“I wonder when he’ll get rid of her things,” I said, but Hugh didn’t seem to hear me. He was moving faster through the clothes, checking the labels.
“It’s not here,” he said. “A red Gianni Versace suit I bought for her at Mitsutan. Was she buried in it?”
“The coffin was closed so I don’t know for certain, but I really doubt the funeral people would dress her in red. Too loud.”
“Where could the Versace be, then?” He paced the room.
“She probably returned it,” I told him.
“She wouldn’t! It was fabulous on her. Besides, I had the credit card and receipt.”
“At Japanese department stores you can return things you charged for a cash refund, no questions asked. Setsuko did that a lot. I found out last Sunday.”
“So you’re saying she cheated me?” Hugh sat down on the bed, denting the immaculate coverlet.
“Come on, you were paying for information! Does it matter whether it was in the form of goods or cash?” I explained what Miss Yokoyama had intimated.
“It’s being tricked that bothers me,” Hugh muttered as we made a final clean sweep upstairs. “If I had known she wanted money I would have gladly paid it. But she seemed thrilled about the clothes.”
“Women in Japan aren’t supposed to desire money. That’s reflected in the salaries paid to those of us who do work. You earn five times what I do,” I said, bumping the heavy bag filled with the telephone books downstairs.
“I didn’t know that. Still, aren’t you’re doing what you love?” He began a slower descent behind me.
Ha. A picture of myself riding the bullet train to my horrible new job in Osaka ran through my mind as I walked around turning off lights and heaters. We had a short spat over whether the living room door had been open or not; I threw up my hands at last and allowed him to close it.
“Is the front door locked?”
“Check!” I called back. In the kitchen, I remembered to turn off the water heater and collected my cleaning supplies in the pail. Then Hugh slipped out the back door with his law book and I began the process of waiting. Somehow, those last minutes alone were the worst; what my watch told me was really twelve minutes felt like half an hour. At last I heard the Windom purring down the back alley, and I slipped out of the door with the books and my trash bags.
I had miscalculated. The car that stopped at the gate was a white Mercedes. I darted behind a camellia bush and listened. The car door opened and footsteps clipped the garden path. I caught a glimpse of shiny black wing-tip shoes and dark blue trousers.
I looked further up to Seiji Nakamura’s face.
He paused, looking around. He obviously knew a maid was scheduled, because he’d left an envelope with cash payment in the entry hall. We’d taken it to avoid causing suspicion.
Another thought hit me—what if he had been hoping to rendezvous with the maid? Why else would he be out, driving around, during work hours? I remembered the lace teddy hanging in Setsuko’s closet.
The footsteps came closer. I couldn’t let myself be found. Equally nightmarish was the prospect of Hugh arriving. Nakamura had passed me without seeming to notice and was now creeping along the kitchen wall, looking in the windows. He was suspicious.
Escape would be now or never. I straightened up from my hiding position and started tiptoeing toward the garden gate.
Wind rushed against the garbage bags full of supplies that I was carrying, creating a crinkling sound. I picked up my pace, intent on getting off the property as fast as I could. I heard the scraping of Nakamura’s steps on the cement path, coming back.
The humming sound of an engine approached. Don’t stop here, I thought as I fumbled with the latch and at last pushed through to the alley.
“Who’s that?” Seiji Nakamura’s voice bellowed behind me as Hugh drove into the alley. I sprinted past Nakamura’s Mercedes, counting on Hugh to keep driving at a slow pace, following and picking me up on the main road.
That didn’t happen. Hugh put the Windom in reverse and backed up, smoothly sailing around the corner and vanishing to points unknown.
I kept running, moving like someone had poured super-strength gas in my tank. I heard Mr. Nakamura yelling as I ran past a couple of gawking housewives. Initially, I was only afraid of being nabbed by Nakamura, but now I thought of the police.
