The Lady Killer

by Masako Togawa

  Osawa turned and gazed at him blankly. He cupped his ear and said, “What?” His several-day growth of stubble, peppered with white, contributed further to his generally slovenly appearance.

  “I said we’ve met before, haven’t we?”

  “Oh yeah?” replied the old vagrant in negative tones, and he returned his attention to his shochu. He was withdrawing into his shell, and Shinji had to move quickly.

  “I remember where it was. We were both in line at the same blood bank… let me see, the Komatsu Laboratory on the Keio line, wasn’t it? I’ve just sold 200 cc today, so let me buy you a drink, gaffer.”

  “Really? Very kind, I’m sure.” His voice softened perceptibly. He gulped down the remainder of his glass in one mouthful, as if afraid that this stranger might change his mind. But still the way in which he wiped his mouth with his hand betrayed how precious the liquor was to him.

  With the new glass in front of him, he relaxed. “It’s O.K. for you young guys, I expect,” he opened defensively. “They’ll still buy your blood, I expect. But an old man like me… they don’t want us any more. Say it isn’t thick enough or something.”

  “So you aren’t selling any more? When did you last sell, then?”

  “Over a year ago. The person in charge was shifted, and the new one doesn’t take me seriously.”

  “But would you still sell if you could? I mean, if someone, anyone, came to buy, would you sell?”

  “Sure I would. I’m quite healthy and besides, my blood is a rare type. Valuable, it is. Not the blood most people have, you know. I’m AB Rh-negative—only one in two thousand, you know. But still nobody comes to buy it.”

  The old man’s speech was beginning to slur. Shinji ordered him another drink and stood up to go.

  “Buy you another one sometime, old fellow,” he said. The old man, his mouth full of shochu, almost choked as he said goodbye. Shinji left and headed toward Shinjuku Station. Well, he thought, the old laborer was no longer able to sell his blood. Who would want it, thin and alcohol-soaked as it was? Anyone seeking blood would try to get it from a younger man, someone around Ichiro Honda’s age. He deleted from his mind the day laborer and the medical student. And, he reflected, X was unlikely to have approached the intern because of his medical knowledge.

  At Shinjuku Station he took the Chuo line and headed for Kanda. Once the train started, he thrust his head out of the window, letting the rushing air drive the beer fumes out of his head. But as the train gathered speed, he found that the buffeting slipstream deadened his thinking. The palace moat, glittering in the summer night, flashed before his eyes; he just took in the lovers and others in gaily lit boats bobbing on the waters. Even after the sight was long gone, the white shirt and matching blouse of one such couple lingered in his eyes.

  The Turkish bathhouse, Alibaba, lay about five minutes’ walk from Kanda Station. Indeed, Shinji could see its garish, red neon sign from the train as it drew into the platform. However, getting to it was much more difficult than he had anticipated. He had to walk down a narrow alleyway crowded with cabarets, cheap bars, and low-class eating houses. Passing one such establishment, which specialized in skewered chicken, he had to wade through the heavy white smoke that flowed down from its extractor grill. He felt trapped. And rather than the smell of oil, he began to sense the scent of sexual desire and immorality. There was also a row of small textile wholesalers, all of whom had closed and pulled down their shutters long since, leaving the approach to the Turkish bath in pitch darkness. Alibaba stood immediately next to a public bathhouse; what a contrast, Shinji thought, between the physical cleanliness of the one and the moral pollution of the other. For, although he had never been inside such an establishment, he was well aware that they were no more than the thinnest of veils for prostitution.

  The entrance was flanked by potted palms and rubber plants. Passing them, he came into the tiled outer hall, which was hidden from the inside by a wall covered in maroon and gold satin damask.

  Within, the lights were low and faintly red. The red carpet had such a deep pile that it absorbed his footsteps, giving him a sense of secrecy. There was a table with a couch and several soft armchairs to one side of the lobby, where sat several men who had nominated girls and were waiting for them to be free. They were mostly reading magazines or watching TV listlessly; although there were several open bottles of beer on the table, nobody seemed to be drinking much.

