by Kotaro Isaka
"S{)ite? When the stakes are this high?"
"(Castro took up with the Soviets and caused the (Tiban Missile Crisis l)ecause he felt he was badly treated when he visited the U.S. He hatl nothing against America belcjre that trij), but when he got back he was ready to crawl into l)ed with the Russians. Reople do a lot ol things out of spile." T he point was shrewd enough, but the man's flat tone matle Aoy^igi feel he was more interested in j)eople's skin and bones than in their feelings.
"So where did they take him?" Ik* asked.
"I don't know. But I'm fairly sure that it you ker‘p hiding, they'll dis|)ose ol
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him soon enough." The lack of emotion in his voice left Aoyagi at a loss for a moment. "If they can't catch you, they'll use him. They'll probably just issue a report and produce a body. They're quite capable of that kind of thing. Do you find that shocking?"
He pictured his double lying faceup in a field somewhere. Shot through the heart. Dr wrists slit. And the headline: "Aoyagi Found Dead."
"They think the whole thing'd be over if they could convince people I was dead?"
"Dead men tell no tales, as they like to say."
"But I'm not dead. What if I resurfaced and started talking? If I said it was a double that died?"
"I suspect they're confident they've seen the last of you."
"So they'd just be tying up loose ends," Aoyagi said, feeling a bit queasy. "But why are you telling me all this?"
"The information came to me, and I just felt I should pass it on. I wanted to make up for the trouble I caused."
"I've had a good bit of trouble since yesterday," said Aoyagi. "A false lead and a trip to the hospital are hardly the worst of it."
"I have one more bit of news, though I'm not sure if it's relevant."
"At this point, Td prefer irrelevant."
"This friend of mine, the plastic surgeon who runs the clinic, told me that he'd been asked to do another operation, to create another double of someone else."
"I don't know what to say," said Aoyagi. "That's quite a racket you guys have going for you."
"You don't understand," said the doctor. "The request seemed to come from the police, or their surrogates. But the man who had the operation was taken away the other day, too."
"I don't follow."
"Well, it's just speculation, but I think they were planning to frame someone else. Not you."
"Not me?"
"They originally meant to pin the assassination on another person, and they had a double made of him, too. I think they couldn't use him at the last minute, and that's why they settled on you."
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''You mean he was otherwise engaged?" Aoyagi wasn't sure what the doctor was trying to say but he played along. "So 1 got the job?"
"It just seems possible that you were a kind of backup plan," said the voice on the phone.
Aoyagi thought about this for a moment. Given how powerful these people seemed to be, how carefully they had worked out every last detail, it was certainly possible he was only part of their scheme. "But even if it's true, that doesn't change anything. Whether 1 was the star or an understudy. I'm just as screwed."
"Yes, but at least you know that the people chasing you might have weaknesses, soft spots. I'm sure they prepared carefully, even for the backup plan, but you were only for use in an emergency, not their favorite option, and that might give you room to maneuver, to outflank them."
"So this is your way of telling me 1 should keep the faith, keep trying?"
"1 suppose you could say that."
Aoyagi hung up without another word. He could feel Kojima watching him as he stared at the floor and sighed.
"You're not going to believe this either," he said, looking up at the TV screen, where some pundit was holding forth. "But hear me out. 1 did not do this. They . . . ." He paused, realizing he had no idea who "they" were, chilled by the thought that an enemy he couldn't even name was crushing the life out of him. "They made a body double of me, or rather, they had a plastic surgeon make one. T he pictures of me on T V are actually him."
Kojima looked as wary as ever, but now there were signs of bewilderment in his expression. His eyes seemed to plead with Aoyagi to leave him alone, to let him w'ait in j)eace for his j)ending retirement without being caught up in this mess.
"Now 1 think they're planning to get rid of the double sometime soon instead of me. Since they haven't caught me, they're going to produce his body and claim that I'm dead." He had managed to stay calm up to this p(jint, but he was suddenly overwhelmed by anger and Irustiation. "1 just tlujught ycHi should know," he muttered.
