“Yutaka Arita?” she asked, her eyes suddenly as avid as a cormorant spotting a sardine. “What’s he done?”
“Nothing, ma’am. He’s a witness in a case we’re investigating and we need to talk to him.”
“Is that why he lost his job?”
“No, honorable auntie, nothing like that.”
“It’s that building there. The one with the bikes parked in front.” She gestured down the block with a gnarled claw.
Kenji thanked her and started to walk away. She called after him, “He’s not home, you know.”
Kenji turned. “Not home? Where is he?”
The old woman clamped her mouth shut. “Better ask his wife,” she said, propping her broom next to the front door and slipping off her geta before stepping inside and decisively sliding the door shut.
Suzuki joined Kenji in front of the five-story building. After identifying themselves by intercom, they were buzzed in, climbed the stairs, and found the door to apartment 202 already open. A salt-and-pepper-haired woman with a pair of flower-arranging secateurs in one hand and a branch of cherry blossoms in the other peered at them curiously from the doorway. She wore a green canvas apron over her slacks and flowered blouse, a kerchief holding her chin-length bob away from her face.
They introduced themselves and she invited them in, placing two pairs of brown vinyl slippers on the carpet beyond the entryway. She took off her apron and bustled back and forth, clearing flower cuttings from the table. A half-finished arrangement arched from a pale green ikebana vase.
“Please don’t go to any trouble, Mrs. Arita. We just need to ask your husband a few questions.”
She stopped, a tissue-wrapped bundle of flowering branches in her arms.
“My husband?” she looked at them, puzzled. “Why are you looking for him here at this hour? He’s at work.”
Kenji opened his mouth, then stopped himself. “Ah. We thought he might have come home for lunch. We’ll try to catch him this afternoon, but in the meantime maybe you can help us?”
“What’s this about?” she asked, setting down the branches and folding her arms over her chest.
“We think he might have witnessed a crime we’re investigating, so first we’d like to find out if he was even in the area where the incident occurred. Do you know where your husband was last Friday evening?”
Mrs. Arita relaxed. “We were both in Nagoya over the weekend, visiting our daughter. He left work early on Friday and we took the three o’clock bullet train from Tokyo Station. We didn’t return until Sunday night.”
Kenji made a note, nodding with satisfaction. “Thank you, Mrs. Arita. I guess it wasn’t him after all. You saved us a trip to your husband’s office—I don’t think we’ll have to bother him now.”
Bowing, he shepherded Suzuki back out the door.
Outside the building, they stopped under the overhang. It had started to rain.
Suzuki said, “She doesn’t know.”
“Apparently not.”
“But he’s been out of work for a month!”
“Yeah.” Kenji looked down the street and made a decision. “Let’s see if we can find out where he goes all day.”
Hunching his shoulders against the rain, he dashed down the block and knocked on the old neighbor’s door.
It cracked open. “Yes?”
Kenji identified himself again and explained they were investigating an incident at Hamada Sweets.
She looked at him sharply. “Where Arita-san used to work?”
“May we come in for a moment?” Kenji asked.
The old woman slid the door aside and fetched some woven straw slippers. A calico cat slunk out as they entered, stopping where the dry pavement ended, weighing its urgent cat business against wet feet. The old woman invited them into a modest tatami-floored room, bare except for a low kotatsu table covered with a thick indigo-dyed quilt. Although it was April, damp chill still seeped into the unheated, thin-walled house. The purring from the table’s built-in heater fan told Kenji and Suzuki that when they pulled up a pair of floor cushions and slid their legs underneath, they’d find an oasis of comforting warmth. The old woman probably spent most of her time in this room, and when she needed to venture into the unheated parts of the house, relied on a pair of the red, woolen long johns that people of a certain age still wore under their clothes for warmth and good luck.
Tea appeared in thick Mino-ware cups, frothy white glaze dripping down the sides like frosting.
“Thank you,” Kenji said, politely taking a sip. He took a rice cracker from the bowl she offered and thanked her with a polite “itadakimasu” before taking a bite. Even police business required the mandatory pleasantries.
“Delicious,” he said.
“They’re from Niigata. My hometown is famous for them,” she replied, pleased. Then she frowned. “Why did that company fire Arita-san after he’d worked there for so many years?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Kenji said. “Tell me, honorable auntie—how did you know Arita-san wasn’t home?”
“Saaa . . .” She shook her head. “Poor Arita-san. He still goes out every morning, dressed in his suit and carrying his briefcase.”
“Then how did you know he lost his job? It doesn’t seem like he’s told anybody.”
The old woman sighed. “He comes home at the regular time, but sometimes there are leaves stuck to the back of his coat. And he’s not always sober.”
“Do you know where he goes during the day?”
The old woman selected a rice cracker from the bowl. “Last week I was on my way to the National Museum to see the Sesshu exhibit and I saw him in Ueno Park. He was sitting on a bench, playing Go with a homeless man. I turned my face away and hurried past, hoping he wouldn’t recognize me.”
“Where in the park?”
“On the main promenade, across from the o-bento restaurant. The one with the red torii gate next to it.”
