Akiko came back in with a can of tea for Sakaguchi. It looked teensy in his thick-fingered paws.
“How do land investments tie in to the homicides?” Sakaguchi asked. “And why a train?”
Akiko said, “Everyone who died either owned and managed buildings or bought and sold land. Several other such foreigners appeared to have committed suicide.”
“You found that yesterday?” Hiroshi asked.
“What do you think I’ve been texting you about?” Akiko said. “I collected it there.” She pointed to the folder Hiroshi had read and put down on his desk.
Hiroshi sipped his coffee.
Akiko sighed. “I called Steve’s ex-wife in America, too.”
“What did she say?”
“She said he was, and I quote, a ‘scumbag.’” Akiko used the English word.
“What does that mean?” Sakaguchi asked.
Hiroshi explained graphically. The explanation sounded cruder in Japanese, but Sakaguchi chuckled.
“She said his alimony payments stopped, so she turned it over to the courts to get an income withholding. But he failed to file taxes in America.”
“He was working here,” Sakaguchi said.
“Americans have to file taxes both in the country of residence and in the States,” Hiroshi said.
“Because he didn’t file for two years, there was nothing she could do since Japan never signed a treaty with other countries,” Akiko said.
“How did you find all this out?” Sakaguchi asked.
“Typed in a question and hit search.”
“Still, that doesn’t mean he didn’t have the money,” Hiroshi said.
“How much would it be? A couple of buildings?” Sakaguchi asked.
“Billions of yen, just to build a small one,” Akiko said.
“Money for construction companies, architectural firms, a lot of different payments. If you get contracts prearranged, you get a good cut.”
“With high rent, you make a lot, too,” Akiko said.
“Rich people can’t lose in Tokyo,” Sakaguchi said.
“Unless they end up in front of a train,” Akiko said.
“The problem is,” Hiroshi said, “Many buildings weren’t turning much profit when vacancy rates slipped. So, competition for the best locations increased.”
“That raised the price for information,” Akiko said.
“Information about what?” Sakaguchi asked.
Hiroshi said, “Our girl found out secrets and sold them.”
“Sold them?” Akiko looked confused.
The phone rang and Akiko answered, speaking in her politest Japanese, before hanging up. “The chief’s on his way with the embassy rep.”
“We better go,” Hiroshi said, grabbing his coat and an umbrella.
Sakaguchi stood ready at the door.
Akiko said, “I’ll find some excuse, but where are you going?”
“To talk to Wakayama’s accountant,” Hiroshi said.
Sakaguchi said, “I’ll try to find Takamatsu.”
“You want the building purchase contracts?” Akiko said.
Hiroshi nodded “yes” to Akiko and followed Sakaguchi out the door. “Meet me in Roppongi later. If we go in circles long enough—”
Akiko sat down and got into the reports, preparing an excuse for when the chief and the embassy rep arrived.
Chapter 29
The accountant’s office was a long walk from Akasaka station. The buildings got older and squatter the farther Hiroshi walked. Walking time from the nearest station—noted in minutes—was a basic part of directions—and of rents—in Tokyo. This was more of a taxi ride away, Hiroshi realized too late. By the time he got to the lime-green building on a backstreet, Hiroshi’s shirt felt as wet and sticky as a washrag.
The accountant’s building had a front bed for plants with nothing growing in it. Tiles were missing from the walls and the lobby was just wide enough for a person to turn around. Unlike the other businesses on the half-empty directory, Sono Accountancy was written in both English and Japanese.
The elevator arrived with a long creak ending in a dull thunk. Hiroshi checked the elevator inspection date as he rode slowly up.
Sono’s door had beveled glass set in thick wood with his name hand-painted on the glass in English and Japanese. Hiroshi knocked, and a soft, startled voice asked him to come in.
A thirty-something woman, hair pulled back above round, thick-framed glasses, looked curiously at Hiroshi as he poked his head around the door. She was sitting at a desk with a blanket over her lap. Behind her were two rows of cubicles made from mismatched partitions. The room was cold as a refrigerator.
“I’m Detective Shimizu. I called.”
She looked at him.
“Just a minute.”
She flipped a shawl off her shoulders and took a blanket from her lap. She walked between the patchwork partitions and leaned down to whisper to someone in the last cubicle. The room was silent except for the hum of the air conditioner on full blast. Hiroshi shivered in his sweat-damp shirt.
“Please come this way,” the receptionist said. He followed her to an area whose dingy, cloth-covered dividers enclosed a laminated wood coffee table with four low sofa chairs. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling cast an anemic, yellow light over the room. One flickering bulb in back made the room twitch nervously.
Hiroshi sat down, and in a minute, the secretary returned with a cup of green tea. Tea spilled into the saucer, and would drip if he picked it up, so he let it sit.
The accountant, Sono, wore a plain white shirt and red-blue tie that dangled when he made a perfunctory bow. Hiroshi handed over his meishi. The man didn’t offer his, but sat down, pulling up his pant legs and shirtsleeves in clockwise order and looked at Hiroshi’s meishi on the table in front of him. Deep wrinkles flexed over his thin face. He seemed used to talking with people, but not as if he liked it.
