by Constantine
“Don’t come back,” he heard one of the two say.
Nobu rolled onto his side and watched as they returned inside the building. Well, this was just perfect. He’d scared off the one person who knew about Akane’s work, and to top it all off, got his ass beat pretty handily.
Rolling onto his back, Nobu stared up at the night sky. His body was in pain. The ground was damp from rain earlier in the day. Maybe he should just stay right here and have a rest.
The sound of heels rapidly clacking on the pavement was the last thing he remembered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Asami woke Kyoko, same as she did every morning. Kyoko checked the clock and saw it was around seven. Pretty typical for the cat. The Calico hopped off the bed when Kyoko shifted the covers and walked towards the kitchen, confident that she’d gotten her slave out of bed.
Kyoko groaned and walked slowly after Asami. She prepared her pet’s breakfast, poured some ice coffee, and lit her morning cigarette. The typical routine, as usual. Although today would prove a bit more interesting. She was heading straight to visit the Suzukis to discuss the case, hopefully discover if there was anything more they knew about Yuki Ichikawa. Or Jo Miyashita, the—in Saori’s words—‘creepy’ manager at Star Rise Entertainment.
Once she finished her coffee and cigarette, Kyoko prepared for the day by taking a quick shower and dressing. The Suzukis had a house in the Minato Ward, not far from the port, near the park. It took around twenty minutes and a train change before Kyoko stood on their doorstep.
Their house was two stories and narrow, but a decent size for just two people. Kyoko walked up to the sliding doors and rang the bell above the mailbox. Kosei Suzuki answered the door, dressed in a suit without the jacket, and welcomed Kyoko inside.
“Mr. Suzuki, I hope you’re not staying home from work on my account.”
“It’s fine, my boss understands the situation. He said I could come in this afternoon instead.”
She bowed as she entered, removing her shoes in the genkan and following Kosei into the house. The genkan was connected to the kitchen and Tomiko stood at the counter, facing the door. Clearly Kyoko walked on her making preparations. The two exchanged bows and Kosei led Kyoko through the sliding doors attaching the kitchen to the living room. There was a TV up against one wall and a kotatsu table with a small couch at one end and a chair at each of the others.
“Please, have a seat.” Kosei motioned to the couch and Kyoko accepted the offer. Kosei took one of the seats perpendicular to her.
A moment later, Tomiko entered the room, carrying a tray, which she set down on the table. From a small, porcelain pot, Tomiko filled the three cups with green tea. First, she passed one to Kyoko, who accepted with both hands and a bow, then one to her husband, and the final for herself. Also on the tray was a glass dish containing a mixture of nuts. Kyoko declined the offer for those and settled for the tea, sitting forward on the couch as she briefly exchanged some pleasantries with the family.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to discuss the case now,” said Kyoko, just as she was about finished with her tea.
“Have you found who murdered Akane?” asked Kosei.
“I should be clear about something, sir,” said Kyoko. “Although I believe the circumstances surrounding your daughter’s death are suspicious, there is still a very real possibility that this was a suicide. Or accidental. I’ll follow the investigation wherever it leads, regardless of whether or not it fits your initial conclusions.”
“Yes, of course,” said Kosei. “We just want the truth.”
“Good. Now, as I understand it, Akane was fired from Star Rise Entertainment a year ago, correct?”
“That’s true.” Tomiko looked away from the table. In one corner of the room was a bookshelf, which held several framed photographs of Akane. “She was devastated. She always loved to sing and dance…”
“And she was recruited at the age of seventeen?”
“Yes. Back-up in one of the larger groups. Then her and four other girls were spun off into Koibito,” said Tomiko. “She was around…nineteen when that happened.”
“And then fired a year after that for breach of contract.”
Tomiko looked down. “Yes…”
“You said you gave her some money. About how much?” asked Kyoko.
