Out

by Natsuo Kirino

  'No .. . it's just that... '

  'Spit it out. You'll feel better.'

  'You're barking up the wrong tree. I'm a changed man.'

  'That's what they all say. But in my experience, men who kill for pleasure don't stop after the first time.'

  For pleasure? The words hit Satake like a sledgehammer, but he returned Kinugasa's taunting, come-off-it look. It wasn't for pleasure! he wanted to scream. The pleasure had come from sharing in the woman's death. At that moment, he'd felt nothing but love for her. That was why she was the only woman he'd ever have, why he was bound to her for life. He'd taken no 'pleasure' in killing her; what he'd felt couldn't be explained away by a single word. But how could he explain?

  'You're wrong,' he said, staring down at his lap.

  'Could be,' said Kinugasa. 'But we're going to do our damnedest to prove we're right. You don't have to tell us a thing.' He patted him on the shoulder, as though patting a dog. Satake twisted away to avoid his meaty hand.

  'I really didn't do anything,' he said. 'I just warned the guy to keep away from the club. He'd fallen for my top girl and he was following her around. I told him to leave her alone. This is the first I've heard about what happened to him.'

  'Maybe your "warning" is different from other people's,' said Kinugasa.

  'What do you mean?'

  'You tell me. What did you do after you beat the shit out of him?'

  'That's ridiculous.'

  'What's so ridiculous? You kill a woman, you're a pimp, and you beat up your customers. Is it so hard to imagine you might chop them up, too? And you've got no alibi either. You're the one who's ridiculous.' When Satake said nothing, Kinugasa lit another cigarette. 'Satake/ he hissed, blowing smoke in his face. 'Who'd you get to do it?'

  'Do what?'

  'You've got those Chinese guys working in your club. What does the Chinese mob charge for a job like that? What's the going rate these days? Finger-sized bits - like so much sushi - what'd they charge you for that?'

  'You're out of your mind,' said Satake.

  'The weeklies are saying it costs around ¥100,000. That sound right to you? At that rate, you could get ten guys hacked up on just what you walk around with.'

  'I don't have that kind of money,' Satake laughed, amazed that the cop could be so unrealistic.

  'You drive a Benz, don't you?'

  'That's just for show. But I wouldn't throw away my money on something as stupid as that.'

  'You might if you realised what would happen if you're convicted of murder again. This time around they'll go for the death penalty.' When he saw how serious Kinugasa was, Satake knew he'd already decided he was guilty. They really believed he'd killed a man and had somebody cut him up. How was he going to get out of this? Not without a lot of good luck. The spectre of a tiny prison cell made him prickle with sweat again. Noticing how uncomfortable he was, the other detective, who had been quiet so far, spoke up.

  'Satake, has it occurred to you what this must be like for the guy's widow? She works nights in a boxed-lunch factory and still takes care of two kids.'

  'His widow?' he muttered, remembering the woman he'd seen on TV. She'd been a lot prettier than he'd have expected a creep like that to be hitched to.

  'Young kids,' said the detective. 'But you wouldn't understand, not having any of your own. She'll have it rough.'

  'I'm sure she will, but that's got nothing to do with me.'

  'Doesn't it?!' the man barked.

  'That's right.'

  'You can sit here with a straight face and tell me you're not somehow mixed up in this?'

  'I'm telling you I didn't do anything and I don't know anything about it.' Kinugasa was quietly studying his reactions as the exchange dragged on. Sensing that he was being watched, Satake turned to stare at him. An idea was beginning to take shape in his head: maybe it was that woman, the wife, who had killed him. How could she be so calm when she'd just found out that her husband was dead and that somebody had made mincemeat of him? Something about that face on the TV had bothered him, like biting into a grain of sand in the middle of an oyster. He'd seen something written there, something you could never read unless you'd had the same experience - call it a sense of fulfilment. She had the motive. Her husband was running after Anna and spending all his time and money at Mika. He'd only had a glimpse on the tube, but the Yamamotos didn't seem rich. So naturally she'd have hated him.

