Tokyo Zangyo

by Michael Pronko

  Suzuna smiled back at Toshiko, returned to her ramen and then spoke in a low voice. “Mayu said Onizuka was a really evil man. He tormented her. And a lot of other people, too.”

  Hiroshi was sweating from the noodles. He wiped his face and resettled himself on the stool. “Suzuna, could you give me the names of Mayu’s other friends?”

  Suzuna kept her eyes on the last bit of soup at the bottom of her cup. “I have them on my home computer.”

  “Not on your cellphone?” Hiroshi asked.

  “It’s easier to send later, if that’s OK?” Suzuna dug out the last sliver of noodle with her chopsticks.

  Toshiko fingered the leafy plant in front of her on the table. “Mayu and I slept in the same room after my husband moved to the Philippines for work, our futons side by side, talking until we fell asleep. She would scrub my back in the bath and I brushed her hair. She had beautiful hair. I wrote all that down and made my lawyer read it out loud. I wanted to be sure Onizuka and the others at Senden heard about Mayu’s life.”

  “I hope they were listening,” Hiroshi said.

  “I’m not sure they were, but I wanted it on record.” Toshiko looked out the window. “I went to a Catholic high school. On a scholarship. And then the sister school, a women’s college. We read the Bible and sang hymns. I never took all that seriously, but losing Mayu was like something out of the Bible. I can’t imagine revenge, but I can’t forgive either. I still smell her and hear her laugh. We still follow the weekly schedule she made for us.”

  “Schedule?”

  “She had us all so organized—exercise, shopping, cleaning, paying bills. She made a study schedule for Suzuna so she could pass the English tests and go with her to America.”

  “She just had the knack of order.” Suzuna picked up the ramen containers and started to put everything in the trash, her eyes averted, readying things to re-open the shop.

  Hiroshi finished the onigiri and Suzuna took the wrapper, stopped, turned and looked at Hiroshi. “I’m not sure how we can help you. I’m sorry, but Mayu’s gone, and now that man is gone. Nothing else matters, does it?”

  “Death always matters.” Hiroshi looked at her until she turned away and dropped the trash in the bin beside the wrapping table.

  A customer knocked on the glass and Hiroshi couldn’t think of what else to even ask them. Toshiko and Suzuna seemed to be just what they were—mother and best friend. He left with a polite goodbye.

  The meeting with Senden wasn’t for two hours and he didn’t want to go back to his office. He remembered a nearby jazz kissaten with a tube amp and vinyl collection. He hadn’t been there for years and got turned around in the pedestrian alleys, but he finally found it and climbed the stairs. Loud jazz filled the dark, wood-lined space. He picked a seat by the window, ordered a cappuccino, ignored his messages, and drifted into the music.

  What did matter on this case, or on any of them? On cryptocurrency cases, it all made sense up to the point where it didn’t, where the connecting bridge was washed away and you couldn’t get across. Many of the jazz greats said that in jazz there were no wrong notes, as long as you kept going, turning a wrong note right, pretending that’s what you intended. Maybe that was the same with working a case.

  When the waitress flipped the record, Hiroshi opened his eyes and looked out the window. On the pedestrian lane below, Suzuna walked by in a long wool coat.

  Hiroshi got up and hurried to the register, wondering why she wasn’t working.

  He eased down the steep stairs, ran to the end of the lane and caught her heading into the nexus of small alleys Takamatsu had dragged him through the day before. Hiroshi hurried after her.

  Inside the yokocho maze, he took the largest, straightest alley that emptied out on the street in front of the station, where Suzuna seemed to be heading. He kept sight of her loose wool coat and her blonde-dyed braids. She was carrying a large bouquet of flowers wrapped in brown paper with plastic and tinfoil at the end. Maybe she was making a delivery.

  She took the escalator up to the ticket machine and up the next escalator to the platform. Hiroshi hurried onto the same train one car down. If he leaned back and stared down the center of the train, he could just see the dark orange and gray of her coat.

  He stood quietly, checking on her at every stop, ready to get off when she did.

