Suzuki set his laptop on the coffee table and eagerly began annotating the printout of Oki’s gray-market vendor report with his four-color pen. When the big detective joined them, shutting the door on anybody who might wonder why they were discussing a dead hostess when they were supposed to be working on the shakedown, Kenji passed them copies of his notes on Cherry’s death.
He let them get up to speed, then began. “Here’s what we know so far. Cherry Endo died falling down the stairs outside her apartment sometime between one and three last Friday night. Her body wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs yet when her neighbor heard two people arguing outside at two twenty-nine, so we’ve narrowed the window to between two thirty and three.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Suzuki interrupted, frowning at something in Kenji’s notes. “Why did you make a note that the argument was about astrology?”
“That’s what the witness said. It might make sense if one of the participants was Cherry herself. The day she died, she picked up a marriage compatibility chart from that astrologer whose office is near the train station. Madame Lily told me Cherry was in debt to a Kabuki-chō loan shark and she’d asked for a marriage chart to be drawn up for someone whose birthday was on Valentine’s Day. Cherry told the astrologer that if it worked out, it would solve all her problems.”
“‘Problems,’ plural?”
“She wasn’t taking her birth control pills regularly, so she might also have been pregnant.”
“If she had a pregnancy to hold over someone,” Oki explained to Suzuki, “she might have gotten herself killed trying to blackmail him into marrying her and/or paying off her debt.”
Suzuki flipped to Cherry’s administrative autopsy report and frowned as he scanned the blizzard of complex medical kanji. “I don’t see the character for ‘pregnant’ in this description of her condition.”
“The doctor who did her post-mortem didn’t really look,” Kenji said. “I left a voicemail for him.”
“How about the doc she got her birth control pills from?” Oki asked. “Think he might know?”
“Good idea.” Kenji checked his file and found the photocopy of the label on Cherry’s pill compact. He handed it to Suzuki. “Can you find out if the Komagome Women’s Clinic is open today?”
“Yes sir.” He stepped out to make the call.
“Did you find out anything about the Friday night boyfriend yet?” Kenji asked Oki.
“Nope. One of the girls who worked with her told me she saw Cherry at the Jonathan’s in Shinjuku on Friday night a few weeks ago, but she wasn’t with a boyfriend, she was with the guy who collects protection money from Club Heaven. He goes by the name of Zoro and moonlights as an enforcer for a Kurosawa-kai loan shark. Maybe she was getting behind on her payments.”
Suzuki returned. “The women’s clinic is open today, sir. Would you like me to go check it out?”
“No, I think I’ll do that myself.”
Oki flipped through Kenji’s report. “What do we know about this Zombie character?”
“Not much at the moment,” Kenji said. “And if the Club Heaven manager has anything to say about it, we never will. She’s not going to tell us his name unless we pry it out of her with a warrant.”
“Which might be tough,” Oki acknowledged, “since this case is supposed to be closed. Should we go back and try to get it from one of her girls?”
“We can try. But she runs a tight ship, and apparently blabbing about customers is a firing offense.”
“If we knew a little more about him—a name, a description, where he works, anything—we could ask around at other clubs, see if he’s got a reputation.”
“I know someone who might be hostessing at a club in Kabuki-chō,” Kenji said thoughtfully. If Yumi was right and Coco really was working as a hostess, maybe she knew about The Zombie.
He reached for his phone to call her.
Chapter 28
Monday, November 11
12:00 P.M.
Yumi
Nothing on the menu looked good. Yumi squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t be pregnant. It was way too soon for morning sickness, anyway.
But before long, it wouldn’t be.
She checked her phone. Noon, exactly, although it was perpetually midnight at Coco’s favorite restaurant, Princess Heart, an eerie black-walled café with a fake gnarled tree growing up through the ceiling. She had to leave Ginza by 1:00 or she’d be late for her 1:30 appointment. The shop where Coco worked was just around the corner, but it wasn’t unheard of for an indecisive matron to arrive at 11:55.
