“Please represent me at the service.”
Aoki nodded. Then he received his new assignment. He was to report to an inspector in the Second Division who was working on a drug case in the Shibuya district.
Aoki left without a word. Was this to be his fate—to play second fiddle to another inspector? Perhaps it was temporary; whatever, it would be useless to ask Watanabe.
In the corridor he pulled up short. Sergeant Saburi dead! How much responsibility for that lay on his shoulders? Aoki’s jaw tightened. He needed a space of time to think about that.
~ * ~
Three nights later, alone in a Ginza bar, Aoki confronted Saburi’s suicide. It was the case that had killed the sergeant, the relentless pressure Aoki had put on him. The dead man’s wife and children had been at the shrine in the temple, and all of his old team had been present. There were flowers from the department.
Ex-governor Tamaki’s photograph was in the papers that day. He was opening a new section of expressway in his home prefecture.
Aoki stared at himself in the bar mirror. He realized he’d become even more reticent during the course of the week, and at home Tokie and his father were watching him as though he were recuperating from an illness. At work he was under similar observation, from observers not as precisely identifiable. He worked on the drug case. They’d raided premises in Shibuya, but the perpetrators, obviously, had been tipped off. There was no one there and no incriminating evidence. They needed their own tip-off, and Aoki had begun working through contacts he had in that district.
Aoki thought more about his marriage. It was another case to solve, an even more difficult one. He and Tokie lived in different worlds: art and culture, crime and, maybe, punishment. He couldn’t see how that could change. In whatever direction he looked, the future appeared bleak.
The faint buzzing had come into his head again, or was it his ears? Aoki finished his beer and walked out to the Ginza street, entering a stream of close-packed bodies moving wearily in the humidity. A jungle of neon signs imprinted blazing patterns and characters on the night. The motor traffic crawled along as if it were heat-exhausted, too. Everything in his city was suffering from summer. He draped his jacket over his arm and headed for the station, instantly bathed in perspiration.
Of course, whatever was said, and despite his guilt at the pressure he’d put on Saburi, it was the Fatman who’d killed the sergeant.
~ * ~
Chapter Three
ONE MORNING, A WEEK LATER, an unseen hand laid the time bomb on Inspector Aoki’s desk.
The newspaper was folded open to display the article, and the block of print seemed to lift off the page as though it had been suddenly magnified. Unconsciously, Aoki drew in his breath.
Police Abandon Investigation into
Diet Member’s Business Connections
By Eichi Kimura
A long-running investigation into allegations of corruption and yakuza links surrounding prominent Liberal Democrat Party Diet member Yukio Tamaki has been abandoned by the police. Reportedly the links involved yakuza connections with certain unnamed banks, allegedly sponsored by former governor Tamaki. Reliable sources advise that the high-powered investigation team has been disbanded. Senior police would not comment on the case, and no reason for its terminaton is available. In 1991, allegations of corruption surfaced against Tamaki when the Judicial Commission looked into development approvals in Osaka in the late 1980s, but these fizzled out, as did the commission. In the 1970s, when he was governor of _______ prefecture, similar allegations went unanswered. It appears that yet again the Fatman is fireproof against worrying allegations, and that public interest has again been put aside.
Aoki sat there, stunned—at the article and at the Eichi Kimura connection. The fellow was the husband of his wife’s best friend! Perspiration had broken out on Aoki’s forehead and hands. What in the hell! How did Kimura get the story? He sank back in his chair, and sickeningly the suspicion came down on him.
He was fumbling for a cigarette when his phone rang, making him jump. He was summoned to the director general’s office! Aoki put on his coat, dried off his hands, and went up in the elevator. His throat had tightened so that it ached.
The bowing secretary conducted him into the room. The DG was seated behind his desk, staring fixedly ahead. Then his eyes shot to Aoki. Superintendent Watanabe stood to one side, his eyes hooded. A hostile silence drenched the room.
The DG drew in his breath. “How did the paper get this?” He lifted it up and thrust the article in Aoki’s direction. The newspaper was shaking in his hairy hands. Aoki was expressionless. With an effort, he was keeping his composure, waiting to see which way things would go, still in the dark like them. The DG’s authoritarian but hitherto reasonably polite manner had vanished. Here was a man of fractured nerves, exuding the pressure pouring down on him from above.
Watanabe appeared calm.
“I don’t know, sir,” Aoki replied.
The director general’s face turned red. He bit at his lips, glaring at the detective with heavy suspicion, and said, “If you have anything to tell me about it, do so now. “
Aoki got the message—later would be too late—but he had nothing to say.
“Very well, Inspector. We will be looking into this.” He dismissed Aoki with a curt nod.
Aoki left. Superintendent Watanabe did not go with him.
Back in his cubicle, Aoki sat at his desk and gazed out over the thirty or so detectives seated at their desks and computers. His hand found the mole on his cheek and fingered it. He had nothing urgent to do; his inspector colleague on the drug case was off duty, and he was waiting on calls from his own contacts.