  She stayed on until Kanda Station, where she changed to the Yamanote Line. The platform was narrow there, one of the older ones in the city, so he stood behind a vending machine until she got on, quickly hopping on just before the doors shut.

  She got off at Nippori Station and headed up a steep slope into a quiet neighborhood with streets just wide enough for a single car at a time. She walked steadily and surely to where the street ended and a cobblestone walkway started. Was this Yanaka Cemetery? A signboard map of the burial areas said it was.

  Suzuna turned into a cobblestone walkway between the neat squares of graves. Smooth stone blocks marked off each area, with stone lanterns, sculpted trees and chiseled grave markers inside each. Poking up behind were racks holding long wooden sotoba covered in brushed-on prayers in Japanese and Sanskrit. Ancient, craggy cherry trees hung over the walkways and graves, and here and there a few plum trees grew.

  Hiroshi stopped to take a photo of a neat map of the plots in that part of the cemetery, the interlocking rectangles and parallelograms numbered precisely. He stayed angled behind a large, ornate mausoleum from where he could watch.

  Suzuna unwrapped the bouquet she’d brought and set it in front of a gray stone marker. She put her hands together to pray. After raising her head, she went to get a broom and bucket and dipper from the communal area. She filled up the bucket with water and carried it back to the grave. She set it down and began sweeping away fallen leaves. When she finished she began laving water over the stones and brushing them down. With the last of the water, she filled up two vases attached to the stone on either side of the grave marker and arranged the flowers in them.

  When she was satisfied with how it looked, she put her hands together again and her head down, her shoulders rising and falling inside the wool coat, breathing deeply or maybe sobbing.

  Before she finished, two more women arrived. Both were draped in oversized sweatshirts, their heads tucked in their hoods. One was rather plump and the other short and wiry. They stepped up to join Suzuna on either side, putting their hands together to pray. All three stood close and held their heads down for a long time.

  When they straightened up, they talked together while rearranging the flowers and resweeping the whole area. After tending the burial plot, they swept the steps again and returned the broom, bucket and dipper to the communal area, and walked off in separate paths out of the vast cemetery.

  When Suzuna and the other two women were out of sight, Hiroshi walked to the grave, already knowing what would be carved on the stone: Mayu Ayase, 1991-2017.

  Chapter 10

  Takamatsu and Sugamo were waiting in the circle drive in front of Senden Central Infinity when Hiroshi got there. Takamatsu stripped off his trench coat as soon as they stepped inside the overheated lobby. To the right was the entrance to the museum of the history of advertising, featuring, of course, Senden Central and the company’s newest incarnation, Senden Infinity.

  “A museum advertising the history of advertising,” Takamatsu said.

  “And there’s an ad for the museum.” Hiroshi pointed to a banner hanging among the others.

  “We’re already going in circles and we’re just in the lobby,” Takamatsu said.

  Hiroshi spoke to the receptionist at the desk by the elevators.

  In a few minutes, a tall young woman dressed in a business suit walked out of the elevator straight to the detectives and bowed deeply.

  “We met the other night? On the roof?” Chizu Kawamura said, and led them to the elevators.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Hiroshi said. “It was a bit dark on the roof.”

  “And you were bus
y,” Chizu said. She looked directly into Hiroshi’s eyes, as if she had lived overseas and lost the Japanese custom of reserved eye contact. She also seemed to not know how attractive she was, unlike most Tokyo women who took every glance as compliment. She held the elevator door open for them and then pressed the button and folded her hands in front of her.

  When they got out on the sixteenth floor, Chizu led them down a hallway to a conference room that looked over the broad Hibiya-dori Street and the green waters of the moat and thick stone walls that circled the Imperial Palace grounds. Beyond that was shitamachi, the lower town of eastern Tokyo, where Onizuka had grown up.

  Chizu asked them to sit at the conference table, and then stepped out and left them alone. Hiroshi leaned back in the ergonomic chair and wondered if Akiko could somehow requisition chairs like these for his office.

