“They have some of those noted, but it might include Koreans and Chinese. I’ll call the office of statistics to see how they count them and whether they have specific records for foreigners.”
“Maybe it’s faster to call the embassies. Start with the Western embassies, but be careful what you say. The last thing we want to do is stir up trouble. Unless it helps.”
“You want to line up the times and dates and places, right?”
“Yes. Details in order turn into patterns.”
She got up again, but Hiroshi said, “Coffee’s ready. Hope you like it black?”
“It’s not dessert,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Akiko looked at the coffee, smiled and walked off.
Hiroshi stared after her. He looked at his door, which was usually closed. She’d left it open. It was going to take some getting used to, having someone in the office. He would have to think of what to ask her to do, to stop doing everything himself. He couldn’t think with her going in and out and asking questions all the time. He would have to take longer walks by himself.
Hiroshi poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. He could picture the dead man, Steve, and his younger colleague, Mark, walking the streets of Roppongi, cocky, loose, proud. He imagined them in the Venus de Milo, laughing a little too loudly, lightly intimidated by the women’s cultivated sexiness, but attracted to their seeming acquiescence, their exoticism. Most foreigners, like Japanese, could never imagine that the corporate secrets they let slip so carelessly could be bought and sold.
Why hadn’t Steve taken a taxi or stayed at a love hotel? Why had he been in the train station at all? There could be only one reason. Takamatsu was right. Why push a man, or rather, flip him in front of a train? If the killer was able to make money from Steve’s information, why stop the flow of valuable info? Why not string him along? Even if Steve had moved to Bangkok, he’d still have been helpful. Maybe money wasn’t the issue—or maybe it was only part of the issue?
Takamatsu knocked as he walked straight in to Hiroshi’s office.
“Got it all figured out?” he said, heading for the coffee machine.
“Almost, until you interrupted.”
Takamatsu flipped a tied bundle of files onto his desk and poured himself a cup of coffee. “How’s Kido-san? Cute, eh? Smart, too.”
“She’s only going to get in the way.”
Takamatsu shook his head. “You’ll see she’s a lot more help than you think.”
“I do my best thinking alone.”
“You can talk it through with her before thinking alone. I have twenty detectives in my office over in the main building,” Takamatsu said, laughing. “You should learn to think in public, like a Japanese.”
“Did you get into the David?” Hiroshi asked.
Takamatsu nodded, yes. “Did you break your dry spell?”
Hiroshi frowned.
“I can tell that means yes,” Takamatsu said, sipping his coffee, and then looking for sugar and creamer.
“Black only,” Hiroshi said.
Takamatsu sighed. “The David didn’t have much. Hostesses, their dates, drinks. So, I started thinking it might just be a suicide. Too hard to prove otherwise.”
“You did?” Hiroshi sat forward, confused.
“I did. But when I got to the office this morning, I got called to administration. The chief introduced me to the head of the American Chamber of Commerce, the PR Division Head for Japan Railways, and the new chief of detectives. I hadn’t met the new chief in person before. He just came over from the Justice Ministry. Total bureaucrat.”
“You talked to all three? All together?”
“I got talked to. I didn’t say a word. They told me to find out who did it and make sure nothing leaks to the press. If the media gets this, it’ll be murdered foreigners, unsafe trains, and incompetent cops.”
“A triumvirate of failures.”
“A trium-what?”
“Three failures.”
“Ah, a triple play.”
They drank their coffee in silence.
After a while, Takamatsu said, “The good news was they said, ‘spare no expense.’”
“Can’t we announce it’s a suicide to buy more time?”
“Better to say nothing. Dead foreigners make Japanese officials nervous. And dangerous trains make everyone nervous.”
“Kido-san’s checking on the suicides. There must be other suicides that weren’t suicides. Let’s look again at the girl in the video, maybe we can go from there.”
“What video?” asked Akiko, walking in.
