I reckon the old man was the reason I never lost my shit and ran wild.
Because of him, I got to do stuff all the other kids wanted to, but never could. The old man did things like take me to Disneyland or get me a nice juicy steak for lunch. I felt a bit guilty around the other kids. I was luckier than them, so I did my best to be nice to them all. If it wasn’t for the old man coming around the way he did, maybe I’d have ended up a second Hiroki. At least, that’s my take on it now.
It was my third year in junior high. The old man had taken me out to lunch. We ate all sorts of things, steak, noodles, whatever. That day, I remember, we were having okonomiyaki pancakes. The old man was eating a pork pancake with a beer to wash it down and I was having beef with oolong tea. The place has shut down now, but, God, the okonomiyaki there was good.
“Studying hard for your high school entrance exams, Kosuke?”
“Me?” I answered. “Nah, study’s not really my thing.”
“How’re you going to get into high school, then?”
“High school?” I shrugged. “Dunno.”
Truth is, I was sick of school. What use were factorization and quadratic functions for a guy like me? No, I just wanted to be the total opposite of my dad; I wanted to get out there and start earning money for myself ASAP. I was just a kid, but I was pretty fired up.
“If you don’t go to high school, what are you going to do?”
“Thought I’d get some sort of job, I s’pose.”
“It’s a tough world out there, kid. You need to think a little harder.”
I knew that. Unless you had some special talent or a skill or were a really driven kind of person, it could be hard for a high school grad to find a job. That was why I liked the idea of doing the same thing as the old man: all a construction worker needed was a few tools and some know-how, and you could make a living anywhere, without the need for college. As long as you put in the work, you could learn everything you needed on the job, and it only took a few years.
Thinking back on it, maybe the old man invited me to lunch and asked me about my future plans to set me thinking in that direction. If he did, I’m fine with that. He may have influenced me, but he never forced me to do anything.
“If the idea of working as a general contractor isn’t too much of a turnoff, you should come and work with me, Kosuke. Recently, I’ve been thinking about striking out on my own. I’m going to call myself the Takaoka Construction Company—yeah, I know it sounds a bit high-falutin’!—and start handling jobs directly myself.”
Waves of heat were drifting up from the iron griddle on the table in between us. I felt something similar inside me: a wave of hope welling up in my chest.
“Will you give me a job?”
In my excitement, I grabbed hold of the table so hard that I knocked over my glass and spilt my tea all over the griddle.
“Yikes!”
“You idiot! Oh, shit.”
A great cloud of steam billowed up toward the ceiling. All the other customers started yelling and shrieking; then the fire alarm went off. At the end, me and the old man, we were literally groveling in front of the manager, saying we were sorry. “He’s a no-good kid. I just don’t know what to do with him,” said the old man, cuffing me on the head a few times. I had to suck it up.
The instant we were out on the sidewalk, though, the two of us burst out laughing.
Good times. I’ll never forget that day.
* * *
I was impatient to get started. I was due to graduate junior high in April, but I began my apprenticeship over the winter vacation.
The trouble was, the whole building trade more or less shuts down over New Year. All I did was help polish off one small job that was all but finished anyway and then go to the warehouse of a big contractor the old man worked for to help them with their big year-end cleanup.
The old man’s friends were surprised to see me. “Hey, Ken,” they’d say to the old man. “How come you never told us you had a grown-up kid?”
In construction, plenty of guys bring their sons into the business. The old man told his pals that I was the son of a relative. Hearing him say that made me feel kind of proud. The other guys accepted me on the spot.
I remember one funny thing that happened during my very first job. We were putting the finishing touches on this newly built house when I came across this book in the trash. It was a step-by-step manual for putting up a door or something like that. Anyway, I asked the old man if it was really okay to bin it. I mean, I didn’t want to throw out anything important. The old man didn’t reply. When I looked at him to see if he’d heard me, he was staring straight past me. There was something savage in his eyes, like a wolf stalking its prey.
The light was fading, but I saw this man standing in the street, just outside the front door. I recognized him. It was the guy who gave me the money when I went to pick up Dad’s things after he died.
I remember what he was wearing. He had on this fancy black overcoat and a bright red shirt underneath. I could just see the collar. He wore sunglasses even though it was evening. As a kid, I hadn’t realized how tall he was.
A few seconds later, he caught sight of the old man and grinned in our direction. “See you later,” he said to whoever it was he was talking to outside, and then he went off. And that was that.
Snapping back to himself, the old man turned to me.
“Oh, yeah,” he mumbled. “I was looking for that.”
He plucked the book from my hands and wandered up to the second floor.
Looking back on it now, I think those two must have known each other for a long time.
* * *
When I graduated, I moved out of the orphanage in Shinagawa to live with the old man in his apartment in Middle Rokugo in Ota Ward. He had a couple of rooms. The place was kind of run down, but it had a bath and a toilet, so it was comfortable enough. For me, it was home.
Working in construction is no walk in the park. You need to be strong, but you’ve also got to do the job right. Like when you’re carrying something, you’ve got to be careful not to bump into anything and damage it. Plasterboard panels are like that: they’re heavy and bulky, but if you don’t put them down gently, they’ll snap in half.
