The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1)

by Michael Pronko

  Uncle Ono came over with a push-button box control for the overhead crane. Uncle Ono had always been in charge of cleaning the motors and oiling the hoists, blocks and chains. The load limit of 20,000 kilograms was more than needed, but Michiko’s father never skimped. The crane slid along I-beam tracks forming an overhead lattice capable of moving heavy loads in any direction.

  Michiko stepped back and watched him run a thick chain under the central bed of the lathe and hook the safety latches. He pushed the button once to tighten the chains, and checked to be sure they were set, then pushed again and the lathe creaked up from the floor. With the push of another button, the crane pulled the huge, heavy lathe so it hung just an arm’s length to the side.

  Beneath the base of the lathe was an in-floor door that Michiko leaned down to pull up on its hinges. Inside was a vault lined with thick sheets of tin, filled with sealed, taped bags of 10,000-yen notes stacked carefully in rows. Michiko took the new wrapped bags of money from the duffel bag and added them to the stacks, leaning deep into the vault.

  When she was done, she shut the door and waited while Uncle Ono used the motor overhead to maneuver the lathe and lower it down. Michiko spray-oiled the bolts, and tightened them while Uncle Ono undid the chain and moved the whole mechanism back to where he kept it ready. He rubbed down the lathe and the floor with a rag. When Michiko stood back to look at their handiwork, she could see no trace of the vault door, only a lathe that looked well-used, well-kept, and never moved.

  “The fish store closed.” Uncle Ono said, picking up the tools to put away.

  “Did someone die?”

  “They hung a sign, ‘closed shop,’ nothing else.”

  “You’ll just have to walk to the new supermarket.”

  “It’s not the same. No one talks there. And it’s crowded.”

  “That’s why this place will be worth something someday.”

  Michiko went to take a shower in the add-on bathing area she and Reiko used as girls. Uncle Ono grilled fish and put on the rice and miso soup, filling the air with the seaside humidity and salty aroma of home cooking. Michiko, in sweatpants and T-shirt, came out rubbing her long, wet hair with a towel until it was dry enough that it didn’t drip, and draped a fresh towel over her shoulders under her hair.

  She got chopsticks for them both, and her favorite furikake topping of seaweed, sesame seed, and dry wasabi. Uncle Ono served the grilled fish, its skin crackling brown, on long thin plates with shaved daikon and grated ginger. Michiko scooped miso soup into small lacquer bowls. They both said “Itadakimasu,” and Michiko poured furikake all over her rice.

  ***

  After the year in Kobe, they spent every day like this. Uncle Ono had no need to talk. He kept the lathe humming, which put her to sleep, and made sure meals were cooked, even when she didn’t sleep or eat, or even leave her room.

  After that year of confinement and torture, she took long baths every day, soaking for hours, sweating out the drugs. The shaking chills and brutal nightmares took a long time to ease up. Some mornings she woke with her old school books and manga and the wooden kokeshi dolls strewn over the bed, unsure of whether there’d been an earthquake or if she’d shaken them off the shelves herself. Her nightmares were gut-clawing, mind-thrashing streams of panic. It soothed her to spend the day reorganizing the shelves.

  Reiko visited her often, but was too worried and frightened to ask questions. Michiko stretched out listening to Reiko chat about her customers and the other hostesses until she fell asleep with her head in Reiko’s lap. Shibuya came to see Michiko, bringing cash, but Michiko just stared at him in silence until he found an excuse to leave.

  Natsumi, who combed Michiko’s and Reiko’s hair when they all lived together so many years earlier, brought fresh fruits and vegetables every day, like the surrogate mother she had always been. Michiko listened to Natsumi talk about what a good student her daughter was and about the fresh produce stand Michiko helped Natsumi buy.

  In October, when the weather cooled, six months of detox took hold and Michiko finally felt like jogging.

