That the apology was addressed to their shareholders briefly caught Negoro’s attention, but it was nothing new for this type of press conference. He returned to the draft, adding and pulling out quotes from other industry figures, hastily arranging the character of Kyosuke Shiroyama, president of Hinode Beer, in fifty lines. All the while, voices continued to fly around him, the murmuring tide of reporters looking for comments over the phone ebbed and flowed, and the direct line to the kisha club never stopped ringing. Once the news embargo ended, there had been a constant stream of calls, not only from the reporters at the kisha club but also from those who had fanned out to cover the areas surrounding the incident. What was more, there were related op-ed pieces to tweak before they went to print, articles that came back needing to be proofread, and finally the growing stack of drafts whose usefulness had yet to be determined, and under the mounting pressure Negoro’s hands were moving incessantly. Though he was far from catching up, owing to long years of conditioning his mind managed to focus on each story as much as possible, organizing and grasping the crucial points. Was there a sure way to locate the heart of the matter, which may or may not even have existed somewhere in all this? Negoro didn’t have much confidence.
“The lead on the extortionists doesn’t seem to be turning up anything,” muttered the junior reserve reporter sitting nearby. He held a cigarette in one hand and a paper coffee cup in the other.
Negoro brushed off the ash that had fallen right in front of him as he asked, “Says who?”
“The slot editor said so on the phone with the kisha club.”
Amid the continuous ringing of the phone, someone yelled out, “I got the location! It’s in Jukai, along the prefectural highway between Narusawa and Fujinomiya!”
Immediately, Tanaba began to shout, “Get a map! How far is it from the bypass? You have the location of the on-scene investigation team?”
More reports followed in quick succession. “Call from the club! The on-site team is at a resort. One of two properties located inside Jukai . . .”
“A correction from the Communications Bureau. The first character in the last name of the staff member from the fire station—they had it wrong.”
“Layout! Hold off on the Metro page!” Tabe bellowed.
“Five more minutes!” came the reply from the layout desk. “Tabe-san, for Metro’s headline, we’re going for a horizontal, corporate terrorism bares its teeth. Keep the front-page headline as is!”
In the midst of the hustle and bustle, the rim editor suddenly let out a sound and rushed toward the television, just as the screen switched over to an image of the president’s family standing outside the front door of their home in Sanno Ni-chome. “Better get this down!” Several reporters pulled out notepads and ballpoint pens.
The young man leaning away from the onslaught of cameras and microphones looked nervous and confused, with a dash of anger mixed in. “I am Shiroyama’s son. I apologize for the terrible concern this has caused . . . We have received word that our father is safe, and our family is so relieved . . .”
“Okamura! Cut two quotes and insert quotes from the son instead. Layout! Give me five more minutes for Metro. Negoro, the profile!”
On the television above his head, there was a cacophony of voices. “What word would you use to describe what your family went through during these fifty-six hours?” “There has been an uptick in attacks targeting corporate executives, but has the president ever spoken to your family about such matters?” “What were you doing when you found out that he was unharmed and had been taken into protective custody?” “A word about how your mother is doing?”
Negoro’s red pencil moved mechanically back and forth over the page as he quickly counted the lines of the draft, now riddled with red marks indicating deletions, replacements, and corrections. “Give this to the slot.” He handed the document to the reporter behind him, then looked back at the television screen and gazed upon the face of Shiroyama’s son.
“I, uh, I don’t . . .” The son had reluctantly started speaking, and for a brief second, Negoro saw his temple quiver as he glared sharply at the press corps.
“I don’t want to disturb our neighbors any further, so please, if we could be excused for now . . .” With those words, just as his mouth twisted in a grimace, and perhaps to hide his expression, the son bent forward at a forty-five degree angle and bowed.
合田雄一郎 Yuichiro Goda
The morning sunlight streaming through the train window fell across Goda’s back. Having left Investigation Headquarters behind, the scent of the case quickly receded, and the only thing that lingered was an uncomfortable drowsiness.
“The president should arrive at Omori just after 10:30. I bet it’ll be on TV,” Goda said.
“What will?” asked the inspector from Crime Prevention who was with him.
“They’ll show the face of Hinode Beer’s president,” Goda clarified.
“What about his face?”
“I just want to see his face in its natural state.”
“Why?”
Goda was at somewhat of a loss to explain why. With each passing hour, the victim’s external defenses would strengthen, he would wise up, and he would develop a new face. There were likely to be more opportunities to see Kyosuke Shiroyama at press conferences and such events, but by then he might look like a completely different person. Now, as he returned to Tokyo from Fujiyoshida, could be the last possible time to see his true face—that of a victim freshly embroiled in the incident, before the heap of emotions changed shape. The only chance to catch a glimpse of this version of his face would be when he arrived at Omori Police Department. Shiroyama’s face was not material to the investigation, of course, and it wasn’t even close to the level of what might have been encouraging—Goda simply wanted to see it for his own sake.
“Not everyday you get to gawk at the president of a trillion-yen company.” Goda went for a noncommittal answer, and left it at that.
