“It’s kind of you to lend it to me,” I said, trying to make up for my rudeness. “You must be very fond of Hugh to go to this trouble.”
Her face flushed. “Not so fond. Not fond enough to be stupid.”
“That makes two of us.” Yet, as we lurched over the pitted road leading to the train station, I doubted myself.
14
Mariko was going to be one in twelve million, if she had stayed put within Tokyo city limits. I spent Wednesday searching through Setsuko’s book without luck. Neither was she among the many Ozawas listed with Tokyo directory assistance. Thinking it over, I concluded that she might have married and changed her name, or might have no telephone at all.
Mr. Ota called to get a report on how the tsuya had gone, and I asked immediately for the latest on Hugh.
“Things are proceeding. While I was visiting, the British consul made a visit to ensure his conditions were adequate. We all had a chance to talk.”
“Do you think he’ll get out? The two day period is up today.”
“The police chief in Shiroyama is keeping him longer. There’s a legal loophole he’s using while he tries to gather evidence.”
“Can’t the consul help?”
“The British consul cannot supersede the Japanese police. By the way, what’s this about your withholding the address book? Miss Yasui could have had it translated in a matter of hours.”
“I’m using it for my research,” I said, although I’d only made out half the names so far. “If you want me to give it up, have Hugh confirm it. I’m not giving it up until then.”
“I thought I told you he’s not allowed telephone calls. The most he could provide was a floppy disc. He had messages on it to half of Tokyo, a big headache for me.”
“Is there a message for me?”
“Yes, there is,” he said grumpily. “I will fax it to you.”
“When?” I couldn’t believe he hadn’t volunteered the information earlier.
“This afternoon, maybe.”
“Listen, the only fax I have access to is at Nichiyu. If you could send the document at a set time, I’d be able to intercept it without anyone noticing. What about five minutes after three?”
“Three-oh-five then, Miss Shimura, and don’t forget to bring me the address book soon, please.”
Mrs. Bun watched me run to the fax machine when it suddenly stuttered at four minutes after three. It was only a report for Mr. Katoh.
“Rei’s doctor is faxing her medical record, and she’s afraid we’ll all snoop in it,” Richard smoothly lied. He made me blush, adding to the effectiveness of the ploy. At 3:08, the machine started again, spitting out a cover sheet with Mr. Ota’s letterhead. A second page followed with blurry typed writing. I grabbed them tightly against my chest and sprinted from the room, Richard at my heels.
“Come on, Rei. I’m involved!”
“Sorry, babe.” I slammed the women’s lavatory door in his face, curled up on the cracked vinyl chair by the sinks and began reading. The message had been neatly typeset into a memo form addressed To Rei Shimura, from HG, regarding incarceration. I half-smiled at that, but stopped quickly as I read on.
Alive and well in an unheated prison with no telephone privileges, to put it mildly. For reasons of security I cannot discuss elements of my defense, but Mr. Ota and I are both working hard. I am unsure whether the answer to Setsuko’s death lies here or in Tokyo, which is why I asked you to help.
I understand from everyone who’s spoken with you that you are remorseful about your telephone call to the police. I was quite angry at first; I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that. But I’ve thought things through and have come to the conclusion that you intended no malice. I hope Mr. Ota has communicated my feelings, as well as the fact that I remain grateful for whatever you can do. You are a woman of considerable talents. Still, I request that whatever you learn should be solely communicated to my lawyer, who will in turn share the news with me.
It wasn’t the way he talked, this patronizing, unemotional set of commands. Yet I had no doubt he’d written it. I read it over a few more times and wandered slowly out to the hall, where Richard was waiting. Without saying anything, I gave him the letter.
“He sounds stodgy. Like an old man,” Richard concluded.
“It’s probably the way lawyers are trained to write.” Irrationally, I was upset at my friend’s criticism. Maybe Richard was right; it certainly wasn’t the kind of letter a person would write to someone he was romantically interested in.
