The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4)

by Sujata Massey

  As I came near, the hawker waved as if I were an old friend of his. I couldn’t keep my eyes off his outfit—shiny athletic pants worn with suspenders over a bare torso. Ex-military, I guessed, eyeing a tattoo of the rising sun on his biceps.

  “Konnichi wa. Boyzu ga suki desu ka?” he greeted me in melodious Japanese, telling me good afternoon, and following it up with “Do you like boys?”

  I imagined this was one of the few Japanese phrases he knew, but to test him, I answered back in rapid-fire Japanese, “I prefer men wearing Hugo Boss suits.”

  To my surprise, the man whipped off his mirrored sunglasses to take a better look at me.

  “Cherie, you are a live one,” he answered in English, but it wasn’t American-sounding English: it was English spoken with a French accent, and a hint of something else.

  “Where are you from?” I asked, smiling.

  “Senegal, but please hush,” the man whispered. “I am supposed to be a rape artiste from Los Angeles.”

  “Don’t you mean rap?” I asked. “The way you said it could lead to trouble—”

  “Not in this country! I am violated twice a night; three or four times on Friday and Saturday! The schedule is exhausting. Please look.”

  I took the pamphlet that he had been waving at me. It was printed in Japanese and English. Come dance with a stranger! Show a Boy, established 1993. Explore the culture of international dance with our talented boys. Please wet your seat at dancing of your choice. Choose from Cowboy Time, Handyman Special, Flamenco Love, Windsor Naughty, and Black Magic. Our guarantee is authentic foreign boys only. Membership available to lady customer of all nations.

  “Je m’appelle Marcellus,” the man said. “I am the Black Magic dancer. My first show is at six tonight, during happy hour. Lifetime membership to Show a Boy is just fifteen thousand yen, with the bottle-keep system. A special introductory rate of five thousand yen includes a drink ticket and one evening’s admission. Other services require an additional charge.”

  Other services indeed. I asked, “How bad does it get in there?”

  “How bad do you wanna be?” Marcellus leered at me.

  I shouldn’t have asked him such a leading question. I said in my most businesslike way, “My name is Rei Shimura, and I’m writing an article for a monthly called the Gaijin Times. I’m trying to track down a comic book circle called Showa Story that is based somewhere in this neighborhood. Their manga‘s name is similar to Show a Boy, don’t you think?”

  “These artistes are foreign boys?” Marcellus raised an eyebrow that looked as if it had been waxed by Miss Kumiko.

  “No. Well, actually, I don’t know the sex and nationality of everyone in the group. I’m assuming they’re Japanese.”

  “A Japanese man would not be allowed to dance,” Marcellus said firmly. “Our customers desire to escape their everyday existence. Nobody wants to see a dancer who reminds them of the salaryman who works in the same office. Our boys are surreal.”

  I shook my head. “The man I seek is an artist. Someone who works with a pen, not a—”

  “Penis,” Marcellus finished. “I can reassure you that our dance program is only risque, not obscene. We keep the G-string on.”

  “Gee. That makes me feel better.”

  Marcellus burst out in peals of laughter. “I look forward to dancing for you, Miss Shimura. However, I must beg you to slip into something a little more comfortable before you enter our club. No denim allowed, except of course on the cowboy dancer.”

  “That’s okay, because I’m not interested. Male dancing isn’t my cup of tea. I was looking for an artist.” I smiled at Marcellus, so that he wouldn’t take offense that I was turning down my opportunity to see the Black Magic performance.

  “Ah, but you do not know until you try. Tell me more about these comic book people you are seeking. Do you have a name?”

  “Just one. Kunio Takahashi,” I said, and watched his eyebrows rise again.

  “Oh, he’s not a dancer.”

  “But you know who he is,” I said quickly. “How is that?”

  “He painted the walls when the place opened. He’s not around anymore. Our mama-san was the one who talked to him most.”

  He was talking about the club’s female manager. It was customary for hostesses or hosts to call their boss mama. “What is your mama‘s name? And is she here tonight?”

  “Yes, but Chiyo-san is rather … difficult. I don’t know how far you’ll get without giving her something. She’s that type of person.”

