At 11:10 A.M. the internal phone rang, and Superintendent Motono said, “Never rains but it pours. We’ve found Hatano—or a fellow of that name, who answers the description—on a slab at the central morgue. He was filled with bullets last night at Shibuya Hospital. A yakuza hit. He’d just had an eye operation. They’re printing the corpse, but you get out to the morgue and identify him. I’m sending men to the hospital.”
Aoki sat, gazing across the busy room. Could it really be the angry, fish-slitting bastard? The news item he’d read coming in on the train flashed back. He slipped the disk of his report into his pocket, put on his overcoat, and went on his way.
~ * ~
Hatano, all right. The chef’s face was stamped with the anger of his last moment—though the guy’s face had never showed anything except an evil temper. Aoki counted six bullet wounds on the naked corpse. The left eye was surgically bandaged. Go stones were as lethal off the board as on it! The attendant slid the tray back into the wall; the autopsy was to be done at 1:00 P.M.
In his overcoat, a cigarette stuck between his lips, Aoki paced the room. Had Saito—he couldn’t think of him as Yamamoto, his Osaka Go-competition identity—had the chef, with his dangerous knowledge, taken out? Blasted full of holes in a hospital bed? That would’ve tickled Saito’s crazy funnybone. Sans flowers, all right. Had he put his damned wig back on and done the job himself? The last thought came without a trace of humor.
Aoki gave the central morgue’s room a long stare. He might’ve sealed the chef’s fate when he revealed to Saito that he knew of his grotesque culinary obsession, of Colonel Oto—if that was his obsession, and if there was a connection with the dead colonel. He shrugged. Whatever the reason, Hatano deserved his fate. Aoki turned on his heel and left. He’d go to the hospital and see what they’d turned up on the killing.
He was heading for the subway when his cell phone rang. He answered it on the move and pulled up. For a second he couldn’t believe the voice he was hearing. “Where are you?” he gasped. Instantly he was breathing hard.
They were fifty yards away, in the coffee shop next to the public health building that accommodated the morgue. Almost in a dream, he retraced his steps. He entered through the revolving door. The dream evaporated, and excitement was pulsing in him.
Kazu Hatano and her twin sister rose from their table as one, bowing. Spellbound, Aoki stared at them, then belatedly responded. His eyes were wide, and the skin of his face felt tight. His left hand had gone to the mole on his cheekbone. They had on street clothes. Coats and hats. Each different, but to Aoki the faces were identical. Sad and worried faces. He pulled out a chair. This was a shock—and a wonder.
Kazu Hatano was on the left; now he could see that. The stamp of the manager-proprietor gave her an air of authority. Her sister, who’d been in his arms, was soft and self-effacing. Kazu Hatano smiled, a brief shadow of a smile, doubtless at the expression on his face. “We’ve come here to attend to the formalities for our father. You know about that?” Aoki nodded quickly. “And we wish to talk to you.” She hesitated. “The time’s come for that.”
The familiar voice with its mountain accent seemed to be filling Aoki’s head.
She looked down at the handbag in her lap, then brought out a paper-clipped sheaf of papers and put them into his hand. “This is a copy of a document our father made two days ago, relating to his connections with Mr. Saito. The man you know by that name.” Aoki continued to stare into her eyes. “He intended to send it to Mr. Saito—telling him that if anything happened to him, the original would be put into the hands of the police. Unfortunately, before this could be done—”
Aoki’s mind had moved into gear. The chef had had bad timing throughout.
“Our father has done terrible things.” Her voice had dropped. “Things we could never have imagined, that can’t be forgiven. Much of it forced upon him by Mr. Saito.” She paused; this was an ordeal. “Too much. We can’t discuss it.” The freckles were covered up this morning, but as if he had X-ray vision Aoki could see each one of them. Her eyes showed her pain; nonetheless, they were unwavering. “We could only bear to read a part of it.”
Aoki nodded, glanced through the four sheets of paper, then nodded again. He folded the document in two and put it in his breast pocket.
