I waited for a break in traffic and crossed the street.
“Look at the freak!”
I heard the giggles after I set foot in the sand.
Young people lying on their towels were openly gaping at me. Maybe I should have thrown away the wig I was wearing; I hadn’t done it because it was a rental. Somehow I’d try to return it and get my money back.
“It’s a convention of them,” a mother massaging sunblock into her baby’s shoulders murmured to her husband. “So many today.”
I turned to address them. “Have you seen a dog? I mean, a person dressed like a dog?”
The woman clapped her hand over her mouth, as if to hide her embarrassment.
The man spoke sharply. “We don’t know your kind. This beach is for families, neh?”
I could have argued that they didn’t need to know my kind, all they had to do was tell me whether they’d seen someone dressed as a dog, but there was no point.
How I longed for Takeo’s bird-watching binoculars so I could scan the beach at a glance. I trudged through the sand, my head whipping in all directions. I truly felt like an alien from outer space.
I walked the whole section of unfamiliar beach without luck and decided that I might as well continue on my route to Takeo’s house via the water. At least, if I walked by the water’s edge, I couldn’t hear all the snickers of the people lying in the sand. I unlaced my Asics and threw them in the convention tote bag; now, as I walked in the shallow water, at least my feet were pleasantly cool. I was almost to the section where the Bojo bar was located. I didn’t want to go too close, lest I encounter the Fish.
A man was standing in the water ahead of me; there was something familiar about the profile. He was wearing an undershirt and a pair of white trousers. He slowly circled, turning toward the string of bars in the sand, as if he was looking for someone. From the smooth movements, I recognized him. Once again, Kunio Takahashi.
He’d recognize me in a flash in the creepy Mars Girl outfit. I sat down quickly on the sand, unzipping the unitard. Underneath it, I was wearing a black Jockey bra and underpants. Well, it almost looked like my Speedo bikini. I washed the makeup off my face in the shallow waters and then picked out the sharp fragment of tile that I’d been carrying in my backpack and gripped it in my hand, just in case.
As I started walking toward Kunio, I remembered how I’d once had nightmares about appearing in my underwear in a public place. Yet here I was getting far less attention than when I’d been wearing the Mars Girl costume. I was twenty feet from Kunio now, and he hadn’t noticed me. If he saw me and decided to run, I’d follow. He might be faster in the beginning, but I doubted that he’d have as much stamina as I did. Besides, I was in sporty underwear, and he wasn’t. He’d be vastly uncomfortable if he got into motion.
I was about ten feet away from Kunio when he finally noticed me. He put his hands on his hips and stared me down. “Another tacky Rei Shimura costume. Who are you this time?”
“I’m the same woman you watched in the anime coffee shop, and whom you punched in the train station. I don’t think you’re going to get the better of me this time.”
“I was in the coffee shop, but not in any train station, okay? Not that you’ll believe it—you think I killed him. Is that why you’re carrying that weapon in your hand?”
I looked at the tile, and I handed it to him. “No, I don’t believe you could have. Now I’m thinking that you first spotted me when I was at your apartment building, and it was you who shut the door so I couldn’t keep looking around. You were worried, so you followed me around all day. Because of that, you couldn’t have killed Nicky. If you were in the coffee shop when I was, you didn’t commit the murder.”
His expression softened. “Do you think… the police would believe it?”
“Maybe. Especially if you helped them find the killer,” I said.
His eyes were darting around the beach.
“You know who killed Nicky,” I said. “Is she here?”
“She was,” he said in a low voice.
“It makes perfect sense,” I said. “How exactly did you tip off Chiyo about Showa Story?”
Kunio stubbed his toe in the sand. “It was a mistake. When I asked for her help, I told her that I couldn’t afford a post office box because we had to give all the profits to the printer. I guess she told them then.”
“You mean she told the yakuza?” I said. The sound of waves masked the word from others.
