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You’re lucky you can get a job waiting tables in this country. You’re an alien in your own land, Oshiro. You’d think you’d know to be happy with what you’ve got.” He snorted two more jets of smoke at his desk. “Sergeant and detective after only four years on! How you made it that far is beyond my reckoning.”
    “I’m a good cop, sir. That’s how I made it this far.”
    “It’s not proper. Administration, yes, I could see that. Even upper administration. It’s not unheard of; I’m sure you can type as well as anybody. But if I had my way, your only role in this station would be to serve the rest of us tea and coffee on demand. Believe me, as soon as you give me cause, I’ll have you doing just that.”
    Now Mariko’s face was sweating, not because of the office radiator but out of anger. “Go ahead,” Ko said, meeting her glare through a haze of smoke. “Say something. Give me cause to demote you. Or don’t. I can be patient. You look at me like I’m a cracked old man, but my ears are sharp. If there’s even a whisper that you’ve broken protocol, I’ll hear it. All I need is the allegation. In this department, that’s enough.”
    Mariko’s jaw was set, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Don’texpect to hear anything,” she said. “I’m going to keep on being a good little girl. Sir.”
    “Perhaps. Perhaps not. What’s certain is, you won’t be making Narcotics under my command. You’ll serve out the remainder of your Narc probation. Then, rest assured, you will be denied your transfer, and I’ll have you working low-end property crimes for the rest of your career. And because you could do with some practice with cases like that…” He pulled a pale blue folder out from the middle of a stack of papers and dropped it on the front of his desk. The wind it stirred up scattered white ashes from the ashtray. “You’ll take the Yamada case. Old guy out near Machida. Says someone tried to steal his sword.”
    “Sir, like it or not, I’ve got eight more weeks on Narcotics before you start handing me the shit cases. I’ve got a right to work legitimate drug busts until then.”
    There was that shit-eating grin again. “Special request from Machida PD. Entitles me to pick anyone I like. Lucky you.”
    Mariko said nothing. She picked up the folder and walked out.

6
    Swords, Mariko thought. Bōryokudan violence is swelling, we’ve got a dead policewoman and no leads on who killed her, cocaine threatens to hit us like a typhoon, and my priority is supposed to be stolen swords.
    No, she thought. One sword. An almost -stolen sword. A purported attempt at stealing a sword. Not only was this not a narcotics case, but Ko didn’t even have her investigating a crime . This was an aborted crime, a past possibility of a crime.
    She took the train to Yamada’s place. She could have commandeered a ride in a squad, but even that might be seen as misappropriation of department resources, and Mariko didn’t want to risk it. She could be patient too. There were a lot of cops in the precinct; Ko would only get busier as time went on, and then she’d see if his ears were as sharp as he claimed.
    The ride to Machida took almost an hour, the buildings neighboring the train tracks becoming ever shorter, ever smaller as the distance grew between Mariko and the city center. Within the first fifteen minutes the train car had so few people that she could move her elbows away from her ribs, and soon after that she could see from one end of the car to the other. While waiting on the platform for a transfer, she’d had time to make a phone call, during which she learned that Machida’s department was tiny, that they’d recently lost their lonedetective to retirement, and that as yet they’d found no one to replace him. Even better, Mariko thought. Now I’m playing spare tire to the investigation of an almost-crime.
    Not for the first time, she wished to hell Lieutenant Hashimoto hadn’t retired. Not