The time was now 11:53 a.m. Kubo turned back to his work on the draft, which had been interrupted, and recounted the number of lines in the last paragraph.
. . . With the victim safely in protective custody, yet neither the objective nor motive of the perpetrators known, Investigation Headquarters increased the number of investigators to three hundred, who are dedicated to a thorough inquiry and are gathering information from eyewitnesses. In addition, Hinode Beer held a press conference at their main office at 10 a.m., during which Vice President Sei’ichi Shirai, looking visibly relieved, recounted the details of the incident, and expressed their consternation at being the target of such an unimaginable and heinous crime, as well as their acute outrage toward the perpetrators.
This would add thirteen lines to what had appeared in the second edition. Kubo was unsure about the clause, “yet neither the objective nor the motive of the perpetrators known.” Was it worded too strongly? Did it betray his personal feelings, that the explanation of the victim’s release was unsatisfactory? To hell with it, he thought as he deleted it and rewrote the beginning of the paragraph as, Now that President Shiroyama is reportedly safe in protective custody . . . Then he considered the phrase, “acute outrage toward the perpetrators.” He tried to recall whether the vice president who had appeared at the press conference had really sounded all that outraged and, deciding it didn’t matter either way, he also scrapped the word “acute.”
For the second-edition draft he had submitted an hour and a half ago, he had barely managed to insert the facts and format them into the semblance of an article, but from the looks of it he would not have anything significant to add for the third edition, and this irritated Kubo as he continued to type. Over the last two and a half days, he had been calling every single one of his dozen sources, but his contacts at Special Investigation headquarters remained even more tight-lipped than usual. Meanwhile, thanks to strict confidentiality this time, his sources who did not have any connection to headquarters received no information whatsoever regarding the investigation, and as a result no story reached Kubo from them, either.
What would be revealed in the noon press conference that would start in three minutes? The course of events from abduction to release. The victim’s condition when held hostage. What the crime group had said and done. Whether or not there was a ransom demand. Any clue that could lead to the perpetrators’ profile. If only he knew these things, he’d be able to fill up the third and the final evening editions, but the real problem was the next morning’s edition and every one after that. As he anxiously wondered what the hell he would do tomorrow if he didn’t get his hands on a lead—any lead—Kubo looked at the clock and then, leaving the blank spaces in his draft for the time being, he got up from his desk. Next to him, Kuriyama was hastily laying out a document with a timetable, leaving various parts of the main text empty, while deep in conversation with someone on an outside line; and beside Kuriyama was their junior colleague Kondo, who was constitutionally unfit for these journalistic battles that required him to hit the ground running without even thinking, looking as if he might actually burst into tears as he silently dialed a number on the phone. Kubo called out to these two as well as to Chief Sugano, “I’m going to the press conference,” and he left the nook.
Kubo knew he ought to lend a helping hand to his younger colleague, but despite this inclination, he could never afford to do so. For the two years since he’d been moved to the MPD beat from the Sendai branch office—every second of every day—Kubo couldn’t shake the obsessive feeling that he himself was falling one, then two steps behind his competitors. Or rather, like he was in a permanent and unmanageable state of excitement. Even during the ten or so seconds it took him to walk to the press conference hall, Kubo realized that still, after all this time, he felt buoyed with excitement, and he wallowed for a while in this mild discomfort. When he had no story, he became excited even as he felt anxious, and chasing leads was so stimulating that in the end he lost track of what he was even doing. The truth was that, night and day, his mind was consumed with chasing stories.
News of the victim’s safe return would ordinarily have resulted in the disclosure of information related to the investigation that had yet to be made public, but that seemed unlikely this time. The fact that the hostage had suddenly been released after fifty-six hours of captivity led him to assume that either a ransom had been secretly paid out or there had been some kind of backroom deal, but it was next to impossible to back up such speculations. While the investigation would inevitably drag on, the beer company and the police were likely to become only more tight-lipped.
Under such circumstances, Kubo grew even more anxious that if he did not find a story—no matter how small—one of the other papers would beat him to the punch, and in his mind he ran through the interviews he had planned for the day, after filing his draft for the final edition. For now, he would wait to decide on whom to chase down, depending on the contents of the imminent press conference, and he would call a few of his sources. There would also be the call from his guy at Marunouchi Police Department after 2 p.m. If he had time after that, he would stop by the Metro desk at Toho’s main office—only a five-minute walk from MPD—where he might pick up a few details while making small talk, and his night entailed wining and dining his sources while fishing for leads. Then there’d be the evening interview session.
As these last thoughts occurred to him, Kubo drew to one side of the hallway, furtively taking out his wallet to check that there was about a hundred thousand yen in it. Some of his sources liked to drink at bars that did not accept credit cards. Putting his wallet back in his pocket, Kubo dashed into the press conference hall.
根来史彰 Fumiaki Negoro
“Six hundred million! Six hundred million!” shouted the slot editor Kei’ichi Tabe, the phone receiver in one hand. “The perps demanded six hundred million!”
