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that he’d had much choice. Like Mariko, the man had no idea how to do anything halfway. Twenty-six years of eighty-hour workweeks had taken their toll, until finally he’d passed out in his office and woken up to a doctor telling him he was a near case of karōshi . As the train clacked along, Mariko thought about how strange that word was. Karōshi : death from overwork. What did it mean about Japanese culture that they had a word for that? How could a society survive where so many people worked themselves to death that they had no choice but to come up with a name for it? The Americans had no equivalent—but, then, the existence of the term drive-by shooting was every bit as biting a commentary on their culture. Only in a place of unremitting violence could people invent vocabulary to separate this kind of shooting each other from that kind of shooting each other.
    And Mariko had chosen the land of karōshi over the land of the drive-by. What did that say about her? There was something so classically Japanese about it, preferring suicide to a random shooting. The samurai once debated whether there was any honor in winning a battle by resorting to firearms. Unlike a sword or an arrow, a musket ball was random, and the true follower of Bushido was honor-bound to kill using only his own talent. Better to die by seppuku, some said, than to claim the empty victory of the gun. Of course, the ones who said that were the ones the musket balls had torn apart by the score.
    Now and then people still talked about the samurai spirit. Mariko wondered if she had it, and if it had ever been anything more than sheer stubbornness. No—stubbornness plus a willingness to endure more than the other guy. Mariko was good at that part. It was the only way to beat guys like Ko: she’d outlast him. Even if it killed her, she’d outlast him.
    She found she could not enjoy the sunshine, nor the cloudlesssky, nor Machida’s relative verdure compared to downtown. The pale blue folder in her left hand still smelled of cigarette smoke. She flipped through it for Yamada’s address and found the house easily.
    Yamada Yasuo, aged eighty-seven, retired, sole resident. No criminal record. Whatever career he’d retired from was lucrative enough for him to afford his own home, a luxury Mariko could never aspire to. Presumably widowed, and an accomplished gardener, for when she reached the house, she found Yamada snipping a huge pink chrysanthemum from its bush beside his front stoop.
    “Yamada-san?”
    The old man turned around and smiled. His hair was as short as electric clippers could make it, and in the sun it shone like a million tiny points of silver light. He was kneeling—the flower he’d snipped was low on the bush—but even so she could tell his back had a slight but permanent hunch. He wore slacks and a sweater the color of milk tea, and his face was dotted with liver spots. The skin of his hands and face was as wrinkled as any Mariko had ever seen.
    “Why, hello,” he said.
    “I’m Detective Sergeant Oshiro, TMPD. I’m here to ask you some questions about your recent attempted theft. Have you got a minute?”
    “Of course. Do come in.”
    He beckoned her with a wave of the head, and with clippers and chrysanthemum blossom in one hand, he made his way toward his front door. Now that he was standing, she found him to be shorter than she’d expected, not ten centimeters taller than she was herself. His hunch had stolen some of his height. His feet found each step carefully, which surprised Mariko, for he’d stood up from kneeling quickly enough, and he seemed quite fit for his age. When he reached the front door, she discovered why he moved so slowly. He fished in his pocket for his house key, and, finding it, he bent down so that his face was no more than a finger’s length from the doorknob. Only then could he fit key to keyhole.
    “You’re legally blind?” said Mariko.
    “None too delicate, are you, Inspector?”
    Mariko