Tokyo Zangyo

by Michael Pronko

  “You should have come to Boston.”

  “You should have invited me.” Ayana looked away. The outside porch lights were off and the glass doors reflected their figures. “I figured you had an American girlfriend by then anyway.”

  Hiroshi started to protest, but stopped himself from pretending to deny it.

  Ayana continued staring out the window. “My boss, well, if everyone in our department went out drinking, he made sure to seat me next to him. The younger women had to arrange everything, so I had to stay and settle the bill, and he’d hang around, take the train in my direction, even though he lived way up in Saitama. Things like that.”

  Hiroshi looked confused. Why had he never heard this before? Why had he never asked about this before?

  “I didn’t want to quit. I thought I’d get a chance to do something, take on some responsibility once I got through the training phase. But after the first year, I could tell that none of the women were going to be promoted.”

  Hiroshi stepped over and took her in his arms. She twisted away and looked out the window, so he held her from the side.

  “Then my boss started asking me to go with him to visit other companies. I thought, maybe I’ll learn something I can use. But all I did was carry the laptop, open it up, and nod in agreement. Of course, my boss was just doing the face-to-face with clients, trying to maintain the relationship. I was supposed to sit there and smile at the right time. And after each company visit, he’d ask me to go out to eat and drink.”

  “You mean, just the two of you?” It made no sense to feel jealous about something that happened so long ago, but he did, and angry too.

  “He was mentoring me with crumbs of advice, but he didn’t know much. He did as he’d been taught to do. Nothing more to it.”

  “And you—”

  “I got tired of fighting him off.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Early forties I guess.”

  “Married?”

  “Divorced with kids. I had to listen to all that too.”

  “So, you quit?”

  “One of the people we met regularly at another company asked me out. So, I went.”

  “That was who you married?”

  Ayana nodded. “We had to keep it secret at first. Dating a client would have been grounds for dismissal.”

  “But dating your boss would have been OK.”

  “No, but everyone would know and pretend they didn’t. It got worse, so I started leaving work early. I called in sick a few times. All of that was seen as disrespect, disinterest, getting ready to quit. Which it was. My boss felt rejected and followed me. One day he saw me with my soon-to-be husband, one of his clients. The next day he reported me to Human Resources. I told HR what he’d been doing, but they saw it as a misunderstanding, part of working closely together. In a way they were right. It was the status quo.”

  Hiroshi nodded. “I didn’t know any of this.”

  “You didn’t ask, mister detective.” Ayana walked over and leaned on the kitchen island, undid her hair and retied it into a high night-time ponytail. She rinsed the glass and set it on the drying rack.

  “I dreamed of you coming to Boston.”

  Ayana leaned into him. “Senior year, in January, I got my passport. I bought a ticket to Boston. I read it was cold in Boston in February and March, so I bought a new coat. I thought I’d just go to Boston even though I didn’t know how to find you. I figured I’d just wait at the gate to your school until you passed by, pretend it was an accident.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Ayana shook her head. “You hurt me so badly by just leaving in the middle of college without a word. Eto Sensei finally told me the truth about where you were, but even he didn’t have your address. I thought it was my fault.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How could you just leave? And say nothing? You really hurt me.”

  “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know I had the capacity to hurt anyone. I only knew I could be hurt.”

  Ayana pushed him away and went to the window. “As it turned out, I probably should have toughed it out at the company. As soon as I got married, my husband lost interest in me. I couldn’t figure it out. We bought this place but he got transferred to America and then to Paris. I was free to do what I liked. I went back to school, studied library science, and got back into kendo. That was the best part of the marriage, his indifference gave me freedom. Looking back, I guess I was never really in love. So, when I finally divorced him, I thought of that time as one long study trip. I disappointed my family twice. Failed at work, failed at marriage.”

  “You’re not failing with me.”

  “Why didn’t you write me after you went to Boston?”

