Girl in a Box (18 page)

Mrs. Ono spoke briefly with the priest, while I bought incense for my aunt and then spent some time studying the needle display, trying to figure out where I could stick the unbroken needle I'd brought with me.

“Are you ready?” she asked me, taking not just one but ten needles out of a strawberry pincushion in her purse. When she saw me look at the needles in awe, she added, “I'm making offerings for the whole alterations department.”

“Why is there tofu?” I asked.

“As you know, tofu is very soft. It's easy for the needle to pass through. So it's a good place for us to insert our needles.”

“What happens to all of it?” I noticed the priest carrying away one tray, and another ceremoniously kneeling to place a new tray of the soybean curd in its place.

“The priest recites a sutra that expresses a prayer for the needles passing from active life. After that, the tofu is burned.”

I paused. “Wouldn't the needles survive the fire?”

“Yes, of course. They are kept in a sacred place in perpetuity. It is like a cremation for a person; here, they receive respect and a peaceful place to rest forever.” As Mrs. Ono spoke, she neatly stabbed each needle she'd brought into place. I followed suit with my needle, which slid softly into the tofu.

“Very good. Now I shall pray.”

Mrs. Ono knelt before the altar for a long time, her grayish-black head bowed. I had to squeeze in between some other women, because the space was so tight. As I tucked my feet under my thighs in the classic
seiza
position, I thought about the meaning of the day; how interesting it was that in Japan the instruments of work, such as needles, were honored rather than people. No matter how intently the seamstresses and nurses around me were praying, I was sure that their working lives would continue to be tough. I'd been working for only a week at Mitsutan, and already I was exhausted; I could imagine the situation of people like Mrs. Ono, who had spent almost fifty years on a craft. I'd seen how gnarled and rough her fingers were when she'd clasped her hands in prayer.

“Will you be my guest for lunch? Please, I insist,” I said twenty minutes later, as we reentered the rainy streets of Asakusa.

“We must take care of our clothing,” Mrs. Ono fretted. “I can't imagine what we can safely consume.”

After some looking, during which time the rain picked up, we decided that our best bet was a sandwich shop on a lane that ran parallel to Nakamise-dori. It was so warm inside that the windows were steamed up, and the air was rich with the scent of good coffee. We each ordered a lunch set; a set of finger sandwiches, a cup of corn soup, and a cup of tea. It felt odd to me to eat nouvelle western food while wearing a kimono, in a casual restaurant with a television mounted close to the ceiling, but Mrs. Ono ate quietly and zealously.

“Have you had a very busy year in the alterations department? Is this the reason you brought the needles?” I asked.

She shrugged, her small shoulders barely rising under the stiff kimono. “Not especially. These days, there are so many special sections, like Daisy and Rose, for ladies who don't fit into the standard clothing. Not so many alterations for us to do these days, but still, we are employed, and the store continues to profit. I'm quite lucky.”

“Is that so?” I had no idea how to judge the high profits that I'd seen reported when I'd glanced at the K Team's computer each day. I kept notes and sent the figures by e-mail to Michael, nevertheless. The OCI wanted numbers; the analysts in Virginia were supposed to be able to understand what they meant.

“Just a minute. The news!” She lifted her chin toward the television, which she was facing. I turned my chair to look, because my obi was so tight that I couldn't twist my body. By the time I turned around, the television was showing a long delivery truck bearing the Mitsutan name surrounded by ambulances and police cars. It was parked in the alley that ran behind Mitsutan—the area I passed through to get to the locker room each morning.

“Oh, it can't be!” Mrs. Ono exclaimed as the film footage showed next the store's general manager, Enobu Mitsuyama, bowing and greeting customers.

“But it is,” I said with a growing feeling of dread. “That's our
shacho
, Mitsuyama-san.”

“Sssh,” she said, despite the fact she was the one who'd started talking. Now they were showing another shot of the van, and another Mitsutan employee—a man I didn't recognize, wearing a dark suit, standing at a podium before a crowd of journalists clicking cameras.

I listened as hard as I could, but the din of the lunch customers, plus the fact that Japanese wasn't my first language, made it impossible for me to understand what had already had been said. There was news at Mitsutan, and from what Mrs. Ono had already expressed, it wasn't good.

When the show switched to a commercial, Mrs. Ono turned to me. Her mouth was trembling. “I can hardly believe it. And just after we prayed.”

“Is the store being sold? What was the news?” I was tripping over myself to learn what I hadn't been able to understand.

