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

by Sujata Massey

  “Soon she’ll hear his name on television or in the papers. Then she’ll probably feel guilty for all that she said.”

  “Or guilty for other reasons!” Marcellus sounded ominous.

  “What do you mean? Does this relate to the danger that you hinted about earlier?”

  There was a long silence. “I have to think about what I can tell…” Marcellus said at last.

  “Do you think that Nicky’s death could be related to the yakuza?”

  “Don’t say that word!” Marcellus cried.

  He had become so Japanese. “All right, I’ll say g-a-n-g. Are you aware of such groups’ involvement at the club?”

  “No! Our customers are women of normal background. They would like to rape me, but they are not technically criminals. Just women being naturelle.”

  “What about visitors during off-hours?”

  “I cannot discuss that.”

  “I’m trying to figure out whether someone who stopped by your bar killed Nicky. If you won’t tell me, just think about keeping yourself safe!”

  Marcellus snorted and said, “Ma cherie, when I came to this land, I believed it was the safest place on earth. In a tourist guide I saw a photograph of a Japanese village by the sea, with kind elderly ladies walking the road carrying baskets of vegetables. Consider where I must work, and the young ladies who try to tear off my clothing every night! The real Japan is a great shock.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Can you get out of the city for a while?”

  “I met a lovely lady who would like me to do that.” He sighed heavily. “The difficult part is that it pays more to be a rape artist than to catch fish from the sea. I wear handcuffs of gold. Comprends-tu?”

  I comprehended. I thought about what it would be like for Takeo if he couldn’t be a gentleman do-it-yourselfer in Hayama. He was too haughty—not to mention too thin—to make it through a night of customer pleasing at Show a Boy. So what could a man without options do? Might he turn to a life of crime?

  ***

  I left the phone booth, which had become a hothouse, given the sun beaming down from outside and the general July humidity. My cotton knit dress that had looked so fresh and neat going off to lunch was now plastered to my body. I looked as if I’d gone swimming. To try to restore my appearance, I stood close to the air-conditioning vent in the subway car: the only cool spot I could find on my short ride to the Hattori Copy Shop.

  After getting out, I stopped at the station’s news kiosk, mindful that I needed to buy something to photocopy. I had in my backpack several copies of Showa Story, but I didn’t want to tip my hand by using them. In the end, I settled on buying the Asian edition of Newsweek.

  I approached the small shop, which was fronted by glass, looking to see who was inside. There were no customers on the small row of chairs lined up against the window; I could see a counter behind which was copying equipment and two employees. As I got closer, I saw one was a middle-aged man, and the other a young woman. The two were in conversation; as I drew close to the door, I could tell it was an argument. The man was shaking his finger at the woman, and she was backing away. I wanted to hear for myself what they were talking about, so I quickly pushed open the door.

  A bell jingled, announcing my presence and startling the woman, who, without even glancing in my direction, rushed through a door into the back of the shop. All I could see was that she had shoulder-length hair and a slightly chubby figure clad in Pepe Jeans. I thought she was probably under thirty, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I wondered if it was Seiko.

  The man, who had remained standing in the customer service area, nodded at me and uttered the regular irasshaimase welcome that was given to customers entering a shop. He looked at me expectantly.

  I opened my mouth and said, “Hattori-san?”

  “Yes. What can I do for you?”

  “I need some articles photocopied,” I said. “The thing is, I would like to use a very good paper for it.”

  “We have many high-quality papers. I can show you a selection.” He went to a shelf and began collecting samples of sheets. “What kind of quality do you want, exactly?”

  “Ideally, a paper called Contessa.”

  “Ah, that’s better for artwork, and it’s oversized, by the way. Didn’t you say that you are just photocopying articles?”

  “The articles have color photographs,” I said swiftly. “It’s got to look good.”

  “I’m afraid that I’m out of stock of Contessa right now, but I can get it within a month’s time. That probably is too long a wait.” He looked at me shrewdly, and I wondered if he’d seen through my feeble excuse.

