Hiroshi nodded. “And do you know about his bank accounts? Was he—”
“They’re all over there. In that top drawer.” Natsuko pointed to an antique tansu. “I quit paying attention to all that when the boys’ college tuition was done. I have my secret hesokuri account, like all good housewives, but he kept pressing money on me. I barely paid attention, though once or twice the credit card company called—”
Takamatsu took over. “Did your husband gamble or have other, well, expenses?”
She launched into a digression on overseas gambling junkets—roulette and blackjack in Macau and Las Vegas, horse racing in Melbourne, Dubai, and Louisville, being comped in casinos, a lifetime of top-tier gambling.
While Takamatsu kept her talking, Hiroshi went to the top drawer of the low, wide tansu. Bankbooks, deposit and withdrawal slips, hanko personal seals, a jar of change and money clips pinching folds of cash were scattered in the otherwise empty drawer. It looked like she tossed anything related to money inside. Probably loaded it up at tax time and gave the whole mess to her accountant. Hiroshi picked up the bankbooks and carried them to the chair across from Natsuko.
Natsuko smiled at him. “Did you find what you wanted? I’m so sick of the whole thing. As for the gambling, he said he stopped when he was promoted. If I’d known he was a gambler I would never have married him. My father gambled. Lost everything. I told my older son the whole story.”
Takamatsu said, “How do you know he stopped?”
Natsuko smiled. “Well, he’s not kicking the furniture. But I guess he just stopped kicking the furniture, but kept on gambling. He told me to change the passwords on all the accounts, which I did, but he just opened his own, I guess.”
Takamatsu nodded soothingly. “Did you share accounts or keep separate ones?”
Natsuko nodded at Hiroshi. “You can see for yourself. All the bankbooks are there.”
“Did you control all of the household finances?” Takamatsu asked.
“Long ago, I controlled all the payments and gave him a monthly okozukai. He liked it that way, he said. It kept him on a leash and he couldn’t spend too much,” she explained.
“About how much allowance did you give him?”
“Ninety-thousand yen. That’s more than most men get, but he was a bucho, so he needed to take his subordinates out for drinks.” She laughed, thinking about it. “But like most things with him, the allowance was a charade. He accessed our accounts all the time. Moved money around, spent what he liked. I quit looking.”
Hiroshi said, “Do you think your husband had accounts overseas?”
Natsuko thought about that. “He probably did. But like I said, when the boys graduated, I quit paying attention.” She started looking through the blankets and under the pillows on the sofa, then going back through them all, standing up and bending over, her butt pointed right at the two detectives.
Takamatsu suppressed a smile.
She really was drunk. Hiroshi shook his head. “What are you looking for?”
“My cellphone. It’s either in my purse or it slipped between the cushions.”
“Where’s your purse?”
“There it is.” Natsuko picked up her cellphone and started punching the buttons. She clicked and scrolled through. Her nails were long, squared at the ends, and two had broken off. Hiroshi wondered how she could type with them, but she did.
They waited as she checked and frowned, checked again.
“Did you find anything?” Hiroshi asked.
After considerable scrolling and inputting of numbers, she held the cellphone up to Hiroshi.
Hiroshi took it and looked at it carefully, scrolling up and down puzzling over the deposits, transfers, and withdrawals. “When was the last time you checked this account?”
Natsuko shrugged and Hiroshi looked at her carefully. She looked away, thinking. “Maybe last year.”
“You haven’t looked at it since then? Are you sure?” Hiroshi asked, not looking up, but scrolling further and further in the monthly statements.
“He took my password and used it, then I changed it and he never said a word. But he figured it out again, starting using it again. I changed it again. I thought he’d explode, but he didn’t even notice. He’d moved on in all kinds of ways by then.”
“There’s a lot of money in here,” Hiroshi said.
“What’s a lot?” Natsuko looked around.
“Do you know where it came from?”
She started to get up. “I need a drink. Would you detectives like something?”
“Onizuka-san. Natsuko. I think you need to stop drinking. Do you want us to call one of your sons?”
Natsuko looked down at the table in front of her. “One is overseas and one is working. They’re turning out just like their father, only split in two, each with one side of their father’s personality.” Tears started in her eyes, but didn’t spill over her puffy lids as she blinked and looked away.
“I’ll return these,” Hiroshi said, holding up the bankbooks. “We just need to check them at the station. Is that all right?”
“Sure. Check ‘em wherever you like.” Natsuko waved OK, her hand dancing in the air. “All you’ll find is numbers.”
“Can’t we call your son to come over? Or someone else?” Takamatsu asked.
“I just need to sleep. To start over. Sleep and start over.” Natsuko pulled her feet up on the sofa, dragged a blanket over herself, and looked at them with big eyes. “Can you detectives see yourselves out?”
Hiroshi and Takamatsu looked at each other, wondering what to do. Takamatsu tapped his watch and shrugged.
Chapter 27
Hiroshi leaned back in his office chair and stretched. He’d been matching withdrawal, deposit, and transfer slips from Onizuka’s and Mayu’s accounts for hours and his eyes were starting to ache and his shoulders stiffen. Mayu was amazingly organized, but the mess from Onizuka canceled that out.