“It's very bad news.” She dropped her gaze downward, in the same manner she'd done in the temple. She was praying. After a minute, she spoke again.

“I'm especially sorry for you, Shimura-san. I know that Fujiwara-san was a mentor to you and all the new salespeople who just finished customer training.”

“Something happened to Mr. Fujiwara?”

“I'm afraid so. He was found dead in one of our store vans. And the police are saying that he may have been the victim of foul play!”

On the way home from Asakusa, I found myself shivering with a mixture of sorrow and fury. It wasn't that I cared at all about Mr. Fujiwara personally—in fact, I had considered him the ringleader in my harassment in the
rotenburo.
But I had known, through my eavesdropping, of a probable murder—and I had not figured out that he was at risk.

But I'd assumed after listening to the conversation that the silent person on the other end of the phone was Masahiro Mitsuyama's son, Enobu. I'd chosen to believe that the tense conversation was a family matter; the
sempai
father talking to his
kohai
son. But of course, Masahiro Mitsuyama would have felt free to rail against anyone in the store.

I needed to tell Michael as soon as possible what had happened. On my subway ride home, I whipped out the cell phone and began patiently pressing the combination of keys that allowed me to text-message in English. It was a cumbersome procedure, but it was the only way. I wrote CUST SERVICE BOSS FUJIWARA MURDRD MOR LATR, then sent it.

I was too strung out and shocked to go all the way to my aunt's house, so I went straight home; took off the kimono by myself; and sat on the edge of the bed in my underwear, still shaking, while the tub filled in the bathroom.

I was no stranger to death, but that didn't make things feel any easier. For the first time, I had actual knowledge of a crime in advance of its occurrence; and if nobody believed me, well, I had the recording on file.

There was something else I had to feel bad about: Mr. Fujiwara's phone call, the one to me that I'd avoided answering. If I had answered, I probably would have found out his plans for the evening, maybe even the person he was going to see.

The call he'd placed to me, however, was a danger in itself. Both Miyo and Mrs. Okuma knew he'd called. Miyo had been the one to give me the handwritten message, with his phone number. Miyo might tell a lot of people; I remembered how quickly she'd ratted on me to Mrs. Ono about my taking my uniform home.

I went into the bathroom, turned off the taps, and sank into the hot water. It was almost too hot, but I felt I deserved to suffer a bit. After a minute, my muscles began to relax, and I slowly traced over everything I remembered about Mr. Fujiwara. He'd been married; I remembered his little story about his wife as a typical housewife shopper. Maybe his wife knew he was after younger women, and she'd gotten revenge. That—or he had been the person being threatened by Masahiro Mitsuyama.

I wondered about all this as I lay back in the bath, fragrant with Hakone bath salts that had been in the vanity, most likely left behind by an earlier spy. It was the nicest leftover I'd found; there were also less savory things, like some dirty sweat socks, an opened box of condoms, and two porn magazines. I decided these things had belonged to Tyler Farraday, not Michael.

The phone hanging on the wall near the toilet rang. I eyed it, wondering if it was Aunt Norie. I'd left her a quick message that because the weather was so bad, I wanted to come to dinner a day later. I hoped she wasn't calling to protest.

I let the phone ring until it stopped, and then it began ringing again. Growing weary of the noise, I stood up in the tub, reached for the cordless receiver, and clicked it on.

“I got your message,” Michael said. “Can you talk?”

“Yes! Have you gotten in touch with the police?” I asked, stepping out of the bath and beginning to dry myself—awkwardly, since the receiver was cradled uncomfortably between my ear and shoulder.

“No way, nohow,” Michael said. “Agency rules.”

“But you cooperated with the Japanese government before. Remember? I was there with you—”

“Not the police. We dealt with their department of state, and that's who they thought I was, too. And that was a secret matter, as is this one.”

I took a deep breath. “I know I signed secrecy agreements, but I can't help feeling this is really serious, us knowing what we do and just standing by.”

“It boils down to this: the integrity of this project will be ruined if anyone in Japan learns you planted bugs. Not to mention that you'd probably go to jail.”

“And what if I don't talk? How can I keep working in the department store, knowing that the guys on top are responsible for a killing?”

“We don't know that yet.” Michael's voice sounded strained. “Still, you've convinced me that the risk has elevated.”

“Which means…”
Please, not that I'm being sent home.

“I'm flying over to join you ASAP. It's been cleared, and I'm just waiting till morning, when I can get my airline tickets and some orders from State.”

“So you're coming to bring me home?” Now my anguish was turning to anger. “Because I'm inexperienced and I screwed things up, or because you're afraid of what I might say?”

