Out

by Natsuo Kirino

  A few minutes later, she was standing next to him, dripping wet. She twisted her thick black hair over her head. Satake noticed that the young man was watching them. He wore a pony-tail and one earring.

  'You're being watched,' he said.

  'He was talking to me in the pool.'

  'Who is he?'

  'He says he's in a band.' She sounded blase, but turned her head

  slightly to gauge Satake's reaction. Satake gazed at the drops of water sliding down her arms and legs, savouring her youth, her beauty.

  'Go swim with him. You've still got some time.'

  'Why would I want to?' she said, giving him a disappointed look.

  'He was hitting on you, wasn't he?'

  'You won't mind?'

  'Not as long as you show up for work.'

  'Oh,' she said. It was as though a bubble of innocence had burst. Throwing aside her towel, she ran back to where the man was lying by the pool. As he sat up to greet her, obviously delighted, he turned to look at Satake in disbelief.

  Anna was quiet on the way home from the pool.

  'I'll drop you off at the hairdresser's,' he told her.

  'But you don't need to pick me up,' she said.

  'Why?'

  'I'll get a cab.'

  'Fine. I'll take a shower and look in at the club.' After letting her out at her usual spot, he pulled on to Yamate Avenue. The sun was low, shining right in his eyes. The sunset in summer always reminded Satake of something, a memory so intense it made him wince. Back in the heat of his room, he stared at the shadows of the Shinjuku towers beginning to stretch across the street outside his window. That feeling, the uncontrollable irritation, was returning again.

  -

  When he made his entrance at Mika that evening, all the hostesses turned toward the door in their standard greeting. For a moment, their faces held the plastic smiles reserved for the clientele, but when they realised who it was, their smiles faded. Satake looked around the empty room.

  'What the hell's going on? This the slack season?' he said to Chin, the floor manager, who was standing at his shoulder. 'It's still early,' said Chin, quickly rolling down his sleeves.

  Satake, who was strict about his employees' appearance, noticed that his bow-tie was crooked and his black pants wrinkled. 'You're a mess,' he said, pulling roughly on the tie.

  'Sorry,' Chin muttered, wandering off. Sensing that Satake was in a lousy mood, Reika, the manager, hurried over from the kitchen. She was wearing a black dress with a string of pearls - as if she were going to a funeral, he noted sourly.

  'Satake-san, good evening. I'm afraid things are a bit slow, what with the heat and all.'

  'What do you mean, a bit slow? Have you been making calls? I just don't believe you can't drum up any business at all!' His eyes swept the room again before settling on the vases. 'And get some new flowers!' he shouted.

  In general, Satake kept a low profile in his own clubs; but tonight was different. The way he scowled sent Chin scooting over to the nearest vase of badly wilted mauve bellflowers. The hostesses looked back and forth nervously between Satake and the vase.

  'A number of regulars said they'll be in later,' Reika said, trying to soothe him.

  'You can't run a business like that, waiting like some fucking princess for people to show up. Get out on the street and drag them in!'

  'I was just going to do that,' Reika said, laughing amiably, but she made no move to go, obviously reluctant to face the heat outside. Holding in his anger, Satake looked around again. He'd had a feeling that something was missing - and now realised what it was.

  'Where's Anna?' he asked.

  'She called to say she'd be taking the night off.'

  'Did she say why?'

  'She said she'd got too much sun at the pool and wasn't feeling well.'

  'Okay,' he muttered. 'I'll be back later.'

  The relief was apparent on her face. Satake noticed that the whole place seemed to relax as he walked out the door, still struggling to control his rage.

  Outside, he was instantly engulfed in the sweltering air of Kabuki-cho. Though the sun had set, the heat and humidity lingered, as though the whole city were in a steam bath; the heat was trapped inside, as if building under the skin of a grimy, middle-aged man with clogged pores. Satake let out a groan as he climbed the stairs to the next floor, a bit more slowly than usual. Things had got slack at Mika, and he would have to do something about it.

  When he opened the door to Playground, Kunimatsu headed over to greet him. Satake was relieved to see a number of businessmen around the tables.

