The elder detective peered at his watch. It was just past seven in the evening. Perfect time for asking a few questions, he thought, as he stared dubiously at the peeling paint on the elevator wall. There shouldn’t be many customers around at this early hour—not that I’m an expert on this sort of place …
The noise of the crowd took Kusanagi by surprise as he got off the elevator and stepped through the nightclub door. Of the more than twenty tables inside, fully a third were already occupied. Judging by their clothes, most of the patrons were salarymen, though there were a few in the crowd whose occupation he couldn’t place.
“I was asking questions in a club in Ginza once,” Kishitani whispered in his ear. “The mama there was wondering where all the guys who used to drink at her place during the economic bubble were drinking now—well, I think I just found out. They’re all here.”
“I have a hard time believing that,” Kusanagi shot back. “Once you get used to luxury, it’s hard to lower your sights. The Ginza crowd wouldn’t be caught dead in a place this seedy, hard times or no.”
He called over one of the waiters, who was dressed in a black tuxedo, and asked to speak to a manager. The young waiter’s casual smile vanished, and he disappeared into the back.
A bit later, another waiter came out and showed the two detectives to seats at the bar.
“Will you be drinking something?” he asked.
“A beer for me, thanks,” Kusanagi replied.
“You sure that’s okay?” Kishitani asked after the waiter had left. “We’re on duty.”
“If we don’t drink anything, the other customers will get suspicious.”
“You could’ve had some tea then.”
“Since when do two grown men come to a bar to drink tea?”
They were still debating the ethics of drinking alcohol on the job when an elegant woman in a silver-gray suit appeared. She was about forty, and wearing a lot of makeup, with her hair done up in a neat bun on her head. A little on the thin side, Kusanagi thought, but a beauty nonetheless.
“Welcome,” she said. “You wanted to speak to me?” The trace of a smile played across her lips.
“We’re police,” Kusanagi announced in a low voice.
Next to him, Kishitani reached into his breast pocket, but Kusanagi stopped him, turning back to the woman. “You need proof?”
“That won’t be necessary.” She took the seat next to Kusanagi, placing her business card on the bar. It read, “Sonoko Sugimura.”
“You’re the mama here?”
“You could call me that,” Sugimura replied with a smile.
“Quite the place you’ve got. Business looks good,” Kusanagi commented, glancing over his shoulder at the tables.
“It’s mostly just for show. I think the owner runs it for the tax break. Most of the customers are indebted to him for one thing or another.”
The detective nodded.
“This whole thing could shut down any day, really. Sayoko was right to get out while she still could and start that luncheon shop of hers.”
Kusanagi suspected business wasn’t all that bad—he even detected a hint of defiant pride in the way the woman casually mentioned her predecessor. This Sonoko Sugimura was a survivor.
“I believe some of our people from the department were down here the other day?”
She nodded. “They came a few times, asking about Mr. Togashi. Is that why you’ve come today?”
“We’re sorry to take your time like this.”
“Well, I told the other gentlemen this, so I may as well tell you, too. If you’re trying to pin this whole thing on Yasuko, you’re barking up the wrong tree. She has no motive, for one.”
“No,” Kusanagi said, waving a hand, “we’re not here because we suspect Yasuko. It’s just that our investigation isn’t going as smoothly as we’d have liked, so we’re trying to make a fresh start.”
“A fresh start, hmm?” the mama echoed with a sigh.
“Previously, you told us that Shinji Togashi had come here on the fifth of March?”
“That’s right. It was quite a surprise, seeing him after all that time. I couldn’t imagine why he would be dropping by now.”
“So you knew him?”
“I’d met him once or twice. I worked together with Yasuko back in Akasaka, you know. That’s where I knew him from. He was a big spender back in those days, always dressed to a T. Quite handsome, too.”
Kusanagi sensed from her tone that this description hardly applied to the Togashi she had met in March.
“And Shinji Togashi was trying to find Ms. Hanaoka, is that correct?”
