Soul Cage--A Mystery

by Tetsuya Honda

  “Yeah, she went upstairs a while ago.”

  Reiko’s mother had had heart trouble in the summer. She’d given up staying up late.

  “Had dinner?”

  “I had a snack earlier.”

  She noticed that her father was enjoying a nightcap with his late-night TV.

  You’re drinking, Dad. You could hardly have come and gotten me in the car.

  “So you’ve not eaten properly?”

  “I had fried chicken and a rice ball.”

  “That all? Let me rustle up something.”

  “I’m fine. Anyway, eating late makes you fat.”

  Oh yeah? Then how come you’re happy to stay out late in bars all the time, Reiko?

  “If you say so, darling. Got the day off tomorrow?”

  “Nah, it’s too soon for that. Maybe another week.”

  Her father looked concerned.

  “Look here, Miss Lieutenant, we don’t want you overdoing things.”

  Her father was a regular working stiff with a regular office job. He’d probably never even heard the word lieutenant till Reiko got promoted.

  “Okay for me to do some laundry?”

  “It’s too late now. Dump it by the machine and Mom’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Not so bad. Pretty good, actually.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Reiko peered briefly up the darkened staircase. When she looked back into the living room, her father had returned his attention to the television.

  He was wearing a navy blue dressing gown. Reiko always found the sight of her dad’s rounded shoulders in a dressing gown oddly comforting.

  No, always wasn’t the right word. She wasn’t thinking about her childhood. She was thinking of something that had happened almost exactly twelve years ago. It was a winter’s night back when Reiko was starting to put her life back together after having been assaulted.

  It was late. Reiko, unable to sleep, had come downstairs only to find the kitchen light on. She’d assumed that someone had forgotten to switch the thing off, and then she noticed someone in the room. She realized it was her father just in time not to shriek.

  He was wearing a dressing gown, and he was squatting in front of the sink.

  Through her surprise, Reiko had realized that her father was staring at a carving knife that he was holding with both hands. He was gazing intently at the light glinting off the blade as though he could see through it to something else on the other side.

  Some time passed. Then he lifted the knife above his head and held it there. His rounded shoulders quivered. Was Dad crying?

  “Reiko … I’m sorry … I … I just can’t.”

  For a moment, she’d thought he was talking to her. Then she realized he was talking to himself.

  And that was when she had realized what was going on.

  Her father was fantasizing about killing her assailant. He was trying, if only in his imagination, to kill the man who’d raped his daughter.

  It was something he’d never be able to do in real life.

  And it was something he couldn’t do in his imagination either.

  Daddy!

  She had felt an overwhelming urge to throw herself on those convulsing shoulders and hug him tight.

  Her dad—who wanted to avenge her. Her dad—who couldn’t hurt a fly, even in his imagination.

  “Daddy?”

  She had only spoken in a whisper, but her father leaped to his feet, his face turned to one side.

  “Oh … uh … I’d no idea you were up.”

  His voice had trembled as he hid the knife by dumping it in the sink.

  “What’s wrong, darling? Can’t you sleep?”

  “No, I’m fine,” she had said, anxious not to upset him further.

  “You should hurry back to bed.”

  “I guess,” she had murmured.

  She hadn’t been able to bring herself to leave him alone down there. She wasn’t sure why, but she desperately wanted him to know how she felt about him at that moment.

  He had let out a long, drawn-out sigh. He didn’t want her to know he’d been crying. Reiko knew she’d seen a side of him she wasn’t supposed to see. It only made her love him more.

  “Daddy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  Her father hadn’t replied that night.

  “Oh gosh!”

  Reiko snapped back to the present at her father’s exclamation.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  “I just remembered that we’ve got some cream puffs in the refrigerator. Mom told me on her way up to bed.”

  You’ve got to be kidding me, thought Reiko. Tempting though it was, no way was she going to have a cream puff this late at night.

