Next, Monoi tried calling the number he had just been given. Around this time in the summer, the only time Monoi would bump into Koh was on the occasional Sunday at a WINS off-track betting site in the city, and so with no idea where he might be or what he might be doing, Monoi heard him answer the phone, “Hello, Kowa Credit Union. This is Koh.” His voice was stiff and businesslike, quite different from what it sounded like at the racecourse.
“Sorry to disturb you. This is Monoi from the pharmacy,” he said.
“Oh, of course,” Koh replied, shifting into his salesman tone. “How can I help you?”
“Koh. That story I heard you talking about back in April at the racecourse in Fuchu. This old man has decided to give it some serious thought.”
“What story?”
“The one about milking money out of a big corporation.”
With that, Monoi hung up the phone. Then, he made his third call. This was also to a cell phone and he had no way to know the person’s whereabouts, but there was a ten-to-one chance he wouldn’t be tied up with work. When, as expected, he answered, “Handa speaking,” Monoi heard the background noise of a pachinko parlor.
“Seiji Okamura died today. This old man has a lot on his mind, but—here’s the question, Handa-san. Do you have any interest in squeezing money out of Hinode Beer?”
Amid the jingling of the pachinko machines Handa shouted back, “What? What did you say?”
“Back in April at Fuchu—you and Katsumi Koh were talking about it. We could do it just like you said. Why don’t we shake down Hinode Beer?”
Once Monoi repeated himself, Handa paused before answering and, for several seconds, there was only the noise of the pachinko balls clinking as they fell. Handa finally replied, “You do realize I’m a police detective?”
“Yes, of course.”
Monoi replaced the receiver. Despite having just concocted this plan, his first thought had been that—whatever the plan entailed—he was nothing on his own and he would need conspirators to carry it out. As he considered those in his circle, the faces of Koh and Handa were the first to surface in his mind—not because they had been the ones discussing how to extort a company. Monoi had a certain intuition when it came to judging a person’s character. Both Koh and Handa, if they were to go through with something, would do it as a crime of conscience. Monoi had intuited this aspect of their characters.
After making the necessary calls with a clerical efficiency that surprised even himself, Monoi returned to the wake room, where he sipped the to-go cup of saké he had bought that evening near the train station and smoked a cigarette. There was no trace of the sudden vicissitudes of emotion that immediately followed his discovery of Seiji’s body, and even though he had been ruminating on how to go after Hinode Beer, he showed no sign of any significant change that had occurred within him.
His discovery of Seiji’s corpse had dragged Monoi into a dark tunnel, and in reality, emerging from that tunnel and arriving at Hinode Beer was not such a leap for Monoi; rather, it underscored the very uncertainty of life. After all, in this fleeting world where suddenly one day a wealthy dentist jumps in front of a train, or a brilliant scholar who graduated from Tohoku Imperial University dies in a nursing home with no one to bear witness, it was hardly a surprise for a former lathe operator who was about to turn seventy to now, out of the blue, come up with the idea of blackmailing a major corporation.
To avenge Seiji—this most seemingly plausible rationalization had quickly paled, and when he surveyed the scene anew, there was nothing other than that the money was there for the taking. In fact, Monoi couldn’t help but think he was destined to bring this about. However many years ago it was, he had contemplated the way of this world, with those who amassed their fortunes on one side and those whose diligent efforts supplied the capital for such wealth on the other, and yet, here he was, never having experienced any particular kind of awakening. The thought of giving in to the fiend seemed to suit him.
“Now that I think about it, Seiji-san, you were never one to talk about laborers’ rights or anything like that, were you? It seems I too lack the mind for such things, but then again I can’t resign myself to working like an animal.”
Monoi spoke to the coffin this way, and pulled open the lid of another to-go cup of saké.
“Where am I trying to go, I’m not quite sure myself, but no matter where I end up, all I have to worry about is myself. I no longer need the Shinto gods or Buddha. That’s what I think, anyhow.”