“Kido-san, our angel of investigation!” Takamatsu got up and bowed dramatically.
“Takamatsu, you might have told Hiroshi I was coming,” Akiko said.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Takamatsu smirked. “Show her the video,” he commanded.
Hiroshi cued the video up on his computer. “It’s only a few blurry seconds, but let’s look again. Since we’re under orders.”
Hiroshi let Akiko sit in his chair to watch the video clip as he poured her a cup of coffee.
Akiko watched and then rewound the snippet of video and let it play again. “Look how she walks, with dignity, but also with training. Her clothes are not off the rack. They’re from a boutique. Ginza or Aoyama,” Akiko said.
“So, she’s rich?” Hiroshi said.
“Or knows someone who’s rich. And she’s definitely with him,” Akiko said.
“How can you tell?” Takamatsu asked her.
“The way she almost reaches for him when he wobbles—right there!” She pointed at a spot in the video as Takamatsu and Hiroshi bent in to look. “That’s not what a woman would do with a stranger or a casual friend.”
“But she doesn’t touch him.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can see she moves to touch him. Watch.” Akiko backed up the video and let it run. “There. And her hair has an unusual cut. Most hostesses have curlicues and piled layers. Hers is more tasteful, meaning more expensive. She uses professional treatments, antioxidants, proteins and vitamins. See the way it shimmers? Her regular hairdresser might recognize her from behind. Her hair looks dyed, too.”
“Looks black to me.”
“Hers is blacker than black. It’s dyed.”
Takamatsu was, for once, quieted.
Hiroshi waited for more.
Akiko continued, “She’s a meter eighty. Seventy, seventy-five kilos. She works out. A lot. Look at her legs—there. She stands more like a man, legs apart. Athlete or martial arts. Her lace-up sandals shouldn’t be too hard to find. Designers like that sell at only one or two boutiques.”
“What does her face look like?” Takamatsu said, joking. The video angle was only from behind.
“A woman like that is gorgeous.”
“How can you tell?”
“You can just tell,” Akiko said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Every woman in Tokyo looks great from behind!” Takamatsu laughed.
Akiko growled her exasperation with him and said, “It’s not so hard to flip a man if he isn’t expecting it. And no man ever expects it from a really attractive woman.”
Takamatsu and Hiroshi cleared their throats and watched as Akiko played it back again, watching to the end.
Akiko continued: “The suicide reports from Japan Railways will be here this afternoon. The police reports mentioned an interview with the train drivers not included in the final railway report. I’ll find the drivers. They’ll be worth talking to.”
Takamatsu and Hiroshi paused, waiting to see if she was finished.
“As for motive,” continued Akiko, “If it’s a woman killing a man, I can think of a million reasons.”
Chapter 21
Michiko walked beneath the raised highway that divided her old neighborhood from the new apartment complexes closer to Kawasaki Station. The matching beige apartment buildings looked like toy boxes dropped at random by a massive child. Newly planted flower beds and tree
s propped up with struts dotted the fitted-brick walkways and rolled-out grass turf.
Housewives hung out futons over the railings of identical balconies, a patchwork of bedding up and down the buildings. The whomp-whomp of futon-beaters reverberated through the air, the housewives thrashing out dust and sweat and clumps of stuffing along with frustration.
From the other side of the sound-insulated highway, the metallic-sulfur stench from thousands of small factories and foundries, most now abandoned, steered Michiko home. The farther she got from the stylish apartments, the older and more used everything became.
The older Kawasaki residents, rough and robust, had mostly retired, died, or moved away, replaced by pale office workers and their soft, uncertain families. The area became a place to sleep, not to make things. Thriving factories became boxed-in bedrooms.
Michiko stopped at the shrine nearest her home. With the “taifu ikka”—the fresh, clean air after a typhoon, the sky seemed high and far away over the shrine grounds. The main pillars of the building had started to soften and decay. Only the gravel and tamped earth resisted. Incense from morning visitors smoldered in the large urn by the main building.
