The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) (9 page)

In the end, I took the prototype, knowing that I could tell Nicky, when he called, that I had it. The whole business about the door locking was strange. I wondered if Nicky had pushed the button on the doorknob of Kunio’s door, causing the door to lock after we’d left. He could have done that to force me to leave.

It was risky visiting strange men in their homes. My mother and aunt and about a hundred other people had told me that during the course of my twenty-eight years. Now I had to agree.

The message light was blinking on my answering machine when I got home, so I played back the tape, hoping for a message from Kunio Takahashi.

Instead the caller was Takeo, apologizing for being snappish over the phone earlier in the day.

“I was upset because I thought that something had happened to you. You’ve gotten in trouble before, and I guess I was expecting the worst. Call me when you have a chance.”

My heart softened, and since I didn’t know Takeo’s cellular phone number by heart, I hunted around for my address book to find the number. Funny. The address book wasn’t in my backpack, nor was it on my telephone stand. I tried to remember when I’d last used it and finally remembered that it had been at the beach bar in Hayama. I’d taken it out to check the phone number of Takeo’s country house before I called using Rika’s friend’s cellular.

Could I have left the book at the bar? If so, chances were that it was either lost in the sand or had been turned in to the Hayama police department’s lost and found. I couldn’t remember the name of the bar, but I bet Rika would. However, it was Sunday, so I couldn’t reach her until the next morning, when the
Gaijin Times
opened at 9 a.m.

“Rei-san! Why aren’t you here?” Rika whispered into the receiver after I’d identified myself.

“I have no reason to be,” I said, caught off guard. “I just called to ask if you know the name of the bar where we were Saturday night. I think I dropped my address book.”

“It’s called Bojo. But listen, Mr. Sanno is here today. He wants a full status report of all the stories in progress.”

“Really? But it’s just Monday!”

“This is what happens when a Japanese authority takes over, Rei-san. We have to
gambaru
—give it our all.”

“If he had told me to come to the office, I would have. But he didn’t say
—”

“Yes, you are at a disadvantage because you are a freelancer. Since we are all regular staff members, we came in on Monday as usual. And I really must go now, because Alec-san is waving for me to come back into the conference room. Just tell me one thing. May I give the progress report on your work? I would like to tell him what we discussed at the beach the other night.”

I pointed out that it was dangerous for her to promise a story to Mr. Sanno that I possibly might not be able to deliver. “Can you just say I am in the process of tracking down a promising
doujinshi
artist?”

“I’ll try,” Rika said. “Yes, that is a good idea. I will say that is why you are not here. You telephoned to apologize and say that you are in the midst of a very important interview with Kunio.”

“Please don’t say his name, since it might not—”
work out,
I would have said, but Rika had already chirped a cheerful good-bye.

I was no closer to getting my hands on my address book, so I tried to do something meaningful with my afternoon while waiting for either Takeo or Kunio to telephone me. I decided to straighten up my apartment, collecting in the process any phone numbers and addresses that I’d jotted down on slips of paper. It was amazing how sloppy I was. There were phone numbers scrawled on the backs of torn envelopes and restaurant menus. Many of the numbers had been written down without an identifying person’s name.

Kunio’s apartment had been far tidier than mine. I thought about how there had been a few things on the table, but no real clutter of notes and magazines and dishes, as was the style in my place. It looked as if he had just stepped out—though that couldn’t be, I realized.

A naturally tidy person would not leave a half-full beer on the table a full day after he’d started to drink it. He would have thrown it away. And the futon was damp. It obviously had hung out overnight and soaked up the previous night’s rain. Nobody, if he were sleeping at home, would leave a futon outside.

So what had happened?

I imagined one scenario. Nicky had come home late at night, and Kunio, relaxing in his own apartment, had heard him. He might have left fast to avoid a confrontation over the borrowed money.

No, I decided, Kunio must have left at an earlier time the day before. Otherwise he would have brought in his futon. Nobody would leave a futon hanging out overnight, unless he hadn’t come back home because of an emergency.