“You’ll get a permanent obaa-san line between your eyebrows if you keep making that face, you know,” Coco said, pulling out the seat across from Yumi, settling her new Gucci handbag between her back and the chair.
Another expensive new purse? That and Coco’s choice of lunch spots made Yumi more sure than ever that her friend was moonlighting. The supple leather bag was an order of magnitude too costly for the plain brown uniform and triangular head scarf Coco wore to Akebono, and the Princess Heart café charged a un-shopgirl-like premium to eat unremarkable food while being called “Your Highness” by uniformed maids.
Coco yawned and glanced at the menu. “I’m starving. What are you going to have?”
“Maybe just a mentaiko spaghetti,” Yumi said. She had to order something, and the other offerings looked even less appealing than noodles with cod roe.
The waitress arrived and asked what Their Highnesses wanted, leaving behind two glasses of water.
Coco peered across the table in the dim glow from the blue fairy lights twinkling on the dead tree. “You really don’t look that great. Are you sick? You can’t be hung over from last night—you barely drank anything.”
Yumi looked at her friend, then blurted, “How come you knew all those girls at the other tables when we were at Club Nova? You aren’t working at a hostess club, are you?”
Coco examined her fingernails. “Who told you that?”
“Ichiro. Saturday night he said he’d seen you at some club in Kabuki-chō, where he goes with his dad for business. I told him he must be mistaken.”
“It’s only a couple nights a week,” Coco said defiantly.
“Coco! What are you thinking?”
“Oh, don’t be such a stuffy old auntie. What’s wrong with it? Pouring drinks and flattering salarymen sure beats selling tea ceremony sweets for minimum wage.”
“Do your parents know?”
The way her friend looked away, rummaging in her purse instead of answering, told Yumi everything she needed to know.
“How long have you been doing it?”
“About a year,” Coco admitted. “Don’t look at me like that—it’s not like I’m going to make a career of it. I’m just picking up spending money, that’s all.”
“Yeah, but…”
Coco changed the subject. “Did you see Miho Yamaguchi at Nova last night?”
“Miho Yamaguchi?” Yumi forgot her worries about Coco as others abruptly took their place. What if Miho had recognized her at the host club after they met at the kimono event? Would she tell Ichiro’s family?
“That’s who Hoshi left us to go sit with. The one who ordered that bottle of Richard. The one who clinched the number one spot for him all by herself.” Coco gave a short laugh, a sliver of bitterness in her voice. “After you left, I moved over to join some girls I know who work at Club Heaven, but Hoshi only stayed for a few minutes before he had to go attend to her again. We were hoping he’d come back after he put in his time at her table, but it was nearly closing time when he finally walked her to the elevator. We thought he took her down and put her in a cab because he came back right away and sat with us for about ten minutes, but later, while we were waiting outside for our taxis, we saw her sitting in a car parked in the lot across the street. One of the other girls knew it was Hoshi’s because he told her one of his regulars buys the same white BMW sedan every two years, and she sold her old one to him really cheap.�
� Coco added gloomily, “I guess he took Miss Entrepreneur of the Year home.”
The maid brought Yumi’s spaghetti topped with a dollop of tiny red fish eggs and served Coco her fried shrimp.
“Look, Coco, he’s a host,” Yumi said. “That’s what he does for a living. Don’t you think you’d be happier with someone you don’t have to share with Miho Yamaguchi?”
“Like who? The only remotely available guy I’ve met in the past six months is that sōshoku danshi Kenji Nakamura.”
“Sōshoku danshi?”
“Yeah, I think he’s one of those ‘herbivore’ guys who secretly like girls’ comics and sweet desserts, and aren’t especially interested in women.”
“Where’d you get that idea?”
“The only women he was interested in at your party were witnesses.”
Good thing it was dark in the Princess Heart so Coco couldn’t read her face and discover just how wrong she was.
