Kenichi Takaoka, who had worked at Nakabayashi, had become a surrogate father to Tadaharu Mishima’s son after his death.
And then Kenichi Takaoka himself …
“So how’s old Ken doing these days?” asked Ikawa. “I bumped into him a while back at a site in Kawasaki. Is he doing okay?”
“No.” Kusaka looked into Ikawa’s eyes and shook his head. “Kenichi Takaoka is dead.”
“What—!”
Ikawa was speechless with shock. Experience told Kusaka that the man’s reaction was genuine. Still, that was just his impression, not an unassailable matter of fact.
4
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6
At the morning task force meeting, Kusaka provided a short, bare-bones account of his interview with Kosuke Mishima and of his visit to Nakabayashi Construction.
It was so unlike his usual performance, Reiko suspected him of underplaying his hand.
What was Kusaka doing all last night?
Reiko was no fan of Kusaka’s normal rapid-fire, ultra-detailed delivery, but his suddenly turning all cagey like this made her uncomfortable. Had he found a valuable lead that he didn’t want to share? Was he so far ahead that she was going to end up shut out of the case? The idea was torment.
I’ve got to admit, I’d do the same thing myself. Perhaps that’s the only reason I’m so suspicious of him.…
Reiko wasn’t usually so self-critical, but the thought helped her calm down.
“Time to mosey along, Lieutenant?” said Ioka.
“Let’s go.”
She slipped her arms into the sleeves of a down jacket she had bought the day before. Kikuta, who’d been sitting one row behind them during the meeting, turned his back on Reiko without a word and headed for the door.
What’s your problem? What’s the cold-shoulder treatment about?
Was Kikuta too stupid to realize that she was as unhappy about being paired up with Ioka as he was? She couldn’t stop the guy from flirting with her, and it wasn’t her fault that he’d been promoted to the same rank as Kikuta. When Kikuta had lost his temper and lunged for Ioka, she had to intervene; but for Kikuta then to indulge in a mega-sulk because she’d “taken Ioka’s side” was downright childish.
The man’s an idiot.
Ioka was ready. He stood there, twisting and squirming, as he waited for Reiko to make the first move.
What a bunch of clowns!
Reiko grabbed her Coach bag and headed for the door.
The sooner we solve this case, the sooner this task force will be dissolved and we can all calm down.
* * *
Their assignment for today was to see what they could discover about Kenichi Takaoka’s past life from a visit to South Hanahata in Adachi Ward.
A shock awaited them at their destination.
“It says it should be right here.”
“What a screwup!”
On the site of the “previous address” listed on Kenichi Takaoka’s resident’s card stood a towering fourteen-story apartment block.
It was clearly newer than the rest of the buildings around it. Would anyone in the neighborhood remember Kenichi Takaoka? After all, he had moved out twelve years ago.
They quickly found the caretaker’s office. The caretaker was a scrawny old fellow of around sixty. His face reminded Reiko of those yellow pickled radishes you see hanging from the eaves of farmhouses in the countryside.
“I’m afraid can’t help you. I only moved to this area three years ago, so anything earlier than that…”
“Do you know anyone who’s lived around here a long time?”
“Let’s see … I know. If you turn left out here and go down the street, you’ll come to a barber. They’ve been here a long time, I think.”
Reiko and Ioka went straight there. The barber’s shop occupied the first floor of a four-story apartment block and looked clean, new, and rather trendy. When they went in, Reiko’s fears were confirmed: the owner was a man in his thirties.
“Twelve years ago? I was working as an apprentice over in Shinjuku then. I wasn’t here.”
“Who was running the place then?”
“My dad. But he passed away six years ago.”
“I see. And your mother?”
“She died two years after him.”
“Do you know anything about the house of a Mr. Takaoka, which was on the site of the new apartment building just up the road?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. Anything to do with real estate, you’d be better off talking to the Takenotsuka people.”
Takenotsuka turned out to be a small realty agency a few doors down the street.
“I’m sorry, madam, the boss is out right now,” the middle-aged woman, who was the only person in the office, told them. “There’s another agency you could try in block 2, directly opposite the primary school. Maruzen, it’s called. They might be able to help you.”
Maruzen was only a five-minute walk away. The place was deserted.
“This is a ghost town.”
“Don’t say that.”
They spent the better part of an hour walking around the neighborhood with nothing to show for their trouble. As a last resort, they visited the local police station and asked the duty officer to show them the record of their home visits. If home-visit records were kept properly updated, they could provide valuable information—things like how many people were in a family along with their dates of birth. Sadly, that was not the case here.
“Well, Officer, it looks like you guys don’t take your home-visiting duties over-seriously.”
The officer, who looked around forty, was wary of them. He mumbled an apology, but he sounded blasé, and his chin was thrust out defiantly.
“Can you at least tell us who the local realty agents are?”
“That won’t be a problem.”
The officer’s tone changed. Suddenly he was brisk and perky.
“Here we have Yoshizawa Real Estate,” he said, gesturing at the large, detailed map of the neighborhood on his desk.
“We’ve been there already.”
“How about this one? Maruzen?”
“Nobody home.”