“I think he wanted to patch things up between them. But still, I didn’t tell him anything. I knew all too well the hell that poor girl had been through on his account. I thought as long as I didn’t say anything she’d be safe, but I didn’t count on the girls. One of them knew about Yonazawa and Sayoko’s lunch shop, and she told that smooth talker everything.”
“I see,” Kusanagi said with a nod. After working for a long time in a business like this, which thrived on human connections, a former hostess would find it nearly impossible simply to disappear.
“Does a Mr. Kuniaki Kudo come here often?” he asked next, changing his line of questioning.
“Mister Kudo? From the printing company?”
“That’s right.”
“Quite often, yes. Though not so much recently.” Sugimura tilted her head. “Has Mr. Kudo done something?”
“No, no. We’ve just heard that he was one of Yasuko Hanaoka’s regulars back when she was a hostess.”
Sugimura’s lips softened and she nodded. “He was. He thought the world of that girl.”
“Were they seeing each other outside the nightclub?”
“Hmm…” The woman tilted her head again. “Some of the girls thought she was, but as I see it, their relationship began and ended at the club.”
“How so?”
“Well, they were closest when Yasuko was in Akasaka. But right around then she started having trouble with Mr. Togashi, and it seems Mr. Kudo found out. After that, he became more like Yasuko’s counselor then her lover. I don’t think things between them progressed very far at all romantically.”
“But after Ms. Hanaoka got divorced, they could have started going out…”
Sugimura shook her head. “Mr. Kudo’s not that sort of man, detective. After he’d been giving her all this advice on how to make things right between her and her husband, he couldn’t go dating Yasuko after the divorce. It would have made it look like that was his plan from the start. To be honest I think he intended to maintain a sort of platonic friendship with her after the divorce. Mr. Kudo is married, after all.”
So Sonoko Sugimura didn’t know that Kudo’s wife had passed away. Kusanagi decided there was little to be gained by telling her, so he kept silent.
For the most part, he guessed that she was right about Yasuko and Kudo’s relationship. Like other experienced detectives, he respected a hostess’s intuition when it came to the affairs of men and women. Sugimura’s observations were in line with his own, only confirming Kusanagi’s hunch that Kudo was innocent. Which meant it was time to change the topic.
He pulled a photograph out of his pocket and showed it to the mama. “Know this man?”
It was a photograph of Tetsuya Ishigami. Kishitani had snapped a shot of the teacher as he left his school one day. In the photograph, the mathematician’s eyes were fixed on some faraway point. It had been taken from an angle, and at a distance, so that Ishigami wouldn’t notice.
Sugimura frowned. “Who’s that?”
“So you don’t know him?”
“No, sorry. I can tell you he’s never come to this club.”
“His name’s Ishigami. That ring any bells?”
“Mr. Ishigami…”
“Maybe Ms. Hanaoka mentioned him?”
“I’m sorry. If she did, I don’t remember it.”
“He’s a high scho
ol teacher. Did she ever say anything about seeing a teacher?”
“I don’t know,” Sugimura replied, her frown fading. “I talk to her now and then on the phone, but she’s not said anything of the sort.”
“What about any other relationships Yasuko might be having? Has she asked you for advice with anything, or told you anything about that?”
At this question, Sugimura let slip a wry chuckle. “The other detective who came before asked that as well, and I’ll tell you what I told him: she hasn’t said anything. Maybe she is seeing someone, and she didn’t want me to know, but I don’t think that’s the case. That girl’s got her hands full raising Misato. I’d imagine she hasn’t the time to bother with love right now. Mind you, it’s not just my opinion. Sayoko said something of the sort not too long ago.”
Kusanagi nodded quietly. He hadn’t expected to hear much about a possible relationship between Ishigami and Yasuko here at the club, so he wasn’t too disappointed. Still, hearing someone say that there was no man in Yasuko’s life made it hard for him to feel confident about the theory that Ishigami was Yasuko’s conspirator.
Another customer walked in. Sugimura glanced with interest in his direction.