It was now 10:32 a.m. As soon as the train carrying Goda and his partner pulled into Tanashi Station on the Seibu Shinjuku Line, he was on his feet and running off ahead toward the south exit, in the opposite direction of the bus stop where they were going. Television screens in the train station and nearby cafes were dominated by news of the case, but since he’d been constantly on the move while he was doing legwork on stolen vehicles, it had been rather difficult to come across the desired broadcast at just the right time. Goda dashed into a private clinic not fifty meters from the station and stood before the television in the waiting room.
As he had expected, the commercial broadcast showed the press corps clustered outside the entrance of Omori Police Department. The president had not yet arrived. Goda sat down on an empty bench and jutted his neck out toward the TV, relieved that he’d still be able to get a look at his face, as long as the president came to the front door. Goda’s partner walked in a moment later and took a seat next to him, the corners of his mouth twisting into a snicker. “Don’t you feel sorry for yourself? Glued to the TV in a place like this?”
“I’d be sorrier if they didn’t have a TV.”
“You’re a strange one.”
His partner fell silent, and Goda stared at the screen.
The familiar scenery surrounding his police department—the elevated highway with the Dai-ichi Keihin and the string of office buildings beneath it—for Goda, this all symbolized suffocation, to put it plainly. His eyes were not necessarily focused on the press corps with their stepladders lined up in the street or on the stream of traffic along the Dai-ichi Keihin that every one of the cameras was trained upon. He had simply fallen into futile self-scrutiny, questioning his own existential purpose, as he wondered how his heart could go on beating so placidly despite this feeling of suffocation.
Except, in the depths of this suffocation, his gloom was a pool of lava, part of which was st
ill molten, and every so often it would erupt out of nowhere. He told himself not to think about it but he couldn’t help it, he tried not to expect anything and yet he still did, his legs moved on their own, his frustration mounted out of his control, until all of a sudden he was overwhelmed by strange desires, like laying eyes on the face of the victim. These impulses came over him with a fierceness he could not have imagined back when he was still at MPD, and at times he scared even himself.
After a few more minutes’ wait, the press corps surrounding the entrance to the building began to swarm en masse, and the footage from the broadcast revealed the patrol car that appeared in the lead at the intersection opposite the police department, then the jet-black Toyota Crown that followed. The cameras began flashing at once. The image wobbled. A uniformed police officer obstructed half the screen, leaving visible only the roof of the car that had stopped in front of the entrance.
The car doors opened. The heads of three or four plainclothes policemen parted and a cap of silver hair appeared among them. He was taller than expected, with a small head. He shook it to the left and to the right, as if giving a little bow, and as he stepped onto the few meters of sidewalk, glimpses of his profile and torso flashed through the gaps within the crowd. Kyosuke Shiroyama was wearing a decidedly well-tailored dark gray suit with a golden brown necktie, and the collar of his brand new dress shirt was dazzlingly white. His short hair was parted on the side and appeared to have been combed. His face, visible a number of times, bore little trace of a victim who had just been released from fifty-six hours of captivity—like the rest of his appearance, it seemed to have been promptly scrubbed clean of any scent of the case. His cheeks were considerably more hollow, and his jaw more pointed, than in the photos, but Goda thought these looked different from the wounds of mind and body—like terror or exhaustion—that the victim of a crime usually suffered. Was his mind occupied with particular thoughts that made him seem either abstracted or resolute? At the very least, the physical effects of any fear experienced while he was held hostage seemed minimal.
Altogether it took no more than ten seconds for Goda to gaze upon Kyosuke Shiroyama’s face and to imprint in his mind the man’s meticulous appearance—which did not resemble the victim of a heinous crime—along with his expression, which could be interpreted as sincere as well as formidable. In particular, what caught Goda’s eye was the steady look Shiroyama gave the surrounding horde of press and police, which reminded him of those company men who were occasionally arrested for financial crimes. At first, such men would use their triple layers of armor—corporate, civilian, and personal—to confront the judicial system. Shiroyama was in the position of a victim for the moment, but perhaps he had already predicted the eventual conflict of interests between the investigation and the company, for his face did not give the impression of someone who would be wholly dependent upon the police investigation.
With the press cameras chasing him, the police closed in around Shiroyama and they disappeared swiftly behind the doors. Goda stood up from the bench.
“So? What’s your opinion now that you’ve eyeballed him?” his partner quizzed him.
“Looks like a tough one to crack,” Goda replied.
“He’s making backroom deals, that’s what I see on his face,” his partner remarked, but Goda’s ruminations had stopped short of such a judgment, and he could neither agree nor disagree. Since he knew next to nothing about the corporate society to which a great many Japanese people belonged, upon further reflection, Goda did not feel confident that his eye could accurately appraise the expression of the president of a huge company like Hinode Beer. And now, having gone out of his way to duck into this random clinic just to glimpse the face of a victim of abduction and unlawful confinement, his only true impression was a renewed sense of suffocation at the constrains of his own life.
Goda went along with his partner back to the bus stop at the north exit of the station and waited for the bus. The subject of their inquiry this morning was a resident of the Hibarigaoka public housing complex whom they had been unable to reach. The license plate of the van for which said resident had filed a stolen vehicle report one month ago had been found affixed to a different-make van that was listed as an abandoned vehicle in Kita City two weeks earlier. While the precinct had attempted to locate the owner of the abandoned vehicle with the switched license plate, that van also disappeared without a trace. Both of those cars were white, unlike the dark-colored vehicle that had been witnessed in the alley near the scene of the crime.