“No to all three,” Michael said. “I wish I could tell you more, but you'll have to wait until we meet face-to-face.”

“And when you're here…what's going to happen? Are you moving into the apartment?” Now that I knew Michael wasn't sending me home, I couldn't help feeling relief, tinged with anticipation.

“No,” Michael said crisply. “I'll book myself into some lodgings nearby and will make the contact after I arrive. Don't find me; I'll find you.”

“But—how are you going to pull it off? What are you going to do, go to the store and pretend to be a customer? I can't possibly keep a straight face if you come into the K Team office.”

“The store's your territory. I wouldn't dream of encroaching, and I'll steer a wide berth around you as well. I'll explain my story once I'm there.”

“So you'll text-message me or something about when to meet?”

“Or something.” Michael's voice was tight. “Be careful over the next few days, okay? More careful than you've been.”

“How so?”

“Watch your back. Suspicious vehicles, people following you, the kind of stuff you learned in Surveillance 101.”

Michael sounded like a broken record or, to be more up-to-date, a skipping CD. I thought about the recording that held the voice of Masahiro Mitsuyama talking for just a few minutes, but that had not, since then, picked up any more sound. This situation made me wonder if he'd simply stopped wearing that pair of shoes—or if he had detected the bug.

I'd thought I'd done a good job with the bugging, but there were a lot of things I'd done that I'd thought were good but were turning out to be all wrong.

While putting on my black uniform jacket the next morning, I found the note with Mr. Fujiwara's message, which I'd wanted to forget. Now, as I looked over the message, I realized that the phone number was not from inside the Mitsutan store; it was an outside number, with an area code, 090, typically used for cell phones. Mr. Fujiwara could have called from the building, using the cell; or he could have been somewhere else. I went inside one of the toilet stalls at the far end of the locker room and shifted the message from my jacket pocket to the inside lining of my purse. This number would be something to follow up on later.

I came out of the stall, washed my hands and regarded myself in the mirror. My overly made-up face looked back, its paleness exaggerated even more by the austere black uniform.

In the West, the color of death was black; in Japan, it had once been white, long ago, when Buddhist beliefs were more prevalent, but it had changed to black over time. There was an entire department on the fourth floor devoted to women's mourning suits with prices starting at 49,000 yen. I didn't own a mourning suit; to buy one, I thought, was to be a real pessimist. But thinking over my life patterns in Japan, I had to admit that I probably should have my own, instead of always borrowing from Aunt Norie.

I still needed to return her kimono. When could I do it? I made up my mind to do it right after work. During my lunch break, I made it out to the street and used my cell phone to call Aunt Norie to double-check about supper that night.

“We're very excited to see you, but I apologize for not being so well prepared,” my aunt said. “I'm a bit busy, so I'll stop in at one of the
depaatos
to pick up some of the meal.”

I cringed at the possibility that she could catch me in uniform, but then realized that she was probably talking about a department store in Yokohama. But if she was busy, she shouldn't have to shop for food at all.

“Let me bring something from Tokyo, to save you the trouble,” I offered.

“No, you won't know what to buy. If you do bring something, don't get it from Mitsutan.”

“Why?” I asked cautiously. Had she gotten wind of where I worked?

“One of the store managers was killed. I heard on the television news this morning. That means the store workers will be very distracted. And with a police investigation going on, fresh food deliveries may be delayed. We could suffer food poisoning.”

“I would gladly pick something up at Mitsukoshi,” I suggested, wanting to change the subject.

But Aunt Norie wouldn't be deterred. “It's a terrible situation, really. The
yakuza
have their fingers in everything.”

“Oh? Have the police said that gangsters are responsible for the executive's death?” I could never possibly catch all the news that my aunt did.

“Well, what they said is, it appeared to be the work of violent ones, and you know what that means.”

I finished the call, in the end agreeing to my aunt's request for me to stay overnight. Since dinner was going to be served at nine-thirty, the plan made sense. I remembered Michael's order for me to watch my back. That was a lot easier to do if I moved between cities during the day than at night.

As I walked the Ginza, watching everywhere for spies, I thought more about my aunt's casual mention of the link between organized crime and department stores. I did recall reading about gangsters in the historical overview of Japanese retailing that Michael had given me. Apparently many department stores still paid off gangsters around the time of their annual stockholders' meetings, mainly to suppress any hard questions that the shareholders might ask of the company. Any shareholders who did ask questions would be shouted down or threatened by the bad guys in suits. It seemed remarkable to me that
yakuza
could walk brazenly into a stockholders' meeting; but the fact was that many
yakuza
had offices with their emblem on the door and gave huge, publicized charitable donations in times of trouble, like the Kobe earthquake.

