement of Parker Center. It was after two in the morning when I got there, and most of the sections were closed down. SID was pretty much a nine-to-five operation. Of course, the teams worked at night collecting evidence from crime scenes, but the evidence was then stored in lockers, either downtown or at one of the divisions, until the next morning.

I went to the coffee machine, in the little cafeteria next to Latent Prints. All around the room were signs reading:

DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS? THIS MEANS YOU

and:

DON'T EXPOSE FELLOW OFFICERS TO RISK. WASH YOUR HANDS.

The reason was that the SID teams used poisons, especially Criminalistics. There was so much mercury, arsenic, and chromium floating around that in the old days, officers had sometimes gotten sick by drinking from a Styrofoam cup that another lab worker had merely touched.

But these days people were more careful; I got two cups of coffee and went back to the night-duty desk. Jackie Levine was on duty, with her feet up on the desk. She was a heavyset woman wearing toreador pants and an orange wig. Despite her bizarre appearance, she was widely acknowledged to be the best print lifter in the department. She was reading Modern Bride magazine. I said, "You going to do it again, Jackie?"

"Hell, no," she said. "My daughter."

"Who's she marrying?"

"Let's talk about something happy," she said. "One of those coffees for me?"

"Sorry," I said. "But I have a question for you. Who handles videotape evidence here?"

"Videotape evidence?"

"Like tape from surveillance cameras. Who analyzes it, makes hard copies, all that?"

"Well, we don't get much call for that," Jackie said. "Electronics used to do it here, but I think they gave it up. Nowadays, video either goes to Valley or Medlar Hall." She sat forward, thumbed through a directory. "If you want, you can talk to Bill Harrelson over at Medlar. But if it's anything special, I think we farm it out to JPL or the Advanced Imaging Lab at U.S.C. You want the contact numbers, or you want to go through Harrelson?"

Something in her tone told me what to do. "Maybe I'll take the contact numbers."

"Yeah, I would."

I wrote the numbers down and went back up to the division. Connor had finished the tape and was running it back and forth at the point where Sakamura's face appeared in the mirror.

"Well?" I said.

"That's Eddie, all right." He appeared calm, almost indifferent. He took the coffee from me and sipped it. "Terrible."

"Yeah, I know."

"It used to be better." Connor set the cup aside, turned off the video recorder, stood, and stretched. "Well, I think we've done a good evening's work. What do you say we get some sleep? I have a big golf game in the morning at Sunset Hills."

"Okay," I said. I packed the tapes back in the cardboard box, and set the VCR carefully in the box, too.

Connor said, "What're you going to do with those tapes?"

"I'll put 'em in the evidence locker."

Connor said, "These are the originals. And we don't have duplicates."

"I know, but I can't get dupes made until tomorrow."

"Exactly my point. Why don't you keep them with you?"

"Take them home?" There were all sorts of departmental injunctions about taking evidence home. It was against the rules, to put it mildly.

He shrugged. "I wouldn't leave this to chance. Take the tapes with you, and then you can arrange the duplication yourself, tomorrow."

I stuck them under my arm. I said, "You don't think anybody at the department would - "

"Of course not," Connor said. "But this evidence is crucial and we wouldn't want anybody to walk by the evidence locker with a big magnet while we were asleep, would we?"

So in the end I took the tapes. As we went out the door, we passed Ishiguro, still sitting there, contrite. Connor said something quickly to him in Japanese. Ishiguro jumped to his feet, bowed quickly, and scurried out of the office.

"Is he really so scared?"

"Yes," Connor said.

Ishiguro moved quickly down the hall ahead of us, head bent low. He seemed almost a caricature of a mousy, frightened man.

"Why?" I said. "He's lived here long enough to know that any case we might have against him for withholding evidence is not strong. And we have even less of a case against Nakamoto."

"That's not the point," Connor said. "He's not worried about legalities. He's worried about scandal. Because that's what would happen if we were in Japan."