“Mmm, I don’t know. He seems to be taking things too seriously. He’s got no sense of humor.”
“Richard, prison is a serious place!” The letter was so depressing that only one thing was clear in my mind: he needed to get out. Then I could look into his eyes and figure out where we stood. And I would find Mariko, even if I had to visit every bank in town.
I started the next morning with the English-language telephone directory. I tried bank personnel departments in alphabetic order, identifying myself as a long-lost friend of Mariko Ozawa’s. I quickly found out Aoyama Bank didn’t release personal information about employees. The same policy was in effect at the next two banks. I needed a more compelling story. Then I came up with a truly devious idea.
“I wish to register a complaint about a bank employee who made an error with my account last week, Mariko Ozawa…”
The receptionists all instantly went into a defensive, hyper-courteous mode. “Could you please wait for a minute? We will check that…” They would come back, triumphant. “We have no employee by that name. Perhaps the honorable customer was mistaken?”
I had luck midway down the list when I called JaBank. “Mariko Ozawa? In foreign exchange at the Shinjuku branch? The personnel manager you need to speak to is named…” I took down the name carefully and assured the clerk I’d follow up.
That afternoon, Richard and I were sent to a kitchen store in Shinjuku to look at the English language signs that had been created for a Nichiyu espresso maker that could also steam milk to make caffe latte. “Latte” had been misspelled “ratte”, and Richard argued it wasn’t worth changing because there was no letter L in Japanese. We pronounced the word “ratte” ourselves to be understood by anyone at Nichiyu.
“The problem is the word looks like rat,” I said. “Who’d want to drink something called caffe rat?”
“Rats are considered very clever animals in Japanese folktales. They’re loved by everyone! Let’s keep it.” Richard had the kitchen section manager and two clerks nodding in support.
“If we allow one misspelled sign, the misspelling might make its way into the brochures and packaging. How can Nichiyu ever hope to compete against Braun and Krups if our brochures are written in Jinglish?”
“Find me one expert who says people even read the brochures,” Richard scoffed.
“Okay, I’ll find a second opinion,” I insisted, wondering who I could ask. Mrs. Chapman, maybe? She was as typical an American as I could think of, and I doubted she’d approve of any Jinglish brochure.
The argument over the espresso maker was postponed for now. We said our good-byes to the department store team and walked toward the train station, Richard pointing out how close we were to Mariko’s bank.
“Lets go there. It’s just one subway stop away.”
“Richard, we’re working! I don’t know about you, but this job means something to me. I’d like to keep it.”
“We’re not expected back for a while. If we’re a half hour late, what’s the problem? We can say we got caught in bus traffic. Vouch for me, and I’ll vouch for you.”
He became distracted on the way when he spotted a branch of his favorite source for leather and denim, New Boys Look. I had no patience to wait while he shopped, so we agreed to meet after I found Mariko. It was almost three o’clock, bank closing time.
JaBank was on Shinjuku Dori, underneath the super-sized TV screen where Chisato Moritaka was singing “Jin Jin Jinglebell.” T
he bank was considerably more sedate, with a cordial employee who showed me upstairs to the foreign exchange section. A moon-faced woman in her mid-twenties was counting out yen to a foreigner with a backpack.
“Is Miss Ozawa here?” I asked as she finished the transaction and prepared to call the next person in line. I was surprised that someone sharing Setsuko’s bloodline could be so plain.
“Please take a number if you want assistance,” the clerk sing-songed.
“Don’t be so uptight, Hatsue!” A young woman with dark curls rose from a sea of desks behind the customer service counter. “I’m Ozawa.”
There was something undeniably cocky about the way Mariko Ozawa stood with her hands on her hips. Her navy uniform fitted her a little too tightly and her makeup was exaggerated, as if she were trying to put ten years on top of her twenty-something. She tapped a scuffed high heeled shoe impatiently and stared me down.
“I’m here on a family matter.” I handed her my card and bowed.
