The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) (8 page)

Rika shook her head. “Since college is finished for the summer, it will be hard to find them. If the American is in the foreign-exchange program, he may have gone home for the summer.”

“There is a Japanese girl in the group,” Rika’s friend said.  “I think her family name was Hattori.”

“Hattori Seiko-san?” Rika asked.

“Yes, that’s it. Seiko Hattori,” Rika’s friend said.

“Great,” I said, writing down the name. “I wonder if Kunio also engages in
cos-play
. I heard that he dresses in vintage clothing.”

“He was older than me, so I didn’t know him well,” Rika said with a little sigh. “But I have seen him dressed that way. He does look very sexy.”

How many times had women commented on Kunio’s looks? He really had to be something.
Six years your junior
, I reminded myself. Boy, did I feel old.

The moths flew into the lights and were zapped, the bartender ran out of bananas for daiquiris, and the clock’s hands were edging toward eleven. Perhaps seeing the time, Rika reminded her friends that in less than half an hour, the last train to Tokyo would be leaving Zushi Station. After the blue-nailed boy whipped out a small cellular phone to call a taxi to get to the station, I borrowed the same phone to check if Takeo had returned to his house.

Still no answer. I felt a mixture of uneasiness and something close to anger about Takeo’s absence and the locked door. I could walk back over the rocks to his house and wait on the doorstep, but I knew that if I was stuck there all night, I’d be very uncomfortable. As the taxi picking up Rika and her friends stopped on the beach road, I decided to do the sensible thing. I joined the group to take the taxi back to the train station.

What if something bad has happened to Takeo?
I wondered, feeling guilty as we ran for the last train at Zushi Station, Rika’s ankle almost getting sheared as the door closed behind her. But once I was on the train, there was no turning back. We made it to Tokyo Station just before midnight, making sprints in various directions to get on the last subway trains heading home. For a culture so dependent on trains, it seemed unfair that most of them stopped running at midnight.

Life in Japan was challenging, and I knew that I had it easier than most people. Rika and her friends lived with their parents in far-flung suburbs, but I lived autonomously near Sendagi Station in the northeast inner quarter of Tokyo. It was only a ten-minute walk from the station to my one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a prewar house. The flat had the stale warmth of a place that had been closed up for the weekend, so I opened the windows to let in the night air. I had bars on the exterior of the windows, a protection that was probably unnecessary given the extremely low crime rate in my old-fashioned neighborhood, which abutted Yanaka Cemetery. An unchained bicycle had been leaning against the back of the house for the longest time, because nobody knew who had left it there, and to throw it away seemed unkind.

I hadn’t found the beach to be very tranquil, and my time with Takeo had certainly been limited. It was good to be home. I looked around the familiar persimmon-colored room filled with Japanese antiques that I had rescued from the flea market and refinished. An antique child’s kimono hung on one wall, and antique wood-block prints decorated the other. My futon took just a few minutes to roll out of the bedroom closet. I sank into its softness and wondered one last time about why Takeo had not been waiting for me.

I found out the very next morning at eight  o’clock. The telephone by my bed shrilled, and when I picked up the receiver, Takeo’s voice was almost as loud.

“So you’re alive! I was wondering, given the bag of clothes you left on the doorstep. The note said you’d come back, but you did not, so I thought you might have gone for a suicidal night swim.”

“No. I left the bag there because I didn’t want to carry it to the beach.”

“The beach?”

“Your house was locked, so I went to the beach to use the latrine, and then I waited”—I decided to use that verb, instead of ‘passed the time drinking’—”at the bar. I called you twice. Because you still weren’t back by eleven, I took the last train home.”

“We weren’t supposed to meet at the house.”

“Oh?” I asked.

“I wasn’t at the house because I was expecting you to get off at the bus stop near the
manga
shop. Isn’t that what we agreed?”

“I didn’t know that!” I could just picture what had happened. I must have sailed right past him, not looking out the window because I was so consumed with reading
Showa Story.

“After the last bus passed the bus stop at eleven-thirty, I walked home.”

I was positive that neither of us had said anything about meeting there. But now I remembered that as I’d waved at Takeo and run across the street to catch the bus, his mouth had been moving. I hadn’t heard what he’d said. I’d made an awful mistake.

“Did you call out that you’d meet me at the bus stop when I was running to catch the bus?” I asked.

“Yes. Did you forget?”

