“It could have been a matter of anger.”
“Why? Did the son say there was an argument?”
“There was no fight between B and Harmony that Robert mentioned, but the fact is that the bride’s parents refused to let her see Robert. They even shipped her back to Japan. This could have wounded Robert’s father’s pride enough for him to give Harmony a fake in exchange for payment.”
“Hmm,” Michael said. “It’s an interesting theory, but it puts a lot of importance on a high school relationship. How likely is that? I mean,” he said, “maybe you remember your first boyfriend, but were your parents vested in how that relationship turned out?”
“They were vested in destroying my relationships,” I said, remembering.
Michael laughed, the first time I could remember him doing so. “And now that you’re over thirty, it’s probably the reverse.”
“You’re right, but don’t let me lose my train of thought. I can make sense of Emi’s parents’ actions more than I can understand Brother B’s laissez-faire parenting. Apparently Brother B wasn’t thrilled that his son wanted to study in Japan, but because Brother A had already moved to Tokyo to open a shop, and Robert was of legal age and had his own trust fund, B didn’t try to stop him.”
“Ah, the trust fund left to him by his late mother?”
“Oh. You know about the mother?”
“I have done some research,” Michael said. “What I’ve learned is that she was Iranian, was wealthy, and fled Iran with her parents for Paris during the revolution. She met her husband when he was taking a course there in arts and antiques. They married, and Robert was actually born in Paris. He holds two passports: E.U. and Turkish.”
“I bet he used the E.U. passport for his student visa,” I said. For a Turk to get a student visa would be much harder. “What about the mother? Do you know when and why she died? Robert was shaken when we talked about her.”
“There was a car accident four years ago,” he said. “The Mercedes she was driving was hit by a speeding bus on a mountain road near a resort. Not only did she die, but five people on the bus did, too.”
“Oh, my God. And the bride was lost in a car accident, too.” I was silent for a moment, thinking about how painful this coincidence must have been for Robert.
“You still there?” Michael’s voice had a hint of anxiety.
“Yes. The main reason I called—I want more background on why the Harmonys left Japan. As you were saying, a high school romance is hardly reason to jump ship from an important ambassadorship. I wonder why he came back and took that other post. I think Mr. Ito would be our best source here—”
“You can’t talk to him. I told you that already.” Michael’s voice was impatient.
“But why?” I challenged. “If you trusted him enough to bring him into the conference room at the Smithsonian and to arrange for my reentry into the country—why can’t I ask him what I really need to know?”
“The father of the bride is a colleague of similar rank in the government. If we ask Ito about Harmony, there’s a good chance he’ll feel that the loyal thing to do is call the guy and warn him of our interest.”
“I don’t know about that. I liked Mr. Ito.”
“Yes. You liked Mr. Flowers, too.”
I bit my lip. “What are you insinuating?”
“Nobody said that you had to sleep with our suspect.”
A slow flush spread through my body as the words registered. At last I said, “I’m trying to decide whether to hang up on you.”
“Please don’t. I’m sorry if you’re embarrassed, but I have suspected this for a while, and I have to know. There aren’t supposed to be secrets between us.”
When embarrassed, go for sarcasm. “Actually, I’d think you would be delighted about what I did. The sacrifice of my virtue, or whatever you want to call it, meant that I was able to remain in the house overnight and locate the vessel. In fact, I answered the question you sent me out to answer, yet I still haven’t been released from active duty—”
“I haven’t called you home because you’re doing so well,” Michael said. “By all means, Rei, find out what you can by using the underground channels you seem so good at working. And I know you came onboard pro bono, but—this job has turned out to be more difficult than we all thought. I’ve put in a request already to arrange for some financial compensation.”
Yes, I was a real whore.
I hung up, knowing that I should feel good about both the money and the praise, but I was only more depressed. How would I know the job was finished when the job description seemed to be changing daily? And I was disturbed that Michael knew about Takeo. Somehow, it gave him more power over me, and I didn’t like that feeling at all.
I put the phone back into my sweater and rounded the corner, entering the residential neighborhood where Norie and Hiroshi lived. A Japanese policeman was standing alone in the center of the street. I continued on, but the policeman stepped directly in my path.
“This is an identification check,” he said, in a voice that was all business. “May I see your foreigner registration, please?”
So the police had found me.
31
Identification check. The only thing I had going for me was that I didn’t have my card with my name—although that in itself was a violation of the law. Foreigners were supposed to carry foreigner registration cards. Nobody really did in the old days, because the police didn’t run around hassling people. But that was then. This was now.
“I’m just visiting on a tourist visa. I’m not a resident, so I don’t carry a card,” I said, eyeing the street for signs of life. A block ahead, a salaryman was turning into his walled garden. There was nobody else around, just a big black car purring gently in a no-parking zone. Maybe that was what had brought the cop here—a chance to ticket the car, which some trusting Japanese person had left with the keys in the ignition. And now it was time to ticket the foreigner.
“When did you arrive?” the officer demanded.
“October fifth.”
“And when is your departure date?”
