“You want to switch places with an old man who has too much time on his hands?”
“Aren’t you writing the article about the speech?”
“You are an irritating man.”
“Come on, don’t say that. Here, should I add some ginger?”
As the piping hot tempura arrived, Negoro seasoned the dipping sauce with grated daikon and ginger, and since Matsuda wouldn’t pick up his chopsticks unless the food was right in front of him, Negoro pushed a plate into his hands.
“Say, professor. Have you ever heard anything from BLL about their involvement with Hinode Beer?” Negoro said, directing the conversation.
“I saw the news this morning. That has to do with discrimination?”
“No, I don’t want you to misunderstand me. This is an entirely different case from the kidnapping, but I was wondering if you would dig into this for me.”
On the paper wrapper from his chopsticks, Negoro wrote with his ballpoint pen, 1946–7, Labor Dispute, Hinode Kyoto Factory, and slid it over to Matsuda, who looked at it.
“Ah, this takes me back . . .” he mumbled. “That was the era when they gave us powdered skim milk, sprinkled DDT on our heads, and led us to believe that we had been freed from all sorts of oppression. So, what do you want to know about this Kyoto factory?”
“If you could look up the names of every employee who was dismissed before or after the General Strike on February 1, 1947—whether it was for a labor dispute or any other reason.”
“Does this have to do with the segregated buraku communities?”
“I think so.”
“Then I’m sure there will be some materials in Kyoto. Incidentally, an acquaintance of mine in Kyoto, he loves sumo and—”
“Would you like me to get tickets for the May tournament?”
“Two tickets would be great. Doesn’t seem right to ask for help for free, does it?” Matsuda said, pocketing the chopsticks wrapper.
For some time after that, Negoro listened to Matsuda unfurl his customary excoriation of major corporations, including Hinode, then he picked up the tab and left the eatery alone shortly after eight in the evening.
At the end of a meeting with a source he was always inundated with businesslike concerns—Was there anything amiss about the exchange? Had he gained any information? Was the lead credible? Could there be any leaks?—but now Negoro was stuck with the same vague irritation he had felt earlier, when he had stuffed the publisher’s press release in his pocket. He was born of a generation raised under the rainbow of democracy, but now that he was reaching his mid-forties, the realization that had persisted over the years—that he had been deceived all along—had grown more urgent.
Before hailing a taxi, he stopped by a drugstore to buy an energy drink. The customer in front of him, who was about his age, had recommended this particular brand and after paying for it, Negoro paused to read the advice on the label: Bad stomach, overworked liver, poor circulation, shoulder aches, back pain, chronic fatigue, lack of energy. He cracked open the bottle on the spot, thinking that if only the list had included “sleep deprivation” and “loss of faith in humanity” it would have been perfect.
At half past eight, Negoro got out of a taxi beneath the elevated train tracks of the JR Shimbashi Station. He began making the rounds of his old haunts one by one, starting in the alley behind the New Shimbashi Building. Back when times were flush, Negoro hadn’t gained access to Ginza, which used to teem with high-rolling stock traders, big-time investors, and financiers; he’d barely managed to make a few connections in the Korean clubs around Akasaka. He had regaled his sources—salesmen from local brokerage houses, self-styled financial analysts, investor groups, non-bank salesman, and loan sharks—at non-descript bars in areas like Tsukiji and Shimbashi, but his pay was still not enough; he had to borrow money from a credit union to cover the drinking expenses. That hard-won network of information, however, had collapsed along with the market, and since barely anyone was left, the city might well have been empty to Negoro.
He walked around for about an hour, his feet growing heavier, and after wandering through four bars, sipping a whisky at each establishment, he passed a man in the doorway of the fifth pub.
“Hello there, it’s been a while,” he called out. Negoro quickly remembered the man’s name—Okabe—and nodded back.
He had no idea what Okabe was doing these days—up until four years ago, at least, he had worked at the Nihombashi branch of a certain major securities company.
