Dead Ends and Fresh Starts
"So who are we seeing again?"
"You know," grinned Kagome, "this reminds me a lot of when we first started investigating the Shikon Deal. It was always like this then. We'd go and see people, and talk to them, and try to glean some little piece of information..."
"Yeah, only back then it was my friends we were seeing, not Kanna's, and although I thought I had complete control over the investigation I was sadly mistaken."
"Come on, are you still hung up about that?"
"No, I'm just saying you're a double-crossing sneaky bitch. So who are we seeing again?"
"A guy called..." Kagome squinted at her notebook, "Marco Brunetti. He lives right by this station... uh..." She consulted the notebook again. "Well, I can't pronounce it so never mind. It's the next station anyway, so get ready."
"I hate Venice. Why are there no streets? And did I mention I'm allergic to water?" asked Inu-yasha, who had been almost constantly queasy since they arrived. His experience of boats so far had been limited, bordering on nonexistent, and Kagome's offer to hire a motorboat for a bit of exploration should they decide to take a day off the investigation had been forcefully rejected.
"Twice," said Kagome. "Want me to hold your hand while you walk off the scary boat onto nice, safe ground?"
"Why didn't I ever get offers like that last time I went on a boat and was single?"
"Because you were ten years old and still afraid of girly germs."
The house they were visiting was old, large and very pretty. Kagome whistled her appreciation and then started looking through the names listed by the front door. "Fourth floor," she said. "Must have a nice view." She pressed the button beside Brunetti's name hard, waited for a while and then rang again. After the second time the phone was picked up by a guy who sounded as if he was just out of bed.
"Mm?"
"Hello," said Kagome, cheerfully. "We are from an agency in America called the Youkai Secret Agency. We were wondering if you would spare us – "
"Bugger off," said the guy and put the phone down.
Kagome gritted her teeth, and rang again.
"Just go away," said the voice when the phone was answered the second time. "I don't – "
"As I was saying," Kagome cut off (this time not so cheerfully), "we're from the YSA, a more specialized, more secret and although I'm not supposed to say this more brutal branch of the CIA. Have you ever heard of the CIA, sir?"
"Come up," said the voice and the lock on the door buzzed. Kagome smiled.
"It's all down to having the right rhetoric," she said.
The guy was waiting for them as they arrived on the fourth floor, wearing an old soccer T-shirt over worn jeans. His initially hostile expression changed as he saw them into a sudden, delighted smile, and he clapped his hands together.
"Dio," he exclaimed, "the CIA must surely these days stand for Cute and Irresistibly Attractive! Come in, come in. I will put on coffee."
"I like him already," whispered Kagome to Inu-yasha and grinned.
They were ushered into a living room with a (indeed nice) view of the canal and presented with one cup of coffee each (Kagome pounced on hers as if she hadn't had three cups already that morning). Marco, who had admonished them to call him by his first name, sat down in front of them with his own breakfast.
"I hope you don't mind?" he asked. "I only just got up, you must excuse my rude behaviour earlier."
"No problem," smiled Kagome. "Would you be willing to answer a few questions for us while you eat?"
"When a beauty like you are asking the answer can be no other than yes," grinned Marco. "Has anyone ever told you that you have very pretty eyes?"
"I believe my boyfriend told me as late as yesterday."
"And where is your boyfriend? Is he close?" He quirked his eyebrows.
"Quite close, yes," said Inu-yasha warningly, and had the pleasure of seeing Marco choke on his croissant. "You aren't by any chance related to an American guy called Miroku, are you?"
Marco's eyes lit up. "My second cousin Miroku!" he exclaimed. "Do you know him? How is he? How did you know that I know him?"
"Let's call it an educated guess."
"He's fine," Kagome supplied. "His club's going great. He got his girlfriend to help out and it's being going good ever since."
"His girlfriend?" asked Marco, frowning in confusion. "As in just one girlfriend?"
"Believe me, we're just as surprised."
"Well, this certainly is news." Marco shook his head, smiling. "To think you know Miroku! But you are not here to talk about him. What can I help you with?"
"Do you know someone called Naraku, possibly?" asked Kagome, watching his face carefully for a reaction. The one she got was a puzzled one.
"Naraku..." Marco chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Can't say I recognize his name, no."
"But you know Kanna?"
"Kanna!" Once again, Marco lit up as the name was mentioned. "Don't tell me you know her, too? You do! What a coincidence!"
"Coincidence. Yeah," said Inu-yasha carefully. "We talked to Kanna just before we left America," (this was not strictly true) "and she told us that this guy, Naraku, would be seeking a hiding place here in Venice, possibly through old friends of hers. So we're looking for him."
