Remote Control

by Kotaro Isaka

"Like 1 said, 1 thought you were on our side. If you aren't, just forget 1 said anything."

  "But we are ... on your side," Haruko said. And then she remembered something useful. "And 1 know someone who can get around the city at night without attracting suspicion."

  "Who?"

  "You'll need a truck to move the manhole covers. 1 know just the guy to drive you." She realized that there would be no tap on Hodogaya's phone and that she could use it to get in touch with Masakado.

  THE INCIDENT

  Masaharu Aoyagi

  Aoyagi glanced at his watch and saw that it was already close to midnight. He was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. His eyes had been closed until a moment ago, but he hadn't slept, even though he knew it would have helped calm his nerves. A few hours from now, he would be leaving this apartment and heading toward his date with the police and the mass media. He didn't know how well his plan to use the sewers would work, but at this point it was his only option.

  Kojima had been sitting next to him. He had got up twice to go to the bathroom, but otherwise he had hardly moved. "Are you really going through with it?" he said now.

  "I'll have to leave you here. I'm sorry, but 1 can't think of any other way. I've got a few arrangements to make and then . . ."

  "And then?"

  "It's up to fate."

  A half hour or so ago, Hodogaya had called to say he would be able to manage the manhole covers. Aoyagi had been worried that the switch would be impossible in a city as closely watched as Sendai, but somehow they'd got the use of a maintenance truck, and several of the manholes were in Security bod blind spots. When he asked how they'd come up with the truck, Hodogaya said cryptically that they "had hel|) from various quarters"—which in turn made him worry that too many j)eoj)le had been let in on the [)lan. But Hodogaya assured him it would all work out, and he had little choice but to trust him.

  Now it was almost time to make his calls.

  "Aren't you going to sleep?" he murmured to Kojima, unlikely though it was in his current situation.

  "No, I'm fine," Kojima said, and desjiite his age he actiKilly sec'ined to be okay. Maybe his jiolice training had kicked in, but he showed no signs of nerves or exhaustion.

  Aoyagi picked uj) the remote and turned on the TV—|)c*iha|)s loi the last

  REMOTE CONTROL

  time, it suddenly occurred to him. As the uncanny blue light gradually filled the room, the box in front of him seemed almost like a mind-control device.

  Sitting next to Kojima, facing the screen, he could half imagine that he was enjoying a movie at home, but the image that appeared gave him a jolt: it was his father's face talking to the camera, the same scene that had played live several hours earlier. They seemed to be recyclirig footage in tighter and tighter loops.

  And his father was a big star now. Standing outside the house, facing the mikes with the same intensity, the same gruff gestures, and, at the end, the same line: "Just keep running, boy."

  He didn't kiiow how Kojima was reacting to the scene this time, and he didn't bother to check. Instead, he put his haiids on the floor and got to his feet.

  He picked up the phone Miura had given him and dialed the nuniber Kojima had given him: a direct line to the unit responsible for the investigation. He had thought of dialing 911 and talking his way through to the people in charge, but then realized Kojima would know a way to cut through the explanations.

  Kojima, too, had suggested he limit the conversation to thirty seconds. It had been a suggestion, but somehow Aoyagi knew he should follow it.

  As he listened to the phone ring, he felt himself tensing. Then a man's voice grunted "Yes?" No greeting, no name, but that was probably normal police etiquette—or lack of it.

  "Td like to speak to Ichitaro Sasaki," Aoyagi said.

  "Can I tell him who's calling?"

  "Masaharu Aoyagi."

  There was a moment of what Aoyagi took to be shocked silence while the man considered what to say. Finally he muttered that he should stay on the line, and Aoyagi suspected at that point the phone was being switched to a speaker.

  "Sasaki here," a voice said. "Where are you?"

  TIO

  THE INCIDENT

  Hariiko Higuchi

  Haruko woke with numbness in her face. She had fallen asleep leaning on the dining room table, her head resting between her arms. Her phone was vibrating ne.xt to her. The clock on the display said it was 3:30 a.m.

