It was a Wednesday in late June when a call came to his office from one Kazunari Shinozuka. Rain was falling in a fine drizzle outside the window, and Imaeda had just given up hope that any customers would show themselves that day.
Imaeda knew from the moment Kazunari introduced himself on the phone that he would be a client. There was that certain ring in his voice. A few minutes later he was giving him directions to the office.
Imaeda hung up and scratched his neck, thinking. Kazunari hadn’t gone into specifics about his request over the phone, which left Imaeda to wonder what he needed. He knew Kazunari was single, which ruled out the usual adultery investigation. He didn’t peg him as the sort to hire someone else to look into a lover’s suspected infidelities, either.
Imaeda had first met Kazunari the day he ran into Makoto Takamiya at the driving range – Kazunari had been the man standing behind Makoto’s wife, Chizuru. The three of them had arranged to meet that day for dinner. Imaeda hadn’t gone so far as to invite himself along, but he had shared a cup of instant coffee with them in the lobby, which was when Kazunari had given him his business card.
He had since run into him twice more at the driving range. Kazunari was an accomplished golfer. They had spoken a little about Imaeda’s work on those occasions. Though Kazunari hadn’t seemed all that interested at the time, perhaps Imaeda had succeeded in sowing the seeds that led to today.
Imaeda pulled out a Marlboro and lit it with a disposable lighter. Putting his feet up on his cluttered desk, he leaned back and took a deep drag, sending a stream of smoke to drift up towards the dimly lit ceiling.
Kazunari Shinozuka wasn’t your average salaryman. He was next in line for an executive position at his uncle’s pharmaceutical company and that meant he couldn’t rule out a corporate investigation. Just thinking about that possibility made Imaeda’s heart race. He hadn’t felt this excited in a long while.
Imaeda had gone independent from Tokyo General Research two years earlier. He didn’t like the crappy working conditions and the low pay and after doing it for a couple of years he didn’t see why he couldn’t accomplish many of the same things himself. He certainly had all the connections he needed by that point.
And business had been good, for the most part. He was getting enough requests to support his own modest lifestyle. He was even saving a little and hitting the golf course once a month.
But he wasn’t satisfied. More than half of his jobs were looking into affairs. The kind of corporate cases he occasionally got when he was working for Tokyo General were nowhere to be seen. This meant he was spending every day out on the streets, wallowing in the stench of love and betrayal, and while he didn’t mind that per se, it was getting old. There was none of the tension he used to feel.
At one time, he had considered joining the police force. He passed the tests and had been accepted to the Academy, but he was discouraged by what he saw as the unnecessary harshness of laws and regulations that seemed meaningless to him at the time. He dropped out without graduating. That was when he was in his early twenties.
After that he drifted from one part-time job to another before finding the help-wanted ad for Tokyo General in the newspaper. If I couldn’t make it as a police officer, maybe I could make it as a private eye, he thought half-jokingly to himself as he went for the interview. He was hired on the spot, but in the beginning, it was little more than part-time work. That went on for about six months before he became a full employee.
It was on his very first investigation that he realised how well suited he was for the job. Being a private eye held none of the glamour depicted in the movies and on TV. It was repetitive, lonely work. Without the authority of the badge, you could never walk in the front door to any case. And you had to protect the privacy of your client. You left no traces of your investigation and could allow nothing to leak. And yet the feeling of fulfilment when, at the end of long hours, you got what you were looking for wasn’t something he’d ever found anywhere else.
The phone call from Kazunari started Imaeda thinking that maybe he could get some of that excitement back. He had a good feeling about this client.
Then he shook his head and stubbed out his cigarette. Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ll probably be following some woman again. Just like always.
Kazunari arrived at twenty past two. He was wearing a light grey suit and his hair was perfect, despite the weather. He looked a good four or five years older than he had at the practice range and carried himself like a man with well-lined pockets.
‘I haven’t seen you much at the driving range,’ Kazunari said, taking a seat.
‘Yeah, I can never seem to make myself go when I don’t have a date set up to play,’ Imaeda told him as he went to pour coffee.
‘We should go play a round some time,’ Kazunari offered. ‘I know a few good courses.’
‘Sounds great. Definitely let me know if you’re heading out.’
