Lady Joker, Volume 1

by Kaoru Takamura

  Handa fumbled for a reply while Takahashi succinctly responded and followed up with a question. “We’re from the Shinagawa Police Department. Are you Dr. Hatano’s wife?”

  “What’s wrong?” the woman asked, rooted to the spot. “Did my husband do something?”

  “No, no. We just came to ask him a few questions. No need to worry.”

  Takahashi had barely finished speaking when the woman rushed past them, with such force it seemed she might crash into the front door, before disappearing inside.

  On the elevator ride down, Takahashi muttered, as if just now remembering it, “Her suit was Valentino, seven hundred thousand yen. Her Hermès Kelly bag, eight hundred thousand.”

  The surface of Handa’s mind tried to recall the appearance of the woman they had just encountered, but his only impression was that of a woman in her forties, with a garish visage that showed no signs of aging, sporting what seemed like a freshly-set coiffure. He did notice that she was put together in a chic black ensemble from head to toe, but the labels were beyond his ken.

  “By the way, does this case really require a written statement?” Handa inquired.

  Takahashi immediately replied, “You don’t know who Shin’ichi Nishimura is?”

  “You know him by name?”

  “Of course I do. There’s only one Nishimura with a centimeter-wide mole on his chin. He’s a second-generation Zainichi Korean, and his real name is Hoyeol Kim. He’s been on the list of corporate extortionists for ten years.”

  So here was the target of the White Collar Crime Unit. The knowledge finally generated a small ripple on the pond within Handa’s head, but not one big enough to cause his bobber to move. He merely responded, “I’m sorry I wasn’t aware.”

  Takahashi looked suddenly irked, as if he hadn’t realized he was working with someone so stupid, and he started walking ahead. Handa followed him sluggishly.

  “Where are we going now?”

  “To a loan shark’s. We need more info on Nishimura. Listen. This Nishimura has nothing whatsoever to do with the BLL. Nor is he associated with Hinode. But this man used the BLL’s name to get to a dentist he had never met before, and for no charge he handed over an internal document from Hinode that who knows where he got. If this doesn’t smell fishy, I don’t know what does.”

  “I see.”

  So this is my life from here on, Handa thought.

  The moment he looked up at the leaden sky above the residential street, out of a years-long habit, a second daydream slipped through Handa’s mind. It was another simple fantasy, in which one day out of the blue he slams down an envelope with the words Letter of Resignation onto his boss’s desk. But the image soon faded feebly, without giving him much pleasure. At this point there was not a single circumstance that would make Handa’s resignation matter to anyone. There was no reason for his boss, the police department, or MPD to be surprised, or for any of them to turn blue in the face trying to convince him to retract his decision. It was not as if anyone would fear or regret his resignation.

  Handa accompanied Inspector Takahashi until dark as he made the rounds to several loan sharks in Shinjuku as well as the offices of a few financial brokers, after which they returned to the department, where Takahashi outlined Shin’ichi Nishimura’s profile and modus operandi, then he ordered Handa to review each of the briefing points for the interview with Hiroyuki Hatano, set to take place tomorrow, the 18th. Nishimura currently worked as an errand man for several corporate underlings of a large crime syndicate called the Seiwakai. Among those in Seiwakai’s employ was an influential underground financial group known as Okada Association, and the issue was whether Nishimura was somehow connected to this Okada group, and so on. Handa finally understood that, quite simply, for Investigation unit two, who handled financial incidents, Hinode’s complaint letter was nothing but a fortuitous excuse.

  When he finally left the department just before nine that night, he saw that the light in the second-floor window where homicide was located still shone brightly, but the indignation it roused was somewhat dulled. Diagonally ahead on his way to Shimbamba Station, the glimmering office buildings of Hinode Beer and Sony rose into the night sky above Kita-Shinagawa. Like stars fallen to earth, their beauty never ceased to amaze him.

  Handa gazed up at the cluster of gleaming high-rises. Although he knew that each one was populated by workers who wore out their shoes trying to make an extra yen, he still felt nothing in common with them and, faced with another wave of alienation, he looked away.