I jerked a glance over my shoulder and did not see Nakamura; I slowed to a walk, gasping as much from terror as the exertion. My situation was bad. I was lost without money in a Japanese suburb several miles from a train station. I also had no idea how I’d find Hugh. The creamy houses that had looked so enticing the first time I’d entered the neighborhood now looked alternately mocking and menacing. I was out of my league, they seemed to tell me. I’d failed.
I’d walked all the way down the hill to the convenience store when the Windom pulled up.
“He saw me!” I fell into the car with the torn garbage bags I’d carried the whole way.
“Who? What? And why did you take off like a ninny just when I was arriving?”
“Nakamura! He came in that white Mercedes. I thought you saw it.”
“That car was blocking the alley. I couldn’t get through, so I reversed. I never thought—”
“He saw the back of me. Maybe he’ll think the maid was shy. He’ll certainly find his house clean,” I added glumly.
“Right. We must not panic,” Hugh said as if to convince himself while making a dangerous right in front of oncoming traffic. I screamed. He ran two red lights on the way out of town. I shut my eyes and didn’t open them until he’d gotten on the toll road and set the cruise control to ninety-eight kilometers per hour.
“It was a set-up,” I decided. “The maid must have told him we were coming. Or your secretary, Hikari.”
Hugh shook his head, remaining silent. After a while I couldn’t stand it and stretched my hand toward the radio dial.
“Do you mind?” Hugh barked, snapping J-WAVE off. He was obviously quite shaken. Well, he had more to lose than I did.
After fifteen minutes, he took his left hand off the steering wheel and closed it over my right. He was probably trying to apologize or needed some comfort. I squeezed his hand back and then made a move to release it. But he hung on, his fingers tracing my ring finger.
“What’s this?” He took his eyes off the road for a moment.
“I got it for Christmas.” It was a piece of modern sterling silver set with onyx and mother-of-pearl that my mother had sent me.
“Why didn’t you wear it in Shiroyama?”
“I don’t travel with valuables.”
Hugh put his hand back on the wheel. I stared out the window, watching the evergreens and mountains slowly give way to gray forests of skyscrapers and factories. When the Shuto Expressway loomed, I started reading him the directions we had assembled before starting the trip.
“I’m fine from here, thanks,” he snapped.
It was dark when we arrived back at Roppongi Hills, where the portico was filled by a mini-traffic jam of media vehicles. Hugh sped past and turned to enter the garage. But a young man waiting by the entrance swung a camera toward us while darting under the rising door. Hugh backed up with a horrible screech and shot down an alley.
“Drop me off near the train, will you? I’ll get home on my own.” The style in which he was driving was bound to lead to arrest, and I didn’t want to be involved.
“What about me? I won’t be able to go home for hours and I’m not in the mood to drink in Roppongi. There’s nowhere I can go that people don’t know my sorry foreign face.” His desolation reminded me of the way he’d appeared on New Year’s Day drinking by himself.
“You could try a really crummy neighborhood like mine,” I suggested, expecting him to complain about its shabbiness.
“There’s an idea. We could kill time by going through the telephone books.” Hugh sounded thoughtful.
“That sounds like fun.” I yawned, thinking of the huge t
ask ahead.
“Darling, are you saying you’d rather do something else?”
“I’m not, and you’re only conditionally invited,” I warned.
“And what are these conditions?” There was laughter in his voice.
“First, you’ve got to start driving like a law-abiding man. And second, the only one who gets called darling is Richard, okay?”
23
As if anticipating good times to come, Richard’s head poked out the apartment door as I helped Hugh upstairs. He held out his arm for my parka and, upon seeing the maid’s uniform I was still wearing, yelped.
“Nothing like acting out one’s fantasies, eh?”
“Where’s Mariko?” I slipped off my shoes and motioned for Hugh to do the same.
“She left a note saying she had to hurry to work.”
“Back to work! Do you believe it?” I asked.
“Well, she had plenty of time to go through the bathroom to take my Super Hard gel and your favorite MAC lipstick.”
“Just great.” Mariko hadn’t done much to prove her innocence, but I still was going to worry about her. I slumped against a wall, knocking a kimono askew.