She said, “My father asked me to find a lawyer. To accompany him to the interview.” What an experience for her, for the lawyer, Aoki thought. “The original is in a safe place and can be provided. My phone number is here.“
The sister wasn’t going to speak, that was plain. Aoki couldn’t stop himself staring at her beautiful red-painted lips. The face was inscrutable behind makeup, having thoughts he couldn’t even guess at.
Kazu Hatano placed a small sheet of green paper before him. “Mr. Saito may be found here. Under this name.”
Aoki stared down at the Aoyama address. Oto! His mouth fell open. That name. His true identity? The one at rock bottom for him to slot back into? He looked up at her. “How did they find your father? “
Huskily, she said, “He wasn’t an intelligent man. We believe he may have telephoned Mr. Saito from the hospital. That his call was traced.”
Aoki nodded slowly. Saito wouldn’t have wasted any time. He wondered how much the prefecture detectives had found out from her. He’d see the report. . . According to Saito, these women were the beneficiaries of Ito’s will. Had that been the reason for the banker’s visit to her office on the eve of his death?
She said, “Inspector Aoki, you’ve been good to me, to our family. We ... I will never forget it.” She bowed deeply.
They hurried away to make the funeral arrangements. The body would be released in three days, Kazu Hatano had said, as if discussing the laundry schedule at the ryokan. Family duty. No sentiment—except for the deep dishonor.
When they’d gone, Aoki ordered black coffee and thought about the two women. What a wonder! He was still under their spell. He stared into the coffee when it came. At the ryokan the physicality of Kazu Hatano, the sight, sound, and scent of her, had consumed him. For him, something had begun. Briefly, he’d thought of a future, tenuous, but a possibility.
There wasn’t one now. He was under suspicion, and his blood was on the Fatman, and in his garden. He no longer heard his wife, but, if that time hadn’t passed, he thought that she might have told him, I’m so sorry, Hideo.
Eventually, his mind released these thoughts and went on into territory just as tricky. He glanced at the sheet of green paper and shook his head. Oto! This Go-playing yakuza boss who’d called himself Saito, this director of a large construction group, would know who’d killed ex-governor Tamaki; he had looked into Inspector Hideo Aoki and, expertly, had read what his ultimate intentions for the Fatman would be. It hadn’t been the bastard’s intention that he’d survive to do anything. But he had survived. If Oto/Saito were arrested, Aoki had no doubt that he’d point the finger straight at him—as the Fatman’s killer.
Perspiration had sprung out on the detective’s brow. He lit a cigarette and absorbed the tobacco taste. He touched the Band-Aided wound. Whichever way he turned, he was fucked. Immediately he stubbed out the cigarette. He’d go to Aoyama and have a look at the twelfth floor of this building; then maybe he could get his thinking straight. He left the coffee shop, stepping into a misty noon.
En route to the Aoyama address, his cell phone rang. “What’s the result?” Superintendent Motono asked.
“It’s him, all right. Hatano the chef, six holes in the corpse. I’m going to the hospital to interview the witnesses.”
“Superintendent Shimazu wants to talk to you, Inspector. He’s out at Hakone. Be in his office at 6:00 P.M. They’ve found shoe prints in Tamaki’s sand garden, and blood that isn’t his on his kimono. It’s routine. Nothing a DNA test and a look at your shoes won’t sort out. It was a .45—one shot in the chest.”
Feeling cold in his heart, Aoki said, “A .45, eh? It’d take that caliber to stop the Fatman.” He put h
is phone away. The chill was spreading in him. There’d been a trace of irony in Motono’s voice. Events were taking over, and his thinking was suddenly much straighter about his future. At a kiosk he picked up a chocolate bar, and ate it as he went.
~ * ~
The building was a stubby, modern glass box, its top six floors taken up by the construction group. The twelfth floor, the note said. It was the highest. Concentrating hard, Aoki decided that at this stage he wanted to see without being seen. He rode the elevator to the sixth floor. It was the main reception area.
