The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) (5 page)

As Murano and Takeo chatted idly about surf conditions, the salesgirl rummaged around in the back. She came back with a Tokyo phone number lightly penciled onto
Ogre Slayer
stationery.

“The artist’s name is Kunio Takahashi. This is the phone number he left for us.”

‘‘You’ve been really helpful,” I said, taking Takeo’s magazines from him and placing them with the Mars Girl
doujinshi
on top of the counter. “I’ll add these to my purchase. How much do I owe you?”

“Never mind,” Takeo said, moving to take his magazines back.

“No, I insist.” The total of five comics came to 4000 yen, which was a little less than $40. This was significantly more than most customers were spending. In the time I’d been in the shop I noticed that many customers had come in to read comics for a half hour or so, and then left without buying anything.

“You’re good at getting what you want,” Takeo said when we were outside.

“Your timing helped me. It was only because you were waiting behind me that they gave me the phone number.” I started walking back on the beach road toward a telephone booth I’d seen. Takeo followed behind me, because the sidewalk was too narrow to walk side by side.

“I doubt it,” Takeo said from behind me. “Actually, I dislike Murano, that fellow who sold you the magazines. When we were teenagers, he thought he was the greatest surfer on earth and bullied anyone else who wanted to share the waters. It doesn’t surprise me that Murano would wind up with an easy job near the beach. And he’s such a gossip. Probably everyone in town is going to know you stayed with me.”

“Why is that a problem?” I felt a fluttering of unease.

“I’m supposed to be renovating the house, not entertaining in it. My father would be embarrassed to hear that a guest stayed while the house was in a bad condition.”

It was such a Japanese excuse. So typical, in fact, that I was deeply suspicious. Takeo had taken me out to a highly public breakfast spot. What was his problem now?

“If you don’t want me to stay with you, I won’t,” I offered. “I’ve been enjoying the weekend, but I could easily go home. We could stage a big good-bye fight at the train station if you wanted that to get back to your family as well.”

Takeo caught up with me and put his hand on my arm, forcing me to stop and look at him. “I wouldn’t want anything like that,” he said. “I’m sorry for the way I sounded. It’s hard to understand what it’s like to be part of an uptight clan. You’re lucky, Rei.”

“If you think I’m so lucky, I’ll put your opinion to the test,” I said, smiling at him. “Let’s see if Kunio Takahashi answers his telephone.”

The mechanical-sounding operator’s voice told me that the telephone number I’d dialed for Kunio Takahashi was no longer in service. Worrying that perhaps the salesgirl had written the number incorrectly, I dialed information and asked for a number that corresponded with the magazine’s masthead address. I was given the same dead number.

It’s rare to get an out-of-service message in Japan, because people who move or need to change phone numbers usually sell the old number. The phone numbers are bought and traded by individuals, not by the telephone company. For example, I’d bought my home telephone and fax numbers from my ex-boyfriend Hugh when he moved from Japan. I paid him exactly what he’d bought the telephone numbers for: about five hundred dollars per number. A telephone number was a low-level investment of sorts. In the four years I’d lived in Japan, I’d seen telephone numbers sold for sums anywhere from the mid-$500s to $800.

I couldn’t understand why the
Showa Story
telephone number was no longer valid. There had to be some kind of breakdown in phone service. It was irritating, because I’d need to try to track the group down through the street address. In Japan, where streets didn’t have names, that would be hard work.

“Nobody’s forcing you to write about
Showa Story
,” Takeo had said when I told him about the stumbling block. “You have time to go back to Animagine and find some easily accessible
doujinshi
artists.”

I shook my head. “I’m a reasonable person. If a client asks me to find an original wood-block print of Hiroshige’s
Wave
, I tell them why I can’t do it. There was a limited printing of the woodblock made in 1842, and all those are now in the hands of serious collectors and museums. None in antiques shops, none on the street.” I paused. “This comic book in question was printed seven months ago. It should not be an impossible feat to find the people who created it, especially since we live in the same city.”

“How much energy do you want to put into something that is a side job for you?”

“That column accounts for a third of my monthly income,” I said. “Probably more, if you count the added business.”

“You won’t get any any added business out of a story on comics. If anyone gets the business, it will be Animagine and all the other
manga
shops in Japan.”

“Why are you being so moody about the project, when yesterday you wanted to help me?” I mused aloud.

“I still want to help. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time as I’d like. I’ve got to get up on the roof and fix some tiles this afternoon.”

“Okay, I’ll just nip back to Tokyo to check on something. I’ll bring back something nice for a late dinner.”