Akiko said, “Why don’t you take a break? You skipped lunch.”
“OK, let’s order something, whatever you like.” Hiroshi eyed the espresso machine, but stayed away. “I’m getting jittery.”
“Ramen?”
“Sure, something light, asari or shoyu.” He pulled his futon chair out and unfolded it to its horizontal shape.
“Get some blood in your head. You’re going to need it before we can assemble all these bank transfers into a single flow chart.” Akiko called a nearby shop to deliver two bowls of ramen.
Hiroshi stretched out on the futon chair and immediately his cellphone buzzed. He should have left it in a drawer out of earshot. It was his uncle. That was nice, but he didn’t have time to chat. He’d call him back after the case was finished. Closing his eyes felt like heaven after eyeballing numbers on the screen all afternoon.
“Hiroshi?” Akiko called.
“Is the ramen here?” He’d fallen asleep.
“I think you better see this.” Akiko leaned toward her computer screen.
Hiroshi pulled his legs over the side and forced himself to his feet. The ramen bowls, one empty, one still covered in plastic, sat on a tray by the espresso machine.
“Why didn’t you wake me when the ramen came?”
“I tried,” Akiko said. “Get over here.”
He stretched as he stepped over and stood behind Akiko.
Streaming from Nihon TV was a press conference. Five chairs lined up in front of a long table behind which hung the Senden Central Infinity logo. Camera flashes popped in staccato bursts, bleaching the table and logo.
“Turn it up, can you?”
Akiko slid the volume control.
On the screen, Chizu, the HR assistant, came around in front of the table to set out name plates. She adjusted the gooseneck microphones and set papers in front of each spot along the table.
“Can you record this?” Hiroshi asked.
Akiko clicked the screen recording.
“How did you find this?”
“I set a fe
ed for news about Senden.”
Hiroshi stared at the screen. The camera pulled back to a large conference room with journalists seated in chairs and photographers jockeying for position.
On screen, the room came to a hush.
The company president, Tanaka, and three other executives in dark suits, including Nakata, head of HR, walked in solemnly, turned toward the audience, and bowed deeply, hands at their sides. The video lights brightened and cameras clicked rapidly. After a long pause with their heads down, the men sat down stiffly in their appointed chairs.
“Pull up NHK news and one other station, too, can you?” Hiroshi said.
“I’ve got the tech guys recording all of them,” Akiko said.
Hiroshi looked at her for a second, wondering how he could have been so lucky.
Akiko looked at him, frowned at him looking at her, and returned to her screen.
The company president started to speak. “Today, we are regretful to call this press conference about one of our former colleagues, Shigeru Onizuka. As reported, he fell from the roof of our headquarters this past week and died. We pray for his soul and send our condolences to his family.” They all bowed deeply again.
“We also have unfortunate news to report about Onizuka. We had long been aware of improprieties connected with our move to internationalize and expand our business to other countries. We must now deliver some very unfortunate revelations about this difficult transition to international status.”
A hush fell over the room and the camera flashes stopped.
“It appears that, pending further investigation and auditing of last year’s budget, the deceased, Onizuka, may have been involved in financial irregularities connected to the international expansion. We deeply regret this and apologize profoundly.”
Cameras started clicking.
“For this indiscretion and oversight, there is no one to blame other than those here at this table. Our supervision and guidance was insufficient, and for that we take full responsibility. After a thorough review of these problems, and an exhaustive examination of the issues, we have reset our budgetary priorities and personnel policies so that this will never happen again. These changes will allow us to continue to offer the highest quality services to our clients. As president, I sincerely apologize for this mistake.” All of the executives bowed deeply.
“And now our chief financial officer will read a statement.” He turned to the executive at the far end.
Hiroshi said, “They’re dumping this on Onizuka? How convenient. They’ll apologize, someone will resign, and they’ll shut us out from finding what really happened.”
The chief financial officer of Senden picked up his prepared statement. “I was remiss in not discovering this issue earlier and rooting out the cause of this. Sadly, with the passing of Onizuka many issues came to light, and the reasons for his suicide—”
“Suicide?” Akiko shouted.
Hiroshi cleared his throat with an angry rumble.
The CFO continued. “Budgets for advertising were not totaled correctly, which impacted what we charged our clients. Refunds are forthcoming. In addition, budget payments were not processed in a timely way. We’ve corrected that. And finally, invoicing and collection of payments from overseas customers is now reformed, with new procedures to be followed precisely.” He paused and looked at the room, his hands shaking slightly, and continued. “I will from this moment resign as CFO of Senden. I have worked here my entire career and am ashamed to have failed the company that took care of me so well.”
The CFO stood up and bowed ninety degrees before sitting back down.
The president pulled his mic closer and said, “Now our head of Human Resources will make a statement.”