“That’s who’s after us, right? I was getting these strange fan letters from a man who called himself the Fish. It was really giving me a stomachache, reading all this stuff about me being a living national treasure. He wanted me to draw manga glorifying the gangster tradition. Can you imagine how that made me feel?”
“Flattered and terrified,” I said. “But the Fish didn’t kill Nicky. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt your series. He wanted to keep reaping profits.”
“How?”
“The yakuza might have been taxing Seiko Hattori’s father, because he printed your manga and kept the profits. They count on getting payments from people like that. It used to be that yakuza mostly hit up businesses in the floating world. But now, even a copy shop printing doujinshi can come under scrutiny.”
“I could have quit a year ago.” Kunio sounded mournful. “This artist at Dayo Publishing wanted to hire me. But I was proud. I wanted to do my own work.”
“I have one question for you,” I said. “Nicky and Seiko—I just can’t understand. Why did he have a romantic relationship with her? He could have had anyone.”
“You mean someone who’s got a better body than Seiko?”
“No.” I blushed, and suddenly I remembered I was having a conversation standing in my underwear. “In fact, Nicky told me he felt sorry for me. That I couldn’t possibly get anyone in Japan.”
Kunio smiled a world-weary smile. “Have you noticed the sex in Showa Story?”
“There was quite a lot of it in the later issues.”
“Yes. Nicky came up with the stories. I just illustrated.”
“Oh?”
“He was seriously kinky. And not many girls would have done the things he liked to do in private. Seiko loved him more than life itself. She’d do anything, he said.”
“Oh,” I repeated. “I wonder how much her father knew.”
“He didn’t know she was sexually involved with Nicky,” Kunio said. “If he knew, he’d have been very angry. Most fathers want their daughters to stay pure. I know Seiko was not pure, but she was fragile.”
Fragile wasn’t the word I’d pick. Seiko was so sturdily built. She’d been reading an erotic comic when I saw her on the bus. She didn’t strike me as a shrinking violet.
“I saw a dog’s head mask in the trash outside this beach. Why did Seiko throw away her precious costume?”
“She didn’t say. She left about fifteen minutes ago, after telling me that she was sorry and wanted to say good-bye.”
“Where is she going?” I asked, completely confused.
“I don’t know. She didn’t mention that. She paged me at the convention, and when I called her back, we made this plan to meet here. I assume it was convenient for her.”
“Why would it be more convenient to meet here than at the convention?” I shook my head and stared into the waves. “Which way did she go when she left you?”
Kunio scratched his chin. “Well, we were sitting on the sand. From one of the little stands, she ordered both of us ice cream and glasses of lemonade. She said that she wanted me to have a tart memory, because the time we spent working on Showa Story was the most bittersweet time of her life. Then she just stood up and left, taking her lemonade. I couldn’t leave because I had to find the cash to pay the bill. I didn’t have quite enough, but the waitress let me off. I was pretty embarrassed that this happened when both of us were wearing costumes. It gives manga fans a bad image in the mainstream.”
“I know what you mean.” I was conti
nuing to look along the shoreline. Two hundred feet ahead I noticed a yellowish pile of something. It made me feel strangely worried.
I looked at Kunio. “Tell me, are you a good swimmer?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. I grew up in the mountains. No chance to learn.”
“Call an ambulance. I might be going in.”
“Going in where?”
“The water. I think that Seiko might have gone in.”
Normally I would stretch and start off rather slowly when I ran; this time, I went full blast. As I drew closer to the pile, it began looking like a fur coat. No, it was an acrylic dog costume. A dog collar and shoes were neatly laid beside the clothes, along with an empty drinking glass and a small vial. It was an empty container that had a Valium prescription and my name on it. Seiko must have taken the drugs from my backpack during the brief time that I’d gone to the bathroom at St. Luke’s and my cousin had left her to deal with his emergency-room concerns.
I began shaking then, because I knew that my first thought was right: Seiko had probably committed suicide.