  “I told you, Dad, I’m fine. A quick bath and then I’m going straight to bed.”

  “Oh well, suit yourself,” murmured her father, picking up his whiskey glass and turning back to the TV.

  Reiko thought she’d try him.

  “Hey, Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “Thanks? Thanks for what?”

  He hadn’t picked up on her reference.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  She went upstairs to get changed.

  When she came back downstairs to take a bath, her father was no longer in the living room.

  PART V

  1

  Iknew that the father of the girl Kosuke was going out with had died in a fall at one of Kinoshita Construction’s building sites. My work buddies told me all about it. Apparently, Kosuke had been asking them about the dead man—the guy’s name was Noboru Nakagawa—and trying to get contact details for his surviving family.

  Still, I made out like I had no idea what was going on.

  Wanting to treat Kosuke like an adult was only half the story. I also felt kind of hobbled by my position: I was like a father to him, sure, but I wasn’t his real dad.

  I was also plain thrilled that my Kosuke had got himself a girlfriend. Maybe he’d get hitched any day now. I was over the moon just thinking about it.

  I wondered what sort of girl Michiko Nakagawa was. I’d only seen her in the diner where she worked as a waitress. What the hell, I thought—if Kosuke likes her, she can’t be bad.

  Her background and experience were similar enough to his: she knew the value of money and the importance of family. Kosuke wouldn’t have time for anyone who didn’t have basic values of that kind.

  I knew that Kosuke was taking the place of my own son, who’d effectively died at the age of five. That was my problem, not his. That was why I made up my mind not to say anything to him about the girl’s father. Maybe I was just being selfish, clinging to the joy I felt in watching the boy grow up.

  Kosuke looked happier with every passing day. It was like his life was finally getting going and he could feel it in every nerve of his body. I was a wee bit jealous, but mostly I was excited. I wanted to do whatever I could to help him.

  * * *

  That evening, when work was over and done with, Kosuke helped me put all the gear back in place on the garage shelves, said a hasty good night, and hurried back to his place. It was raining, but somehow the drizzle seemed to land everywhere but on my boy.

  I grinned ruefully to myself. Heck, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t upset by the boy’s eagerness to get away. But that’s the way it goes: parents have to accept that the kids will eventually fly the nest.

  I pulled down the garage’s metal gate and went back to my place. I’d been living alone so long now, I could hardly remember when coming back to an empty house made me feel lonely.

  I stuck the key into the rickety doorknob, pulled open the door, and switched on the light. In the living room, I picked up the remote control on the table and switched on the heater unit—the only piece of modern technology in the whole apartment.

  I followed the same routine every winter nig
ht. I’d do a bit of house cleaning, perhaps a load of laundry, and prepare my dinner—which meant defrosting something I’d made earlier—while I was waiting for the bath to fill up. Then it was time for a nice long soak in the tub to wash away the cold and the weariness. Touch wood, my body’s still holding together. I don’t know how much longer I can keep working, but when my body goes, it’ll be game over for me.

  When I got out of the bath, I usually opened a beer to have with my dinner. On the menu tonight was vegetable stew cooked how my old lady used to make it. A big-screen TV was my only dinner companion. I watched a report about a scandal in the police force and a variety show with a bunch of TV personalities horsing around. I was enjoying myself until some news came on about a big pile-up on an expressway somewhere. I couldn’t bear to watch, and I changed the channel. That was when I remembered something.

  I’d been cutting up some lumber with a circular saw earlier that afternoon. Work was winding down for the day, and I must’ve gotten sloppy. With a saw, it’s important to stand close and put your whole body weight behind the thing. I had wanted to cut this piece from a little further away, and I just swiveled and stretched in close. It was the sort of mistake I’d never make normally, but, like I said, it was late and I was tired—or maybe I was just getting old. Anyway, the electric cord snagged, and the saw blade went through it like butter.

  The saw gave a sad sigh. The blade stopped rotating, and the cord plopped to the ground.

