Kamakura Inn Read online

  Now he ceased his hissing and tapped on the desktop with his fingernails. “Here is your new assignment,” he said.

  Aoki was assigned to a homicide case being run by an inspector whom he knew slightly.

  On the third floor the desks of his former team were unoccupied; his men had been scattered far and wide to other divisions and offices across Tokyo. For the moment Aoki kept his cubicle, but he spent much of the day in another being briefed by his new colleague and reading up on his new assignment: the murder of a moneylender by a businessman. He’d been slotted back into a case about as routine as they came.

  The inspector running the case, Natsumi, looked at Aoki with a certain sympathy. Over seventeen months, it would’ve taken a miracle to keep the existence of the Fatman investigation totally under wraps. Of course, stuff had leaked out, and yesterday’s disbanding of the team had been a crystal-clear message to inside observers.

  Throughout the day Aoki was on automatic pilot, going through the motions, doing it by memory—all the defensive clichés of the experienced detective who’d been terminated from a case that he’d been deeply committed to. Hazily, he’d remembered his wife, assisted by his father, showering him and putting him to bed last night; their quiet, speculative voices as he’d finally faded out. He’d left without breakfast. His father had already gone out on his early morning walk, and Tokie said nothing about his drunken homecoming; naturally, they knew something had happened.

  After going off duty, Aoki went to the same bar in the Ginza and gazed again at Mount Fuji. In the early days of his marriage, he’d told Tokie that one day they’d climb the mountain together, to see the sunrise. Somehow, the hope and intimacy of those days had slipped through Aoki’s fingers.

  There was no one in the bar he recognized. He curtly dismissed a hostess who offered her company, then sat on a barstool, drank beer, and smoked, surrounded by noise and vivacity that, for him, could’ve been on another planet.

  It hit him like a spasm of pain. He had lost his face. After the seventeen months of massive effort, of driving his men to, and beyond, their limits, the case’s abandonment had made him look ridiculous—in his eyes, at least. Kicks in the face from the system came with the job, but he’d never had to deal with anything like this.

  Did the Fatman know what a narrow escape he’d had? He would know—though did “narrow escape” accurately describe the situation? Aoki’s face muscles felt as tight as braided steel. He’d become so immersed in the case that he’d forgotten its sponsors were a breed who always kept their options open.

  He shook his shoulders, stubbed out the cigarette, and looked at his watch. Tokie and his father would be sitting down to dinner, a meal he was rarely home for. His wife prepared delicious meals: simple, refined, and traditional, much appreciated by his father, who valued all things traditional. Ten years ago the old man, an associate professor of literature at Tokyo University, had retired. These days he lived his life by a kind of cultural calendar. Right now, it was the Kabuki theater season, and tonight he and Tokie had tickets for a play.

  Aoki never accompanied them. It wasn’t to his taste, and he didn’t have the time, nor was it his world. He had gone straight from college into the metropolitan police and, in due course, had been stamped out of its mold. Clearly he didn’t take after his father—more after his earthy, pragmatic mother. Three years since she’d died. The last month she’d been in a nursing home, and every night he could get off, Aoki went out to spoon-feed the old lady mushed-up delicacies from Tokie, the tiny amount of food his mother wanted. In the lengthy periods between spoonfuls, she told him things about her rice-farmer parents, whom he’d never known, talking softly, laughing quietly at the memories of the long-ago, lost life, wanting him to know them. On the other side of the bed his father sat in silence, already grieving. Yet in forty-two years of marriage, in Aoki’s experience, the two had never seemed to communicate except on day-to-day household matters. She died leaning forward to take a spoonful of soup from Aoki.

  Tokie’s father, a classmate of the senior Aoki, had also been a professor—of arts, at Kyoto University. Tokie had been a high school art teacher. The two old professors got together, a match was made, and Aoki, at age thirty, and Tokie, at twenty-five, were married. Each of them had been amenable to it. Several years later it had occurred to Aoki that his father had been choosing a daughter-in-law as much as a wife for his son. Tokie’s father had died five years ago.