  Her route led her past the old dojo training hall for aikido and the cries of youngsters drew her to the open door of the small wooden hall. She was surprised to find Sato sensei, with his loose clothing and long gray hair, teaching a group of children, just as he had taught Michiko when she was a child. She had heard he’d moved to Hawaii to set up a dojo hall there.

  She walked into the dojo and stood at the door. The children gradually slowed their practice to a halt when they noticed Sato sensei and Michiko looking at each other across the hall. When Michiko turned and left, they slowly started back up.

  The next morning, Michiko was inside the dojo in the early morning. Sato sensei said nothing, but stood calmly in the middle of the hall and waited for her to mirror his motions. She could follow very little of it the first day, but over the next few months, she built herself up.

  Michiko said yes when he invited her to help with the children. She felt strange with them in the afternoons because she had never been around children, and had hardly been a child herself. “Maybe you’ll take over the dojo,” he suggested to her. “Falling leaves return to their roots,” he said, quoting a Chinese saying.

  As she rebuilt her technique and stamina, Michiko started to talk with Sato sensei, though he was always allusive and abstract. He never asked what happened to her father, or to her. They worked out together in the mornings, and then after the children’s workout in the afternoons, they talked over tea before she went home.

  Sato sensei liked to talk about the Japanese spirit—part of the falling leaves returning to roots, he said—in old stories like the Chushingura with the 47 ronin, master-less samurai who avenged their master’s honor after waiting for years. He talked about how the soul of modern civilization—not just in Japan, but in America, too—had lost direction.

  “Honorable revenge was necessary. It was a form of justice. But now,” he shook his head. “Now, who would notice?”

  “Justice is still a matter of honor, isn’t it?”

  “For those ronin, it was more important than death. They knew how to suffer small disgraces in pursuit of their goal.”

  “But sensei,” Michiko protested. “In Japan, women have always been ronin.”

  Sato sensei grunted, “Times have changed.”

  “But that’s stayed the same,” she insisted. “Women are still in exile, enduring their suffering, waiting for their moment.”

  When Sato sensei died a year later—a year in which he showed no signs of fatigue or age or sickness while helping develop Michiko’s aikido—Michiko was too bereft to grieve. She organized the funeral, and his students poured in from all over the country, and from Hawaii, to pay their respects at the shrine. When the funeral was over, she knew she was ready.

  ***

  Michiko scooped in a mouthful of rice loaded with furikake. After she fully chewed the rice, another lesson from Sato sensei, she started to explain things to Uncle Ono. “You need to take some of the money to the shrine at Obon ancestor festival and at New Year’s, too.”

  “I do that every year,” Uncle Ono answered, using his chopsticks to neatly stack fish bones on the edge of his plate. “And buy a plaque in the factory’s name.”

  “A big one.”

  “The priest turned over the shrine to his son.”

  “He wasn’t that old, was he?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was tired.”

  “Take the money inside the desk first. Use the money in the lathe later.”

  She stripped the big bones out of the fish in one smooth motion and dug into the underside of flaky white meat. When they were done, Michiko poured tea. Uncle Ono sliced watermelon by the sink, and Michiko came over to eat it. They chomped into the slices, spitting the seeds into the sink and setting the rinds there, too.

  “Last watermelon for the year,” Uncle Ono said.

  “Season always ends too soon,” Michiko said.


  Michiko went to her room and came back with a file of documents inside a large envelope. Uncle Ono got his reading glasses as she spread the purchase agreements, transaction documents, escrow instructions, inspection findings, mortgage papers and closing statements out on the table. She was not sure how to begin to explain it all to him, but she wanted to at least make sure he knew the importance of keeping them safe.

  “This one shows the debt on the factory is paid off,” Michiko said. “So the hold on ownership is lifted. It now moves to you. The red stamp here means it’s finalized, in case you need to show anyone.”

  He took the document in his hand, peering at it carefully. “How did you get it all paid off? Your father never could. Did you talk to them?”

  “I didn’t have to. I sent them all their money.”

  “They won’t come back?”

  “No, they won’t come back. You don’t need to worry.”

  He nodded, hesitantly, and put down the document.