  On his walk to the station, that other self—like a devil on Handa’s shoulder—blustered, Just watch, I’ll quit soon enough. Chastened, Handa wondered, How many years have I been saying that? The reality was that he had no choice but to go on working tomorrow and the next day, gaining back his self-respect and confidence only in his dreams. No matter how fed up he claimed to be, the thought of getting a new job at a security company where he’d end up directing traffic at some construction site practically made him want to die from anger.

  Handa got on the still crowded train, stood in silence gripping the strap, and got off at Kojiya Station. Weaving through the tiny shopping district around the station where only the neon signs of the pachinko parlor blinked away, he came out on Kanpachi-dori Avenue and headed in the direction of Haneda Airport. He had not walked more than a minute or so when the road lined with only businesses and old machiya houses began to feel deserted, and there were no more lights beckoning passersby. Commuters rushed home as if chased by the sea breeze, briskly disappearing down back streets, and at the corner before a small rail crossing, Handa too slipped into an alley in the neighborhood of Haginaka.

  He lived in tower two of the Daini Haginaka Apartments on the west side of Haginaka Park, and though he arrived there soon enough, Handa stood in the alley and hesitated for a few seconds. The lights were on in the top-floor window of the five-story building. Inside, his wife, who usually came home around nine, would be doing laundry and tearing open the packages of prepared food she brought home as a late supper for herself and her husband from the Ito-Yokado supermarket where she worked. Sashimi and simmered greens. Braised burdock root with carrots. Since he made it a rule not to drink at home, there was not a single can of beer in the refrigerator. Standing there, all Handa could think about was a beer, so he decided to keep going past his building.

  Intending to make a detour until ten or so—another thirty or forty minutes—Handa went along the alley that continued toward Haneda Airport. Within minutes he arrived at Sangyo Road, beyond which was the district called Haneda. During the day choked with exhaust from cars heading to the airport, and at night untouched by the lights from the neighboring airport, the neighborhood was pierced by the overpass of the Shuto Expressway running above the densely packed rooftops of machiya houses that modestly overlapped one another. There was a small shopping district along the other side of the road under the overpass. In the evening most of the stores were closed, but there were still a few lights on here and there—a soba eatery, a cheap Chinese restaurant, a liquor shop.

  First Handa bought a can of beer from a vending machine at the liquor shop by the overpass. He pulled the tab open right there, and sipped a mouthful of freezing cold beer. The pharmacy kitty-corner to where he stood was still open. Without any neon, the signage of the store was obscured by the nighttime shadows, but there, on the glass door where the curtains were pulled shut and illuminated from inside, was the name Monoi Pharmacy.

  As Handa gulped down another mouthful of beer by the side of the road, the glass door of the pharmacy opened and a man came out. Handa recognized his horseracing buddy, the ex-army man, who that night had a ten-centimeter-wide bandage wrapped around his head. He also noticed Handa, and he paused wearily to mutter, in place of a greeting, “Look at this mess.”

  “Were you in an accident?” Handa asked.

  “Yesterday. On the
Tomei Expressway,” Jun’ichi Nunokawa answered. “The fucking ten-ton trailer in front of me suddenly swerved out of its lane. The minute I hit my brakes, a ten-car pileup. My truck is a fucking wreck.”

  “You’re lucky it wasn’t any worse.”

  Jun’ichi Nunokawa paused for two seconds after Handa said this, then spat toward the ground at his feet, “I missed out on dying.”

  Missed out on dying? I see—the parent of a disabled child thinks about things like this. Handa tried to imagine, but he could neither empathize nor did he feel compelled to ask any further about it.

  “Betting on the horses?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then. Gotta be going.”

  Neither of them asked if the other was going to Fuchu on Sunday, tomorrow. Handa was in no mood to talk, and Nunokawa didn’t seem like he was either. Nunokawa got into a minivan parked on the side of the road. Handa had not noticed until then, but within the vehicle’s dark interior two arms were swimming in the air without making a sound. Nunokawa’s daughter was flopped over on the flatbed, thrashing around. As soon as the engine started, the minivan in the hands of a professional driver glided away like a speed demon, and disappeared along Sangyo Road.