  Hiroshi didn’t try to answer. He walked over and hugged her from behind, both of them looking out the window, seeing their own reflection and the balcony outside. Hiroshi knew there was nothing to do but hold her tight.

  Ayana twisted around to face him, leaned back and started pounding him in the chest, gently at first, then harder.

  Hiroshi let her pummel away until she slowed and stopped and rubbed her face against his chest.

  “That was the first workout I’ve had in weeks,” Ayana said, giving him one more slug in the chest. “You stink of alcohol.”

  Hiroshi turned her toward the bedroom, enveloping her from behind as they walked in sync, close, tired and reassured.

  Chapter 7

  The conference room on the top floor of headquarters was rarely used, but the chief called all the homicide detectives in for a briefing on Onizuka’s death in Marunouchi and no other room was large enough to fit everyone. The tables faced the front in perfect hierarchical rows.

  Hiroshi sat in the last row next to Takamatsu. His sake hangover felt like a huge steam iron on his head. His body felt bloated, feverish, and achy. He squinted at the front of the room, and then closed his eyes in foggy resignation.

  Sugamo and Osaki sat right in front of Hiroshi, a human scrum to hide behind. Sakaguchi squirmed at the front next to the chief. It was early morning at the front of the room and twilight at the back.

  After an hour of the chief’s asking the same questions repeatedly and prattling about the importance of the first forty-eight hours of the investigation, Hiroshi whispered to Takamatsu, “He’s keeping all of us from getting any work done.”

  Takamatsu fiddled with his lighter. “The tech guys will come through on the video footage soon enough.”

  “What if they don’t?” Hiroshi growled, his throat scratchy and dry.

  As the briefing stretched on, he sent text messages to Akiko. She, at least, was working in his office, where he should be. He asked her to get the information assembled to send to Interpol so he could restart the cryptocurrency cases he’d been working on until yesterday.

  He was about to explain to her what to do about an investment scam case when the droning from the front of the room stopped and the chief shouted, “Hiroshi, are you listening?”

  Hiroshi leaned to the side around the shoulders of Sugamo and Osaki and looked toward the chief at the front of the room. Several detectives turned around and stared at Hiroshi with bored faces.

  Hiroshi held up his cellphone and tried to look apologetic. “I keep getting calls about canceled meetings. Interpol wants to work with us here in Japan, but…”

  A few coughs and a couple chuckles echoed through the room.

  “Is that the cryptocurrency thing you’re still working on?” the chief shouted.

  Hiroshi nodded.

  “You need to put that off until we get this Onizuka case finished. This guy was one of the leaders in the Japanese business world. Senden Central—”

  “Senden Infinity,” Hiroshi corrected him, and wished he hadn’t.

  The chief leaned across the front table. “Senden whatever. It’s one of Japan’s flagship companies. They are leading a wave of Japanese expansion overseas. To catch up with China. And what are you doin
g, Hiroshi? Chasing invisible numbers around the internet.”

  Hiroshi started to reply but Takamatsu cleared his throat to warn him to shut up.

  “Today, and until this is solved, you’re to focus on this top executive and nothing else. When this happens in the boardroom of one of Japan’s top corporations, we need to stay focused, work quickly and finish quietly. That’s how we support Japan and support the economy. Is that clear?” The chief stopped to let the silence resonate. “You all have your assignments.”

  Outside the conference room, Hiroshi and Takamatsu joined the rush of detectives keen on getting away from the chief. They squeezed into the first elevator down and got out in the sub-basement passageway that linked the main building with the annex building where Hiroshi’s office was hidden away. Neither of them spoke until they got to the fire doors dividing the two buildings.

  “The chief always wants to uphold the system,” Hiroshi said.

  “He’s benefited from it from the beginning, so he supports anything that will get him more connections and move him up another rung on the ladder,” Takamatsu said.

  “How does this case help him?”

  “He can’t promote himself, can he? You’ll see. He’ll use it to his advantage.”

