In the Miso Soup (7 page)

I managed to really tag it on my first official swing, smashing a line drive up the middle, and heard Frank behind me go: “Whoa.” But the ball hit the netting about two meters below the home run sign. I connected well with the next one too, but it was even lower and banged against the steel mesh protecting the pitching machines. Every time I told myself to keep my eye on the ball, it conjured up a picture of Dad. I don’t remember him playing with me that much—he was out of town more often than not, and ended up spending most of his time in Malaysia, where he was helping build a big bridge. But even now I often dream that I’m playing catch with him.

On the third pitch I lined one that would have been good for extra bases, right down the third-base line and nowhere near the home run banner. On the fourth and fifth I hit grounders. After about ten of my twenty pitches, I was so focused on the ball that I’d forgotten all about Frank, but my head was full of my father. My mother seems to have considered him something of a playboy, but that sort of thing doesn’t matter to you when you’re a kid. “I have two regrets,” Dad said when he was dying of lung disease: “Not seeing that bridge completed, and not teaching Kenji how to swim.” Apparently when I was born he told himself that though he’d probably be too busy to play with his son much, at the very least he’d teach me the fundamentals of baseball and swimming. I sometimes think my desire to go to America may have a lot to do with him. He always looked so happy, after having come home for a brief stay, to be heading back to Malaysia. My mother says it was because he had a “local floozy” there, but I don’t think that could have been the only reason. Maybe he did have a woman, and I know he loved his work, but I also think there was something about Malaysia itself that excited him. It was sad when he left, of course, but my father was never more appealing to me than when he was saying “See ya!” and walking off with a suitcase in his hand. I’ve always thought that one of these days I’d like to fly off somewhere like that, with just a casual “See ya!”

I swung up from my heels on the fourteenth pitch, got under the ball, and sent it up at a good angle. Frank shouted “
No!
” and I shouted “
Go!
” but the ball ended up in the netting a good meter below the target. From there on it was all downhill. My anxiety over the prospect of losing my entire evening’s wages destroyed my form, making me swing for the sky, and the best I could do on the remaining pitches was some useless grounders. When, on the seventeenth pitch, I whiffed again, I heard Frank stifle a laugh, and that made me lose my cool entirely. None of the last three balls even made it into fair territory.

“Boy, that was close! I thought I was done for, several times.”

Frank was feigning sympathy for me. I felt I needed to do something. There was no way I could accept having to work for this clown for free, even for one night. I came out of the cage, and before putting my jacket back on I held the bat out to him and said: “Your turn, Frank.”

Frank didn’t take the bat. He played dumb and said: “Whaddaya mean?”

“Your turn to try. Same bet.”

“Wait a minute, nobody said anything about that.”

“You used to play baseball, right? I already hit. Now you’re up.”

“Like I said before, I’m tired. Much too tired to swing a bat.”

I braced myself.

“You’re a liar,” I said.

Sure enough, this summoned up the Face. Little blue and red capillaries appeared on his cheeks, the light went out of his pupils, and the corners of his eyes and nose and lips began to quiver. This was the first time I’d seen the Face head-on and close up, so close I could almost feel Frank’s breath on me. He looked like he was either very, very angry or very, very frightened.

“What are you talking about?” he said, peering at me with those lightless eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re calling me a liar? Why? When have I ever lied to you?”

I looked down at my shoes. I didn’t want to look at the Face. Frank seemed to be trying to arrange it into a sad, hurt expression, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight. I felt pathetic just being associated with a face like that.

“You said you used to play baseball when you were little. You told me that, in the waiting room at the peep show. You said you and your brothers didn’t have anything else to do so you played baseball all the time.”

“So how does that make me a liar?”

“For anybody who’s played it as a child, baseball is a sacred thing. Right?”

“I don’t get you.”

“It’s sacred, more important than anything.”

“Okay, Kenji, hold on a minute. I think I’m beginning to see. I guess you’re saying that if what I said in the waiting room is true, then I should take a turn at the plate?”

“Exactly. Isn’t that what we did as kids? We always took turns batting.”

