The master shuffled the dozen or so bottles inside the fridge until he found the ones he wanted. Carrying these to the counter, he hoisted the large bottle of cold sake and, cradling it in the crook of his arm, poured out the clear, clean liquid. The sake flowed gently over the top of the lip of the glass into the box, arousing the aroma of cedar and fresh rice. He poured out sake from a different bottle for Hiroshi and placed both bottles on the counter so that each displayed the artful calligraphy of their labels.
They bowed down like penitents to take the first sip without spilling. Then they plucked up the small, thumb-sized glasses for a silent toast before downing the second gulp. Finally, they poured the spillover from the cedar box into the glass, took another sip, and set their half-full glasses back inside the wet cedar boxes.
The master ascertained they were satisfied, glancing up as he set down two small dishes of pickled vegetables, and then he turned back to prepare for whatever they might order.
Hiroshi reached for a pair of chopsticks from a black-lacquered, glass-top box. He pulled apart the wood with a crackle, brushed off the splinters, and held them up in the air for a bite of the pickles.
Seeing the chopsticks in mid-air, the pickles suddenly looked unappetizing. Leaning back, he set his chopsticks down, folded his arms and said, “I don’t feel so hungry.” He took another sip of sake and looked at the rough grain of the wood walls.
Takamatsu looked at Hiroshi’s chopsticks, and remembering the chopstick work of the body cleanup squad on the tracks, he left his chopsticks untouched, lit another cigarette and studied the label on the sake bottle in front of him.
Chapter 5
Hiroshi pulled open his office door to the lingering smell of disinfectants. The room was large, but windowless, and had been used to store cleaning supplies until cleaning was outsourced to a company. The smell built up every time he closed the door for long and greeted him when he came back to the room, located between two floors of the back stairwell in the Central Police Agency Second Annex.
Despite the smell, and the isolation, he felt comfortable, as if the room were another skin. Two large desks, plenty of shelf space, and a small chair that unfolded out into a comfortable-enough futon mattress took up most of the room. The centerpiece of the room was his coffee machine, which he used all day and most of the night.
Takamatsu’s chief, Hiroshi’s chief as well, told him that conversations in English with overseas police departments would be impossible in the regular offices. So, the chief requisitioned the room to give Hiroshi his own workspace. His exile from the bustling homicide department in the main building, with its unaired smell of tobacco and nervous sweat, was a boon. He was the only detective at any level to have his own office—the ultimate Tokyo luxury.
When he took the job, in a bid to support Linda and himself, he skipped most of the regular training and went straight to work using his English and the accounting degree he acquired in the States. The former financial detective, hopelessly disorganized and barely competent in English, quit, or was fired, and Takamatsu—an old family friend he barely remembered—got him the job.
Linda hated Hiroshi’s job once it became clear the temporary police job he took to support them was going to be full-time plus overtime. She had taken a job teaching English, which she felt was beneath her. It was exhausting and led her all over the city, moving all day from company to company, while Hiroshi was stuck in his office.
Her photo came up on his smartphone the next morning by accident. Every time one of her pictures appeared, when he pressed a wrong button, or looked for something else, he thought of Linda’s departure. They were waiting for her flight at Narita Airport sitting silently on chairs in the departure lobby when he got a work call. The last words she said to him were, “Turn that fucking thing off.”
She was back in Boston, their relationship turned off. Hiroshi was not good at turning anything off. He stayed at the job.
Hiroshi’s basic unit inside the large homicide department was, so far, just Hiroshi. His office was quiet enough that he could talk with people all over the world, anytime he needed, and he could even take a nap whenever he felt like it. He could sleep overnight in his office, too, which, after Linda left he did more and more. He took long walks in the city by himself in the middle of the day. It cleared his head and gave him a chance to work through the details. He got used to the solitude.
Hiroshi spent most of his time tracking down foreigners who absconded with business profits, refused to pay child support, defaulted on loans, ripped off elderly investors or fled ongoing investigations. He worked more closely with his counterparts in London, Paris, New York, and Hong Kong than with anyone in homicide. It was safe and clean work, entirely different from the work at the train station the night before.
The possibility of extraditing the people he investigated back to Japan was remote, since Japan had few such treaties with other countries. Those countries didn’t want to send their nationals to Japan, even with a lot of evidence. So, with most cases, Hiroshi satisfied himself by letting his work add to their cases. He rarely saw anyone caught or prosecuted. It felt like playing long-distance chess, with a stalemate every time: warrant issued, pending arrest, filed with the court, no trial.
He never imagined he would love pulling apart the tangles of a Ponzi scheme, dismantling an investment pyramid, or unmasking the subtleties of embezzlement cases. He would become so immersed in the scamming techniques, he would lose track of time. Linda accused him of being obsessive-compulsive, and he knew she was right.
The rest of the time she accused him of drinking too much, something that also emerged after a few months into the job, but was the first time in his life he drank much at all. When all the detectives worked together to track someone or seize evidence under search warrant, it was hard to beg off from drinking afterwards. He’d lost most of his Japanese groupthink over the years in Boston, but back in Tokyo, he felt the need to keep good relations, which meant accepting the obligation of drinking with the other detectives.