Monoi took off his shoes and settled into the sofa, working on his second cold saké. Now that Seiji had been placed in the coffin, his face as it was had begun to recede, as had the fact that until just half a day ago Monoi had intended to take custody of Seiji—that too had drifted away—and Monoi was once again engulfed by that familiar sense of hopelessness, pulled along by the current of time that turned murkier as it washed over him. And yet, thanks to the fiend enshrined deep within his belly, perhaps he felt a twinge of heat, as if there were a tumor growing inside him.
As he dozed off, leaving a bit of his saké unfinished, Monoi recalled the faces of his grandparents and parents and siblings back in Herai, sifting through them in his mind one by one as if turning the pages of a photo album. Strangely, even though until now he had always thought that everyone in his family—Seiji Okamura included—had the same indistinguishable, quiet mien, when he looked more closely, each face was imbued with its own severity, melancholy, or even a slight hostility, giving the overall impression of petty riffraff.
And as he turned another page in his memory, among the small-jawed, inverted triangular faces peculiar to Monoi’s family, there he was—Seizo at about seventeen or eighteen years of age—with his one good eye that shone with a particular slyness. That face appeared in a commemorative photo that had been taken at the foundry in Hachinohe. Monoi stared at it, and realized with a bit of surprise, Even back then, I can already see a glimpse of the fiend.
The following morning, Monoi had Seiji cremated at the city crematory and, carrying the urn with his remains and the memorial tablet both wrapped in a cloth, he returned to Haneda shortly past two in the afternoon. On the glass door of the pharmacy, across the notice that the lady pharmacist had posted to announce the store’s temporary closing, the words In Mourning were written messily and ostentatiously. Before doing anything else, Monoi gave a bucketful of water to the wilted morning glories. Then he went inside, where he set the urn and the tablet atop the altar. He burned some incense, struck the gong, and joined his hands together in prayer. He gazed at the small altar, so crammed that it resembled the corner of the hearth in his birth home in Herai, where the seven members of his family had slept on top of one another.
Since he had only dozed a little the night before, Monoi took a nap for about an hour, after which there was a relentless stream of neighbors who came by, saying, “Who else passed away?” and “Let me pay my respects.” Monoi received them in his usual way, offering beers and glasses of cold saké, but with so much on his mind, he hardly listened to the nostalgic reminiscences of the old fogies with nothing better to do.
In the early evening, the owner of a neighborhood eatery came to pay his respects, so Monoi ordered two sets of grilled eel over rice, and by the time he found the right moment to slip away from the pharmacy on his bicycle, it was just after six. The sun had yet to go down. The steel door of Ota Manufacturing had been left open, though there was a closed for obon holiday notice taped on it. He found Yo-chan hunched over beside the work desk at the far end of the room, apparently sanding something with a file. When Monoi peered down at Yo-chan’s hands, he saw that he was beveling the edge of his cutting tool’s blade and the corners of a chip breaker. It was detailed handiwork that measured no more than 0.05 millimeters long. Monoi had taught Yo-chan how to do this ten years ago, recommending that he do it whenever he had spare time in order to avoid getting nicks on the
tool blades, but back in the day when he had been swamped with work at the factory, the truth was that Monoi rarely kept up with it himself.
“Koh came by around noon,” Yo-chan said without even looking up. “He wanted to know what I think about you.” His shoulders wobbled a little as he snickered.
“And what did you say?” Monoi asked him, but whether Yo-chan never had any intention of responding or he had already forgotten that he had been the one to start this conversation just now, he just kept silent, moving the whetstone with his oil-covered hands. Even though work had slowed in the recession, Yo-chan was still at the factory at least twelve hours a day, and when he had no jobs to do he sharpened tools and milling cutters one by one, so that the equipment here was almost insufferably shiny.
“Go and wash your hands. Let’s eat this eel.”
“I’ll go buy some beer.”
