“Just keep it below the fold,” Tabe said brusquely. On the six-man Metro desk, Tabe was the most blunt. Judging from the tone of his voice, it seemed unlikely that there would be any last-minute prime scoops for the final edition. With this thought in the corner of his mind, Negoro continued to type up his draft.
Over on the Political desk, which was preparing for the nationwide local elections, things seemed a bit busier, with continuous calls coming in from the Prime Minister’s Official Residence and the reporters gathered at the Hirakawa kisha club. Just a moment ago, their slot editor had run over to the Layout desk across the aisle and even now an argument could be heard from that direction. “With this election as dull as it is, why not hit ’em with a headline like aoshima in the lead?” followed by, “Can’t you be a little more reasonable? It’s the front page!”
Across from the Political desk, there were still about five or six people on Foreign, but aside from their slot editor crying out in a high-pitched voice, “Call New York!” no other sounds rose above the fray. On the other side of Foreign was the Business section where—thanks to a recent string of financial scandals, the strong yen, and slumping stock prices—reporters were coming and going even at this hour, leaving their computers connected to the internet, the screens streaming figures from markets overseas.
Further over, where the National, Culture, and Sports sections were side by side, several people still lingered, but nothing about their desktop computers or mountains of files suggested anything notable would crop up. Beyond them the photo room was partitioned off. While a few overnight photographers should have been around, they might either be taking a nap or getting some coffee, since there hadn’t been any signs of them running out on assignment.
The news room floor, measuring roughly 1,300 square meters, was illuminated by the same overhead lights as during the day, yet it appeared slightly dim, and even though there were nearly a hundred people spread out everywhere, the atmosphere could be described as both lively and quiet, enveloped in a fog of ennui unique to these late hours of the night. Looking around him, Negoro noticed how each section had one or two televisions on which brightly colored images danced on the screen without any sound, and in his mind they appeared like underwater mirages of Ryugujo, the Dragon Palace Castle.
He rubbed his eyes, wondering if something was wrong with them, and just then Tabe’s voice came hurtling toward the Reserve section.
“Hey, Negoro, about your series. Would you mind cutting the chart and adding five more lines to the main text to adjust? We secured an interview with a member of the credit association so I’d like to run it there.”
Negoro raised a hand and replied, “Okay.” He saved the draft he had been working on for tomorrow and pulled up today’s draft instead. If he were to cut out the chart that detailed the recycling process, those five lines allotted him only seventy characters in which to explain it.
He tried adding a sentence—In the process that begins with the production and output of industrial waste and ends in its permanent disposal, the technology and costs required for handling it become progressively more expensive for in-house disposal, reuse, and recycling—and as he was counting the number of lines again, the overnight reporter covering the Ministry of Health and Welfare called out to him. “Negoro-san, telephone.”
Reaching for the phone with an outside line, Negoro looked at the clock out of habit. 12:05 a.m.
The caller was the chief of CID at the Setagaya Police Department, whom Negoro had been friends with for going on fifteen years. When he was thirty, Negoro had been assigned to the MPD beat, but he had struggled. As bad as he was at finding sources, he was at least as inept at socializing. He had never gotten used to the police force, no matter how much he tried, and thus he had little incentive to try harder, but he still maintained cordial friendships outside of work with a handful of detectives he had gotten to know over time, and this guy was one of them.
“Negoro-san, I might not be able to make it to the rose show tomorrow after all,” the chief said.
This formidable man, who held a fifth dan in judo, had begun growing roses in his garden at home in Komae ten years ago, and since then he had been busy creating new rose hybrids and submitting them to international competitions. Negoro, on the other hand, lived in an apartment building and had no garden, but acting on a whim to take advantage of the chance to admire at least a flower or two, he had promised to go see the rose show at the Jindai Botanical Garden tomorrow afternoon.
“Did something happen?” As Negoro asked this, he noticed that the chief was not calling from his home phone but from the police department, and he wondered if there could have been an incident.