  Aoki squinted his eyes against the drifting cigarette smoke in the bar. He hadn’t had time to think about his marriage in the past seventeen months.

  Would his wife and father go to the Kabuki tonight? In view of his unexplained behavior last night, they might not. He hoped they would.

  At nine o’clock he took the train to Kamakura. A young man sitting opposite caught his eye and bowed in his seat. “Aoki-san,” he said.

  The inspector looked at him blankly, then recognized the young fellow, who had hair down to his shoulders. Two years ago, he’d been in a karate class that Aoki and one of his colleagues had given at a club for youngsters from poor families. “Shimazu-san?” The young man nodded. “How’s it going?”

  The young man stood up to get out at the next station. “I’ve got my black belt, thanks to you.”

  “Congratulations. “

  The young man bowed low and left the train.

  At Kamakura, taking his jacket off, Aoki walked home. Compared to the previous night, he was sober. The bonsai trees had been set back in place. Tokie must’ve just watered them, and the velvety moss around the miniature roots was damp, the tiny foliage sprinkled with moisture. One was missing. Killed in action.

  His family wasn’t home. He took a shower, then sat in the kitchen, an icy can of beer in hand, remembering the midmorning call from Assistant Inspector Nishi, who was also having difficulty letting the case go. Aoki couldn’t offer Nishi any consolation.

  Tokie had left him a meal on the usual shelf in the fridge, but he ignored it and took out another can of beer.

  Soon Aoki went to bed and fell into a deep sleep, the air conditioner humming in his ears. In his dream, the case files were before him, and he was looking at them, one by one, each a documented brief for the district prosecutor. The Fatman was standing in the bedroom, watching him; then the ex-governor turned and walked out, his broad back shaking with silent laughter.

  Aoki jerked awake and listened to Tokie’s quiet breathing beside him. Home from Kabuki.

  The next day Aoki and a sergeant, nearly sixty and close to retirement, went by train to Yokohama to talk to a witness and take a statement in the moneylender case. The witness lived in an old part of town, and they called at the local police kiosk to pick up a uniformed officer to guide them to the address.

  Two more days went past. Aoki was now working regular shifts: from 8:30 A.M. to 5:15 P.M. the first shift day, then a twenty-four shift from 8:30 A.M. to 8:30 A.M. the following morning, followed by a day off. Still, he continued to come home at erratic hours. He didn’t see Superintendent Watanabe.

  Each night that week his father and Tokie went to another play with their prebooked tickets. On Thursday morning Tokie said, faint hope in her voice, “Won’t you come with us tonight, Hideo? Probably we can buy an extra ticket. “

  “Yes, please do,” his father added.

  Aoki shook his head.

  On Friday night, he and Tokie made love for the first time in a month. Friday night was their usual night for lovemaking, but he hadn’t been home the previous three. By tacit agreement, on Friday nights, his father usually went to a nearby hall to play Go, coming home at 11:00 P.M. His delicacy and the thin walls of the small flat made it a convenient arrangement.

  Afterward, lying there in the dark, Aoki spoke at last. “The case is over. The high-ups have decided it’s not to go ahead.” His voice was flat. His wife put her hand on his arm but didn’t ask this taciturn husband why. She had ten years’ experience at the edge of his world, and of him, but
he knew that she’d think about it, and probably discuss it with his father.

  On Saturday he had a day off and read the newspaper, feeling restless and unemployed.

  Ah. He turned a page and there was a big picture of Tamaki, smiling benignly at the public. The article said that the ruling party’s power broker had reemerged as a candidate for the prime ministership, with the new support of several factions. Grimly, Aoki stared at the photograph. Yeah, the Fatman had played an unexpected card, upstaged the faction that had been gunning for him. Not an avid newspaper reader, Aoki read every word of the article. “Fatman” was not used once by the journalist in the piece. Nor was there a hint of the case against him having been dropped, which was quite understandable, as there’d been nothing in the press about a case in the first place.