  'You're early this evening,' Kunimatsu said, glancing down at Satake's clothes. Realising that patches of sweat were showing on his silver-grey jacket, he slipped it off, but the black silk shirt underneath was soaked through and clung to the lines of muscle on his chest. 'Is it hot in here?' Kunimatsu asked him uneasily as he picked up the jacket.

  'No, it's fine,' said Satake, taking out his cigarettes. A young dealer who was practising at an empty table before going on duty looked up at them. Satake noticed the hint of a sneer that crept into his expression when he saw the limp jacket. 'What's the new guy's name?' he asked Kunimatsu.

  'Yanagi.'

  'Tell him to watch himself in front of the customers. Nobody wants to see a dealer pulling faces like that.'

  'I'll tell him,' Kunimatsu murmured, backing away as if to distance himself from his unusually bad mood. Satake stood and finished his cigarette. Almost before he'd stubbed it out, one of the bunnies came over to change the ashtray, and he lit another.

  The staff seemed to be watching him nervously, paying more attention to him than to the customers; and somehow, though it was his own club, for the first time he felt very out of place. 'Can I bother you for a minute?' said Kunimatsu, coming back over.

  'What's up?'

  'There's something I wanted to show you.' Satake followed his manager's tall, tuxedo-clad form to a small room at the back of the club that served as his office. 'A customer left this,' he said, taking a grey suit coat from the locker. Satake noticed the silver jacket he'd just removed on another hanger. 'I was wondering what we should do with it.'

  'No one's claimed it?' Satake asked, taking the coat. It was lightweight wool, obviously cheap.

  'Look at this,' said Kunimatsu, pointing at a label sewn into the pocket. 'Yamamoto' had been machine embroidered in yellow thread.

  'Yamamoto?'

  'Don't you remember? The guy you chased off at the beginning of last week.'

  'Oh, him,' said Satake, recalling the man who had been bothering Anna.

  'He hasn't been back to get it. What should we do?'

  'Throw it out.'

  'You don't think he'll be around at some point looking for it?'

  'He's not coming back,' said Satake. 'And if he does show up, just tell him we never saw it.'

  'I'll do that,' said Kunimatsu with a small nod. He seemed to have something more he wanted to say, but thought better of it. After discussing the recent receipts for a few minutes, Satake left the office. Kunimatsu hurried after him, still trying to humour him. A couple of flashy young women, apparently hostesses from the neighbourhood, had come to gamble. The sight of their artificially tanned skin made Satake think of his own top girl. 'I'm going to check up on Anna,' he said. 'I'll be back later.'

  Kunimatsu bowed politely, but Satake couldn't help noticing the way he relaxed as he saw him out the door. At moments like these, when he saw how nervous his employees seemed to be around him, he wondered whether they had somehow found out about his past.

  He had been a model of self-control, had worked so hard to keep his dark side sealed away. But he knew that even a hint of what he'd done would terrify other people. Still, only he and the woman herself knew the truth about what had happened, and no one else could understand what he'd been up to. It had been Satake's misfortune to taste the forbidden fruit when he was twenty-six, and he'd been cut off from the normal world ever since.


  Something seemed odd when he got to Anna's apartment. There was no answer when he rang the intercom. He was just taking out his cell phone to call her number when a voice finally came crackling from the speaker.

  'Who is it?'

  'It's me,' Satake said.

  'Honey?'

  'Are you okay? I want to see you for a second.'

  'Okay,' she muttered. He could hear her unchaining the door

  funny, he thought, she never used the chain. 'I'm sorry I didn't show up for work,' she said once the door was open. She was wearing shorts aiid a T-shirt and looking a bit pale. Satake glanced down at the floor of the entrance hall. A pair of fashionable sneakers lay next to Anna's shoes.

  'The guy from the pool?' he asked. Her eyes followed Satake's to the shoes and she blushed. 'I don't mind if you fool around, but you can't let it get in the way of work. And no love affairs.'

  She shrank back and stared at him, as if in shock.