I was worried, although there was no good reason. I had been anxious about Takeo because he had not been at his home Saturday night, and he’d turned out to be angry but unscathed. Kunio was a grown man who could take care of himself. The fact that he’d not spent the night in his apartment was probably because he was spending time with one of the admiring girls Nicky had spoken about.

Wherever he’d been last night, there was still a chance that he had dropped by Show a Boy to pick up his mail. I called information to get the telephone number for the club, and dialed, hoping that someone other than Chiyo would answer.

“Hai,”
breathed a man with a scratchy accent.

“Hello, is Marcellus there?” I asked.

“Nobody’s here right now. Who’s calling?”

Nobody except you,
I thought. I hesitated before saying, “I have a question about the artist who painted the walls.”

There was a pause. “Why?”

Could this be Kunio on the other end? I chose my words carefully. “If he stops in for his mail, I would like to talk to him. It’s about an excellent publicity opportunity. One that goes beyond a magazine article.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want publicity. That’s what I’ve heard.”

“You mean a young man straight out of college doesn’t want to make money doing the work he loves?” I laughed softly, trying to make it sound like a joke. I had to get on the right side of this edgy guy, whoever he was.

“There’s more to life than money. If you don’t know that, I’m sorry for you.”

I struggled for an answer, but he hung up on me.

The person on the other end of the phone had to have been Kunio. No matter how fast I made subway connections to Shibuya, he would be gone from Show a Boy by the time I arrived. Another idea was to stake out his apartment, but if he caught me doing that, it might alienate him further. I sighed. If Kunio ultimately refused to be interviewed, I could write a story without his participation. But Rika had probably already told Mr. Sanno that I was profiling Kunio. It would be a major embarrassment if I couldn’t come up with the subject.

I made myself a cup of Darjeeling and sat down in my tidied apartment to think about the pros and cons. In the end, I felt the messages I’d left with Nicky and Chiyo were enough for Kunio to decide whether to get into contact with me. In the meantime, I would locate another interview possibility—a talented artist who would welcome the chance to be written up in a glossy magazine.

Instead of trekking out to Animagine, I’d look for the new artist’s work at a
manga
shop in Tokyo. A likely location for one would be Harajuku, a booming retail neighborhood that drew teenagers like cats to an open can of tuna. It was only about a half hour’s subway ride to the west, but it had a completely different age demographic from the rest of Tokyo. There was no way to amble leisurely through the street. Instead, I was swept up in a dark blue wave of school-uniformed adolescents. I almost felt as if I were entering one of the schoolgirl comics that older men enjoyed reading, wondering how many of them would have liked being stuck in this moving mass of pigtailed soldiers who brayed with delight at a Ronald McDonald clown statue.

The statue was a hazard to foot traffic, I thought sourly as I got swept into the tide of girls once more, the momentum stopping from time to time as friends decamped to get their pictures taken in booths or ran into record shops.

“Excuse me, do you know where…” I tried to ask a teenager carrying a bag emblazoned with Doraemon, the robot cat from a famous television series, but there were too many shrieks for him to hear my question.

Fortunately, I was a few inches taller than most of the teens, so I was able to see a gaudy clothing boutique that had mannequins in the window dressed as animation heroes and heroines. I broke out of the pack, apologizing to the dozen girls I bumped into during the process, and tried to creep backward against the tide to reach the shop.

“Do… you know… where I can find a
manga
shop?” I was slightly breathless when I approached the store’s salesgirl who was dressed in the tiger-skin costume worn by Urusei Yatsura, a female demon from an
anime
program that used to be on television.

“There isn’t a retailer in this neighborhood anymore. But there is a coffee shop called Anime Kissa,” she said.

“Does it have any connection to
manga?”
I asked because the word
anime
was associated with TV and video, not printed matter.

“Yes. If you go in and pay four hundred yen for a coffee or tea, you are allowed two hours’ time to read the magazines in stock. It’s a good way to catch up on series.”

“So I can’t actually take any comics out of there?” I asked.

“That’s correct! But who wants to buy what you can get for free?” She laughed gaily. “Actually, that’s the kind of saying that my mother tells me, but she doesn’t mean it in reference to
manga!”