  Laying the paper down, Aoki saw that his father was watching him over the top of his own paper. “I’ve read that article,” the old man said. His father was a gentleman of the old school, and the comment was the maximum extent of his intrusion into his son’s affairs, but the way he said things gave them a wealth of meaning. Clearly Tokie had told him what had happened.

  That afternoon, Aoki, dressed in casual clothes, walked down the street, passing the temple. His father walked for an hour each morning, then took a shorter walk in the late afternoon; the temple was one of his short ones. The old fellow was familiar with every hill, temple, and narrow street in Kamakura.

  Aoki went to a bar, ordered a Heineken, and sat watching a baseball game on television—except he wasn’t watching it, he was seeing Tamaki’s photographed face.

  Aoki was a pragmatist, like his mother. What came to him—in his police life, in his sparse life beyond that—he accepted. He took orders and worked hard and efficiently. Whatever way something finished, he went on to the next task, the next stage, but this time was different. He was beginning to realize just how different. He frowned at the TV screen. Deep in the heart of the Tamaki investigation, he’d been alert, as fine-tuned as he’d ever been. Frequently he’d been exhausted, but even amid the frustration and setbacks they’d encountered he’d felt totally involved—elevated to a higher level.

  Now he felt dazed, and drained.

  He went home to dinner. Saturday night. Tokie had made special dishes, but he barely touched each, despite her gentle prompting. She and his father discussed one of the plays they’d seen during the week.

  After a restless night, Aoki slept in on Sunday. Rising at ten o’clock, he padded across the cool tatami mats to where Tokie had left a breakfast tray waiting for him. She was in an alcove off the living room, seated on a cushion, making broad inky strokes with a brush on large sheets of white paper. Several sheets were scattered beside her. He stood watching for a moment, and she turned and smiled at him, the brush poised. He noticed that she had on a blue kimono, which she often wore on Sunday mornings to do this work. He smiled back at her.

  This morning there was a breeze from the sea, and the humidity had temporarily dissipated. His father was still out, possibly sitting in the park after finishing his walk, gazing at trees, at nature, in the careful, absorbed way that puzzled Aoki.

  Aoki had woken again in the night, just as he’d opened a file on a Yokohama apartment project where two witnesses had provided sworn statements that Tamaki’s secretary had negotiated a substantial “commission” for the Fatman in return for his influencing a planning approval. It was one of the twenty-three documented charges that he’d been ready to brief the prosecutor on. The secretary, a sharklike guy of about forty, had been investigated by Nishi. Over the last year and a half, the fellow had been especially active in dirtying his hands: the Fatman’s shadow and bagman.

  Seventeen months. Eating his breakfast, Aoki brooded on this. His wife worked on in silence. The brushstrokes made a soft whisper, if you listened hard, though what Aoki heard this morning was a kind of buzzing in the air, as if something more were coming down on him.

  ~ * ~

  On Monday morning he accompanied Inspector Natsumi on a revisit to the scene of the moneylender’s murder. Aoki had suggested to his colleague that some details needed checking. The crime scene was still sealed, and a smart young constable from the local police kiosk saluted them on their arrival and departure.

  Back in his office, looking up and across the heads and desks, he saw Superintendent Watanabe standing in front of the elevator staring at him. Abruptly, the superintendent turned away.

  It hit Aoki that he was under observation. Frowning, he sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette. Someone must be worried about him, nervous about what he might do next. His brief display of temper and the aberrant walkout and drinking session: That impromptu and singular dissent and defiance had made them look at him in a new light. An alarm bell had rung—probably in Watanabe’s mind. Could a minor thing like that change your life? He knew that it could; in the world of the metropolitan police, something like that was not minor.