  When she sat up and looked over her shoulder at the tatami room, there were no futons and no sign of Nanami. For a moment she was confused, before she remembered that the girl had gone to spend the night with Ami and Tatsumi. Haruko had expected some resistance, since Nanami's experience of sleeping away from home was limited to one trip with her kindergarten class, but she was having fun playing with Tatsumi and had simply told her to "Help Mr. Aoyagi" and had gone off happily enough.

  At ten o'clock, Haruko had met up with Hodogaya and Masakado to work on the manholes. She knew they probably didn't need her help, but she was the one who had got Masakado involved, so she could hardly have left them and gone home to bed. Besides, when she thought about what was happening to Aoyagi, she knew she had to do something herself.

  They met on a narrow, one-way street near the hospital. Masakado told them the rounds for the Security Pods started at eleven, so they used the hour to collect the fake manhole covers from Hodogaya's place, which was a large house in an expensive neighborhood in Uesugi. Haruko was a hit surprised by the size of it, hut when she asked him why he didn't get out of the hospital and come home, he had nothing to say.

  Seeing him return to the van clutching an armload of realistic hut feather-light manhole covers, they knew better than to ask any cpiestions and simply loaded them in the hack. T hen they headed for the area where they planned to make the switch. On the way, they began to realize they were dealing with a j)rofessional. He had brought rubber gloves and made them put them on. "Wouldn't want to leave any messy prints," he said.

  He had also brought a kind ot crowbar with a hook on the end lor hoisting the real covers. When they reached the lirst m.mhole, lu‘ attaclu'd the hook, bent his knees, and pried it open. " These wc*igh sixty kilos," he said. "It

  n I

  REMOTE CONTROL

  would take Aoyagi half the night to get one open from below." He dropped in the fake, then pulled it back out with one hand.

  "Is this really where he's going to start?" Masakado asked. He seemed to be having trouble believing the whole scheme could work.

  Haruko bent over and lifted the cover, then peered into the hole. It was dark, with no sign of the bottom. When Hodogaya reached over her shoulder and aimed a flashlight down the ladder, a patch of damp cement appeared about six meters below. She tried to imagine Aoyagi disappearing here tomorrow morning.

  A chain was attached to the underside of the fake cover, with a hook at the end. "If he latches this onto the ladder after he climbs in, it'll be harder to open from the outside," Hodogaya explained. Then he seemed to remember something and climbed down into the hole for a moment—to leave an extra flashlight, apparently. "I also left a map of the drain system," he said with a note of satisfaction as he reappeared. "That should do it."

  When they had finished and Haruko stood looking at the manhole, it struck her as weird that she might never see Aoyagi again and yet he wasn't far away and was heading in this direction. In the half-light before dawn, he would lift this cover and lower himself into this dark aperture. Was he all right? Would he make it? she wanted to ask the person who would soon be here in this strange place.

  The whole job took less than thirty minutes. When they were done, Hodogaya insisted they celebrate, so they repaired to the parking lot of a nearby convenience store and drank some juice and beer from cans in the van. Masakado was still marveling at how well Hodogaya managed to get around with the casts on his legs, and also curious as to why the hospital let him stay on when he was so ab
le-bodied.

  Hodogaya's claim that it was due to his "connections in the underworld" might have sounded like so much bluster, but they were far less inclined to doubt him now that they had seen the skillfully faked manhole covers and the ease with which he organized the switching operation.

  "We've done our bit," he said as he drained his beer. "Now we'll have to wait and see whether he can pull this off." He might have been talking about a pennant run by his favorite baseball team.

  "What would that mean?" Haruko said. "Simply surviving the night?"

  THE INCIDENT

  "It might at that/' Hodogaya admitted. "The cops are basically cowards. If things get messy during a chase, they're quite happy to shoot first and ask questions later."

  "Even when they're on live TV?" Masakado asked.

