But how was she going to explain that to Kenji?
Mrs. Matsumoto appeared. “I hope these are still your favorite,” she said with a smile, setting a plate of o-hagi on the table.
Yumi stared at the sweets she hadn’t ordered. Sharing a plate of the sweet, chewy rice cakes covered with red bean paste had been the first link of friendship between her and the nine-year-old Kenji, back in third grade when they’d been assigned to work on a model of the Ise Shrine together. They’d sat at this same table, playing rock-paper-scissors over who got the fifth o-hagi, too gooey to split.
Yumi thanked Mrs. Matsumoto, but as soon as she’d turned her back, pushed the plate away, as if refusing to take a bite would make it easier to push Kenji out of her life.
She wasn’t hungry anyway, even though she’d eaten nothing all day. This morning she’d felt downright sick, and was still a little queasy. She’d only had two glasses of champagne last night—why did she feel so lousy?
“Sorry, am I late?”
Yumi looked up, startled to find Kenji standing there, smiling apologetically. He pushed a hand through the wedge of dark hair that had fallen in his eyes, a habit he’d had since he was a schoolboy.
Dropping into the chair across from her, he spotted the plate of rice cakes and grinned. “Mmm, o-hagi. How come there are still some left?”
“I…wasn’t hungry.”
“That never stopped you before,” he joked, grabbing one and biting off the end.
Mrs. Matsumoto brought a second cup of tea as Kenji’s phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and looked at the display.
“Damn. Sorry, I have to take this. Excuse me.”
He stood and said, “Moshi-moshi,” as he pushed back out through the door. Standing outside with his back to the window, he rocked back and forth on his heels, then ran his hand through his hair again. He ended the call, grimacing, then dropped his keitai back into his pocket and rejoined her.
Yumi steeled herself for the painful discussion, but he surprised her by saying, “That was Coco, returning my call. She gave me a real earful. Just my luck, the one guy whose fingerprints I need is the one she won’t help me with.”
“Fingerprints?”
“From that host at the Club Nova. Hoshi. He’s the one you were worried she was too involved with, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Why do you want his prints?”
Kenji explained about the prints they’d found in Cherry’s apartment, and that he wanted to know if any of them were Hoshi’s.
Ah. Kenji was working overtime on that case—that’s why he was wearing a suit on his day off. With luck, she could get him talking about that instead of what happened last night.
“So you think Hoshi pushed her?” Yumi asked. “Why?”
“Dō, ka naa…?” he said, thinking. “I don’t know yet. Maybe they were lovers, had a quarrel. Maybe she was pregnant.”
Pregnant. Yumi’s stomach lurched. Pregnant? No. That can’t be why I’m feeling so lousy. She pulled her attention back to Kenji. He was explaining something about the victim’s birth control pills.
“If she was pregnant,” he concluded, “she might have been pressuring him to step up and take responsibility.”
“But wouldn’t killing her be a bit extreme?” Yumi objected. “I mean, there are…other options.”
Maybe it’s the flu. That professor I interpreted for last week wasn’t wearing a face mask—typical foreigner—and he was coughing…
Kenji stuffed the other half of his rice cake into his mouth. “Other options, yeah, but let’s say Cherry thought Hoshi was the father. Let’s say she was tired of being in the hostess business and she saw the baby as her ticket out. She tells Hoshi she wants to keep the baby and pressures him to marry her. He refuses. They argue. He gets violent, pushes her down the stairs.”
“Why would he do that? Even if she proved he was the father, there’s no law requiring him to marry her.”
“No, but he’d lose his job, wouldn’t he?”
“Why?”
“It’s against the rules. Or at least it is for hostesses; I bet it’s the same for hosts. Think about it—what woman would pay tens of thousands of yen to flirt with a guy who’s got a girlfriend and a baby?”
“Good point,” she conceded.
“And what other company would hire him? ‘Good at smoking cigarettes, drinking, and picking up women.’” Kenji snorted. “I still can’t believe those guys get paid for that.”