“Seems like something happened in Sanno. You should check it out.”
“Sanno, in Ota district?”
“Something’s going on with the department radio.”
After this brief exchange, the call ended. It took about two seconds for him to get goose bumps from the realization that—for the first time in a long while—one of his sources had leaked a story. In the past, all the hairs on his body would have stood up at once. Negoro quickly reached for the receiver of the direct line to their nook in the kisha club at the MPD.
“This is Negoro. Did anything happen in Sanno, in Ota district?”
“No.” The person who picked up was Tetsuo Sugano, the chief reporter. “Everything’s quiet here.”
“A friend just called, he said something’s going on with the police radio.”
“The radio—? Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“Sanno, huh. I’ll ask one of the guys who’s out at the evening session.”
This call ended briefly too. Sugano was a shrewd reporter with years of experience on the MPD’s Public Security Bureau beat. In addition to being a man of few words, he always thought of three things in the time it took a normal person to think of one, so with both younger colleagues and his contemporaries, he couldn’t hold much of a conversation. In spite of this Negoro had managed to be friendly with him for quite a while, though no matter how many years they had known each other, every time he heard Sugano’s voice he felt as if he were consulting a workbook that gave him all the right answers without offering any insight on how to solve the questions. Actually, Sugano was one of the heaviest drinkers on Toho News’s hundred-member-strong Metro section, but since he never mentioned it himself, not many people knew about it. That’s the type of man he was.
As soon as Negoro replaced the receiver, Tabe, famous for his keen ears, called out from his desk, “Something up?”
“No, not yet,” Negoro replied briskly, annoyed that he couldn’t really focus as he returned to his draft. For the time being he printed out the article to which he had added five lines, circled the revisions in red, handed it to the overnight reporter nearby, and asked, “Can you get this to copy?” Having left the matter up to Sugano, he felt confident that things would move forward without a hitch, but at the same time his own hands were now idle. The goose bumps from only a few seconds ago had also passed, so Negoro was at a bit of a loss.
Returning to his earlier draft, he continued writing—When it comes to thermal energy from urban waste—and looked at the clock. 12:10 a.m. By now, the beat reporter for MPD’s First Investigation Division, having been paged by Chief Sugano, would be in a hired car, rushing to Omori Police Department and Sanno Ni-chome. For a moment Negoro tried to remember how, fifteen or sixteen years ago, he used to go running around like that, but he could not immediately retrieve a single memory, and as he caught himself wondering if this were the fate of the brain cells of a third-rate reporter, his fingers had typed, When it comes to thermal energy from urban waste, its fate is . . . He deleted and retyped, When it comes to thermal energy from urban waste, its current state is . . .
The clock said thirteen minutes after midnight. Over at the copy desk, the direct line t
o the press box rang once, and the rim editor Takano grabbed the receiver. The call lasted a few seconds, and Takano turned and said something to Tabe next to him. Tabe’s head, with its hairline that had receded five centimeters, rose above his desktop computer as he shouted toward the layout desk across the aisle, “The front page and the Metro page, we might have to swap out an article!”
Then Tabe cried out in a voice that resounded through the entire Metro section, “There’s an unmarked police car in Sanno Ni-chome. They’ve also spotted vehicles from the investigation unit in the back lot of Omori Police Department.” Right away, the overnight reporters looked up, asking, “Something up?”
“Don’t know yet. In any case, the chief inspectors of the First Investigation Division and the Crime Scene Unit have not returned to their official residences. The police departments in each of the two areas are keeping mum. The kisha nook is waiting for the broadcast. Hey, Doi, make sure we have a residential map of the Sanno neighborhood. And keep the overnight staff in the photo section on standby.”
As he spoke, Tabe’s eyes darted to the large wall clock. Negoro also looked up at it. 12:16 a.m. No matter how much they pushed back, they had only an hour and a half until deadline. Whatever had happened, they wouldn’t be able to write much about it.