  With his can of beer in one hand, Handa rang the bell in front of the pharmacy, opened the glass door, and stuck his head inside. The display shelf of discounted detergent and toilet paper that was placed outside during the day had been brought inside for the night, and it made the tiny store so cramped it was difficult even to step inside. The owner, Monoi, parted the curtain at the back of the store and popped his head through. As soon as he saw it was Handa, he came out, saying, “You’re early tonight,” and pushed the shelf out of the way for him. “There. Come in.”

  Although Handa knew that Monoi had lost his grandson last month, the man was impassive and taciturn to begin with, and to the outward eye Handa could not detect anything to suggest he was terribly despondent. His aspect had always been quiet and plain, but since he did not wear his sunglasses at night, his milky, immobile left eye made him look a little peculiar.

  An old lady pharmacist tended the store during the day, so as befitting a retired old man, Monoi puttered around the neighborhood, playing shogi at “Elder Haven” and shopping at the supermarket, then coming home in the evening to fix something for himself to eat and to mind the store as he watched TV, before closing up around eleven and going to bed. Sunday was for horseracing. Over the past six or so years of frequenting the pharmacy, Handa had pieced together the way that Monoi whiled away his day. Sometimes when he stopped by the store, Handa would smell something burning on the stove.

  “Nunokawa was just here. He has a head wound from an accident,” Monoi started to say.

  “I saw him outside,” Handa replied. “He seemed pretty stressed.”

  “It’s quite a lot of trouble. He has to submit a written explanation to the company, and the police called him in.”

  “I see.”

  “If it’ll mean a few days off, an accident isn’t the worst thing. That’s what I tried telling him.”

  During this short exchange, Monoi had put on his reading glasses, taken out last Sunday the 11th’s two winning tickets from the drawer of the register, and with a “Here you are,” carefully placed them on the counter. Handa thanked him and took the tickets. The two races he had asked Monoi to bet on had both won. He did not bother asking what the dividends were, it just meant that enough cash for a drink was back in his pocket.

  Handa took a swig from his can of beer.

  “What about tomorrow’s race?” Monoi asked.

  “I didn’t even have time to buy the paper.”

  “I have it. You wanna see?”

  “No. I’ll pass for tomorrow.”

  Just when he took another swig of beer, a woman walked past on the other side of the curtain behind Monoi, causing Handa to pause for a moment with his can in midair. A black suit and the contour of calves in stockings. From the neck up she was hidden by the curtain. That suit, Handa thought, it was the Valentino he had seen earlier at that dentist’s home. Noticing Handa’s gaze, Monoi himself turned around and mumbled, “My daughter’s home for a bit.”

  What are the odds? Handa almost said out loud. Of all the people . . . the grandson who had died was the son of that dentist and Monoi’s daughter. But he was struck speechless for only a moment. He could not refer to a case that was still under investigation, of course, and Handa found such a coincidence encountered at the end of the day as cheap as a TV drama, which made him feel alienated all over again. He gave a noncommittal response, “Oh, really?” and finished the rest of his beer. The wind seemed stronger outside, as the glass door facing the street rattled noisily.

  “I’ll buy the paper for you before next week’s Japan Cup,” Monoi said.

  “I wonder if Oguri Cap will run.”

  “I hope so. If he does, I’ll bet on Oguri.”

  “Are you going tomorrow, Monoi?”

  “I’ve got nothing else to do.”

  “Well, sorry to leave you with this but—”

  Handa placed the empty can on the counter, said goodnight, and left the store. He heard Monoi pushing the shelf back on the other side of the glass door.

  Handa purchased another can of beer at the liquor shop’s vending machine. In front of the intersection on Sangyo Road, he pulled the tab open and took a sip. Crossing the intersection and walking straight down the alley would bring him to his apartment in Haginaka, but his feet would not move and he remained drinking by the side of the road. Before him was the factory wall of Yamamoto Rolling Stock Manufacturing. All along the deserted industrial road were corrugated-metal and concrete fences, a succession of street lamps.

  Back then, just what was I hoping for? Handa wondered. To sit at a desk where the sun shone brightly. To make a fairly stable living and lead a respectable life—wasn’t that all? He had become a policeman with a single, pathetically ordinary desire—and what now?