Hugh had moved in from the doorway and was evaluating the apartment. I followed his eyes over the brick-and-plank bookcases holding my art books and Richard’s Japanese comics, my laundry drying near the heaters and finally, the rumpled futon I’d neglected to roll up in the morning.
“This reminds me of my younger brother’s room,” Hugh said, smiling. “Not the antiques, mind you, but the mess.”
“It’s all Rei,” Richard said. “My section of the apartment begins beyond those doors. I don’t suppose you’d want to see my adult video collection?”
I hadn’t been so embarrassed in ages. I ran around, stuffing stray clothing into the closet while Richard showed Hugh around—a five-second tour, given the size of the place.
“Do you own a telephone?” Hugh asked cautiously.
“Of course. But no long distance!” Richard ordered.
“Just calling my answering machine, I promise.” Hugh’s shoulders were shaking with laughter as he started punching his number in. I frowned at Richard—I didn’t like how swiftly he had appropriated Hugh—and pulled the photo album from one of the garbage bags. I settled down near the heater to look at it while Richard hung over my shoulder.
“Which one is Setsuko?”
“The pretty one on the left.” A nine- or ten-year-old Setsuko stared out of the page at us in a navy blue sailor suit. A slightly older, stout girl stood with her in front of a small, crumbling house with a tiled roof, the kind that didn’t get built much anymore.
“Is the plain Jane with her the sister?” Richard asked.
“Maybe.” I squinted at the faded picture. “No. It’s got to be Kiki, Mariko’s guardian.” There was something hard about Kiki’s mouth, even then, and I recognized her flat nose. Kiki was wearing her uniform as provocatively as she could given the circumstances, her skirt hitched up a bit, which only did the unfortunate thing of accenting her thick legs.
“Come on, it has to be Setsuko’s sister,” Richard insisted, flipping back through the album. “Even though they don’t look exactly like each other, they’re together in all these pictures.” There they were, dressed in flowery kimonos for the children’s coming-of-age holiday. I slowly paged through more pictures showing them in later childhood and adolescence. The last picture was most telling: teen-aged Setsuko and Kiki wearing tight mini-dresses, posing in a smoky nightclub with Japanese businessmen more than twice their age. So they had been hostesses together.
“What do we know about Mariko’s mother?” Hugh hung up the telephone and joined us, stretching out on the floor so he could rest his ankle.
“Setsuko’s sister Keiko died after giving birth to Mariko,” I said. “That’s what the aunt told me. I meant to research it at Yokosuka City Hall but haven’t had the time yet.”
“Mr. Ota did.” Hugh sounded smug. “I just received a message saying there’s no death record for Keiko Ozawa. He did locate a 1954 birth record for Keiko, and one showing Setsuko born in 1956. Keiko had the Japanese father and was listed as a legitimate, first-born daughter. Because Setsuko was illegitimate, her listing was something different—”
“Onna,” I said. It was a blunt term for woman that was rarely spoken. “This is completely different from what Mrs. Ozawa, the great aunt, said. She told me Setsuko was the older, legitimate one!”
“Not by any Japanese government records. Either Auntie was lying or we can be generous and say she might have Alzheimer’s.”
The heater had caused steam to condense on my window, and I rubbed a finger on the glass to see out into the street. And suddenly the truth was as clear as the neon sign flashing SAPPORO in stylized letters over the liquor store.
“If Setsuko was the younger sister, the American was her father. What Mariko told us was true,” I said.
“And Kiki is Mariko’s mother?” Richard quizzed me.
“Maybe not. Setsuko’s autopsy showed she had a baby,” I remembered. “Let’s see, Mariko is twenty-four. If she was born in 1973, Setsuko would have been only seventeen. I can understand why she gave up her own daughter.”
“To a sister just three years older?” Richard objected.
“But not as pretty. With fewer chances,” I said.
“I think it’s time for drinks at the Marimba, don’t you? Drinks and conversation with Mariko and Kiki.” Hugh looked at his watch.