"Why?" asked Marco innocently.
"We don't like him."
"Fair enough." Marco pulled his brows together in thought. "Now that you mention it... there was a guy here maybe two weeks ago, didn't give his name but said he knew Kanna. He asked for a place to stay but I said he couldn't live with me."
"Why not?"
"Well..." Marco looked quickly from Inu-yasha to Kagome and then put on a pious expression. "Because, to tell the truth, he looked very criminal and I do not have anything to with that kind of stuff anymore."
Inu-yasha stared at him. "Yeah, and my name is Ronald Reagan."
"Is it?"
"No. Come on, we're not stupid. What was the real reason you wouldn't have him?"
Marco grinned. "Alright. I was having a party that weekend and he looked boring. Didn't want to have him around, ruining the mood. Happy?"
"With 'boring', I assume you mean 'prepared to go to the police at the first sign of illegal substances, not that I'd ever allow it at one of my parties'?" said Inu-yasha, and had two replies in the forms of Marco grinning broadly and Kagome kicking his ankle.
"Happy," said latter, knowing that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar and hints about selling the person you're interrogating out to the authorities never work all that well for extracting information. "So what did you suggest him to do?"
"Go and see a couple of friends of mine, all more or less shallow acquaintances of Kanna's. I'll give you the names..." Kagome handed him her notebook and he wrote four names down, complete with addresses. "And I also suggested to him that if he wanted to lie low, he'd do well to get out of Venice. Here everyone knows everyone, and anything that happens becomes known within hours or at the very most a couple of days. If he stayed with anyone here, the ones who were looking for him wouldn't have a hard time finding him."
"What did he say?"
"That he wasn't lying low, he was on a pleasure trip and he didn't have any reason to hide anyway." Marco glanced at Inu-yasha and grinned. "To which I responded that if that were true, my name was Silvio Berlusconi."
"Is it?" asked Inu-yasha.
"No."
"But you don't know whether he did shack up with any of the guys you recommended?" asked Kagome.
"He didn't," Marco replied. "I would have heard. He's not staying with anyone in my circle. So if you want my opinion, I think he's left Venice."
"Damn," said Kagome, frowning. "Well, what date did you meet him here? It would be good to know when he was here, at least, even if he isn't any longer."
"Sure, no problem. It was on the... wait..." He thought hard. "The twenty-sixth of November. Exactly two weeks ago."
"And you don't think he's here anymore?"
Marco shrugged noncommittally. "I think I would have heard."
Feeling disappointed and downtrodden, they took their farewells and left the apartment. "So what do we do now?" asked Inu-yasha, as the door closed behind them. Kagome shrugged, starting to walk down the stairs.
"We still visit all the other names we have. They might have hidden him well enough to escape the grapevine, or they might know something of where he went."
"We'll have to hope he doesn't talk, too," said Inu-yasha, inclining his head in the general direction of Marco's apartment. "It wouldn't be good if he let slip something about our visit and it made its way to Naraku's ears."
"Oh yeah, you're right," said Kagome, ran up the stairs and rang Marco's doorbell again. When he opened the door she gave him her very brightest and cutest smile.
"Forgot to ask," she said, "but would it be too much to ask you to keep quiet about this? It's a bit embarrassing, really... we're not after Naraku as CIA agents, but for personal reasons, and if it comes out that we're abusing our authority like this..." She allowed herself a nervous little laugh. Marco beamed at her.
"Anything for you, bella," he said, and added in a whisper that nevertheless carried to Inu-yasha's sensitive ears, "If ever you decide he is not the one after all, I'm usually free on Saturdays." He tipped her a wink, waved at the glowering Inu-yasha and closed the door.
Sesshoumaru arrived at the YSA office four days later to find it empty.
"Hello?" he called. "Anyone here?" There was a long pause, and then Shippou stuck his head through the doorway to the adjoining room and smiled at him.
"Morning!" he said cheerfully, and disappeared back in. "Sorry, I'm just fixing something here... got it." There was another brief pause and then he appeared in the door, with his whole body this time. "You're here early. What's happened to you? This has to be the third time in a week you actually get up at a normal time."
"Everyone keeps saying this to me. You mean that usually I'm not normal? You don't have to answer that." Sesshoumaru took his coat off and slung it over the back of the armchair, looking around himself. "Are you on office duty by yourself, or what is this?"