She was startled at how much the old cherry trees had spread and grown, the branches now drooping under their own weight. With the years, their shapes had grown fuller and thicker, the bark coarser. One or two had been cut down, damaged in storms—but they looked somehow wiser and more beautiful than ever. She and Reiko waited for her father, his last year, under the trees, to have a hanami. Michiko stopped at the spot.
***
Reiko and Michiko got to the shrine early to set up the plastic tarp. They set out the rice balls, tea, senbei rice crackers, and, for him, beer. In April, when the year’s orders were just coming in, her father could get away for a few hours to go for a meal, a walk, and cherry blossom viewing party.
Reiko and Michiko chatted as the blossoms fell and dotted the grounds white and pink, with a dash of dark pink from one of the trees. While waiting, they tried not to nibble everything, checking on the beer to be sure it was still cold. They played a card game and used cherry blossoms as point markers, giggling when petals blew away in the breeze, ruining their count.
When one of the workers came to get them, Michiko was furious. She packed up the rice balls, tea, and cakes they had laid out and stormed home. Michiko charged up the stairs to demand an explanation for why her father broke his promise.
The factory workers, with bandages, slings and ice packs on their heads, were in the midst of a heated discussion. Michiko saw the bandage around her father’s arm but she still shouted, “You promised to come.”
The workers looked down. They had been encouraging him to spend more time with his daughter, taking on extra tasks to free up time, and telling him a boss was entitled. But that day, things had gone awry.
Her father spoke calmly, “We’ll go tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to go tomorrow,” Michiko said, staring at him, her face red with anger.
Her father waited for her storm to pass, while the workers kept their eyes averted.
Finally, Michiko stomped off through the door into their living quarters. Reiko, as always, followed dutifully behind.
Later that night, Michiko’s father came to her room. Reiko was asleep, but Michiko was still reading by the light on her study desk. When he sat on the edge of her bed, she pretended to ignore him.
“You’re just like your mother—beautiful, smart and hot-tempered. Her family was a samurai family. I told you before. Do you remember?”
Michiko nodded slightly, but kept reading her book.
“I want to explain what happened. I think you are old enough. We lost our contract to the big company. We had to give up our long-time small contracts to take the bigger one. But now, that big company cut back, so we don’t have either the small ones or the big one.”
Michiko listened but still did not speak.
“And you remember the other bad businessman? The one you saw in the factory that day you ran away? Well, his friends came back. They pressured us to take new contracts.” He fiddled with the bandage, readjusting the stretchy wrap around his forearm. “We refused, but they insisted. Some of the workers had enough, so a fight started. I had to stop it. That’s why I couldn’t come today. I was looking forward to the hanami just as much as you.”
Michiko looked down at her book.
“We’re going to go again, okay? I promise.”
Michiko kept the promise to her mother not to cry.
“Are you okay?” she asked, tears starting.
Her father held his arm up. “I just hurt my arm a little. It’s okay. I can work.”
“Before mother died, she said I had to take care of you,” Michiko said, looking over at a sleeping Reiko so he could not see her face. “But I don’t know how.”
“You’re doing a very good job,” her father said, ignoring her sniffles.
“I’m going to start aikido.”
“Are you?”
“To help.”
“Help?”
“In case,” Michiko said.
***
She walked around the outer balcony of the shrine, its floorboards creaking. She stopped by the open shutters in the back where the fox statues that had scared her when she was a little girl were lined up along the stone wall in back. Then, she continued around and went down the stairs to the wooden votive ema plaques.
She pulled a new one from the stand, and placed her coin in the payment box. She pulled a pen from her purse and wrote on the wood carefully.
Kamisama, Kigan. Protect me. Help me to get my tasks done, so I can leave. Help me to do them right. Grant me a safe journey. I can’t keep going on my own. I have to keep going. I’m almost ready to go.