Coming home late, and none too sober, was not a cultural practice Linda adapted to. She would be waiting at the door in one of her kimonos, calmly, quietly demanding an apology or explanation or something she could get angry at. Hiroshi could never find the right way to explain where he’d been or why. That he had to work and the work involved drinking with colleagues was such a basic Japanese concept, he couldn’t put it into words. Linda would demand an explanation, not get one, and then storm off to the bed to get some sleep before dawn.
Often, he wasn’t drinking, but the time difference calling overseas investigators meant he had to stay at work late. He couldn’t explain that to her, either.
Hiroshi could understand now how her loneliness piled up with boredom at teaching and the pressure of adapting to a new culture. He knew she felt the oppressiveness of being a woman in Japan—especially a foreign woman—so much so that the pressure pushed her to action, and she left. When she did, she handed the loneliness to him.
***
Hiroshi cranked up the coffee grinder, tired after being out so late with Takamatsu the night before. The taste of the sake lingered in his mouth. The loud grind of the machine helped wake him up and restore his energy.
The files from Takamatsu were already on his desk. Another folder contained a printout from the text messages on the victim’s cell phone, but it was hard to read, with numbers and symbols riddling the messages. He would have to use a yellow highlighter to get through the mess.
He flipped through the body photos as fast as he could and closed the folder.
He popped the DVD of the train station’s camera footage in his computer. The first two seconds showed a large man listing drunkenly beside a woman—nothing more.
A second image showed the escalator, but the camera was aimed at the opposite escalator, and only captured the back of the head of the man and the woman. She was tall, with long black hair and dark-colored clothing—maybe with him or ma
ybe not.
After a scramble of dead time, the next shot caught the man’s slip-ons—soft leather, designer brand—and the sashes from her sandals, wrapped around her legs. After that, there was only the platform.
Photos of the contents of the dead man’s wallet showed all the meishi shop cards from high-priced restaurants in Azabu, Daikanyama and Ginza, credit cards and ATM bankcards from Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ Bank and from Mizuho Bank. The meishi cards formed a trail of people he met and shops and restaurants he went to and wanted to remember. The foreigner shopped for himself and probably lived alone, evidenced by well-worn discount point cards for coffee, CDs, DVD rentals, bread, and two up-market grocery stores, Kinokuniya and National Azabu.
The last photos from the wallet were meishi from clubs in Roppongi. Hiroshi guessed they were exclusive hostess clubs because of the names—Pink Rose, Enjoy, Ransom, White Leather—quite a collection. People at the clubs would remember the dead man clearly, but would not talk. People at the stores would talk, but not remember him.
Like most foreign executives, the dead man probably lived a comfortable life, especially with the “hardship pay” foreign companies dished out. If he committed suicide, he hadn’t gone on a mad spending spree before the end. The hundred thousand yen, in cash, now soaked with dried blood, would have covered a big night out in Roppongi. His bankbook showed the usual automatic payments, in and out.
Hiroshi’s cell phone rang again.
“Hai? Yes?”
“Takamatsu said you should attend a funeral, at Yushima Tenjin Shrine. Not far from Ochanomizu station.” It was one of the secretaries, but he wasn’t sure which one. He didn’t recognize her voice.
“Takamatsu told me to tell you. The funeral is for, I don’t know how to pronounce it, Steve Deveaux or something, the guy hit by the train last night,” she said.
“I’ll meet him there?”
“He said it’s better if you go alone.”
“Why isn’t he going?” Hiroshi asked.
“He said it will be in English,” she said. “He has some photos he wants you to take with you, to see if they show up at the funeral.”
“Who?”
“Acquaintances of the deceased, I guess.”
“Why doesn’t Takamatsu check these people out?”
“He said to tell you, though I hate to even repeat this, but he thinks all foreigners look alike.”
Hiroshi let out a sigh. “Where are the photos?”
“I’ll bring them over in a few minutes. I want to get out of the office and the long walk over to your place is a good chance to escape.”
“What does he want me to do at the funeral?”
“He said you’d know.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“He also said to meet him tonight at Roppongi.”
“For what?”
“You’ll have to ask him. But I can guess,” her voice held no hint of amusement.
“Tell Takamatsu he owes me.”
“He owes everybody,” she said.
Chapter 6
After morning meditation, the young priest sweeping the grounds at Yushima Tenjin Shrine was surprised to see a tall, young woman sitting alone, staring at the main building as the sun came up. The warmth of a cloudless day eased into the temple’s plum trees and the sun dried the curved slate roofs, the air crisp and fresh after the heavy rain.
When she noticed him watching her, she walked to the front gate where water trickled into a stone basin from a brass dragon spout. With a long-handled scoop, she poured water over her hands. She had entered the grounds hours earlier, but sat down without the ritual purification, content to be alone in the early morning quiet of the shrine.
The young priest glanced at her intermittently as he swept the dark brown, still-wet leaves with his dry straw broom. While he had removed himself from worldly interests, he could not help but notice how poised and intense she was, even across the spacious courtyard.