  'The wife,' he said aloud. 'What about her? Are you sure she didn't do it?'

  This made even Kinugasa flip. 'You worry about your own sorry ass, Satake! She's got an alibi. My money's on you, all the way.'

  So they've already given up on her, he thought, and this guy is looking for me to take the fall. He had to admit that it didn't look good. 'I'm sorry to disappoint you,' he said, 'but I really didn't do it. I swear to you.'

  'Lying bastard,' Kinugasa roared.

  'Fucking cop,' Satake muttered, leaning down to spit under the desk. While he was at it, Kinugasa caught him on the side of the head with a swing of his elbow.

  'Don't mess with me,' the cop warned him. But Satake didn't need any warning: he knew they could pin anything on you if they wanted to. And this time the stakes were high: maybe even his life was on the line. He found himself shaking with rage and fear. If he ever got out of this place, he swore he'd get even with the real murderer. For now at least, he figured that had to be the wife.

  He knew enough about how things worked to realise that this little affair would probably cost him both of his clubs, and the thought nearly killed him. He'd slaved away in the ten years since he'd got out of jail, built up so much, and now to get mixed up in something like this .. . He should have known that summer would get the better of him; it was in the cards, he'd seen it coming.

  It suddenly seemed dark, and looking up he saw that a bank of black clouds had sprung up over Shinjuku. The leaves on the zelkova trees outside were rattling in the wind, a portent of an evening shower.

  -

  That night, in his cell at the detention centre, Satake dreamed about the woman. She was lying in front of him, a pleading look on her face. 'Hospital, hospital . . .' she seemed to be saying. He put his finger in the wounds he'd made on her body, sliding it in up to the knuckle, but the woman seemed not to notice and merely whispered over and over, 'Hospital.' His hand was drenched in blood. He wiped it on her cheek, and as he did so, he realised that the face of this woman, marked with her own blood, had taken on an unearthly kind of beauty.

  'Take me to the .. . hospital.'

  'They can't help you. It's over.' In response, the woman grabbed hold of his bloody hand with startling strength and pulled it toward her neck, as though urging him to kill her quickly. He stroked her hair instead. 'Not yet,' he said.

  The look of utter despair in her eyes made his heart contract with both pity and delight. Not yet. You can't die yet. Not before we come together.... He held her tighter, his whole body slippery with blood.

  He opened his eyes. He was dripping with blood - or so it seemed for a moment until he realised he was covered with sweat. He glanced over at his cellmate, a cheque forger, who lay rigid in the next bunk, pretending to be asleep. Ignoring him, Satake sat up in bed. It was the first time he'd dreamed of her in ten years, and it excited him. He could still feel her lingering nearby. His eyes searched the dark corners of the cell, eager to find her.

  3

  She remembered her first ride on the national railroad, on a winter day four years ago. It was evening and the car was packed. For Anna, who wasn't used to the crowds, it was like being absorbed by a foreign body. Under a relentless assault from elbows and bags, she was driven far into the car. Somehow she managed to find a strap to grab and stood staring out the window at the burnt orange of the winter sunset. As the light flared, the buildings in the foreground seemed to recede into shadow, vanishing from sight as the train passed. She twisted around from time to time, worried that she would miss her stop or that she wouldn't be able to g
et to the door because of the crush of people.

  Suddenly, she realised that voices speaking her own language were rising out of the crowd. Someone nearby was speaking in the familiar tones of Shanghai. Feeling comforted, she scanned the faces around her to see who it was; but then, listening more closely, she realised it was Japanese she'd been hearing, with its various similar sounds. And she felt a stab of real loneliness, the loneliness of the traveller adrift in a foreign country. Though the faces and voices resembled her own, she was alone in a world where no one knew her. When she looked out the window again, the sun had set and she found herself staring at her own reflection in the dark glass: she saw a forlorn young woman in a dowdy coat looking back at her, and the sight filled her with a sense of utter isolation. She had been nineteen at the time. To be sure, this wasn't the first time she'd felt overwhelmed by the economic prosperity of Japan or the frenetic activity of the city, but her loneliness at that moment was like nothing she'd ever felt before.