Perhaps Mitsutan was paying gangsters off to be able to do business as usual; gangster involvement might even have something to do with the sky-high profits. I supposed there could even be gangsters at the store working within the management and sales force. I knew the store had a slight shoplifting problem; what if it mostly came from a few employees, who were, say, filching the latest handbag in order for it to be copied and sold on shady backstreets?

My thoughts flitted for a second to Miyo. There was a stereotype that the
yakuza
were among the few Japanese institutions that had warmly welcomed Korean people—but it might be just a story. There were conflicting stories: for instance, that the
yakuza
were descended from samurai: my family's social class.

Yakuza
and labor—now that was a combination worth pondering. According to the news I'd seen on television that morning, Mr. Fujiwara had been rolled up in a quilted blanket used for padding crates, to keep them from scraping against elevators and walls as they were transported through the stores. The choice of the blanket and van would seem to indicate that the person doing the work was involved in a cruder job at Mitsutan, surely not one of the executives or someone in the sales force. But the loading dock was adjacent to the building holding Mitsutan's annex, which housed the employees' locker rooms and cafeteria, plus many administrative and storage rooms. Closest to the front was Personnel, the place where I'd started my brilliant career a little over a week before.

I looked at my watch. I still had fifteen minutes of my break. Impulsively, I left my post at Wako and turned the corner into the alley that ran between Mitsutan and the annex. The van that had held Mr. Fujiwara was gone, although the area where it had stood was roped off with tape. This meant that traffic into and out of the parking garage was proceeding slowly, at the direction of numerous sign-wielding store security officers.

I walked into the annex building, swiping the slot next to the door with my employee ID. Then, instead of going to the restroom or cafeteria, I walked into Personnel.

Miss Yamada, the secretary who had helped me before, looked at me blankly.

“Do you need to make an appointment?”

“No. It's—I'm Rei Shimura. You were kind to me a couple of weeks ago, when I came here for the interview.”

Her hands flew to her mouth. “I'm sorry. Of course it's you! I just—I guess I didn't recognize you in the uniform.”

Wearing Mitsutan black, with our hair in a minute range of shades, with one ring per hand and pale pink polish, we all looked the same. I smiled at her, thinking that my cover was a total success.

“It's good you came, actually. I have something for you that would have gone upstairs by interoffice mail, but I'll just get it for you. I'd set it aside because your file is gone.” She jumped up and rummaged around in a cabinet.

“What do you mean about my file?” I asked.

“Someone came by and said her boss requested it. I was going to make a photocopy, but she wanted the original.”

“Really?” Who had wanted my file, and what was he looking for? “Do you know the secretary's name, by any chance—”

“No, but don't worry about it. It's not your boss, Mrs. Okuma—that's the important thing.” She went into an office and came out with a small brown envelope. “I just remembered where Aoki-san said to put your
meishi
. And I thought the spelling was right, but now I see your name tag, I'm afraid I made a mistake.”

She was talking about business cards, with the Mitsutan three-diamond crest on the top, and my name on the center of the card, with the K Team phone and fax numbers below. How exciting to have my own business card, but as she said, my first name was spelled wrong: it was the more ordinary form of “Rei” that meant bow, not the unusual “Rei” my parents had chosen for me, a
kanji
character that meant a crystal-clear sound.

Rei who bowed, though, was perfect for a department store. I could live with it, for the time being.

“Please don't worry about the business card. It's no problem. In fact it will be easier for the customers to read,” I said.

“Great. And by the way, is everything okay? Is there a reason you need to see Aoki-san?”

“Oh, my job with the K Team is fantastic. I'm very happy there,” I said quickly.

“I'm glad you're comfortable. I wasn't sure if there was a problem when you came in. As you have heard, there's been no girl before you lasting longer than six months.”

“Why do you think that they left?” I asked.

“I'm not sure. They are temporary contract jobs, to begin with, but I also think it is hard overseeing the tax rebates. If you make a mistake with a rebate, the foreigners get really upset.”

I nodded, thinking how ironic it was that Mrs. Okuma made mistakes herself, all the time.

“Or maybe it's working with the other K Team member. I've heard she's a bit territorial.”