  She pulled out another document.

  “These deeds are for the storage and warehouse buildings by the Tama River. There are a lot of them here, so don’t get these out of order. It’s all set up, so keep them like this, OK?”

  “Those are the ones that were in your mother’s family, before?”

  “That’s why I got them back.”

  “There’s no business now to make them worth anything.”

  “They aren’t worth anything for storing metal parts. The whole area is being turned into apartments, so—”

  “Who wants to live there? The river stinks.”

  “It does now, but once the factories are gone, it’ll become fashionable. We own the land they’ll need. I’ve bought a checkerboard of—”

  “Checkerboard?”

  “It just means I don’t own all of the land, but just pieces in between the large tracts. They’ll have to buy those in order to develop the entire riverfront area.” Michiko didn’t tell Uncle Ono who the developers were and worried that they might come to the factory looking for her, but she didn’t have time to explain all that to Uncle Ono now.

  “How do you know they’re building there?” Uncle Ono asked. “It doesn’t seem like a place people want to live.”

  “I just know,” Michiko said, and looked away. She needed to tell him enough, but not too much. “The entire area is being developed, though nothing’s been announced yet. We’ll start negotiating after the official, public approval notice.” That negotiation would be tricky, and dangerous, but she already had the accountant Sono prepare the offers in advance. That way, she could get the sales concluded quietly before they launched any strong-arm tactics.

  “When will that be?” Uncle Ono asked. “Soon?”

  “A couple years maybe. I’ll be back when it’s time.” Michiko said, carefully turning each document—there were over a dozen different deeds with supporting papers—to be sure they were in order.

  “How will you know the right time when you’re in another country?” Uncle Ono asked.

  Outside, a car door slammed. Michiko stood up and quickly put all the documents into two files—one for him and one for her—and said, “Put these deeds away in the safe in the office. I’ve got to go.”

  “Who’s that?” Uncle Ono asked.

  “It’s not them. But I don’t know who it is.”

  Together, they listened together for a minute. The front door on the factory floor rattled.

  “I better go,” Michiko said. Uncle Ono watched as Michiko hurried back to her room. The doorbell to the living quarters rang, but Uncle Ono waited for Michiko to get her things, change her clothes, and head out through the back.

  He tucked the deeds she’d left behind into a stack of papers on a small desk beside the dining table and arranged the dishes so it looked like there was only one person eating.

  The doorbell sounded again.

  After hearing her soft footsteps descending the back stairs, he climbed down to the workshop floor. Working in the dark, he picked out an arm-length crescent wrench, took the push-button box in hand, and stood in place, ready for whoever came inside.

  Chapter 42

  Hiroshi stood at the bottom of the stairs outside the factory building and pressed the doorbell. He heard a faint clonk upstairs. He pressed the doorbell again as Sakaguchi pulled at the large rolling doors into the workroom to no effect, hammering on the metal so the sound echoed back from inside.

  Hiroshi went around the side of the building, but his way was blocked by metal drums full of discarded parts and an unplugged vending machine leaning just sideways.

  Hiroshi walked back to the front and glanced over at Ueno and Osaki waiting by the car parked on the other side of the small canal. Kudzu grasped at frayed canvas awnings and clung to signs lettered in chipped paint. It coiled up and over the sides of the abandoned buildings, windows taped up or boarded over. Along the row of once-upon-a-time factories walled with sheets of rusted-thin, corrugated metal, only this one factory showed signs of life.

  “Let’s go in,” Hiroshi said in a low voice. Hiroshi stood back as Sakaguchi pulled out an expandable baton and a small flashlight. He looked up inside the rolling doors to where a bar rested snugly on two bolts. He poked at it with the baton and ducked back as the heavy cross-arm swung down from the bolt.

  With Sakaguchi’s help, Hiroshi pulled open the sliding door and stepped in, letting his eyes roam over the vast interior of drill presses and lathes—a steel forest for the skilled labor that built Japan after the war. Even with the door open, it was dark. Sakaguchi pulled out a flashlight as Hiroshi touched the machines, one of which was warm from recent use.

