As Koh talked about all this, he seemed somehow removed from any sense of guilt—rather than seeming negligent, Monoi was once again reminded of Koh’s pervasive and utter indifference to society. This indifference coated all of Koh’s words like a tasteless and odorless poison, and Monoi suspected that the shadowy aura that Koh exhibited every Sunday also stemmed, in large part, from this cold-blooded indifference.
At any rate, Koh had said flatly that he wasn’t surprised by Monoi’s plan, but neither was Monoi surprised by his reaction. If Koh were the kind of person who tormented himself over the deceitfulness of financial institutions, Monoi would never have approached him with such an idea.
“Anyway, how’s your Kowa Credit Union doing these days?” Monoi asked.
“The city banks are starting to withdraw their deposits.”
“Oh?”
“So in order to fill those gaps, we are trying to round up large fixed deposits from the general public. We’re now offering four point two percent interest for a year-long fixed deposit of ten million yen or more. Double the interest of the city banks. That’s what yesterday’s meeting was about, too. Scatter the four point two percent bait, they said.”
“Four point two is pretty amazing.”
“After adding the acquisition cost to the official discount rate, we just barely make a profit at two point five. If we set the interest above that limit, we only go deeper in the red the more deposits we acquire. But they still want us to do it.”
After explaining all this, Koh handed Yo-chan two thousand-yen notes and asked him to go get some more beer, then slipped a Dunhill cigarette in his mouth. Since the first time Monoi met him, Koh’s brand of choice had always been Dunhill. His lighter was Cartier. Monoi knew the names of these foreign brands because of the wristwatches and handbags that his daughter Mitsuko wore. At first he had thought the name Cartier sounded like the Japanese for “minor wisdom,” which made him tilt his head quizzically, and then when he heard how much they cost he could only sigh. Despite Koh’s cloak of indifference, he clearly earned a comfortable salary. Monoi could only surmise—from the side of Koh that he was seeing tonight—that the man’s sense of guilt toward his clients and distaste for the kind of work he did were reaching a sort of haphazard accumulation.
“Anyway, about what I said on the phone yesterday . . .” Monoi started.
“I said I wasn’t surprised, but I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
“This isn’t really the reason, but yesterday, my elder brother, who was about to turn seventy-nine, died at his nursing home.”
Monoi gave an equally concise and ambiguous explanation of his relationship with Seiji Okamura; how Seiji used to work for Hinode Beer; how he was forced to resign during the turbulent postwar years; and how after drifting from job to job, he finally died of dementia. All it amounted to, he said, was the story of a single, unfortunate life—nothing more.
Koh fiddled with the empty beer can on the desk to pass the time while he listened to Monoi, but spoke up as soon as he had finished. “The more determined the corporation, the greater the number of people they cast away, used up and discarded, in order to survive—that’s for sure,” he said. “That’s how they have so much capital saved up,” he added. “But Monoi-san, it’s not like you’re in need of money. Why would you want to extort a corporation?” he asked.
“All I can say is that my sixty-nine years’ worth of life has led me to this point,” Monoi replied, choosing his words. “The reason I approached you is because I wanted to hear the opinion of someone who is well versed in the financial affairs of a corporation. If you say it’s impossible, I’ll just have to reconsider.”
“When attacked on a matter that concerns their reputation and credibility—unless it’s an exorbitant amount—a company will generally pay up. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.”
“How about Hinode Beer?”
“Hinode, hmm . . .” Koh said, and he stared for a little while at the smoke rising from the cigarette between his fingers. His expression looked as if he were calculating something in his mind. Then, he replied simply, “It’s not bad,” and tossed another handful of rice crackers into his mouth.
“What do you mean by not bad?” Monoi asked.
“The stock price of food and beverage companies fluctuates comparatively easily. Unlike the machinery or the metal industries, their business is directly connected to the consumer, so a threat packs an extra punch for them.”
Monoi tried to listen carefully, though he had a hard time imagining where Koh was coming from, and what he was talking about. Perhaps this was because day after day in the financial world, Koh was exposed to situations that came perilously close to extortion, or perhaps because, when it concerned his family business, that air he had talked about breathing was shared by those in the shadowy underworld—but in any case, the enigma that was the true Katsumi Koh was peeking out from beneath his veneer of an ordinary salaryman.
And yet, the person who occasionally stopped by the factory, setting his rice crackers on the desk alongside a can of beer, teaching Yo-chan how to use a computer, and laughing as they played TV games together—he was also Katsumi Koh. Even now, his eyes seemed far from wicked. In fact, he seemed as defenseless as a child with no ulterior motives, his legs sprawled out lazily, having let his guard down somewhat.
One side was dangerous, the other was harmless. Put both sides together and, when it came down to it, Monoi did not know what kind of man Koh would be. But Monoi’s plan to extort money from a corporation itself was so far outside of ordinary—in that sense he and Koh were equally menacing.
“Say, Koh. How would you feel about coming up with a plan that ensures we’ll get the money?”
