The Thief

  I could dimly make out the shape of his eyes behind his sunglasses.

  “As a threat, that’s kind of old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

  “Old-fashioned threats are the most effective,” he said with a laugh. “You and Niimi are both pretty dumb. Even though you’ve chosen this lifestyle, you still seek attachments. That’s the height of stupidity. You’d be much better off if you were truly free. The only reason Niimi didn’t run away before the robbery was you.”

  “Niimi said that?”

  “I gave him a choice—either you both took part in the job and I let you live, or if either of you tried to get away I would kill you both. If he was just out for himself he’d have thought about running even if it meant risking your life.”

  I went to light a cigarette, and then saw there was still one burning in the ashtray. The man was staring at the smoke rising from it.

  “To put it plainly, you work for me now. You can’t refuse, because if you do, the woman and kid will die a horrible death. It’s your fate. Fate is like the relationship between the strong and the weak, don’t you think? Look at religion, for example. The Israelites, who worshipped Jehovah—why were they afraid of him? Because their god was powerful, that’s why. Everyone who believes in gods fears them to some extent. That’s because gods have power.”

  He took another drink.

  “Imagine that God wasn’t the creator of the world but just a superhuman with superpowers. It would still be the same, wouldn’t it? They’d obey him, worship him, pray to him for their own prosperity. I’m going to tell you a story. I’m in a good mood today.”

  He made a call on his cell phone and the waiter brought more whiskey and water. Without my noticing, I had finished my drink and my glass was completely dry. Still expressionless, the waiter bowed as low as before and left. People were still cavorting in the other room.

  “A long time ago, in France when they still had slavery, there was an aristocrat.”

  He seemed to be getting drunk, but his swarthy complexion was unchanged. He looked at me with amusement, leaning back on the dimly-lit sofa and gesturing with his hands as he spoke.

  “A thirteen-year-old boy was bought as a servant for the nobleman’s castle. A beautiful boy. The nobleman was bored with life and looking for excitement. He spent his fortune freely and acquired whatever money could buy. He slept with different women almost every day. He lived like a king with power, fame, everything he could possibly desire.”

  He paused for breath.

  “The nobleman looked at the youth and thought that he would try to prescribe his entire future. The story of his life, his joys, his sorrows, even his death, he would decide it all. Like Abraham and Moses, who were always under God’s control. For one year he observed the boy’s personality and abilities, forming a general impression of how he would react if the nobleman did this or that. He took some paper and started to write down the young man’s life from that point on. It took him several days to write. The book outlined the young man’s fate. What was in that book could not be changed. The boy would have to live his life exactly as it was written there.”

  Circles of orange light reflected off the man’s shades.

  “When the boy was fifteen he met a girl he liked, but before they could get together she was moved to a faraway place. They parted with floods of tears, like in a B-grade movie. It was the nobleman who’d brought the girl close to the boy, and of course it was he who separated them.

  “At eighteen the boy was given permission to visit his parents, who were serfs, for one day only, but on that day the family was attacked by outlaws. Naturally that was all according to the nobleman’s instructions, and had been written in his book beforehand. The boy’s parents were slaughtered before his eyes. Apparently the noble spent the whole day sitting in his chair, heart pounding—not out of horror at what he was doing, but because he was worried that the brigands he’d hired might kill the boy by mistake. In his fury and heartbreak the young man’s face lost its innocence.

  “Then he was invited to learn swordsmanship with the noble’s private army. It was impossible for a slave to become a knight, but he could go into battle. He could also join the pursuit of bandits. The youth became skillful with a sword. Of course the commander was also following the nobleman’s orders. During the day the boy worked as a servant in the castle and at night he practiced the art of the sword, because in that wound that would never heal he had found his reason for living. Like Job when he was being tested by the Lord, he never cried out, why is this happening to me? He didn’t realize that he was being manipulated by the nobleman.

  “His master had also written many of the minor events in his life in advance. For example, he was seduced by a female servant and slept with her. The steward was going to punish him, but he was saved by a pardon from the nobleman. At that, the young man swore even greater loyalty. Even the trivial details of his day-to-day life occurred exactly as was in the notebook—the mistakes he made in his duties as a servant, the small rewards he received.

  “At twenty-three he reached the high point of his life. In other words, the climax of the book. He took part in an outlaw hunt and found himself face to face with the men who murdered his parents. The captain ordered him to finish them off. Amusing, isn’t it? With tears in his eyes, the young man killed the bandits. At twenty-six he married a woman slave on the nobleman’s command, but she had such a troubled personality that he soon tired of her. Once again he was seduced, starting an affair with the nobleman’s mistress, often meeting in secret. Of course that too had all been dictated by the nobleman, just as it was written in his book. Before long the nobleman’s mistress became pregnant and the noble, who knew the whole story, casually told the young man that out of all of his children he wanted to make this one his heir. The youth was troubled and afraid.

  “The noble even wrote a banquet scene in which the young man was waiting at table on a crowd of aristocrats. The mistress seemed to be on the verge of making a full confession but then changed her mind at the last minute. The nobleman was vastly entertained. And then, when the young man turned thirty, the nobleman summoned him to his chamber.”

  He stopped. I had a slight ringing in my ears and the revolving shadow of the ceiling fan was bothering me. He spoke briefly into his cell phone. I continued to smoke, and the man drank his whiskey.

  “The nobleman handed the youth a bundle of papers bound with string. When he opened the pages, he saw his whole life until that point recorded there. It was what the nobleman had written some fifteen years before. It must have been a terrible shock when he saw it. At the end of the story, he was to be put to death in front of the nobleman for the crime of laying his hands on the mistress, even though that crime had of course been staged by the nobleman himself.