I was thinking of the savory pork-stuffed
shu-mai
dumplings sold in to-go boxes at Yokohama Station, my transfer point for the train into west Tokyo.
Shu-mai
were the only lapse in my vegetarian diet.

“But we still have leftovers,” Takeo, who was recycling-crazy, protested. “There are six courses in the refrigerator already. Why don’t we eat that?”

“Fine.” I ended the conversation by sprinting across the street to catch the approaching bus marked for Zushi Station. If I had known how late I’d get back that night, I would have acted differently: kissed Takeo good-bye or, at the very least, told him to eat the most perishable foods first. But how was I to know?

***

Shibuya is the kind of neighborhood that is best to avoid if you’re over twenty. Not because the teenagers would beat you up—crippled by their twelve-inch platform shoes, that would be an impossibility—but because their attention was not on the cars or pedestrians in their path, but on small plastic objects straight out of a science fiction comic book. The teens were holding “pocket bell” beepers, a kind of walkie-talkie carefully tuned to frequencies that allowed them to broadcast to other owners of the same gadget. With a walkie-talkie in hand, a person could send a signal to unknown others indicating a particular mood and willingness to get together. The abundance of coffee shops and rent-by-the-hour love hotels in the Shibuya side streets made any eighteen-year-old’s dream a possibility.

It was in this epicenter of teenage lust that
Showa Story
had listed its office address. The artists were all probably very young, I thought gloomily as I went to the police box to ask where 6-7-22 Shibuya was located. The fact there were very few street names in Tokyo made my life an endless series of visits to the police.

The policeman on duty didn’t know the building in question, but from the numbers he guessed that it was on the same street as the Yamato Building, a low-rise building a few blocks away that housed an Italian restaurant and various boutiques catering to teenagers. That was enough information for me to proceed, and I crossed the big intersection and proceeded behind the Tokyu department store into a street jam-packed with clothing stores and parlors where one could play pachinko, a game similar to pinball that made a deafening racket. The Yamato Building had a sign identifying it as 6-7-22 Shibuya. The
Showa Story
office had to be inside.

A quick scan of the building’s registry showed the tenants included the Italian restaurant, and numerous sneaker and blue jeans boutiques, but no
Showa Story
.

I decided to comb through the businesses on either side of the street, and found that a majority were boutiques, restaurants, and bars. There was a short, run-down-looking office building that seemed the most likely, but it contained a travel agency, a fax machine repair shop, and a language school.

Showa Story
had to be somewhere, but I was dizzy in the mid-afternoon heat. I needed to cool off and rest my feet, blistered from the rubber thongs that I had stupidly worn into the city. I decamped into a coffee shop, and when I had refueled with an iced coffee, I asked the waitress about the
manga
circle.

“Show a Story?” She pronounced the name as if it were three words and not two.

“That’s right. They design comic books and supposedly work in this area. That’s all I know.”

“Ah. I think I know where they are, but the name of their business is slightly different. It is called Show a Boy.”

“I’m afraid that’s not what is written on the magazine. See?” I showed her the inside page, which listed the circle’s name and address.

“Yes, that address is located halfway down the street, attached to the Yamato Building. Look for door with a doorman outside.”

“I can’t believe I missed it.”

“The hawker might not have been outside, so how would you know?” the waitress said.

“What sort of doorman is he? I wonder if I can get in.”

The waitress laughed. “Definitely. It’s a women’s club, and it’s a lot of fun. As they all say, everyone should see a foreign
chin-chin
once.”

The waitress, talking in an extremely vulgar way about the male anatomy, obviously had mistaken me for a Japanese-born person. Ordinarily I would have been pleased by this, but this time I was embarrassed. A strip bar featuring foreign men? Show a boy, indeed.

It seemed unlikely that this Show a Boy establishment had anything to do with the
Showa Story
circle, but as the waitress had pointed out, the address was correct. And the iced coffee ricocheting through my system was enough to give me the jolt to check it out.

As I walked toward Show a Boy, I chided myself for having missed it the first time around. The name of the establishment was engraved on a small brass plaque next to a glossy green door decorated with the silhouette of a man tipping a top hat. A couple of high-school girls in uniforms, the skirts hitched up high and the socks puddled around the ankles, had stopped to talk to a tall, handsome man with skin the color of coffee. The man handed the girls a leaflet, and I saw them look at each other, hesitate, and giggle a bit. When the girls went inside, I took that as my cue to approach him.