“Not a lot. We’ve had some difficult times ourselves, so we gave her what we could, some money to help with her rent on her apartment,” said Kosei. “Her room is still upstairs and we told her she could come back at any time. But she refused.”
“She was always stubborn. Wanted to make her own way.”
Kyoko took another sip of her tea and after setting the cup on the table, rested her hands on her knees. “If it’s okay, I’d like to be blunt for a moment.”
“If it will help, then please, by all means,” said Kosei.
She exchanged glances between the two of them. “If I’m going to get to the bottom of this case, I need to know everything. Including whatever it is you’re holding back.”
Tomiko looked down but Kosei seemed offended by the suggestion. “Just what is it you’re implying, Ms. Nakamura?” he asked.
Kyoko sat back in the couch and crossed her legs. “From what I’ve pieced together about Akane’s life prior to her fall is that she was not a girl with many options.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tomiko.
Hesitation overtook Kyoko. What she was about to tell the Suzukis would be difficult for them to hear. “I’ve learned some things about your daughter. If I tell you, they might prove…upsetting.”
“Please, we have to know,” said Tomiko.”
“Very well.” Kyoko took a breath to prepare herself. “She lived in a one-room apartment in a seedy area of town. Judging from the empty bottles and cans I saw in her apartment, it seemed like she was abusing alcohol. The dresses in her closet suggest she may have worked at a hostess club, which would also have contributed to an alcohol addiction.”
The looks on their faces were pretty severe. There was nothing Kyoko wanted more than to stop right there and not say another word. But they wanted the full story. And if Kyoko was going to get the information she needed out of them, that meant she would have to go beyond the pale.
“There were three used condoms in Akane’s trash, all of them likely used that day.” She swallowed. “I took them to a friend of mine who works at Osaka University to check them. The semen found in each condom belonged to a different man.”
Bringing herself to look at the Suzukis’ faces was too much. Kyoko instead looked to the bookshelf with the photos of Akane, stretching back from the time she was a baby until her late teens. A bright life, cut short. Potentially by her own hand, with the possibility that she was pushed to do so by the life she’d been forced to lead.
“You…you mean to tell me…” Kosei was having trouble finding the words, and Kyoko could hardly blame him.
“I think she may have…sold sexual services, yes.”
“But hostesses aren’t prostitutes…” Kosei was clearly having trouble coming to terms with this aspect of his late daughter’s life.
“That’s true. Hostesses are not necessarily prostitutes,” said Kyoko. “But one aspect of the job can involve going on dates with a customer outside of the establishment. And that can lead to a sexual relationship.”
Kosei’s eyes were wide open and he just kept shaking his head. He reached for the tea cup, and it shook as he brought it to take a sip. “This is…unbelievable…”
“This is where I have to make myself very clear.” Now, Kyoko stared at the two parents. “It’s very odd when a girl who has a home to return to ends up in Akane’s situation. So I have to ask: what is it you aren’t telling me?”
They both looked down at their cups. Kyoko kept a hard gaze on both of them. Tomiko opened her mouth a few times, but closed it just as quickly after. Kosei just continued to shake his head, appearing as if he were in shock. It seemed Tomiko was the only on
e who would tell her, so Kyoko reasoned that’s who she’d have to focus her efforts on.
“Mrs. Suzuki, please,” she said. “Tell me why your daughter felt she couldn’t come back here.”
“I—it was my fault…” said Tomiko. “After the news broke that she’d been fired because of her boyfriend, we got into a fight. She felt she was entitled, that Ichikawa was more important. I told her she knew the rules, but broke them anyway, and what happened was her fault. And until she could learn to accept that, she wasn’t welcome here.”
“But you still sent her money?” asked Kyoko.
“I did,” said Kosei. “Tomiko didn’t know about it at first, but I tried to send Akane whatever I could spare.”
“It’s all my fault…” Tomiko began to repeat herself. “If I weren’t so hard on her, if I only told her she could come back…none of this would have happened.”