Two blocks later I turned left at a vintage jeans shop, looking for Anime Kissa. A narrow doorway led into a room that was filled with so much smoke that I had a coughing fit. The room looked almost like a library, because the walls were lined with bookcases filled with paperback comic magazines. None of the teenagers or office workers looked up to notice the intruder.

I went to the shelves, preparing to make a systematic sweep. According to the rules posted near the entry in Japanese and English, I wouldn’t have to buy a drink until I’d brought my desired
manga
to a table. Then, as soon as a waitress met me to take the refreshment order, the two-hour clock would start ticking. If I ordered more drinks or something to eat, I could stay even longer.

I quickly passed the rows and rows of commercial comic books in favor of a few shelves of
doujinshi
in the back. There was one
Showa Story
comic with an appealing cover of Mars Girl landing on the deck of a classic Imperial Navy ship.

I took that along with an armload of about a dozen other amateur artworks, found an empty table for one, and began reading. In my case, reading meant skipping over
kanji
that I didn’t know, so I was actually plowing through books at the same speed as the people around me. I read my way through two iced coffees and a piece of pumpkin cheesecake. I was looking for the spark of something interesting. Instead, what I found were monotonous copies of popular series, with the added excitement of sexual situations. Very boring, although I supposed that to some, these comics might be titillating. The only comic book I liked was
Showa Story.

I noticed more of customers in Anime Kissa were reading commercial comics than
doujinshi.
The bookcase where I’d gone to pull out some
doujinshi
was receiving no traffic at all. The only person who had picked up an amateur-designed comic was a young man in sunglasses who was chain-smoking with a
doujinshi
in front of him and an iced coffee at his side. I thought about approaching him for an interview—
Have you heard
of Showa Story?
Why do you like
doujinshi?—but I noticed with scorn that his head was not even tilted toward the page. It was aimed instead in the general direction of where I was sitting.

Maybe there was someone fascinating behind me. I pretended I had an itch on my upper back so that I could turn around and see, but the table behind me held a salaryman who was buried in a copy of
Jump.

Perhaps Sunglass Man was gay and trying to encourage eye contact with Salaryman. I got up and took a few of the
doujinshi
I’d finished back to the bookshelf. When I sat down, I bent my head to study the next comic book, but kept an eye on Sunglass Man. He strolled over to the main comic section, then, as I’d suspected he would, went straight for the
doujinshi.
He was interested in seeing what I’d read.

The magazines I’d returned to the shelf were salacious rip-offs spoofing
Sailor Moon
and
Neon Genesis Evangelion
. I had no interest in writing about them because the artwork was not special, and the stories seemed clichéd. I didn’t want the Sunglass Man to focus on what I’d looked at. It was time to leave.

Trying not to be obvious, since he’d sat down once more in his seat, where he could keep an eye on me, I moved my handbag onto my lap and began counting out change to leave the waitress to pay for my coffee and cheesecake. I slid the change onto the table next to me and continued to pretend to read for the next five minutes. I remembered the salesgirl at Animagine telling me that the average Japanese took ten minutes to read a comic, so I didn’t want to rush things and raise suspicion.

At last I closed the comic and rose to go to the bookshelf to swap it for another. I felt the man watching me, but I pretended not to notice. I returned to my seat and opened the new magazine. The instant the man had gone up to investigate which
doujinshi
I’d returned to the bookcase, I zipped out of the coffee shop.

I ran a few doors down the alley and dived into an electronics store, where I could hang out behind some stereo speakers and see through the window whether he passed. I didn’t see Sunglass Man, but I knew he might be camouflaged in the huge wave of teenagers who were now heading largely toward Harajuku Station. It was five-thirty, time to head home to eat dinner and do homework. I wondered how many of the children’s parents knew they were wasting their time shopping in Harajuku instead of attending after-school tutoring. I also doubted the parents would be pleased about the kind of men who lurked beside the teenage patrons of
anime
coffee shops. It could have been Kunio Takahashi, of course, which would mean there was no danger, but I’d blown a chance at an interview. The fact that Sunglass Man had black hair, and not red-brown as Chiyo had described, might simply mean that Kunio had gone back to his natural color.