Tokyo Vice (8 page)

I got back to the office at eleven, ate some cold pizza left in the refrigerator, and developed the film. (This was still in the dark ages of film, when developing photos was a big pain in the ass.) I blew up the notice, cropped it, made bad copies of it, crumpled them up, and took the most ratty version home with me. My purpose was to make it look as if I’d either gotten a copy from one of the victims or a local merchant
or fished it out of the trash. I didn’t want anyone figuring out that I’d photographed it while hanging around the police station. Not only could that curtail my access to the police, it could also get my doughnut friends chewed out.

The next day I went to one of the stores, talked to the manager about the crime, and asked him if he knew of any similar cases. He showed me his copy of the police notice but wouldn’t give it to me. Around two in the afternoon, I walked into the Omiya police station and asked permission to go up and see Fuji.

Fuji motioned for me to sit down and planted his elbows on his desk, forming his fingers into a temple and peering over them with some amusement.

“How’s the big story coming along?” he asked.

“I’ve given up on that one,” I said.

“Given up?”

“Yes, I’ve got a better one. I’m going to write a public interest piece about the recent rash of roadside robberies in the Omiya area. I think I’ll include this composite drawing as well.”

I showed him the copy but didn’t hand it to him.

“Where’d you get that?” he sputtered.

“I’ve already talked to some of the victims.” It wasn’t an answer and it wasn’t a lie, but it was misdirection.

Fuji wasn’t amused. “We’re in the middle of that investigation right now. If you publish that, you’ll scare him off and we’ll never catch him.”

“That’s not my problem,” I said. “My job is to gather the news, write it, and publish it as soon as possible for the good of the community. I
can
write that you’re investigating, if you like. I promise.”

“Don’t write that story.”

“I’m a reporter. I
have
to write things. That’s my job. Just like you investigate things and catch criminals for a living, I investigate things, and they’re published in the newspaper. If I’m not writing, I’m not working, and I don’t have anything better to write right now.”

Fuji’s eyes narrowed behind the thick glass. “I could give you something better to write about. Maybe something better than a little public service announcement about unsolved crimes.”

“Like what?”

“I’ll give you stuff on the pickpocket that none of the other papers has.”

“That would be nice, but I’m only interested if it’s a total, hands-down, noncompetitive exclusive.” I was feeling cocky.

“We don’t do that. If we give you the exclusive, all the other reporters who cover this police station are going to come in here whining about unfair treatment.”

“Let them whine. I have to tell my boss in thirty minutes what I’m turning in for the morning edition. Right now, this serial thief thing is all I’ve got.”

“Hold on,” he said. “Give me thirty minutes.” He motioned the policewoman over. She brought over a cup of green tea and was about to set it before me when Fuji motioned her to stop. “Would you like coffee instead?”

“No, no, green tea is fine.”

“But you prefer coffee, right?”

“Well …”

Fuji nodded at her.

“Cream or sugar?” she asked.

“Both, please.”

“Okay, wait here,” Fuji said, stepping away and heading downstairs.

The coffee was terrible, instant stuff, but it was better than the green tea.

Fuji returned twenty minutes later. “All right. Meet me at the dojo training hall tomorrow at noon. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about the pickpocket. Think of all the questions you want to ask beforehand, because I’m only doing this once.” And that was that.

That evening in the press club I told Yamamoto about the deal I’d made. He was pleased but pissed off at the same time.

“You blackmailed the chief detective for that story?”

“I didn’t blackmail him. I exchanged one story for another.”

“You blackmailed him.”

“Did I make threats?”

“Well, no.”

“Okay, then it’s not blackmail.”

“Adelstein, you’re a real piece of work. You have balls. And you’re sneaky too.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“For all that, you should have gotten a better story out of him, that’s what. A lousy pickpocket was the best you could do?”

“There wasn’t anything else I wanted.”

“All right,” he said. “Get the story, type it up, and I’ll try to get the desk editor to give it scoop treatment.”

When I got to the training hall the next day, Fuji was inside waiting, sitting cross-legged on the tatami with a sheaf of papers in his lap. I took off my shoes, stepped onto the tatami, and sat across from him in the formal
seiza
position, knees together and feet tucked under my ass.

Fuji took off his glasses, put them down beside his knees, and looked me over. I took out my notepad and pen.

“Adelstein.”

“Yes, Fuji-san.”

“Your socks don’t match.”

I looked down. It was true. I had on one gray sock and one black sock. I hadn’t planned on being shoeless. “I’m sorry. I was in a rush this morning.”

Fuji shook his head. “You’re a strange one. I thought you were clueless, but you actually seem to know what you’re doing. Then again, you can’t even match your own socks.”

“This is true.”

“In the eight years I have been a detective, I have never given a reporter a scoop.”

“I am honored to be the first.”

“And the last. You are to tell no one I told you about this case. If people ask you how you got the scoop, what are you going to say?”

“I’m not sure anyone will care.”

“Oh, they will. I know your kind.”

“My kind?”

“Reporters. So what will you say?”

I thought for a moment. “I’ll say that someone leaked the story out of headquarters to my boss and I was forced to write it up because it was on my beat.”

“Excellent answer.”