Parent/child fights. Kyoko had more than a little experience with those.
“Something doesn’t make sense to me,” said Kyoko. “You told me Akane was excited about possibly re-starting her music career. How would you have known that if you weren’t speaking?”
“She sent us a letter,” said Tomiko. “Apologizing for the fight we’d had. And she said she’d been in talks with a new agency, that soon she’d be a musician again.”
“I understand Yuki Ichikawa and Akane were classmates,” said Kyoko.
“They knew each other since junior high,” said Kosei. “They went to the same high school and started dating. But then Akane got her break with Star Rise and we assumed they’d broken up. We didn’t learn the truth until the gossip magazines broke the story.”
“When we first met, you gave me a number. Whose was it?”
“His parents. They live around here as well,” said Kosei. “We haven’t spoken to them in years. Not since Akane’s break.
“Sometimes we’ll see them around town and we’ll pretend that we don’t know each other,” said Tomiko.
“Do you still have their address?”
“I think so, let me check my book.” Kosei rose from his chair and walked over to the bookcase, looking for his address book.
While he went about that, Kyoko looked at Tomiko. There was guilt written all over her face, and Kyoko felt equal parts disdain and sympathy for the woman. But she was a professional and she’d keep her game face on, despite her personal feelings.
“Mrs. Suzuki, I understand you haven’t yet packed up Akane’s apartment. But what about the effects she had on her when she fell?”
“The police returned those to us. I put them upstairs in her old room.”
“Was there a cell phone among them?”
Tomiko nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
“Would you mind if I took that with? It might prove useful.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nobu woke to a dry mouth and a throbbing pain in his head. He got to his knees and saw he’d been sleeping on a futon. But the apartment itself looked completely foreign to him. A one-room place, the sun filtering through the curtains.
“What the…?” Nobu struggled to recall the night before. The last thing he remembered was talking to Miki at the club, then being forced out—and roughed up—when he’d asked too many questions.
But how did he get from the street to some stranger’s apartment?
The sound of a lock turning was like an alarm to him. He sprang to his feet, watching the door with a mix of curiosity and fear. And when it opened, he was surprised to see a young woman standing in the doorway. He studied her face.
She wasn’t wearing make-up this time. And her dyed hair was styled in a more casual fashion, pulled back in a simple ponytail. Plus, her clothing was quite different—sweat pants and a t-shirt.
But despite those differences, Nobu could recognize her as Ai, the new girl at the club. The one who’d brought him inside.
“Good, you’re awake.”
She locked the door behind her and walked over to the center of the room, where his futon was. Ai sat down across from him and between them, she placed a plastic bag. Digging around inside, she pulled out the items she’d bought from the convenience store. Ai handed him a can of hot, black coffee and a ham and lettuce sandwich wrapped in plastic.
“Hope that’s okay for your breakfast,” she said.
“It’s fine. Thanks.” Nobu opened the can and sipped the coffee. He set the can on the floor and tore open the plastic, taking a bite out of one half of the sandwich.
Ai smiled, unscrewing the cap on a plastic bottle of milk tea. She ate a wakame riceball and watched Nobu devour his sandwich.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Nothing. You seem pretty hungry.”
“Guess so.” Nobu washed down a bite of his sandwich with some coffee. “So, I’m guessing this is your place.”
She nodded.
“How’d I get here?” Nobu studied her face. “We didn’t…did we?”
Ai burst into laughter. Nobu frowned in response.
“Not exactly the reaction I expected.”
“I’m sorry.” Ai calmed herself with another sip of her tea. “No, we didn’t do anything. You were thrown out of the club and I was worried about you. So I brought you back with me.”
Nobu though about the logic of that. “So wait…a complete stranger gets kicked out of your hostess club…and you decide to leave work early and take him home with you?”
“Well, when you put it like that, does sound kinda dumb, doesn’t it?”
“For all you know, I could be some creepy stalker.”
“Are you a creepy stalker?”