“I never heard you. I’m so sorry. I did leave a message on your answering machine when I was coming in from Tokyo, but I guess you don’t check your answering machine when you’re out of the house.”

“There’s probably a code that would let me check away from the house, but I don’t know it.”

“Actually, I thought of breaking into your house,” I confessed. “I decided not to because I didn’t want to be the source of any more repairs to that place. You have enough to do.”

Takeo still sounded grumpy. “Yes, I’ll be up on the roof today, and I’ll probably start repainting the interior the day after tomorrow.”

“So I guess you won’t be spending much time in Tokyo this week?” I asked.

“No. I’m just too busy,” he said, and hung up.

All that morning I thought about what had happened. People fell out over misunderstandings all the time. I was beginning to realize that I’d had a lot of such experiences in my life, which could mean only one thing: many of the misunderstandings were my fault.

There didn’t seem much that I could do to mend this particular broken fence, so I crawled out of bed, had my usual pre-breakfast run, and got on with the day. I was planning to take a walk to 1-2-8 Nezu, the location in Kunio’s comic book, to see whether the old school really existed.

The area in question was on the other side of Shinobazu-dori, the main artery running through the neighborhood, along which two Chiyoda Line subway stations, Sendagi and Nezu, were located. I walked in the direction of Nezu, feeling consumed by curiosity. If Kunio lived so close to me, why had he wanted to receive mail all the way over in southwest Tokyo? It could be an issue of status. Having one’s address in Taito Ward was a lot less glamorous than having it in Minato Ward, where Shibuya was.

I stopped at a police box for information about the exact block mentioned in the comic book.

The policeman was eager to talk. “Sure, there once was a school there. They closed it when I was in high school. What you’ll find at that place is a small apartment building.”

I looked at the policeman. He was in his early thirties, I guessed, a little bit older than me, and perhaps eight years older than Kunio Takahashi.

“Do you know someone living in the area called Kunio Takahashi?”

“Not personally… but if he lives here, he should be registered. Shall I check for you?”

“If it’s not too much trouble. I’d guess he lives in the area around the school, if that’s any help. Here’s the spelling of his name.” I held out the comic book, because I didn’t want to attempt to write the complicated
kanji
that made up his name.

“Chome
number eight, right?” The policeman opened a thick book filled with pages and pages of addresses and names, all in very tiny
kanji
pictographic writing.

“I’m not positive.” He was referring to a numbered neighborhood subsection that was part of the school’s address. “Are the Takahashis all listed together?”

“Not at all. Each family entry is organized by the street address. There are probably more than one thousand families in the
chome.
Maybe it will take some time to check for you.”

I suddenly felt guilty. “You have so much to do. I don’t want to trouble you like this . . . not when I’m unsure that this man is based in Nezu.”

“It is your decision,” the police officer said, slapping his book shut.

“Well, I mean, if you do come across it, I would be grateful.”

He sighed. “I’ll look. Come back in two hours.”

In the interim, I decided to walk to the apartment on the site of the old school, following the directions the policeman gave me. Looking for Kunio was like following a Hansel and Gretel trail of crumbs. Or, in this particular neighborhood, it meant following torn-up bits of newspaper, snippets of rotting scallion, and the occasional wayward soft-drink can.

1-2-8 Nezu was really an alley off a street that ran west of the Nezu Shrine. Most of the houses here were old tin-roofed shacks. Cats lounged boldly on the roofs. I wondered what was up there that was so enticing. Perhaps it was just the Japanese custom. I’d never seen an American cat behave the same way. There was no evidence of any school, and I was thinking that the policeman had gotten his facts wrong, because there was only a parking garage.

A small tofu shop stood on the left of the parking garage—in old-fashioned neighborhoods, you could buy fresh tofu made by a specialist—and to the left of that there was an apartment building. Futons hung over the balcony railings on most of the windows, presenting a spectacle of colorful textiles in red, blue, and pink against the grimy stucco building. The top floor’s balcony revealed a futon decorated with a Mars Girl cover. The futon was a good omen, I thought, just the nudge I needed to go investigate the building’s interior.

Fortunately, the vestibule did not lock. A battered gray letterbox was attached with rusty screws to a wall that needed repainting. The labels on the letterbox’s compartments appeared to have been slapped on by the tenants, so the names were shown in styles varying from neat typing to almost illegible scrawls. I had the
Showa Story
comic with me to double-check the
kanji
for the name that I was interested in. I didn’t need to open the magazine, though, because I recognized the clear, block hand-lettering on the label for Apartment 4A.