“All right,” Frank said. He took the bat and stepped into the cage. “Double or nothing, then?”

The guy in the training wear was packing up to leave. Except for the dozing attendant and the bum, we were the only ones on this bizarre concrete plateau in a canyon of love hotels.

“That’s right,” I said. “If you hit the home run target, my fee for tomorrow night also is zero. If you don’t hit it, you pay me the regular fee for both nights.”

Frank nodded, but before putting the coins in the slot, he hesitated and said: “Kenji, I don’t really understand how this happened. All I know is I’m stepping up to swing this bat because you’re in a bad mood. But I just want us to get along. You know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not like I tried to get you mad so you’d take the bet and I wouldn’t have to pay you. I’m not that kind of person, Kenji. I was just playing around, feeling like a kid again. It’s not about money—I’ve got plenty of money. I guess I don’t look like a rich fellow, but that doesn’t mean I’m not one. You wanna look in my wallet?”

Before I could refuse, Frank pulled a wallet from his breast pocket. A different wallet from the one he’d taken out in the lingerie pub, which had been made of imitation snakeskin. This one was of well-worn black leather, and inside was a thick wad of ¥10,000 notes and another of $100 bills. “See?” he said and smiled. What this was supposed to prove, I couldn’t tell you. Genuine rich guys never carry a lot of cash around, and I didn’t see any credit cards in there.

“That’s about 4000 bucks and 280,000 yen. Oh, I’ve got money, all right. You see that now?”

“Yeah, I see,” I said, and Frank strained to make the happiest face he was capable of. His cheeks twisted grotesquely, and he kept them like that until I grinned back at him. I felt goosebumps rise on the nape of my neck.

“All right, then. Here goes.”

Frank took ¥300 out of his coin purse and fed the machine. Then, instead of standing on the artificial turf of the batter’s box, he stepped onto the concrete and stood directly on top of the painted lines of home plate. I had no idea why he was doing that. If he didn’t move before the pitch came, he was going to get hit by the ball. The green light came on, and the machine began to stir. Still standing on home plate, Frank crouched down facing the machine and held the bat out in front of his chest. His grip was wrong too—his right hand below his left. I thought he was trying to be funny. I heard the spring’s final stretch and then the thump as it snapped back. Frank still wasn’t moving, and the ball grazed his ear at 100 kph. Well after the ball had hit the mat behind him, he swung for all he was worth—if you can call it a swing. He pounded the bat against the concrete, as if he were chopping wood, and let out an incomprehensible yowl. The metal bat slipped out of his grasp and bounced up in the air, ringing like a high-pitched gong. When the next pitch came whizzing at him Frank was standing sideways to the ball but still right on top of home plate. I was dumbfounded. I was watching an adult American male stand in the path of a speeding baseball with nothing in his hands. That familiar, everyday concept—the batter’s box—had been transformed into something alien. Frank’s pose had nothing to do with baseball, or any other sport. He squatted there with his head bowed and his fists still locked in the position they were in when the bat flew off—one on top of the other, both pointing toward left field. It was as if he’d been instantaneously freeze-dried. The second ball grazed his back, and I called out to him: “Hey, Frank.” He didn’t even flinch. He was staring at the bluish white concrete floor. A scrap of paper rode a gust of wind through the chain-link fence and danced lazily in the air to the ancient pop song crackling over the loudspeakers. Frank wasn’t even blinking. It was as if rigor mortis had set in. I felt like I’d wandered into a nightmare. One ball after another brushed past Frank and slammed against the mat suspended behind him. The regular, muffled sound it made was like the ticking of time in some alternate world—strangely comical but also painfully real. The sixth ball hit Frank in the ass, but he still didn’t move except to bring his hands in front of his face and peer at them. It was a pose of sorrow and resignation, like someone who’d just confessed to a crime and was awaiting punishment. I began to feel I’d been bullying him and went into the cage to try and put a stop to it all. “This is dangerous, Frank,” I said and put my hand on his shoulder, which was as cold and hard to the touch as the metal bat had been. “It’s dangerous here,” I said again, shaking him. Frank finally looked up from his hands and nodded. His face was turned toward me, but his dead eyes were focused somewhere else, and as I led him from the cage he slipped on a stray ball and fell down. I apologized to him again and again. I felt like I’d crossed a line, done something unforgivable.