And paid handsomely, Yumi thought, recalling that Coco had stuffed ¥85,000 into the little white envelope on Friday night. It was common knowledge that you could make money hand over fist in the mizu shōbai business if you were willing to…
Her worries about Coco resurfaced. “Did Coco say anything to you last night about…her job?”
“No. We didn’t really talk about work. Why?”
“Ichiro had her confused with someone he met at a hostess club. I’m sure he was mistaken but…”
“You think Coco’s working as a hostess?”
Yumi felt a wave of guilt. She shouldn’t have suggested such a thing about her friend. “No, that’s ridiculous. Sorry I mentioned it.”
“It’s pretty common, you know. I heard that a lot of women who get involved with hosts end up working as hostesses. They fall for those pickup artists and pretty soon they’re at the host club a couple of times a week. But that habit isn’t cheap; if a woman gets behind on her bar tab, sometimes the only way she can make enough money to pay it off is by working in the mizu shōbai business herself. She ends up sleeping days, working nights, and never meeting men who are interested in a real relationship. She gets even more involved with the host, gets further in debt to his club, and pretty soon she can’t quit even if she wants to.”
“Oh no. Do you think Coco…?”
“I don’t know about Coco, but I think that might have happened to Cherry Endo. This guy Hoshi…” Kenji shook his head. “Imagine how many women he’s stringing along.”
Kenji was right. And Yumi had seen how Coco looked at Hoshi; she was hooked on a guy who would never return her affection.
“What was it you asked her to do?”
“I wanted her to bring me something he’s handled so I can check his fingerprints against the ones we found in Cherry’s apartment.”
If Hoshi was involved in a crime, getting Coco away from him was all the more urgent. What if she offered to help?
“I’ll do it.”
“What?”
“I’ll get Hoshi’s fingerprints for you. I’m meeting Coco tonight and I know she’s planning to go to Club Nova afterward. I intended to try and talk her out of going, to convince her to stop seeing Hoshi altogether. Not that I thought it would do any good,” she admitted. “What do you need?”
“A glass, a cigarette package, a credit card—anything he’s touched that has a nice, smooth surface.”
“Wakatta.”
She drank her tea, wondering how she was going to get Hoshi to touch something that she could…
Kenji reached into his pocket and set a little, worn Daruma cell-phone ornament on the table between them. “Remember when you gave this to me, Yu-chan?”
What? She looked at him, puzzled, then recognized the Daruma she’d handed to him in the elevator after he caught that murderer last April.
“I’d almost given up on coloring in Daruma-san’s other eye,” he continued. “I didn’t dream he’d ever give me what I wished for.” He leaned toward her. “Call off this joke of an arranged marriage, Yu-chan. After what we overheard last night, you know it’s a mistake.”
Ambushed.
“How can you think of getting married when you’re both in love with other people?” he pressed.
Her stomach clenched, the nausea returning with a vengeance. She doubled over.
“Yumi? What’s wrong? Yumi?”
Pushing her chair back, she ran for the bathroom.
Fortunately, it was unoccupied. The door bumped shut b
ehind her, she slid the lock home and hung her head over the toilet. Her stomach heaved a few times but she didn’t throw up. The nausea retreated a little. She sat back on her heels. Her fears resurfaced. Surely she wasn’t so unlucky that she’d gotten pregnant from doing it just once without a condom…?
A tentative knock on the door. Mrs. Matsumoto’s muffled voice. “Are you all right in there?”
“I’m fine,” Yumi lied.
She stood and pushed the button on the Sound Princess to suggest nothing was amiss. The recording of flushing pulsed reassuringly. She had to escape the coffee shop, and she needed to stop Kenji before he said anything more, anything that would make it impossible for them to agree they’d both had too much to drink and couldn’t remember a thing about what happened in that dark restaurant. That was the time-honored way to handle indiscretions that were later regretted. She moved to the sink and splashed water on her face, then dried her hands and marched back through the door.
Kenji jumped up from his chair as she emerged. “Are you okay?”