  “That is a long time,” I agreed. “What else can you offer me? Oh, and I was wondering, are you Seiko’s uncle?”

  “I’m her father,” Mr. Hattori answered. “Do you know her?”

  “A little bit,” I said after a second. I’d been listening to some rustling sounds in the back of the store that had suddenly stopped. “Does Seiko-san work here?”

  “Yes. I’ll tell her that you said hello.”

  “Oh, how convenient that she’s in the shop. May I say hello to her?”

  “She’s actually gone out to lunch. I’ll tell her you stopped in, if you give me your name.”

  It was two-thirty, not exactly a typical Japanese lunch hour. But maybe they had to work through the normal lunch hour, because that was when customers had enough free time to come in for service.

  “You wanted to leave your name?” Mr. Hattori was staring at me rather quizzically.

  “Rei Shimura,” I answered him, handing over my Rei Shimura Antiques card.

  “Ah, you work with antiques. I can understand your interest in high-quality photo reproduction. Do you want me to create an advertising flyer for you?” His voice was a bit warmer.

  “No,” I said, feeling silly that I hadn’t just brought in some photos of my wares. “It’s a news article for a, um, language class that I teach on the side.”

  “Well, how about selecting the paper? Here is a choice that is comparable to Contessa. I’m sure you’ll understand that prices are higher than five yen for this type of paper.”

  “Do you have anything in the twenty-yen range?” I didn’t want to blow a lot of money on this copying project, since I’d have to explain it to the accountant at the Gaijin Times.

  “Here’s something that’s suitable for photoquality reproduction that costs thirty yen per page. I assume you want a color copy made?”

  “Yes.” I was flipping through Newsweek, looking for an article worth copying. I stopped at one about police efforts to crack down on Japanese gangs. I figured that it made sense for me to be photocopying an article on a Japanese topic.

  “How many copies?”

  Since I’d said that I was teaching a language class, I should have more than one made. However, I knew color copies were going to be expensive.

  “Two.” Seeing his disappointed expression, I added, “It’s a very small class.”

  “Teaching English isn’t big business anymore, is it?” Mr. Hattori commented. “Ten years ago, it was a good career choice. But now it’s not so good.”

  Seiko was an English major, I recalled from the conversation at the admissions office. I wondered if another reason that Seiko’s father had made her leave school was the fact she was studying English.

  I handed Mr. Hattori the magazine flipped open to the article about Japanese gangsters. I saw his eyes widen slightly at the topic, and he looked at my face again. I smiled benignly.

  Mr. Hattori went a few feet behind the counter and began the process of making a color copy. It took a minute or so, but he kept his back turned, as if to discourage further queries about Seiko.

  I used this time to glance around the shop. The walls were decorated with framed examples of photocopied and printing jobs. I didn’t see anything as obvious as a Showa Story cover on the wall, but I didn’t need to see one to be fairly certain it had been printed here. Seiko c
ould have done it on the sly, when her father wasn’t watching. She could have been the one who used up all the Contessa stock.

  “All right, then. Each color photocopy is two hundred fifty yen, plus sixty yen for the special paper, plus tax—your total is five hundred eighty-eight yen.”

  I paid it, getting a receipt so that the Gaijin Times would reimburse me.

  “Thank you for your business, Miss Shimura.” Mr. Hattori lined up the sheets and slid them into a perfectly sized red-and-white-striped bag. The bag’s pattern looked familiar. I’d seen another one like it somewhere.

  “You’re welcome,” I answered, taking the bag. “Oh, when would be a good time for me to catch Seiko in person?”

  “She’s so busy. It’s hard to say.”

  I had a feeling that she’d be busy whenever I came in. I exited the store, no closer to finding Seiko than when I had gone in.

  I walked around to the back of the shop and saw a Toyota Town Ace van parked in a narrow space adjacent to the shop. I crouched down to take my notebook out of my backpack. I was going to record the license plate specifics and see if I could use that information to get a home address for the Hattori family.

  I heard the sound of footsteps and looked up. If this were Mr. Hattori, I’d have to make some kind of excuse.