  "No, but they might find someone else to do the job. They wouldn't need to do it themselves if they could say that some gung-ho citizen did it for them. A verv likelv scenario."

  "I hope he'll know enough to run if things get bad," Haruko murmured. "He has to give it a try, but he shouldn't be afraid to retreat."

  "It's hard to admit you've lost and turn around, but I suppose he could always go back the way he came, down the manhole," said Hodogaya.

  "It's a long way out to the middle of the park from where he'll be coming up, and he'll be taking a risk getting there, won't he?"

  "There're plenty of manholes closer in. Maybe we should fix them so he can use them, too. And vou should be around to distract them if it looks like he's in trouble," Hodogaya said, pointing at Haruko. "You can yell '1 did it!' or something to get their attention while he makes his getaway. If you go yelling in the middle of that scene, 1 guarantee the cameras and the law will shift your way, at least for the few seconds it'll take for him to disappear."

  "But why should 1 say 1 did something when 1 didn't?" she asked.

  "Where's your spirit of romance?" said Hodogaya. "Isn't there any such thing as true love anymore?"

  She had wanted to tell him that they'd broken up years ago, but something had stopped her. . . .

  And now she realized again that her phone was ringing on the table next to her. T he disj)lay told tier it was her husband.

  "Do you know what time it is?" she said.

  "They said it would be on TV at 4:00, so 1 thought you'd be watching." She didn't understand what he was talking about at first, but then it hit her.

  "T hey've announced it on T V?"

  "A half hour ago. He's going to come out into the open. T here's a huge crowd around the bus stand at the east exit ol the stiition. Lights blazing, like a lestival or sometliing. Like the night belore the World (aip."

  "But why were you watclung at this time ol night?"

  "We were w(;rking late, trying to finish some things lor meeting tomorrow."

  REMOTE CONTROL

  "You poor thing." She had allowed herself to believe that he had it pretty easy when he was away on business.

  "Save your sympathy for your friend," he laughed. "I'm afraid he needs it a lot more. We were checking figures in a conference room, but one of the guys who was looking at the news on his laptop hopped up to turn on the TV. Sendai seems to be the center of the universe tonight."

  The cogs in Haruko's sleep-fogged brain began to turn. Someone was undoubtedly listening in on this call, which had already lasted more than thirty seconds. She picked up the remote and turned on the TV.

  "How's Nanami?" he asked.

  "Asleep at the moment," Haruko told him, neglecting to add that she was at Ami Tsuruta's house. "What do they say he's going to do?"

  "Apparently he called the police and said he'd show up at the bus stand at the east exit. They plan to arrest him there. But he's claiming he'll have a hostage with him so they're supposed to keep their distance."

  "A hostage?"

  "1 assume he wants to make sure the police don't get too close—that they don't clap him in irons or shoot him dead the minute he shows his face. He may be bluffing, but it should keep them back for a while at least."

  "Pretty good." The words slipped out before she knew what she was saying. He'd come surprisingly close to guessing what Aoyagi had in mind. "You should get a job as a profiler."

  "Looks like the police have guessed that much without my help. But there's also a rumor that one of the stations is going to be broadcasting his voice live as he makes his entrance."

  "Where did you hear that?" she said. She couldn't imagine Aoyagi had wanted that information to get out.

  "It's making the rounds on the blogs. He'll be talking live to some reporter as he surrenders."

  "No doubt 'some reporter' posted it himself."

  "Probably," he said.

  "And they're probably sorry they couldn't convince him to surrender in prime time," said Haruko. Aoyagi may well have choseri the early hour just to put them out.

  "There's more," said Nobuyuki. "The police are planning to use these new

  THE INCIDENT

  dart guns they've just brought on line." Dart guns? The new information was more than Haruko's brain could take in. "The cops must have realized they couldn't shoot him in cold blood on live TV, so they came up with an alternative that lets them 'shoot' him—with an asterisk. He shows up and at the least sign of suspicious behavior they bring him down with a tranquilizer dart and hog-tie him. You have to remember: they're desperate, too."