The receptionist rose and bowed, and Aoki produced the name card of the Go administrator at Osaka. He’d thought of something. “Is Mr. Yamamoto available, please? I met him at the Go competition in Osaka, and as I’m visiting Tokyo I wish to pay my respects.”
The girl looked puzzled. “We have no Mr. Yamamoto here, sir.”
Aoki threw his hands up in despair. “There were so many people at the competition. I must’ve got his name confused with someone else. “
Her pretty brow showed concentration. “Our Director Oto was in Osaka last week.”
Aoki smiled tightly. “That’s the name.”
“Please see his private secretary on the twelfth floor. “
Aoki reentered the elevator. He sighed with relief when the door opened at the twelfth floor to show a lobby divided from the executive suite by a glass wall and a security door. Behind the glass, at her desk, another secretary glanced up as he appeared. Ignoring the security door, he strolled to a sofa as though killing time, sat down, picked up a newspaper, and began to read it. Peeking over the top of the paper, he could see down a wide passage flanked with chrome containers of shiny-leafed plants. Glass-walled offices opened onto the passage.
Moments later, a well-groomed woman of about thirty walked the length of the passage, hips undulating, carrying papers, going away from Aoki. And there he was, in the blue suit, fifteen paces away, stepping out of a room to talk to the woman. Unmistakable. Saito of the mountain ryokan, minus the hair, Yamamoto of the Osaka Go competition, Oto of this doubtless yakuza-owned construction company with a big problem in a Yokohama project, and probably daimyo of one of the major gangs in Japan. He had his back to Aoki. Swiftly the detective got up and, keeping his own back to the executive suite, crossed to the elevator. The few seconds it took to ascend to the floor seemed like minutes. As he went through its door, his eye caught the sweep of the security camera, and he swore softly. High up in a corner. He hadn’t seen it.
In the traffic-saturated street, he grimaced. Maybe he hadn’t been spotted, but in a place like that that was hard to believe.
He took the 3:15 P.M. train out to Kamakura, thinking it all over, and went to the bar where he’d spent so much time in recent months. One thing, Oto wasn’t going anywhere right now, unless he put on that false hair and came after Hideo Aoki! He ordered a Heineken and slowly read Hatano’s affidavit. The chef’s stark, semiliterate story brought into focus the one he’d been compiling in his head. He’d been on the right track. Saito and Hatano went back to 1990, when the Go-player became a patron of the Osaka One restaurant. The eatery had crashed because of Hatano’s drug habit. Aoki shook his head; he’d missed that, though the signs were there.
Saito had tracked down the bankrupt chef in his seedy Osaka apartment. The drug addict was startled to find out that Saito and an aged uncle, a former officer in the imperial army, were into much more exotic fare than he’d served at Osaka One. It was a question of health and vigor, long life and sexual prowess—and Saito’s taste for the grotesque. Money talked, and a few times a year special supplies arrived for Hatano’s refrigerator, brought by a shadowy gangster the morning of the periodic dinners that Hatano prepared and served at an obscure inn. Saito used his Osaka identity, Yamamoto, for his dealings with the chef.
It had also been a question of history. The colonel had developed a taste for this dining in wartime China and inducted his nephew into it. That was what Hatano understood. Then the old man died.
Aoki sipped beer and read on. Into the picture came the journalist Nagai, who’d met Saito across the Go table. Hatano didn’t know how Nagai had gotten his information, but in a matter of days Nagai had written his pieces and been eliminated by Saito. Saito had dined solo on the journalist’s liver. Hatano had had enough and fled to the family’s ryokan at the other end of Japan. It had been a safe haven until the past had caught up with everyone.
Aoki ordered another bottle of beer and moved on to Kamakura Inn. Each had had a shock, finding the other there. The meeting had an interesting potential for Saito, an unpleasant one for Hatano. Aoki looked up and stared across the bar. It wasn’t such an amazing coincidence. Saito had come to the ryokan in pursuit of Ito and Yamazaki, who were there because of Madam Ito—as was the chef. They’d all been in a kind of dance of common destination, incestuous connection, fate. And the devil had been calling the tune!