T he tape on Kojinia's mouth had worked loose and he was appiirently trying to sj)eak. Aoyagi was just about to ask him what he w.mlc’d to say wIumi a taniiliar face came on the T V.
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Masaharu Aoyagi
"Mr. Aoyagi! Mr. Aoyagi!" a reporter with a microphone was yelling, and Mr. Aoyagi, his father, stood frowning in front of a familiar house. Beside him on the gatepost was a plaque reading "Aoyagi," and in the background, the front door. He had not been home since the end of last year, but here was his father, on national TV, shaking his fist at the camera. "You have no right to force your way in here!" he was shouting.
"But we're still outside," giggled a reporter whom Aoyagi remembered seeing on one of the popular news shows.
"How dare you invade my home and accuse my son of being a criminal!"
"The police have identified him as the prime suspect, and there are witnesses. Do you have anything to say about what your son is accused of doing?" This reporter was a middle-aged woman who also had a mike to thrust in his face.
"What do you know about him?" his father shouted at her. "You don't know the first thing about my son!" The reporters were silent for a moment, apparently considering their next line of attack. "I've known him since the day he was born! And his mother even longer than that, since he was in her belly. I saw his first steps, heard his first words. I've known him forever. You've been snooping around since yesterday. What can you know about him?"
"Mr. Aoyagi, we understand that you'd like to believe in your son's innocence. . . . ," said the woman.
"You don't understand anything! 'I'd like to believe'? I know] I know he's innocent." Aoyagi couldn't take his eyes off the screen. He was shaking and his pulse had quickened, as though his blood was racing around in search of a way to escape. "Something like this happened when Masaharu was in middle school. A shopkeeper accused him of stealing some CDs. That time, too, I knew for a fact that he didn't do it. Just like now. I don't know how many times I have to tell you, he could never do something like that."
Reporters continued to call his name from here and there in the crowd, but he waved them off as though they were flies. "Who wants to bet me?" he
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said now. "Who wants to bet that he did it? I'll het anything you want that he didn't! Who'll bet me?" He pointed at each one of them in turn. "If you're so sure he did it, bet me. It doesn't have to be money. Bet something that matters to you. At the moment this seems to be the only thing that matters to you—to take it out on my family. I realize it's your job; that's the way it is. But if your job is to destroy other people's lives, you need to be damn careful about how you do it. We all take our jobs seriously—bus drivers, builders, cooks—they all do their best, because they know people's lives depend on it. Can you all say the same?"
His listeners started complaining audibly. They were furious that the old man could speak to them this way; he should remember how many people had been injured or killed in the explosions; he should use his common sense. Or maybe they weren't really furious but only pretending to be. At any rate, no one was willing to take his father's bet.
"Just as I thought. A bunch of bullshitters." His father smiled, and Aoyagi felt as though he was watching a comic sketch unreel behind the tube in front of him. A moment later, his father pointed to his right. "
Is that the camera?" He turned to face it. "Masaharu. This gets uglier and uglier the longer you stay in hiding."
Aoyagi laughed. "You can't imagine," he said to the TV.
"But don't worry about us. Your mother's fine. I'm fine. You just keep doing whatever you have to." T he reporters took this as tantamount to aiding and abetting a wanted criminal, and they began to shout again and wave their microphones. But Aoyagi's father was unfazed. "Just keep running, boy."
Aoyagi could feel a lump rising in his throat. He knew what would happen if he wasn't careful. T he lump would become a knot, his eyes would start to water, and soon he would be bawling. He clenched his teeth. T he minute he started crying, his anger and his will to go on would drain away. If he began to blubber, it was all over. If he luoke down, the fuel that kept him going w(mld disaj)pear.
He sensed a slight movement in the room, a vague crumpling in the tiir, as tlurngh a slieet (A j)aper had been wadded up. When he looked oxer at K(jjima, he realized he was shaking slightly, and that tears were running down his cheeks. T he tape over his mouth was dam|).
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He continued to cry for some time even after Aoyagi had removed the tape. His slioulders heaved and he wiped his eyes with his handcuffed hands—but he made no attempt to shout and give him away.
Aoyagi turned off the TV, but the silence made him uncomfortable so he switched on the CD player. Abbey Rond was still loaded in the tray. He skipped to the medley at the end and listened to the cheerful tune.