  Hiroshi’s eyes had barely adjusted when he made out the figure of a small, wiry man, barely as tall as the machinery by a tool rack at the back of the space. Hiroshi squinted and moved his head to see more clearly what he was holding in his hands—a long wrench of some kind and something connected to a thick wire up to the ceiling.

  And then Hiroshi heard a motor grinding and a metal chain pulling overhead.

  Simultaneously, Hiroshi and Sakaguchi looked up in the dim light. Sakaguchi flicked the flashlight around, but neither could see what was up there, their eyes still adjusting. Hiroshi could see the short man reach for another dangling object, a box of some kind, connected like the other one to a thick wire looping up toward the ceiling. The grinding suddenly stopped and the lights clicked on.

  A thick silver bolt clattered to the floor by their feet. Hiroshi and Sakaguchi looked up at a large clamshell bucket filled with heavy pieces of discarded metal swaying right over their heads. As the bucket creaked to a stop on the overhead track, another bolt, round as a fist and twice as heavy, toppled over the edge and slammed into the concrete at their feet.

  When the man pressed the push-button on the box, the motor—or maybe it was another one—started grinding again. Hiroshi could hear the motor glide along the overhead runway toward him and Sakaguchi. He looked up at a second clamshell bucket swaying right above their heads.

  Hiroshi and Sakaguchi waited for the man to speak, but he just stood there, watching them with a long-handled crescent wrench set against his leg ready to be snatched up if needed. His thumbs hovered over the smooth green release buttons that could send two full buckets of misshapen metal parts onto their heads with a quick push.

  Hiroshi cleared his throat and said, “We need to ask you a few questions.” The man stared intently at Hiroshi and then at Sakaguchi. Hiroshi tried not to look up at the buckets dangling over their heads, high enough for a quick, fatal rain of metal. He could tell Sakaguchi was getting ready to dive out of the way. For some reason, Hiroshi couldn’t move, but listened intently for the click of a button or the rattle of a chain.

  Hiroshi said, “We’re looking for Michiko Suzuki. This is her address, isn’t it? We’re detectives.”

  “You’re all the same to me.”

  “Do you know where we can find Michiko?”

  “It’s all
paid off.”

  “What’s all paid off?”

  “It’s on an official document.”

  “We’re not here about the factory. We’re here about Michiko. We’re police detectives.”

  “You’re all the same to me,” he said again and reset the motor and release mechanism just a little bit to underscore his point. Hiroshi flinched and looked up at the swaying clamshell buckets. Sakaguchi didn’t move.

  “Have you seen her recently?” Hiroshi asked.

  “She doesn’t come here anymore.”

  “This is her father’s shop, isn’t it? Michiko’s father? Suzuki, right?”

  “He’s long since dead. He was killed.”

  “We’re not going to hurt her or bother you.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “We have badges,” Hiroshi said. “Can I pull mine out for you to see?”

  He held his up and Sakaguchi fumbled his out, fingering his collapsible baton.

  “Last time put me in hospital,” the man said.

  “Last time?”

  “Last time you came.”

  Hiroshi answered quickly to keep him talking. “This is the first time we’ve ever been here and you’re right to be careful here all alone. But we just need to ask Michiko what she knows.”

  “She’s not here, that’s all I know.”

  “You work here?”

  “Forty years.”

  “Are you related?”

  “I was cousin to her father. I keep things running.”

  “You must have known Michiko since she was a baby?”

  He nodded.

  “We’re not here about money. We’re here about information. We can push your badges over to you, so you can see them,” Hiroshi said. He put Sakaguchi’s badge on top of his, stooped over, and slid them along the rough floor. They only made it halfway. The man didn’t move to get them.

  Sakaguchi switched to his thick Osaka accent and said, “This place reminds me of my uncle’s shop. Shops like this built this country. You still machine parts here? For automobiles, appliances, furniture, precision parts, I guess?”