“Would you like to get a drink?” Negoro heard himself asking, his ulterior motive getting the better of him as he considered the prospect of going back empty-handed.
“I’ve got no leads for you, though.” Okabe laughed bitterly. “I was on my way to get some ramen before going home, so just one quick drink at the noodle shop.” He started walking toward Ginza under the elevated train tracks.
“Do you still work for the same company?” Negoro asked.
“Hanging on somehow.”
“Are you still trading bonds?”
“No, I got let go from that position. I’m working with individual clients now. This month earthquake recovery stocks took a tumble, so I was just at a client’s home near here, bowing my head in apology.”
“I see. But I hear spot purchases are doing well for private investors?”
“Picking up deep-value shares here, OTC stocks there? This isn’t stockjobbing.”
“What about the big accounts?”
“They prioritize returns so it’s sluggish. Even futures are only moving to hedge risk.”
“What about today’s incident with Hinode Beer? How’d their stock do?”
“That news first thing this morning was pretty shocking. But since the president was found safe and sound, nothing much happened today. Hinode shares are expected to rise based on their new product announcement. Once it goes to market in April, it should be a good time to buy . . . Ah, now I see. For you and the other papers it will be all Hinode, all the time. What are the chances of the criminals being arrested?”
“It won’t happen any time soon.”
“Is that so . . .” Okabe’s expression in profile revealed a flash of the inner workings of his mind—he was trying to read the stock outlook—but it only lasted a moment.
They were now on the northern side of Shimbashi Station, under the elevated Shuto Expressway, where they arrived before a red noren shop curtain on a back street. Okabe entered through the curtain first. When Negoro met him five years ago, Okabe’s title had been manager of the first sales team handling major accounts, but after his branch was indicted for illegal compensation to clients for market losses, no doubt there would have been some internal reshuffling. Most securities brokers were indistinguishable from regular salarymen, but Okabe had a bit of roguishness about him. He was the kind of guy who had always worn an Audemars Piguet watch that cost a few million yen as if it were no big deal—and as Okabe opened the sliding door of the ramen shop, Negoro recognized the same item from back then, still on his wrist.
They sat down at a table covered with a cheap vinyl cloth. Okabe ordered beers, and from his suit pocket he casually tossed a crumpled red pack of Lark cigarettes and a hundred-yen lighter on the table. His manner and his expression—not much about them had changed in five years. Whatever shifts had occurred in economic conditions or the financial market, they did not affect the substance of the people who moved money around.
“Okabe-san, how are speculative stocks these days?”
“There are some stocks that have speculative potential. But they just get dragged around through arbitrage. Which causes the spot prices to fluctuate so much, and that only makes it harder for regular investors to buy right now. Lately, anyone with funds—from top of the line to the bottom—they’re all aggressively trying to make a profit margin on the Nikkei 225 or with bond futures. O
f course, hedging all the while. You can’t turn a profit without moving money. Say, is something going on with the market?”
“Oh, no, it’s just that when I bumped into you, you reminded me of an acquaintance. He called me three or four years ago out of the blue and told me he’s running a boutique investment firm, but since then I haven’t been able to get in touch with him.”
“We had a few guys like that at our company too, who made off with clients and went out on their own. Those were good times, in the sense that we all had our dream . . . I’m having ramen, how about you, Negoro-san?”
“I’ll have the same.”
“Two chashu ramen, please,” Okabe called, raising his hand. Over Okabe’s shoulder, Negoro saw the door slide open and two men peer into the shop. There were no other customers besides him and Okabe, and the two men cast a glance in Negoro’s direction before retreating and closing the door.
With nothing to accompany their drinks, Negoro took swigs of the cold beer. He was aware of his exhaustion, but in a mild attempt to press things further he lobbed, “About that acquaintance I mentioned earlier—it seems he managed to borrow money using a client’s bond as collateral.”