“I’m happy to help,” Sono said, “but I’ve been over this before.”
“The case with Wakayama is closed. However, info about him might help us with a new case.”
Sono called to the secretary/receptionist, “Bring the Wakayama files.”
“It’s not about what’s in those files exactly.”
“Then what do you need to know?”
She brought in two thick files, and placed them on the coffee table in front of Sono. He opened one and then the other, bending back the fold of each with both hands until they gave out a loud crack.
“All the accounts are here, so what do you need?”
“Mostly I need background on Wakayama.”
“Background? I work with numbers. I’m an accountant.”
“So am I.”
Sono looked at him, a bit confused.
Hiroshi leaned forward. “His wife didn’t believe he committed suicide. What do you think?”
“I’m not a psychologist.” He took off his glasses and opened and closed the temples. “Is there something about his investments you need to know?”
“Was he good at investing?”
“He made three real estate purchases that were highly profitable. They were old buildings he resold for large gains. I’d say he was very good.”
“Where was the real estate?”
“One was near Tokyo University—an old student dormitory—another was an apartment building in Takanawa, and the third was in Kawasaki. All those areas were being developed.”
“He bought them only a short time before he sold them?”
“They were turnarounds. The time frame was short.”
“So, he had help?”
“Help?”
“He had advance information.”
Sono cleared his throat. “Real estate investing is all about having the right information.”
Hiroshi shrugged that off. “Would his wife have benefited if it was murder?”
“She did not retain my services, so it’s no concern of mine, but it seems strange she wanted to keep the
case open.”
“She wanted to know the truth.”
“He made money. He died.”
“His wife said he was sending money to a woman?”
“Several women, in fact. I didn’t think I needed to tell her everything, so I reduced the number to one. She didn’t seem interested in the details.”
“I am, though. How many exactly?”
“Two large regular payments and three occasional ones.”
“Bank transfers to five different women?”
“He also withdrew cash.”
“Were any of the recipients named Michiko Suzuki?”
Sono paused and slowly turned over several pages in the folder. “Anyone can open a bank account in any name.”
“It could have been the same woman with different names on the accounts, then?”
“Possibly. They often do that, those women.”
“Those women?”
“Mizu shobai, the water trade. Hostesses, call girls, companions, AV actresses.”
“Do you handle accounts for them also?”
Sono said, “I have handled accounting for them sometimes, yes. They know how to make money, but also how to spend it. The more they make, the more they end up in debt. A few have taken my advice.” He eyed Hiroshi as if that was more information than he usually extended to anyone.
“Was Michiko Suzuki one of them?”
He looked down at the Wakayama files. “I’d have to check my files. Her name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Are you sure the payments from Wakayama didn’t all go to the same woman?”
“I don’t track down who is on the receiving end of bank transfers.”
“That must make things easier.”
Sono frowned. “Covering one’s tracks on paper is not complicated.” He again peeled his glasses off, working its hinge back and forth steadily. “Nor is it illegal.”
The room was too cold for Hiroshi’s shirt to dry. It clung to his skin. He looked at the sporadic blinking lightbulb. “Wakayama’s wife said he invested in a hostess club.”
“And lost the entire investment.”
“Lost it?”
“The club went bankrupt.”
“What happened?”
“Bad management, few customers, bad location, the usual, I suppose.”
“The bankruptcy was a way of laundering other gains?”
“Sometimes a bankruptcy is used that way, I’ve heard, but Wakayama was not that type.”
“That was right before his death?”
“A few months before.”
“Could you give me the exact date?”
Sono paused, and then flipped through the two files, running his fingers through a spreadsheet and a timeline. “Two weeks before. Fourteen days exactly.”
“Did he take out a lot of cash before he died?”
“I put a certain amount in his account every month.”
“How much? Roughly?”
“He roughly took out as much in cash as he paid in bank transfers.”
“I can request the accounts formally if that’s better.”
“You’re welcome to do so,” Sono said, shrugging and neatening the files.
“Where did that cash go?”
“The point of cash is you can’t trace it.”
“And you said you handle these women’s accounts, too?”
The light bulb that needed changing flicked jumpy shadows and sizzled softly.
“Not those same women, but others. I already gave the police all the records. And the insurance company, too. They’re more careful than the police.”
“What’s your impression of Wakayama’s cash flow?”
“I don’t deal in impressions, detective.”
“Did he like to spend money?”
“He had it to spend.”
“Any thoughts on his relationships to these women?”
“It’s not something we discussed. Like other men of his generation, he no doubt considered the attentions of young women another benefit of working hard.”
Sono called to his secretary for cigarettes, offered one to Hiroshi, who waved it off. As Sono lit up, he held his elbow in his other hand and observed Hiroshi closely. His secretary came in with an ashtray.
