The doll girl didn’t say anything as she went to the door and threw back the bolt.
“I apologize for barging in so early in the morning,” said a very haggard Mayor Kajiwara, stepping into the house.
“You’ve arrived at exactly the right time!” Tonbeau said with an excited little jump. “You don’t need to apologize for anything. I was just thinking of ringing you up. We need to talk. Supposing I was able to rid Shinjuku of all that ails it at the moment—”
“I’ll pay whatever I can.” In front of the pair of greedy eyes, he thrust out a brown overnight bag.
“What?”
“Whatever I’ve got in my pockets. But first you need to take care of this.”
Tonbeau and the doll girl exchanged glances. The mayor placed the bag on the table and unzipped it with stiff hands. He reached in, then thought better of it and backed away.
“I put it in there, but lack the confidence to extract it. If you would, please.”
“Me? No way. What the hell is it?”
“A wooden box.”
“A box?”
“Yes. But no ordinary knick-knack. There’s a dragon and tiger painted on the cover. They escaped last night.”
They didn’t doubt what he said was true, not in Demon City. At the same time, Tonbeau picked up on something else.
“They were certainly there to guard the box,” she observed, a white-hot intensity in her voice. “If they escaped, it must have been because they were beckoned by the person they were supposed to protect. Or went to her on their own volition.”
“That’s not all,” Kajiwara said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “After the creatures took off, I peeked inside the box and saw green forests and fields beneath white clouds. And from the window of a magnificent mansion, an old man the size of a grain of sand looking back at me.”
“You don’t say.”
Tonbeau wasn’t addressing the mayor, but the bag on the table. She opened it and peered at the thing inside. Her beefy arms reached in.
“I shut the top right away. A minute later I tried to open it again, but couldn’t. I wasn’t dreaming. So I brought it here. An item like this can’t be casually tossed aside. This is a mystery that needs unraveling. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Her fat wrist disappeared inside the bag and stopped. “Worth how much?”
“I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”
“Make sure those arrangements amount to more than a trifling.”
“Rest assured they will be made.”
Tonbeau harrumphed and fell silent. A trifling was all she could expect. She wouldn’t have been surprised at all to learn the mayor’s salary. Though official salaries amounted to no more than sparrow’s tears, the movers and shakers in Demon City could expect to receive generous additional perks and benefits. The “honorariums” bestowed on Shinjuku’s civil service whenever a “specialty product” was added to the list of “allowable exports” were frequent and generous.
Tonbeau smiled, as if to say: Then let it be so. There would be many more ways to skin this particular cat.
“Let’s see what the fuss is all about, shall we?”
She buried her arms in the bag down to her elbows. And removed them without incident. The doll girl focused her attention on the cracked and desiccated surface. Small colorful flecks fell off.
“A part of the paintings. It seems to have been damaged when the creatures fled.”
Tonbeau seized the lid. The mayor took a deep breath. She exerted all her strength but the lid didn’t budge. She jiggled it back and forth and lifted the box off the table.
Then softly set it down. “It is sealed with magic, and securely at that. However, Mr. Mayor, those guardian beasts didn’t lay a hand on you. They were in a hurry to get somewhere. Or crazed out of their minds. You give the box a good shaking?”
“Ah, yeah,” Kajiwara answered with a vague nod. “The top wouldn’t come off again, so I turned it upside-down too.”
“And maybe that drove them out of their little heads. I wonder how old this thing is. I haven’t seen a complex gadget like this in a hundred years.”
“Is there nothing you can do about it?”
“I can’t make any firm promises, but—hoh, this is beginning to sound like a business negotiation.”
“I have promised you remuneration.”
Tonbeau raised the box overhead. That view proved no more revealing. And yet she smiled broadly. “We’ll do whatever we can do. I assume you won’t mind entrusting it to our care for the time being.”
“That would be fine.” Kajiwara finally felt the tension beginning to unwind. “In fact, I stopped at Mephisto Hospital on the way here, but the director was nowhere to be found.”
“The doctor wasn’t in?” said the doll girl.
“He hasn’t told us where he is, only that he is working on behalf of the city, he and Aki-san too.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then. I shall bid you goodbye. My wife is waiting with the car. Later.”
After Kajiwara left, the dawning light mixed with a heavy silence that filled the room.
“This is it,” Tonbeau said in a tired voice. “No mistake about it.”
“Can it be opened?”
“One way or another. The mayor managed to peek in once. The timing probably coincided with the mechanism being thrown out of kilter. In that case, we should be able to duplicate a similar chain of events.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“The problem is, which comes first? The box or that lover boy you’re so fond of?”
Tonbeau pursed her lips in evident pleasure. Her ability to look the total bitch no matter how good a mood she was in was one of her more particular characteristics.