  He sat down, and a male attendant immediately approached him.

  “Do you have anyone in particular you want to see?”

  “Yes. Miss Yasue.” This was the girl who, according to the detective’s report, was favored by Seiji Tanikawa. “Miss Yasue, if I remember aright. You do have such a girl here?”

  “Certainly, sir. Please wait for a few minutes,” said the attendant with fawning politeness. “May I get you a drink in the meantime—compliments of the house, of course.”

  Shinji ordered a whiskey, and the attendant withdrew.

  According to the detective’s report, Seiji Tanikawa frequented this establishment on Mondays and Fridays—the days when he had no night work. Normally, it appeared, he came here between seven and nine—the slack period.

  He noticed that the lobby was permeated by a strange, heavy odor. It was, he decided, the smell of men who were about to unload their sexual desire.

  Time crawled by. Occasionally a customer sitting by the table would get up and disappear within in answer to the attendant’s summons. But they were always replaced by new arrivals from outside, some of them drunk. Sometimes a woman in sandals, wearing a red-and-white-striped wrapper over her Turkish bath girl’s uniform of a red-striped brassiere and scanty pants, would emerge and see her customer off with a gay voice. Had Seiji Tanikawa gone home already, or was he still within?

  As this thought crossed Shinji’s mind, the curtain parted and out stepped Tanikawa. Shinji recognized him, down to the lean body, from photographs provided by the detectives. His skinny figure was emphasized by the black polo-necked sweater that he was wearing tonight. He was followed closely by a diminutive girl—obviously Yasue Terada. Tanikawa walked straight past Shinji, displaying his sunken cheeks and haggard profile.

  Yasue saw him off at the entrance, tapping his bony shoulder with familiarity. Tanikawa merely shrugged his shoulders and left without a word. For a man to visit this place twice a week…, Shinji, whose private life was as clean as a sheet of blank paper, thought. He watched Tanikawa’s retreating figure until it vanished from his view, convinced that in it he could sense a shadow of weakness; this man’s feet were sinking into the swamp of vice.

  Yasue made her way back in, but was stopped by the attendant, who whispered something to her. She came over to Shinji, but when she saw his face she was taken aback.

  “You are Mr….” she started, but could not finish the sentence.

  “It’s me—Yamada, remember?” Shinji lied fluently. “I came once before—some time ago.”

  “Oh yes, of course, Mr. Yamada,” she replied cheerfully, conducting him out of the lobby. These girls, he reflected, had congress with so many men each day, maybe over a hundred a month, so there was no question of remembering the face or name of a customer who had only come once some time ago.

  Following her, he gazed at the sensuous nape of her neck and felt moved to erotic expectations. “Will you take a steam bath first?” she asked. What an extraordinary question, Shinji thought at first, and then reflected that some customers might be shy whilst others probably only did come here for the steam bath. He decided to play the role of someone who was shy or unromantic and opted for the bath. She led him to the cubicle, but instead of undressing, he killed time with questions.

  “That customer you just had—his name is Seiji Tanikawa, isn’t it?”

  She was raising the lid of the steam chest, but she turned sharply toward him, a suspicious look on her face.

  “Do you know him, then?”

  “Well, it certainly looks like
him, anyway. A bit embarrassing, bumping into him in a place like this.”

  “He’s a regular of mine. Works for a film company, he says.”

  “Does he come here often?”

  “Twice a week.”

  “He must be pretty well-off, then.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he makes money playing the stock market. Some of our customers come every day, you know. Maybe they’re addicted to steam baths.”

  “I would say that that customer was more addicted to you.”

  She laughed and was not displeased. “Not really. He had another girl before me, but she left, so he switched to me. I came here to work just when the other girl quit, so he was handed over to me. A sheer fluke.”

  “I have heard a lot of people quit this job. Is it true?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose you could say that in this business we have a high metabolism. As soon as a new place opens, everyone tries to join it for a better guarantee. People move a lot; I’ve been here six months, which makes me an old hand.”

