Sins As Scarlet

by Nicolas Obregon

  ‘Yeah. Same for me.’

  Over the next few weeks, as summer turned to autumn, Nozomi and Kimura began to see more and more of each other. He lived in an old apartment block in Ikebukuro and she would frequently go over after work to listen to records and cook with him. The leaves of a tall beech tree tapped the windows whenever a breeze blew. Nozomi thought it was an even more beautiful sound than the trains passing her bedroom window. Kimura’s single room looked out over a neighbourhood park and they enjoyed making up stories about the locals: their infidelities, their resentments, their silly little lives.

  As autumn deepened an unsophisticated courtship played out, an efflorescence of intimacies and secrets culminating in an awkward dinner and bunglesome first sex. Afterwards, in that chilly dark, sure as they were both breathing, Nozomi and Kimura knew they were in love.

  ‘Tell me something, Nozomi.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘How many publishers are left in Tokyo that you haven’t tried yet?’

  Her laugh was a tired croak. ‘A few, probably.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s time for you to start trying again.’

  8. Sorry

  Iwata finally found the witness from Meredith’s case file, an enfeebled Puerto Rican man, sitting in the shade by the window of the common room. He was freshly shaved and wearing the pyjamas he had been issued earlier that day.

  ‘Joseph Clemente?’

  ‘Who are you?’ He spoke softly.

  Iwata reached for his ID but he had already checked it in. ‘Sir, I’m a professional investigator and I’m looking into the incident you witnessed. I’d really appreciate a few minutes of your time.’

  ‘You faked your way in here just to talk to me?’ Clemente hoisted a bushy grey eyebrow.

  ‘Someone was murdered, sir.’

  ‘I know that. I saw it.’

  ‘That’s what I want to go over. Exactly what you saw. I’ll pay you, of course.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Let’s start at twenty and see how much you know.’

  Clemente shrugged. ‘I couldn’t sleep so I went for a walk. A little ways out towards the tracks, I seen two figures. At first I thought it was a couple fooling around. Figured they were probably in a good mood so I went to ask for change. But then I saw it. The train headlights showed me everything.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘He had just dropped her. I could see right away she was dead. I’ve seen my share of bodies. I shouted out and he just split. Just as the train came, he disappeared on the other side of it. By the time it passed he was gone.’

  ‘You didn’t see a car in the area?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Like I told the cops, I didn’t really see his face.’

  ‘About five nine, wearing a hooded sweatshirt.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s all.’

  ‘Was he big? Muscles?’

  ‘He looked strong but he wasn’t big. More like, slim, you know?’

  ‘Can you remember anything else? At all?’

  ‘Look, pal. It happened fast and it was dark. Then he was gone. I didn’t see anything more than that and it’s been a while since.’ Clemente looked up at the clock. ‘It’s almost time for afternoon sermon.’

  ‘Last question. You say you shouted out. Did this man say anything back?’

  Clemente frowned now. ‘You know what, maybe he did.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘No. It was like … he was talking to the girl after he dropped her.’

  ‘Go on.’ Iwata grappled with his excitement.

  ‘I didn’t hear him too good but he had kind of a strange voice.’

  ‘Strange how?’

  ‘Just, like, strange. Almost soft.’

  ‘Softly spoken or quiet?’

  ‘Both. At first I thought he was praying. I didn’t hear that part clearly, but it had the rhythm, you know? But when he dropped her there was something else. Something clearer.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘ “Sorry.” He said, “Sorry.” ’

  Iwata reclaimed his clothes, put two twenty-dollar bills in Joseph Clemente’s plastic tray and left the Sanctuary. He gave his bed ticket to a woman who had been turned away for lack of ID. Then he walked the dusky mile and a half back to the train tracks. It was chillier now, the breeze around his body bringing out gooseflesh. On the one hand, Iwata felt the old buzz of a hunt taking shape. If there was a murderer out there, he would find his scent. At the same time, in the pit of his stomach, he couldn’t ignore the sinking dread of a fear confirmed.