Hiroshi pulled his chilled shirt from where it stuck to his back and sat forward.
“What happened to the other businesses?” Hiroshi continued. “His wife mentioned there were many.”
“He owned stakes in many businesses.”
“Could you give me the list?”
“He cashed in and cashed out a lot over the years.”
“I need the list.”
“It would take time. I can send it to you,” he picked up Hiroshi’s name card. “To this address?”
“He had good information about other companies, too?”
“He knew where to invest.”
“You liquidated the percentage ownerships in almost all the businesses after his death.”
“His wife asked me to do that.”
“Who bought most of the shares?”
“It’s not shares like stocks, just a portion of the business.” He looked down at the folder and flipped through several pages. “Most of them were bought by a company called Bentley Associates. They’re located in West Shinjuku.”
“In fact, the dead man I’m investigating worked there.”
Sono leaned back on the sofa, and then leaned forward to tap off his cigarette ash. “That’s a coincidence worth investigating.”
“Let me just ask again, did it seem like Wakayama wanted to kill himself?”
“Wakayama was an old-style businessman—shrewd and confident. He sent presents to everyone twice a year and had a lot of contacts. He knew how to chat for a long time before asking a business question. He wouldn’t know how to be depressed.”
“That’s a dying breed.” Hiroshi leaned forward in his chair. “Thank you for your time.”
“I wish the investigation had been done correctly the first time.”
“Just one more thing,” Hiroshi said, as an afterthought. “Wakayama’s case may be connected to another, similar case. Anyone involved in either one is an accessory to both. Murder is different from money laundering. With murder, two is much more than one plus one.”
Sono stood as Hiroshi left, but let Hiroshi see himself out. When he sat down again, he finished his cigarette slowly and then ground out the butt in the ashtray until the filter was reduced to tiny, smoke-brown splinters.
Chapter 30
Akasaka to Shinjuku was not far. Hiroshi exited onto a balcony that looked down over the passengers coursing through the west exit. Akiko told him that every day more than three million people passed through Shinjuku Station.
Could that be possible, he wondered, so many people through one station? What would one more—or one less—human being matter among all these others? The place was a shrine to mobility, efficiency and work, an overflowing offering of humanity.
Hiroshi moved into the stream of brisk-walking people making their way toward the skyscrapers of West Shinjuku. He found the basement lobby of the NS Building from the underground passageway, safe from the heavy rain aboveground. He waited a long time for the elevator that took him up to the 40th floor, to Bentley Associates.
In the reception lobby, he waited by a huge window dripping with condensation. It obscured the view of nearby buildings and turned the lights and traffic forty stories below into twinkling dots of blurry color.
The same secretary that showed him Steve’s office during his first visit came out to meet him. She looked earthy and radiant in that stiff corporate entryway.
“Back again?” she asked, looking at him directly, her face not a mask like other secretaries.
“It always takes more visits than you think,” Hiroshi said. “I need to talk to Barbara Harris-Mitford again, and to Mark Whitlock. He was out the last time I came.”
“Barbara is expecting you, but things are in a bit of an upr
oar today,” she said, leading him to a meeting room down the hall. The privacy glass frosted automatically as they passed, blocking Hiroshi’s view inside.
“Uproar?” Hiroshi asked.
Steve’s former secretary switched to English. “Some money went missing!” She pulled a face of surprise and concern.
“Is that right?” Hiroshi said in English.
“I’m quitting in two weeks,” she said, and then dropped to a whisper. “So, I don’t really care.”
She showed him to the same meeting room with the twenty-person table, the lacquered inlaid wood gleaming from the soft lights above.
“What are you going to do?” Hiroshi asked.
“I’m going to Australia,” she said. “A classmate opened a flower shop in Sydney. I’m going to work there!”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Sun, wine, cheap rent.”
“Three of life’s essentials.” Hiroshi handed her his card. “Call me after your last day here. We can celebrate!”
“That would be nice,” she said.
This is getting easier, he thought to himself.
She slipped his card into the hip pocket of her summer skirt. “My name’s Shiho, by the way.”
“Shiho. I’m Hiroshi.”
She hesitated a minute and returned to polite, corporate Japanese, “Barbara will be in shortly. I’ll bring some coffee.”
“I also need to talk to Mark Whitlock.”
“Mark? Didn’t they tell you?” Her brows came together over her round face. “He’s taken a leave from the company.”
“Where can I contact him?”
“He’s on emergency leave.”
“Emergency?”
“Family emergency.”
“Where is he now?”
“I booked a ticket for him back to the States.”
“When does his flight leave?”
“This afternoon.”
“What time?”
“Is this important?” she asked.
“Very,” Hiroshi said.
She hesitated. “Well, I’m leaving anyway. I’ll go get his flight info. But don’t tell Barbara. Company policy is not to hand out that kind of information.”
“Understood,” Hiroshi said.
Hiroshi looked out the window at the rain. Its staccato rhythm on the glass echoed in the large, empty meeting room.
The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1) Page 17