“Can you tell us what he looks like?”
“Let’s see . . . not too tall, losing his hair, a bit thinner than he used to be. He’s the kind of man you’d never pick out of a crowd, but he’ll be easy to spot today because it’s raining. I saw him walk by this morning, carrying his daughter’s old Hello Kitty umbrella.”
The rain pattered on the roof and gurgled down the copper chains hanging from the eaves outside as Kenji finished noting Mr. Arita’s description.
“He’s not in any trouble, is he?” she asked anxiously.
“No. Don’t worry, you haven’t added to his burdens by talking to us.”
“Poor man. He’ll have to tell his wife sometime. Doesn’t he realize it won’t get any easier?”
Chapter 20
Tuesday, April 9
1:30 P.M.
Kenji
The storm had knocked down so many cherry petals that the main promenade through Ueno Park was plastered in pink. Raindrops trickled along the branches overhead, plopping randomly onto the cheap, plastic umbrellas Kenji and Suzuki had bought at a Family Mart near Arita’s apartment. Fewer jobless men than usual huddled on the benches lining the path. Those who lived in tents made from blue government-issue tarps had retreated to their relative comfort, and the few unfortunates who were truly homeless hunched in ones and twos under cast-off umbrellas, occasionally sharing a bottle.
As they neared the restaurant with the red torii gate, Kenji and Suzuki slowed, scanning for Hello Kitty.
“There he is, sir,” said Suzuki, nodding toward a man sharing his bench with a weathered veteran of the streets. Between them sat a cheap Go board with a game in progress. Both men looked up as the police officers stopped beside them.
Kenji pulled his police ID from his pocket. “Yutaka Arita?”
The man under the pink umbrella looke
d beaten. Lines creased his forehead and drew deep parentheses around his mouth. His cheeks sagged, as though he’d lost weight suddenly. “I’m Arita,” he said, glancing at Kenji’s ID.
“May we ask you a few questions?”
“About . . . ?”
“Your former employer.”
The man’s mouth froze in a thin line.
“We were wondering if you knew that Tatsuo Hamada and his wife are dead.”
Shock slapped across Arita’s face. “Hamada-san is dead? What happened?”
“You didn’t see the news?”
He shifted slightly, showing Kenji the outdated Asahi Shimbun he was sitting on to keep his pants dry. “I don’t use the papers much for reading anymore.”
“We found them Saturday morning. It looks like they committed suicide.”
“Suicide? Both of them?” His brow furrows grew deeper. “Why?”
“We hoped you might know.”
“I don’t know anything about the Hamadas. I haven’t seen either of them since I left the company.” He looked down at his wilted suit, ashamed. “How did you find me, anyway?”
“We visited your wife.”
“No! You didn’t tell her . . . ?”
“We didn’t. Someone else pointed us in the right direction. We told your wife that you might have been a witness to something we’re investigating. Which is true—what we’d like to know is why you resigned from the job you held for twenty-six years. We heard that it was Mr. Hamada who asked you to leave.”
The ex-purchasing manager looked at Kenji for a long moment, then sighed and bowed his head. “It was March fourteenth, a Thursday. My model train club night. I was anxious to get home and put the finishing touches on a water tower I’d built for our HO-scale setup; I wanted to take it with me to the meeting. So when Hamada-san called me into his office, I was hoping he wouldn’t keep me long.
“He shut the door and asked me why I’d ordered cut-rate sweetener and milk without consulting him. I didn’t know what he was talking about. We always ordered our ingredients from the same suppliers we’d used since his father was president. Then he handed me a bill of lading from a Chinese company, showing we’d received a shipment of two hundred fifty kilos of artificial sweetener and one hundred kilos of milk powder the previous week. I told him I’d never seen it before, that I’d never dealt with that company, that I’d never even heard of it.
“He pointed to the hanko stamp at the bottom, and I was horrified to see it was mine. I couldn’t explain it. I asked who’d given him the document. He wouldn’t tell me. He just shook his head and told me to clean out my desk. I was so shocked I started to black out. I had to sit down. Hamada-san just sat like a wooden Buddha, then he followed me to my office and watched while I put my things in a box. He didn’t say a word, just held out his hand for my passkey at the door. I walked to the train station and put my box of stuff in a coin locker, then sat in a bar until I recovered enough to go home.”
“If you didn’t stamp your hanko on it, who did?”
“Anyone could have done it. Anyone who brought papers for me to sign knew I kept it in my desk drawer. None of us locked our offices.” Arita looked stricken. “We were like family.”
“But there must be someone you suspect . . . ?”
Arita sat wordlessly, bitter lines framing his mouth. Finally he said, “Look at who replaced me.”
“Hiro Hamada?”
Arita remained silent.
“He was after your job?”
Arita tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “Not exactly. He was being groomed to take over the company, everybody knew that. But his father saw himself as caretaker of the family legacy, and took pride in running it exactly the way his wife’s father had taught him. During O-bon he was fond of saying he hoped when his father-in-law’s spirit returned every year, he liked what he saw. So Hamada-san insisted his son work his way up from the bottom, learning every part of the business. Hiro didn’t get promoted until he’d mastered every task, down to the last detail. Hamada-san actually speeded up his son’s promotions after his cancer treatments last year, but it wasn’t fast enough for Hiro. Hamada Jr. thought that because he graduated from Waseda, he should go straight to the top.