‘I will. I’ll invite Makoto along, too,’ he said, taking a sip of his coffee. Imaeda detected that familiar stiffness in his movement and voice that every client had.
Kazunari put down his cup, took a breath, and said, ‘I have a rather odd request.’
Imaeda nodded. ‘Don’t worry. Nearly everyone that comes here thinks their request is odd. How can I help?’
‘It’s about a woman,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to investigate her.’
‘All right,’ Imaeda said. He felt his heart sank a little. ‘Your girlfriend, perhaps?’
‘No, actually. We’re not directly connected. Not like that, at least.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a photograph that he placed on the table. ‘This is her.’
Imaeda picked up the photo.
It was a picture of a woman standing in front of a large house. From the white fur coat she was wearing, he guessed the photo had been taken during the winter. She had a natural smile and could easily have passed for a professional model.
‘She’s attractive,’ Imaeda said.
‘She is. In fact, my cousin is dating her now.’
‘By cousin, do you mean your uncle – the CEO’s – son?’
‘Yes. He’s a managing director at Shinozuka Pharmaceuticals.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Forty-five.’
Forty-five was a very young age to be managing director at a big company like that. Clearly the CEO’s son had been fast-tracked along the way.
‘Is he married?’
‘No, not currently. His wife died in the Japan Air crash six years ago.’
‘Oh, sorry to hear that. Did he lose any other family members?’
‘No, she was the only one of them on board.’
‘Any children?’
‘Two, a boy and a girl.’
Imaeda looked back at the woman in the photo. She had large eyes, with a slightly feline curve to them.
‘So, if his wife has passed away, am I right to assume that there’s no legal issue with your cousin seeing this woman?’
‘That’s right. In fact, we all hope he finds the right person soon.’
‘So,’ Imaeda said, tapping his finger on the desk next to the photograph, ‘you don’t think she’s the right person. There some kind of problem with her?’
Kazunari leaned forward in his chair. ‘Frankly, yes, there is.’
‘So what is it? If you don’t mind telling me.’
Kazunari nodded and clasped his hands together, resting them on the table. ‘Well, for one, she was married before. That in itself isn’t a problem; the problem is who she was married to.’
‘And who was that?’ Imaeda asked, his own voice growing softer.
‘Makoto.’
Imaeda sat up straight. ‘Makoto Takamiya?’
‘That’s right. She’s his ex-wife.’
‘Well,’ Imaeda said, shaking his head. ‘That’s a surprise.’
‘I thought it might be,’ Kazunari said, smiling. ‘As I may have mentioned before, Makoto and
I were in dance club together during college. The woman in that photograph was in our club, too. That was how they met.’
‘When was the divorce?’
‘That was in ’88, so three years ago.’
‘And Chizuru was the cause?’
‘I don’t know the details, but that’s a good guess,’ said Kazunari, a faint smile on his lips.
‘So Makoto’s ex-wife is dating your cousin now. Was their meeting a coincidence? I mean, did Makoto’s ex-wife and your cousin meet at some other place and start dating without your knowledge?’
‘No, I wouldn’t call it a coincidence. I suppose you can say that I was the one who brought them together.’
‘How so?’
‘I took my cousin to her store, a clothes boutique in South Aoyama called R&Y. She told me it was named after herself and her mother, Reiko.’
Yukiho Karasawa had been running a couple of boutiques since before her divorce. Though Kazunari had never been a patron during the marriage, a short while after the divorce he’d received an invitation letter to a special sale. When he asked why she sent the invitation, she explained that Makoto had asked her to.
‘Apparently, he thought I could help out her business. He still felt responsible, I guess, and wanted to do what he could to support her.’
Imaeda nodded. It was a common enough story. Every time he heard something like this, he wondered anew at the foolish generosity of some men. Sometimes, even when the fault in a divorce lay clearly with the wife, the ex-husband would try to lend a hand afterwards, despite himself. Women, on the other hand, typically wanted nothing to do with their husbands after they split up.
‘I’d been wondering myself how she was doing after the divorce, and thought I might as well go, if only to check up on her. I mentioned the whole thing to my cousin and he said he wanted to come along too. He said he was looking for something he could wear on his days off that would still be a little classy.’