  They arrived at the office and Hiroshi felt glad once again to be far away from the main headquarters. Just the short underground walk was enough to gain headspace and refocus.

  When Hiroshi first moved in, the isolation of his office let him work efficiently, making calls to overseas police departments without all the other detectives in the same room. The smell of cleaning supplies stored in the room before he took it over faded, and Hiroshi’s office became a hideaway for Sakaguchi and Takamatsu, a place they could gather to talk over cases without the chief’s interruption or the other detectives’ banter. And of course, people liked to talk with Akiko, who was, in Hiroshi’s estimation, the best member of the support staff in the entire headquarters.

  When Hiroshi and Takamatsu started up the stairs up to Hiroshi’s office, they heard the fire doors slam behind them and turned to see Sakaguchi plodding toward them. They waited to help him up the half-flight, but he waved them off and grabbed the handrail.

  Akiko heard them coming, and when they got to the office, she had already cleared the files off the foldout futon chair so Sakaguchi could flop onto the chair with a loud whoosh.

  Hiroshi beelined to the espresso machine, hoping some caffeine would jolt the hangover and clear his head. He could feel the veins pounding along the side of his skull.

  Takamatsu smiled at Akiko, pulled off his jacket and hung it on the rack. “You missed the excitement. Hiroshi, lifeguard of Tokyo Bay, used his hero status from that case to argue with the chief.”

  This was the first time Takamatsu had mentioned being saved from the freezing water in the bay on a particularly grisly case during the past winter. Hiroshi had saved Takamatsu’s life, but Takamatsu was too grateful, or too proud, to speak about it until that burst of sarcasm.

  Akiko was never bothered by any of Takamatsu’s banter. “It’s just good he didn’t let you drown.”

  Takamatsu nodded for an espresso and straightened his cuffs. “We can all get back to real work when the video footage shows which resentful colleague helped Onizuka to the edge of the building.”

  “Is that what happened?” Akiko pulled a chair around for Takamatsu, but he stayed standing.

  Sakaguchi shrugged. “It’s as good a guess as any at this point.”

  “The girl’s family seems more likely, doesn’t it?” Hiroshi said. “I mean, the mother, the father, they must have been devastated.”

  “Or the American boyfriend,” Takamatsu said. “This seems like the work of a younger person.”

  “Where do you get that?” Hiroshi asked.

  Takamatsu shrugged. “From my gut. Where I get most things.”

  “I’ll go get you some tea.” Akiko patted Sakaguchi’s shoulder as she hurried off to the vending machines down the hall.

  Hiroshi handed Takamatsu a double espresso and set another on Akiko’s desk.

  Akiko came back with a can of tea for Sakaguchi and smiled at her steaming espresso. “I pulled together some things about the girl, Mayu Yamase.”

  “What did you find?”

  “A lot of articles, how much overtime, how many harassment reports, it’s all detailed. Seems like she stuck it out for a year after it got bad. I found her case mentioned in most of the articles about karoshi.”

  “How do you say that in English?” Takamatsu asked.

  Hiroshi shook his head. “It doesn’t happen there, or not in the same way. ‘Death from overwork’ comes closest.”

  “Americans would just quit, I guess,” Takamatsu said.

  “And rightly so,” Akiko said. “Japanese hope gaman will get them through.”

  “That quality of self-denial is different in America too.” Hiroshi swirled his coffee cup. “In Japan, it’s the national curse.”

  “And blessing,” Takamatsu said. “Without perseverance and tolerance, Japanese society wouldn’t function.”

  “But it’s always women who are supposed to have more gaman,” Akiko said. “Enduring a meaningless, low-paying job that’s killing you is no virtue.”

  Takamatsu looked at her. “You seem to be speaking from experience.”

  “I am.” Akiko sipped her espresso and stared back at Takamatsu, who was a master of letting things go only to ask about them later. “I was brought up to be able to suffer in silence but I changed at my first job. I was strangling on the monotony. So, I quit and set off to study in America. The best choice I ever made. And maybe the first real choice.”

