Free Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein

something better to write about. Maybe something better than a little public service announcement about unsolved crimes.”
    “Like what?”
    “I’ll give you stuff on the pickpocket that none of the other papers has.”
    “That would be nice, but I’m only interested if it’s a total, hands-down, noncompetitive exclusive.” I was feeling cocky.
    “We don’t do that. If we give you the exclusive, all the other reporters who cover this police station are going to come in here whining about unfair treatment.”
    “Let them whine. I have to tell my boss in thirty minutes what I’m turning in for the morning edition. Right now, this serial thief thing is all I’ve got.”
    “Hold on,” he said. “Give me thirty minutes.” He motioned the policewoman over. She brought over a cup of green tea and was about to set it before me when Fuji motioned her to stop. “Would you like coffee instead?”
    “No, no, green tea is fine.”
    “But you prefer coffee, right?”
    “Well …”
    Fuji nodded at her.
    “Cream or sugar?” she asked.
    “Both, please.”
    “Okay, wait here,” Fuji said, stepping away and heading downstairs.
    The coffee was terrible, instant stuff, but it was better than the green tea.
    Fuji returned twenty minutes later. “All right. Meet me at the dojo training hall tomorrow at noon. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about the pickpocket. Think of all the questions you want to ask beforehand, because I’m only doing this once.” And that was that.
    That evening in the press club I told Yamamoto about the deal I’d made. He was pleased but pissed off at the same time.
    “You blackmailed the chief detective for that story?”
    “I didn’t blackmail him. I exchanged one story for another.”
    “You blackmailed him.”
    “Did I make threats?”
    “Well, no.”
    “Okay, then it’s not blackmail.”
    “Adelstein, you’re a real piece of work. You have balls. And you’re sneaky too.”
    “Did I do something wrong?”
    “For all that, you should have gotten a better story out of him, that’s what. A lousy pickpocket was the best you could do?”
    “There wasn’t anything else I wanted.”
    “All right,” he said. “Get the story, type it up, and I’ll try to get the desk editor to give it scoop treatment.”
    When I got to the training hall the next day, Fuji was inside waiting, sitting cross-legged on the tatami with a sheaf of papers in his lap. I took off my shoes, stepped onto the tatami, and sat across from him in the formal
seiza
position, knees together and feet tucked under my ass.
    Fuji took off his glasses, put them down beside his knees, and looked me over. I took out my notepad and pen.
    “Adelstein.”
    “Yes, Fuji-san.”
    “Your socks don’t match.”
    I looked down. It was true. I had on one gray sock and one black sock. I hadn’t planned on being shoeless. “I’m sorry. I was in a rush this morning.”
    Fuji shook his head. “You’re a strange one. I thought you were clueless, but you actually seem to know what you’re doing. Then again, you can’t even match your own socks.”
    “This is true.”
    “In the eight years I have been a detective, I have never given a reporter a scoop.”
    “I am honored to be the first.”
    “And the last. You are to tell no one I told you about this case. If people ask you how you got the scoop, what are you going to say?”
    “I’m not sure anyone will care.”
    “Oh, they will. I know your kind.”
    “My kind?”
    “Reporters. So what will you say?”
    I thought for a moment. “I’ll say that someone leaked the story out of headquarters to my boss and I was forced to write it up because it was on my beat.”
    “Excellent answer.”
    Fuji then outlined the sequence of events leading up to the arrest of the pickpocket, the interesting angles to the story, the pickpocket’s date of birth, and the number of cases he’d confessed to. He then patiently answered all my other questions.
    He never gave me