“Okay. This one here is Suzuki Real Estate Sales.”
Ioka duly jotted down the address.
“Any more?”
“There’s Sanko Home Sales here. That’s the lot, I think.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
Sanko Home Sales was the closer of the two, so they went there first. It turned out to be the local office of a large real estate chain. All the employees who’d been working there twelve years ago had been rotated out to other offices.
They finally got lucky at the last place they went to.
“The big apartment block? You mean Green Town Hanahata? Sure, I know all about that place.”
The boss of Suzuki Real Estate Sales was Taichi Suzuki, a portly man of fifty or so. He was more than happy to share what he knew with them.
“It was quite controversial. They had to displace quite a few people in order to build it. There was quite a cluster of small shops and flats there, back in the day.”
Reiko looked around the office.
“Have you got a map from twelve years ago?”
“Sure.”
“Can you show us this address?”
She showed him the address they’d gotten from Takaoka’s residence card. Suzuki went to the steel bookcase, took down a large file, and opened it very deliberately.
“That particular address,” he said, peering at the house-by-house map, “was the Takaoka Store.”
“A family business?”
“Yes, it sold cigarettes, candy, and a few toys as well. Toward the end, it wasn’t doing too well.”
Reiko pictured the little candy store close to her family home in Minami-Urawa. Just by the front door, there was a sliding window for selling cigarettes to passersby, and inside, bags of colored gumballs hung from the ceiling. The lighting was a single fluorescent tube, and
there was a bizarre hodgepodge of stuff for sale: superhero utility belts for kids, and snacks like sugar-coated wheat-bran sticks and vinegared squid. Reiko liked the large sugar-dusted boiled sweets best, with sour vinegar seaweed a close second. Tamaki, her younger sister, detested seaweed; she always went for the roasted soy flour sweets.
“Tell us about the Takaoka Store. Whatever you can remember.”
Suzuki nodded, then promptly leaped up from his chair with a great display of urgency. All he did was prepare three cups of tea.
“Thank you,” Reiko said, accepting a cup.
Looks like he’s settling in for a good long talk.
As he sipped his steaming tea with a faraway look in his eyes, Suzuki reminisced about the store.
“A married couple ran the place. I remember my dad telling me that the store was already there when he set up this business, so that’s a good fifty years ago. I used to buy stuff there myself when I was a lad. That’s how old the place was!”
Suzuki then went off topic and held forth on the subject of novelty candy. The business didn’t seem to evolve much: Suzuki had bought the same brands of candy in his childhood as Reiko in hers.
“I’ve seen a few stores that specialize in retro candy recently,” chimed in Ioka. “There’s one in the Sunshine Sixty shopping mall in Ikebukuro.”
They’d never get back on topic if Ioka encouraged Suzuki.
“Japanese Plum Jellies were my favorite,” said Suzuki. “Delicious.”
“I like the way they turn your tongue bright red.”
“What? You have those jellies over in Kansai too?” Reiko asked.
“What do you mean? I’m a Tokyoite, born and bred.”
Wow, that really is a revelation.
After a while, the interview got back on track.
“Anyway, the plan to put up this big apartment building got the go-ahead, and the residents started receiving eviction notices. My son was about to switch from primary to junior high, so that would be … let’s see … around fifteen years ago.”
“You said there was some controversy or trouble with the development?”
“The whole 1980s stock-market and real-estate bubble was already over by then, but there was plenty of nasty harassment.”
“Tell me more.”
“They’d do things like smash up people’s water mains or gouge out the eyes of their pets. There was a noodle shop a couple of doors down from the Takaoka Store; they got the worst of it. A case of food poisoning put the place out of business. There were all sorts of rumors: people said that the customers who got sick were plants and that the butcher who supplied meat to the place was in league with the developer—things like that.”
In Tokyo fifteen years ago, land-sharking of that kind had been rampant, though not always easy to detect. But with land prices in decline since then, there was much less of it these days.
“Do you happen to know who the developer was?”
“A firm called Nakabayashi Construction. They’re based in the Shinagawa area.”
Nakabayashi Construction…?
The name sounded familiar to Reiko.
Yes, it was at the meeting this morning. Didn’t Kusaka say something about Takaoka having worked at Nakabayashi Construction before striking out on his own?
“What about the Takaokas? Did Nakabayashi use the same sort of strongarm tactics on them too?”
“I’m not sure,” replied Suzuki, pursing his lips. “The husband was long dead by then. The wife tried to make a go of running the store on her own, but it didn’t work out, and the place soon closed down. Come to think of it, the wife was probably dead as well when the problems with the new apartment building started.… Yes, yes, that’s right. The noodle shop was still running at the time of her funeral. Yes, she died before the trouble started.”
“But the Takaokas had a son,” Reiko said.
“How did you know that?”
“Kenichi.”
“I’d forgotten his name.”
Suzuki murmured “Kenichi Takaoka” to himself a few times in an effort to jog his memory. It didn’t seem to have much effect.
“The son didn’t take over the store?”
“No one does that anymore. There’s a convenience store on every street corner, fewer children around, and vending machines for people who wants cigarettes. I think the son went to college and then got a white-collar job.”