“I have no family.” She chewed on her full lower lip, smearing purple lipstick.
“I’m from America,” I said, deliberately vague in the face of her eavesdropping coworkers. “My Japanese isn’t so good.”
She gave me a long look. “I’ll be off in ten minutes. Wait right there.” She pointed with a dragon-lady fingernail to a small couch in the customer waiting area. I opened the latest edition of Tokyo Weekender but kept sneaking looks upward to make sure she wouldn’t vanish on me.
Promptly at three she came back, carrying a fake fur coat and a black bag with MOSCHINO written across it in big brass letters. I watched it swing against her hip as she led me out a back exit, past a guard who looked at both of us carefully and recorded something in a notebook.
“Your bank has a lot of security,” I commented.
“A teller was attacked a couple of weeks ago, so they’re being careful.”
“Robbery?”
“More likely someone’s lunatic boyfriend.”
“I met your great aunt, Mrs. Ozawa. She had no idea what had become of you,”
“It’s supposed to be that way,” she snapped. “I’ll have nothing to do with the Ozawas.”
“You look so different from the Ozawas, with your height and that great curly hair—where do you get it done?”
“It’s not a perm, okay? It’s natural, and I hate it. In junior high, the girls pulled it all the time to make it more straight, more Japanese. It got so bad I dropped out.”
“What happened to you after that?” I’d heard how terrible bullying was in the schools.
“I started working.” She glared at me and I kept quiet during the rest of our walk through the east side, watching the businesses around us change from clothing stores to slightly seedier pachinko parlors to strip bars and the soaplands where prostitutes worked. This was Kabuki-cho, the infamous red light district I’d blundered into while naively searching for “public relations” work during my early days in Tokyo. I pulled my parka around my body and tried to ignore the doorway droolers.
“Don’t speak. You’ll embarrass yourself and me,” Mariko said, pausing at the entrance to an establishment with the proverbial green door—this one decorated with a neon silhouette of a woman’s hourglass figure. We entered a small, extremely dark room. I quickly deduced it was a hostess bar from the couples at tables: businessmen with large tumblers of whiskey, brightly-dressed younger women nursing doll-sized glasses of oolong tea. All were enjoying a late liquid lunch or early happy hour. I gave a Western man with a teen-age Asian girl in his lap a particularly dirty look as Mariko hustled me by.
A middle-aged woman with eyeliner drawn up garishly around the corners of her eyes strode out from a bar loaded with glistening bottles of liquor. Judging from her glittering gold and diamond jewelry, she was probably the Mama-san who ran the place.
“We aren’t hiring,” she called out to me. I smiled and bobbed my head while Mariko yelled back I was just a friend. She led me into a back room cramped with racks of clothing and lingerie, shut the door and started undressing.
“This must be your part-time job?” I was at a loss for better words.
“You have a problem with it?” Mariko challenged.
“No. It’s just that I only knew about JaBank.”
“How was that, anyway? You’re such a snoop.”
“Mrs. Ozawa knew that you were at a bank somewhere, so I made some phone calls.” I paused. “I actually called bank headquarters and said I had a complaint against you in order to find out where you worked. I hope it doesn’t get back to you.”
“I got some stupid phone call, but because I don’t work with customers, it made no sense. I told them it was a mistake.” She walked directly in front of me and turned around, indicating I should zip up her short, spangled blue dress. Her back was as smooth and golden as her face; she must have lain nude in a tanning bed to achieve that look in the Tokyo winter. “You still haven’t told me how you met the Ozawas.”
“We met at your aunt’s tsuya.” Mariko said nothing, so I clarified, “The one for Setsuko Nakamura in Hayama.”
Mariko was fussing with her hair, attempting to pin it up, seated in front of a mirror. “Obasan hosted somebody’s tsuya? I can only hope it was her husband.”
“Your aunt…” I was going to have to break the news of the death. I swallowed hard and said, “Setsuko is the one who passed away. I’m so sorry.”
