Lady Joker, Volume 1

by Kaoru Takamura

  Once he had shifted into gear, Murai started barking out instructions even to Negoro, who sat half-asleep over in the Reserve section. “If this keeps up, we won’t have much to fill pages, so make those articles on the two credit associations and the candidates in the gubernatorial election on the longer side. You can even run each candidate’s self-recommendation remarks.”

  “Yes,” Negoro replied, but instead of turning on his computer, he stood up to go to the lavatory and devoted ample time to washing and shaving his face.

  A pale seamless gray filled the world outside the windows of the news room, as if they were ensconced in a cloud, and large snowflakes continued to fall on the moat of Chidori-ga-fuchi just beneath them. Several of the reporters who had been called in during the wee hours after news of the incident broke were stretched out on the row of sofas near the windows. The rest were either staked out on the frontlines in Omori and Sanno or stalking an early-morning interview subject, mindful of the news embargo.

  On the other side, the editor-in-chief and managing editor, along with the chiefs of Metro, Political, Finance, and Layout, had been locked in a meeting since around 7:30 a.m. Based upon Chief Sugano’s assessment from MPD that there was unlikely to be any movement in the abduction and unlawful confinement of the president of Hinode Beer, and that the police had not yet narrowed down any suspects, they were discussing what to do with the Metro pages should the situation remain unchanged for the foreseeable future.

  The Political and Finance sections had the nationwide local elections in two weeks to worry about, and if the news embargo were not lifted until right before the election, media coverage would then be dominated by news about the kidnapping, which would have a detrimental impact on voter turnout, so they were rightly concerned about the outlook of the situation. Depending on how it developed, they might have to redraw a significant portion of their election projection map, and the anticipation of election results could even have considerable effects on both exchange rates and stock prices.

  Meanwhile the Metro section had a backlog of crucial incidents all requiring follow-up articles, so if the present situation were to drag on, they would run into complications with dispatching reporters. What was more, their branch manager in Hachioji, whose older brother was a human resources manager at Hinode Beer’s main office, proffered the information that late last year, Hinode had distributed a strictly confidential manual detailing the company’s crisis management system to the leadership at each of their branch and sales offices, which did not bode well for Toho’s reporting going forward.

  Hinode had overhauled their online system last fall, and the company had installed a new access management and feedback system, in addition to strengthening their system surveillance. Since then the addresses and phone numbers of all executive staff above the level of manager had apparently been scrubbed from company directories and computer files. This meant that Hinode had presumably contracted with a specialized overseas insurance affiliate to install a risk management system—these were not yet widespread in Japan—and since the existence of such a contract itself would be considered a trade secret, no one outside the company would have known about it. When Negoro floated this story past Sugano, he gave his own opinion on the matter. “I’ve heard that Hinode’s negotiations with Limelight over their merger leaked straight to the CIA, so no doubt Hinode’s on their toes now.”

  Before going into the executive meeting, the Metro chief, Toru Maeda, had rubbed his ample belly and remarked, “This is a quandary . . .” But from where Negoro sat in the Reserve section, the elation evident on Maeda’s face suggested that the situation, though still a quandary, was not entirely unwelcome.

  The first words out of Maeda’s mouth when he got to the office shortly after two that morning had been, “Bet this is linked to extortionists.” And shortly after, a reporter covering the evening interview session at the District Public Prosecutor’s Office informed them from the courthouse kisha club that some of the officers from the special investigative division of the District Public Prosecutor’s Office had indeed been summoned to meet at 7 a.m., and another reporter on his morning interview prowl at the MPD kisha club—this was before 6 a.m.—confirmed that the Fourth Investigation Division in charge of corporate extortion would most likely be convened at the Special Investigation Headquarters set up at Omori Police Department. Following Maeda’s speculation, at dawn the Metro section had tweaked the assignment chart and rounded up however many reporters they could find to hit up extortionists and their corporate underlings, and they had just fanned out.