“When you go out on your own, there’s a lot to deal with. I, on the other hand, if I lose money—so long as they’re minor accounts—all I do is go around, bowing my head in apology. I just tell them we’ll get it back next time.” Okabe snickered a little, his shoulders quavering lazily.
“Don’t give me that. I know you have your own fan club over in Nihombashi.”
“I told you, these days I go around apologizing to all my fans.”
“Okabe-san. Have you ever heard of a company called GSC, by any chance?”
“Is that your guy’s company? No, I don’t know it. That wouldn’t be a G.S.C. group, would it?” Okabe guffawed, and Negoro laughed awkwardly as he mumbled, “No way.”
G.S.C. was one of the corporate groups composed of the Seiwakai’s front organizations, and the name was rumored to be an acronym for the English words Generality, Service, and Confidence. Funds loaned by financial institutions were absorbed into an inscrutable network of G.S.C.’s affiliation of non-banks, loan sharks, investor groups, real estate companies, and so on, circulating into obscurity. The source of the capital Kimihiro Arai had used to buy up shares of Ogura Transport came via G.S.C., and Takuji Yasui—of the former Ezaki group, the same Yasui whom Negoro had been looking for that very night—had also once been an executive at a non-bank affiliated with G.S.C. Finance. In sum, the Okada Association kept up appearances while G.S.C. kept the money flowing—parallel wheels of the machinery running this shadow economy.
Even if Okabe was only joking about a connection with Takeshi Kikuchi’s company, GSC Ltd., Negoro could do no more than stammer a vague reply as Okabe took the arriving bowl of ramen in his hands, exclaiming, “Oh, looks great.” He must have been pretty hungry, for he wasted no time pulling a set of disposable chopsticks from the stand on the table, splitting them apart, and digging in. He fell silent as he ate.
Negoro watched Okabe slurp his noodles, his face tilted downward, and noticed that one of his front teeth was chipped. It was none of his business, but Negoro couldn’t help wondering whether it was that Okabe did not have the time or the money to fix it. And yet, considering his own appearance, Negoro knew that though his teeth were all intact, his head of greying hair resembled a hedgehog, and his suit, shoes, and watch all paled in comparison to Okabe’s. Negoro ruminated that the only thing the two of them had in common as they slurped ramen together was a certain indifference.
Once Okabe’s hunger had been tended to, his mind seemed to start working again, and he picked up the conversation, continuing to eat noisily.
“By the way,” he said, “there’s an investor group that’s rumored to be affiliated with that G.S.C. They also deal in stock index futures. We’re not the company that’s been commissioned, but I hear orders come in every day over the phone. Their margin is fifty or sixty million yen, which makes them quite the player, as far as private investors go.”
“Is that so . . . So some yakuza with capital have decided to embark upon legal alchemy to make the big money, huh?”
“As long as you’re willing to take risks, it’s a game that offers easy profit. Perfect for a yakuza.”
Negoro looked up at the sound of the door sliding open. The same two men were in the doorway again—this time they fixed their gaze for three seconds on the interior of the shop where Negoro was sitting. The men had on duster coats, and peeking from beneath their collars were shirts in colors never worn by typical salarymen, coordinated with flashy neckties. Negoro confirmed to himself that he did not recognize their faces before looking away, and the sliding door closed again. Okabe, with his back to the door, was oblivious. Having already finished his bowl of ramen, he had set it down on the table and now had a toothpick in his mouth.
“So then, Negoro-san, what should I do about Hinode Beer’s stock?” he asked.
“If I knew the answer, I’d be buying too,” Negoro replied.
“But with the president released unharmed, doesn’t that imply some kind of vulnerability on Hinode’s part, and that there was a backroom deal with the criminals? Their share price could be affected, depending on how things develop.”
As Negoro listened to Okabe’s frank assessment, it suddenly occurred to him, He’s exactly right.