Why had I bought Jackie and Win police dolls? This man was the farthest possible thing from cuddly. “I’m not sure. The next week or two.”
The officer shook his head. “You must show me your passport and embarkation card.”
Now I was in trouble. The fact was, fine print on the embarkation card said I was required to carry it with me at all times while in Japan. In the old days, nobody ever did that either.
I looked up at the tall officer, trying to establish a human bond. He looked so stern. He hadn’t even demanded my name; I guessed that was because he knew it. The whole thing was a setup.
Damn, damn. I lowered my head and began, very slowly, to unzip my backpack. I certainly wasn’t carrying my passport—after my bad luck with the first cell phone, I had stashed it in my suitcase in Aunt Norie’s house.
I couldn’t decide whether to admit to him that I didn’t have the passport with me or to feign surprise about its absence. This man would show no mercy, and under Japanese law he had the right to take me into police custody and postpone telling the American embassy about my whereabouts for as long as suited police purposes. I was screwed.
I crouched down as if to grope in my backpack. All I wanted was for the ground to open up and swallow me, I thought as I looked at the policeman’s large feet, in black suede running shoes. I blinked and looked again. Yes, he was wearing Nikes, not black leather lace-up boots like the police dolls in my backpack.
Why would a Japanese policeman wear the wrong shoes to work? A policeman would never do that. But an imposter might.
Trying to seem unsure, I rose up slowly and then hurled the backpack as hard as I could at the man’s groin. He doubled over, swearing, as I sprinted up the street toward Norie’s house. But before I knew it, I heard the big black car start up. He’d recovered enough to get himself into it. I now realized that it was his.
As I
pounded the asphalt, I thought about the cell phone in my pocket, and the impossibility of pausing to make a call to 119. The man was probably a gangster, and he might even have a gun. In the land of gun control, gangsters seemed to be the only ones with guns.
I heard the car creeping around the corner I’d just turned. My only hope was to go where the car couldn’t, over the walls and into the private gardens that surrounded the houses. But where was an entry point? I ran past one house with a six-foot stucco wall, knowing that it was too high and had nothing for me to grasp. The next one was bordered by a shorter bamboo fence, though, and hand over hand I pulled myself up, using the muscles that had previously been tested only in gym classes.
He’d seen me go over that garden fence; but now he couldn’t see me anymore, and I had two other garden walls to choose from: one garden on the left, and one on the right. I ran for the higher one, which I knew bordered a house catty-corner from my relatives’ house. It was high, though—about seven feet. I stood in front of it, breathing hard, trying to assess whether I’d make it. Fear made me feel as though I’d been running for an hour, but no more than a couple of minutes had passed. If only I had the power to get to the house.
Powerhouse. I remembered the pet phrase of my trainer at the gym in Washington. Women’s strength was always in the belly. I just had to concentrate and pull my belly to my back. Feeling long, straight, and strong, I moved quickly upward, using the ivy that covered the garden wall for footholds. The top was in sight. The narrow, powerful wedge that I’d shaped myself into pulled over the top and then dropped down easily on the other side.
I was running through a garden, feeling the crunch of flowers under my feet. Sorry! I apologized between breaths as a woman peered at me out of her brightly lit dining room.
Another wall at the back of the garden, a little bit higher; I struggled more, scraping my hands as I climbed this one and half fell into the next garden. This was Aunt Norie’s neighbor’s garden, three houses away; I recognized the neighbor as she peered out at the intruder running through her bed of chrysanthemums.
I hoped she would call the police. Maybe the presence of real cops would scare away the impersonator. I had no inclination to make the call myself, right now—it was such a quiet night that I was sure my ragged voice would carry. I couldn’t give myself away.
I couldn’t run much more, but I was almost home, I thought as I faced the stone wall where, on the other side, I knew Aunt Norie’s few remaining camellia bushes were planted. I took a deep breath, preparing to climb, then paused.
He’d know I was going home, I thought with a feeling of awful certainty. If he’d lain in wait for me in the Shimuras’ neighborhood, he certainly knew my address. I imagined myself inside, and him knocking on the door—or, even worse, him presenting himself to Aunt Norie and getting in by pretense or force. I could make out headlights on the road, outside the other garden wall—the one that fronted the street. He was probably already there, waiting.
Norie’s street was a cul-de-sac, so I could make my way out of the neighborhood by running through all the walled and fenced gardens, and back down to the main road where he’d found me. That was about the best I could do. I still had my train pass zipped into the cell phone holder, so I could board a train and get out of the neighborhood. Maybe Richard would take me in for the night, because all my cash and credit cards were in the backpack. I wondered what my pursuer would make of all that, and the police dolls and the boxed tea glasses, which I’d heard smash after the backpack bounced off his body.
I escaped the residential section, but I still felt vulnerable on the main road. I took a parallel path, down a smaller street crowded with little restaurants, to reach the train station. Then I jumped onto the first train heading back to Tokyo. It was rush hour, but I was too frazzled to observe any etiquette. My phone had switched itself into e-mail mode, and I had to press the “enter” button over and over again to get back to a telephone menu. At last I was able to dial my aunt’s home number. Norie picked up. Her tone was impatient.