  “Too bad.” I didn’t have more than a few thousand yen and a credit card in my shorts pocket, and I wasn’t interested in handing over either. “Perhaps I’ll mention this place in the article. That’s like free advertising.”

  Marcellus nodded. “That might be attractive to our mama. I’ll say you were on our guest list. No payment to get in, but as I’ve told you, you cannot enter wearing jeans.”

  “You’re sure that if I go away now, I’ll still have a chance to get in? Even if you’re not at the door?”

  “Cherie, you have my guarantee. And that’s not jives.”

  Chapter Seven

  Too impatient to go to my apartment in northeast Tokyo to change out of my T-shirt and shorts, I decided to make a quick purchase at Tokyu, the massive department store that anchored Shibuya Station. I could hear the rumble of trains as I rode the escalators up to the floor. Tokyu was cheaper than Sogo, Mitsukoshi, and Isetan, and it also took credit cards.

  I rarely let myself buy new clothes, so this would have felt like a treat if I hadn’t had such a small amount of time to browse. I went straight to the junior boutique called Nice Claup. The clothing brand had recently changed its name to this unusual moniker after it got wind that the brand’s original name, Nice Clap, had unfortunate connotations.

  I found a fashionable red-and-purple floral rayon dress that flowed to the ankle, minimizing the impact of my thong sandals. Marcellus hadn’t commented on my footwear, and I hoped that it would escape the mama-san‘s notice. It seemed silly that women going out on the town to relax and ogle men had to observe a dress code. Or, as Marcellus would say, it was surreal.

  I had the salesgirl cut off the price tag so that I could pay her and leave the store without changing clothes. My shorts and T-shirt went into a Nice Claup shopping bag. Since I’d found dress so quickly, I decided I could spare the time for a five-minute Shiseido makeover on the ground floor. I emerged smelling and looking like a rose, all for less than 9,000 yen. It was a good deal.

  Marcellus was not in sight when I made it back to the sidewalk outside Show a Boy. I looked at my watch and saw the time was close to six o’clock. How the afternoon had zipped by; Marcellus was probably inside performing. There was a new hawker outside now, a Germanic-looking blond in lederhosen. He opened the door for a small stream of office ladies in pastel suits. Their show of unity made me realize that it was going to look rather eccentric to enter the strip club by myself.

  After taking a deep breath and forcing a phony smile on my face, I told the lederhosen boy that I was on the guest list; he said, “Ja wohl,” and held the door open for me.

  Show a Boy was dominated by a short, elevated runway decorated with spotlights and poles. The runway itself was surrounded by small tables draped with damask tablecloths, and small but comfortable-looking dark velvet club chairs. Most of the tables were already taken by females ranging in age from the schoolgirls, some of whom were sipping canned soft drinks, to women my mother’s age with balloon glasses of cognac. The majority, though, were women within ten years of my age and were wearing fashionable suits and dresses. They clinked wine glasses together, screeched with laughter, and shouted greetings to friends coming in the door. They were loose, loud, and behaving in a way that would make people look askance in any office or home.

  “Madam, may I inquire as to whether you are a member?” A blue-eyed blond man wearing a tuxedo without a shirt underneath—this was obviously the club’s trademark—
addressed me in polite Japanese.

  I shook my head. “Marcellus said it would be all right for me to come in. I need to talk to the mama-san.”

  “So you’re the one. Marcellus told us. I am Nicky, your host.” Nicky’s gaze was warm. So this was how they turned normal women into quivering masses.

  “That’s nice, Nicky-san, I just need to—” I stopped talking abruptly, catching sight of the wall behind his head. The whole expanse, about twenty feet long and ten feet high, was covered by a mural. The colors were jewel tones that played off the club’s burgundy carpet and emerald green tablecloths, and the content was perfect for the room. The first illustration was of a man and woman dressed in 1920s fashions clinking martini glasses together. The second was of a couple dancing, the woman bent all the way back over a man’s arm in a tango position. The final picture was of a woman lifting her evening dress to expose a thigh, while a man knelt before her, fixing her stocking to a garter.