While no one could predict what would happen with the case, the kidnappers at least knew precisely when and how those developments would break, and what kind of outcomes they would bring about. Were the perpetrators operating on their own and demanding a mere six hundred million, the scenario Okabe proposed was unlikely, but if a more substantial organization were behind them, and if that organization was equipped with sufficient intellect and financial resources, what would be their move? If someone could control the direction of the case, knowing specifically when Hinode’s stock would plummet, they could only have one thing in mind . . .
“Say, Okabe-san. Would you mind keeping an eye on any margin trading with Hinode stock, and I’ll keep you posted about any new information that comes in?”
“Really? You’ve got a lead on something that might make the price fluctuate?”
“I don’t know about that. But there might be someone in the shadows who’s short-selling, in anticipation that the price will drop.”
“I knew I smelled smoke. You develop a sixth sense when you inhabit this world.” Okabe grinned, revealing a satisfaction with his keen nose, but also a shrewdness, as though his mind had started churning as well.
“Please keep this between us,” Negoro reminded him.
After he and Okabe left the ramen shop and he sent Okabe off with a prepaid taxi voucher, Negoro stood for a moment on the sidewalk beneath the overpass. There had been something off about the two strange men who had peered inside while they were eating ramen, and it pricked at his senses persistently. He felt as if their presence still lingered, and Negoro turned around to check the empty street behind him.
He then looked down at his own feet, knowing that they wouldn’t carry him fast enough to escape anyway, and with an ambiguous resignation, he started walking toward a phone booth a mere ten steps ahead of him.
Inside the booth, first Negoro called the Metro section and informed them that he was in Shimbashi now and would be back in half an hour. Next he called the Metro section of their Osaka bureau and asked for the home telephone number of the slot editor who had worked on today’s evening edition. He then punched in the number, which started with “06.”
The call was answered right away and he heard the screaming laughter of children—You’re so dumb! Stupid! You dope!—and after a female voice came on and apologized, Negoro asked for the slot editor and, while he waited for him to come on the phone, he listened to the jumble of sounds—the woman calling to her children, their flee
ing footsteps, and the Nintendo Famicom in the background.
As he let that ambient noise wash over him, Negoro stared idly at the sight of the two men who had reappeared again on the street, about ten meters away from the phone booth. The men were standing on the sidewalk, their shoulders and legs twitching while they smoked cigarettes, their gazes fixed on him. They were of the same ilk as the men who had trailed him night and day four years ago, when Negoro had been chasing the story about where the shareholdings of the former Chunichi Mutual Savings Bank’s founding members had been transferred. These types seemed to have trouble keeping still—they were always jiggling some part of their bodies, as if out of boredom.
“Hello? Negoro-san? I’m sorry my kids make so much noise,” the slot editor from Osaka said over the phone.
“No, I’m sorry to bother you at home. I just have one thing to ask. You wouldn’t happen to know the name of the stock speculator that Takeshi Kikuchi was hanging around with?”
“I think it was Yasui something or other from the former Ezaki group . . .”
“Takuji Yasui?”
“Yes, yes, that’s him. Back when Yasui’s faction had been dabbling with the Osaka Exchange, Kikuchi interviewed him for a story and must have gotten to know him.”
The men on the sidewalk tossed away their cigarettes and turned to leave, heading off toward Ginza. As he watched them, Negoro made a snap deduction: tonight, intimidation; next time, attack.
“Negoro-san?”
“Oh, sorry. I must be getting old, lately my hearing’s been going . . . Thanks so much again.”
Negoro hung up the phone and, still in the booth, cautiously sorted his thoughts. Tonight, the only person who knew firsthand that Negoro was going to be in the Shimbashi neighborhood was the slot editor at the securities industry news he had called earlier. Perhaps the editor happened to mention Negoro’s phone call to someone, and from there the information could have been passed along. Or maybe, as he was making the rounds at the other four bars tonight, someone had seen him and triggered an alarm. But the most important question was why the same kind of threat from four years ago was suddenly being made again tonight.
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 53