Minutes ago, Watanabe’s attitude had been enigmatic, normal for him. During the Fatman investigation, Aoki had been reporting directly to the DG, but the superintendent had been hovering around its edges. Once he’d stopped Aoki in a corridor and said, “How’s it going?” Aoki was surprised: The superintendent had been present at the last weekly briefing of the DG. Watanabe had examined him with shrewd eyes. “I mean, how’s it really going?” Aoki had shrugged, hiding his anger. It had been the day before the investigation was shut down.
Eichi Kimura was a feature writer and crime reporter on the Tokyo Shimbun. Aoki hardly knew the fellow, despite the closeness of their wives.
Aoki picked up the phone to call Tokie, then put it down and gazed afresh out of his glass cubicle. He guessed Watanabe would be calling him soon, but no call came.
~ * ~
Inspector Aoki signed off at 5:30 P.M. and went home. Strung tight with tension, he rode the train out to Kamakura, tonight having to stand all the way. His stomach was upset, sour with lack of food and uncertainty—the suspicion that kept rising up in his mind, and that he kept rejecting. It was unbelievable, inconceivable, that his wife could be involved in any way whatsoever. He’d folded the newspaper into his pocket.
At Kamakura he stopped in a bar and ordered a Heineken. A compulsion was on him to get home and clear up the matter; nonetheless, he needed a breathing space to put himself in order for it. Hopefully, it would all be dismissed by his wife in a few incredulous words. But if not? He knew it was a bad sign that he couldn’t force himself to phone her.
Aoki wasn’t an ambitious man; the case was the biggest assignment he’d had. Despite his successes, it totally outgunned his rank, and at the outset he’d been amazed, then deeply doubtful, about that fact. However, as they’d delved deeper and deeper the doubts had vanished. He’d become as one with a world that in the past had been off-limits to him—or any other inspector of the TMPD. Slowly he shook his head, then drank up the beer, squared his shoulders, and left the bar.
Fifteen minutes later, Aoki entered the peaceful enclave that was their home: a minuscule clearing in the vast urban jungle that was Tokyo, yet the place where he was least comfortable. Tight with tension, he let himself in and stepped into the living room. His father held a book open in his hands,
but Aoki could tell that he wasn’t reading it. Tokie came forward with a bow and took his suit coat. His shirt was stuck to his back with perspiration. She gave him her usual quiet and pleasant welcome. He needed to be very calm about this. He was still embarrassed about the emotional scene, and the humiliation hadn’t abated. He would take a shower and further prepare himself.
Today Tokie and his father had been to an art exhibition at a Kamakura gallery, and they’d had tea in a garden next to one of the tranquil temples. Pouring him beer, Tokie told him this.
They ate their dinner. Her manner seemed strained and earnest. The folded newspaper was still in Aoki’s pocket. In the ascetic face with its mottled brown age marks, his father’s eyes were worried. Down what tributary were the old man’s thoughts moving? Aoki wondered, his heart beating faster.
Tokie took away the plates, brought in a platter of fruit, and resumed her seat.
Aoki forced himself to reach for the newspaper in his pocket and, fumbling, unfolded it to display the article. Wordlessly, he laid it before them. They stared at it.
Tokie raised her eyes first, and Aoki knew.
“What have you done?” he said quietly.
She shook her head vehemently, but her eyes had become clouded. His father was staring down at his small hands.
Aoki felt wretched, and he knew his face had darkened. He compressed his lips, as if to stop any further utterance. How could he ever have foreseen such a thing? His gentle, artistic wife? This scholarly old man who was his father? He shook his head slowly. Far beyond his knowledge or his idea of her, was his wife some kind of activist? Aoki grappled with these thoughts. Stay calm, he told himself in the midst of them. His hands somehow had become clasped together.
“Why didn’t you come to me first?” Aoki heard his voice say. His control was slipping.
Quietly, his father said, “Your wife feels very deeply the great indignity you’ve suffered, the injustice. She sees what it has done to you, what it is doing to you. She went to Kimura-san’s wife, then him, in strict confidence.”
Tokie leaned forward, earnest, desperate. “I told him that you could not, would not, speak about it. He promised me anonymity. “
Aoki shook his head in bewilderment. Strict confidence! In a case like ex-governor Tamaki’s! Their naive idea of security, the anonymity that could be expected, rendered him speechless. The real world would throw out the source like an animal spitting out poisonous food!
The great chasm between their worlds, their lives, had brought this on. He groaned—could not stop it. Then he questioned her in detail. Without his knowing it, his voice had turned rough, terse in his disbelief that behind his back she’d done what she’d done.
Throughout the interrogation she stared fixedly at the platter of sliced fruit, the dessert they wouldn’t eat.
He had the story from her quiet answers, and gradually their voices faded away into the summer night. Tears had flooded his wife’s eyes, but she made no sound.
Aoki rose from the table, found his shoes, and left the apartment. He needed a bar, and solitude. Everything ahead was now very clearly mapped out for him, he thought, stiff with anger and despair, but that was not the case at all.