Nakata, the head of HR, gave a curt nod and picked up the prepared statement in front of him. “As head of Human Resources, I oversaw an internal investigation which formed the foundation to update our policies so that we can handle personnel issues efficiently and discreetly.” He pointed at a screen at the side of the hall. A Powerpoint slide projected onto the empty white space. “As you can see, we have reconfigured HR to reflect the current values of our newly reformed workplace. We have rewritten the handbook for workplace interactions to include the latest organizational research and best practices. Finally, on this slide you can see our latest figures on overtime. Because one of our former, sadly deceased, employees, Mayu Yamase—”
“Finally, they mentioned the poor girl,” Akiko said, sitting on her hands and leaning forward.
Nakata continued uninterrupted. “—was found to have worked more than one hundred hours of overtime in the last month of her life. From today forward, we now have a system regulating overtime work and contact between employees outside of regular working hours. We name our new system in her honor, and informally call it ‘The Mayu Rule.’ These new principles and practices will ensure overtime is reduced, and when it occurs, receives compensation. These will all be implemented as of today and are to be inviolable upon condition of dismissal. That applies to all employees.”
On the screen, the president stood up and all of the executives joined him, bowing to the assembled media. Hiroshi caught a glimpse of Chizu standing at the far side of the hall as the camera followed the executives retreating out a side door. Chizu collected the prepared statements before bowing to the room and following the executives out the door.
The TV station returned to the studio, where commentators sat around a semi-circular table and started summarizing and commentating on what had been said. The roundtable included a lawyer for a union group, a former Senden employee, a business professor, and a reporter who covers economics. The commentators started nodding and answering questions from the announcers.
“He didn’t resign,” Hiroshi said.
“Who?”
“Nakata. The head of HR. He’s the one who ignored the complaints from Mayu. Nothing happened to him.”
“And they said it was suicide? Where did that come from?” Akiko fidgeted in her chair.
Hiroshi folded his arm and leaned on his desk. “They’re trying to get out ahead of whatever we find. This announcement will buffer whatever we find and deflate the scandal before it even happens.”
Akiko pounded her fist on her desk. “But the accounts and transfers speak for themselves. Look at how it all lines up. And that’s just what we found today.”
“We still need to connect all that to the company. And we can’t do that unless we can get a peek inside their files. With this announcement, they can contend that Onizuka went rogue. Contrive plausible deniability. Play it out in the press. They sacrificed those two, who are dead anyway, to keep the company above reproach.”
“Can we connect it all?”
“We’ll find a way.”
“We also have these tweets.” Akiko held out a printout.
Hiroshi took it and started reading. “This isn’t from Mayu—”
“The tech guys are tracing who it’s from. These tweets about Onizuka proliferated in the weeks after he died.”
Hiroshi looked at the long list of tweets, complaining about conditions, demanding changes, criticizing Onizuka, and berating Senden. “Why didn’t you tell me about these before?”
“We were working on the bank transfers.”
Hiroshi hummed, frustrated that he was so slow in pulling together what he should have realized before. “These tweets could only be from one source. We need to head back to Kichijoji.”
“To the flower shop?” Akiko scrolled through her computer. “There’s a meeting of the support group tonight. And I’ll send you these new tweets, organized into groups.”
Hiroshi called Takamatsu and told him to get Sugamo and a car and meet him at the front door right away.
He pulled on his coat and gave Akiko an apologetic frown. “Can you pull all of today’s work into a single flow chart? We’re going to need it.”
“Aren’t you going to eat your ramen?”
Hiroshi looked
at the bowl, but stood over it reading a LINE message. When he finished, he hurried off without another word.
Chapter 28
Outside the station, Hiroshi read the LINE message from Chizu again and pulled his coat tight against the cold. The sun had set and the wind had stopped, but the cold came on harder. Takamatsu stepped out from the front door without a word and lit a cigarette, nodding to some detectives coming in. He seemed to know everyone and Hiroshi, with his office in the annex, felt like he knew almost no one.
“The woman from HR at Senden, Chizu, texted.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
“She called from the toilet, so she—”
“From the toilet?” Takamatsu nodded at detectives going home for the night.
“The only safe place in a company for women to call from. She wants to meet, but wasn’t sure when.”
Takamatsu blew his smoke up high into the air.
“She found out something about Mayu.”
“But we’re investigating what happened to Onizuka.” Takamatsu put out his cigarette in the upright ashtray outside the station.
“Mayu had been filing complaints almost from the time she started working at Senden. The complaints would be considered and rejected. She’d get moved out of Onizuka’s section, and then, she’d get moved back into Onizuka’s section. She’d file, wait, transfer out, have it denied, and get moved back in.”
“Does Chizu have the files in hand?” Takamatsu looked for Sugamo and the car.
“She wants to hand them over in person.”
“We should have brought her in, for protection.” Takamatsu fidgeted with his lighter. Sugamo pulled into the parking lot and eased toward them.
“Chizu is probably getting squeezed like Mayu. Why not bring her in?”
“It seemed like she wants to take us to the files but doesn’t have them yet.”
“We could go with her. Or get a warrant and raid the place, if she’ll still show us.”
Tokyo Zangyo Page 18