As I came near, the hawker waved as if I were an old friend of his. I couldn’t keep my eyes off his outfit—shiny athletic pants worn with suspenders over a bare torso. Ex-military, I guessed, eyeing a tattoo of the rising sun on his biceps.

“
Konnichi wa. Boyzu ga suki desu ka?
” he greeted me in melodious Japanese, telling me good afternoon, and following it up with “Do you like boys?”

I imagined this was one of the few Japanese phrases he knew, but to test him, I answered back in rapid-fire Japanese, “I prefer men wearing Hugo Boss suits.”

To my surprise, the man whipped off his mirrored sunglasses to take a better look at me.

“
Cherie
, you are a live one,” he answered in English, but it wasn’t American-sounding English: it was English spoken with a French accent, and a hint of something else.

“Where are you from?” I asked, smiling.

“Senegal, but please hush,” the man whispered. “I am supposed to be a rape
artiste
from Los Angeles.”

“Don’t you mean
rap
?” I asked. “The way you said it could lead to trouble—”

“Not in this country! I am violated twice a night; three or four times on Friday and Saturday! The schedule is exhausting. Please look.”

I took the pamphlet that he had been waving at me. It was printed in Japanese and English.
Come dance with a stranger! Show a Boy, established 1993. Explore the culture of international dance with our talented boys. Please wet your seat at dancing of your choice. Choose from Cowboy Time, Handyman Special, Flamenco Love, Windsor Naughty, and Black Magic. Our guarantee is authentic foreign boys only. Membership available to lady customer of all nations.

“
Je m’appelle Marcellus
,” the man said. “I am the Black Magic dancer. My first show is at six tonight, during happy hour. Lifetime membership to Show a Boy is just fifteen thousand yen, with the bottle-keep system. A special introductory rate of five thousand yen includes a drink ticket and one evening’s admission. Other services require an additional charge.”

Other services indeed. I asked, “How bad does it get in there?”

“How bad do you wanna be?” Marcellus leered at me.

I shouldn’t have asked him such a leading question. I said in my most businesslike way, “My name is Rei Shimura, and I’m writing an article for a monthly called the
Gaijin Times
. I’m trying to track down a comic book circle called
Showa Story
that is based somewhere in this neighborhood. Their
manga
‘s name is similar to Show a Boy, don’t you think?”

“These
artistes
are foreign boys?” Marcellus raised an eyebrow that looked as if it had been waxed by Miss Kumiko.

“No. Well, actually, I don’t know the sex and nationality of everyone in the group. I’m assuming they’re Japanese.”

“A Japanese man would not be allowed to dance,” Marcellus said firmly. “Our customers desire to escape their everyday existence. Nobody wants to see a dancer who reminds them of the salaryman who works in the same office. Our boys are surreal.”

I shook my head. “The man I seek is an artist. Someone who works with a pen, not a—”

“Penis,” Marcellus finished. “I can reassure you that our dance program is only risque, not obscene. We keep the G-string on.”

“Gee. That makes me feel better.”

Marcellus burst out in peals of laughter. “I look forward to dancing for you, Miss Shimura. However, I must beg you to slip into something a little more comfortable before you enter our club. No denim allowed, except of course on the cowboy dancer.”

“That’s okay, because I’m not interested. Male dancing isn’t my cup of tea. I was looking for an artist.” I smiled at Marcellus, so that he wouldn’t take offense that I was turning down my opportunity to see the Black Magic performance.

“Ah, but you do not know until you try. Tell me more about these comic book people you are seeking. Do you have a name?”

“Just one. Kunio Takahashi,” I said, and watched his eyebrows rise again.

“Oh, he’s not a dancer.”

“But you know who he is,” I said quickly. “How is that?”

“He painted the walls when the place opened. He’s not around anymore. Our
mama-san
was the one who talked to him most.”

He was talking about the club’s female manager. It was customary for hostesses or hosts to call their boss
mama
. “What is your
mama
‘s name? And is she here tonight?”

“Yes, but Chiyo-san is rather … difficult. I don’t know how far you’ll get without giving her something. She’s that type of person.”

“Too bad.” I didn’t have more than a few thousand yen and a credit card in my shorts pocket, and I wasn’t interested in handing over either. “Perhaps I’ll mention this place in the article. That’s like free advertising.”

Marcellus nodded. “That might be attractive to our
mama
. I’ll say you were on our guest list. No payment to get in, but as I’ve told you, you cannot enter wearing jeans.”

“You’re sure that if I go away now, I’ll still have a chance to get in? Even if you’re not at the door?”

“
Cherie
, you have my guarantee. And that’s not jives.”