Takahashi, Kunio.
I could guess without a doubt that his was the apartment with the futon hanging outside it. And because the balcony door behind the futon had been wide open, I could deduce that the artist was in.

I rang the buzzer at 4A, and the door pitched open a little. It seemed to be unlocked. I rang the buzzer again and called out.

“Mr. Takahashi?”

There was no response. Not even after five minutes.

What to do, what to do. I supposed that Kunio Takahashi went out and had left his apartment completely unlocked. It was safe enough to do that in a neighborhood like Nezu. On the other hand, he could be lying inside, alone and injured in some way.

I moved away from his door and rang the buzzer of the one beside it. The peephole darkened, and a voice croaked, “What is it?”

“Ah, I’m trying to locate Mr. Kunio Takahashi.” I straightened my posture, aware of the scrutiny that was going on through the peephole. “Do you know if he lives in apartment 4A?”

“The one who’s
soooo
good-looking?” The speaker had a strange accent that I couldn’t quite place.

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, that one.”

“He certainly does. Just go ahead, ring his bell. Lots of girls do.” There was a hint of world-weariness in her voice, arousing my curiosity. Probably she had no similar interest about me, if Kunio really was getting visitors day and night.

“I did ring, and he’s not answering. But I don’t think he’s out, because the door is ajar. Do you think he might be injured or something?”

“You are persistent.” The door swung slowly open, and I saw, to my surprise, a very odd-looking person.

I was staring at somebody about my age who seemed to possess the sexual characteristics of both a man and a woman. The hair was a blatantly false tangle of lavender acrylic; the face, Kabuki-pale and with sparkling blue eyes; the body, voluptuous, and stuffed into a high-necked blue nylon leotard. A silver lame skirt swept the ground, so I couldn’t examine the person’s feet. This had to be a transvestite. I could understand seeing such a fellow in Roppongi, but not in Nezu.

In my time in Tokyo, I had met many eccentric men, but this one crowned them all. I opened and closed my mouth, aware that I should make some kind of formal greeting, but completely overwhelmed by the fact that the old lady I’d thought I would be talking to was in reality a young man.

“My name is Rei Shimura,” I said. “I’m here because I want to write about Kunio Takahashi.”

“You don’t recognize me.” The man smiled, and it was his large, white, perfectly even teeth that helped me make the recognition.

“You’re the host from Show a Boy… is your name Nicky?” I remembered the man whose voice had been as warming as the sherry I’d drunk.

“I don’t look like Mars Girl all the time, but I’m going to a very important meeting today.”

“Oh! You must be part of Kunio’s
manga
circle. You’re the American! Do you study at Showa College?”

“I used to,” Nicky said. “But the money from the bar’s so good, I decided to take a little vacation from school. I flew over to Korea, and Chiyo-san got the paperwork done so I could have a legitimate work visa. I love Japan. I could live here forever.”

“What about the girl in your group?” I asked. “Seiko Hattori?” His made-up eyes widened. “Have you talked to her, too?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Does she also dress as Mars Girl?”

Nicky chuckled. “No, she’s an animal lover, so she dresses as Mars Girl’s dog, a.k.a. The Bitch. Get it?”

“Yes.” I didn’t smile at his joke. It was jarring after his supreme courtesy toward women at the bar the night before. “So, can I ask you something? Since you work at Show a Boy, are you the one who came up with the idea of using that location as a mailing address?”

“Yep, the name of the comic and the mailing address were my brainchildren.” He laughed as if he thought he was a great wit. “I told Kunio to ask about using the address because I didn’t want her to realize that I had an interest in
manga.
She doesn’t like us having outside work or hobbies.”

“That seems unfair,” I said. “Anyway, I’d like to talk to Kunio. When can you introduce us?”

“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Nicky taunted. “The price of Kunio’s artwork has gone up. Tell your bosses they’re going to have to be serious about wanting him.”

“Of course we’re serious,” I sputtered. “But journalists don’t pay cash for interviews! The payoff will be in the exposure. After this story, your comic is bound to pick up some new readers. What is its print run?”

“About two thousand. We sell at
manga
shops and by subscription.”

“That’s kind of small, isn’t it?”