  If she had come to Japan to learn, as her student visa suggested, she might have been able to put up with these feelings. But Anna had come with the sole aim of making money, and the only tools she'd brought with her were her youth and her beauty. She'd come with great expectations, attracted by the ease of it all, spurred on by the broker's promises of the riches to be earned in Japan; and in the end, it had been this love of ease that had undermined a bright, sensible girl like her. Anna had been a good student at school, and had even thought of going on to university. But now here she was, making easy money just for spending time with Japanese men. She knew there was something sleazy about the whole business, but she couldn't help herself.

  Her father was a taxi driver, and her mother sold vegetables at the market. Every evening, they came home to tell each other about the day's successes, about the money they'd made by cunning and grit. That was the way of the Shanghai wage earner. But Anna felt that she could never report her own successes to her serious, hard-working parents. And here in Tokyo, though she took a secret pride in her Shanghai heritage and her own looks, she usually felt intimidated by the self-confidence of the rich young Japanese women. Self-confidence was something she lacked. It all seemed so unfair. And it was when she felt most frustrated with her situation, most insecure and lonely, that she saw herself as she did that time before - as a frightened country girl lost in the big city.

  During her first months in Japan, she had gone dutifully to the language school recommended by the broker who arranged for her visa, working nights in a club in Yotsuya to support herself. She studied hard and, thanks to her good ear, she was soon able to get the drift of most conversations and communicate in broken Japanese. She also learned how to dress like the fashionable young women she saw in the department stores. Nevertheless, she could never quite shake the feeling she'd experienced that day on the train; no matter how hard she tried to ignore it, it always seemed to be lurking nearby, like a stray cat.

  Still, what mattered was the money. The quicker she earned it, the sooner she could go back to Shanghai, where she planned to get rich running a fashion boutique. Days were spent at the language school, nights at the club. But in spite of all her efforts, she never managed to save much. Prices were high and it cost her more to live in Japan than she'd expected. It seemed as though she'd been here for ever, but she still had less than a quarter of the amount needed to open her shop; at this rate she'd never get home. Anna felt trapped, and the feeling filled her days with a vague anxiety, like a hairline crack that threatens to break up a delicate teacup. She lived with the fear that some day she would break, too. And then she met Satake.

  -

  He was a fairly regular customer at the bar where she worked, a man who was conspicuously generous with his tips despite the fact that he never drank. She noticed that the manager of the club seemed a bit wary of him. Still, they had assigned him one of the most popular girls, and Anna had concluded that he was out of her league. The next time he stopped in, however, he had asked for her to join him at his table.

  'I'm Anna. Pleased to meet you.'

  Satake seemed different from the other customers, who tended to be either self-conscious and shy or too full of themselves. He closed his eyes, as if enjoying the sound of Anna's voice, then opened them and studied the movement of her lips as she talked, like one of the teachers at her Japanese school. It made her nervous, as if she'd just been called on in class.

  'Scotch and water?' she asked. As she mixed a very weak drink for him, she glanced up at his face. He was in his late thirties, swarthy, with close-cropped hair. Small, up-turned eyes and full lips. Though he wasn't exactly handsome, there was a composure in his face that made it appealing. But his clothes were ridiculously loud. A slick black designer suit that ill suited his sturdy frame, topped off with a gaudy tie. A gold Rolex and a gold Cartier lighter. The effect was almost comic, and strikingly at odds with the mournful look in his eyes.

  His eyes. His eyes were like well-water. Anna remembered a photo she'd seen in a magazine somewhere of a dark pool hidden away in a high mountain valley. The water was steel grey, still and cold, and Anna had imagined that its depths sheltered strange creatures in the tangles of water grass. No swimmer would go near a pool like that, nor any boat. At night, the black crater would suck up the starlight, while its strange inhabitants watched unnoticed from the depths. Maybe the man beside her had chosen his shiny costume to keep people from looking into his own dark pool.

