Blue Light Yokohama

by Nicolas Obregon

  The warm air is making his cheeks hot.

  After a long time, the police car stops outside a small house on the edge of a steep forest.

  The policeman opens the door for Kosuke and puts a hand on his shoulder.

  “You’ll stay here tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll see.”

  The porch stairs sigh and insects circle the bare bulb.

  The policeman hangs his hat on a peg.

  “Wait here.”

  The policeman disappears for a short while as Kosuke smells the smell of other people’s home. He comes back holding quilts and leads Kosuke to a side room.

  He lays out the quilts in the corner.

  The policeman pats him on the head and Kosuke smells a woody, smoky smell.

  Then he goes.

  Kosuke isn’t tired anymore.

  He whispers to himself.

  “Five for silver, six for gold.”

  He sits up playing with the zip of his backpack.

  Rip. Rip. Rip.

  * * *

  The next day is gray and wet.

  Kosuke realizes that mountain days are much shorter than city days.

  The bedroom door opens and an old lady with an angry face and a mess of gray hair is standing there.

  She closes it and he hears her footsteps marching away.

  Soon Kosuke hears the policeman’s low voice, slow and sad.

  “He’s just a little boy.”

  The woman is whispering very loudly.

  Her voice sounds like soft wheels over gravel.

  “Well how long for, Eiji?”

  Kosuke can’t hear what the policeman says now but the woman talks over him.

  “Well! He still needs feeding, doesn’t he? He still needs clothing. He needs things, Eiji. You’re too giving. They won’t pay you for looking after him, will they? It’s cruel, that’s what it is. You think you’re being kind, but actually it’s the opposite.”

  The door slides open and a chubby girl, a little older than Kosuke, walks in.

  She closes the door behind her and sits in front of the TV.

  “My grandmother,” she says over her shoulder. “Always complaining.”

  The girl turns on her SEGA Mark III and the shiny, metallic blue logo appears in the blackness.

  Automatically, Kosuke sits quietly behind her.

  She skips through the options menu and the title sequence but Kosuke already knows it.

  This is Bare Fist 2.

  Metro City was once a peaceful place until one day … an evil crime syndicate, headed by the mysterious Mr. Z, moved in and took over. Gripped by a violent crime wave, the city was plunged into chaos and the police force has been corrupted. With no one else left, only you can save Metro City now … with your BARE FISTS!

  The girl chooses Flame—the judo expert—and Round 1 begins.

  She is good at this, hardly taking damage as she KOs wave after wave of bad guys.

  Her cheeks glow blue from the TV.

  Kosuke spends all day watching her mash buttons, taking back Metro City, one punk at a time.

  It’s not until late afternoon that he sees the policeman again.

  The arguing in the hallway stopped a long time ago.

  The policeman stands in the doorway, wearing his hat.

  Kosuke picks up his backpack and waves good-bye to the girl.

  “Bye,” she says, without looking over her shoulder.

  The policeman puts Kosuke back in the police car and straps him in.

  They set off back down the mountain.

  “Are we looking for my mother now?”

  The policeman looks at Kosuke, but says nothing.

  He just drives.

  Only the heating makes any noise.

  Kosuke hopes he hasn’t done anything wrong; even so, he vows to be careful.

  The last of the sun is sinking behind the mountains.

  Kosuke wishes he could eat a mushroom and grow to be twice his size.

  Kosuke wishes he could eat a power flower and throw fire from his hands.

  Kosuke wishes he could watch the girl play SEGA forever.

  * * *

  The drive is long and it’s pitch-black when the policeman stops the car.

  Behind tall gates, a big building with tall windows stands in the middle of an empty field.

  The sign reads:

  SAKUZA CHRISTIAN ORPHANAGE—KITAKUWADA DISTRICT

  “Where are we?”

  “Nearest village is Miyama. Wait here for me, son.”

  Leather squeaks as the policeman swings out of the car.

  As he passes the headlamps he lights up like the SEGA logo.