  In the Bronco he dialled Kate Floccari’s number. When she picked up Iwata spoke without greeting. ‘It wasn’t Talky who killed Meredith. It had to be someone else.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just spoke to the witness. He told me the killer said something to the body as he dumped it. If he said something, then it can’t have been Talky.’

  ‘Shit. Are you going to call Detective Silke?’

  ‘Going by our introduction, I don’t think there’d be much point. I have zero proof of anything. But I know whoever killed Meredith is still out there. And I don’t think he’s finished.’

  Floccari inhaled quietly. ‘Listen, Kosuke …’

  ‘I know. You can’t help me. You’ve already stuck your neck out far enough and you’ve got things in your own life to deal with. I just didn’t want to be the only one in this city to know about him.’

  They were silent for a moment.

  ‘Well, then. Good luck, Inspector Iwata.’

  Iwata thanked her and hung up. Kate Floccari had never used his old title before. He watched a freight train lumbering past. He too, now, was alone, fixed to the track. He didn’t know where it would take him. The only thing he knew for certain was that Meredith’s murderer had said, ‘Sorry,’ after he killed her.

  Why? Why did you say, ‘Sorry’?

  Iwata realized he was sweating. He was trembling. From nowhere, he felt an urgent, disastrous terror, like he was hurtling down to a depth at speed. Gasping, he tried to free himself from the seatbelt he didn’t have on, pawing at his own chest. He was hyperventilating, punching the dashboard to regain control. Iwata saw the murder victims from his past, their bodies ribboned and riven, their intestines slopping out. He tried to scream.

  And then it was over.

  The train was already dwindling in the distance.

  Panting, he told himself it was just a panic attack. That it was just his body’s resistance to returning to its old function. Yet Iwata knew it was more. He knew the feelings intimately. They were the ones he had tried to self-medicate his way out of for such a long time. It was a fear that used to draw him into the foetal position in police station toilets, a fear that would force him to pull over to the side of the road to vomit.

  And now here he was again, with a boxful of murder – a headful of memories he could no longer pretend away. No matter how much he hoped he was wrong, he knew that, somewhere out there, there was a man with a garrotte and a taste for transgender women.

  And it fell to Iwata to find him.

  When his breathing had normalized he started the car and drove to the hardware store as though he were a normal person doing normal things.

  Back at home, Iwata showered, then made himself yellowtail with ponzu citrus sauce. He put his Spanish CD on and tried to relax. But he couldn’t stop himself gazing at the photographs of Meredith, the police report and the papers that Kate had given him on the missing and murdered trans women.

  Iwata shuffled through Meredith’s smile, her death, her neck. Though it was clearly the same person, the difference between the photograph of her in the restaurant and the photograph of her by the train tracks was vast. It was like seeing a real-life, normal person, and then, smiling and lit by candle, the movie version, played by a younger, far more beautiful actress.

  Iwata had met Meredith as Julian several times in the past, but they’d ne
ver shared more than pleasantries. Charlotte Nichol and her husband were stern, exacting parents. But Cleo and her sibling had always been close, that much Iwata knew.

  Iwata had spent his life trying to abscond from who he really was. Yet Meredith had moved a thousand miles to be herself. He wondered if she had died for it too.

  Iwata put the photograph from the restaurant to one side and peered closely at the second, which clearly showed Meredith’s garrotted neck. Her blue eyes were half open. Her hair, raven black, was a drab brown at the roots, a few greys here and there. One of her hands had fallen across her chest. Her fingernails had not been cared for, and her skin, particularly for someone who had lived in Southern California for several years, was very pale.

  Nobody raped you, nobody stole from you, nobody beat you. But somebody wanted you dead. Was this hatred? Did someone hate who you were? It didn’t seem likely to him, somehow. Whoever had murdered Meredith had done so with precision, with economy, almost impersonally. There had even been compunction, according to Joseph Clemente.

  Sorry.