“You said you kept in touch with Ms. Hanaoka on the phone? I was wondering when you last talked to her.”
“The day that Mr. Togashi was on the news, I think. I was so surprised I had to call her up. I’m certain that I told that to the other detective, too.”
“How did Ms. Hanaoka sound at the time?”
“No different than ever, really. She told me the cops had already been by to talk to her.”
That was us, Kusanagi thought, but he didn’t feel the need to mention that to Sugimura.
“And before that, you didn’t tell her that Togashi been in to the club asking after her whereabouts?”
“I didn’t. Which is to say, I couldn’t bring myself. I didn’t want to make her upset.”
So Yasuko Hanaoka hadn’t known that Togashi was looking for her. And if she didn’t know he was coming, she wouldn’t have had time to devise a plot to murder him.
“It did occur to me to mention it … but at the time, she sounded so happy, there just wasn’t a good moment.”
“At the time?” Something tugged at the back of Kusanagi’s mind. “You mean the last time you talked to her on the phone, when Togashi was on the news? Or some other time?”
“Oh, that’s right, I’m sorry. I was talking about a time before then. Oh, about three or four days after Mr. Togashi dropped in. She’d left a message for me, so I called her back.”
“Around when was that?”
“Let me see—” Sugimura retrieved her cell phone from the pocket of her suit. Kusanagi expected her to go into her list of calls made and received, but she pulled up her calendar instead. She studied it for a moment, then looked back up at him. “March tenth.”
“The tenth?” Kusanagi echoed, raising his voice. He and Kishitani exchanged glances. “Are you sure?”
“Quite sure, yes.”
The day Shinji Togashi was murdered.
“Do you remember what time you called her?”
“Well, it was after I’d gone home for the day, so I’d say around one in the morning. She’d called me before midnight, but I was still busy here at the club and in pickup.”
“How long did you talk?”
“Oh, I’d say about half an hour. We usually talk that long.”
“And you called her? Her cell phone?”
“No, actually. I called her at home.”
“Erm, sorry to be so particular about this, but it was one o’clock in the morning, so you mean you called her on the eleventh, not the tenth, correct?”
“That’s right, it would have been the eleventh, wouldn’t it?”
“You mind me asking what sort of message she left on your phone?”
“She only said she wanted to talk to me, so I should call her when I was done at the club.”
“What did she want to talk about?”
“Nothing much, really. She wanted to know the name of this shiatsu massage place I went to for therapy. Lower back pain, you know.”
“Shiatsu? Okay. Had she called you about things like that in the past?”
“Oh, she calls about all sorts of things, none of them terribly important. I think she just wants to talk, you know. That’s why I call her.”
“And always so late at night?”
“I wouldn’t say always, but it’s not unusual. Late nights come with the territory. I suppose mostly we talk on days I have off, but she had called me, so…”
Kusanagi nodded and thanked Sugimura for her time. He tapped Kishitani on the shoulder and the two of them got up to leave. But as he made his way out of the club Kusanagi found he still wasn’t satisfied.
He mulled it over on the way back to Kinshicho Station. The phone call Sugimura had mentioned at the end of their conversation bothered him. Yasuko Hanaoka had been talking on the phone in the middle of the night on the tenth of March. Her home phone. Which meant she had already come back by that point.
A theory had been going around the department that the actual time of the murder was sometime after eleven o’clock on the night of the tenth. This was little more than a theory based on the assumption that Yasuko Hanaoka was the murderer. If Togashi had been killed that late, then Hanaoka could have done it even if her alibi at karaoke held up. Still, nobody gave the theory much credit—even the ones who had suggested it in the first place. If it was true, Hanaoka would’ve had to leave the karaoke bar and go immediately to the scene of the crime in order to get there by midnight. And if she had done the deed then, there would have been no way for her to get back to her house by public transport. Few criminals wanted to leave an obvious trail by taking a taxi. In any case, taxis hardly ever passed by the riverbank where Togashi’s remains had been found.