  Takamatsu fiddled with the connectivity panel poking up under a lid from the dark veneer tabletop. He ran his fingers over the inputs for video, audio, chargers, and network connectors. He flipped the top down with a loud clack that echoed in the empty room.

  “You should have brought your laptop,” Hiroshi said.

  “Yeah, I always forget that.” Takamatsu opened and shut the top as impatiently as he flipped his lighter, and just as loudly.

  A young woman came in with tea and set out the small round cups with a soft-spoken “Doozo.” She held the tray to her chest and bowed before departing the room. A blast of hot, dry air leaped out of the overhead heating unit. Sunlight angled in from the floor-to-ceiling windows, which further warmed the room.

  The door clicked and a thin man with a flat, pale face came into the room. Following him was Nakata, the head of HR, who Hiroshi and Takamatsu had met on the roof the night before. The flat-faced man looked at both detectives closely as they stood up to greet him. He looked to be in his mid-sixties, with gray hair and a well-cut suit with a dark blue tie.

  Nakata bowed and said, “This is our company president, Tanaka.”

  Hiroshi and Takamatsu bowed.

  Tanaka said, “Thank you for your cooperation on this matter.”

  Hiroshi said, “Tanaka shacho, thank you for your help. We need a few files about Onizuka and then we can conclude this case as soon as possible.”

  Tanaka said, “I’ve requested the HR department,” he gestured to Nakata and Chizu, standing in rank behind him, “to give you every assistance. We would like to put this tragic incident behind us. Our grand opening on the global stage is scheduled for this weekend. We have a press conference on Friday.”

  Hiroshi said, “With your full cooperation, we can expedite this. But cases have their own schedules. We will look into the files and keep Nakata-san up to date with our progress.”

  Tanaka looked at the detectives for a quiet minute.

  Takamatsu straightened his cuffs and shifted his stance.

  Hiroshi waited.

  Tanaka finally spoke. “I’ve contacted the National Police Agency and the Ministry of Justice. We’ve already cooperated with the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on other issues related to Onizuka. So, I’m sure you’ll be able to conclude this investigation before this weekend.”

  Hiroshi nodded without saying anything more.

  “Thank you for your understanding.” Tanaka turned and said something to Nakata and looked back to the detectives with a brief nod before leaving.

  Nakata and Chizu bowed to him as he left, then motioned for Hiroshi and Takamatsu to have a seat. Nakata sat straight with a breezy confidence, no doubt born from countless meetings, with his shoulders back and an imperious look.

  “I’ve brought several files for you, which I think should get this incident resolved quickly.” He turned to Chizu, who sat next to him with a stack of folders. She looked through them, checking the labels and handing them to Hiroshi.

  Hiroshi opened the first folder and handed one to Takamatsu.

  Nakata cleared his throat and set his hands on the table.

  Hiroshi skimmed the files. “We need to get several pieces of information from you.”

  Nakata nodded. “I think it’s all in there. Chizu will be able to follow up on any further requests that we can’t answer today. She’s my assistant in Human Resources and knows more than I do.” A smile flickered across his face, meaning what, Hiroshi couldn’t tell.

  Hiroshi set the files down and looked up. “We’ll need to see the actual HR file on Onizuka, not this edited one. We need specifics on how long he worked here, what sections, what positions, the essentials.”

  Chizu took notes on her tablet.

  Hiroshi continued. “We need to know who filed claims against him for harassment, who transferred out of his section, who quit after working under him, and what disciplinary actions were taken against Onizuka. From what we know, he had a history of harassing his subordinates.”

  Nakata looked at Chizu, who showed him a page on her tablet computer. To Hiroshi, he said, “You must understand that a lot of that information is confidential, so we can’t—”

  “You must understand that this is a possible murder investigation and we need to rule out suspects as quickly as we can.” Hiroshi watched both of them carefully. “Your company president just advised as much.”

  “We’ve certainly had enough negative publicity as it is,” Nakata said, glancing at Chizu to be sure she was writing everything down.

  “If we can’t get all the information on Onizuka, our investigation could drag on for longer, possibly interfering with PR for your overseas expansion. We want this case closed as much as you do,” Hiroshi said.