  Iwata turned the photographs face down, cleared away his dishes and took out two old mugs. He poured two fluid ounces of multipurpose glue into the first mug, the same again of water, added a little pink food dye, then mixed thoroughly. He dissolved a tablespoon of borax into the second mug, this one with a fluid ounce of water. When he combined the two mixtures, the pink liquid began to congeal. Iwata stirred the mixture thoroughly then kneaded it with his hands for ten minutes until it became a flesh-like putty. He took the putty to the coffee table, laying it on top of a few sheets of kitchen towel. Then he opened the bag from the hardware store and took out his purchases.

  First, Iwata pulled some fishing wire taut across the putty in mimicry of the possible murder weapon. He garrotted the pink substance for two minutes, enough time to end a life, then took away the wire. He held a lamp over the ligature mark. It was straight and unforgiving, and did not resemble the marks on Meredith’s neck at all.

  Iwata moved on to a variety of ropes, a scarf, a small chain – he even tried his telephone cord. But the ligature pattern in the photograph wasn’t close to matching any of these things. It was a distinct, wavy imprint in angry pink around the throat. Iwata fell asleep trying to imagine what, and who, had caused it.

  Iwata spent much of the next morning trawling through the Casual Encounters page of Craigslist in search of some kind of link between the catalogue Mingo had given him and the images of Meredith and Geneviève against the ocean. He narrowed his search to trans4m. Most of the ads were composed using oblique, almost adolescent vernacular, seemingly from people seeking mundane activities:

  DDF Chocolate Beauty in town to see fireworks

  Cute blonde looking for movie nite

  + maybe nite cap lol xxx

  Others were less twee:

  Hung? Gorgeous Tgirl in Bellflower waiting to suck you – just unload + leave

  In most of the ads a cellphone number had been pasted across the images of the girls themselves to circumnavigate the rules against solicitation. Practically all of them were written in the parlance of the internet hook-up world. Some were easy enough for Iwata to decipher: a prostitute called Molly was seeking an encounter involving MDMA; another named Poppy was after heroin; a ‘night on the ski slopes’ meant cocaine. But he had to look up countless apparently innocuous words or acronyms for their hidden meaning: ABR, adult breastfeeding relationship; Roses, financial recompense for sex; GHM ISO HWP TOP, gay Hispanic male in search of height-weight proportionate male to be penetrated by … on and on it went. Any mention of generosity, kindness or posts with dollar signs in them – Lookin 4 nice guy$ – again related to a financial exchange.

  By midday Iwata had sent dozens of messages to trans women asking for information about Meredith or Geneviève in exchange for cash. He was met with silence.

  One subject did, however, keep on cropping up. They called him John Smith – a trick killing transgender prostitutes. On the sleuth forums some speculated that he liked black women, others said only white. Many believed he’d been going for several years, his murders falling beyond the gaze of the police. On the trans message boards there were countless warnings, suggested precautions, advice on where to find economical self-defence classes.

  To Iwata, John Smith felt like an urban legend, a spook story. But he knew that even in the outlandish, fragments of truth could sometimes be found. He also knew that bodies were turning up, spook story or no. And if John Smith did exist, then Iwata saw him as a manifestation of silent loathing, obsession, desire, all wrapped up in the costume of a normal man. The sort of man Meredith might have invited into her room or gotten into a car with.

  Iwata turned away from his laptop and thought about coffee. In doing so, he noticed something. He had two supposedly identical photographs of Meredith in the restaurant, one from Charlotte, the other from the police report McCrae had sent him. But they were different. The larger one – the police copy – had been blown up somewhat. But the other had a few more inches of detail. And right at the fringe of the photograph a hand had been caught in frame. It was holding a credit card. And on it, a name: Joyce Carbone.

  Iwata returned to his laptop and logged into MARPLExp – a data-fusion search tool he spent a small fortune on in monthly fees. Though he preferred the old-fashioned low-tech brand of investigating – shoes slapping concrete, fingers on doorbells – the technology was undoubtedly useful. Were it not for the cost, he thought, similar technology would likely be rolled out throughout every police station in the land.