The news room floor stirred for a moment, then someone from the layout desk cried out, “Six hundred million? You sure? Then we’ll go with six hundred million demanded as the front-page headline!”
“Have they paid that yet, or not?” asked another.
“The perps told Hinode’s president they’d be in touch, then they let him go—” Tabe shouted back.
Fumiaki Negoro looked up at the wall clock, which showed 1:15 p.m. His hand paused on the corrections he was making to the draft of an article and he promptly began rifling through the heap of articles for the Metro page before him. The nuance of many of these articles would change now that a monetary demand had become clear. Notwithstanding suspicions about backroom deals, any mention along the lines of the “perpetrators’ motives remain unknown” had to be either deleted or replaced.
First, on the chronological list of incidents of corporate terrorism, “Abduction and Unlawful Confinement of Hinode Beer President” would have to be changed to “Kidnapping for Ransom.” Next, he needed to check or swap out comments from experts and sources in the financial and liquor industries and Hinode’s rival companies. Some statements were difficult to give the axe to, and for those he’d hand the article to one of the reserve reporters hanging around and have them call the source to reconfirm. Now, the chronology of the incident in relation to Hinode should be okay as it was; the profile on the company president as well. Also fine was the testimony from the staff member of the fire department at the foot of Mt. Fuji who told the press corps, “When he told me he was the president of Hinode Beer and asked me to alert the police, his words and expression were so clear and resolute—I could scarcely believe it. I never would have imagined that this person had been held against his will in the mountains for dozens of hours.”
Even as Negoro continued revising, putting in calls to the respective reporters and making the corrections himself, follow-up items from the kisha club were zinging past his desk and the phone was ringing off the hook with calls from reporters out in the field dictating the
ir stories. Time was running out—reporters in the Reserve and slot editor’s section typed furiously as they improvised articles on their computers, phone receivers tucked between their shoulders and ears—calling to mind the scene in the Kabuki drama Kanjincho, when Benkei contrives to recite from what is, in fact, a blank scroll. The time was now 1:25 p.m.
“There were six adhesive body warm patches, not five. Fix it.”
“His mouth was taped with duct tape. His blindfold was a handkerchief, the president’s own!”
Amid the whirl of such cries, someone handed Negoro an item that had come in from the deputy chief reporter to check. Negoro’s eyes flitted over the draft, which read: Food supplied to the victim at the hideout included six rice balls, four pastry buns, two bananas, three mandarin oranges, two blocks of processed cheese, and two cans of pork and beans. In addition, they gave him paper cartons of oolong tea, orange juice, and fruit-flavored milk . . .
“We have the address of the hideout!” someone shouted.
“Fuji Village, number twelve. A vacation home, single story, a bit more than five hundred thirty square feet. Owner’s name is Takeji Sasamoto. The place is in shambles, hasn’t been used for years. Electric, gas, water have all been turned off. A police dog detected the place by scent. Fingerprints and footwear impressions are forthcoming—”
“Matsuoka! Add what you just heard to your article. Yamane, you contact the owner. Layout, hold off on the Metro page! Negoro, I need that draft now, quick!”
“Hurry it up!” Layout replied with typical urgency.
An abandoned, snowbound vacation home with no one around, Negoro thought. For a brief moment he tried to imagine the house that served as the hideout, but his eyes were already racing after the wording “they gave him paper cartons of oolong, tea, orange juice, and fruit-flavored milk.” No sooner had his hand automatically changed “they gave him” to “he was given,” he passed back the draft, saying, “Give this to the slot.” It wasn’t until after he had handed it off that his mind finally made the connections—the six heat patches; the details about the food; the reason the victim had appeared so calm when he arrived at the fire station; why, at the Fujiyoshida Police Department, when asked if he wanted anything to eat, he had requested only a cup of hot tea—but it was too late.
Negoro glanced over at his colleagues in the Reserve section. Then, after checking the pile of paper on his desk to make sure there were no stray drafts, he went ahead and let out a deep sigh of relief from his seat. The clock on the wall read 1:32 p.m.
Having filed their articles, the reporters were beginning to stretch and quietly drift away from their desks. The slot editor announced, “There’ll be a five-minute meeting at one fifty-five!” Negoro sipped an oolong tea—his third of the day—from the vending machine and bit into a piece of dried sour kelp from the stash he kept in his desk drawer. He had been glued to his seat since the incident occurred, and his lower back felt heavy. He didn’t have the luxury of taking a walk to clear his mind, though the younger fellows had already disappeared, using the brief window to make personal calls to their sources or take a break, leaving the Reserve section completely empty.
Negoro knew the evening edition that had just gone to press would be the last time they got away with inconsequential factoids such as orange juice and fruit-flavored milk. Starting with tomorrow’s morning edition, their pages would have to zero in on the truth behind the incident. More than anything, there was the mystery of why the crime group had suddenly released their hostage while demanding six hundred million in ransom. In the meeting that was about to begin, no doubt the Metro chief would ask, “So, Negoro, what do you think?” Just how would he respond?