"The Beatles made masterpieces right to the end, right to the moment they split up." It had been Kazu up on the soapbox at some fast-food place back when they were in school.
"Even though they couldn't stand each other," Morita had added. Then someone—he no longer knew who—had wondered how Paul had felt as he stitched the songs together. He must have felt that he was trying to stitch the band together again.
Aoyagi leaned back against the wall and hugged his knees. He closed his eyes, wanting to absorb the music rather than just listen to it. Paul's solitude seemed to wash over him. "Golden slumbers . . . ," he sang with an intensity that echoed inside Aoyagi for a long while. The curtains were closed so he had no idea whether it was fully dark outside, but he felt oddly sure that the sound of Paul's voice wouldn't carry beyond the room.
"The End" began to play, the last song on Abbey Road. Paul and John on vocals, then John's guitar solo. While they'd listened all those years ago, Kazu had spoken up again like some music critic, pointing out how the song showcased their individual talents. "Can you even tell the difference?" Morita had teased him.
When the CD ended, Aoyagi started it again, this time from the beginning: "Come Together."
"You really didn't do it?" Kojima murmured. Aoyagi glanced up at him. His eyes were closed and he had stopped crying.
"Do I look like I could pull off something like that?"
"But everyone's convinced you did. I believed it myself."
"1 can see why. Someone did a great job of framing me. But you're a cop; you've got a job to do. That's just the way it is."
"They don't expect much when you reach my age. I'm going to retire soon, which is why they put me here. They thought there was virtually no chance you'd come back."
THE INCIDENT
''1 guess you just got lucky," Aoyagi said. The Beatles continued to play in the background. He could see his rejection next to Kojima's in the dark screen of the TV. "Do you have a son?" he asked.
"A little older than you," Kojima told him. "And I suppose Td be on his side, too. Td want to believe him unless it was something too terrible."
"Like killing the prime minister?" This made the man smile for the first time since they'd met up. "But what my dad said about shoplifting the CDs? I actually did that." Kojima stopped smiling. "1 was with a buddy. We got carried away. Nobody framed us—1 guess my dad's instincts were off."
Aoyagi closed his eyes, and the lyrics to "Golden Slumbers" drifted through his head agaiii. Ouce there was a way to get back homeward. He thought of that place from his past—that was gone now.
Golden slumbers fill your eyes. Smiles awake you when you rise.
He wished he could find that warm, golden sunlight, let it embrace him. He wanted to fall asleep drenched in golden light. Little by little, his anger left him. Slowly, he felt himself accepting his situation. He clenched his fists, recalling the scene of his father letting fly at the TV reporter. It occurred to him that his father was a much likelier choice for the role of a hit man. He pictured him again, and the memory began to warm him like sunlight.
"Human beings don't act on impulse. They do things deliberately, consider the consequences." He had said something like this once. "Act deliberately, consider the consequences."
But what good w'ould thinking do him now? What weapons did he have at his disposal? He tried to be calm, to think about what he knew and stitch it together the way McCartney had stitched together his medley. Then, for some reason, he remembered noticing a j)iece of thin cord next to a stack of Inai's boxes—a j)in mike, the kind that connects to a cell |)hone. T he gears began t(j turn in his head.
. . . When you rise. Just as Taul sang the words, Aoyagi oj)ened his eyes. Kojiimi watched him as he g(A up and took out his phone. Next, he brought his wrist close t(j his lace and studied it caretully. "It's still there," he murmured.
"What is?"
A(^yagi pointed to the sj)ot where lie h.id wrillcMi down a lek'phone number. "I'll take it as a good omen that it didn't get waslu'd .iway," lu‘ Siiirl as lu*
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punched the numher into the phone. He counted the rings, telling himself he would give up if no one answered.
"Yaji Yaji Yajima," a man's voice chirped. It sounded like a TV jingle, but it was music to Aoyagi's ears.
"Who'd have thought anyone in TV could be so happy," he said, only half joking.
"Who is this?"
"Masaharu Aoyagi."