“Drawing up a plan is the same thing as executing it,” Koh said, laughing. His expression turned serious once again. “Before we get to that, I’d like to know your true motive, Monoi-san.”
A reasonable request, Monoi thought. “You may laugh, but this old man just wants to see those who made a fortune suffer. Lately, I’ve been thinking about this more and more. I was born into a family of tenant farmers in Aomori, and the memories have come flooding back . . .”
Koh, listening quietly, stared straight into Monoi’s eyes for the first time that evening. Then he said, “I wouldn’t laugh. I’m a Zainichi, after all.”
Yo-chan returned, and set out the beer and sake he had brought back on the work desk. He had said he wanted to listen, and he feigned ignorance as he sat at the end of the work desk and returned to the task of sharpening his cutting tool. Koh merely glanced at him without saying anything.
Monoi was in no hurry to force a decision from Koh, so instead he went off on a tangent. “By the way, Koh. What would you like to do if you had money?”
“Me?”
Koh stopped, the new can of beer in his hand frozen in midair, and once again he glanced briefly at Monoi. Up close, Monoi stared back at Koh’s single-lidded eyes, the whites showing beneath the iris, and realized that, over these last three and a half years, he had never looked carefully into his face. But there was no distinguishable expression in Koh’s eyes as he returned Monoi’s gaze, and like the sliding fusuma door to an inner drawing room that opens briefly only to close again immediately, he looked away.
“My family operates the kind of business where money comes rolling in everyday, ten or twenty million yen at a time, you know? I’ve never had to wonder what I would do if I had money. Why would I, when money is the only thing I’ve got enough to rot.”
“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never experienced anything like that.”
“But my folks are different. After the war, they worked twenty hours a day making moonshine and working in the black market until they saved up enough money to start their own business.”
“I see . . .”
“For some reason I don’t see eye to eye with them,
so I’ve always worked outside the family. I guess I don’t really know myself.”
Koh stopped speaking abruptly, even though he had been the one to bring his family up—either he wasn’t sure how to explain it concisely or he had lost interest in talking about it. Monoi wasn’t quite sure what Koh was trying to say, but that night he could feel it in his bones, that ill will he had sensed Koh harbored for his people and that he was unable to distance himself from.
“Actually, my grandma is about to die,” Koh said, his tone changing suddenly. He gave a belch that transformed into a big yawn. When he opened his mouth wide, he revealed his beautifully set teeth—a mark of his parents’ thorough attention since he was young. Monoi took notice of such a thing because when he himself had been in the prime of his working life, he had not had the means to fuss over such details, and as a result his daughter Mitsuko’s teeth were riddled with cavities, for which she had held a deep grudge ever since.
“Yes, so I’ve heard. Yo-chan told me.”
“My grandma is the one who controls the bulk of our real estate. The family business uses it and pays rent, but when my grandma dies, her estate will be divided among six brothers, including my dad. All of his brothers are gunning for the right to control the company, so it’s a hell of a situation. True story.”
“Huh.”
“I’m in the finance world, after all. I can’t just cut ties with the family business, but it’s not as if I’m in the Chongryon—you know, the General Association of Korean Residents—and I don’t have any Zainichi relationships either. So it’s getting to be a crucial stage for me too . . . which brings me back to Monoi-san’s plan.”
After a long detour, the conversation had returned to its starting point. Monoi could not immediately grasp how the “crucial stage” that Koh mentioned tied into squeezing money out of a corporation.
“You mean about my plan to extort money from Hinode Beer?”
“Let’s make a deal,” Koh said, leaning forward a bit. His gaze was languid, as if he were still feeling the effects of his recent yawn, but the words that came out of his mouth next were far from languid—they were purely business. “If you’re serious, Monoi-san, I will take on the responsibility of coming up with a surefire plan to get the money. You will have my full cooperation. In exchange, if it’s Hinode Beer you’re going after, the surefire plan we take will have an impact on their stock price. How does that sound as a condition?”
“I’m not sure I understand . . .”
“I’d like to help an acquaintance of mine profit from his Hinode stock. In exchange, I will ensure that your plan will succeed. Of course, the stock will be sold through a securities company.”
“Are you talking about the underworld?”
“It has to do with speculation. To make a long story short, I have a plan that will protect my parents’ company from my relatives.”
Despite what Koh said, it was apparent to Monoi that if there was no shady underworld connection at all, Koh would have no need to confirm anything with him in the first place. Monoi would be obliged to consider the pros and cons of adding an extra layer to his initial plan, but for the time being he responded, “All right, I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t repeat what I just said,” Koh added tersely, and for a brief moment Monoi thought that he saw a flash in Koh’s eyes that did not belong to an ordinary salaryman. Before he could dwell on it Koh was back to his usual self, calling out, “Hey, Yo-chan, let’s go to Makuhari next week,” to which Yo-chan responded, “Sure,” without even raising his eyes from the work desk.
“What’s in Makuhari?” Monoi asked.
“An expo of the newest video game software.”