  Then he disappears inside the building.

  Kosuke waits and waits and realizes he is very hungry.

  He takes out the sandwiches from his bag and eats them.

  He is thirsty and he needs the toilet.

  He thinks about his mother but it makes him feel sick so he looks at the building again.

  Behind it, a mountain rises up like a wave on pause.

  Forest stretches out all around it.

  The policeman comes back out with a woman in a black-and-white uniform.

  She is wearing a black hood and a long silver cross bounces on her stomach as she walks.

  The policeman opens the car door and Kosuke feels the cold.

  “Come on, son.”

  Kosuke steps out of the car and slips on his backpack. He can hear a river somewhere nearby.

  “Thank you, Officer Tamura.”

  The woman’s voice is very strange.

  She is tall and her skin is very pale.

  The policeman nods, then without saying another word, he gets back into the car.

  He reverses away, looking over his shoulder.

  When the car is swallowed up by the dark, the woman takes Kosuke’s hand.

  “I’m Sister Mary Josephine, I’m the head nun here. You must be tired.”

  She leads him through the wet grass toward the big building.

  Inside, she smiles down at him as she locks the door.

  Kosuke feels strange in his stomach, like an animal is digging down to get away.

  The corridor is lined with pictures of a dying man.

  In some he wears a nice, blue yukata.

  In others, he is almost naked, bleeding everywhere, his eyes rolled back.

  In this dark, the floor is shiny like a frozen river.

  Their footsteps are loud.

  The woman clears her throat gently.

  “You must be very tired, Kosuke.”

  Kosuke doesn’t know if he’s tired or not.

  She leads him up creaking stairs.

  As they pass the windows, the moon illuminates her pale face.

  She doesn’t look down at Kosuke, she just stares straight ahead.

  There is a slight smile on her lips.

  Kosuke can’t see her hair, or her feet.

  She looks like a shadow with a woman’s face.

  At the end of the corridor, she stops and takes out her keys.

  She leads Kosuke into a room of smelly feet, cold snot, and fragile sleep.

  She points to an empty bunk and Kosuke takes off his shoes.

  He puts his backpack under his pillow and climbs into the bunk.

  The nun turns to go, and this is when Kosuke realizes his mother has abandoned him.

  This is when Kosuke realizes his mother is not coming back.

  This is when he realizes that the policeman isn’t looking for her.

  Kosuke screams.

  Faces rise up out of their slumber, some laughing, some angry.

  They are gray smudges in this milky light.

  Kosuke is holding up the money his mother gave him in both hands.

  He’s holding it up like treasure.

  “Please no! Please no! Don’t go! Please!”

  Kosuke is struggling to breathe.

  Fear is eating him whole.

  Voices are heard in the corridor now.


  Lights are being turned on.

  Kosuke grabs hold of the nun’s ankles.

  “Child, let go—”

  Kosuke cannot let go.

  “I wasn’t careful enough! I wasn’t I wasn’t I’m sorry I’m sorry!”

  The other boys have descended on the small wad of money that Kosuke’s mother gave him.

  The nun is angrily trying to kick him off.

  Someone is passing round his sandwiches.

  The moon is smirking behind its cloudy fingers.

  * * *

  Mr. Uesugi is prowling through the pews, his eyes sweeping over the tops of the little heads.

  Kosuke feels the cold, hard stone on his knees.

  He puts his hands together like the others do.

  The words begin and he closes his eyes.

  They are strange words.

  If you close your eyes they sound like magic.

  “Let us not!”

  Mr. Uesugi’s voice is booming.

  His footsteps echo loudly through the chapel and Kosuke peeks at his big shoes.

  They shine like eggplants.

  “Let us not become weary of doing good…”

  Mr. Uesugi checks that his children are kneeling well, their backs straight, their hands even.

  He irons out those who are not with a kick.

  “For if we do not give up…” Those last words drip with disgust. “Then at the proper time we will reap a harvest. Galatians 6:9.”