“Hiro started suggesting improvements, trying to impress his father with tricky ways we could change things to make the company more profitable. Fiddling with the accounting, bidding out contracts to squeeze lower prices from our suppliers, tinkering with the recipes, substituting less-expensive ingredients.
“His father refused to consider any of them, and I was the one who had to deliver the bad news.”
They listened to the rain whisper in the trees far above.
“So what do you think Hiro Hamada did?”
“I think he ordered cheap ingredients from that Chinese company in my name. Maybe he thought if he secretly substituted them and no one noticed a difference in the finished products, Hamada-san would finally admit his son was right: The company could boost profits without hurting quality and maybe the old man would let Hiro skip the rest of the low-level jobs, move straight into management.” Arita frowned. “Or maybe he just wanted my job.
“In any case, he got what he wanted. When Hamada-san discovered that bill of lading, Hiro let me take the fall instead of admitting what he’d done behind his father’s back.”
“But why would the president of a company fire an old and trusted employee for stepping out of line only once?”
“I didn’t,” Arita insisted, offended.
“But even if Hamada-san thought you did, why was making that one order so terrible he fired you?”
Arita sighed. “Hamada-san was a man of honor; he came from an old samurai family. Ordering from an unapproved Chinese company made him think I no longer shared his commitment to the traditions his father had handed down. After he had cancer last year, Hamada-san was afraid Hiro might have to take over before his training was complete, so he became even more rigid about making his son do things in the traditional way. But Hiro pushed back. Hamada-san hated clashing with his son, so he made me the middleman. The thing is, some of Hiro’s ideas weren’t that bad. I tried to talk Hamada-san into trying a few of his son’s suggestions, but he refused every time. When Hamada-san saw that Chinese bill of lading, he must have thought I’d joined the employees who’d begun currying favor with his son, thinking he might become their boss sooner rather than later. It looked like I’d sabotaged everything the company stood for. And Hamada-san was more like his ancestors than he wanted to admit: A single insult was enough to make him draw his sword.”
“Was it enough to make him commit suicide?”
Arita nodded. “He’s the sort of man who would kill himself for honor. But how could two hundred fifty kilos of sweetener and one hundred kilos of milk powder that were never used make him take his own life?”
“How do you know they were never used?”
“The line manager or test engineers would have noticed a change in the taste. We have strict controls so our candy is always the same, even though milk from the same farm can taste different at different times of year, depending on what the cows are eating. I can’t imagine that cheap ingredients from a completely new supplier in a different part of the world would go unnoticed. Someone would have told me.”
Kenji nodded and shifted his umbrella to his other hand, digging in his pocket for a business card. He handed it to Arita, apologizing for not doing it properly with both hands. Arita apologized that he no longer had one to give in return.
“If you think of anything else, please call me,” said Kenji. “I hope that your fortunes improve soon, Mr. Arita. Thank you for your help.”
Chapter 21
Tuesday, April 9
2:30 P.M.
Kenji
Suzuki shouldered open the do
or to the interview room carrying two Styrofoam cups of tea. He set one in front of Kenji, who muttered his thanks and drank a slug without looking up. Suzuki perched at attention on the edge of his chair, waiting for his superior to finish reviewing the notes taken during the day’s interviews.
Kenji looked up, marking his place with a finger. “You’re making me nervous, sitting like that.”
Suzuki relaxed slightly.
“Your notes are very . . . comprehensive.”
“Thank you, sir. I think the four-color pen makes it easier to keep things straight, don’t you?”
Kenji rubbed his eyes. “Maybe this would go faster if I organize the timeline and you look back through your notes for the details.”
He stood to face the blank whiteboard. Drawing a black line across it, he marked a point near the right end. “Okay, let’s work backward. The Hamadas committed suicide on Friday . . . What was the date?”
Suzuki consulted his phone. “April fifth.”
Kenji wrote it on the board. He stepped to the left and made another mark. “About a week before that, they visited their lawyer and changed their wills. And Arita-san was fired on March fourteenth.” He marked the timeline.
“Hamada and his son had some sort of disagreement after work a day or two before Arita was fired.” He wrote “March 12?” then stepped back and looked at the board. “What else?”
“The bill of lading, sir?”
“Right. Arita didn’t give me a date, but he said the shipment had arrived about a week before.” Kenji extended the line and wrote “Shipment—March 5?”
He capped the marker, fetched his tea from the table, and turned to study what he’d written. “Okay, what have we got? A shipment of cheap sugar and powdered milk is delivered. The next week, Hamada and his son have a disagreement after everyone else has gone home. We don’t know what it was about, but Hamada Sr. is too upset to open his office door to General Manager Fukuda afterward. Two days later, Hamada confronts Arita, who claims to know nothing about the order. Arita is fired, but Hamada doesn’t explain why.”
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