Koh wrapped a rubber band around the opening of his rice cracker bag and put it back in the drawer of the work desk. Then, turning toward Monoi again, he said, “You know, in a situation like this, Handa would be useful.”
“But he’s a cop.”
“Precisely. You can’t pass up the chance to use a cop when committing a crime. Besides, I know for sure he’ll come in on it.”
“Why do you think so?”
“A sixth sense. Last week I saw him at WINS, the off-track betting parlor, and he looked like a fresh mackerel that was already rotting from the inside. Like he was itching to do something—I’m sure of it.”
As Koh rose from his seat, his jacket and briefcase in his hands, Monoi said, “When it comes to doing anything with this old man, you’ll have to go without your underground ties.”
After a second, Koh burst out laughing, but as he turned to leave, he resumed the stoop of an exhausted businessman.
Once Koh was gone, Yo-chan actually lifted his head to speak, from his corner of the work desk. “You can say that, Monoi-san, but Koh is a man of the underworld.”
“I know that,” Monoi responded.
“Trust Koh, or give up on Hinode Beer. It’s up to you, Monoi-san. If you do this, I will too. If I go on living like this, I’ll die of boredom.”
Yo-chan promptly delivered his simple and definitive conclusion, then he pulled a newspaper specializing in horseracing out from under whatever was on the desk, and bent his head low over it.
The next day, Shuhei Handa was the one who called Monoi to say he would stop by after work. Handa appeared at the pharmacy a little before 9 in the evening, and as soon as he opened the glass door he started talking. “That guy Nunokawa. This morning, he called the department saying his wife had set her futon on fire, and what should he do . . .”
“What?” Monoi couldn’t help but gasp in response.
“I called his local precinct in Tsukiji, and they said a small fire did break out at Nippo Transport’s employee dormitory in Kachidoki, but they said it was from smoking in bed. I told Nunokawa to keep his mouth shut. Told him to take her to a hospital instead.”
Handa spoke practically nonstop. Pushing aside the display shelf of detergent and toilet paper that had been brought in from outside for the night, he made his way into the store.
“Come on in,” Monoi called to him anyhow.
Nunokawa had seemed pretty desperate since around springtime, but given his complicated situation as the parent of a disabled child, there was nothing that Monoi and the others—fellow horseracing fans and nothing more—could do for him. Monoi wondered briefly who would look after Lady if her mother spent time in the hospital, but it was a pointless concern.
“If the firefighters hosed down the house, there must be an awful mess to clean up.” Monoi finally found a few words to say.
“I went to help him this afternoon,” Handa replied. “Not just the futon—everything from the tatami floors to the furniture is a total loss.”
“Well, it was good of you to go to the trouble.”
“I was off-duty this afternoon anyway.”
As he passed through the store and stepped up into the living room, Handa glanced at the plain wooden memorial tablets and urns arranged on the Buddhist altar, and he lit a stick of incense and joined his hands together. Then, after hearing about how Seiji Okamura had died, he said, “The day before yesterday, I was at a funeral too. You remember Takahashi from the Shinagawa Police Department, right? That detective . . .”
“Oh, that guy . . .”
When Hiroyuki Hatano committed suicide, Monoi had visited the local police department in Seijo where a detective had brought him into a separate room and questioned him insistently about Seiji Okamura’s letter. The detective, who came from the Shinagawa Police Department, had asked him at length about Hatano’s last phone call to Monoi and his relation to Seiji, and he also asked in detail about Monoi’s family, where he had worked after moving from Hachinohe to Tokyo, and his own family circumstances—that had been Takahashi. Monoi remembered him as a man in his fifties with a thoroughly unremarkable appearance, save for the strangely haunting light in his eyes.
According to Handa, in 1992 Takahashi had been transferred from Shinagawa to the Koiwa Department’s Police Affairs, and then this spring he had been hospitalized with cancer, and died the day before yesterday. Four years ago, the reason a veteran detective who had exclusively handled white-collar crime had been harassing Monoi about Hatano’s case had something to do with a group of extortionists who were suspected of giving Okamura’s letter to Hatano, and apparently Takahashi had doggedly pursued this thread afterward as well. But due to internal circumstances on the police force, he had been shunted over to Koiwa, and since then had been relegated to his desk everyday, working on administrative tasks in Police Affairs—so for someone who had still been on active duty, Handa said, his funeral was poorly attended. Handa had occasionally gone to visit Takahashi in the hospital, reasoning that the man had once been his superior, if only for a short time.
“The last time I saw him, a week ago, Takahashi asked me to look up the criminal record of a man named Yoshiya Kanemoto. I thought it was just the delirium of a gravely ill person so I paid no attention, but he said Kanemoto is a golf buddy of the extortionist Shin’ichi Nishimura, and that Kanemoto himself stops by the home of Seizo Monoi about once a month.”
“You mean Yoshiya Kanemoto of Kanemoto Foundry?”
“That’s right. You know him, don’t you, Monoi-san?”
“Yoshiya is the son of the owner of the foundry in Hachinohe where I was an apprentice. I used to look after him. Of course this was over half a century ago.”
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 24