We came around the corner. Ishiguro was standing by the banks of elevators, waiting. We waited, too. There was an awkward moment. The first elevator came, and Ishiguro stepped away for us to get on. The doors closed on him bowing to us in the lobby. The elevator started down.

Connor said, "In Japan, he and his company could be finished forever."

"Why?"

"Because in Japan, scandal is the most common way of revising the pecking order. Of getting rid of a powerful opponent. It's a routine procedure over there. You uncover a vulnerability, and you leak it to the press, or to government investigators. A scandal inevitably follows, and the person or organization is ruined. That's how the Recruit scandal brought down Takeshita as prime minister. Or the financial scandals brought down Prime Minister Tanaka in the seventies. It's the same way the Japanese screwed General Electric a couple of years ago."

"They screwed General Electric?"

"In the Yokogawa scandal. You heard of it? No? Well, it's classic Japanese maneuvering. A few years ago, General Electric made the best scanning equipment in the world for hospitals. GE formed a subsidiary, Yokogawa Medical, to market this equipment in Japan. And GE did business the Japanese way: cutting costs below competitors to get market share, providing excellent service and support, entertaining customers - giving potential buyers air tickets and traveler's checks. We'd call it bribes, but it's standard business procedure in Japan. Yokogawa quickly became the market leader, ahead of Japanese companies like Toshiba. The Japanese companies didn't like that and complained about unfairness. And one day government agents raided Yokogawa's offices and found evidence of the bribes. They arrested several Yokogawa employees, and blackened the company name in scandal. It didn't hurt GE sales in Japan very much. It didn't matter that other Japanese companies also offer bribes. For some reason, it was the non-Japanese company that got caught. Amazing, how that happens."

I said, "Is it really that bad?"

"The Japanese can be tough," Connor said. "They say 'business is war,' and they mean it. You know how Japan is always telling us that their markets are open. Well, in the old days, if a Japanese bought an American car, he got audited by the government. So pretty soon, nobody bought an American car. The officials shrug: what can they do? Their market is open: they can't help it if nobody wants an American car. The obstructions are endless. Every imported car has to be individually tested on the dock to make sure it complies with exhaust-emission laws. Foreign drugs can only be tested in Japanese laboratories on Japanese nationals. Foreign skis were once banned because Japanese snow was said to be wetter than European and American snow. That's the way they treat other countries, so it's not surprising they worry about getting a taste of their own medicine."

"Then Ishiguro is waiting for some scandal? Because that's what would happen in Japan?"

"Yes. He's afraid that Nakamoto will be finished in a single stroke. But I doubt that it will. Chances are, it'll be business as usual in Los Angeles tomorrow."

I drove Connor back to his apartment. As he climbed out of the car I said, "Well, it's been interesting, Captain. Thanks for spending the time with me."

"You're welcome," Connor said. "Call me any time, if you need help in the future."

"I hope your golf game isn't too early tomorrow."

"Actually, it's at seven, but at my age I don't need much sleep. I'll be playing at the Sunset Hills."

"Isn't it a Japanese course?" The purchase of the Sunset Hills Country Club was one of the more recent outrages in L.A. The West Los Angeles golf course was bought for a huge cash price: two hundred million dollars in 1990. At the time, the new Japanese owners said no changes would be made. But now, the American membership was slowly being reduced by a simple procedure: whenever an American retired, his place was offered to a Japanese. Sunset Hills memberships were sold in Tokyo for a million dollars each, where they were considered a bargain; there was a long waiting list.

"Well," Connor said, "I'm playing with some Japanese."

"You do that often?"

"The Japanese are avid golfers, as you know. I try to play twice a week. Sometimes you hear things of interest. Good night, kōhai."

"Good night, Captain."

I drove home.

I was pulling onto the Santa Monica freeway when the phone rang. It was the DHD operator. "Lieutenant, we have a Special Services call. Officers in the field request assistance of the liaison."

I sighed. "Okay." She gave me the mobile number.