  I swore.

  “You’re an amateur, boss,” laughed Kosuke. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Shut it, kid. Get the handsaw and deal with the last three pieces of wood yourself.”

  I needed to repair the saw. Tomorrow morning would have been fine, but now that I’d remembered the thing, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

  It was nine o’clock when I slipped a sweater over my tracksuit and headed over to the garage. It was still raining a little, but the garage was close enough that I didn’t need to bother with an umbrella.

  The garage was bigger than necessary for a minivan, but after I put in the shelves around the walls, the space became quite tight. I had to drive the van out into the road just to open the hatch.

  I parked the van outside to free up space for my repair work. If any of the other garage owners came back, it would be easy to move it and let them in.

  I grabbed the circular saw and its broken length of cord from the back of the van. I also grabbed an extension cord and a tool belt with a cutter knife, a tape measure, a hammer, and other stuff in it.

  I went back into the garage, switched on the lightbulb, and squatted down in the middle of the empty garage floor.

  The first thing I needed to do was to strip the broken cord. Five centimeters should be long enough, I reckoned. I carefully sliced around the black rubber insulation covering the wires and slid it off.

  Now I had two smaller wires sticking out, one red and one green. I repeated the process for them, cutting through the colored rubber and sliding it off. The metal electric wire splayed out like little tufts of blond hair.

  I did the same for the other end of the broken cord, then I reconnected the wires, the red to the red, and the green to the green. I had some green insulation tape in my tool pouch. I cut a couple of lengths of it and wound it around the bare wires to stop the different ones touching and causing a short circuit.

  Then I grabbed the extension cord and plugged it into a wall socket along the back wall. After plugging it into the outlet, I then plugged in the repaired saw cord.

  I was just about to turn on the saw to see if my repair had done the trick, when I heard a voice.

  “Yo!”

  He was a dark silhouette framed in the open garage doorway. The trademark long coat was soaked through and sticking to his body.

  “What the hell happened to you? What are you doing here this time of night?”

  It was Tobe. Out of the blue. The guy never came to my part of town. Wait, that’s not quite true; he’d dropped in a couple of times when I first moved here, but not once in all the years since.

  “Oh, nothing special, Mr. Ta-ka-ok-a.”

  I looked at Tobe more closely. His face was spattered with mud. He looked like he’d crawled around to see me as some sort of stupid practical joke.

  I smiled at him in an effort at being friendly.

  “Don’t think the look does a lot for your sex god persona,” I said.

  “I’m not in the mood for your dumbass jokes,” Tobe shouted, launching a kick at the shelves on the side of the garage.

  A square of laminate slid down the space between the shelf and the back wall, making a warbling sound as it flexed and settled that would have been comical at any other time. A can of glue toppled off the top shelf and crashed down onto the cement floor. So did the metal pole-hook for opening and closing the shutter of the garage.

  “Sorry, Takaoka. Didn’t realize it was serious.…”

  Tobe bent down and picked up the pole-hook, then turned to look at the shutter box above his head.

  “That fellow you work with, the kid … he’s the son of Tadaharu Mishima, the guy I … uh … dealt with.”

  Fear rushed into every cell of my body. I broke out into goose bumps. I felt like I was about to physically burst.

  Tobe thrust the pole-hook into the loop on the roller shutter and yanked violently. The shutter unrolled, hitting the concrete of the floor with an almighty crashing sound. The interior of the garage was cut off from the outside world.

  Tobe unhooked the pole-hook from the door but didn’t put it down.

  “I had no fucking idea. All this time, you’ve been lying to me.”

  Something sliced through the air right by my ear. Pain exploded in my shoulder.

  I groaned.

  I couldn’t have avoided the blow even if I’d known it was coming. I crashed down, face forward. My shoulder blade was burning.

  “What the hell were you thinking, Takaoka, doing something like that? Have you forgotten the shit you pulled yourself?”

