didn’t care. He was just flattered that she had agreed to stay the whole night with him and still didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. She hadn’t even counted the money in the tissue paper he had put into that brand name bag of hers. Probably she was unused to being with men who were closer to her age than her father’s. And young men with apartments of this quality usually only existed in manga comics.
She might even have required dislodging. There was a gym on the eleventh floor and Taro wanted to do some training before breakfast. He hadn’t been one of those inmates who had spent his incarceration doing push ups. Physically and mentally he had been fading away to nothing. He figured that the atoms within him that had endured must have been the strongest.
‘I’d like to offer you some breakfast,’ he said, ‘but we have to hurry because I have some things to do.’
The girl nodded her head. Why wouldn’t she believe it? A man who lived in a place like this would certainly have things to do.
Taro dabbed the water off his chest. He felt the towel around his waist loosen and he smiled. ‘I have been sick lately and I have become scrawny. I would like to do a workout. Take a shower and get yourself ready. If there is still time, I will take you somewhere for breakfast. Ok?’
Taro would have used her name if he had been sure of more than just the first syllable: Hi. Hitomi? Hirani? Surely not Hiromi. But it had been close enough. His ears had closed with that first syllable. And he wanted those feelings closed as well. It had been a leaking Fawcett and it hurt.
‘Yes,’ said the girl excitedly. She seemed to be of the opinion she had stumbled into a situation that could only be dreamed of. Taro too. It remained to be seen who was the most deluded.
22
The woman from Yoyogi Park was this time waiting for him. Again the meeting time had been set for midday. At the Hachiko Statue in front of Shibuya Station. The dog that had waited loyally for its master to return from work long after he was dead. Taro was cynical about the story. The dog had probably just wanted to get fed from owners of the station food stalls.
‘You didn’t screw up,’ the woman said. ‘So, you get a name. You can call me Waneta.’
She was wearing large circular framed sunglasses that would not have suited the average wide cheek-boned Japanese girl so well. Her lips were glossed red.
Taro nodded. ‘I didn’t find it a difficult job.’
‘That’s because it wasn’t. But fools screw up easy jobs just as well as they do difficult ones.’ She looked Taro up and down. ‘You are handsome in a suit. Well, at least more handsome than you were.’
Taro was wearing the same suit as the previous evening minus the jacket, which was too nice to subject to an afternoon of perspiration on such a hot, sticky day. He had instead opted for a white shirt to go with the trousers.
‘Thanks.’ Taro realised he was yet to utter a full sentence in the presence of the woman, but he found her intimidating. His eyes wandered down her outfit in the search of an appropriate return compliment. A light brown blouse and dark brown skirt. She was in motion before he could think of anything to say.
‘Handsome enough to be seen with me at a love hotel,’ she said. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
A startled Taro found himself looking at the body beneath the outfit with a new perspective; no longer mulling over compliments he was sizing her up as a potential lover. A large, firm behind. A waistline that dipped inwards. The kind of older woman he had always been attracted to.
She held his attention through the mist of cute, fashionable teenagers that perpetually roamed the Shibuya shopping streets.
The love hotels were only a block further up, sharing the street with some well-known nightclubs and a sprinkling of minor bars. The way Waneta was striding it didn’t seem like she was on her way to a social even. Most people chose love hotels at least as carefully as they did the partners they were bringing with them, but she entered one, a five floor tiled building named the Silver Moon without even looking up.
She fed ten thousand yen into the key dispenser. The main criteria to the room she selected seemed to be its proximity to the stairs. She got into the thin-carpeted, well-used room and turned sharply to Taro’s excitedly gazing eyes.
‘They always look at me like that the first time,’ she said. ‘Before they know what’s going on. I’m not saying you won’t look forward to coming to love hotels with me again in the future. But I promise you there will be a different look in your eyes.’
The tone in her voice was all business and the room suddenly felt like an office. Taro dropped into the bedside chair that was standard to every love hotel room and was probably the least used thing in it.