  He rang Nishi, who’d been reassigned to the Fourth Criminal Investigation Division. He hesitated before speaking, then said, “Pass the word. Everyone should keep their heads down and their mouths zipped. The brass are nervous, watching for a false move. Don’t ask me why. What could, or would, any one of us do?”

  The plainest thing about it was that ex-governor Tamaki had obviously swept back into favor with a vengeance.

  Again Aoki heard that buzzing in his brain. He wondered if he was becoming unwell, if it was a kind of delayed nervous shock. Certainly his energy was failing him, and he was back to smoking thirty cigarettes a day.

  ~ * ~

  That night, as he sat at the dining table, the distant buzzing in his brain without warning became a crescendo. Something happened to his face. It was rigid. The muscles in the side of his neck locked in a painful spasm, and he gripped his neck. Tokie and his father, chopsticks frozen in midair, eyes wide, were staring at him.

  The spasm was passing, as though something in him were unblocking, and a violent gasp burst forth. “They’re letting Tamaki off. Before, they wanted to get him. Now they see him as prime minister. One of the greatest crooks I’ve ever heard of. Up to his neck in corruption, even in murder. A partner with the yakuza. And we had him cold!”

  Aoki was staring blindly past their shocked faces at the small thicket of bamboo framed in the window. He was shouting now, unaware of his violent gestures; a bowl of pickles went flying across the table. “The director general is corrupt. My boss is corrupt. Everyone who stopped it is corrupt. My team is dishonored. The politicians, the cunts have screwed us…“

  It was like spasmodic vomiting that couldn’t be stopped, and his wife and father, faces stricken, were gazing at a new person, into another world. A man who never discussed his work was graphically laying it out for his family, these gentle, cultivated souls, ripping open his mind for them, spilling the guts of the Fat-man case, voiding his own of the misery and humiliation. Finally, he plunged his face into his arms on the low table and sobbed like a child.

  Tokie rushed to him and put her arm around his shoulders. Tears were streaming down her face. His father came to his side and laid a hand on his arm.

  The sobs shaking his shoulders quickly subsided. Aoki lifted his head and rubbed with a handkerchief at his face, instantly red with shame. Here was a man who’d never shed a tear in adulthood, weeping like a schoolgirl. Another disgrace.

  ~ * ~

  The next morning, riding the train into town, Aoki saw the scene afresh, and it seemed unbelievable. He knew the case had gone down deep in him, but it had gone down to bedrock. He shook his head in his embarrassed disbelief. Even so, he was sure that in the past he would’ve surmounted such a defeat. Why not now? Aoki tired hard to understand the point he’d reached—in the police, in his life—but he couldn’t, and it made him deeply uneasy. He had been too ashamed to look his wife and father in the eye as he left.

  Glancing at the salarymen’s faces in the carriage, he realized that ex-governor Tamaki was in his brain
like a tumor, and there was no treatment that he could think of.

  That day he and Inspector Natsumi finished off the brief for the prosecutor on the moneylender case, and Aoki bowed to his colleague and went back to his cubicle. An hour later, he reported to Superintendent Watanabe.

  “This is tragic,” Watanabe said, as the inspector entered the room. Aoki looked at his boss without comprehension. “Ah, you haven’t heard. Sergeant Saburi took his own life—thirty minutes ago. Shot himself in the park outside his apartment building. “ Aoki blinked, and his head went back. “Tragic, and most unfortunate in its timing. Of course, it has nothing to do with the case. He was having great marital difficulties. It is to be treated as an accident while cleaning his pistol.”

  Cleaning it in the park? Aoki stood there, rigid. Twelve months into the Fatman’s case, Saburi’s wife had left him, taking their two children, and refused all attempts at reconciliation. She’d been pleading with him to transfer to the uniformed branch. Aoki had observed the sergeant more closely, but his demeanor and his efficiency hadn’t seemed affected.