  Tobe was raining blows on my back. It was excruciating. Moaning, I rolled onto my side in an effort to protect myself.

  “You stole the family register of a dead man. You faked your own death. You arranged for your sister to get a nice fat insurance payout. But who set the whole gig up for you? Who got your sister on board? Huh? Who?”

  He whacked me. On the hip this time.

  “What are you up to now? Training the son of one of our debt-ridden jumpers to become a carpenter? What the fuck is that about? Don’t try and tell me that you’re doing it out of the kindness of your heart. Kindness is not what you’re about, my friend.”

  The pole-hook came down on my thigh. Agony all the way down to my knee.

  “You want to do anything, you get my permission first, okay! You’re a fucking ghost, my friend. You died, and I, Makio Tobe, I brought you back to life again. You’re the walking dead, my pet fucking zombie. Looking after people, caring for people—normal shit like that is a complete no-no for you, pal.”

  He hit me again. And again. And again. My whole right side was numb from the pain. It was like it just wasn’t there anymore.

  “And you know about that Noboru Nakagawa guy. Another loser who did the high dive for us. His daughter—”

  My mind suddenly snapped back into focus.

  Noboru Nakagawa’s daughter.

  “I paid for her. That makes her my bitch, see. Straight outta high school, that is one fresh little piece of pussy.”

  Tobe made an obscene pumping motion with his crotch. There was a smirk on his mud-spattered face.

  “I’ve been getting my money’s worth out of the girl, believe me, I have. Then tonight, that dipshit Mishima boy, your precious protégé, shows up out of nowhere and he’s like, ‘The bitch is mine, brother. Move over.’ Think I enjoyed that?”

  Another blow on my shoulders. Pain drowning in a sea of numbness.

  “Two little lovebirds
and their match made in high-dive heaven! Don’t fucking make me laugh. I made a woman of the Nakagawa girl. I fixed her up with a place to live. She’s mine—one hundred goddamn percent. That pissant kid’s got no business fucking her or lecturing me with his high-and-mighty bullshit. You’re gonna tell that kid to get the fuck out of my face. Okay, Mr. Ta-ka-o-ka?”

  Tobe was now stomping on my arms. I checked. I could still move my hands. So no broken bones … yet.

  “You don’t help, then I’ll unleash some crazy shit your way. I’ve still got all of Mishima’s and Nakagawa’s IOUs. I say their debts are paid, then their debts are paid. I say their debts are outstanding, then, hey, presto, their debts come magically back again. You get that? If the girl doesn’t fall into line, I’ll send her to a soapy massage parlor and the cunt can screw herself to death there. And what about your dear sister’s restaurant? You want me to send some of my yakuza buddies over to frighten off her regulars? Then there’s your kid in the hospital. Want me to drop by and fuck with his life-support machine? Pull a few tubes out of the wall? Huh? Which way you want to play this? Yours or mine? It’s up to you, fuckbrain.”

  I’d dreamed about life without Makio Tobe in it before that day. Back when I started my new life as Kenichi Takaoka. Back when I met Kosuke and started to love the boy. And the more I loved Kosuke, the more I hated Tobe. The more I wanted him out of my life.

  Every time he showed up on a building site where I was working, I’d fantasize about his death.

  I hope you get cancer. I hope you get hit by a car. I hope one of your slut girlfriends stabs you to death. I hope your yakuza pals beat the shit out of you, stick you in a drum full of concrete, and shove you into Tokyo Bay. Anything—just so long as I never have to see you again.

  But today was the first time I realized that I could do the job myself.

  “Hey, get the fuck off me.”

  I’m gonna get this bastard out of my life.

  “You weigh a fucking ton. That hurts. Hey! Hey!”

  I want him dead, so Kosuke can be free.

  “Enough. This ain’t funny no more. Let me go.”

  Kosuke and the girl.

  Tobe screamed.

  Now they can escape from the cycle of misery and poverty and I can bring this fucked-up life of mine to an end.