“Not for a
doujinshi!
We’re one of the most successful amateur groups.”

“My article could increase your press run and do so much for you,” I said rashly. “Introduce me to Kunio, okay?”

Nicky sucked air between his teeth, a Japanese tic meaning “no can do.”

“I haven’t seen him in a while. He went on a trip to see his parents.”

“He came back from that trip. He brought sweets to Chiyo.”

“Really? Well, I haven’t seen him. I went in to water his orchids yesterday. Come to think of it, the place seemed to be rearranged.”

Nicky had a key to the apartment and permission to go inside. I’d struck gold.

“Why don’t we go in to look around?” I suggested. “I won’t be able to rest unless I’m sure that he is all right.”

Nicky rocked back and forth on his heels. “It would be disloyal to my friend to let you inside. On the other hand, if he’s come home, maybe the money is there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I make a lot more money than he does because of working at the club, and I guess that I’m a sucker. I lent him fifty thousand yen to cover the cost of his trip home. He said he was going to bring me the money from his parents. He owed me more from before, too.”

If Kunio was already in financial difficulty, that could be the reason that his phone number was dead. I raised my eyebrows. “We both have an important reason to go in, don’t we?”

Nicky reached onto a crowded table and picked up a key on a Mars Girl key chain. “Just for a minute. I’ll come with you to make sure you don’t try anything funny.”

He shuffled into a pair of Teva sandals to walk the four steps to Takeo’s door. He pushed open the door, exposing a room with all the windows open, so it was drenched with light. White walls were covered by taped-up sketches of scenes featuring Mars Girl. Each page of sketches was the same size as a comic book page. He probably had three books’ worth of illustrations taped to his walls, all in sequence. The overall impression was a cheerful checkerboard in rich colors similar to those of the mural in Show a Boy. The colorful walls stopped only at the room’s small kitchenette—and a half-opened door to a small bathroom.

“Just as I thought. He’s not here,” Nicky said. He slipped off his sandals to walk into the center of the room. Despite his rude language, he had some grace.

“The futon’s hanging on the balcony,” I said, remembering what I’d seen from the street. “That’s got to mean that he slept here last night.” I walked out to the balcony and straightened the futon; even though it had a big clip securing it to the railing, it looked as if the wind had whipped it. Touching it, I was surprised to find the cover was slightly damp.

I returned to the inside of the apartment and noticed that a cordless telephone was lying on the floor. Its base sat on a small table near the door. The telephone number written on a Mars Girl sticker on the base matched the one I’d been given at Animagine. I replaced the receiver and immediately picked it up to check for a dial tone. As I’d expected, there wasn’t one.

A desk was covered with more sketches, and a tansu chest had a few drawers open, exposing papers and art supplies. The low tea table had some newspapers, a Mars Girl
doujinshi
that I hadn’t seen before, and a half-full can of Asahi Super Dry Beer.

Nicky picked up the beer and took a sip. “It’s only slightly flat. He probably opened it last night. So he’s come back to the city and obviously has enough to keep himself in beer, but not pay me back. I haven’t come across more than seven hundred yen.”

“This newspaper has yesterday’s date on it as well,” I said. I picked up the
doujinshi
and began paging through it. Mars Girl was there in all her violet-haired splendor, wearing an outfit just like Nicky’s. I skimmed the boxed illustrations and realized that these were the exact ones that papered the walls of Kunio’s apartment. He must have photocopied his originals to form this sample, which was bound in a simple plastic cover instead of the usual glossy paperback cover.

I traced the story. Mars Girl was living in 1930s Japan, and she was staying with a family who seemed to believe she was a strange cousin from the country. She was asked to prepare rice on an old-fashioned stove, and there the conflict arose, because in outer space, as in modern Japan, electric rice cookers were the norm. After trying a variety of measures of rice and water, Mars Girl slipped off to a restaurant to buy rice. But in the restaurant, she encountered gangsters who were trying to extort protection money from the owner. She used a few swift karate moves to dispense of two thugs; however, the most sinister of them turned out to be a karate master who overpowered her and kidnapped her, taking her away in a cycle rickshaw. The gangster paid off the rickshaw driver in exchange for abandoning the two in the vehicle in an isolated spot under a bridge over the Sumida River. Then, over the course of five pages, Mars Girl’s kimono was unwrapped, and the next illustration was of a steam-powered train traveling through a tunnel. So Mars Girl was getting raped—a typical cartoon fantasy. However, my spirits rose when Mars Girl wrapped her legs around the gangster’s head in a surprise hold and broke his neck. With a bit of soy sauce, she dribbled an outline of the planet Mars on his face as the final humiliation before dragging him down to the river, where she discarded the body. The gory tale was wrapped up by Mars Girl returning to the rickshaw to discover a fresh boxed lunch, which she of course took home and managed to pass off as her own cooking.