  If extortionists were involved then organized crime would soon follow. In certain cases even ultranationalists and politicians might be in the mix. Before the war, because of the liquor tax, Hinode Beer had a history of involvement with the political world, and though they treaded much more carefully after the war, there was no doubt that they were among the corporations inducted into the troika of politics, bureaucracy, and business established alongside the “1955 system” of the Liberal Democratic Party’s decades-long dominance. There was also no doubt that, judging from their purchase record of political party fund-raising tickets, Hinode’s pipeline to the current political world ran through Taiichi Sakata, who served as the Secretary-General of the LDP. There had been no particular problems as of yet between Sakata and Hinode, but the so-called “S. Memo” that emerged during the infamous Ogura Transport and Chunichi Mutual Savings Bank scandal had belonged to none other than Sakata himself. Behind the ultranationalist Zenzo Tamaru, who had maneuvered behind the scenes to bring down Chunichi, was the group known as the Okada Association, which held in its arsenal extortionists, corporate raiders, and loan sharks, and behind Okada the vast crime syndicate the Seiwakai stood in the wings. Now that the head of the corporation had been kidnapped, it would be impossible for the investigating authorities not to be gravely concerned about these mysterious connections.

  Negoro returned to his seat as he ran through all this in his mind. “Go get some coffee,” he said to the reporter in the Reserve section who was yawning repeatedly beside him. “But before you do—those interviews you got from the campaign offices of the gubernatorial candidates? For the piece that didn’t make it in yesterday? I’m going to use some of the comments, so could you show them to me?”

  “If you like, I also have what I call the Collected Off-the-Record Pomposity,” the reporter said as he slid over a few pages of notes and walked away. Up until the previous night he had been part of the election reporting team.

  Negoro turned on his computer and glanced at the first line of the notes. But his gaze soon drifted away, and he wasted several more minutes before starting to work. By and large, the distance he felt toward each new incident widened year after year, and the victim’s suffering resonated less and less with him, but still, in his own way, Negoro could not keep himself away from the scent of the trail. He left his computer as it was and reached for the receiver of the outside line. He dialed the eight-digit number and stared into the void outside the window as he listened to the ringtone.

  The call should have connected with a desk of one of the prosecutors on the eighth floor of the joint government building of the Legal Affairs and Public Prosecutors Bureau, not so far away from Toho’s main office. The occupant of said desk, if Negoro’s assumption was correct, was currently in charge of the fraudulent loan case involving the two credit unions, and he and his clerk should have been knee-deep in a mountain of confiscated documents, flipping through payment slips and slaving away from eight in the morning till all hours of the night. He was a guy Negoro had become friendly with three years ago, while he was the chief reporter at the courthouse kisha club, but it had been at a used bookstore in Kanda where they had gotten to know each other. He was an avid reader with a sincerity about him, yet for someone who worked in the special investigation division he was surprisingly unconcerned with ranks or factions—still in his youth, he was that rare p
rosecutor who did not consider himself a member of the elite.

  The phone picked up after three rings. The fact that the guy who answered was at his desk now meant that he was not among the special investigation prosecutors who had been temporarily summoned onto the Hinode Beer case, but since Negoro’s acquaintance with him had never been about work, he had no reason to be disappointed.

  “I’m calling from Sanseido Bookstore in Kanda,” Negoro identified himself with their standard code.

  “I thought I’d deposited my payment last month,” came the prosecutor’s reply. “How’re you hanging in over there? Must be busy. Did you stay overnight?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. How about you?” Negoro asked.

  “Seems like I won’t be involved.”

  “Does that mean you’ll still come out for some saké under the cherry blossoms? It’s almost that time of year.”

  “Let’s do that, if it ever stops snowing,” the prosecutor replied affably.

  “By the way, and I guess I’m not entirely without ulterior motives here, but your brother-in-law, he’s at Omori Police Department now, isn’t he?”