Without a glance at him sweeping, she walked to a small side hall where the temple shop had trays filled with small folded sutras, bright portable omamori charms. She selected an ema, a small wooden plaque with a silk cord and a painted picture of a horse, on which to write her request to the gods.
No one was behind the counter in the shop yet, so she slipped the money into the slot of a locked box and took the small wood board over to a bench in the middle of the courtyard. She pulled a felt-tip pen from her purse and began to write in neat lines from top to bottom, right to left:
Kamisama, Kigan. My supplication, Lord. Please let his soul go free and not wander. Protect me from others and from myself. Purify my actions with your wisdom and power. Nature takes its course and only the half-living follow unnatural paths. The rest still needs to be done. Take care of their souls.
As she wrote, she watched the ink soak into the plaque’s grain, soft as wooden flesh. She walked to a tall rack from which dangled hundreds of similar plaques. Each one held a heartfelt plea for a cure from a disease, for a husband, for easy childbirth, for world peace. Most asked to pass the university entrance exam. Each one was suspended in the morning breeze, tied up with red cords along taut wires that stretched between worn, wood posts.
She found a space for hers, for his, reaching under the row of other plaques to tie her words carefully in the middle. She brushed a row of plaques, which swayed and clacked, then quieted and stilled.
She turned from the ema and walked down the long steps toward the thick, old posts that marked the front entrance. She walked to the main street and caught a taxi to Omotesando for the rest of the morning’s business.
***
She got out of the taxi in front of the Tokyo-Mitsubishi-UFJ Bank on Omotesando Boulevard—Tokyo’s Champs-Elysees—and stood waiting on the wide, tree-shaded sidewalk for the bank to open. She looked through dark sunglasses at her outlined reflection in the shiny-clean, two-story bank window. Her broad shoulders were draped in a gauze-thin blouse and her hips set snug in a tight skirt. Moving behind her reflection, she could see the passing reflections of women, and a few men, walking back and forth on the one sunny morning in the middle of rainy season.
The other women, out for the day with former classmates or their husband’s colleagues’ wives, glided by in flowery Milanese and frilly Parisian fashions. Their outfits were well matched and they matched each other. They were well-raised and well-schooled at women’s universities, after which they worked for a few years before quitting to get married, have children and focusing on the levers of power at home while their husbands worked at climbing the ladder in big companies or government posts.
The women’s passing reflections reminded her how different she was from them. They enjoyed the area around Omotesando with its refined pleasures—the boutiques, art galleries, starred restaurants and beauty care centers—as if it were their birthright. They seemed encircled by their luxury, satisfied with the pleasant encompassing. She and the women had only the morning sidewalk in common.
At opening time, she stepped over toward the door when an employee set aside the “please wait” sign, reset the automatic doors and bowed deeply to the first customer of the day—her. She walked briskly to the number machine in the bank’s atrium and took her number—“one.” Her tall, fit figure looked thinner in the cavernous interior of the bank.
She leaned on the counter to fill in the forms for the renewal of money transfers and automatic deposits as seriously and conscientiously as she had written the ema at the shrine. She took out her hanko, her personal seal, and set her red-inked mark, “Suzuki,” into the correct oval on the forms.
When her number popped up, she folded her long legs to the side as she sat down in front of the counter cubicle, set her sunglasses on top of her head and looked straight at the clerk, a middle-aged woman in the bank’s uniform, who quickly looked away as she took the forms, muttering in the politest Japanese, “Please wait. This will just take a minute. Please take a seat and we’ll call your name.�
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She sighed, stood up and moved toward the sofa chairs, sat down, and idly surveyed the dappled marble that lined the floors, columns and walls of the bank. A few other customers wandered in and took numbers.
“Michiko Suzuki,” the clerk called out. Michiko came over and sat back down in the same chair as before. Clearing her throat and looking at the imposing woman before her, the clerk said, “I’m extremely sorry, but we cannot send an automatic renewal notice to an overseas address.”
“Could you please call the manager for me?” she asked.
“Yes, of course,” the clerk answered, bowing deeply and scampering off.
The manager, a pasty-faced man with a comb-over, smiled a practiced smile as he noticed the silver and gold lines across her account book that signaled she was a preferred customer.
Michiko said, “I will be overseas for an extended time. However, your renewal for automatic payments must be resubmitted every year, so I would like to have the renewal notice done automatically.”
He frowned, looked at the amount in her account, and tightened his lips. “Please wait a minute,” he said, and hurried back to his desk to make a phone call.
Michiko remained seated and watched the comb-over manager talk while the uniformed clerk stood nervously to the side. After a few minutes, he called for another clerk to bring another form, which he looked at as he listened on the phone. He hung up and hurried over.
“We can allow an extension of one time period,” the manager said, resetting his thin hair with his fingers. “So a total of two years. However, we would ask that you return in person at the end of that time to renew. Would that be acceptable to you?”
“It’s better than one year,” Michiko said.
“Thank you very much. This is your name here? Michiko Suzuki?”
The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1) Page 3