“The only thing Kenji wanted to talk about was whether I knew some ugly rich guy who’s in the habit of getting drunk at hostess clubs and beating girls up afterward.”
“Do you?” Yumi asked.
“No,” Coco said, shooting her a disgusted look.
Pushing the too-salty fish eggs off her pasta, Yumi disentangled a few plain noodles from the pile and nibbled at them. Under the table she checked the time on her phone. She couldn’t be late for that appointment.
“You working this afternoon?” Coco asked.
“No, but I have an appointment at one thirty.”
“I thought you just got your hair cut Saturday?”
“It’s not that kind of appointment. It’s at the Komagome Women’s Clinic.”
“What?”
Would it be unpardonably disloyal to Ichiro if she told Coco what had happened at the love hotel last night? She hesitated, then described the argument she’d lost.
“…so I decided to go to the clinic and find out what my…what my options are.”
“What do you mean, ‘options’?” Coco set down her fork. “Just make him wear a condom next time.”
“You don’t know Ichiro. It’s not that simple. I can tell it’ll be a real fight from now on, since I didn’t insist last night.” She looked down at her pile of nearly untouched spaghetti and added, “I was thinking of getting a prescription for, you know, those pills.”
“Birth control pills?” Coco’s face clouded. “You want to put chemicals in your system, throw off your whole body’s natural rhythms?”
“It’s better than getting pregnant!”
“How do you even know they’re safe?” Coco argued. “They haven’t been approved in Japan for very long. You don’t know what the long-term effects will be.”
“Lots of the girls I knew in college used them. They’ve been prescribing birth control pills in America and Europe for fifty years.”
“Yeah, but they haven’t been used by Japanese women for fifty years.” She speared a bite of shrimp. “Besides, I heard those hormones can get into the water and make fish and frogs be born with extra eyes and legs and stuff. Haven’t you seen the pictures? It’s totally disgusting. How can that be good for you?”
“It might not be an option anyway.” Yumi took a shaky breath. “What if I’m already pregnant?”
“Well, that’s a no-brainer. Have the baby.”
Yumi was silent.
Coco rolled her eyes. “God, you are such an idiot sometimes. You’re getting married to a perfectly nice guy who adores you. And—by the way—also happens to be from one of the oldest, richest families in Japan. So what if you’re pregnant before you drink the three cups of sake? It won’t even show in a wedding kimono.”
“I just don’t think I’m ready for kids yet. Getting married is a big enough change. I don’t really want to trade in my job for changing diapers and making o-bento and…”
“You’re worried about giving up a job you’re always complaining about and making a few lunches?”
“It’s more than that. If we have a baby right away, Ichiro’s life will hardly change, but mine…” Yumi hesitated, then decided to spill the rest. “Do you remember that woman in the silvery dress who was at the party?”
“The one who looked like your twin?”
“Yeah. She’s Ichiro’s ex-girlfriend.” Yumi poked at her noodles. “I found out some things at the party that make me think their relationship isn’t really over. Even though we’re getting married.”
“All the more reason to have his baby!” Coco put down her fork. “Listen to me. Once you’re the mother of Ichiro’s kids, he’ll never leave you, no matter how many ex-girlfriends throw themselves at him. His family won’t let him. You’ll have the money and the freedom to do whatever you want. You’ll be a Mitsuyama.” She frowned. “Didn’t you think babies were part of the deal? What did you think you were signing up for, anyway? You don’t realize how lucky you are that he’s reasonably attractive as well as rich. Even if he turns out to be the biggest jerk in history, half the girls in Tokyo would still trade places with you in a heartbeat.”
Yumi was shocked to hear the envy in her friend’s voice. Was Coco talking about “half the girls in Tokyo” or was she talking about herself? It had never occurred to her that the friend who’d had boys panting after her since middle school wasn’t remaining unattached by choice.