She put on a wan smile. “Sorry, I had way too much to drink last night. I suddenly felt just terrible, but I’m better now. What were you saying before I left? Did I do something embarrassing last night? Honestly, I downed so many glasses of champagne after that interminable receiving line I can’t remember…”
Kenji looked like he’d been stranded, teetering at the end of the high dive. “Yumi…”
She glanced at the sushi clock over the register. “Oh no, look at the time! If you want me to try and get Hoshi’s fingerprints, I’d better run. I’m supposed to meet Coco at the Hatter in half an hour—if we’re lucky, she’ll ask me to tag along to Club Nova tonight.” Plucking the bill from the small silver stand on the table, she glanced at it and pulled out her wallet.
Kenji sighed and took the check from her. “Let me get it today. You go meet Coco.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you when I’ve got something with Hoshi’s prints on it,” she promised, shouldering her bag and turning to wave as she pushed her way out the door.
Kenji stood there, staring after her, his face unreadable.
Chapter 21
Sunday, November 10
7:00 P.M.
Yumi
Yumi appeared in the doorway of the Mad Hatter and the bartender called “Irasshaimase!” from behind the bar, automatically reaching for the coconut milk and shō-chū to mix her usual, a White Rabbit. Everyone called him Boshi-san, as if Hatter were his last name. Tonight the diminutive bartender was wearing an elegant silk top hat. It usually sat next to the straw boater on the long shelf of eclectic headwear above the liquor bottles. He wore a different hat every night; rumor had it he even wore one to bed.
The Mad Hatter was a favorite watering hole of Yumi’s friends, attracting a mix that included Princess Gals, office workers, and girls dressed in every Lolita style from Sweet to Goth, ruffled petticoats and parasols mixing with Regency-style frock coats and coffin purses.
“Make mine a virgin today, okay, Boshi-san? Her stomach still didn’t feel a hundred percent.
She blinked a few times, her eyes adjusting to the perpetual twilight of the underground room, lit only by candles on the tables and spotlights trained on the grid of nearly a hundred display cases hanging on the far wall.
“I like your new Alice,” she said, spotting the latest addition to the bartender’s collection of Alice in Wonderland action figures. The newcomer was a thirty-centimeter-tall, vintage Astro Boy, custom painted in Alice’s trademark blue dress, white pinafore, and golden tresses. It joined the official Alice cell-phone ornaments, scale models, anniversary editions, and bizarre custom versions—Godzillas and Gundam robots among them—that friends had made for the bartender over the years.
He set Yumi’s glass on a napkin.
“I guess Coco’s not here yet?” she asked.
Taking her ¥1000 note, he moved to the register. “Haven’t seen her tonight.” He brought back a small plastic tray with her change and leaned on the counter. “Hey, is her name really Kokoro?”
Yumi’s drink stopped halfway to her mouth. “How did you know?”
“She’s been in a few times with some new friends, and I heard one of them call her that.”
“Which friends?”
“Don’t know their names. They looked like Princess Gals.”
Or hostesses.
“Hi Boshi-san! Hi Yumi!” Coco bounced up to the bar and dropped her large pink handbag onto the nearest barstool. Tonight she was wearing a short chiffon dress printed all over with big, red, lipstick kisses. Her nails had been freshly painted a glittery red, overlaid with heart-shaped rhinestones and lace.
“Lemon Jabberwock?” the bartender asked.
“No, club soda, please.”
He moved away to fill her glass.
Yumi peered at Coco’s face. “You look different.”
“Oh, you mean the circle contacts? Do you like them?”
The Coco she’d known since middle school suddenly had eyes with giant pupils, like an anime character. And she’d done something new with her false eyelashes that made her look even more wide-eyed and doll-like than usual.
“Thanks Boshi-san,” Coco said, accepting her tall glass of sparkling water and handing the bartender a ¥5000 note. Change in hand, she led Yumi to their favorite table and perched on one of the chairs next to a heavily armed robot Alice.
“I might have to order two bottles of champagne tonight at Nova,” Coco explained. “Hoshi called to make sure I was coming, because Shinya’s his kohai. It’s his one-year anniversary event, and I have to support him by ordering a bottle of champagne. But I also want to make sure Hoshi makes number one this week.”