I had my share of accidents. The old man was always giving me a hard time, like, “Kosuke, be careful. Those materials cost money.” I was constantly having to say I was sorry.
On top of that, there’s always loads of dust and grime floating around construction sites. Stick a towel up your nose after a day’s work, and the thing comes out black. You’re getting shit in your eyes all the time too. There’s all that loud machinery, like electric saws. One of the guys I worked with wore earplugs all day. He was unusual, though; really into music and high-end audio gear, so …
At the beginning, I couldn’t do anything right.
“You’ve got to hit nails straight to get them to go in straight. They’ll bend if you hit them off-center. You’re holding the hammer wrong.”
“A good workman is as only good as his tools. Use a carpenter’s square that’s squiffy and it’ll screw everything up.”
“You’re not ready to use the circular saw. Fetch an ordinary saw and cut this manually.”
“The metal hook at the end of a tape measure makes it hard to read. If you want accurate measurements, you’re better off starting from ten than the zero mark.”
I had a lot to learn—a bit of basic architecture; a ton of terminology; how to handle my tools; the names of different kinds of wood and other building materials; how to cut them up and assemble them; how to bang in nails right; the right order to do jobs in; how to give a job a nice finish; how to work well with other contractors. It wasn’t so hard, if your head was screwed on right. I mean, everything was there right in front of you. It was the first time in my life I realized that learning could be fun.
“You’re writing all this down! You’re more serious about this job than I thought.”
&nb
sp; I was kind of embarrassed when the old man came across my notebook. I’d christened it my “Builder’s Bible,” and I updated it every day while the old man was in the bath. It was my prized possession.
“Hey, boss, how do you spell that wood we used today?”
“Cedar? That’s S-E-E-D-A-H, I think.”
The old man was even worse at reading and writing than me. He couldn’t even spell half our clients’ names. Like Kinoshita Construction, where he had a bad habit of getting the K and the C the wrong way around.
I started out at five thousand yen a day. The old man paid me every couple of weeks.
“You don’t need to pay any rent while you’re here with me. Use the money to buy yourself tools. If you have your own gear, you’ll treat it with the proper respect.”
After a year, the old man hiked my daily wage to eight thousand yen. I was able to move out of his apartment into a place of my own. The old man helped me find one: it was a small studio with an even smaller bathroom. It cost me sixty-five thousand a month. I felt kind of bad: it was a whole lot newer and nicer than the old man’s pad.
“Here,” he said, handing me a couple of envelopes on the day I moved out. “Use this for the deposit. Today’s a special day, after all.”
One of the envelopes was one of those fancy ones used for gift giving. The other had the logo of a big foreign insurance company on it.
“Thanks. What’s this one for?”
“That? It’s an insurance policy. If something happens to me, you’re the beneficiary. It’s not a whole lot of money, but provided you do the paperwork, you’ll get something.”
I felt hot and cold shivers going up my spine.
“I don’t know what to say, boss.…”
I loved the fact that he treated me as family. At the same time, the idea of something happening to him frightened and upset me.
“I don’t deserve this.”
The old man reached out, grabbed hold of the hand in which I was clutching the two envelopes, and looked deep into my eyes.
“There are two policies in the envelope; one’s for you, and the other’s for someone else. It’s a bit complicated. Basically, I haven’t told the other person about the policy; that means they might not hear the news about my death. I want you to make sure that doesn’t happen. If anything happens to me, open up the second policy and get in touch with the beneficiary so they can claim the insurance money. Okay? You promise to do what I’m asking?”
I felt a bit overwhelmed. It was all so new: having someone who trusted me; having to deal with big, unfamiliar ideas like death, the uncertainty of the future, insurance payouts, mystery beneficiaries.
Whatever my feelings, I had no business turning the old man down. He was the only family I had.
“Sure, boss,” I said, as I sniffed back the tears. “But I don’t want to think—”
He gave me a mighty smack on the back.
“Don’t be such a crybaby, Kosuke. Everybody has life insurance. When you get married, you’ll see. It’s the most natural thing in the world.”
I often thought it funny that the old man didn’t have a woman in his life, so when he came out with that spiel about things being “a bit complicated” with the “other person,” I just thought to myself, “Aha, so there is a woman in the picture after all.”
* * *
I remember a conversation we had just before I turned eighteen. We were having a meal of deep-fried pork cutlets in a soba restaurant at the time.
“Listen, Kosuke. You should get yourself a driver’s license.”
I’d been thinking the same thing.
“I want to go,” I explained. “The thing is, I’ll be too worn out to take lessons in the evening after work, and the lessons are probably booked solid on weekends.”
“Have you heard about those intensive courses where you go off and stay somewhere and do nothing but practice all day? It’s way cheaper than learning here in Tokyo, and you stand a better chance of passing the test too. You know Satoru? His daughter went to Iwate Prefecture to get her license. School was nice, apparently.”
Satoru was a plasterer we sometimes worked with.