But now that she thought about it, Coco hadn’t landed a serious boyfriend in college, and by day she worked at a store where the clientele was a hundred percent matronly. She met plenty of men by night, but they were the kind of guys who went to hostess clubs to avoid having a real relationship.
No wonder she’d fallen so hard for Hoshi.
Chapter 29
Monday, November 11
1:00 P.M.
Kenji
Even the thought of what went on behind the walls in the windowless stucco building made Kenji shift from one foot to the other, embarrassed. He pulled open the heavy wooden door to the Komagome Women’s Clinic and quickly crossed to the reception desk, avoiding eye contact with any of the women awaiting the doctors’ attention. Discreetly showing his police ID to the receptionist, he explained in a low voice that he was investigating the death of a patient and needed to speak with the doctor who’d treated her six months ago.
Twenty minutes later, seated in a cramped and cluttered office, he’d discovered nothing new. Cherry hadn’t been pregnant when she was tested in July. She hadn’t said anything about being raped. The doctor had given her a prescription for a year’s supply of birth control pills and sent her on her way. That was her one and only visit to the clinic.
As he rose to leave, the doctor asked, “Did you happen to notice an unusual scar above Miss Endo’s left breast during the autopsy?”
“No, but now that you mention it, there was a reference to it in the post-mortem report. Why?”
“In January it was a fresh wound. I asked her about it because it didn’t look accidental. I thought she might be cutting herself. Last year I attended a seminar on eating disorders and self-mutilation because it’s on the rise here. Specialists like myself are often the first to see signs of it and suggest intervention. The marks on Cherry Endo’s chest looked like they’d been made deliberately.” The doctor pulled out a pad of paper and drew two lines.
“The cuts were clean, as though they’d been made with something sharp, maybe a scalpel. Deep enough to scar, but not so deep they required stitches. They looked like they’d been made at two different times. The vertical line was healed, but still pink; the other one was fresh. That’s what made me suspicious she was self-mutilating.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
“Yes, but she said it was none of my business, that all she needed from me were the pregnancy test results and advice about birth control. I gave her a counseling pamphlet, but I doubt she followed up.” A worry line appeared on the doctor’s brow. “When she died…were there more?”
“I have a call in to the guy who did her
autopsy. I’ll ask.”
The clinician shook his head, his face troubled.
Kenji thanked him and returned to the waiting room, holding the door for a nurse wheeling a young woman whose tearstained face suggested she hadn’t been there for a happy reason.
The waiting room was now crowded with patients, the chairs filled with women reading magazines and checking their phones for messages.
One of them was Yumi Hata.
Chapter 30
Monday, November 11
3:00 P.M.
Kenji
What was Yumi doing at a women’s clinic? Kenji arrived at the front door of the Komagome Police Station without noticing how he got there.
Was she pregnant? If Yumi was having Ichiro Mitsuyama’s baby, she’d never leave him. Wait. Think. Maybe she was there for a different reason. Maybe she was just getting birth control advice. But that was no comfort at all. It meant she was sleeping with her fiancé. Or planned to start sometime soon.
He stepped out of the elevator, and his phone began vibrating as soon as he tossed it onto his Inbox. It was the morgue doctor, returning his call. He pushed Yumi from his mind and pulled out Cherry’s autopsy report. Pressing his phone to his ear, he tried to block out the hum of squad room conversation.
Kenji explained why he had called.
“You didn’t ask so I didn’t test,” said the doctor defensively. “I seem to recall that your main interest was looking for evidence her fall wasn’t an accident. Since she clearly died from a cerebral hemorrhage sustained while falling down a flight of concrete steps, whether she was pregnant or not didn’t seem particularly relevant.”
“I understand,” Kenji reassured him. “Looking back, though—was there anything that indicated she was?”
Silence.
“It was unrelated to her cause of death,” the doctor emphasized. “I didn’t see any reason to add to her family’s grief, so I didn’t say so explicitly. I merely noted the indicators along with the other health notes. If you read my comments carefully, though, you’ll recognize the symptoms.”
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