  “Do you like the art?” Nicky murmured in my ear. He must have caught on to something Western about me, because he had switched to English with a Midwestern twang. Ordinarily, this fact would have puzzled me, but I was too caught up in what was some of the most wonderful modern artwork I’d ever seen in Tokyo. The extravagant painting on the wall was obviously the work of the Showa Story circle. The exquisitely detailed dance hall background, the sweeping lines of the figures, and the emotion in the faces were familiar to me from the manga I’d seen. I hadn’t thought that a comic book artist, used to cramming a lot of detail in a small square box, could enlarge his work so successfully.

  “I love it,” I said, somehow finding my voice. “I think I know who the artist was.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t anybody famous. Just our house painter,” Nicky said.

  “One person alone?” I asked.

  He nodded. “The boy you want to speak to Chiyo-san about, isn’t it? Let me take you to her.”

  How could the club’s guests not be spellbound by the walls? I thought crossly as we circled the perimeter of the room, heading toward a polished mahogany bar in the back. A dance show had started, with Marcellus on the stage. He was dressed head to toe in an Oakland Raiders football uniform, doing a series of football-inspired poses while he lip-synched to “White Lines.” It seemed especially bizarre to see a dance such as this in front of the beautiful, nostalgic illustrations of courtship that Kunio Takahashi had painted.

  The bar area was illuminated by a hanging Tiffany-style colored glass lamp, and in the small circle of light that was cast on the wooden counter, I saw a woman’s hand. The hand was fairly plump, but the nails were dragon-lady long and painted a dark purple. I squinted in the darkness to try to make out the woman who went with the hand, but she was faster on the draw than I was.

  “So the schoolteacher comes back.” The mama-san‘s voice was rough but not unfriendly.

  “I’m not a teacher anymore.” Now I recognized the woman Marcellus had called Chiyo. I’d last seen her almost two years before, in a hostess club on the west side of Shinjuku Station. She’d used a different name then. Struggling to maintain my cool, I said, “I write about art and antiques these days. I see that your business has changed as well.”

  “Yes, with today’s economic hardships, men have less money to spend on hostess bars. So I changed my focus. No matter what happens in Japan, women always have disposable income. We changed everything! And the name I’m using now is Chiyo. Don’t forget it.”

  I could understand why Chiyo wouldn’t use her old name. In her previous incarnation, she’d gotten in trouble with the law. I’d been peripherally involved with that situation, and that was the reason for her coolness.

  “Chiyo-san, may I buy a drink for you?” I asked, settling down on the only stool at the bar that was not taken. Girls were everywhere, flipping back their hair, checking their friends’ teeth for lipstick, buying huge, colorful cocktails with umbrellas in them. The club’s fleet of foreign waiters was attired in tight gym shorts, with t- shirts flipped back over their shoulders to reveal their bare chests.

  The mama-san leaned toward me, coming into the light. Her forty-something face was puffy, and there was a tell-tale redness to her nose. Either she had spent some time at the beach, or she’d become a hard drinker.

  “We have a fine selection of Spanish sherries. Lady customers prefer sherry over whisky,” she purred, taking down two glasses and tipping a golden brown liquid into both. It looked as if I was going to have to drink on an empty stomach, and I didn’t like that.

  “Do you have any snacks here?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrows. “We offer yogurt. Chocolate mousse torte. Strawberry tarts. Crackers with cheese.”

  “Girl food.” I smiled at the irony. “Would it be too much trouble if I ordered some crackers and cheese?”

  “No trouble at all.” She reached below the counter and tossed out a couple of packs of vending-machine-style cheese crackers. I had been hoping for a plate of water biscuits with a selection of real cheeses, perhaps some properly aged Stilton and Brie, but that was clearly not on the menu.

  “Itadakimasu.” I uttered the traditional Japanese grace as I pulled the plastic off the crackers. I was starved.

  “Marcellus was quite charmed by you.” Chiyo lifted her glass of sherry to the underside of her pug nose and sniffed deeply. “After he explained your situation, I agreed to speak to you.”