Then there was a matter of the stolen bicycle. The bicycle had been taken after ten o’clock in the morning. If the bicycle was a plant, that meant that Yasuko had to have gone to Shinozaki Station by that time. If it wasn’t a plant, and Togashi had stolen it himself, then that raised the question: what had Togashi been doing between the time that he stole the bicycle and the time that he met Yasuko near midnight?
Having worked through this line of reasoning early on, Kusanagi hadn’t seen the need to establish an alibi for Yasuko after karaoke on the night of the murder. And even if he had wanted one, he now knew she could provide it: she’d been on the phone with Sonoko Sugimura.
And that was what was bothering him.
“Remember the first time we talked to Yasuko Hanaoka?” Kusanagi asked Kishitani abruptly as they walked.
“Sure. What about it?”
“Do you remember how I asked her about her alibi? Did I ask her where she had been on the tenth?”
“I don’t remember exactly how you asked, if that’s what you mean, but it was something like that, yeah.”
“And what did she say? She went to work that morning, and out that night with her daughter. They went to the movie, then to eat ramen, then to karaoke. Which got them home after eleven, right?”
“Sounds about right.”
“And according to the mama we just talked to, Yasuko was on the phone with her after that. She left a message asking for her to call, even though it wasn’t about anything serious. So the mama calls her a little after one o’clock, and they talk for thirty minutes.”
“So? What of it?”
“Well, when I asked her for an alibi, why do you think Yasuko didn’t mention the phone call?”
“Well, I suppose she didn’t think it was necessary.”
“Why not?” Kusanagi stopped and turned to the junior detective. “If she used her home phone to call someone, that’d be proof she was at home.”
Kishitani stopped, too. He pursed his lips. “That may be so; but from Yasuko Hanaoka’s perspective, telling you about her night on the town must have seemed like enough. I
bet if you’d asked her about what she did when she got home, she’d have told you about the phone call.”
“You think that’s the only reason she didn’t say anything?”
“Can you think of another? I mean, if she was hiding the fact that she didn’t have an alibi, that would be one thing, but she had an alibi—she just didn’t tell us about it. Seems a little strange to get worked up over that.”
Kusanagi turned from his partner and resumed walking, scowling faintly. The junior detective had taken Hanaoka’s side even before they knocked at her door that first night. It was no use expecting anything like an objective opinion from the man now.
Kusanagi’s noontime discussion with Yukawa resurfaced in his mind. The physicist had said that, had Ishigami been involved, it was unlikely the murder had been premeditated. It was too sloppy for that. He had seemed quite adamant about that point.
“If he had planned it, he never would’ve used the movie theater for an alibi,” Yukawa had noted. “He would’ve known that the movie story was unconvincing—true enough, as evidenced by your suspicion. Ishigami would have understood that. And it raises another, larger question. What possible reason would Ishigami have to assist Yasuko Hanaoka in murdering Togashi? Even if Togashi had been giving her a hard time and she had gone to her neighbor for help, Ishigami would’ve thought of a different solution for the problem. Murder would have been his last choice.”
“Why, because he’s not vicious enough?”
Yukawa had shaken his head, his eyes cool. “It’s not a question of temperament. Murder isn’t the most logical way to escape a difficult situation. It only leads to a different difficult situation. Ishigami would never engage in something so clearly counterproductive. Of course,” he had added, “the converse is also true. That is, he’s quite capable of committing an atrocity, provided that it’s the most logical course of action.”
“So how do you think Ishigami could’ve been involved?”
“If he was involved, then I think he was not in a position to assist with the actual murder. In other words, by the time he became aware of the situation, Togashi was already dead. So what were his options? If it had been possible to conceal what had happened, he would have tried that. If it was impossible, he would have done what he could to hinder the eventual investigation. He would have given explicit instructions to Yasuko Hanaoka and her daughter, telling them how to answer detectives’ questions and what evidence to reveal at what time. A script for them to follow, in other words.”