  “More so,” Takamatsu added, his hands clasped together on the smooth veneer of the table. “Could you tell us a bit about Onizuka based on your personal interactions as head of HR?”

  Nakata cleared his throat. “If I can speak frankly, he was a difficult person. Many of his subordinates did not get along with him. But many loved his hard-driving work style, his loyalty, his successes. He was our best section chief in terms of productivity. Many of his co-workers, junior to him, attribute their own success to having learned the ropes from him.”

  Takamatsu smiled. “We’d like to send over some detectives this afternoon to talk with them. Can you set that up for us?”

  “It’s a bit short notice,” Nakata said.

  “So was Onizuka’s fall from the top of your main building,” Takamatsu replied.

  Nakata looked at Chizu, who nodded and made a note.

  Hiroshi said, “We need to talk with the other women who quit or asked to be moved from his section, or settled quietly and left the company.”

  Nakata said, “We’re trapped by confidentiality agreements, but I’ll see what I can do. You understand I’ll need to contact the company lawyers first.”

  “His recent work focused on expanding overseas?” Hiroshi asked. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe the sweat from his brow. The heating, at least, worked well at Senden.

  “He was lead on the overseas expansion project,” Nakata said.

  “That’s a big project,” Hiroshi said.

  “Much of the groundwork was done little by little, but he was in charge of setting up the offices in New York and London,” Nakata said.

  “Can we get a list of what was done in that regard? Again, it helps us round out the picture of what he was doing.”

  Nakata nodded at Chizu and she wrote everything down. Nakata’s cellphone buzzed in his jacket pocket, and he checked it. “I’m sorry, I have to take this.” He stood up, nodding, and then bowed and stepped into the hallway.

  Takamatsu growled deep in his throat.

  Chizu pulled her cellphone out and held it toward Hiroshi. “Do you use LINE?”

  “Yes,” Hiroshi said.

  “That’s best for me, if it’s all right with you?” She pressed her phone pad and held it out.

  Hiroshi held out his phone for Chizu to capture his QR code.

  “I’ll LINE message you later,” Chizu said, clicking
on her phone to save his contact.

  Nakata stepped back inside and Chizu quickly set her phone on the table.

  Hiroshi said, “And we’ll need access to your accounting section, too.”

  Nakata cocked his head and looked at Hiroshi. “Why is that?”

  Hiroshi shrugged. “It’s often the case that there are financial irregularities in cases such as this. So we just need to check on a few things.”

  “We don’t just turn over our accounts to the police,” Nakata said. “It could take weeks of meetings to get approval.”

  Hiroshi leaned back in his chair. “That’s how long the investigation will continue, then.”

  Takamatsu leaned forward. “We can always route this through bureaucratic channels. But we’re much more discreet than the ministries. You know how things leak out over there.”

  “The records for all of these things are not kept here,” Nakata said. “We need to request those from our storage facilities. Some of the records go back a few years, if that’s what you’re asking for.”

  “That’s what we’re asking for. We need to see it all.”

  Nakata leaned back in his chair. “I’ll have to get back to you later today.”

  “And while you’re asking for permission, we need the name of the law firm that represented you in the lawsuit with Mayu Yamase. Were you the head of HR at that time?”

  Nakata looked at Hiroshi. “The girl’s death was a terrible tragedy—”

  “Her name was Mayu. Mayu Yamase,” Hiroshi said, raising his voice.

  Takamatsu hummed a quick note of approval.

  Hiroshi tapped the table. “We need to re-examine the case of Mayu Yamase. There are too many coincidences.”

  “Senden paid reparations to her mother, so we hoped that would put the tragedy behind us,” Nakata said.

  “It doesn’t seem behind you yet,” Takamatsu growled. “That’s why we’re here.”

  Nakata looked annoyed. “I was the head of HR at that time.”

  “If Mayu Yamase asked for a transfer, why was she not moved to another section? Was Mayu Yamase doing a poor job? Why was she denied a transfer?” Hiroshi asked.