  'You mean you don't care?'

  'Not particularly,' he said. In an instant, her eyes filled with tears. Satake noticed, but it seemed more of a nuisance than anything else. She was sweet, even apart from her value at the club, but for him she was just a fancy pet he liked to spoil. Like the skin that covered their bodies, his relationship with her was all on the surface. 'Just don't play hookey on me any more,' he told her.

  As she turned without a word and went back inside, it occurred to him that this little fling and his reaction to it might give her ideas about moving to another club. He closed the door behind him as gently as he could. On the way back, he wondered to himself why everything seemed to be going wrong today. He felt edgy, volatile, as if the seal to his past had somehow been broken. He willed himself to keep his memories locked away.

  -

  He decided to skip another visit to Mika and headed straight up to Playground.

  'How is she?' Kunimatsu asked, opening the door for him. 'I heard she took the night off.'

  'It's nothing serious. I'm sure she'll be back at work tomorrow.'

  'That's good. And I understand things have picked up downstairs since you stopped in earlier.'

  'Glad to hear it,' said Satake, feeling slightly relieved. He did another quick check of the customers in the club: fifteen in all, half businessmen and the others connected with Shinjuku's night life. Of these, half were regulars at the club. Not a bad crowd, all told. Satake pronounced himself satisfied. Now he only needed to figure out what to do about the little crisis over Anna. It wouldn't do to have her moving to another club because of a silly thing like this.

  It was just as he'd regained his composure and settled down to think through this problem that the door opened and two new customers walked in. They were ordinary enough - middle-aged men in short-sleeved shirts - and Satake almost had the feeling that he'd seen them somewhere before, though he couldn't have said where. Company men? Shop owners? But they looked around inquisitively, their eyes sharper than the average player's. Satake, who could usually size up a customer at a glance, was at a loss.

  'Welcome, gentlemen,' Kunimatsu called out, walking over to greet them. He showed them to a table and, at their request, began explaining the game and the house rules. When he'd finished, one of the two men reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a black leather notebook.

  'We're from the Metropolitan Police Department,' he said, holding up his ID. 'I'd like to ask you all to remain where you are. We want to talk to the manager.' A hush fell over the club, and Kunimatsu glanced sheepishly at Satake.

  So was this the premonition he'd had since morning? Of course they looked familiar - like every other cop he'd ever seen. He picked up a chip lying on the table and crushed it between his fingers to keep from laughing out loud.

  2

  Satake thought he'd heard wrong when a new detective came into the interrogation room and introduced himself. 'Kinugasa,' he said, 'from Central Investigation.'

  'What do you mean, "Central Investigation"?' he said. 'What's this all about?'

  'What do you think it's about?' Kinugasa laughed. He was stocky and tough-looking, with those staring eyes detectives seemed to have - not Satake's favourite type. 'I want to ask you about another case we're working on.'

  'What other case?' They'd already held him for over a week on nothing more than suspicion of operating an unlicensed gambling establishment, and now the big boys from Central were checking in. What did they want? He had to admit, they had him spooked, but he couldn't let them know that. 'What does Central want with a small-time gambling charge? What other case?'

  'A little murder and dismemberment,' Kinugasa said. Pulling a disposable lighter from the pocket of his faded black polo shirt, he lit a cigarette and took a long, appreciative drag as he watched Satake's reaction.

  'Dismemberment?'

  'You look a bit worried,' he said. Satake was wearing a blue shirt that Reika had sent him. He didn't much care for the colour, but the black silk shirt he'd been wearing when they arrested him had been soaked in sweat.

  'Not particularly,' he laughed.

  'Not particularly what? You don't have much to laugh about, asshole. So start talking.' Kinugasa exchanged a weary glance with the other detective from the Shinjuku station. 'Or are you so used to being in the slammer it doesn't even bother you?'

  'Now hold on a minute,' he interrupted. 'I don't have any idea what you're talking about.' This was getting serious. It hadn't been a real raid at all. He'd been convinced all along that they were just making an example of him because his club was making money; but now it began to dawn on him that Central had planned the whole thing. Somehow, without realising it, he'd wandered into some kind of deep shit, and he was sure that it wasn't going to be easy getting back out.

