The Case of the Mad Scientist

Chapter 14: Practice Makes Perfect

Chapter 14: Practice Makes Perfect

“Here are the addresses of all kore ya mama Pharmaceutics properties. Fortunately they have only one main manufacturing plant. The headquarters are not far off. Their research labs are in the same building as the headquarters offices.”

“Koriyama,” Stella said, correcting the pronunciation.

Blaze looked proud of herself as she placed the list of addresses on a coffee table.

“I have been told,” she went on, “that it is more likely Sorren would be using the research facilities. So I think that is where we should check first.”

Sounded good to me, so I didn’t say anything.

“Stella is still putting the finishing touches on her show, so I guess it’s up to you and me, Sled.”

“Sure, babe.”

I might have been a little more certain if my head didn’t feel like a whole platoon of soldiers were marching around inside it. That sack-key stuff is stronger than it looks. Still, a Private Dick’s gotta do what a Private Dick’s gotta do. I pushed my porkpie hat back an inch and told her, “When do we go?”

“Now. It will take us about two hours to travel to kor aye amma.”

“Koriyama,” said Stella, again.

“Yeah, what I said. We can look around, and later tonight, after the offices have closed down, we’ll go in.”

No one said anything, so I guess the plan was fine with Stella and Tara also. I was happy at the prospect of some action. Sitting around eating funny food is not the lifestyle for an action guy like me.

Stella and Tara left, leaving Blaze and I alone in her hotel room.

“I have arranged for a car to drive us to Corry Amma,” Blaze said. I liked the way she frowned when she tried to pronounce Japanese words. “We leave in twenty minutes.”

Twenty minutes, huh? That didn’t leave us any time for anything but a good, old-fashioned “quickie”, but I didn’t know Blaze well enough to suggest that. Too bad. She did have a nice body and a face that made men’s heads turn every time she walked by. Well, maybe the body did it more, but she was also very pretty.

“Pack an overnight bag,” she said, “we’ll stay in a hotel there and return here tomorrow morning.”

I told her I would meet her in the lobby, and went back to my room.

To take a quickie cold shower.

Well, I actually didn’t, but I did use the time to clean Wilma and make sure she was loaded for bear. Fifteen minutes later I was in the lobby, waiting for Blaze.

The car she had hired was Japanese built and the driver was a teenage girl who looked as if she should be in high school instead of driving people around. I felt like asking if she really had a driver’s license. She bowed to us and invited us into her car.

After a while, I calmed down. She wasn’t a bad driver, and once we were out of the main part of Tokyo the roads became much less crowded. The first thing that surprised me was that there were signs on the freeway much like in California: big green signs with white lettering. Of course, the lettering was in

that funny hen scratching they use instead of letters, but most of the major signs had a translation in English under the Japanese writing.

We were told by our teenager driver that Koriyama was in the Fukushima Prefecture and was a central business city for the area. To the north were the Adatara Mountains (which didn’t look all that big to me, having seen the Sierra Nevada Mountains), Lake Inawashiro to the west (I wondered how the fishing was), and the Abukuma River ran right through town.

It wasn’t a long drive, maybe a hundred miles or so, and it was only mid-morning when we reached that city. Being a big city boy myself, I wasn’t too impressed with the ten or twelve story office buildings, but then I had notice that they don’t make their buildings very tall in Japan. Maybe that had something to do with the earthquakes. We had felt several since we arrived, and were told that they were aftershocks from the big one a few months before. Stella also mentioned that they have almost daily small earthquakes in Japan anyway. It’s a way of life here, she said.

Made me feel right at home, being from Los Angeles and all.

We had her drive us by the headquarters building of Koriyama Pharmaceutics. Wasn’t too impressive, about eight stories tall, looked about forty years old and had only one sign announcing who lived there. And that wasn’t a very big one. We circled it a couple times before making off to the Comfort Hotel. Since it was only a few blocks between our hotel and our target, we told our driver to return for us tomorrow morning and we checked in.

I expected Blaze to have reserved two rooms for us, but was surprised when the desk clerk handed me only one key. On the way up, Blaze took my arm and whispered, “We’re married.” Then she explained that the CIA was short of budget and wanted agents to share rooms. Which was fine with me. I could hardly wait to see what the sleeping arrangements would be.

The room was on the fifth floor, was pretty nice by most standards, and obviously outfitted for foreigners. None of that sleeping on the floor stuff, and all. I could have been in a hotel most any place in California. There were two separate beds. Damn. Well, we were still in the same room.

Blaze put her small suitcase in one corner and I dropped my bag on one of the beds.

A king sized bed would have been nice, but at least there was only a couple feet between the two beds: nice and close.

“First thing is to get some lunch,” she said brightly. “I’m hungry.”

I had to admit that I was hungry also. So we wandered down to the front lobby. The in-house restaurant was Japanese style, even though most of the people in there were non-Japanese. I told Blaze we could look around for something else. Just outside, I looked across the street and my heart leapt for joy! There were the big golden arches of a fast food chain I had grown up with. I practically pulled Blaze across the street.

For the first time in a couple days I had a decent meal: a nice, big, juicy, calorie-loaded hamburger! And french fries. I was in heaven and my stomach thanked me.

Back in the hotel room, hunger of one type satisfied, I stood at the window and looked down the street. There, not far off, was the building we were going to break into that night. I could even see people going in and out the front. Property belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.

As I was looking out, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Turning around, there was Blaze.

“Sled, could I ask a favor of you?”

“Sure, babe, anything.”

“Would you please tie me up?”