“Country girls can take a long time to prepare a meal, but the taste is superb,” the father of the household praised, while Mars Girl insisted—like a typical Japanese deflecting a compliment—that she was a terrible cook.

I was surprised that I could understand as much of the story as I did. I looked up after what felt like just a few minutes and saw that I was alone. Where had Nicky gone?

I called out his name, and got up and traced a path back to his apartment. He answered the knock on his door after a minute.

“So you’re done reading?” he asked, looking at the material in my hand. “What do you think?”

“Well—artistically speaking, the mural is superior to the comic. I’m planning to write about the comics, though. In fact, I could start by interviewing you about how much influence the circle has over the
doujinshi’s
content.”

“I’d be happy to, but like I said, I have a matinee.”

“You’re going to a movie?”

He chuckled. “No. I’m running off to meet my hot Japanese girlfriend.”

“Thanks for sharing so much information,” I said in my most sarcastic manner.

“I’m kind of sorry for Japanese-American women.” Nicky looked at me thoughtfully. “Let’s face it, you can almost pass for Japanese, but your personality’s all wrong. You can’t possibly attract anyone here. You have boundaries, and they don’t. Japanese girls are kinky. They do things you couldn’t imagine.”

I could have said a million things. Nicky, like so many of the foreign men I’d met in Tokyo, believed Japanese women had a peculiar combination of emotional purity and sexual willingness that made them the ultimate mates. I could tell that Nicky wanted to make me upset. He understood the kind of woman I was. Well, understanding women was his job.

“It sounds as if you’re better off as a stripper than a student,” I told him.

“Yeah. I dance for them, and they slip money in my pants. When they take me out before work–we call dates like that
dohan
–they always pay for the hotel rooms, the alcohol, the gifts. Everything!”

“These are career women?” I was incredulous.

“Hell, no! There are no career women here, that’s what’s so great! My girls are the babes you saw in the bar: students, office ladies, housewives. They can be twenty years apart, agewise, but once you’re inside, they all feel the same.”

I couldn’t hide my disgust any longer. My grimace made him laugh.

“Well, I’m going to see the others in the circle soon. I’ll tell them about your interest, and we’ll see if something works out.”

“Kunio’s the one I really want to talk with,” I said.

A loud banging noise came from the hall, startling me.

“Sounds as if Kunio might have come home,” Nicky said.

We went into the dingy hall, and indeed Kunio’s door was resolutely closed. Nicky tried to turn the doorknob.

“Open up!” he bellowed, hitting the door.

There was no answer.

“It doesn’t make sense. The door was unlocked before, and now it’s locked,” I said.

“Did you take my key ring with you on the way out?”

I winced. “Your key ring?”

“Yeah, I carried my key ring in with me, out of habit. It must be in there now. How irritating.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Maybe I could call a locksmith—
“

“Don’t bother. I don’t really care to water his plants anymore, especially since I know that he’s back. And I do have to leave. If I’m late for the matinee, my girlfriend won’t like it. She’s liable to whip me.”

As Nicky spoke, he moved around the room, scooping up a child’s Mars Girl lunchbox and putting in it some subway and telephone cards, money, and a lipstick. He shooed me out of his apartment. From the doorway, he said, “I should be seeing another circle member this afternoon. I’ll ask if that person wants to speak with you. But I’ll ask only if you promise to let me call you. Don’t come creeping around the club again, or this building, okay?”

“Sure.” I handed him my business card.

“I’ll see if I can get you an interview. But if our comic runs in your magazine, we want to be paid.”

“I’ll have to ask the magazine staff about that first,” I said.

“See you.” Nicky brushed past me in a blur of taffeta and sweet perfume, a perfect she-boy on his way to the unknown meeting spot. It was only when he was halfway down the stairs that I realized I was still holding the Mars Girl prototype comic. The gap under Kunio’s door was too slim for me to slide it back.