I scanned the ocean, noticing about a thousand heads with straight, shiny black hair. I was looking for a head that wasn’t close to anyone else’s, a head that was taking a lonely trajectory out to sea, or struggling far past the buoys.
I ran through the water, because I knew my feet would carry me faster than my arms. When the water hit waist level, I slowed down. I got on my right side and side-stroked, cursing myself for never having learned the crawl correctly. I stopped to tread water for a minute and decide whether I had the strength to go on.
I thought I could see a black speck in the distance, a moving black speck. Could that be Seiko? She was out far beyond the safe swimming area marked with buoys. If there had been a lifeguard, he might have noticed her. But on this beach, there were no lifeguards.
I turned my attention to the people around me. There were some guys on Jet-Skis, a couple necking in an inner tube, and a couple of elementary-school boys battling over a boogie board. It reminded me of the kickboards I’d used in school—great for someone who needs to go far but doesn’t like to put her head in the water.
I waved at the children, affecting the cheerful tone of a teacher. “Hello, children. Did you hear about the free ice cream on the beach?”
“Ice cream?” Being in Japan, the kids were not instantly suspicious of strangers.
“My friend Takahashi-san, the man dressed in white standing in the shallow water, says that he is buying free ice cream for anyone who needs it. The catch is, I’ll need to borrow your boogie board while you’re on shore.” They’d find out later how short on cash Kunio was. Perhaps the police would get involved, which was what I’d need.
“It’s my boogie board!” one of the boys shouted.
“Yes, yes, I’ll take good care of it.” I already had it under one arm and was launching off. In less than a minute, the boys’ shouting receded, and all I heard was my kicking. I was moving faster than I’d thought possible, wired on adrenaline. It was so different from swimming in a pool. Every couple of minutes, a wave roared in and pushed me backward twenty feet. I reminded myself that the waves were pushing Seiko back, too. Maybe that was why she wasn’t so far ahead. I estimated the distance between us was about fifty feet. She was swimming a slow breast stroke, and when her head and shoulders came up, I could see her shoulder-length hair.
I waited for a moment of calm before I called out to her. “Seiko, wait!”
She stopped and cast a glance over her shoulder. As she treaded water, her hands barely broke the surface of the water. She seemed very tired.
I didn’t know the expression for “treading water” in Japanese, so I said, “Keep moving! I’m coming to help you.”
I couldn’t see her facial expression, but her movements became more agitated. She turned with a big splash and started swimming farther out.
As I floated and kicked, I thought about how the sequence of events must have gone. Kunio had confessed to Chiyo that his profits were going to the Hattori Copy Shop. Chiyo in turn told the Fish, who then hit the father up for a “tax”. Seiko knew about that, and she was trying to end her life as her own punishment for causing the problem.
Seiko was splashing only intermittently now. I paddled as fast as I could. If she went under, I’d be useless at retrieving her.
I wondered whether her slow movements were genuinely a show of weakness. Seiko was a sturdily built young woman who had overpowered a well-muscled young man. She was a much better swimmer than I. The only reason I had been able to close the distance between us was because I had the support of a boogie board. I was getting nearer, but another wave was headed my way. A big one. I watched it swell.
Seiko wasn’t aware of the coming wave. When it hit her, her naked body was picked up like a cheap plastic doll and spat out into the air. I couldn’t watch anymore; I made my body into a straight line so the wave would roll over me. The sound was deafening.
When the wave was gone, I raised my head and saw a hand in the water about twenty feet from me. I paddled over as quickly as I could, and let go of the board to try to haul up the body that matched the hand.
The body was Seiko. I’d imagined that if I caught her, she’d fight me, but she was limp as a noodle. Fortunately, she wasn’t dead. She was coughing as if she’d swallowed a ton of water, but her eyes were closed. The Valium must have taken effect.
Now it was up to me to get her to safety. The outlook was bad: I was a weak swimmer bringing in a woman incapable of movement, and perhaps in need of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But if I gave up, we both could die. And at least I had the boogie board.