  Anna examined his hands. He wore no jewellery, but his skin was smooth as if he'd never done any manual labour. For a man's hands, they were beautifully shaped. She couldn't imagine what he did to earn his living. Since he didn't seem to fit into any of the usual categories, she wondered if he could be one of those 'yakuza' she'd heard of. The thought gave her a half-curious, halfcreepy feeling.

  'Anna?' he said. He put a cigarette in his mouth and studied her face in silence for what seemed ages. There wasn't so much as a ripple on the surface of the pool. No matter how long he looked at her, there was no trace of either approval or disappointment in his eyes. His voice was soft and kind, however, and Anna thought she'd like to hear it again some time.

  Realising he had a cigarette in his mouth, she remembered what she'd been taught and picked up a lighter, but she nearly dropped it again in her rush to play the part of the good bar girl. Her clumsiness seemed to make him relax.

  'No need to be nervous,' he said.

  'Sorry.'

  'I'd guess you're around twenty?'

  'Yes,' Anna nodded. She had turned twenty the month before.

  'Did you pick out this outfit?' he asked, looking at her clothes.

  'No,' she said. She was wearing a cheap, bright red dress that she'd been given by another girl from the bar who shared the same apartment. 'Someone gave it to me.'

  'I thought so,' said Satake. 'It doesn't suit you.'

  Then buy me one that does! - that was the sort of thing she would learn to say only later. That night she had just smiled vaguely to cover her embarrassment. Nor could she have imagined that Satake was amusing himself by picturing her as a paper doll he could deck out in an array of pretty paper dresses.

  'I'm never quite sure what to wear,' she said.

  'You'd look good in just about anything,' he said. She was used to crude, childish customers who said the first thing that came into their heads, but she could tell even then that he wasn't like them. He was quiet for a moment while he finished his cigarette.

  'You were checking me over before,' he said eventually. 'What do you think I do?'

  'Are you in business?'

  'No,' he said, shaking his head with mock seriousness.

  'Then are you a yakuza?' For the first time since she'd sat down, Satake laughed. Anna caught a glimpse of strong white teeth.

  'Not exactly,' he said. 'Though you're not far off. I'm a pimp.'

  'Pimp?' said Anna. 'What does that mean, "pimp"?' Satake produced an expensive pen from his breast pocket and wrote the ch
aracters on his napkin. Anna frowned as she read them.

  'I sell women,' he said.

  'To who?'

  'To men who want to buy them.'

  In other words, a scout for prostitutes. She was reduced to silence, stunned that he could admit this so openly.

  'Do you like men, Anna?' he asked, his eyes on her fingers as she held the napkin. She looked puzzled.

  'I like nice men,' she said.

  'What kind of nice men?'

  'Men like Tony Leung. He's an actor from Hong Kong.'

  'If a man like that wanted you, would you mind being sold to him?'

  'I suppose not,' she said, as if turning the problem over in her mind. 'But why would a man like Tony Leung want me? I'm not even that pretty.'

  'You're wrong,' he contradicted her. 'You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.'

  'Liar,' Anna laughed, unable to believe what she was hearing. She wasn't even among the top ten girls in a little club like this one.

  'I never lie,' he said.

  'But... ' she murmured.

  'You just lack confidence,' he said. 'If you come to work for me, I'll have you believing that you're as beautiful as you really are.'

  'But I don't want to be a prostitute,' she said, pouting slightly.

  'That was just a joke. I run a club, just like this one.'

  But if it was just another club, Anna thought, what was the point? A look of disappointment crossed her face at the thought of more years working in Japan. As Satake watched her, his elegant fingers flicked at the drops of condensation that had formed on his glass, flicking them on to his coaster where they mottled the white paper. Anna had the odd feeling that she'd made the drink just so that he could practice this little stunt.