Yo-chan went out and was back in about three minutes, setting three cans of Hinode Supreme and two to-go cups of saké on the work desk. Monoi laid out the bento boxes of grilled eel, still nice and warm, on the desk and the two of them toasted—Monoi with the saké and Yo-chan with the beer—and began to eat. Outside the open door of the factory, the early evening breeze had finally started to cool down.
Monoi still wondered just what Koh had said to Yo-chan, having apparently come sniffing around so soon after receiving his call last night.
“What did you tell Koh about this old man?” Monoi asked him again.
With a mouthful of rice, Yo-chan replied, “I said you’re between good and evil.”
“You’re probably right. Who do you consider a good person then?”
“The lady who cooked the meals at my institution, I guess.”
“Oh?”
“After we aged out of the institution, she would send each of us a postcard like clockwork every year, but it seems she passed away last month.”
Yo-chan took out a postcard from the pocket of his workpants and showed it to Monoi. The postcard had arrived the day before, judging by its postmark. It was an invitation to a memorial that would be held at the institution, and the woman, whose last name was Kimura, had apparently died at the age of sixty-nine. Monoi didn’t know what to think about this good person, a stranger who had died at the same age that he was, and he had even less insight into the mentality of the young man who was faithfully carrying around the postcard.
Returning the postcard, Monoi said, “Actually, my elder brother passed away yesterday. I cremated him just this morning.”
Yo-chan’s chopsticks stopped moving at this news. He stared at Monoi.
“Don’t worry, he was adopted into another family when I was young, I can hardly even remember his face anymore,” Monoi quickly added.
After a while, Yo-chan said, “Koh’s grandmother has cervical cancer. She only has a few days left, apparently.” After another long pause, he murmured as if the thought had suddenly occurred to him, “Nothing but funerals lately.”
Now that Yo-chan mentioned it, Monoi agreed that, indeed, this summer had seen many deaths. “Did Koh say anything else?”
“Said he’ll come by tonight after work. He wants to discuss something with you.”
“Is that so?”
If that was true, Monoi thought, Koh’s response came a little too quick for an ordinary employee of a local credit union. On another hand, he had always known that Koh’s job with the credit union was only temporary or a cover of some sort, so there was no reason to be surprised. What mattered was which face Koh would expose from behind his cover in response to Monoi’s provocation to “squeeze money out of a corporation.” Monoi had to know what, if anything, Koh had said to Yo-chan.
Anxious to find out, Monoi said slyly, “Say, what would you do if you had money?”
“I would buy a large burial plot, pay off the fees for permanent use, and build a solid tomb. I don’t know who my ancestors are, so I don’t have a family gravesite,” Yo-chan replied. His expression remained as inscrutable as ever, and Monoi could not tell if he was serious or not.
“All you want is a grave?”
“If you mean something you can buy with money, then yes.”
“Maybe I’m too old to understand what you’re saying.”
“What about you, Monoi-san? What would you do if you had money?”
“I don’t know. I already have a grave . . .”
“You can spend all your money on horseracing.”
“I suppose so.”
While he picked at the grains of rice stuck to the side of the bento box, Yo-chan breezily cut to the heart of the matter as if he were making small talk. “You’re taking money from a big corporation, right? I heard from Koh.”
“I’m just thinking about it, that’s all.”
“But why now?”
“There’s no deep meaning behind it. It’s just that, as an old man, my life happens to have brought me to this.”
“I was shocked,” Yo-chan said after a brief pause, then turned on the television above the work desk. As the cheap set took its time to grow bright, the sound of the merry voices of talk-show celebrities blared out, one octave higher than normal.
Yo-chan stared at the people convulsing with laughter on the screen, his eyes hardly moving at all, while Monoi shifted his reading glasses as he surveyed the faces, which seemed indistinguishable from one another.
“Is this the comedy duo Downtown?”
“No, Tunnels.”
“Same difference.”
“Monoi-san. Are you really taking money from a company?”
“I’ll decide after I discuss it with Koh.”
“Are you quitting horseracing?”
“No. This old man’s life won’t change at all, I don’t think.”
“I guess I have no imagination.”