Mariko sat still for a long moment. Then she swiveled around on the dressing table stool, half of her hair up and the other half hanging down. “Tell me again.”
She sounded genuinely stunned, but it could have been an act; hostesses were trained to read people, give them whatever made them feel comfortable. Mindful of this, I spoke carefully. “She froze to death outside a minshuku in Shiroyama. It was ruled an accident but now the police think she might have been slain.”
“I don’t believe it. Aunt Setsuko was the last family member I had.” Her purple mouth quivered.
“Your mother died when you were little, right?”
She nodded. “I was just a baby. My father didn’t think he could take care of me and work, so he went off to Okinawa, Aunt Setsuko told me. I don’t remember him at all.”
“Who raised you?” She was alone in a way that was so complete that my suspicions toward her started to fade, replaced by pity.
“Kiki, you saw her out there.”
“Why do you even work at the bank?” I was curious about that, because I knew hostessing paid at least twice as much as clerical work.
“It was a deal I had with Setsuko. She said she wanted me to have other choices. But I like the bar, and Kiki needs me.” Mariko looked at my clothes, then my face. “Have you thought of becoming a hostess? That’s kind of an Audrey Hepburn thing you have going on with your hair. And your English…”
“Setsuko was right, you’re too smart to be wasting your time like this. Why don’t you go into marketing?” I stopped, realizing she was diverting her grief or trying to distract me. “How often did you see Setsuko?”
“Once a month—for lunch—and then she’d give me the money.”
“What money?” I thought her bluntness was pretty un-Japanese.
“My due from my grandfather.”
“He was American?” I recalled the sailor Mrs. Ozawa had mentioned.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said in a mocking American voice, before switching back to her slangy Japanese. “He was in the Korean war. I think he was home-ported to a ship based here, and he met my grandmother. The other thing I know is he had money and did not forget his daughters. He knew about me because Aunt Setsuko wrote to him.”
“Tell me more about your aunt,” I said, watching Mariko transform her eyelashes into long, navy blue spikes.
“She was very kind to me, usually took me shopping at Mitsutan or Mitsukoshi for a new outfit every couple of months—”
“When was the last time you met?” I interrupted.
“Two months ag
o. She called in the meantime but said she couldn’t get away to see me.” She wiped off the purple lipstick, applying a dark red Chanel color and checking her teeth for smudges.
“Mariko, can we meet this weekend and talk some more?”
“Why do you care?” Mariko was asking as the dressing room door banged open. Kiki, the Mama-san, walked in and tapped sharply on her watch.
Mariko sighed. “I’ve got to start work.”
“Let me be your first customer. I’ll buy you a drink.” I started to follow her out, but Kiki blocked the door.
“Who are you?” Kiki surveyed my checked suit, turtleneck, and low-heeled shoes with disdain. There was something threatening about her, so I gave my name in a cold voice and left it at that.
“You’re not one of the Ozawas?” She looked me over a second time, and when I shook my head, said, “It’s a good thing. Setsuko was hard enough.”
Her use of the past tense hinted that she knew about the death. Knew, but hadn’t told Mariko. I asked her, “May I ask how you came to know Setsuko?”
“You think she was too high to know me?” Kiki shot back.
“Not at all. She grew up poor and had no employment. And you look like you’ve done very well.”
“What are you, some kind of girl-detective-in-training trying to get dirt on my business? We pay all the right people to avoid these problems.”
“I’m a teacher, actually.” Striving to present myself with authority, I added, “I don’t feel right leaving Mariko now. She’s been through a shock, not knowing anything about her aunt’s death until five minutes ago.”
“It’s a little strange, a lady teacher visiting us.” A furrow developed between Kiki’s sharp eyes.
“When will Mariko be free?”
“Never,” she answered, taking me by the arm and escorting me into the hall.
“But I need to ask her something—”
She cut off my protest with directions. “I’ll send you out the back way. Just around the corner to the right and you’ll be on the main street.”
The Salaryman's Wife Page 14