  But it was the young woman with shoulder-length hair and a stocky frame I’d seen earlier. She wore a red-striped cotton tunic over her jeans that matched the pattern on the shopping bag Mr. Hattori had put my photocopies in. She looked a lot like the yearbook picture of Seiko Hattori, only minus the confident, happy expression—and plus a black eye.

  I saw the young woman look back over her shoulder into the copy shop, and her pace quicken as she walked away from it. She was crossing the parking lot where I was crouched behind the van. She didn’t notice me because she was busy fumbling in a large backpack for something. I caught a flash of what looked like yellow fur. Could it be her dog costume? She stuffed the fur back in, pulled out sunglasses, and put them on.

  As I began to trail her, the girl I thought was Seiko turned around, glanced at me, and then walked casually toward the street. Maybe it was a normal occurrence, in this area of few sidewalks, for pedestrians to cut through the copy shop’s parking area. She stood poised on the edge of a crosswalk. When there was a break in traffic, she cut across. She was jaywalking, something not ordinarily done in Japan. Citizens were not supposed to cross streets until the corny musical melody told them that it was safe.

  I hurried to catch up with her; by the time I reached the crosswalk, the electronic “walk” jingle had started and I smoothly crossed the street. I saw the striped tunic bobbing ahead of me, almost but not quite lost in a crowd of other young people. But then, to my surprise, her swift walk turned into a run.

  Perhaps she was scared of someone she’d seen in the crowd—or else her father had warned her about me. If I’d been wearing my trusty Asics instead of sling-back Bally pumps, I would have taken off after her. She wasn’t a fast runner—I could have caught up within half a minute. But because I was feeling so impaired by my shoes, I struggled through the crowd in a racewalk. My head was starting to ache. It had been a long day, and this chase was not something I’d expected would end it.

  Seiko’s run ended at a bus stop, just as a large bus pulled to a noisy halt. I wanted to laugh at myself. She wasn’t a fugitive, just a person trying to catch a bus. Time, and the long queue at the bus stop, were on my side; by the time I reached it, the stoplight at the intersection had gone red, so the bus was still waiting. I climbed on, so intent on locating Seiko that I forgot to take a paper ticket marking my embarkation point. I was reminded by a schoolchild.

  “Sorry,” I murmured, and made my way to the back. Seiko Hattori was snuggled in a seat along the window, her face half hidden by a comic book. She was still wearing the dark glasses, most likely to shield her bruised eye area from the public gaze.

  I hung out, holding on to a rail while standing in the aisle, staying near Seiko. A large grandmother type who had been standing ahead of me in the queue for the bus had gotten the seat next to Seiko. The two were politely ignoring each other, standard bus etiquette.

  Before jumping on the bus, I had thought I could slip off when Seiko disembarked, follow her to where she lived, and approach her later for an interview. Now I realized that could be very, very far away. The bus’s destination, lit up in lights over the driver’s head, was Shinjuku Station.

  I cleared my throat and said, “Excuse me.”

  Instead of Seiko, the old lady sitting next to her looked up at me. “Even if you are pregnant,” she said loudly, “I have as much right to this seat as you.”

  There was a rustling sound as the other passengers craned their heads to get a look at us.

  “I’m not hoping to sit in your seat, I just want to say hello to her—“

  “When I was pregnant, I kept myself clean,” the lady said. “No dirty kimono. Also, I kept clean when I had the babies.”

  This must be a direct reference to my now very wrinkled knit dress. Now I was more angry than embarrassed.

  “I’m not pregnant!” I whispered as loudly as I could. I wanted to call the old lady an obatarian, a nickname that combined the Japanese words for grandmother and battalion and meant a relentless, annoying type of senior citizen, but I didn’t dare.

  Seiko glanced up at last, then reburied her nose in her magazine. The volume in her hands was a comic book with extremely graphic sex. It might have been Showa Story, but I wasn’t going to lean over and stare. “Hattori-san?” I whispered.

  Seiko didn’t look up.

  “I’m a friend of one of your friends.”

  Still no response.