Monoi knew that Yo-chan meant that he couldn’t understand because he had no imagination. Once he had cleared away the bento boxes and the empty cans, Yo-chan returned to sharpening his cutting tools, leaving the TV on.
Meanwhile, Monoi thought about how, when this idea about a corporation first came to him, he had not given any thought to Yo-chan’s existence, and he felt a little dismayed by the many trivial details that had eluded his initial calculation. It was irresponsible of Koh to leak the story to Yo-chan so quickly; Monoi had forgotten that if he were going to do anything, there would be a mountain of issues—including gossip—that he needed to take care of first. Then again, considering that this was not something a good person would undertake in the first place, he decided that the wellbeing of others was beyond his concern.
“Yo-chan. This is my own personal matter.”
“I’m not gonna tell anyone.” His head was bent over the whetstone. “Anyway, when Koh gets here, okay if I listen?”
“What for?”
“I want in.”
“You’ll ruin your life.”
Yo-chan, pretending not to hear, did not reply. After a while, as if he had suddenly remembered it, he asked what was the proper message to write on the decorative noshi gift tag when sending an offering to the surviving family members for the first Obon holiday after someone’s death. Monoi instructed him to write the characters for goku—a sacrifice.
When Katsumi Koh came by it was past nine in the evening. He was clad in a suit and carrying an attaché case, and it was obvious he was on his way home from work. His appearance was entirely different from that of the man they saw at the racecourse, but with his mumbled, “Damn, it’s hot,” and the way he yanked off his necktie as he walked in, he had assumed the same inscrutable façade of the Koh they knew.
“Monoi-san, when you called yesterday I was in a meeting.” After giving this excuse, Koh downed the beer that Yo-chan handed him and, taking out the bag of rice crackers he kept in the drawer of Yo-chan’s work desk, he said, “I can’t eat much durin
g the summertime,” and popped a handful of the rice crackers in his mouth. Watching him, Monoi had the sense that this really was Koh’s lifestyle, and since nothing about him suggested he normally went out drinking around Ginza, it seemed to him that Koh wasn’t kidding when he said he usually spent his nights fiddling with his computer or reading a book. Tonight, Koh had arrived true to form, with his salaryman face on. Monoi wondered if this meant that Koh had heard his talk of corporate extortion with his businessman’s ear.
“I called you out of the blue, it must have been a surprise,” Monoi said.
“Not really. Compared to what we money lenders do everyday, shaking down a company is nothing,” Koh said bluntly. He looked every bit as nonchalant as his remark indicated.
“Huh. Is that so?”
“As long as you don’t give a damn about the morality, it’s best to go straight to stealing the money. That way everything will match up for accounting.”
Monoi remembered now that he had heard Koh himself say a number of times how, until an incident like a bank run forces them to suspend operations, a financial institution never knows their final income and expenditure. If the borrower of a hundred-million-yen loan were to struggle with their financing and run into problems paying interest, the financial institution would simply give them an additional loan equivalent to the amount of interest owed, thereby increasing the total loan amount. Then finally, if the borrower were to fall behind on their principal payment, the institution would typically resort to seizing collateral property, but now that collateral value had depreciated due to the fall of land prices, instead of settling accounts the institution would switch the loan over to their affiliated non-bank. In this way, over a hundred million yen the loaner-borrower relationship would be diversified or bypassed again and again without anyone chalking it up as a loss and it would continue to circulate until eventually someone took the fall.
A financial institution could not make money unless it loaned money. When times were flush, city banks funded credit unions and others with a few hundred billion yen, and in the case of Kowa Credit Union, where Koh worked, even now 40 percent of their deposits were tied in some way to city banks. In return, credit unions gave loans to corporations that were introduced to them by city banks, so that the city banks that made the original deposit were sure to profit through interest. Meanwhile the credit unions built up their figures by increasing the number of loans made with deposits from the city banks. In this way, from the outside it would seem that the calculations for credits and debits matched up in all the account books, but according to Koh it was only the numbers that matched up.
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 23