For now, it was certain that this crime had targeted the Hinode Beer corporation. Since Negoro was in charge of feature articles, his first task was to gather a wide range of reactions and testimonies from the main player and victim—Hinode—as well as from those connected to the organization. Follow-up stories spanning the public and private life of the individual victim, Kyosuke Shiroyama, were also crucial. Since the victim had returned unharmed, another option would be to double down on covering the peripherals of the incident—depending on how the investigation developed. For instance, he could run a three-part series about why the CEO had been targeted. The first installment would list kidnapping cases involving executives of Western companies. The second installment would cover how Japanese companies, in the context of the current economic stagnation and stalled structural development within industries, have detected and responded to various corporate risks, and so on.
But there was a limit to how many features he could run on the topic of corporations. There had to be a reason the perpetrators had chosen Hinode from among the multitudes of major companies. No doubt backroom deals had been made, but the persons in question would never admit anything, and if the police did not formally release the information, he could not write about it anyway. From his position at the helm of the Metro page, he knew they had no choice but to wait for a criminal profile on the perpetrators to become a little clearer. If nothing emerged, coverage of the impending elections would supersede articles about the incident, forcing them back to the drawing board.
He mulled over such things as he bit into another piece of kelp. Just then he saw a light on the phone blink, signaling an incoming call on the outside line, and he reached for the receiver.
“Metro,” he answered. His eye caught the wall clock. 1:39 p.m.
“Is Takeshi Kikuchi-san there?” A man who sounded like he was in his sixties or seventies, his voice muffled with a thick Kansai accent.
In that instant, Negoro managed to rouse his rusty instincts as an investigative reporter, and he pressed the receiver to his ear. “May I ask who’s calling?”
“Name’s Toda. Wanna talk to Kikuchi-san. Go get him.”
A person in whom, in various ways, very little patience remained. Either he had given up on society or had never trusted it in the first place—whichever the reason, there was a sense of arrogance, or perhaps it was despair, in the way he refused to even bother speaking in complete sentences. A life lived in defiance. Negoro’s imagination spun out in a conditioned reflex. Nevertheless, he was sure that the speaker on the other end of the line was not an underworld character—distinguishable by a subtle difference in his tone.
“I’m sorry, but Takeshi Kikuchi works for the Metro section of the Osaka bureau. Perhaps I can help you instead? My name is Negoro, I work in the Metro section here.”
“If Kikuchi-san’s not there, then who’s responsible for writing that article about the Ogura Transport and Chunichi Mutual Bank scandal? Get me that guy.”
Ogura Transport. Chunichi Mutual Bank. Hearing these two names struck something of a chord with Negoro. Back in 1990, Negoro, who had been working out of the courthouse kisha club at the time, had snagged a lead from a source at the public prosecutor’s that a big-shot politico and an ultranationalist were behind the uproar over the founding clan of Chunichi Mutual Bank’s transferring their shares over to a third party. However, a year went by and Negoro had been unable to get any traction on the lead. In 1991 came the announcement that Toei Bank, a major city bank, was to absorb Chunichi Mutual. By that time Negoro had moved on to a different beat. When a leak from the public prosecutor finally brought to light the so-called “S. Memo” scandal—a former Minister of Finance had reportedly promised to support Toei’s bailout of Chunichi Mutual Bank, with a big-time ultranationalist playing go-between—Negoro figured that a police investigation would finally excavate the crime. But in the end, the scandal concluded with a group of corporate raiders and the executives at Ogura Transport being charged with malfeasance. Negoro still carried a vivid memory of his regret at not being able to dig deeper into the story.
Negoro swiftly racked his brain, looking for an immediate response. It was unlikely that this guy Toda, calling the Metro section of Toho N
ews now, would have contacted Takeshi Kikuchi back then about the scandal. Kikuchi had always worked for the Osaka bureau; even though he had been transferred to the Tokyo Metro section in the late ’80s, he had returned to Osaka by 1990, and so he had never been part of the reporting team for the Ogura Transport and Chunichi Mutual Bank Scandal, which broke the following year.
So the guy on the phone and Kikuchi must have come into contact earlier, on a different case. Or perhaps, like Negoro, Kikuchi had sniffed out the story on Ogura and Chunichi early on while he was still in Tokyo and had been sleuthing around for information. But Negoro had no personal relationship with Kikuchi, thus he had no way of knowing which might be the case.
“Back then our slot editors rotated being in charge,” Negoro offered a lie for the time being. “If this is about Ogura Transport and Chunichi Mutual Bank, I was also on the reporting team so I may be able to help you.”
Negoro could feel the caller hesitating for a second or two on the other end. “Just so you know, I’m not leaking this for money,” the man said. Following, unexpectedly, with “This is about Hinode.”
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 43