The chef hadn’t known about the underpinning of Saito’s vendetta with the Tokyo finance chiefs, just as they hadn’t known of Saito’s connection to the Yokohama company they’d pulled the plug on. Aoki stared out at the shadowy park. It was clear now. Ito and Yamazaki hadn’t come up against the daimyo. Probably even Governor Tamaki hadn’t known this daimyo under any name. Sure as hell, the Fatman had his connections to the yakuza, but it was a labyrinth, and Saito, a big fish, had been too deep in it, even for the Fatman. But he knew them all.
Aoki drank more beer and continued reading. Saito’d soon brought Hatano into that picture, including the outcome proposed for the Tokyo cop. He was now committed to putting Hatano to good use, and Hatano hadn’t had a say in it; his Osaka activities hung over his head like a sword. “We’ll do it tonight, and then leave immediately,” Saito had said, but the snowstorm had terminated that plan.
Saito had killed Yamazaki, and the chef had done the carving up. Saito had decapitated the bodyguard, Shoba. They’d both taken care of Ito. Hatano had gone after Aoki with the sword in the anteroom while Saito slipped away. Saito’s kimono had been liberally sprayed with Shoba’s blood, and the chef had burned it in the big stove. On the flight from the ryokan, Hatano had dumped the two women and shadowed Saito back to Tokyo. Why? The chef was silent on his reasons, but it was rat-cunning in action. An investment in his future safety. He must’ve had a lot of luck in pulling it off.
But a fatal move, Aoki thought. His visit to the twelfth floor of the Aoyama building had the same potential.
The story was sordid and bizarre, but it had the ring of truth. He put the papers aside, poured another beer, and gazed at it for fifteen minutes without tasting it.
He wasn’t going to make that 6:00 P.M. appointment with Superintendent Shimazu. He was going home to do some work on the computer, and now he’d have to move fast. He stood up, put on his coat, and left the bar. He’d worked out what lay ahead for Hideo Aoki. Now that he looked back, a path like this had been laid out from the day Tokie had died.
He headed for his apartment across the park. It was getting darker and colder. The park habitues had disappeared. Aoki swept his eyes around, searching for figures, movement. A breeze brushed at his sparse hair. In the middle distance, a piece of white paper blew in fits and starts across a graveled area. Nothing else. But he knew he should be alert. His street cop’s vibes were pinging. He loosened the pistol in its holster, and the burred metal butt felt like the surest thing in his life, and in his future.
According to the chef, Saito had carried a pistol at the ryokan, but only knife work would do—and a piece of rope. Aoki tasted his healing lips. It was a craziness in the case, in Saito, that he still hadn’t come to grips with, maybe never would.
At the door to his building he stepped into the foyer and, hidden from the street, watched. Again nothing, but his street smarts were still giving him a warning.
He’d made two big mistakes: The misfire had caused him to leave his footprints and his blood in Tamaki’s garden; and tonight he’d exposed himself
to that security camera.
He worked on his old word processor for an hour, adding to the report he’d done at headquarters, and then put in the four pages of Hatano’s affidavit. Finally, he added his suspicions about the arrested prosecutor from the Osaka district office: his link to the 1999 body-parts case and the journalist Nagai’s murder. The young Osaka detective had reported that the prosecutor had gone to pieces and was singing about his latest activities. Aoki was convinced that he had a song to sing about Saito and the Nagai case, too. He added the daimyo’s name and address almost as a throwaway postscript. Oto! Then he gave Kazu Hatano’s phone number. He was reluctant to do it, but they’d need to talk to her, and they’d need the original of the affidavit.
He made another disk.
No coffee left. Just a few liquor bottles, and he poured a shot of Suntory whiskey into a glass and drained it down for warmth. He sat with his memories in the chilly room. For years, Tokie had gently reminded him of his promise that they should, at least once in their lives, take the night walk up Mount Fuji to greet the dawn of a new day. In this season he didn’t know how far he’d get up the mountain, but that was what he was going to do tonight. He glanced at his watch: 7:15. He’d missed his appointment, and Shimazu and his men would be looking for him.
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