  A tipsy girl in a green-and-pink checked suit bumped up against the bar. “Excuse me, but it’s my friend’s pre-wedding party. We promised her the Cowboy Time dance, and I hear that Cowboy-san is sick! I don’t believe it—he was in the best of health two nights ago! Could you call him to come in?”

  Chiyo smiled tightly. “Cowboy is having some surgical work done, so I assure you it would not be in your interest to see him. Aren’t you enjoying the Black Magic dance?”

  “We wanted Cowboy-san because he has the rope,” the girl whined.

  Chiyo nodded thoughtfully. “Ah, so you wanted to tie them together. Don’t worry, just wait for the Windsor Naughty dance. That dancer carries a necktie, and if you point at your friend, he will carry out special instructions. Of course, there is an added fee for that personal service.”

  “Put it on my bill. Thank you very much!”

  “Is that kind of thing legal in Shibuya?” I asked when the girl had gone back to her seat. The audience began a rhythmic clapping, urging the dancer on.

  “Completely. I don’t take chances anymore. So, what about this magazine you’re writing for, the Gaijin Times?” Chiyo’s hard eyes, dressed up with thick liner and mascara, did not leave me. “Are you going to report on the club?”

  “Well, my chief interest is in the artist who painted your mural.”

  “You could mention the decor, but don’t forget to mention the dancing! We need more paying customers.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the crowd and saw that it had become standing room only. Marcellus was unlacing his tight football pants, swiveling his hips for the cheering ladies. I looked away, embarrassed not by the sight of him but by how crudely the women were reacting. Did he think we were all like that?

  “Sure. I’d be happy to do that in exchange for some information about Kunio.”

  Chiyo drank some sherry and said, “Kunio was a part-time employee who worked for me when we opened.”

  “Just as a painter?” I asked.

  “Yes. He came in to see me when I was renovating the building for my grand opening last winter. He said that he lived nearby but was going to have to move. He offered to provide labor in exchange for continuing to receive mail at this address; he didn’t have much money. I asked what kind of work he did, and he said he was an artist. I said to him, ‘Good, you paint the interior for me and provide touch-ups if needed, and you can have mail privileges.”

  “You were willing to help a stranger that way?” I asked. Chiyo had never seemed warmhearted.

  Chiyo smiled in a supercilious sort of way. �
��Have you seen the boy?”

  “No. I have heard he’s handsome—”

  “He’s gorgeous. I would have paid him to dance, even though he’s Japanese. We could have said he was a Chinese or Thai boy, if necessary. But he didn’t want to dance! He said that he had no rhythm.” Chiyo snorted, as if this were the most ridiculous thing in the world.

  “How old is he?” I asked.

  “He is twenty-two, the age of good whisky. He graduated this spring from college. I know this because he showed me his diploma, as if that would make me more likely to be willing to continue to allow him use of the mailbox.” Chiyo rolled her eyes. “He looks like a young Toshiro Mifune. Who wouldn’t share space with Toshiro?”

  Toshiro Mifune was the late star of many great 1960s films, especially those by Akira Kurosawa.

  “You mean he’s got that samurai hairstyle?” I asked.

  Chiyo laughed. “No, no. His hair is actually dyed a red-brown, like many of the kids are doing. He wears it falling into his eyes like some English movie star. But I think of Toshiro Mifune because Kunio likes to wear old Japanese clothes. Suits from the Showa period. That’s how he appeared the first time I saw him.”

  “He dresses like that when he paints?”

  “Ah, for that he wore very little. The heat, you know. Shorts and a t-shirt with some kind of manga character.”

  “Mars Girl?” I asked.

  “I don’t keep track of that silliness,” Chiyo said. “His painting costume was an irritation because some of my dancers, well, they kept too much of an eye on him. He is attractive to men as well as women.”

  “He captured the idea of seduction perfectly.” I stole another glance at the painted wall, which was practically pulsating with color and emotion. Now I realized his work was a bit like that of the Japanese artist Hashiguchi Goyou merged with the style of the French painter Balthus, both of whom created extraordinarily haunting pictures of women, children, and the social landscape. In Kunio’s mural, the young artist had captured the beauty and decadence of modern young life in Japan just before the war changed everything.