"Oh no," said Shippou, gesturing towards the desk where a small black dot was jumping up and down, waving tiny fists and shouting something on the lines of why doesn't anyone ever notice me? "Myoga is here, too."
"Ah. Well, do you have anything for me?"
"Oh yes, of course." Shippou ducked back into the other room for moment and came back with his arms full of paper. Sesshoumaru paled slightly. He hated paperwork with a passion to match Koga's, although unlike Koga he usually found a way to worm out of it.
"Firstly..." Shippou took a sheet of paper from the top of the pile with some difficulty, "I learnt from last time, so here is your personal copy of Inu-yasha and Kagome's latest mail. They're in Venice and, apparently, not turning up much except the fact that Naraku was there, pretty recently. Secondly, here is a copy of yesterday's Evening Post. I marked the article."
"Article?" asked Sesshoumaru, completely at sea.
"Crime Time for a Dime – the rise of fortune tellers in police investigations, by Josie Carter. You had her to lunch."
"Oh!" Sesshoumaru lit up. "She's already got her article out? Wow, that's quick work. I'm impressed."
"Just what were you on about with her, anyway?" asked Shippou, frowning. "I seem to remember you pinning pictures of well-known journalists up on the wall and using them for dartboards. I also seem to remember you asking why, since we have such a thing as Pest Control, they haven't set up permanent base at some of the biggest newspaper offices. And now you're suddenly all matey with one of them? With one of the, I quote yourself, 'biggest worms to ever have pushed their big wet nose into someone's business, except possibly Inu-yasha when he was a fourteen-year-old brat'."
"Shippou," smiled Sesshoumaru, "sometimes you have to stand back on your morals."
"Those morals being...?"
"Certain journalists should be clobbered to death with their laptops or, better yet, be terminated sometime during the first three years of their life before they have time to start spreading their poisonous drivel into the world."
"I think you may be confusing morals with disturbing homicidal fantasies."
"My point is," said Sesshoumaru, ignoring him, "is that sometimes you have to join forces with the enemy. Such as when your goal is to catch another enemy. We had a very nice lunch, during which she gave me what I wanted in exchange for what she wanted. I'm talking about information, not sexual favours," he added, as Shippou looked somewhat disgusted. "She was writing an article about fortune tellers as you may have noticed – apparently one had predicted the attack on the CIA. I got the name of this fortune teller and the means to contact her, and was also told about an earlier prediction she made... guess about what?"
"Dunno," said Shippou, who was still getting over the whole she gave me what I wanted thing.
"About the break-in at the Midnight Bank. All too fluffy to be understood until after the break-in had actually happened, of course, but still. I suggest we go talk to her and see what we can find out. We are going to ask about paintings, screams and coffee machines."
"Sounds good," nodded Shippou. He had not read the article but knew its content very well anyway, having discussed it in depth with Nobby over lunch. "I'm on office duty tomorrow, too, so it'll have to be the day after that. What did you offer that reporter in return, by the way?"
"I told her that I was baffled, that I was certainly considering the possibility that the Midnight Bank case and the break-in at the CIA office were related – this is what the fortune teller had hinted – and I also told her we were taking the predictions very seriously."
"What – oh," Shippou said, realizing the implications. "That way she could print that an agent was baffled, considered the connection possible and so on, and it would sound as if this had been a CIA member talking in an official capacity." He nodded in appreciation. "Nice loophole. I take it you suggested it?"
"Indeed," said Sesshoumaru modestly.
"I bow to your scheming expertise. Well, to get off the subject of journalists, because I think I may be allergic, I have some more things for you." He shifted his hold on the paperwork to hand Sesshoumaru a thick folder. "These are Ayame's credentials. And Sesshoumaru..." He looked troubled. "I'm not entirely certain she can be put above suspicion. I mean, if you have a look at..."
"She didn't do it," said Sesshoumaru.
"Look, I'm not blind and I can see there is or was something going on between her and Koga but we can't let that..."
"I know she didn't do it," Sesshoumaru interrupted, "because I know where she was that night."
Shippou's face went carefully blank.
"Oh for God's sake, is there only one thing on your mind?" Sesshoumaru exclaimed, looking thoroughly exasperated. "I mean yes, you are a seventeen-year-old boy and that explains a lot, but there are limits!"
Shippou thought this was very unfair, considering who was talking.
"I've been talking to her, and she has a watertight alibi," Sesshoumaru went on. "There is no way she could have been able to be at the Midnight Bank at the time. I know this."
"Then why hasn't she said this to the police?"