Fuji then outlined the sequence of events leading up to the arrest of the pickpocket, the interesting angles to the story, the pickpocket’s date of birth, and the number of cases he’d confessed to. He then patiently answered all my other questions.

He never gave me another scoop in the entire time I covered the Omiya police. He did, however, continue to ask me whether I wanted green tea or coffee whenever I went to chat with him.

The story came out in late September in “The News Inside and Out,” a feature section of the local
Yomiuri
. Since it was a feature, I actually got a byline.

In the annals of crime, the story of the professional pickpocket is a minor thing, but I’m going to relate it here as an example of the professionalism of Japanese criminals.

Everything in Japan, even theft, is an art. Even assault is an art—judo, aikido, and kendo, all of these are more than just learning to decimate your opponent, they’re about learning to master yourself. In many ways, Sato was a master of his art.

Personally, I wish I’d spent a little more time mastering the martial arts in college; I’d find that surviving as a
Yomiuri
reporter was a little more physically demanding than I’d anticipated.

The end of the old year and the beginning of the new are monumentally important events in Japan. On New Year’s Eve, thousands of Japanese flock to Buddhist temples to hear the tolling of the bells called
joya no kane
. The temple’s big bronze bell is tolled 108 times, one for each cardinal sin in the Buddhist universe. It’s believed that hearing the bells purifies you of your sins and allows you to start the new year fresh and clean.

If at all possible, I go to the bell ringing each year, since it never hurts to be on the safe side. A few temples now have Web sites that let you ring the bell virtually, which I’ve tried; it’s not the same.

After the temple bells are rung, huge throngs of people make pilgrimages to Shinto shrines to pray for good fortune in the upcoming year. No one works for three, four, or, depending on the calendar, five days; many people return to their hometowns, and the streets of the business and government districts grow quiet and deserted.

Before any of this happens, however, the most important ceremony in company life takes place. Usually held in the first half of December, the
bonenkai
is a “forget-the-year party,” and in many cases, given the amount of alcohol consumed, it is not an idle threat. Everyone—employees and bosses—is supposed to let his hair down and have a good time. For the
Yomiuri’s
Urawa office this has traditionally meant getting into a drunken brawl. My first bonenkai was no exception.

It was held at a local izakaya with the usual menu: fish (raw and cooked), yakitori, tofu, pickles, rice balls, and, since Urawa was famous for catfish, catfish tempura. Generally speaking, the Japanese don’t eat
catfish (the flavor isn’t subtle), but I was happy to see something on my plate that reminded me of home.

The first act went reasonably well. All the freshmen were requested to do some kind of entertainment. Someone did card tricks, someone twisted balloons into animals. I managed to push a 500-yen coin up my nose, which was considered an incredible feat. It was at the party after the party where things got weird.

We left the restaurant and were heading toward a hostess club when Kimura, the right-wing, emperor-worshipping head of the Kumagaya branch office, seemed to get wound up. Kimura was a short, stocky fellow with a tight-permed hairstyle reminiscent of the yakuza from my internship story. When he was sober, he was a great guy. He was a mean drunk, however, and he’d been putting it away all night. He kept picking on me as we entered the next izakaya, and once we were sitting down, he looked over at me and sneered. “I look at you, Adelstein, and I can’t figure out how we lost the war. How could we lose to a bunch of sloppy Americans? Barbarians with no discipline, no culture, and no honor. It beats me. Long live the Emperor!
Tenno ni banzai!”

In my five-plus years in Japan as a college student, I don’t think I’d personally met any nationalists. I knew they existed. I knew that Yukio Mishima, one of Japan’s major writers, was a bodybuilder, gay, and a nationalist. I’d seen the right-wing groups driving their black vans around town, blaring imperial marching music from loudspeakers. But I didn’t really know how to deal with Kimura. What was I supposed to say? “Sorry we won the war”?

I make it a rule never to argue with drunks, so I just kept nodding and saying noncommittal, typically Japanese things like “That’s certainly one way of looking at it” or “Maybe that’s how it happened.”

In the early 1990s, historical revisionists and emperor-worshipping guys like Kimura were generally regarded as lovable kooks whom no one took seriously. At the time that Kimura was carrying on, I didn’t take him seriously either.

Yoshihara and Chappy managed to pull my ass out of the fire by switching seats with me a couple of times, but Kimura kept following me around like a pit bull chasing a squirrel. As we stumbled to a hostess bar, Kimura tapped me on the shoulder.

“I read in the company newsletter that you do wing chun. That’s like some kind of Chinese martial art, right?”

“Right.”

“Do you know
shorinji kempo?”

“Yes, that’s the Japanese martial art started by Doshin So. It’s a really interesting fighting style.”

“It’s the best fighting style in the world. It’s a Japanese martial art.”

“I’m sure it’s a great martial art. I prefer wing chun; it just suits me better.”

“Shorinji kempo is the best.”

I turned my back on him and started walking toward our next stop with Yamamoto. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kimura launch a roundhouse kick at me.

As a martial artist, I generally suck. Wing chun, my choosen disipline at the time, is the martial art famous for the one-inch punch, a short-distance impact strike using the bottom two knuckles of the hand for the final impact. After years of wing chun, there were only three things that I could do correctly. The short-distance punch was one of them.