Chapter
twenty
I called McGraw from a payphone. “It’s done,” I told him. “What’s the status on the last file?”
“Done…you mean, done, done?”
“What the hell do you think I mean?”
“It was fast, is what I mean. I’m surprised, that’s all. Impressed.”
“What’s the status on the last file?”
“Just about completed. I’m sorry it’s not quite ready yet. I have to tell you, I never dreamed you’d be able to act on these files faster than I’d be able to prepare them.”
“When can I get it?”
“Tomorrow, I think. Meet me at noon in front of the Benzaiten shrine. You know it?”
“There are a few. Shiba Kōen, Ueno Kōen, Inokashira Kōen. Which one do you want?”
There was a pause. “I didn’t realize there were so many.”
“Popular goddess, apparently.”
“Well, I meant the one at Inokashira. I’ll see you there.” He hung up.
I blew out a long breath, closed my eyes, and shifted mental gears. I realized I hadn’t done anything about finding a good place to take Sayaka for dinner. Outside the love hotel district, I didn’t know Uguisudani at all. In fact, I didn’t know much of anything. Food was mostly functional for me, and more than ramen or a rice bowl was a rarity. What would she like? What would be special for her?
Well, she listens to jazz all the time. Maybe something with jazz?
I thought of the flyers I’d seen at Lion in Shibuya. Shit, why hadn’t I thought of it right away?
I couldn’t remember the name of the performer…a guy who played a horn, that was all. But the club…the club was called Taro. In Shinjuku.
Shinjuku. All the way across town from Uguisudani. She said she couldn’t go far. It wasn’t going to work.
Yeah, but what if there were a way? A live jazz concert…that would be pretty special. Had she ever even been to one? I knew I hadn’t.
I found the club in the Tokyo yellow pages. It was in Kabukichō, one of the more salacious parts of Shinjuku. Not so much during the day, but it could get pretty tawdry as sunlight gave way to neon and the nocturnal clientele began to arrive in force, released from the maw of the corporate machine, animated by sake, emboldened by night. Still, one of Tokyo’s charms is the complete lack of zoning, official or otherwise, and just as you might find a foundry next to an izakaya next to a chicken coop next to a house, so too will you find citizens and sinners walking side by side through even the dimmest ventricles of Kabukichō’s neon heart of darkness.
The only problem was that Kabukichō was infested with yakuza. Next to places like the Kodokan, where I might be anticipated, it was probably the last place I should be going. But still, there couldn’t have been more than a handful of yakuza who had any idea what I even looked like, and it wasn’t like they’d be on the lookout for me in Kabukichō. Nor was I planning on visiting any of their clubs. I decided I was being paranoid. Later in life, anytime I found myself thinking, You’re being paranoid, I’d pat myself on the back. But back then, I looked at it as more a bug than a feature.
I rode out to the club to reconnoiter. It was in the basement of a mixed office-entertainment building at the edge of Kabukichō. I looked down—a steep, narrow flight of stairs. Shit, this wasn’t going to work.
Well, I’d come this far. I headed down. There were some flyers by the entrance. Terumasa Hino, right, that was the horn guy’s name. Nine o’clock that night. I folded one up and pocketed it.
The door was open and I went inside. The place was tiny—room for maybe twenty people, and that’s if they were crammed in tight. Everything was black: walls, ceiling, floor. There was a labyrinth of pipes and vents overhead, and clusters of mismatched tables and chairs throughout. A mirrored bar and a half-dozen stools to one side. A petite Japanese woman was setting up the stage. She didn’t notice me when I came in, and I watched for a moment in awe of her speed and energy—connecting cables, adjusting lights, moving equipment. After a moment, I said, “Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt…”
She paused and looked up. “Yes?”
“I, uh, I have a friend who’s a jazz enthusiast. A huge Terumasa Hino fan, in fact.” That last part wasn’t necessarily true, but I didn’t know that it was necessarily untrue, either.
“Yes?”
“And I’d really like to find a way to take her to tonight’s performance. I think it would mean a lot to her.”
“You should. Just get here early. Hino-san is popular.”
“This is the thing. She’s in a wheelchair.”
The woman said nothing.
“I don’t know how to make it happen, but if you could help, it would make someone really happy. I could pay you, that’s not the problem.”
“Pay me for what?”
“I don’t know. Making sure there’s room for her chair or something.”
“You don’t have to pay me for that. But how are you going to get her down the stairs?”
“I don’t know. I’m just trying to figure out one thing at a time.”
“Well, could you carry her?”
“If she’d let me, I guess. Sure.”
“Then maybe you could carry her down the stairs and I could follow with the wheelchair. I think they fold up, right? Does hers?”
“I actually don’t know. I can check.”
She glanced at her watch. “I’ll make sure we have space. What’s your name?”
“Jun.”
“I’m Kyoko Seki.”
“Seiki-san…I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”
She nodded. “I have to get back to work. Just get here by eight-thirty.”
“I will. I’m just…thank you.”
I headed back up the stairs. There were a dozen things I still didn’t know, a dozen things that could make it all fall apart, but still…I thought maybe I could do this.
But how was I going to get her out here? Thanatos was out of the question. And I didn’t have a car. I could rent one, but I was going to need something specialized. A passenger van, something like that.
I went to a phone booth and found a place that had a Honda step van. I had to go all the way out to Haneda Airport to get it, but I didn’t mind. It was an awkward-looking little vehicle—a van, yes, but too high and too thin, as though someone had squashed its sides together and its mass had nowhere to travel but up, and with ridiculously diminutive tires that made it look a bit like the automotive equivalent of a dachshund. But the back door opened at the top and the bottom, creating a good-sized cargo-loading space, and the floor was close to the ground. And it had air-conditioning…that alone might be worth the price of admission. If Sayaka was game, I thought it would work. I pushed Thanatos in back, drove to Ueno, and found a construction site, where I liberated a couple of two-by-sixes. I might have been able to lift her into the van, but it would be easier with a ramp. Then I found another business hotel, where I pulled Thanatos out of the Honda and parked it. I checked in, showered, changed, and drove to Uguisudani. Along the way, I was more nervous than I’d been outside Fukumoto’s house that very afternoon. It already seemed like a long time ago.