"Um, yes," said Sesshoumaru, looking a bit uncomfortable. "It's sort of complicated." He paused. "Do not repeat this to Koga. I don't want him getting the wrong ideas."
"Of course not," said Shippou indignantly. "I'm not a gossip like some I could mention."
"I don't gossip. I inform about recent events."
"Of course. Well, about this Ayame – she's a perfect suspect. Just take a look at that folder and you'll see why." As Sesshoumaru opened the file and started leafing through the sheets of paper he continued, "She has a good three years of Technical Education under her belt, and several additional university courses in electronics. Top grades and best of her class every time. She could easily have manipulated those security cameras."
"She could," Sesshoumaru agreed, looking at a particularly glowing report of Ayame's progress in an electronics course in high school. "But she didn't break into that vault. Is that it on the paper front, then?"
"Are you kidding me?" Shippou unceremoniously dumped the rest of the paper onto Sesshoumaru. "These are the records of how those art pieces you asked me to check up on have circulated these past few years. So far I haven't been able to trace more than five. They have really been out of the circulation for a while, all of them. But the ones I have found are very interesting – take this one for example..." He tapped a photo stapled to the topmost wad of paper. "The Diamond's Tear, a fifteenth-century pendant manufactured somewhere in the south of France. It's a very coveted piece, the last of a collection made by..."
"I get it, you know your art," Sesshoumaru interrupted, already irritated from trying to keep all the paper he'd been given from slipping. "Just get to the important stuff, OK?"
"This is important," Shippou protested, an art connoisseur in the making, but did as he was told. "Alright, the Diamond's Tear was stolen eight years ago from a museum in Vienna, Switzerland. Since then there has been no word of it, until just over half a year ago when it was sold to a private collector. This is characteristic for all of the pieces on your list. They have been gone from the market for a long time, and have all appeared again in the last year."
"With 'appeared'... you mean on the black market?"
"No, nothing that official," said Shippou solemnly, shaking his head. "In each case it's been the same procedure – a collector has been offered a deal and has then been able to set a meeting, inspect the item and then buy it. None have refused the offer. Each deal has been highly private and very secretive, and I doubt hardly anyone but the ones who were there know about it."
"And who were there?"
"Well, naturally the seller and the buyer, or rather their representatives. Then of course experts from both sides, to verify the authenticity of the piece. Bodyguards – in this kind of deals there will always be suspicion of violence or a set-up."
On the desk, a tiny voice shouted that if some people didn't start paying it attention real soon, more violence would be forthcoming very soon and very violently. Sesshoumaru ignored it.
"So how have you found out about this then?" he asked.
Shippou shrugged. "Primarily contacts. Art dealers and experts in different areas. The people in this world are awful gossips, and there are always rumours. No matter how quiet a deal is, word gets around. One guy I got hold of had actually been present at one of these deals to verify that Devil on the Rocks – a painting," he added at Sesshoumaru's nonplussed expression, wondering why on earth he put up with people who couldn't tell Mona Lisa from Whistler's Mother without a title plate, "was the actual, original one. It was, by the way."
"And he told you about this meeting? The one that was so hush-hush, speak and we'll cut your throat?"
"He owes me," said Shippou simply. "Anyway, the rest were harder to find out – I've been following up on practically every rumour, trying all the tips my friends gave me, finding out all the potential buyers for each item and then hacking into their computers... takes ages."
"I'm impressed," said Sesshoumaru sincerely. "This is great. You don't have to keep going with this investigation – this is quite enough to confirm… what I wanted to have confirmed. I'll take this," he heaved the pile of paper into a better position, "and I'll be off. I'll call you about seeing the fortune teller!"
"Sure. But hey!"
Sesshoumaru stopped in the door.
"You're not going to tell me what this is all about?" asked Shippou. Sesshoumaru appeared to think about it for a while, and then shook his head with a smile.
"No," he said, "I don't think so. Not quite yet, anyway."
"What? Hey!" ...But Sesshoumaru was gone.
Shippou sighed. "Do you sometimes feel a bit like you don't exist?" he asked philosophically, turning to the black dot on the desk. It burst into tears.
……………………………
This chapter was a bit of an intermezzo… but the plot will start to move along now. (Haven't I already said that?) Well, it will, so there. (Uh…)
So I have four more days left before I quit my job. I have no idea what to do after that… Hopefully I'll be able to work for my friend a couple of days a week, so as to have at least enough money for the rent. And how does this concern us, you ask? Well, when I have a bit more free time I might be able to update a bit more often! (Yaaaay) I hope so, anyway.
Well, until next chapter, have fun! Buh-bye now. ;)
