"I notice it's not Japanese."
"Can't be obvious," Connor said. "He following us?"
"No. I think we lost him. Where are we going now?"
"U.S.C. Sanders has had enough time screwing around by now."
We drove down the street, down the hill, toward the 101 freeway. "By the way," I said. "What was all that about the reading glasses?"
"Just a small point to be verified. No reading glasses were found, right?"
"Right. Just sunglasses."
"That's what I thought," Connor said.
"And Graham says he's leaving town. Today. He's going to Phoenix."
"Uh-huh." He looked at me. "You want to leave town, too?"
"No," I said.
"Okay," Connor said.
I got down the hill and onto the 101 going south. In the old days it would be ten minutes to U.S.C. Now it was more like thirty minutes. Especially now, right at midday. But there weren't any fast times, anymore. Traffic was always bad. The smog was always bad. I drove through haze.
"You think I'm being foolish?" I said. "You think I should pick up my kid and run, too?"
"It's one way to handle it." He sighed. "The Japanese are masters of indirect action. It's their instinctual way to proceed. If someone in Japan is unhappy with you, they never tell you to your face. They tell your friend, your associate, your boss. In such a way that the word gets back. The Japanese have all these ways of indirect communication. That's why they socialize so much, play so much golf, go drinking in karaokebars. They need these extra channels of communication because they can't come out and say what's on their minds. It's tremendously inefficient, when you think about it. Wasteful of time and energy and money. But since they cannot confront – because confrontation is almost like death, it makes them sweat and panic – they have no other choice. Japan is the land of the end run. They never go up the middle."
"Yeah, but . . ."
"So behavior that seems sneaky and cowardly to Americans is just standard operating procedure to Japanese. It doesn't mean anything special. They're just letting you know that powerful people are displeased."
"Letting me know? That I could end up in court over my daughter? My relationship with my kid could be ruined? My own reputation could be ruined?"
"Well, yes. Those are normal penalties. The threat of social disgrace is the usual way you're expected to know of displeasure."
"Well, I think I know it, now," I said. "I think I get the fucking picture."
"It's not personal," Connor said. "It's just the way they proceed."
"Yeah, right. They're spreading a lie."
"In a sense."
"No, not in a sense. It's a fucking lie."
Connor sighed. "It took me a long time to understand," he said, "that Japanese behavior is based on the values of a farm village. You hear a lot about samurai and feudalism, but deep down, the Japanese are farmers. And if you lived in a farm village and you displeased the other villagers, you were banished. And that meant you died, because no other village would take in a troublemaker. So. Displease the group and you die. That's the way they see it.
"It means the Japanese are exquisitely sensitive to the group. More than anything, they are attuned to getting along with the group. It means not standing out, not taking a chance, not being too individualistic. It also means not necessarily insisting on the truth. The Japanese have very little faith in truth. It strikes them as cold and abstract. It's like a mother whose son is accused of a crime. She doesn't care much about the truth. She cares more about her son. The same with the Japanese. To the Japanese, the important thing is relationships between people. That's the real truth. The factual truth is unimportant."
"Yeah, fine," I said. "But why are they pushing now? What's the difference? This murder is solved, right?"
"No, it's not," Connor said.
"It's not?"
"No. That's why we have all the pressure. Obviously, somebody badly wantsit to be over. They want us to give it up."
"If they are squeezing me and squeezing Graham – how come they're not squeezing you?"
"They are," Connor said.
"How?"
"By making me responsible for what happens to you."
"How are they making you responsible? I don't see that."
"I know you don't. But they do. Believe me. They do."
I looked at the line of cars creeping forward, blending into the haze of downtown. We passed electronic billboards for Hitachi (#1 IN COMPUTERS IN AMERICA), for Canon (AMERICA'S COPY LEADER), and Honda (NUMBER ONE RATED CAR IN AMERICA!). Like most of the new Japanese ads, they were bright enough to run in the daytime. The billboards cost thirty thousand dollars a day to rent; most American companies couldn't afford them.
Connor said, "The point is the Japanese know they can make it very uncomfortable. By raising the dust around you, they are telling me, 'handle it.' Because they think I can get this thing done. Finish it off."
"Can you?"
"Sure. You want to finish it off now? Then we can go have a beer, and enjoy some Japanese truth. Or do you want to get to the bottom of why Cheryl Austin was killed?"
"I want to get to the bottom."
"Me, too," Connor said. "So let's do it, kohai. I think Sanders's lab will have interesting information for us. The tapes are the key, now."
¤
Phillip Sanders was spinning like a top. "The lab is shut down," he said. He threw up his hands in frustration. "And there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing."
Connor said, "When did it happen?"
"An hour ago. Buildings and Grounds came by and told everybody in the lab to leave, and they locked it up. Just like that. There's a big padlock on the front door, now."
I said, "And the reason was?"
"A report that structural weakness in the ceiling has made the basement unsafe and will invalidate the university's insurance if the skating rink comes crashing down on us. Some talk about how student safety comes first. Anyway, they closed the lab, pending an investigation and report by a structural engineer."
"And when will that happen?"
He gestured to the phone. "I'm waiting to hear. Maybe some time next week. Maybe not until next month."
"Next month."
"Yeah, Exactly." Sanders ran his hand through his wild hair. "I went all the way to the dean on this one. But the dean's office doesn't know. It's coming from high up in the university. Up where the board of governors knows rich donors who make contributions in multi-million-dollar chunks. The order came from the highest levels." Sanders laughed. "These days, it doesn't leave much mystery."
I said, "Meaning what?"
"You realize Japan is deeply into the structure of American universities, particularly in technical departments. It's happened everywhere. Japanese companies now endow twenty-five professorships at M.I.T., far more than any other nation. Because they know – after all the bullshit stops – that they can't innovate as well as we can. Since they need innovation, they do the obvious thing. They buy it."
"From American universities."