  He threw his empty can into the road, where it was swiftly crushed beneath the tires of an oncoming truck with nary a sound. Ah, that’s me, right there. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, that other self grumbled, I’ll show them soon enough, just wait.

  5

  Seizo Monoi

  Seizo Monoi stared at the trademark seal of Hinode Supreme on the empty beer can that Handa had left behind. Crushing it with his hand and tossing it into the wastebasket, he passed through the curtain and returned to the living room of his home.

  His daughter Mitsuko had clearly been waiting to launch into him. “All you care about is horseracing!” she shouted. Her tone was sharp—as if each consonant was catching on a hook—and it made Monoi’s ears buzz. Just like her late mother, his daughter had always been strong-minded, but at least when she was a girl, she had not spoken to him like this, he thought to himself.

  She was probably just irritated because their conversation had been interrupted by a string of customers. This whole time, at least half an hour, Mitsuko had remained standing, her back to a pillar, claiming that her skirt would crease if she sat on the tatami floor. Her mother Yoshie had also been a rather stylish woman who cut a fine figure for someone born in the early twentieth century, but standing before him now, Mitsuko could not have seemed like more of a stranger to him. When he thought about it, the only time he’d held her in his arms was when she was in preschool. By the time she started elementary school she had already matured into a precocious, miniature version of Yoshie; as a teenager she was practically Yoshie’s twin; and by the time she enrolled at the women’s college she’d attended, she existed in a completely separate world that Monoi could no longer reach. When she was a college student and he had cautioned her about wearing flashy clothes when out with her male friends, she rebuffed him by saying, “Don’t be jealous,” while his wife remarked, “Mitsuko has high ambitions. Unlike
you.”

  Monoi was indeed perplexed by the way his manner of thinking and living seemed unfit for the modern era and, shrinking away, his sidelined existence became that of a nonentity who did no more than watch the two striving women in his life. His daughter joined a large insurance company straight out of college, and not even a year had gone by when she announced that she was getting married. Since she had said her fiancé was a dentist, Monoi had intended to arrange a proper wedding, only to be informed that she planned to enter her name in her fiancé’s family register and move into his apartment as soon as the next day. He eventually invited her fiancé’s family for a formal gathering at a hotel in the city, and the whole matter was put to rest after that.

  No doubt a dentist made an incredibly good living. Monoi gathered as much from his occasional encounters with his daughter. She would frequent places like the spa and the gym to refine her figure, have her hair done at the beauty salon every three days, and even when just dropping by her father’s home, she would wear haute couture suits that cost a million yen. Normally, were she not in mourning, she would be further decked out in diamond jewelry the size of tiger beans. Before his grandson’s demise, she’d rarely ever stopped by anyway, but since the funeral, whenever she appeared in these ensembles on some errand, Monoi had trouble knowing where to look, and he simply cast his gaze downward in discomfort.

  If her so-called high ambitions were ultimately to lead a life of affluence and to adorn herself in luxury, there was no question her father never could have provided that for her. Being forced to look upon such wealth, which she paraded in front of him as if out of spite, Monoi couldn’t help but feel that his entire life was being denied.

  In 1947, Monoi had come out to Tokyo after being released by the foundry in Hachinohe in Tohoku. For a year and a half he had pulled a junkman’s cart around Ueno, until he managed to get a job as a lathe operator at a small factory in Nishi-Kojiya in the Ota district, where he slept in a corner of the factory floor. One thing led to another and he ended up marrying Yoshie, who had a four-year-old child in tow, and amid her incessant complaining that they had no money, he made it to age sixty, frugally shaving away steel day after day in the factory. To send his daughter to college on a machinist’s pay required rather considerable effort, so he worked overtime every night and got by with a meager allowance for himself, just enough for a pack of Peace cigarettes each day and two or three hundred-yen horseracing tickets every Sunday. Back then he used to seriously consider how his death would at least generate some life-insurance money. When he was fifty he sold off their house in Nishi-Rokugo and spent all his savings to buy a pharmacy that had been run by a distant relative of Yoshie’s, but the pharmacy turned out to be a shell that had been used as collateral on a loan—they had basically been swindled. Unable to complain about a relative, though, he now worked desperately to pay off the loan. He wondered how all these things appeared in his daughter’s eyes.