She hung it on one of the higher racks. It would be burned with the others during the fire ceremony in a month’s time.
Two blocks from the shrine, Michiko stopped to look at her old aikido dojo. The martial arts training hall now leaned to the side, the wood mildewed and termite-eaten. The hours she spent there learning from Sato sensei after the failed hanami taught her more than just self-defense.
***
“Balance is everything,” Sato sensei said on the first day. He made her stand on one leg, then the other, then stand leaning forward, and then leaning back. She kept falling over, catching herself with her other foot, or her hand, asking him how to do it right. He said nothing but made her practice landing and rolling and blocking and dodging. He never smiled, but spoke in a voice that rose from inner depths. “You try too hard,” he said.
She practiced until she could do whatever it was he showed her. He never scolded or praised, only showed her and advised her. After the first few months, she never asked for an explanation and never again tried too hard.
“Timing is everything,” he said, and by then she knew better than to ask why. She worked on the timing of punches, throws, joint locks, escapes, blocks, reverses, twists, until time was inside her. Aikido was about the inside, no matter what happened outside.
When she won her first contest, she carried the trophy to Sato sensei. He put her trophy on a shelf and worked her harder than ever, though she had planned to take the day off. Sato sensei did not look like he had much power in his tiny frame. His long gray hair and lanky posture made him look older than he was, but one circular sweep of his hand could topple Michiko to the mats, hard and quick.
After each of the contests she won, he followed the same routine, working her to exhaustion. Whenever she felt she was at last truly ready for the workout, Sato sensei showed her she was not, dropping her to the mat in a new way. The floor became her friend, just as he had said. “There is always more to master,” he told her when she could try no more.
Years later, after Michiko had stopped aikido for a long time, she showed up again at the dojo. Sato sensei took her back as if she had never left, and helped her to gradually reestablish the form she had lost. He gave h
er more intense instruction as an adult, much of which she spent on the tatami mats where he dumped her, just as he had when she was a teenager. He sensed she needed to burn something out, and burn in something new. He didn’t ask her what it was. He just kept pushing her past her limits, a place she liked to—or had to—be.
***
She pushed aside the memory of his funeral—which she paid for since he had no family other than his students—and wondered if Sato sensei would appreciate the irony of his dojo training hall crumbling, though his lessons endured. The irony was similar for her father.
She walked over a footbridge of welded beams just wide enough for a handcart, one of many that crossed the long canal. Kudzu vines and water reeds overran the banks, and a trickle of water pooled here and there, dribbling on, reluctantly.
Both sides of the street were lined with two- or three-story structures of corrugated metal bolted onto I-bar frames. Long chains, thick as an arm, dangled across front doors, the locks rusted shut. A few gave well-oiled evidence of recent use, for storage, not production.
Her father had always taken her for walks all over the area, so she knew everyone. Back then, the entire area was a cacophony of manufacturing. Now, it was silent.
Even the koban police box had been moved. She hated the place and had walked on the other side of the street for years after her father died.
She remembered sitting in the front chair across from the local policeman, explaining over and over to them and refusing to cry. She came all the way in from the city in a taxi and spent the morning and the next day there after her father was hit by a car and killed. The detectives didn’t listen to her because she was dressed in a slinky one-piece and was made up like a model.
Her father had been drunk, the policemen said. He stumbled in front of the car, they said. Michiko explained to the police that was impossible. He seldom drank and never to excess. She demanded an investigation.
The investigators never found the hit-and-run driver. She was sure they hadn’t looked too hard.
After that, Michiko divided her time between her apartment in Roppongi and her old room, trying to sort out who was owed what. She discovered a trail of what looked like bad decisions, but her accountant in Akasaka—after she got him to go over the paperwork—told her the debt was probably forced on her father. The workers knew almost nothing about the factory’s budgets or how her father handled the money. But they offered to work without pay until it was all cleared up. Uncle Ono knew even less about the debts.
The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1) Page 12