“No, but you don’t know that!”
Ai giggled. Nobu took another bite of his sandwich. Despite his apprehensiveness about the current situation, he had to admit that he liked hearing the sound of her laughter.
“Seriously, why help me?” he asked again.
“Truth is, when I pulled you into the club, it was towards the end of my shift. I’d just gotten off work when they kicked you out. So I didn’t leave early to bring you home. And I’ve got kind of a sixth sense about people. I’ve only been at Idol for about a week, but I’ve worked at other clubs before. You have any idea how many assholes I see on a given night?”
“More than a proctologist would be my guess.”
She giggled again. Nobu smiled as he sipped his coffee.
“You got me pegged,” Ai continued. “What I’m saying is I know a bastard when I see one. And you don’t seem like the type. In fact, didn’t even seem like you wanted to be there. When I came up to you, I was positive you’d shoot down the offer to come into the club. You threw me for a loop when you said you’d come up. You weren’t there for the same reasons most guys go to hostess clubs, were you?”
Nobu looked up at her. There was something in her brown eyes that he found trustworthy. Nothing he could actually explain. Maybe, like Ai, he had kind of a sixth sense about people.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“That girl you asked about, right? The one I replaced?”
Nobu gave a nod. “Have you heard anything about her?”
Ai had a look of worry on her face as she ate the last bit of the riceball. “No one ever talks about her. The other girls, I mean. I said I worked at other places before, right? Well, most of the time, there’s a ton of gossip when a girl just ups and leaves like that. Like whether or not she ran away with a customer, if she got found out by her family, stuff like that. But with Rina? Not a word.”
“You’ve been pretty good to me, so I’m gonna level with you,” said Nobu. “I’m a private detective. Or…well, I work for one at least.”
“Really?”
Nobu felt in his pockets for his case and he handed her one of the cards. Ai took it, studying it closely as if she were cramming for a test. She finally looked up at him. “So you’re trying to see where Rina disappeared to?”
“Actually, no.” Nobu took another sip of his coffee. “Rina died a week ago.
And her real name is—was—Akane Suzuki.”
That revelation made Ai drop the card and her bottle. The milk tea spilled across the futon and onto the tatami floor. Both her and Nobu got to their feet and Ai cursed. She ran to the bathroom and returned a moment later with a towel, which she used to mop up the tea. Nobu, for his part, picked up the futon and took it out to the balcony, where he draped it over the railing.
Walking back inside the one-room apartment, he saw Ai throw the towel into the washing machine. She walked back over to the center of the room and sat down on the floor. Nobu returned to her side.
“Sorry, that was my fault,” she said.
“No big deal,” said Nobu. “So I take it you’ve heard?”
Ai nodded. “Saw something about it in the paper. There weren’t any pictures of Rina up at the club when I started, so I only heard about her from other people. And I didn’t realize the picture you showed me was Akane Suzuki.”
“Seems odd no one would’ve recognized a former idol working at a hostess club.”
“A lot of these places will hire girls who resemble idols or actresses. Sometimes, the girls will even use the idol’s name as their hostess name.”
“Meaning that anyone who recognized her just assumed she was one of those lookalikes,” said Nobu.
“That’s my theory anyway,” said Ai. “But if she’s not missing, why are you investigating her? Thought the paper said it was a suicide.”
“My team’s trying to figure out if that’s really what happened. It’s why I went looking for her last night. But when I tried asking Miki some questions about it, she started getting suspicious, thought maybe I was a stalker. I told her why I was really there and that Akane had died and she freaked. Bouncers thought I was causing trouble, I guess.”
“What did you wanna know about her?”
“Stuff about her life—how often she worked there, if she had any regulars, and if she did have regulars, did she ever see them outside the club.”
“You think she could’ve had a stalker? Or maybe have been sleeping with someone?”
“Both are possibilities. I’m also trying to find out if she was involved with drugs at all.”