  “Oh. Well, as Tanikawa is older than you, he must have been coming here for quite some time, I expect. When did he start, do you know?”

  “Pretty recently, from what he has told me. He says he only came here once before meeting me, and that was a mere two days before, too. He says he went back to see the same girl again, but she had quit, so he switched to me. But men are full of stories, so I don’t know.”

  “And when did you start work here?”

  Again, the woman became cautious. In place of her merry chatter, she spoke somberly.

  “You are investigating something, aren’t you? Are you police, by any chance?”

  “Do I look like a policeman? No, I’ve taken up divination recently,” he extemporized quickly, “and the theme of my research is the causal relationship between a person’s birthday and the day they take up any particular job.”

  “You can’t fool me with that sort of tale. But if you want to know, my birthday is February sixth. And what day did I start working here? Just a moment.” And she removed her handbag from the locker and extracted a notebook.

  “December twenty-first. And, oh my God, not one yen of tip that first day, I see.”

  “December twenty-first. Half a year.”

  “Yes, six months, and not a single day off. Every now and again I think of quitting this business,” she added, and Shinji detected a look of desperation in her eyes. “But then I take a look at my bank book,” she went on, “and my spirits soon recover, seeing it mounting up every day. When I reach my target, I’ll quit and set myself up in something else.”

  She stood before him, and he looked at her chubby hands. Here she was, the innocent accomplice of men’s desires. Those chubby hands…

  And then it came home to him.

  If the date she had given him was correct, and if Seiji Tanikawa had not lied to her, then the day of his first visit to the Turkish bath would have been the nineteenth of December. The day, in fact, that Fusako Aikawa had been killed!

  Mere coincidence? Or was there some hidden meaning? In that steamy room, he felt cold sweat start to his brow.

  “I must go!” he said rapidly. “I’ve just remembered something vital I promised to do! Sorry!”

  “But what about your massage?”

  “Some other time.” And, grossly overtipping her, he fled.

  If he was lucky, he might just catch Seiji Tanikawa in some nearby small restaurant.

  4

  Shinji found Seiji Tanikawa in a low-class establishment serving skewered chicken and beer. It stood in a narrow street full of similar places, which ran down to the back of the station. It was not the shop in the detective’s report, and Shinji was really very lucky to spot Tanikawa there, hunched over the counter facing the street and wearing his black polo shirt. When Shinji first saw him, he was inserting a skewer into his mouth, the sauce dripping down his front. He didn’t even bother to look up when Shinji came in and sat beside him. He was engrossed in his beer and chicken, and when not occupied with them he would sit gazing blankly into the middle distance.

  “Hello, Mr. Tanikawa,” said Shinji, and the man started, spilling some of his beer.

  “Nice to find you here!” Shinji continued.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Shinji did not answer. Smiling in an obscure way, he looked Tanikawa straight in the eye and said, “How are the films doing, then?” As he spoke, he knew how a blackmailer must feel, for he saw his victim’s face darken and freeze as his words sank in.

  “I said, who the hell are you?” Tanikawa finally spluttered.

  It seemed that the reference to films had done the trick. Shinji took the pressman’s business card out of his pocket and handed it over.

  “A newspaperman, eh? What do you want with me? And what do you mean by ‘films’?” He looked up from the card and stared at Shinji.

  “Well, nothing in particular. I’d heard you work in the film-developing field, that’s all. Today, my business is to inquire about blood donors. You cooperated in the Rh-negative collection campaign last year, didn’t you? You won’t remember me, perhaps, but I was there.”

  It was a shot in the dark, but it seemed to strike home. A look of relief gradually replaced the look of suspicion on Tanikawa’s face. At least the reporter was not onto his blue film business.

  “Can’t say I remember, but maybe.”

  “Have you given blood since?”

  “No, never.”

  “That’s funny. Haven’t the blood banks contacted you at all? I gathered from them that you gave blood in mid-January.”

  “Not me. Must have been someone else.” His face was expressionless as he replied to Shinji’s leading question. It did not look as if he was lying.