“Negoro, could you mark down two places where we can set up near Sanno Ni-chome and Omori Police Department?”
Negoro acknowledged Tabe’s directive with a raised hand. Setting aside his half-finished draft, from the files in his desk drawer he pulled out a list of the five hundred newspaper vendors in the entire metropolitan area. He had used this same list every time there had been an incident, so the pages were well worn and tattered. As he opened the list, he immediately thought of the vendor next to the post office at the intersection in Sanno Ni-chome, but it took a little while for him to call to mind the area where Omori Police Department stood.
Omori Police Department was located on the east side of Omori-machi Station on the Keihin Kyuko Line. It was where the Dai-Ichi Keihin highway branched off from Sangyo Road; at the fork in the road there was a Denny’s, and adjacent to the restaurant’s colorful roof was a small and inconspicuous four-story government building. On the same side of the street as the building, which could easily be overlooked if not careful, there were private apartment buildings and warehouses, as well as various small office buildings. The entrance of the police department faced the Dai-Ichi Keihin highway, and the rear exit faced Sangyo Road, and both sets of doors were shielded from view by the elevated road directly in front of them. Yes, that’s right, the entire area is like the bottom of a ravine, deprived of sunlight even during the daytime—as all these vivid details finally came back to him, he found a suitable vendor from the list and wrote down the telephone number. It was positioned along Dai-Ichi Keihin and about three hundred meters away from the police department, but with a pair of binoculars, it would be an ideal spot to stakeout the coming and goings of investigators.
He put the list back in the drawer. Since there was no way he could concentrate now he gave up on his draft, and saved and closed the file. Then, from his drawer he took out a pencil that did not get much use these days, and started to sharpen it with a Higo no Kami pocket knife. This is what Negoro did whenever he was waiting for something. Tabe, at his desk, was talking on the direct line. “Has there been any broadcast yet? What are the other papers doing?”
Just as Negoro had started sharpening a second pencil, the phone rang for the umpteenth time, and Negoro froze, his hand still on the Higo no Kami. He checked the clock on the wall. 12:18 a.m.
Tabe picked up the receiver, his body bent forward as he stooped over the computer and his forehead shining.
“I see—got it. Let me know the details ASAP. I’m calling the Metro chief.” He nodded once and straightened himself as he put down the receiver, but he hesitated before letting the next words escape from his mouth. “Kidnapping. They’ve got the president of Hinode Beer—!”
His voice was not all that loud, but it reached every corner of the 1,300-square meter office in a flash, and for a second or two, it seemed as if time had stopped on the whole floor.
Then, Takano the rim editor’s bellow rumbled through the office. “The president of Hinode Beer has been kidnapped! Hinode’s president! Kidnapped!” His shouting was drowned out by the hum of voices erupting all at once, chairs scraping the floor as the reporters got to their feet, and footsteps rushing toward Metro.
“Well, the election’s a bust,” the Political slot editor nearby huffed, looking up at the ceiling.
“Hinode Beer? You sure it’s Hinode Beer?” yelled the Finance slot editor as he raced over.
“What do we do for space? How many columns should we keep open for now?” This from the layout editor as he came running.
“If it really is a kidnapping, I’m sure they’ll force a news embargo on us—” That was the voice of the acting deputy managing editor.
A throng had formed in a matter of seconds. In its middle, Tabe rapidly launched into a short summary of the situation at hand. MPD’s Public Information Division had already put a call out to the chief reporters from each newspaper, and Sugano was on his way there now. It seemed to be a given that a temporary embargo would be requested—that much they knew. Everyone turned to look at the clock at once. If the news embargo were issued, all reporting activities would be shut down. Even if talks over the details of the embargo with the publishing managers dragged on, there was a finite limit to how much time they had. Until the embargo officially would take effect, they had one or two hours, tops. In any case, gathering news was a race against time.
As if to signal the start of a hundred-meter race, the crowd that had gathered dispersed in all directions.