  As soon as Negoro broached the subject, he thought he heard a bitter laugh on the other end of the line.

  “Well that one, he’s much more of a stiff than I am, so I doubt he’ll be of any use to you. Though he has changed somewhat lately . . . I guess he’s heading into a pretty difficult stage in his life, age-wise.”

  Whenever he talked about his former brother-in-law, the prosecutor allowed fragments of his emotional life to slip out from beneath the armor of his work, and the tone of his voice also turned ambiguous. As far as Negoro knew, the prosecutor’s former brother-in-law, Yuichiro Goda, was the only person he ever allowed into his simple bachelor life, and he was the only person whom the prosecutor ever spoke about.

  Last year, when this detective Goda had been transferred from MPD’s First Investigation to a local precinct, there had been talk that he had been demoted over mismanagement of some case, but at the time Negoro recalled that the prosecutor, in a moment of confidence, admitted, “The mid-thirties are a difficult time for a man.” He must have been close in age to Goda, so perhaps he had been talking about himself.

  At any rate, Negoro had met Goda three years ago under some circumstance or other, and he could vividly recall the fierce look in the eyes of the shrewd detective from First Investigation, who was at the time in the throes of an investigation, with no time to care about other people. Negoro didn’t know how a person like that might have changed in three years, but he remembered his impression of the raw fragility and youthfulness peeking out from the fringes of Goda’s arrogant gaze. Whatever his motives were, Negoro felt a desire to meet him again.

  “We don’t have to talk about work, let’s meet for a drink soon. I’d like to see Goda-san again. I don’t know how to say this, but there was something magnetic about his eyes.”

  The prosecutor once again let out a private, amiable laugh, and replied gamely, “Give me a call when you have the time. I’m not sure if he’ll go along, but it might do him some good to breathe in some fresh air, too. I’d love it if you could school him on the everyday world.”

  “Of course. I’ll definitely call you.”

  “Talk to you soon then. Goodbye.”

  As he replaced the receiver, Negoro blinked away the image of the noble-faced prosecutor, whose courtesy always remained genuine. He also pushed aside the image of Detective Goda’s slender face, which had seemed both haughty and delicate when he had seen it three years ago. Returning to the second line of the reporter’s notes, he began gathering the comments of the gubernatorial candidates.

  2

  Kyosuke Shiroyama

  Kyosuke Shiroyama lost consciousness, hurtling into a void of spiritual darkness, shuddering beneath a force that pressed down on him like densely packed mud. When he came to for the briefest of moments, there was again a suffocating heaviness, now the mud was jolting up and down, he heard a groaning sound, and again he sank deeply into nowhere.

  He did not know how much time had passed, but as he ever so briefly floated up yet again from the depths of the mud, all at once Shiroyama saw a dark blood-red stain before his eyes. The pool of red caught fire as it seeped into the mud, and just as it transformed into a fetid, roaring flame, an ear-splitting clatter erupted. He heard the wail of a fire bomb as it cut through the sky, and countless cries mingled with the sound of sirens, signal bells, and the bellowing of the volunteer guards.

  You two over there! Who do you belong to? Where are your parents? What are you doing? Why haven’t you evacuated to the shelter yet?

  My sister and I, we’re from the Shiroyama Clinic in Shinagawa. Our parents are at the clinic.

  Shinagawa is burning! Hurry up and take shelter. Someone, take these children with you!

  You two, you’ve lost your parents? Come with us aunties—quick, get going!

  Mister, do you know the Shiroyama Clinic by the west exit of Shinagawa Station? My sister and I, our parents run the Shiroyama Clinic. Please, does anybody know the Shiroyama Clinic in Shinagawa?

  Who do these two belong to? Has anyone seen their parents?

  How old are you two? Eight and four? If you’re from a family of doctors, then you must have had plenty to eat. I’m sorry, I don’t have enough hot water for your little sister.

