Japantown by Barry Lancet

barrier-breaking rebel, he became a public figure revered for the hope he inspired in young entrepreneurs even as he headed for the financial stratosphere. As a newly minted billionaire, he groomed himself accordingly: face tanned, skin lotioned, hands manicured. He wore an expensive French suit of charcoal gray with a faint maroon line, the kind of item ordered from Benz-owning tailors who pulled down six-figure incomes.
    The choking feeling in my chest was not because the mogul stood in my parlor but because there was no plausible reason for him to pass through my front door. He’d obviously taken a wrong turn. Yes, he collected art, but on a higher plane. If memory served, he’d last beenspotted at the Christie’s auction in New York, where he bought a Hockney and a Pollock.
    I said, “Can I help you?”
    Sharp eyes scanned me from head to foot. “Are you Jim Brodie? Jake Brodie’s son?”
    That explained it. He knew my father. Or his work.
    “Yes.”
    Off the mogul’s left flank stood the Great Wall of China, an Asian bodyguard of Chinese or Korean descent with expansive shoulders and hair cropped to bristles in a style you don’t see much in Japan anymore outside military schools and martial arts clubs. His face was round and meaty. Cheekbones pushed his flesh to the sides and made him look like an overfed Buddha. The muscles across his chest and down his arms weren’t overfed, though. They stretched his brown knit shirt to the limit and spoke of strength and speed.
    Hara glanced around the shop with disapproval. “Not at all what I expected. Is it perhaps an older brother who took over Brodie Security? Or a relative?”
    His English was flawless.
    “Nope. Just me. You’ve got the right Brodie and the right place.”
    I’d listed Brodie Antiques on the agency’s website and in the phone book as the stateside contact for Brodie Security. Embedded in the wall alongside the front door was a brass plaque that announced our presence with discretion: Brodie Security—Inquire Within , which riled Abers no end.
    Narrowing his eyes, Hara raised the sword guard. “Tell me about the tsuba .”
    The object in question was disc-shaped and about three inches across, with an elongated triangular slit at the center to accept the tang of a sword. Because sword guards formed a pivotal part of the samurai’s most important possession—his symbolic soul—some of them had been decorated with silver, gold, lacquer, hammered smithery, cloisonné, and inlay work by the finest craftsmen in the land. Today, collectors around the world sought out the best pieces.
    “That particular tsuba is from the late fifteen hundreds and belongedto a Tokyo family that can trace its lineage back to a samurai ancestor who served Lord Hideyoshi.”
    Hara nodded. “Impressive. And the motif?”
    The front side of the guard showed two wild geese in flight; the reverse side showed the same pair, one soaring free, the other plummeting earthward, perhaps weakened by its attempt to crest a pagoda in the background, or perhaps wounded by a hunter.
    “The motif sets off the hazards of warfare against the Zen belief in the impermanence of life.”
    “At least you know your art,” the mogul said flatly, replacing the piece in the case. “How are you on the investigative side of things?”
    Outside on the street, a jet-black Silver Shadow limousine idled at the curb. A chauffeur, capped and immaculate, swept a long-handled feather duster back and forth across a spotless hood that gleamed in the afternoon sun.
    I said, “Why don’t you step in the back? We can talk there.”
    I ushered him into the conference room adjoining my office. With its beige carpet, coffee-colored leather chairs, and walnut table, it was a class act. The table was an early-eighteenth-century William and Mary that I picked up at an estate auction. A Charles Burchfield watercolor hung on a pastel gray wall. Burchfield was a talented but underappreciated mid-twentieth-century