“It would make my life a lot easier if you could drive,” continued the old man.
“I could go and pick stuff up at the hardware store for us by myself.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “And I could have a drink or two on the way back from work.”
“Oh, so that’s what this is really about.”
The old man was obsessed with the scheme. He offered to lend me the money so I could enroll right away and sent off for all the brochures and application forms himself.
Next thing I knew, he’d set the whole thing up, and I was going to a driving school in Fukushima Prefecture.
It worked out well. Somehow, I didn’t have most of the problems student drivers do, and I ended up getting my license in sixteen days, the minimum time possible. I enjoyed the change: it was my first time out of Tokyo.
When I got back, life only became that much harder.
“Hey, Kosuke, nip down to the hardware store and pick up a new drill bit for me, will you? Here’s the size.”
“Get down to Maruyoshi, the builders’ merchant. They called to say the skirting boards and crown moldings we ordered have come in.”
“These nails you bought are hopeless. We’re going to use them for this gutter, so we need a darker color—brown or chocolate brown. These silver ones will stick out like a sore thumb. They need to be exchanged. Oh, and pick up a couple of rafter beams while you’re at it.”
“Do you need two-by-fours or two-by-sixes?”
“You retarded? Can you see any two-by-sixes in this house? They’re for the ceiling joists in the living room there. Of course I want two-by-fours.”
“Sorry, boss. Be right back.”
“Unbelievable.”
Suddenly, there was this horrible whiny, screechy noise; next thing you know, the old man had dropped the saw and was writhing on the floor.
“Boss?”
“You okay, Ken?”
Matsumoto, the electrician, rushed over. That was when I noticed the old man’s left hand.
“Oh shit, look at that.”
“Ken, are you okay?”
The old man was very far from all right. There was a jagged, gaping wound on his hand between the thumb and the index finger.
“Call an ambulance, Kosuke,” hissed Matsumoto.
“I’m fine, Matsumoto.”
“Not with a cut like that, you’re not. Bring me a towel, Kosuke. A clean one.”
The blood was pumping out, streaming out …
“Kosuke, what are you doing, standing there looking all goggle-eyed? Didn’t you hear me?”
An icy spasm worked its way up from my stomach to my chest, neck, and head. My stomach turned over, and I was loudly and violently sick.
“What the fuck, Kosuke!”
I couldn’t help myself. Since the day I’d been taken to see my father’s corpse, I couldn’t bear to see blood or cuts or anything like that. Throwing up was just a reflex action.
“Looks like the kid needs an ambulance more than me, huh?”
In the end, Matsumoto walked the old man to a nearby surgery. They left me lying on the bare wood floor surrounded by puke and with a wet towel on my head, staring up at the beams and joists of the unfinished ceiling.
2
Reiko was responsible for looking into Kenichi Takaoka’s past. At the executive meeting the night before, however, it had been decided that she should interview Michiko Nakagawa, Kosuke Mishima’s girlfriend, so that was the first thing on her agenda today.
The girl lived in a one-room apartment in Wataridamukai-cho in Kawasaki Ward. Reiko called to set up an appointment, then she and Ioka hopped on the train, going four stops from Kamata to Hatchonawate, and then one stop on the Nambu Line to Kawasaki-Shimmachi, the nearest station. (Obviously, Reiko’s request for a different partner had been turned down.)
>
“Lieutenant Reiko?” said Ioka in a wheedling voice, as they walked along beside a fence surrounding a primary school. He was wearing a pair of cheap leather gloves and rubbing his hands together.
“I warned you before not to use my first name.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of love lost between you and Lieutenant Kusaka…”
A cold gust of air blew into Reiko’s collar. She shivered and jerked her head.
“Why’d you say that?”
“The executive meeting last night.”
“What the hell, Ioka! Were you listening in?”
“These great big ears of mine pick up everything.”
Stuffing his bag under his elbow, Ioka grabbed his ears and flapped them at her. It was quite a performance.
“Especially information to do with you, Lieutenant Reiko.”
“You’re like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.”
She thought that might get a laugh.
“Oh, ha ha,” he said acidly.
Reiko couldn’t figure out how Ioka’s moods worked. His unpredictable behavior wore her out.
“So why are you at each other’s throats?”
He just doesn’t know when enough’s enough!
“We’re not. It’s just … normal. It’s like not getting on with the neighbors. Just one of those things.”
“But you’re not neighbors. You’re in the same homicide unit.”
“No. Kusaka’s in a different squad in the same unit. That means he’s my enemy. I need to keep my guard up or I’ll be toast.”
Ioka smiled.
“What’s the creepy grin for?”
“The way Kusaka treated you, I can’t believe he’s much of a hit with the ladies.”
What, not like you, Casanova?
The remark was on the tip of her tongue, but she stifled it. She wasn’t going to let Ioka trick her into talking about matters of the heart. No way.
With his smarminess and his suggestive jokes, though, Ioka probably cut quite a figure in the sordid world of suburban hostess clubs, she thought.
Why am I wasting time thinking about crap like this?
Soul Cage--A Mystery Page 8