  Mr. Uesugi’s footsteps stop by Kosuke.

  He rests his palm on Kosuke’s small head.

  “Oh, boys,” he sighs happily. “Look out of the window.”

  They all turn to look out of the window.

  “Look at what the Lord God has given us. Remember these words, boys. Our glories float between earth and heaven like clouds which seem pavilions of the sun.”

  A cold wind whistles, and the wooden walls of the chapel tense up.

  Kosuke imagines that wind looking down on them.

  A little painted box in snow and grass, surrounded by naked trees.

  “And remember.” He grins up at the stained-glass Christ. “Here we are together. We are together and therefore we are joyous. For whomever is delighted in solitude is a wild beast or a god. Aristotle.”

  Mr. Uesugi looks over the silent, kneeling children, their hair recently cut, still as stones at the bottom of a well.

  * * *

  Kosuke cries at night.

  The other boys are used to ignoring tears and covering their ears.

  So Kosuke is not expecting it when, some nights after arriving, two feet swing into view.

  A boy called Kei drops down to the floor and lands like a cat.

  Kosuke freezes, trying to bury a sob in his pillow.

  Kei pats him over on the mattress and Kosuke turns to face the wall.

  He feels warm arms loop around his shoulders.

  He tries to squirm away but Kei does not let him, he is too strong.

  “Shush.”

  Kosuke falls quiet, sucking in breath in quick threes.

  Then twos.

  Then steady.

  CHAPTER 10: A GREAT WHITE SHARK

  IWATA COULDN’T BREATHE THROUGH HIS nose.

  He opened his eyes.

  A hospital room.

  Where?

  He looked down and saw his patient ID on his wrist—CHIBA UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL.

  Dead petals from long-gone flowers lay by the window. Outside, the brown tube of the canal curved out eastward. It was raining.

  “Rise and shine, Inspector.”

  Sakai was sitting across from the bed, papers splayed out around her.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Twenty-four hours. Some blood loss. Twisted ankle. Busted nose. Couple of stitches for your fun. Want to tell me what it was all in aid of?”

  “Did you find the black Honda?”

  “Nothing turned up.”

  Iwata registered something beneath her words.

  “What is it, Sakai?”

  She looked down at the pages around her.

  “There’s been another one.”

  “Him?”

  “Looks that way.”

  Iwata swung his feet out of bed. His head was a rung bell. His ankle was cracked porcelain.

  Sakai threw a plastic bag on the bed containing cheap, no-brand clothes and underwear from a supermarket.

  “Your clothes were ruined. I threw them away, except for your jacket.”

  Iwata hobbled behind the screen and changed. When he was done, Sakai opened the door, and her heels clicked down the busy corridor loudly. Iwata struggled to keep pace.

  “Something isn’t right,” he mumbled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean someone tried to kill me in broad daylight.”

  She paused in the corridor and turned to him.

  “Someone. In a black Honda Odyssey.”

  “I’m confused as to why you sound dubious, Sakai.”

  She sidestepped him and carried on walking.

  “Iwata, it’s obvious that you haven’t been sleeping or been eating right. Now you were hit pretty hard on the head the other day—”

  He laughed harshly. “That’s sweet of you, but I know what I saw, Sakai. If I were half a second slower, I’d have bigger problems than a poor sleeping routine.”

  They reached the elevator and Sakai punched the button.

  “You saw the driver? You get the registration?”

  “No.”

  “Then it could have been anyone.”

  “Sakai, you know as well as I do who was driving that car.”

  “You think it was the killer. But you can’t prove it was the killer. You don’t even know it wasn’t some drunk, too smashed to have even seen you.”

  “In reverse? In the middle of nowhere? What would he even be doing there?”

  “I was thinking of asking you the same thing.”

  They stared at each other until the doors slid open.