“Where are you? I’ve been so worried. A policeman was here just a few minutes ago. He wanted to return your backpack, which you apparently lost and a kind person turned in at the police station.”
“Obasan, listen carefully. That man is not who he says he is. Tell me if he’s still there—yes or no.”
“No. He’s not here. But as I was saying, Rei-chan, he would like to bring you your backpack when you return—which will be when? You’re an hour late already.”
“Obasan, if he really was a cop, why wouldn’t he have just left the backpack with you to give to me?”
She paused. “He was a little strange, I suppose. His shoes—”
“Yes, they were the wrong ones, because it was the only part of his costume he overlooked.” I gulped, because my throat was so dry. “His coming to you proves that he won’t give up looking for me.”
“Ara!” Aunt Norie exclaimed, the reality finally dawning on her. “I should call the police.”
“Tell them there’s an impersonator lurking in the neighborhood,” I said. “Give them a physical description, including the shoes. If he’s lingering around, they might find him. Oh, and tell them he’s got a big black car. I couldn’t identify the model, but it was a large sedan.”
“Rei-chan, you are the one who noticed the most. You must be the one to give the description—”
“I’m sorry.” I dropped my voice. “I’m in a situation where I just can’t talk to them right now. I can only promise that I’ll be careful and call you when I reach safety.”
“Where are you going?” Aunt Norie’s voice broke. “Not back to America. I know that place is not safe. Chika told me about the men who tried to beat up Angus-chan in your neighborhood—”
“My passport’s at your house, remember?” I tried to sound reassuring. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m just looking for a quiet place where I can figure out the next step.”
“A police station. That’s where you should go!”
“I will call you later. Good-bye. And you must take care, too.”
After I clicked off the phone and tucked it back into my pocket, I sat, gazing out the window and thinking. My retreat would have to come tomorrow, after I’d gotten more money. In the meantime, I’d need to find somewhere to spend the night, with no more than a fifty-yen piece in my pocket.
In actuality, there were several old friends and colleagues I could ask, but none of them had a spare room to put me in—and I was ashamed to ask for a favor when I hadn’t bothered to pay them a social call on this visit. No, the only people I’d already visited, whom I could ask straight out with no worrying, were those paragons of responsibility, Richard and Simone.
I disembarked at Shibuya amid the evening bustle. As gray-haired salarymen in gray suits swarmed toward the trains, they were nearly knocked over by a reverse migration of young partyers. Twenty-something boys with hair the shade of Marilyn Monroe’s and hot pink sneakers on their feet, teenage girls who’d worked their school uniform skirts to breezy new heights, fashionistas of both sexes in cowboy boots and shearling—they seemed to curve around me and lift me into their current. We were like a flock of birds, flying westward to where the best stores, restaurants, and nightclubs lay.
I remembered meeting friends at the statue of Hachiko the dog right outside the west exit; and a bit farther on, I remembered once feeling almost paralyzed with pain as I glimpsed Hugh sitting at a trendy wine bar with another woman. The bar was still there. I had an urge to stop in for a glass of something to calm my nerves, but then I remembered that I had exactly fifty yen to get me through the night.
I pressed on toward Language House, the school where Richard and Simone had set up a partnership. They’d chosen the location well, on a small side street loaded with comic book shops, bars, clothing boutiques, and record stores.
An animated billboard advertisement for Panasonic’s new camera featured the singer Ayumi Hamasaki smiling down
like an angel of the Tokyo night. Keep me safe, Ayumi, I thought to myself. And don’t you dare take a picture of me in these clothes.
I was just going into the language school when the cell phone vibrated in my sweater pocket. I answered and heard Michael Hendricks’s voice.
“Hold on a sec.” I was relieved to hear from him, but I needed to find a really private place, so I headed for the ladies’ room, which I knew had a door that locked. An English conversation school was not a place I wanted to be overheard having an English conversation.
“What’s going on? What’s happening to you?” Michael said.
“How—how did you know something happened?”
“It looked like you were trying to send e-mails. Lots of short messages came over with nothing on—”
“Oh. All I can think is that I accidentally bumped the phone when I was climbing!”
“Climbing?”
I explained about the man who’d been waiting for me, and my narrow escape.
“I’m concerned about what happened to you,” Michael said slowly. “Still, I can’t help wondering if, in this case, he might be the genuine item. It’s fully within a policeman’s rights to pursue an un-cooperative person. And perhaps there’s more flexibility about shoe style than you think.”
“His sneakers aside, no Japanese cop would lie in wait like that. If he was on a mission to bust illegal foreigners, he would be in certain Tokyo neighborhoods, not middle-class suburban Yokohama. And how would he know to show up at my aunt’s house when there was no information in my backpack containing that address?”
“What if he was a real cop sent on a private job by someone higher up?” Michael asked, not pausing for an answer. “We know the police have custody of your old cell phone. I’m sure they’ve gone through it. Maybe you’ve become a person of interest to them, which is just what I was hoping would not happen.”
The Typhoon Lover Page 23