  “Can’t she hear?” The obatarian clapped her hands loudly, causing everyone around us on the bus to glance over. We were becoming an odd situation, the kind of story passengers would recollect later at the dinner table for family amusement.

  The sharp clap was just a few inches from Seiko’s ear. She finally broke her scrutiny of the magazine and looked at both of us with clear annoyance.

  “Aren’t you Seiko Hattori?” I asked.

  She nodded cautiously.

  “I’m a great admirer of Showa Story,” I said. “I wonder if I can ask you something about it.”

  “Who are you?” Her voice was husky, not the standard chirp that most girls of her generation had. To talk in a high-pitched voice was a symbol of friendliness, efficiency, and femininity. But Seiko’s voice was as sexy as a torch singer’s. Not what I’d expect from a round-faced girl wearing a striped pinafore over jeans.

  “My name is Rei. I looked for you in the copy shop, but your father said you were out.” I reached into my backpack and handed her my business card.

  “It’s rude to reach in front of others,” chided the obatarian, who was blocking my access to Seiko.

  “Would you like me to help you move to a silver seat?” Seiko said to the old lady in her low, smoky-sounding voice. The bus had several special seats for seniors that were colored silver to match the color of their hair. Rules posted above the seats said they had to be given to senior citizens or handicapped persons. The seats were placed not in twos, but facing into the aisle so that no senior would have to crawl over anyone’s legs to get in or out.

  “Ara! So rude!” the obatarian exclaimed, staying firmly in her place.

  Seiko mouthed at me, “Chotto matte.” Wait.

  I moved back slightly in the aisle so that neither the old lady nor Seiko felt hemmed in. Seiko shut her magazine and tucked it away. After a couple of minutes, she rang the bell indicating that she planned to get off the bus. She nodded at me. Gratefully I realized she was allowing me to follow her off.

  Seiko made a little pardon-me bow to the obatarian and got to her feet. I held my breath, waiting for abuse.

  Instead of standing, the obatarian moved her knees to one side so that Seiko had to crawl over her to get off.

  “‘Girls
these days!” she grumbled.

  Seiko paid her bus fare with a ticket she tore off from a little strip she was carrying in her wallet. Based on that information, I guessed that this bus stop was close to her family home.

  We got out on a wide street that bordered the university where Takeo had gone. Like Showa College, it was on summer recess. The area was quiet, and more upscale than where I lived.

  Seiko looked at me uncertainly. I imagined what was going through her head: I’ve invited a stranger to get off. Now what do I do?

  I spoke first. “Could I invite you for a cup of coffee?”

  “I’d rather have a real drink,” she said.

  “Sure.” Suddenly I was feeling that I was dealing not with a copy shop clerk anymore, but a femme fatale. Seiko led me into a side street that had a small plaza containing the kind of slick restaurants that were threatening to swallow traditional Tokyo. There was a Royal Host coffee shop, as well as Kentucky Fried Chicken. Seiko pointed toward Henry Africa, a mock Asian colonial tavern.

  “They have a happy hour right now.”

  I was glad I’d brought my backpack with a wallet. I’d need to use a credit card to handle Henry Africa. The last time I’d been inside one, I’d been stunned by the English-language menu and the high prices. I supposed Henry Africa was a thrilling international experience to someone who had never traveled abroad. After all, I spent many hours in Japanese restaurants, dreaming of my future life, when I was growing up in San Francisco.

  The bar was aggressively air-conditioned and held just a few salarymen and foreign corporate types. An unsmiling young foreign man—a blue-eyed blond, just like Nicky—motioned to the bar. He probably expected we were there trying to meet men. I shook my head and said to him in English, “A quiet table in the back would be better.”

  Upon hearing my English, he raised his eyebrows and said nothing, just showed us to a table. I thought of Show a Boy and its male foreign dancers who were there only to please the Japanese women. This fellow could have used a few tips.

  I went to the bathroom to freshen up, and when I came back I saw that Seiko had ordered us both glasses of sherry. When it turned out that my sherry couldn’t be sent back, I handed it to her and asked the waiter for an iced coffee.