  'Don't give me that crap,' Kinugasa said. 'You remember a guy named Kenji Yamamoto who used to come into your place? Well, he's the victim. Don't tell me you didn't know that.'

  'Kenji Yamamoto? Never heard of him.' Satake cocked his head to one side and stared back. From the window of the interrogation room, the Shinjuku skyscrapers were visible, and between them the tall strips of summer sky. Satake shut his eyes, blinded by the brilliant light. His apartment was somewhere nearby - how he longed to get out of here and hide himself away in his own dark room.

  'Then maybe you recognise this?' said Kinugasa, taking a grey jacket out of a wrinkled department store bag that lay on the desk. Satake nearly choked: it was the jacket he'd told his manager to get rid of on the night of the raid.

  'I've seen it. Some guy left it at the club.' He swallowed. So someone had cut up that idiot. He vaguely remembered the reports in the newspapers and on TV mentioning the name Yamamoto. The outline of what they were thinking began to take shape. He looked up to see the detectives smirking at him.

  'So tell us, Satake. What happened to this "guy"?'

  'How should I know?'

  'You really don't know?' Kinugasa gave a high, almost girlish laugh. Shithead! Satake thought, a rush of blood making his head spin; but the self-control he'd learned since getting out of jail helped steady him.

  'I really don't,' he said, managing to sound half-convincing. Kinugasa pulled a notebook from his bulging hip pocket and slowly began flipping the pages.

  'We have several witnesses who saw you and the victim going at it outside the door of Playground around 10.00 p.m. on the night of 20 July - a Tuesday, if I'm not mistaken. They saw you kicking him down the stairs.'

  'That's... more or less what happened.'

  'More or less And what happened after that?'

  'I don't know.'

  'You do know,' said Kinugasa. 'The guy disappeared. What we want to know is what you did after the fight.' Satake searched his memory but came up blank. He might have gone straight home, or he might have hung around a while at the club. He decided the latter option sounded more promising.

  'I had work to finish up, so I went back in the club.'

  'Not according to your employees. They told us yo
u left right after dealing with Yamamoto.'

  'Is that right? Then I must have gone home to bed,' said Satake. Kinugasa folded his arms, apparently amused.

  'So which was it?'

  'Home to bed.'

  'But they told us you always stick around until the place closes. Why would you leave early that one night? Doesn't it strike you as a bit strange?'

  'I was tired, so I went home and went to bed early.' That was the truth. He remembered now that he'd felt pooped after the runin with Yamamoto and had gone straight home without checking in at either club. He'd fallen asleep watching TV. It would have been better if he'd stuck around Playground, but it was a bit late now for regrets.

  'Were you alone?'

  'Of course.'

  'And what made you so tired?'

  'I was at a pachinko place all morning and then chauffeured one of the girls at the club around. I had a meeting with Kunimatsu, the casino manager - it was a full day's work.'

  'And what was the meeting with Kunimatsu about? About how to get rid of the victim, wasn't it? That's what Kunimatsu told us.'

  'That's ridiculous,' said Satake. 'Where do you come up with this stuff? I run a nice little club and a casino, end of story.'

  'Don't fuck with me!' Kinugasa bawled, suddenly turning nasty. 'Nice little club and casino, my ass. We know about your record, about that woman you raped and murdered. How many times was it you stabbed her? Twenty? Thirty? And the whole time, you were fucking her brains out. Am I right? That how you get your jollies, Satake? You're a freak, you are. I nearly threw up just reading the transcripts. How the fuck did an animal like you get out after just seven years? Can you explain that to me?'

  Satake could feel the sweat begin to well out of every pore on his body. The lid on his private hell, the lid he'd worked so hard to keep shut, was being pried off as he watched. The face of the woman in her death throes came back to him. The old, dark dreams that he'd thought were dead crept up his spine like an icy hand. 'That make you sweat?' Kinugasa said. 'Make you hot?'