~ * ~
First thing the next morning, Aoki was again summoned to the director general’s office. He entered a doom-laden atmosphere. Early this morning they’d questioned Kimura. Aoki believed that the journalist would’ve tried to protect his source, his wife’s friends, but even he would not have had the full measure of what he was up against. The Fatman’s power, always formidable, had been revitalized, and, anyway, there were ways to break down even the most obstinate if the stakes were high enough.
“What in hell was your wife thinking?” the director general demanded, emphasizing each word. “Did you put her up to it?” He jumped up and paced the room, unable to control his agitation, but not taking his eyes off Aoki. Superintendent Watanabe sat like the Sphinx.
Aoki remained speechless. He couldn’t explain what had happened. They knew more than he did! And he couldn’t blame his wife before these men.
Ten minutes later, Aoki was expelled from the DG’s office. Suspended from duty. He surrendered his badge and his gun, and Watanabe escorted him off the premises. Aoki shook his head in disbelief. He was a first-class shot, and they were taking away his gun. The illogical thought gave way; now he was stiff and silent with anger.
“Stay cool and it’ll probably blow over,” his boss said, giving him a critical look. “Do anything rash and you’ll be in deep shit. Treat it as a vacation. You’re still on full pay. “
Before noon, Assistant Inspector Nishi called him on his cell phone, finding him in a Ginza bar, and passed on the regrets of some of his team members. It’s gone down deep with us all, Aoki thought. The news hadn’t taken long to get out.
He wasn’t drunk when he arrived home at about 9:00 P.M.
His father was in the kitchen making tea. They regarded each other. “I’ve been suspended until further notice,” Aoki said.
The old man nodded as if to himself. “The only disgrace lies with your superiors,” he said quietly.
Tokie had come from their bedroom to hover in the background, a pale witness to this exchange between father and son. She seemed in a daze.
At 10:00 P.M. Aoki was standing at the kitchen sink looking out the small window, drinking beer from the bottle, when his father came in. The old man said in his soft voice, “It grieved me to hear you talk like that to Tokie last night. What was done came from loyalty, and a fine woman’s horror at the unjust treatment of the man she cares for most.”
Aoki made a gesture of helplessness with the bottle and muttered an apology. Fatalistically, he thought, He’s right. I’ve got to cool it, cool everything, swallow it down. What did it matter anyway? His suspension was just to placate the shadowy figures on the DG’s back. If he was lucky he’d even keep his rank, and after a few weeks he’d be recalled and thrust into the thick of something else— so long as it didn’t concern politicians!
At 10:00 A.M. that first morning of his suspension, Aoki walked to a coffee shop near home and had two cups of Colombian coffee. Then he went to the park and, from a bench, watched the aged and the women and children, a new world to him. At lunchtime, he walked to the bar next to the coffee shop and drank two small bottles of Heineken, then read a newspaper and snacked on cocktail nuts. Unconsciously, he was laying down a pattern, and in the following days, he was to decide that he’d stepped into a slow-motion world.
A man came into the bar and went to a corner table. He ordered a beer and picked up a newspaper. Aoki, immersed in his thoughts and his new regimen, hardly noticed him.
A few minutes later, he did. Bitterly, he smiled to himself. What in hell did they think he’d do? Someone was really worried for ex-governor Tamaki! And that worry was being poured onto the backs of the director general and Superintendent Watanabe—by some high-up bastard.
From that first day of his suspension, Aoki was under surveillance.
~ * ~
Chapter Four
IT WAS A WEEK AFTER the day of Aoki’s suspension when the phone’s shrilling ruptured the apartment’s early-morning peace. Aoki was lying in bed, half asleep, a cool sea breeze blowing on his face. He raised himself on his elbow, listening as Tokie padded softly to answer it. There was a pause. Were they calling him back in?
The scream sliced through the flat. Aoki sprang up and ran out to the living room, but his father was ahead of him.
Both of them pulled up, gazing at Tokie, who was slumped on the floor, her loose hair fallen over her face, her torso bowed like a broken flower. Absolutely still. The scream was an echo in their heads. The phone receiver dangled from its cord. His father went forward and kneeled down beside her, put his arm around her shoulders, and spoke to her in a gentle voice. She murmured a few words to the old man that Aoki couldn’t hear.
Aoki took up the phone and listened. The line was dead. He heard only
the radio playing softly in the kitchen. He replaced the receiver. What in hell’s name? He stared at the tears running down his wife’s face.
The old man straightened up, his face grave. He turned to Aoki and took him aside. “Kimura, the journalist, has been killed. This morning. Murdered on the stairs of his building.”
Aoki stared at his father as if not understanding the words spoken. The old man reached out, took his arm, and shook him slightly. Then Aoki was looking at his wife, who hadn’t moved; her eyes were staring at the tatami mat.
~ * ~
At 10:00 A.M. the broad pattern of it was all very clear to Aoki; the details—or some of them—would come later. He sat in the coffee shop, a cup of the Colombian brew untasted and cold in front of him.
Tokie had gone to Madam Kimura, accompanied by his father. At the door, Aoki had touched her hand, but she’d given him only a fleeting look. At that moment, the closeness between his wife and his father had never been more evident to him, and he’d felt like a bystander.
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