  Takamatsu smiled at her.

  Sakaguchi swirled his can of hot tea. “The foreign sumo wrestlers didn’t put up with bullying and baiting in the sumo stable. They weren’t used to it like the Japanese wrestlers, who knew how to quietly bide their time.”

  Akiko read from her computer screen. “Mayu told people what was happening, but no one listened. The articles said that Onizuka had harassed other employees before her. Some of them gave testimony at the trial.”

  Hiroshi nodded at her. “Let’s gather their names and start contacting them.”

  Takamatsu shook his head. “Let’s do that later, if the video footage doesn’t give us anything.”

  Akiko held up two folders stuffed with printouts. “Her case really drew attention. The mother won her lawsuit against Senden because the public, and the press, were on her side.”

  “And yet Onizuka kept working at the company.” Hiroshi asked Akiko, “Did you find the name of the lawyer who handled Mayu Yamase’s case against Senden?”

  Akiko clicked on her keyboard. “Want me to make an appointment?”

  “Let’s leave the lawyers out of it,” Takamatsu said. “We have the case transcripts.”

  “They always know more than what’s on the record. A lot more. We can stop by on the way to our appointment with the HR people at Senden.”

  Akiko pulled up the number and called.

  Hiroshi went for another espresso, picked up the bag of beans and examined it. “Did I buy decaf by mistake?”

  Hiroshi said, “I want to look into Onizuka’s finances, too.”

  “All right,” Sakaguchi said.

  Hiroshi was surprised he got his way so easily. “As for Onizuka’s cashflow, let’s look through credit card stuff first and then we can see whether he tapped into the company budget.”

  Takamatsu pulled his jacket on and straightened it. “And we need to talk to these two exemplary Japanese mothers again too. Second time around they usually change their stories.”

  Sakaguchi stood up and everyone moved to help him. “I’ve got paperwork.”

  “That takes real gaman,” Takamatsu said. “Hiroshi, I’ve got a couple of things to check on, so I’ll meet you in the parking lot in thirty minutes.”

  Takamatsu walked Sakaguchi back to the main building.


  Hiroshi turned to Akiko. “We also need to find Mayu’s estranged father. He works in the Philippines.”

  Akiko was one step ahead of him. “I already tracked him down, but his company in the Philippines said he wasn’t there. On vacation, apparently.”

  “Vacation where?” Hiroshi asked.

  “They didn’t know.”

  “And this jazz saxophonist, Steve Titus, I want his full schedule.”

  “Aren’t you too busy for jazz?” Akiko asked.

  “That’s Mayu’s old boyfriend,” Hiroshi said.

  Akiko hummed as she searched on her computer. “He’s playing at a club in Shinjuku tonight.” She sent the map to Hiroshi’s cellphone.

  “I know where it is.”

  “Also, you might want to read these.” She turned her computer screen toward Hiroshi, leaned back in her chair and shook her head.

  Hiroshi scooted his chair over and frowned at the list of messages. “What’s this?”

  “Those are Mayu’s tweets.”

  Hiroshi started reading. “What tweets?”

  “The ones she sent right before she died. I asked the tech guys to scour Twitter for the rest.” She leaned back so Hiroshi could read them.

  “It’s five in the morning and I haven’t slept. My body’s shaking in bed. I have to get ready in an hour. I’m so exhausted.”

  “I’m terrified every night when I come home because I know I have to leave again.”

  “My health is terrible. I’ve missed my period for two months, but I’m not pregnant. It’s stress. I can’t eat.”

  “My boss told me never to come to work looking bad again. He said to put on better makeup and a more feminine outfit.”

  “I think dying is better than not sleeping.”

  “My boss told me I’m not even a woman and it was like working with a man to work with me.”

  “I’m not even a person any more, just a drone, an ugly drone, according to my boss.”

  “I couldn’t stop crying today at work alone in the bathroom stall.”

  “Everything I did today, the boss criticized.”