“By the way, Goda-san. Did you have a secret chat with old man Anzai outside the third-floor bathroom?”
As his partner mumbled this question, Goda felt a sudden irritation at being checked up on, and he spat out, “You jealous?”
“The guys from MPD’s Second Investigation were watching you two from the stairway, you know. Word is Anzai’s older brother is a lawyer in Fukushima and a card-carrying member of the Japanese Communist Party,” whispered his partner.
Hearing this, Goda could now understand why Inspector Anzai had to pay his dues on the lower rungs of an anti-communist organization like the police force, but the person whom Goda felt wary of was not Anzai but his own partner, who had gotten wind of this Japanese Communist Party chatter from who knows where.
Goda looked at his partner and mustered a bitter laugh. “Makes me wonder just what our organization is doing . . .”
“Ain’t that the truth.” His partner shrugged with an equally forced laugh and then yawned.
Goda looked away, summoning what little patience he had left as he tried to figure out who was in the wrong. By now, the select members of SIT and Second Investigation at the center of the case must be sharpening their minds to a razor focus to grasp every detail of the incident, and while those on the fringes like him and his partner stood here yawning, still others were engaged in a game of collusion that had nothing to do with to the crime itself.
久保晴久 Haruhisa Kubo
As he silenced the beeping of the pager on his hip with his left hand, Haruhisa Kubo noted the time on his wristwatch first—11:51 a.m.—then looked at the number displayed on the LCD of his pager. The person was calling from a private cell phone. His colleagues on either side stole a glance his way.
Kubo hoped that the call would take no more than a minute and, setting aside his unfinished draft for the third edition, he picked up the receiver for the outside line. “Takeuchi-san? This is Kubo,” he said when the call went through.
“You guys must have it rough over there, too.” Takeuchi’s tone was somewhat leisurely. Takeuchi was from Marunouchi Police Department, and a police beat reporter and his source were not on equal ground, which always made it a little difficult for them to be on the same wavelength. Even without bridging that gap, though, it was second nature—an unconditioned response—for the reporter to answer a call from a source.
Glaring at the clock, Kubo’s irritation mounted. Restlessness crept into his voice as he responded, “Yeah, I guess,” so he forced himself to sound calmer. “Thanks for calling. Where are you now?”
“Out making the rounds,” Takeuchi said. “I was watching TV this morning. Kubo-san, Saturday night on the phone, you asked if there was anything worth checking out in corporate relations. A younger colleague of mine used to work in records for CID at Shinagawa Police Department up until two years ago . . .”
“Oh, that sounds promising. I can accommodate his schedule—please set it up.”
“The name’s Kitagawa. He’s an assistant inspector now at Fukagawa Police Department. Apparently there was an incident with Hinode a few years back.”
Just hearing that Hinode might have been involved in something made his voice rise with eagerness. “That’s fantastic, thanks for introducing me!”
“Who knows if it’ll be useful, but the earlier the better for you, right? I’ll reach out to Kitagawa and call you back this
afternoon. You said it’s best to call after two?”
“Yes, thanks again for everything. I’ll wait to hear from you.”
“Fine. Later then.”
At this early stage, a reporter had no right or reason to criticize the content of the information supplied by a source. That unequal ground on which they stood often meant they were focused on different things, too, but the content was best judged once it was in hand, and until then his priority was to take the call, keep alert, remember to breathe, and then pounce on any lead that came his way.
“Hey, there’s Yamada. Look, that’s our guy!” Kagawa, the deputy chief reporter, shouted from the desk behind Kubo. At some point the commercial broadcast’s live coverage had switched over to show the press corps that had gathered along the highway in Jukai, where the search continued for the location where the victim had been held hostage. Kubo glanced briefly at the television. The screen showed a reserve reporter named Yamada standing in front of a road closure, stamping his feet, his shoulders hunched. At his feet the snow had melted to a dirty slush.
“Wonder if we’ll get it in time . . .” murmured Chief Reporter Sugano as he looked askance at the television.
It had been two hours since the forty-some investigators from both the local Fujiyoshida Police Department and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department had begun searching the resort area that appeared to be where the victim had been held hostage. There were two such locales that could be accessed from the highway in Jukai, and both consisted of narrow roads that cut through over 800 acres of backwoods, and were dotted with vacation homes big and small. There was hardly a soul to be found there during this season but, according to reporters on the scene, the snow that had fallen three days ago had already melted—any tire tracks along with it—and the fresh snow from last night had frozen over, so the search for footwear impressions and tread marks was probably slow going. It was only a matter of time before the location would be discovered—the question was whether or not this would happen before the deadline for the final edition of the evening newspaper. For the advance article Kubo was working on, so far he had typed: The location where the victim was held hostage has been identified as a residence in the resort area of XX, at [XX address], and the on-scene investigation is in progress, leaving four lines for further description after the words, The location was . . .
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 42