“It’s all right, Kenji,” he said when he’d settled into the chair again. “I’m okay now.”

“You want to go get a cup of coffee or something?” I asked.

Frank shook his head, trying to smile, and said: “Let me sit here for a while.”

The homeless man was watching us.

December 30, 1996.

I got up around noon and read the newspaper first thing. It was full of details about the schoolgirl murder.

In the early morning hours of December 28, a restaurant employee in the Kabuki-cho section of Shinjuku, Tokyo, reported to police that on leaving work he had discovered two plastic trash bags containing the dismembered body of a young woman. Police have identified the woman as Akiko Takahashi (17), a second-year student at Taito No. 2 High School and the daughter of Nobuyuki Takahashi (48) of Taito Ward. Evidence suggests that Akiko had been sexually assaulted, and the Metropolitan Police have formed a task force to investigate the case as an apparent rape/homicide
.

Investigators report that Akiko’s torso was found in one bag and her head, arms, and legs in the other. Her face bore several bruises, and cuts and puncture wounds covered her body. It was determined that she had been dead for approximately twelve hours. Her clothing, appointment book, and other personal effects were also found inside the plastic bags, which were discovered at a trash collection site in an out-of-the-way alley. Because of the small amount of blood at the scene, the task force has concluded that Akiko’s remains were transported there after she had been assaulted, murdered, and dismembered at a separate location
.

It is known that Akiko was associated with a group of juvenile delinquents who frequented Kabuki-cho and nearby Ikebukuro. The Nishi-Shinjuku police have interviewed members of the group and learned that Akiko was last seen in the early evening hours of December 27, at an Ikebukuro game center
. . . .

I had finished reading and turned on the TV when the doorbell rang. I opened up to find Jun standing there, dangling a bag from a convenience store. “It’s just instant,” she said, “but would you like some hot-pot noodles?”

“You really think he . . .? What was this gaijin’s name again?”

“Frank.”

“Right. You really think he’s the murderer?”

“I’m not saying that, but . . . I don’t know.”

On TV a psychologist, a criminologist, and a social commentator guy who was supposed to be an expert on high-school girls were holding forth, acting as if nothing in the whole world was beyond their comprehension.

“I mean, I don’t have any actual evidence that he did it. The real mystery to me is why I can’t shake the feeling that maybe he did.”

The thick noodles were delicious. Jun had mixed in some minced meat she’d bought separately. She’s thoughtful like that. Jun has bleached highlights in her hair and piercings in both ears. Today she’d shown up in a black leather miniskirt with a mohair-blend sweater and boots. On TV, the social commentator guy was saying: “As for the baggy leggings and the bleached hair and the piercings, these are all expressions of high-school girls’ rejection of the parameters of adult society.” Jun picked up a tiny clump of minced meat with her chopsticks and said the guy was a fool. I agreed with her. I’m not a girl, and it’s been two years since I was in high school, so I’d never claim to understand even Jun very well. But some of the younger “experts” on TV act as if they’ve got high-school girls completely figured out. You can’t trust people like that.

“Chopping her up, though,” Jun said, “—that’s pretty extreme. It’s like
Silence of the Lambs
, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I do. I think whoever did it must have been influenced by stuff like that. Like you said last night, it’s not a very Japanese way to kill somebody.”

“So did you bring me a picture?”

“A picture?”

“Kenji, you said you’d bring a Print Club photo of the guy.”

“I didn’t get back here till almost three in the morning, after dropping him off at his hotel. He said something you wouldn’t believe last night, at this batting center we went to. Believe me, photos were the last thing on my mind. We went to this batting center and he got all whacked out.”

“What do you mean, whacked out?”

“He suddenly froze up, his whole body. The balls were flying at him and he was facing the wrong way, just squatting there like a statue. It wasn’t just, you know, like he’d never played baseball before or something. It was way beyond that. And when I asked him about it afterward, he told me he’s missing part of his brain.”