“That's true, but I'm working on getting along better with her.” I paused. “Actually, the reason I stopped by was just to say hello and offer my condolences to you. I know that you knew Mr. Fujiwara pretty well, because he came into this office to do all the training talks.”

Miss Yamada nodded. “Yes, it's really sad. And scary. To think some evil street person reached into one of our trucks and put Fujiwara-san inside it.”

It was an odd way to reconstruct the circumstances around the murder—especially since I'd never seen a homeless-looking person walking along the Ginza—but I considered it. “Do you mean that you think he was on his way to work and he was just killed and shoved inside?”

“On the news, the announcer said it was a violent one, and you know what that means.” Miss Yamada shuddered. “It's a tragedy. His wife has called several times already, anxious to find out what benefits she and the children still have.”

“That poor woman. I can't imagine what she's feeling, to have lost her best friend and life support—”

“Heh? I'm talking about his wife, not his friend.”

I blushed, realizing that my comments were showing my western bias. I'd better shut up.

“Well,” I said, gathering up my bag, “I'm off. Just wanted to say thanks for all the help you gave me at the beginning.”

“Don't mention it, Rei-san.” She beamed at me, and I felt a flash of comfort that I didn't understand until I'd left. Miss Yamada had been the first person at Mitsutan to use my first name.

 

Five foreign customers were waiting in the K Team's office when I returned. Miyo was missing in action—presumably on the floor with another customer group—and Mrs. Okuma was trying to process a tax rebate for an elderly woman in a sari while dealing with a couple of impatient younger women from Hong Kong—I'd learned to recognize them, from the accent and shoes—who were demanding an accounting of the Japanese designers available who had collections
not
in black. There was a European couple, too, sitting against the wall; from their grim expressions, I could guess they were last in line.

“Take the Germans, they just want to buy a kimono,” Mrs. Okuma said to me in rapid-fire Japanese, mid-sentence, then swung back into Mandarin.

“Hallo?” I ventured to the German wife, whose husband seemed to have fallen asleep against her shoulder. And the bench for waiting, a few feet from the desk, wasn't a very comfortable place at all.

“We are hoping to find someone to show us kimonos. Upstairs everything is packaged in plastic, and we were told we are forbidden to it open up. How can we find the sizes this way?”

“Ja, ja, that's a shame,” I said, then stopped myself. I was such a mimic that I was inadvertently picking up the speech patterns of my customers. “Come, I'll take you and we shall open them together.”

I was just handing them my new business card when yet another woman walked into the office. She was a real looker, with fine facial features and waves of perfectly highlighted red-brown hair flowing around her face. Unlike most of the Caucasians who used our shopping help, she was both skinny and chic; in a split second I'd identified her jacket from the Issey Miyake section—the section within designer sportswear that was more expensive than the ME line, which I bought—and her Comme des Garçons trousers, studded with plenty of straps and snaps. Both garments were inky black, and between them, she had a multicolored silk chiffon tank top, designer unknown, but just the kind of thing that I liked. But the pièce de résistance was her shoes—open-toe stiletto-heel suede pumps, patterned in stripes and swirls of gold, black, gray, and brown. I hadn't seen those shoes in any of the designer collections in the store.

Was she a celebrity?
I wondered. Foreigners who came to us for help rarely looked so sleek. She couldn't be someone who was traveling; her heels were too high, and the only thing crumpled on her was the Issey Miyake.

“Shimura-san!” Mrs. Okuma hissed, cutting off my reverie. “A VIP just came in! I'm giving her to you.”

“But there are others—” I began, but my voice trailed off as Mrs. Okuma jumped to her feet and started bowing. “Kravitz-san, how happy we are to see you!”

“It's a sad day for you all, I heard,” the woman said in a breathy, baby-like voice, pulling down the sides of her mouth. She looked completely phony.

“Ah, I'm sorry you were burdened with our news.” Mrs. Okuma gave me a warning glance, but I'd learned my lesson earlier that day. I stayed quiet, just watching.

“You owe me two thousand yen, isn't it?” Mrs. Okuma's Indian customer interrupted.

“Right away, madam. And Mrs. Kravitz, our newest consultant, Rei Shimura, will help you straight away.”

“Rei Shimura.” Melanie Kravitz turned emerald-green eyes on me—eyes that looked as if they'd been enhanced with color contacts, a trend I'd thought had come and gone. Apparently I was wrong about that—just as I'd been wrong about her age, at first impression. Her skin wasn't quite taut enough, and there were tiny laugh lines around the emerald-green eyes. She was over forty, for sure, and my hat was off to her for avoiding plastic surgery.