‘And the rest is history, as they say?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
Kazunari claimed that he hadn’t realised his cousin, whose name was Yasuharu, was smitten with Yukiho at all at first. It was only later that Yasuharu admitted to him that it had been love at first sight. He even went so far as to say that he couldn’t imagine being with any other woman. ‘My cousin’s always been a passionate sort of man. Once something catches his fancy, he’s not one to put on the brakes, no matter what people might say. I didn’t know this at the time, but apparently, ever since I brought him that day, he started visiting the boutique regularly. The maid says he owns more outfits than he can possibly wear.’
Imaeda chuckled. ‘I think I get the picture. So, Yasuharu made the moves and scored?’
‘Yes, and I believe my cousin is hoping they’ll get married. Except she seems to be playing hard to get. He thinks it’s their age difference and the fact that he has two children.’
‘I’m sure that’s a factor, yes. Also we have to remember that she’s been burned once already. I’d expect some caution on her part.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So,’ Imaeda stretched his arms and placed both hands on the table in front of him. ‘What about this woman do you want me to look into? From what I’ve just heard, it sounds like you already know quite a bit about her.’
‘You’d think so, but actually, that’s not the case. In fact, there’s quite a lot about her that’s frankly mysterious.’ Kazunari picked up the photograph. ‘You know, if it would make my cousin happy, truly happy, then I’d say he should marry her. Sure, I hesitate a little when I think that she’s my friend’s ex-wife, but I’m sure I could get used to that with time. It’s just…’ He turned the photo around so it was facing Imaeda. ‘The more I see of her, the more uneasy I feel. I can’t explain it. I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something else to her, a darkness under the surface.’
‘I would propose that every woman has a little darkness under the surface,’ Imaeda said with a smile.
‘It’s more than that, I think. The way she smiles, she gives people the impression that it’s a learned skill, a sort of noble way to cope with the pain and the bitterness. Even my cousin says that it’s not her face that attracts him, it’s the goodness he sees shining from inside her.’
‘And you think she’s faking that.’
‘That’s what I want you to find out.’
‘That’s a tough one. Are you sure you don’t have any more, well, tangible reason for suspecting this woman isn’t all she seems?’
Kazunari looked down at the floor for moment before looking back up and saying, ‘I do.’
‘And that is?’
‘Money.’
‘Ah.’ Imaeda leaned back in his chair and shot a long look at Kazunari. ‘I was wondering when we were going to get to that. You think she’s after your cousin’s money?’
To Imaeda’s surprise, Kazunari shook his head.
‘Actually, it’s her money that concerns me. Makoto said he often wondered about it too. See, it was never really clear where her money was coming from. When she opened those boutiques Makoto didn’t help her out at all. She had been into stocks for a while, but with the kind of money she would’ve needed to open stores in those locations… it’s hard to imagine an amateur investor doing so well in such a short time.’
‘Does she come from a wealthy family?’
Kazunari shook his head again. ‘Not from what I’ve heard. Her mother teaches tea ceremony, but she’s just living on that income and what she gets from the government.’
Imaeda nodded. This was getting interesting. ‘Do you suspect anything in particular? Maybe she has a patron of some sort?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s hard to imagine her having some secret patron, especially after she got married… And yet, there is something there, something happening behind the scenes. I’m sure of it.’
‘Behind the scenes, right.’ Imaeda scratched the side of his nose with his pinky.
‘And there’s one other thing that bothers me.’
‘Yes?’
‘The people close to her,’ Kazunari said, his voice growing quiet. ‘All of them have met with some kind of misfortune.’
‘Huh?’ Imaeda blinked and looked back at him. ‘Are you serious?’
‘There’s Makoto, of course. He may be happily remarried to Chizuru now, but the divorce was certainly a kind of misfortune.’
‘Yeah, but that was his fault, wasn’t it?’
‘To all appearances, yes. But it’s hard to say for sure.’
‘Right, well, any other people who met with misfortune?’
‘My ex-girlfriend,’ Kazunari said, then he closed his mouth tightly.
‘OK.’ Imaeda took a sip of his coffee. It had gone lukewarm. ‘What happened there, if you don’t mind me asking?’