I said, “We can go forward.”

Jenny pushed the button. “She really your wife, or is your partner kidding?”

“No, she’s really my wife. Was.”

“You’re divorced now?”

“Yeah.”

Jenny looked at me, and started to say something. Then she decided not to, and looked back at the screen. On the monitor, the party continued at high speed.

I found myself thinking of Lauren. When I knew her, she was bright and ambitious, but she really didn’t understand very much. She had grown up privileged, she had gone to Ivy League schools, and had the privileged person’s deep belief that whatever she happened to think was probably true. Certainly good enough to live by. Nothing needed to be checked against reality.

She was young, that was part of it. She was still feeling the world, learning how it worked. She was enthusiastic, and she could be impassioned in expounding her beliefs. But of course her beliefs were always changing, depending on whom she had talked to last. She was very impressionable. She tried on ideas the way some women try on hats. She was always informed on the latest trend. I found it youthful and charming for a while, until it began to annoy me.

Because she didn’t have any core, any real substance. She was like a television set: she just played the latest show. Whatever it was. She never questioned it.

In the end, Lauren’s great talent was to conform. She was expert at watching the TV, the newspaper, the boss—whatever she saw as the source of authority—and figuring out what direction the winds were blowing. And positioning herself so she was where she ought to be. I wasn’t surprised she was getting ahead. Her values, like her clothes, were always smart and up-to-date—

“…to you, Lieutenant, but it’s getting late… Lieutenant?”

I blinked, and came back. Jenny was talking to me. She pointed to the screen, where a frozen image showed Cheryl Austin in her black dress, standing with two older men in suits.

I looked over at Connor, but he had turned away, and was talking on the telephone.

“Lieutenant? This of interest to you?”

“Yes, sure. Who are they?”

Jenny started the tape. It ran at normal speed.

“Senator John Morton and Senator Stephen Rowe. They’re both on the Senate Finance Committee. The one that’s been having hearings about this MicroCon sale.”

On the screen, Cheryl laughed and nodded. In motion, she was remarkably beautiful, an interesting mixture of innocence and sexuality. At moments, her face appeared knowing and almost hard. She appeared to know both men, but not well. She did not come close to either of them, or touch them except to shake hands. For their part, the senators seemed acutely aware of the camera, and maintained a friendly, if somewhat formal demeanor.

“Our country’s going to hell, and on a Thursday night, United States senators are standing around chatting with models,” Jenny said. “No wonder we’re in trouble. And these are important guys. They’re talking about Morton as a presidential candidate in the next election.”

I said, “What do you know about them personally?”

“They’re both married. Well. Rowe’s semi-separated. His wife stays home in Virginia. He gets around. Tends to drink too much.”

I looked at Rowe on the monitor. He was the same man who had gotten on the elevator with us earlier in the evening. And he had been drunk then, almost falling down. But he wasn’t drunk now.

“And Morton?”

“Supposedly he’s Mr. Clean. Ex-athlete, fitness nut. Eats health food. Family man. Morton’s big area is science and technology. The environment. American competitiveness, American values. All that. But he can’t be that clean, I’ve heard he has a young girlfriend.”

“Is that right?”

She shrugged. “The story is, his staffers are trying to break it off. But who knows what’s true.”

The tape ejected and Jenny pushed in the next one. “This is the last, fellas.”

Connor hung up the phone and said, “Forget the tape.” He stood. “We’ve got to go, kōhai.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been talking to the phone company about the calls made from the pay phone in the lobby of the Nakamoto building between eight and ten.”

“And?”

“No calls were made during those hours.”

I knew that Connor thought that someone had gone out of the security room and called from the pay phone—Cole, or one of the Japanese. Now his hopes of following a promising lead by tracing the call were dashed. “That’s too bad,” I said.

“Too bad?” Connor said, surprised. “It’s extremely helpful. It narrows things down considerably. Miss Gonzales, do you have any tapes of people leaving the party?”

“Leaving? No. Once the guests arrived, all the crews went upstairs to shoot the actual party. Then they brought the tape back here to make the deadline, while the party was still going on.”

“Fine. Then I believe we’re finished here. Thanks for your help. Your knowledge is remarkable. Kōhai, let’s go.”

Driving again. This time to an address in Beverly Hills. By now it was after one in the morning, and I was tired. I said, “Why does the pay phone in the lobby matter so much?”

“Because,” Connor said, “our whole conception of this case revolves around whether someone made a call from that phone, or not. The real question now is, which company in Japan has locked horns with Nakamoto?”

“Which company in Japan?” I said.

“Yes. It is clearly a corporation belonging to a different keiretsu,” Connor said.

I said, “Keiretsu?”

“The Japanese structure their businesses in large organizations they call keiretsu. There are six major ones in Japan, and they’re huge. For example, the Mitsubishi keiretsu consists of seven hundred separate companies that work together, or have interrelated financing, or interrelated agreements of various sorts. Big structures like that don’t exist in America because they violate our antitrust laws. But they are the norm in Japan. We tend to think of corporations as standing alone. To see it the Japanese way, you’d have to imagine, say, an association of IBM and Citibank and Ford and Exxon, all having secret agreements among themselves to cooperate, and to share financing or research. That means a Japanese corporation never stands alone—it’s always acting in partnership with hundreds of other companies. And in competition with the companies of other keiretsu.

“So when you think about what Nakamoto Corporation is doing, you have to ask what the Nakamoto keiretsu is doing, back in Japan. And what companies in other keiretsu oppose it. Because this murder is embarrassing to Nakamoto. It could even be seen as an attack against Nakamoto.”

“An attack?”

“Think about it. Nakamoto plans a great, star-studded opening night for their building. They want it to go perfectly. For some reason, a guest at the party gets strangled. And the question is—who called it in?”

“Who reported the murder?”

“Right. Because after all, Nakamoto controls that environment completely: it’s their party, their building. And it would be a simple matter for them to wait until eleven o’clock, after the party was over and the guests had left, to report the murder. If I were preoccupied with appearances, with the nuances of public face, that’s the way I’d do it. Because anything else is potentially dangerous to the corporate image of Nakamoto.”

“Okay.”

“But the report wasn’t delayed,” Connor said. “On the contrary, somebody called it in at eight thirty-two, just as the party was getting under way. Thus putting the whole evening at risk. And our question has always been: who called it in?”

I said, “You told Ishiguro to find the person who called. And he hasn’t done it yet.”

“Correct. Because he can’t.”

“He doesn’t know who called it in?”