  My sister is fine, thank you.

  In his dream, Shiroyama felt a chafing thirst. His eight-year-old self stared resentfully at the bottle that a lady he did not know was giving to an infant in her arms, as he crouched next to his younger sister, who would not stop crying, and placed a hand over her mouth. Nevertheless, the eight-year-old Kyosuke did not look all that frightened, and since he was warmly bundled in a jacket of fine woolen cloth, he was in no danger of being cold, nor was he hungry either. His younger sister, Haruko, still so little, did nothing but cry, but Kyosuke had a tacit understanding of why their physician father and mother worked so tirelessly day and night tending to patients. His mother occasionally returned to their home in Sanno Ni-chome to hide special procurement cans of food and dried biscuits in the deep recesses of the kitchen cabinet with strict instructions—“Never tell the neighbors about them”—and he knew to take them out and eat them whenever he and his sister were hungry, and then to dispose of them by crushing the empty cans and burying them in a corner of the yard. He wanted to share the food with his neighborhood friends, but he also had the presence of mind to know not to because once he did, that would be the end. Other things he must have known were that enemy planes targeting the switchyard were closing in on the area around Shinagawa Station where his parents’ clinic was located; that sooner or later the clinic would be burned to the ground; that his mother and father would probably die—and the face of the child who Shiroyama saw now in his dream-like trance wore grown-up expressions of those who understood such logic all too well.

  As he listened to the rumbling of the fire bombs in a corner of the air-raid shelter, his eight-year-old mind continued to wonder. If their parents were to die, he and his sister would be taken into an orphanage. There they would be under the watchful eye of a terrifying custodian, their every move scrutinized, forced to sleep in a dirty bed, slapped if they cried, or beaten if they failed to respond quickly enough. He could get by without books or toys, but he could not stand being hit, so perhaps it would be better to run away and live on the streets. If it came to that, he would take the books and kimonos from his parents’ home and sell them.

  Shiroyama strained his ears against the exhaustive ruminations of his eight-year-old self and peered at his obstinate, peculiarly sangfroid expression, he sank yet again into the bottomless mud, thrust down by a mass of bitter confusion.

  When he regained consciousness, at first Shiroyama writhed against the dull pain that permeated every inch of his body, but his heart lurched as he realized that
he could not move his arms or legs, the blood rippling through every vessel in his head. He had no sense of which way was forward or back, nor any means of determining that, which sent him into a panic. For a few seconds, perhaps longer, he screamed at the furious beating of his heart and the throbbing in his head. In reality he was unable to make a sound, but the howling of his every muscle and cell created a vibration and his whole body trembled.

  Then, just when it seemed that silence had abruptly returned, he was besieged by an astonishing thought—I am going to die. Shrouded by an otherworldly chill, he remembered how, long ago, the same sensation had always engulfed him in the midst of the air raids. Deranged and confused, the thought repeated itself—I am going to die—and his entire body seized up, this time by a strangely cold terror and grief. Death was something that appeared as a sudden shock, and if there was even the slightest delay in its onset, terror arrived in its stead, and with even more time to spare, a deep grief soon followed. I see, so this is what it feels like to die.

  From a vast reservoir of sorrows—each one formless and indistinguishable—Shiroyama tried urgently to single out something recognizable before losing all hope, and he wept bitterly. The faces of his children, Mitsuaki and Shoko, from when they were young and from when they were grown up jumbled together in his mind. Meanwhile he could not even remember now what his wife of many years had looked like that morning as he left the house—the only image he could manage to reel in was a blurry face from who knew which era in his life; he was not sure if it even belonged to Reiko. In his mind, he begged his wife for forgiveness and hoped that she would be able get by with his life insurance, savings, and the property in Sanno Ni-chome. In between such thoughts fluttered the azure-blue label of Hinode Meister, the new product set to launch on April 1st, and the dancing amber-colored bubbles of their second Hinode lager, three years in the making.