Waneta sat on the bed and leaned back on her hands. ‘When I take you to a love hotel it means I won’t be asking you just to meet someone or pick up a bag. It’ll be something that to even utter would be a crime. Love hotels are about the only place in Tokyo where a conversation won’t get overheard or a record be kept.’ Waneta chuckled wryly. ‘You of all people should know the risks of being overheard in public.’
Taro felt his heartbeat quickening. He knew his apartment would not get paid for merely by exchanging bags with people on the street, no matter what was inside. He just hoped the things he had to do wouldn’t be too ugly.
‘Generally Tokin does not give his guaranteed staff the messy jobs,’ said Waneta as though to ease his concern. ‘But he does want to see that you’re capable of stepping up if required.’ She again had a designer bag to rummage through. This time it was a silver Mui Mui bag. She came out with a photograph. It was a close up of a man and it wasn’t the kind of face that should come out of such a beautiful bag. Scruffy, gaunt and bearded. The man had an agitated look on his face. He was standing with a brick wall to his back.
‘Men can be surprisingly fragile when they get a beating,’ said Waneta, handing over the photograph. ‘So when all you want to do is hurt someone, you best stick to the extremities. Hands and feet. You can stamp a lot of long term memory in those places. You’d be amazed how many people turn into frenzied sickos once they’ve overcome their inhibitions with a first punch. Don’t try to recreate the good times you had with Aso on someone else. You were such a resilient subject he has not been himself since you were released from his cage.’
‘Him?’ asked Taro at the photograph.
‘He’s a homeless bum these days but there was a time he had his own business, before he gambled away the company’s capital all the way to bankruptcy. Tokin wants to send a message: some creditors will always get a return on their investment.’
Taro flicked at the man’s head. ‘Okay, but this is a serious waste of talent.’
Waneta tilted her head mockingly. ‘You think you’re too good to be beating up a homeless guy?’
‘Well, I thought this room was meant to be used for talking. So, I’m talking.’
Waneta’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘You’re joking, right? I wonder if Tokin knows what he’s getting himself into.’
Taro shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll beat up three homeless guys if it’s going to get me ahead.’
‘I’ve sketched a map where you’ll find him,’ said Waneta. ‘It’s along the railway line from Kanda Station. A hundred metres in the direction of Tokyo Station. There aren’t exactly a lot of parks in that area, so it won’t be hard to find. This intelligence is current, but homeless people don’t always remain in the same place for long. The police might move them on. Or they might get tired of the mosquitoes and heat and front themselves at a shelter. Or they might find a nice new spot under a bridge somewhere to pitch their blue plastic tarpaulin. So, if you’re going to procrastinate about this, do it after you’ve handed in your apartment key. Alright?’
‘I’ll drop by the park this afternoon.’
‘Good.’ Waneta slipped across the sketch map. ‘There aren’t a lot of homeless people in this park but make sure you get the right one or else you really will be having multiple victims on your hands.’
/> ‘What’s his name?’
‘Better you don’t know. Tokin wants the attack to at least have the pretence of being random.’
Taro noted the X mark written in red at the back of the park, which was occupying a small piece of land between an apartment building and a business hotel. ‘That’s where I’ll find him?’
‘Yes. Remember, keep it simple. Don’t turn that cross into a headstone.’
Taro nodded. ‘Understood.’
23
The park had a set of swings but in this part of Tokyo children were thin on the ground. The cigarette disposal bins were much more frequently used, the park being mostly a smoke stop for business people moving between their companies and Kanda Station.
The average time spent in the park would have been less than five minutes. Taro had already occupied his bench for an hour. The four cans of beer he had picked up at a convenience store at least made for effective cover: an unemployed lowlife with nothing better to do. The alcohol would also help steel him for the pitiful task of putting a homeless man into hospital.
The man had been easy to find, flitting between rubbish bins and park seats: he was much more active than the average homeless male, who could spend hours at a time hunched over, staring at the ground. Now at last, however, he had retreated to his tiny blue tent nestled behind a covering of vegetation in the back corner of
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