“You’ll need me there, because I’m the one Mariko’s closest to,” Richard offered.
Hugh stiffened, but I glared at him until he said, “Men do usually attend these places in groups.”
“Naturally!” Richard was acting like he went to hostess bars on a regular basis.
“And they’re dressed well because they’ve come from the office,” Hugh challenged him.
“You want to be my fashion advisor?” Rambling about the merits of Hugo Boss versus Junko Shimada for Men, Richard led Hugh into his room.
I went into the bathroom where I had a fast shower, shaving my legs so fast I nicked both knees. Mindful of what Kiki had said about my looks last time, I wore Karen’s black cocktail suit the way I had for dinner with Joe, a black bra underneath but no blouse and sheer black stockings. I fiddled around with my arsenal of Shiseido makeup samples and the one lipstick Mariko had left me.
“You look like an extremely bad dream,” Hugh said when I emerged from the bathroom.
“I wore this to dinner at Trader Vic’s and it was acceptable.” I began searching around in my shoe boxes for the solitary pair of spike heels I owned.
“It’s quite appropriate, but don’t be surprised if someone asks you to sit on his lap.”
“Mariko says that kind of thing usually goes on with foreigners. You are going to control yourself, aren’t you?” I carefully slid the photo album into my backpack. It was not an evening bag, but at least it was black.
“I’ll be better than Richard. It was hell trying to talk him out of his tongue and ear jewelry.”
“Now you see what I have to live with.”
“I like him, although when you showed him the photo album I wanted to strangle you.” Hugh held his arm out for me to balance as I stepped into my highest heels. The three extra inches made me feel tough.
“He knows everything about Mariko. Like he said, they’re close. That’s why he should come with us.”
“You must understand the more people we involve, the riskier things get. I can picture young Richard called to my burglary trial.”
“He’d lie for you. He lies for me all the time,” I assured him.
“But you’re not supposed to lie in court!” Hugh protested.
“You and your honesty.” I parroted back what he’d said derisively to me in the English Pub. This time, we both laughed.
Hugh handled the admissions at the door—a whopping 7,500 yen per person, which included a bottle of rail whiskey.
As we handed our coats to a bouncer with a bruised-looking face, I muttered to Hugh that I hoped the European Union was paying. He nodded and put a finger to his lips.
The club was busier now than it had been the afternoon I’d visited before, almost every table filled. I was the only woman present who wasn’t in the business. I had no illusions about why I’d been allowed in; the men with me were simply so dishy they couldn’t be turned away.
“We want to see Mariko-san,” Hugh said to Esmerelda, the Filipina in a burgundy lace slip dress who led us to a table with much swishing of the hips.
“There’s no Mariko here,” she said uneasily. “Do you mean Mimi-chan?”
“Yeah, yeah. The girls all have bar names,” Richard said.
“What’s wrong with me?” Esmerelda pouted.
“Absolutely nothing, darling,” Hugh assured her. “It’s just that the wee man fancies Mimi.” He gestured toward Richard, who gave a brilliant smile.
“Ah, you want doubles. Double pay?” Esmerelda appraised Hugh’s suit before looking deep into his eyes.
“No problem,” Richard said as if he were the one holding the credit card.
“I think I see her,” I said, gazing a few tables away at the back of a slender girl with a head of springy curls.
“She’ll be glad we asked for her by name,” Richard said. “It means a two thousand yen bonus.”
A couple of salarymen who had followed us in took the next table. Country bumpkins, I guessed from their cheap suits and the way one of them whipped out a camera and trained it on his hostess’s low neckline. Richard craned his head to see better, and I kicked him back into place.
Within minutes, Esmerelda brought Mariko. The two hostesses approached us arm-in arm with big smiles. When Mariko was close enough to distinguish our faces, she swore and hustled back to where she’d come from.
“Mimi-chan…” Esmerelda’s voice trailed off, and she slid into the banquette next to Hugh. “I think she’s not feeling well. Cramps, or something.”
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