  But would Aoyagi know about this development? Haruko felt a sudden rush of panic. If he was checking the TV, he might find out, but he might already be on his way down the storm drain via the manhole near the bicycle parking lot at Kakyo-in. And this was important information, the kind he would need to make his decision at the end.

  "What are you going to do?" Nobuyuki asked suddenly.

  "Tm going to watch," she said calmly. "It could be the performance of a lifetime." The scene on TV was brilliantly illuminated in the foreground. The sky beyond was dark. The camera panned back and forth between the elevated pedestrian bridges leading to the station and the row of buses below. Forced to keep their distance, the networks had apparently found spots for their film crews in the surrounding hotels and on the roofs of nearby buildings. The trains were still out of service for the night, so the tracks at the edge of the shot were silent and gray. In the foreground was the roof and parking lot of a large electronics discount store.

  Spotlights played across the plaza, flitting one way and the other. Haruko realized that Hodogaya had been right: everyone was convinced that Aoyagi was about to appear there in front of their eyes, and the park on the other side of the station would be virtually unguarded.

  "You should go home and watch on T V," Hodogaya had told her several hours earlier. "I'm going back to the hospital myself for the show. It would be awkward if soitiecjne there or one of my old business associates caught sight of me kjitering in the j)ark."

  “So 1 don't need to call Irom near the |)ark?"

  "If you hang around there, the police are bouiul to notice. You should go home and wait."

  "And call when I see what's happening on T V?"

  "No, the call still needs to come Irom somewhere near the park," llodo-gaya said. "II things aren't going according to |)lan, there's nothing much

  REMOTE CONTROL

  we can do about it anyway, so it's probably better that you aren't the one to do it."

  "So who's going there to make the call?" Haruko asked, and Hodogaya's eyes shifted to Masakado, who had been busy checking the mail on his phone.

  "Me?" he said, looking up.

  After she hung up, Haruko looked back at the TV, where things were beginning to get out of hand. The camera was apparently positioned on top of a hotel so it could look down on the bus pool, but the staff and technicians for the TV channel were moving frantically in and out of the shot, evidently unconcerned about being visible. The scene cut back to the studio.

  Despite the early hour, the announcer was freshly pressed and highly animated. "We have a report ju
st coming in that Masaharu Aoyagi will be surrendering in Central Park, and not at the east exit as had originally been reported. A man identifying himself as Aoyagi called this station approximately ten minutes ago with this information. When we contacted the authorities to pass this news along, we were told that the police had received a similar call. We are moving a crew to the park now, and we've learned that the police have begun to seal off the area."

  The change of plans had apparently thrown the television station into chaos. Confused shouts could be heard in the background, and the screen suddenly went blank. Then a smudge of light flooded in from the right—a camera mounted on a car was trained on the city lights, the image grainy like a low-budget film. "We are heading toward Central Park," a woman's voice said.

  The fact that they felt compelled to keep filming while in transit was evidence either that they were enterprising or that they were just going through the motions. The city lights streamed out behind the car as it sped throught the empty, early morning streets. From time to time, red brake lights flashed ahead, perhaps vehicles from other TV stations racing to the scene. Soon the car stopped and the shot came to a rest.

  "What's happening?" the studio announcer's voice could be heard asking.

  "A red light," the woman said. She sounded exasperated at being forced to obey a traffic signal at four in the morning in an empty city, and no doubt they would have run the light if the camera had not been rolling. They

  THE INCIDENT

  Started up again and at last the reporter said they were nearing the park. ''Tlie police have cordoned off the area," she said as the car pulled to a stop.

  It took them a moment to set up, but when the scene came into focus again, the camera panned down a gently curving street lined with vans and police cars. As Haruko stared at the screen, one of the vans caught her attention—Masakado's work truck, the one she had been riding in just a few hours ago. She even caught a glimpse of Masakado himself jumping out of it, with another man who had been in the passenger seat.