The man screamed and there was a loud clatter followed by silence. "I'm sorry, 1 dropped the phone," said the voice when it came back on, all business this time. "Yajima here."
"As in Yaji Yaji Yajima?"
"That's just a little ritual, my trademark, you might say." He didn't sound in the least embarrassed.
"Because there are so many other Yajimas?" Aoyagi asked. He resisted the urge to laugh, but he noted not unhappily that he was still capable of laughing. Morita had once said that our greatest strengths were trust and habit— he would have liked to tell him that laughter should be added to the list.
"There are three Yajimas in our office; Tm Yaji Yaji Yajima."
"Tm Ao Ao Aoyagi. I called before."
"I remember. You wanted me to promise I wouldn't call the police."
"Do you believe I'm the real Aoyagi?"
"I'm afraid I do, strange as it may seem." For some reason Yajima sounded younger now than he'd imagined him the time before, and more positive, perhaps.
"I have a favor to ask," he said.
"Who doesn't?"
"I'd like you to put me on the air, as I said earlier. I want to explain my side of things—that Tm being framed, that a lot of people are getting hurt because they've been drawn into all this. . . ."
"And will you be telling us the name of the real culprit?"
"No, I don't know who actually did it. But it doesn't matter. No one person killed the prime minister."
"Are we talking about some sort of secret society?"
"Society is right, but it's not secret." He glanced over at Kojima, who was
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watching him with a troubled look on his face. He seemed puzzled by this new turn of events. "Can you put me on?"
"Of course we can—that's what we do."
"I might even be good for ratings," Aoyagi said.
"You might at that, but the question is how we can pull it off. If you come in to the studio, we'll have to let the police know you're here. We could pretend you just
showed up, but the people upstairs are a little antsy and the police are leaning on everyone. . . ."
Impatient, he cut short Yajima's list of obstacles. "I'm going to resurface tomorrow, somewhere in the city. Do you think you could arrange for some cameras to be there? The police will know ahead of time as well, so it should be quite a show."
Yajima was quiet for a moment, probably considering Aoyagi's request. "Where?" he said at last.
"1 haven't decided yet. Downtown, but someplace wide open. I'm guessing the police will try to keep any cameras at a distance, so a place with good visibility."
"And you're just going to show up?"
"The police will have the place surrounded."
"And you want us to film the arrest?"
"1 want to call you while it's happening. Do you think you could arrange to talk to me live?"
"On the phone? While you're being arrested?" Yajima's voice rose with excitement. Aoyagi suddenly worried that the conversation had gone on too long, but there was no reason to think the j)olice had this number. Still, there was always the chance they would catch them in their random eavesdrop-|)ing. At this pcfint, anything seemed possible.
"What do you think? When people hear me on the phone, with the j)(jlice all ar(jund me, no one's going to think I'm a fake, right? T here's something convincing about hearing somebody on T V, live." He wanted to spciik directly to a large number ol peoj)le without any interlerence or filter, and this is what he had come up with. (loing to a stutlio was dangerous aiul lelt o|)en the possibility that someone would edit him; a live, open-air hrOiidcasl was his only hoj)e. "I'll call you beton* it happens, and I'll be* wearing a pin mike when I surrender. You should he al)le to broadcast llu* whole thing."
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"You want us to broadcast what you say just as it comes in to my phone?"
"Can you do it? Technically speaking?"
"We should be able to. But what happens after you have your say?"
"They arrest me. Tm just hoping 1 can plant some doubt in a few people's heads. If 1 can get that far, if there are just a few people out there who start wondering whether 1 really did it, then thirigs could change after I'm arrested. They won't be able to convict me and execute me without someone asking questions. That's why 1 need to get my story out to as many people as possible, to attract attention to my little show. Plus, if you can get the whole thing on camera, the police won't be able to shoot first and ask questions later." This was his other motive in asking for Yajima's help. If he was really an Oswald, then there was a strong likelihood that they would gun him down the moment he showed himself. The people behind the assassination had no interest in hearing what he had to say. Like Ruby with Oswald, they would turn some killer loose on him and put an end to the whole thing. "So it needs to be a spot where everyone can see what's happening."