  Logged in, Iwata could now link a name with criminal histories, employment records, addresses, bankruptcies, vehicles, phones, utilities – and so on. It needed something tangible, ideally a social security number or a driver’s licence, but a full name was better than nothing.

  Iwata typed in the name Joyce Carbone along with the visible details of her credit card. Immediately a little constellation of data appeared before him. Joyce Carbone lived in Highland Park and had worked at Club Noir for a period.

  Iwata wrote down her address and left his apartment.

  9. Hope Heaven Feels Good

  Although only five miles from Downtown, East LA felt like another city. Once home to many of LA’s ethno burbs – Japanese, Jewish, Italian and Eastern European – today it was overwhelmingly Latina, the largest Hispanic community in the country. It was home to fresh arrivals from all over South and Central America, home to the multigenerational residents whose foremothers dated back to the original ranchos.

  As Iwata drove along Whittier Boulevard he took in East LA’s version of the Walk of Fame, the late-afternoon light glinting on its stones. He passed mariachis eating outside taquerias that seemed always to have been there, old ladies lining up outside money-transfer shops and young women in coffee shops studying for college entrance. Poets wrote on typewriters. Glass Coke bottles full of flowers were left beneath murals of the Virgin. Gang members in baggy T-shirts chatted buoyantly on corners, their eyes constantly darting up and down the road.

  5520 Amalia Avenue was a plain house with white stucco walls. A German Shepherd lifted its head from the porch as Iwata opened the gate. He let it smell his hand, then rang the doorbell. A few seconds later the door opened a crack.

  Iwata held up his ID. ‘Joyce Carbone? We spoke on the phone.’

  She had silent-movie looks: dark features, almond-shaped eyes, a well-defined nose. Carbone checked for prying neighbours before letting him in. The house smelled faintly of bleach and dog. She led him into a kitchen of granite counters and dull mosaic tiles. ‘Go ahead, sit down,’ she said, her voice softer now.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Black, please.’

  She leaned against the counter and looked at Iwata with a mixture of annoyance and faint-heartedness, as though his presence were a burden she was obliged to bear.

  ‘You’re not a cop.’

  ‘No.’

>   ‘So what are you, Robin Hood?’

  ‘I’m helping with Meredith’s murder.’

  ‘Nobody just helps. Not for free.’

  ‘Meredith’s sister was my wife.’

  Carbone said nothing. The coffee-maker flicked off. She brought over two cups and sat warily across from Iwata, her fatigue clear. ‘How’d you find me?’

  ‘You used to work at Club Noir.’

  She shrugged as though that time in her life were a mistake. ‘Look, I’d like to help. But I don’t know anything about what happened to Meredith.’ She looked up at the clock. ‘And Michael will be home from work soon. Will this take long?’

  ‘Just a few minutes.’

  Carbone sipped her coffee in consent.

  ‘I assume the police already talked to you about Meredith?’

  ‘Mm. Briefly.’

  ‘What did they ask?’

  ‘ “Most murders are personal, blah blah blah, can you think of anyone who wanted to hurt Meredith?” And I couldn’t. She was just a wonderful person, no enemies.’

  ‘Boyfriends?’

  ‘Nothing serious.’

  ‘What about Talky?’

  ‘Who?’

  Iwata took out the Polaroid. Although shocked at sight of a dead body, Carbone shook her head. He could tell genuine mystification from feigned.

  ‘When did you last see Meredith?’

  ‘It’s been a while. Michael prefers I don’t mix with the old crowd.’

  ‘Police were thinking her murder could have come about due to a violent reaction –’

  ‘To finding out she was pre-op, yeah, they made that much clear with their line of questioning. But like I told them, that’d be surprising to me. So far as I know, she was always upfront with the johns.’

  ‘What about a hate crime?’

  ‘It’s possible. You just have to look at the statistics for that to be obvious. But if you’re asking me if I can think of anyone specifically, then no. There was nobody in my time at the club, no creep, angry ex, whatever. I’ll be honest with you, it was probably more likely to do with something she did.’