Kenichi Takaoka was a college graduate who’d worked in an office job before he became a carpenter.
“What sort of company did he join?”
Surely it wasn’t Nakabayashi Construction?
Suzuki scratched his head. “A gas company? No, no, no. The gas company was the boy from the noodle restaurant. I’m sorry, I really don’t know.”
“No problem. Is there anyone else around here who might?”
Suzuki reached inside his jacket and pulled out an electronic calculator no bigger than a name card.
“Do you know how old the Takaoka boy is now?”
“Forty-three.”
“Forty … three…,” Suzuki repeated. His fat fingers tapped the tiny keyboard with surprising deftness.
“He’s quite a bit younger than me, but I can think of a few people born the same year who still live around here. I’ll get in touch with the newsagent’s daughter and the son of the people who run the florist for you. The best thing would be to find someone who was in his year at school, or just above or below him. They’d have played together. They’d know him.”
“Great. We really appreciate your help.”
Reiko took out one of her name cards, scribbled the number of her cell on it, and gave it to Suzuki, asking him to call if he found anything out. Suzuki took her card politely with both hands and scrutinized it.
“You look a bit like that famous actress, Lieutenant Himekawa. I’ve been trying to remember her blasted name ever since you came in, but it’s just not coming to me.”
“I’m sure you’ll remember before our next meeting,” said Reiko, as they said their good-byes. She was hoping that Suzuki was thinking of someone good-looking, at least.
She and Ioka took the bus back to Takenotsuka Station. Since it was still too early for a proper lunch, they went into a doughnut joint. Reiko had a shrimp gratin pie with a chocolate French doughnut and an Americano coffee. Ioka plumped for a double chocolate French cruller.
“That’s girly food, Ioka. They’re horribly sweet. What? You’re having five of the things!”
“What’s the problem? I’ve got a sweet tooth.”
Reiko wasn’t keen on sitting at a table for two with Ioka. She didn’t like the enforced intimacy. Unfortunately, she had no choice; it was the middle of the day, and the place was packed. Reiko opted for a table beside the window, where no one could eavesdrop on them.
“I love all doughnuts. Why don’t we share?”
“No, thanks,” said Reiko coldly.
She was surprised to discover that the victim’s parents had run a candy store—even more that Takaoka had been to college and had an office job for several years.
“Do you really think Takaoka was a graduate who’d had a white-collar job?” she mused. “Being a qualified carpenter is a skilled trade. It’s not something you can pick up in just a year or two. Quitting a desk job to become a tradesman—it’s an unusual choice to make.”
She sipped her coffee. Ioka, meanwhile, was lavishing all his attention on his doughnuts.
“Even odder is his decision to work for the very company that evicted him from his own house. And gouged out the eyes of the neighborhood cats and dogs. And put the noodle restaurant next door out of business by staging an outbreak of food poisoning. Would Takaoka knowingly work for them after all that?”
Ioka was munching away intently.
Reiko picked up her shrimp gratin pie.
“I wonder if the yakuza were involved?”
Ioka looked up from his plate, hastily swallowed what was in his mouth, and leaned towar
d her.
“Didn’t you know, boss?” he said, in a low voice. “Nakabayashi Construction’s a front company for the Tajima-gumi.”
“Really?”
It was just as well that Reiko’s mouth was full, otherwise the whole restaurant would have heard her surprised exclamation.
“Really.”
“Why didn’t you say anything when the name came up at the meeting this morning?”
“I thought everyone knew.”
You are a complete and utter dolt.
“You should have said something.”
“Lieutenant Kusaka would just have given me a hard time. ‘What, you think I didn’t know that?’ No thanks. I don’t need the grief.”
“You need to be diplomatic. Just preface your remarks with a phrase like, ‘As I’m sure you are aware.’”
“Brilliant! Lieutenant Reiko, I don’t know how you think of these things.”
God, he wears me out.
Hopelessness was like a crushing weight on her shoulders.
“Are you sure about Nakabayashi being a front for the Tajima-gumi?”
“Sure I’m sure. I went out for a drink with a pal of mine from the Shinagawa Precinct. He’s in the Organized Crime Investigation Division. We were on the subject of organized crime, so I thought I’d ask him about Nakabayashi. He says it’s a conglomerate with its fingers in all sorts of pies—there’s Nakabayashi Real Estate, a Nakabayashi Residential Sales, and they’re in the hotel business too. My guess’d be that Nakabayashi Real Estate were the ones doing the dirty tricks to get people out of their houses over in South Hanahata, not Nakabayashi Construction.”
“Is there anything else? Have you told me everything I need to know?”
“There is one more thing,” said Ioka, with a grin. “Today, Lieutenant Reiko, you look ravishing.”
The buffoon! She wanted to grind her pie into that stupid mug of his!
5
Kusaka was already there when Reiko and Ioka got back to the big room in Kamata. He was busy typing up his report. Ishikura and Yuda from her own squad were there too.
“How was South Hanahata?” asked Ishikura, as he poured a couple of cups of tea. He wasn’t the designated tea maker for the squad; they’d just happened to come back after he’d brewed a fresh pot for himself.
Soul Cage--A Mystery Page 11