  “Oh, I’m sorry—must have been our mistake.” He had drawn a blank. Perhaps, after all, there were no fish in this pond in which he was dangling his rod. Or perhaps he had no bait, or even no hook, on the end of his line. He stood up to go.

  “Hey, you’re not going already, are you? Stay and drink a bit.”

  Shinji looked down at him. The man’s speech was slurred and his eyes were red; alcohol was beginning to tell. What a bore! But he was in no hurry to go anywhere else, so he might as well stay a while. The image of the back of the pudgy white hands of the bath girl floated before his eyes; he’d better have a few drinks and forget them.

  “O.K., I’ll stay and join you.” And he sat down again.

  “My round,” said Tanikawa magnanimously, and shouted for beer.

  “Do you come here often?” asked Shinji, as much to make conversation as anything else.

  “No, not really. I go to a Turkish bathhouse down the road.”

  “Sounds fun. Any nice girls there?”

  At first, Tanikawa did not answer. He raised his beer mug up to the level of his eyes and gazed through the amber liquor. And then, watching the rising bubbles, he began to speak in tones of self-hatred.

  “I see a girl there called Yasue every three days. And damn all good it does me. No love or anything about it—purely a commercial transaction. You can buy anything with money, you know. And I know it, too, but somehow I’m unable to stop myself any more. I think I’m scared to stop; at least my life has some pattern the way things are. I am just a bloody fool!”

  He was close to tears. He took a deep gulp of beer and went on.

  “And it all started with one woman—it was her fault; do you understand me? Damn it! How cynical, how ludicrous life is! Look, I never went near a place like that until the end of last year! And there’s a date I can never forget—December seventeenth last year. It was my day off; I went down to Kabukicho in Shinjuku and saw a film and then went into a cheap bar. That’s where I met the woman; that’s where she came and sat next to me and spoke to me…” His head suddenly slumped forward, sending his glass spinning into the ashtray, which fell to the floor and shattered. The spilled beer spread over the counter and started to drip down.


  “Let me take you somewhere else,” said Shinji hastily. He lifted the drunk man in his arms and, staggering under the dead weight, paid the bill and made his way outside.

  Who could this woman be that Tanikawa had suddenly mentioned? Could there be anything to it? In the recesses of his brain, an indistinct female form took shape.

  He staggered down the street, supporting Tanikawa, who was no help, but merely muttered again and again, “It was that woman, that woman…” Anything else he said was unclear.

  Shinji hailed a taxi and dumped Tanikawa in the back, sitting beside him. “Mitaka!” he said. Tanikawa spread himself out so that his hair, which reeked of pomade, came close to Shinji’s nose, and put his feet on the white covers of the seat back in front of him. This displeased the driver, who told him to desist in sharp tones.

  The car moved off. Shinji wound down the window so that the wind blew into Tanikawa’s face and shook him by the shoulder.

  “And what did you do next—you and the woman?”

  “Well, she took me to a bar and stood me several drinks. Then she said she had to go, but she wanted to see me again soon.”

  “She paid for all the drinks? Or did you go dutch?”

  “No, she paid for the lot. And when we parted she told me that she worked for a Turkish bath and would I come and see her? She promised me good service and gave me a piece of paper with the name and address of the bathhouse on it.”

  “Have you still got it?”

  “Yes—I’ve always kept it. Here, have a look.” And he delved into his wallet and finally fished out a scrap of paper. “There, if you don’t believe me!” His voice and his motions betrayed his drunkenness. Shinji took the paper and read it.

  “Be sure to come at 9 p.m. the day after tomorrow. Don’t forget—I’ll be waiting for you. Kyoko.” It was written in pencil but was still legible. Down the side, she had drawn a crude map showing the way to Alibaba.

  Nine p.m. on the nineteenth of December last. Another coincidence? Looking at the paper, he was reminded of the printed messages that call girls leave on parked cars—name, telephone number, and some message such as: “Lonely tonight? Give me a ring.”