Treading water, I managed to slide the board under her chest. She now hung over the board like a collapsed drunk at a table. There was no room for me on the board, but I could keep one hand on its side and kick, slowly moving us both toward the shore. The danger would be waves. If a giant one came, I didn’t know if we could both successfully hang on and ride.
We were still in water deeper than five feet, but I could see people swimming around. I took a hand off Seiko to wave for help. Nobody noticed. When I got closer, I would yell.
Just then, though, a familiar roar sounded behind me. A wave. I peeked over my shoulder and saw that it was tremendous and building. Seiko was lined up well on the board, but she didn’t have a firm grip on it. I awkwardly clambered on, making a tight hold with my own hands so she was sandwiched between me and the board. This was a move that skinny kids under ten could do with ease; it was decidedly awkward for women our size.
Seiko must have come to, because she moaned just as the wave shot up behind us. All I was conscious of was holding on to the board, which the wave threatened to rip away, along with Seiko’s body.
The next thing I knew, Seiko’s body and the board were gone. When my body came to rest, my nose was in sand. We’d been flung so far that we were in shallow waters. I shakily stood up in the thigh-deep water. Seiko and the board were still together, floating a few feet away. We were just a few footsteps to safety. I bent over and, with my hands, pulled the floating girl to the beach.
Chapter Thirty-seven
After the water had been pounded out of Seiko’s lungs, she was too zonked from Valium to talk to anyone. In fact, she fell asleep. All the rescue people and police and manga fans who had materialized were disappointed. As they crowded in around us on sand, talking on their radios, I saw a balding man standing at a distance in bathing trunks.
I looked straight at the Fish. He flashed me the peace sign and slowly moved off toward the road. I saw a Cadillac with long fins waiting. He got in the back, and the car moved off. I wondered how much he’d seen of the events at the beach—whether he’d watched me flail out in the water with Seiko and decide justice would be served if she or I, or both of us, died. Or maybe he would have swum in to help, if things got really bad. It was hard to know.
Lieutenant Hata told me to go home, get some rest, and meet him a
t the hospital next morning.
***
We went into Seiko’s room together. The sun was shining brightly through the window on her wan figure lying in bed. There was supposedly a law in Japan about every hospital room having windows designed so that patients would experience sun to uplift their spirits. But Seiko wasn’t smiling. When she saw me, she covered her face with her hands.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
Snapping on a tape recorder, Lieutenant Hata said, “Sorry about what, exactly?”
”Sorry for the trouble I caused you, Rei-san. I was with my father in the train station when he hit you on the staircase. I caught you because I didn’t expect you to fall that way, and I thought you might die. But I knew, I knew the whole time what happened.”
“So your father killed Nicky Larsen?” I asked.
“No, no! I did it. I—I had to.”
“He made you?” I asked, incredulous.
“Let her speak freely,” Lieutenant Hata whispered to me, and Seiko did. The words poured out. Seiko heard from Kunio that Chiyo had accidentally let the Fish and his group know that a doujinshi artist was using her business as a mailing address. The slip had occurred because someone had left Showa Story mail lying on the bar, and the Fish asked about it, sensing a new source of income. He’d first asked Kunio for the money; Kunio had protested that any money they made went to their printer, to cover his costs. Then the Fish changed tactics and demanded money from Mr. Hattori.
Mr. Hattori became very frightened and sent a bill to Kunio, trying to prove that he wasn’t bankrolling or making money from Showa Story. He also yanked Seiko out of school and told her to shut down the circle. Kunio, being Japanese, had understood the threat immediately; he’d left his apartment for a while because he didn’t want the yakuza to come after him. But Nicky, with his all-American ideas of capitalism, had been unwilling to desist. His plan was to translate all the existing issues of Showa Story and sell the series on the U.S. market. He wanted to do more Japanese issues as well, and even said that he would draw the comics if Kunio wouldn’t.
The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) Page 26