“Two bottles? Coco, that’s a lot.”
“Why don’t you come help me?” Coco leaned toward her. “You should have fun while you still can. Once you become Mrs. Mitsuyama, your partying days will be o-v-e-r.”
Yumi hesitated a moment before agreeing. Ichiro and his parents would definitely not approve if they found out where she intended to go tonight, Yumi thought, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. But helping Kenji prove Hoshi was implicated in a crime was the only way to get her best friend away from that whole sordid world.
It was worth the risk. Besides, she wasn’t married. Yet.
“All right,” she said.
Coco clapped her hands, then eyed her critically. “Did you come here straight from work or something? We should stop by your house so you can change. Surely you’ve got something nicer to wear than that.”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Yumi objected. She looked down at her perfectly presentable skirt and blouse.
“I’m not even going to answer that.” Coco said. She drained her glass and stood. “Come on, I want to get there before they pour the champagne tower.” She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and turned to Yumi. “Why don’t you borrow something of mine? My house is closer.”
Yumi groaned. She could only imagine what surprises Coco’s closet had in store. She prayed nobody would be taking pictures.
Chapter 22
Sunday, November 10
8:00 P.M.
Hoshi
Club Nova pulsed with music, thronged with well-wishers. Tall bouquets of roses sprouting congratulatory signs crowded the entry, and an imposing pyramid of empty champagne glasses had been erected on a linen-draped table in the middle of the floor, sparkling with a thousand pinpoint reflections of the “stars” above. Yūta was stationed at the entrance, greeting each guest and handing out fans that read “Happy 1st Anniversary” in gold script over seductive professional shots of Shinya and the other four hosts who’d been hired since last October.
Tonight the entire staff was dressed in sharp black suits, white shirts, and dark ties, except for the five anniversary hosts, who stood out in brilliant white, each sporting shiny new accessories and freshly styled hair. Shinya wore his white suit with a silvery satin shirt, a lizardskin belt w
ith a rhinestone-encrusted skull buckle, an ornate silver crucifix, and a new silver ring on his thumb—a gift from Hoshi. At the moment, he was entertaining two tables, pouring drinks and bantering with the Queen of Hearts and Club Heaven hostesses who’d turned out with their friends to help him celebrate.
Hoshi had been busy looking out for his kohai’s interests, determined that Shinya would be the top-earning rookie tonight. He’d called his own patrons and asked them to come support his junior; several had already arrived and ordered champagne or expensive brandy in Shinya’s honor. Coco had brought that friend of hers—the one she said was engaged to some rich guy—and Hoshi had high hopes that this Yumi would become as reliable a customer as Coco. She hadn’t seemed very enthusiastic on her previous visit, but she was back tonight, dressed much more attractively. Maybe she would become Shinya’s first patron. He’d mention it to his kohai and try to spend some extra time at their table. Between them, maybe they could persuade Coco’s friend to designate Shinya her shimeisha tonight.
At the moment, though, he was trying to figure out how to gracefully exit from Mrs. Ono’s table. She was far too demanding to be among those he’d reminded to come and support his kohai, but unfortunately she’d showed up anyway, forgetting the anniversary event was tonight. Predictably, she was put out that the club was crowded and she wouldn’t have Hoshi to herself.
“It’s a pity you’re so busy,” she said, flipping her long dark curls over her shoulder. “I wanted to discuss a few last-minute details about Wednesday with you. You do remember it’s my birthday?”
How could he forget? She’d been planning this party for weeks, changing the arrangements nearly every time she came in. Mrs. Ono claimed she’d been born in the Year of the Tiger, and that meant this birthday was a milestone—she’d be entering a new cycle. The Japanese zodiac clocked around every twelve years: Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig, Rat, Ox and back to Tiger. Hoshi was counting on some of her Tiger-like traits—to be daring, impulsive, and, most of all, generous—to further his own plans, but he had to manage her less attractive Tigerish tendencies to be quick-tempered, selfish, and moody.
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