  “Suit yourself, Iwata. But Shindo’s pretty pissed off. You think it will escape his attention that instead of working our case you were snooping outside a dead colleague’s house? And I’m sure you’ll be able to bullshit him later, but you have no reason to hold out on me.”

  She hit the button and the elevator began its descent.

  “All right. Fuck it. I think that Akashi could have known more than what’s in that case file.”

  Sakai shook her head, a husband tired of this line of complaint.

  “Even if that were true, what difference would it make now?”

  “Think about it, Sakai. Why did Akashi kill himself all of a sudden? Why is his house burned to the ground? And why does someone try to kill me when I snoop there?”

  “Chiba PD says local delinquents use the place to get high—probably what caused the house fire. As for your hit-and-run, they’re assuming it’s the same little gang.”

  They reached the car park and Sakai led them to the Isuzu.

  “Do you mind driving?” Iwata nodded down at his ankle.

  “You drive like a grandmother anyway.”

  “Sakai, I checked that house from top to bottom. There was no drug paraphernalia present. ‘Delinquent’ is a cozy word which saves people work. But someone burned that house down. And someone went for me when I looked.”

  Sakai corkscrewed them up to street level and waited for her opening in the traffic.

  “Okay, let’s say Akashi did know more than the contents of our case file. What would that prove? He clearly wasn’t well. A guy thinking straight doesn’t throw himself off Rainbow Bridge.”

  “Or maybe he does.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Iwata shrugged and looked out of the window. Rain started to drum on the roof of the car. They drove in silence for a while. Iwata kept his eyes closed and tried to ignore his pains.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “Sagami Bay,” she replied.
“Victim is a Yuko Ohba. Widow in her late seventies. No children or known family. Heart removed, just like Tsunemasa Kaneshiro. Kanagawa PD has sealed the scene for us.”

  “Did they establish time of death?”

  “Two nights ago. But no traces of Kiyota so far, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Sakai made the turning to join the expressway.

  She drove south, skirting Yokohama, bound for the tip of the Miura Peninsula. Sagami Bay, the Bōsō Peninsula, the Uraga Channel. Iwata knew these place names from history lessons. A century ago, beneath Izu Ōshima Island to the south, the Great Kantō Earthquake had awakened. It devoured Tokyo, Yokohama, and the surrounding prefectures. Some 100,000 died.

  Today, the sea was a calm expanse of tinfoil gray. Grass fluttered along the coastline. On the sandy slopes leading down to the water, crinum lilies grew like white stars. Farther along the coastline, Japanese black pines stood guard over nesting cormorants. They squawked in and out of the cold water and huddled together when the wind blew.

  Sitting beyond these pines, almost completely enveloped by bushes and creeping ivy, was their destination: 6082 Misakimachi Moroiso. Dust coated the windows and the paint on the exterior walls of the house was curling away. The telephone wires above were now just green vines. Piles of rubbish and old furniture were strewn on either side. There would have been a beautiful sea view, but the brambles had not been cut back in years. It was not a long walk to the neighboring property, a large, modern white structure, but the thorny bushes and rubbish marked its isolation. Today the road had been cordoned off.

  Sakai parked and got out of the car, narrowing her eyes as the ocean breeze buffeted her. Iwata hopped out and buttoned up his jacket to the top. A portly cop in his fifties broke off from the police huddle and approached them.

  “I’m the sergeant. Whatever you need, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Sergeant, I’m Iwata. This is Assistant Inspector Sakai. Division One.” He nodded at the house. “I’m assuming we have no witnesses?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  Sakai cut in.

  “Did you speak to the neighbors?”

  The sergeant seemed taken aback by her tone but he nodded.

  “They arrived this morning for the weekend. They’ve holidayed here for ten years and never once saw the victim. They thought her house was abandoned.”

  “Signs of forced entry?”

  “No, ma’am. Though the back window to the kitchen was open.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “The delivery boy. He was her only contact with the outside world. Though even then, the kid says he hardly ever saw her. She’d leave the money, he’d leave the food and collect her trash.”