Tokyo Heist by Diana Renn

red-and-yellow international courier envelope. “Hiroshi Fujikawa is chairman of the Fujikawa-gumi.”
    “One of the yakuza ’s most notorious gangs,” Agent Chang elaborates for us. “And we believe the two men who assaulted Julian Fleury—and who presumably took the van Gogh drawings—are working for Fujikawa himself.”
    “You mean your brother bought art for a mob boss?” my dad asks.
    Kenji emphatically shakes his head. “My brother loved to attend art auctions, and he occasionally bought art for me, or for friends, on his travels. He had a great talent for finding treasures. But I believe Fujikawa is lying. He just wants the painting for himself.”
    “What does he mean by ‘drastic measures’?” I ask.
    Kenji pauses a moment before he speaks. “I can guess. Fujikawa has extorted money from our business from time to time over the years. He left us alone for a while. But after I found the drawings in my Tokyo office four months ago, he began contacting me about the drawings. When I ignored his requests for them, we began to experience some difficulties at our construction sites. Accidents. We suspect sabotage. So it is possible he is planning a more drastic action at a site or a building if I do not come up with the painting.”
    I have serious chills. I think back to the articles I read last week—the explosions, the broken scaffolding, the collapsed bridge. If those accidents weren’t really accidents, who knows what this guy is capable of? Maybe Tomonori’s suicide in 1987 wasn’t really a suicide. Maybe someone pushed him off that subway platform! I wonder if this Fujikawa guy knew that the drawings and painting were real van Goghs long before they were authenticated.
    “And you really don’t know where that painting is?” Agent Chang persists.
    “I wish I did,” Kenji says. “As I have already explained to you, my brother died before he could tell me where he put it. Over the years, I have searched our office building and my brother’s house. I interrogated his late wife, his friends, and his connections at various museums. Eventually, I had to give up.”
    “He didn’t leave a single clue?” Margo asked. “Not even a note or something?”
    “No note. Not even a suicide note,” Kenji says. “Well, not a proper note. On the subway platform were his shoes and socks, which is why we knew it was suicide.”
    “No autopsy?” Agent Denny asks, pausing from taking notes.
    “They were seldom performed in Japan back in the 1980s,” Kenji says. “Especially when all signs pointed to suicide. Well, beside his shoes was his briefcase. And inside the briefcase was a drawing of two ayu . No business papers. Just this pen-and-ink drawing.”
    “Ayu?” my dad asks. “What’s that?”
    Ayu. It sounds familiar, but I’m not sure why.
    “It’s a kind of fish. A river trout. It’s very popular in Japan,” Mitsue explains.
    Maybe I saw ayu on a sushi menu or something. “Who did the drawing?” I ask him.
    “My brother, I am sure. It was his characteristic style, intricate line drawings. It was—” Kenji’s voice breaks. He looks down at his hands in his lap and falls silent.
    Mitsue pats his arm. “Tomo was a talented artist, but the Yamada family was unsupportive of his dream. They pressured him to go into the family business. It is why he consoled himself with collecting art. We interpreted the ayu as a symbolic message, his way of explaining his decision. It was all we had to comprehend his mind-set. Such a happy person, with everything going for him—a thriving business, a healthy young son. I suppose there are disturbances in some people, beneath the surface, that are too deep to create even a ripple. Things you never know until it is too late.”
    “So he was basically a misunderstood artist,” my dad says.
    Kenji nods. “And since he left no message about the whereabouts of his most recent art purchases, we were looking for needles in haystacks. Which is why finding the