“Get all staff who’s available back here now!” Tabe cried out. “Doi, Harada—you guys first look for anyone with a family member who works for Hinode. Negoro, I need you to work on the assignment chart. Yoshida, you get everyone from the photo section over here. And find any material we have on Hinode—everything we’ve got in the archives! Also get anything on the beer manufacturers’ labor union. Arai-san, you’re in charge of the financial side and the liquor industry!”
“Ah!” From the Business desk, Arai cried out hysterically. “Hinode has a shareholders’ meeting at the end of March—”
“Then we’d better interview shareholders too! Be sure not to let on about the incident, keep the conversation on the economy and the industry and so forth.”
Negoro was busy paging each reserve reporter who could be called back to the office, one by one, as he turned over a commemorative poster from the 100th anniversary of the newspaper and spread it on the Reserve desk to start creating the assignment chart.
Behind him, the rim editor Takano was on the direct line with the press box, furiously scribbling on his notepad. As soon as the call ended he read these aloud in a voice that reverberated across the floor.
“The name of the victim, Kyosuke Shiroyama. Fifty-eight years old. President of Hinode Beer. At approximately 10:05 p.m. on the twenty-third, after returning in a company car to his residence at 2-16 Sanno, he was ambushed and abducted by a person or persons who had been lying in waiting inside the front gate. In the shrubs of the front yard, a crumpled letter has been found that appears to have been left by the perp. It said, ‘We have your president.’ The case is being treated as abduction and unlawful confinement. As of now, 12:20 a.m., there has been no contact from the perp. The name of the president’s driver is Tatsuo Yamazaki. Sixty years old. Employed by the company for twenty years. The next briefing will be at 2 a.m.—that’s all that’s been released to the press for now!”
Negoro picked up the receiver of the direct line.
“Yes, Sugano speaking!” he shouted. He sounded like a different man than he’d been half an hour ago.
“Do you have somewhere you want me to send the
reserve reporters?” Negoro asked.
“I need you to follow up with the Hinode executives. Not one of them is returning our calls. Have them try going directly to their homes, knocking on doors.”
Negoro hung up and called out to Yoshida, who had just run back from the archives. “Can you look up the names and addresses of Hinode executives?”
The clock read half past midnight. As Negoro conveyed Sugano’s instructions to the reserve reporters responding to his page, he was also working on the assignment chart with Tabe. On the reverse side of the poster, first he wrote out the headings in large characters, ten centimeters square, and then added names of the reporters. Excluding the reporters on the MPD beat and those covering the District Public Prosecutor’s Office and the courts, the players he had left totaled about fifty reporters.
Across the top, he had written 1) Supervisor and 2) Deputy Supervisor, followed by 3) Hard News 4) Feature Articles 5) Victim, et al. 6) Hinode Main Office 7) Hinode Executives 8) Hinode Employees 9) Hinode Affiliated Companies 10) Distributors 11) Competitors & Labor Union 12) Liquor Shops 13) National Tax Agency 14) Omori Police Department Stakeout 15) Sanno Stakeout 16) Standbys, and so on.
He put the Metro chief under “Supervisor” and the deputy chief under “Deputy Supervisor.” For each team in charge of replacing stories for Hard News and Feature Articles, he would assign one slot editor from each section along with a supervising chief and three reporters. For each reporting crew and the two stakeout headquarters, he’d assign a chief and a few more reporters. The name of Yoshida, the overnight reporter who had covered the joint venture between Hinode and Limelight last year, was listed under 10) and 13), while Tabe wrote his own name under Hard News, and Negoro put himself down for Feature Articles as a supervising chief.
The overnight photographers had already raced off in the direction of the victim’s residence and Hinode’s main office in Shinagawa. The news room floor had become a vortex of noise—calls being made, phones ringing, footsteps coming and going, and voices flying across the room. As his Magic Marker darted around the assignment chart, Tabe was unable to contain the excitement in his voice. “Looks like we’ll be spending nights here for a while,” he muttered.
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 31