  “The young man collapsed on the floor. It took him a long time to fit all the pieces together. At the instant he understood everything and looked up at the nobleman, trembling with emotion, the soldier standing behind him stabbed him in the back. I have no idea what thoughts were going through the young man’s head before he died, but the nobleman was quivering with delight. He was enjoying an overwhelming pleasure, quite unlike fortune, fame, the joy of being with a woman. The nobleman savored that pleasure with a serious expression, as if transfixed, forgetting even to laugh.”

  I opened my mouth for the first time. “That’s crazy,” I muttered.

  His smile didn’t waver.

  “It’s not crazy. That nobleman was simply appreciating everything life has to offer.”

  “You made that up, didn’t you?”

  He laughed.

  “No. To tell the truth, my lieutenant who planned the robbery made it up on the spur of the moment when he was drunk.”

  “With you as the model?”

  “That’s right. You catch on fast. In other words, from now on your life depends on me.”

  He drained his glass.

  “I’ve got the notes to your future inside my head.
It’s extremely interesting, manipulating another person’s life. Now I’ve got a question for you. Do you believe in fate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s the most boring answer. Was the young man’s fate really controlled entirely by the nobleman? Or was being controlled by the nobleman the young man’s fate?”

  There was a knock at the door. When Kizaki answered a thin man in a suit came in. He put an attaché case on the table, bowed and left. Kizaki opened the case and took out several photos and papers.

  “You’re going to do three small jobs for me. They really are trivial tasks. But if we use you, certain things we want to do will become much easier. First, steal this man’s cell phone in the next six days. Put it in the mailbox of an apartment we’ll tell you about. The guy’s home security system is state-of-the-art, so it would be hard to break into, and for various reasons we can’t kill him yet. As for why we want his phone, we need to find out who he’s talking to, quickly and smoothly. We could attack him on the street and grab it, but in this case it’s preferable that he doesn’t realize it’s been stolen, that he thinks he just dropped it.

  “The second job is to take some small item, any item, from this man within seven days. A lighter would do. Some everyday object that will have his fingerprints on it. The point is that he mustn’t know it’s been stolen, just like the first man. The object will end up next to a dead body. Of course we’re not trying to get him convicted, but by making the police suspect him, pick him up for questioning, various other things will be revealed. His room is hard to break into, too. And get some of his hair, as well as the lighter or whatever. It won’t be easy, but do it anyway. I want two or three strands. Obviously they won’t look natural if they’re cut, so pull them out by the root, of course without him noticing. Put those in the mailbox, too.”

  Keeping my face blank, I gazed at the photos. The man was pointing at them gleefully, as if this were a game.

  “Finally, I want you to steal some documents from yet another man. You’ve got ten days. We don’t have a photo yet, but we’ll get one. One of my men made it into his apartment but couldn’t find the papers. It looks like he must carry them on him. He’s a coward, extremely nervous. He also carries a gun. You have to steal the papers in such a way that he doesn’t realize they’re gone for at least two days.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Impossible or not, you’ll do it. The documents are in a sealed envelope, so maybe he doesn’t know what’s in it. Once the envelope is opened it will probably lose half its value. Replace it with this dummy, which we had made by someone on the inside. They real papers should be in an envelope from this company, and the confidential documents should be stamped like this. But we’re not certain about that, so check before you make the switch. This can’t go in the mailbox. Give it to me directly.”

  “And if I fail?”

  “You die. Perhaps you think that’s unfair, but once I’ve got someone in my sights, that’s how it is. Don’t worry, I won’t kill the woman and her brat. Tension and a heightened sense of responsibility can stretch a person’s abilities to the max, but if you apply too much pressure it can have the opposite effect and lead to mistakes. And where possible it’s best not to create unnecessary corpses. The more dead bodies you leave lying around, even if it’s only one or two, the greater the chance is that things come to light. I only killed Niimi because he knew too much about my core business. I don’t murder people for no reason. I’m not just talking about you—that’s why I didn’t kill Tachibana either, even though he’s not much use to me. But if you refuse, then I’ll have no choice. I will kill the boy and his mother. It’ll mean more work for me, but that’s how I operate.”

  He put the papers and photos back in the attaché case and pushed it across the table. I had to take it.

  “I direct other people’s lives from behind a desk. Reigning over people like that—that’s like being a god, don’t you think? If there is a god, he appreciates this world more than anyone. When I’m controlling people I sometimes feel like I’ve absorbed them. Their thoughts and everything they’ve ever felt are inside me, like I’ve been invaded by lots of people’s emotions at the same time. You’ve never experienced it, so you won’t understand. It’s the greatest pleasure there is. Here, listen.”

  He leaned towards me.

  “In this life, the proper way of living is to make use of both joy and suffering. They are both merely stimuli that the world presents to us. So by blending them skillfully within you, you can use them in a completely different way. If you want to be steeped in evil, you mustn’t forget good. When you see a woman writhing in agony, laughter is unimaginative. When you see a woman writhing in agony, pity her, feel sorry for her, imagine her pain, imagine the parents who raised her even, weep tears of sympathy—while torturing her even more. That moment is just exquisite! Taste everything in the whole world. Even if you should fail at these tasks, taste the emotion that comes with failure. Savor with all your senses the fear of death. When you can do that, you transcend yourself. You can look at this world through different eyes. Straight after I brutally murder someone, the sunrise appears so beautiful, and I look at the smiling face of a child and think how adorable it is. If that child is an orphan, I may help her or I may kill her there and then. Even as I pity her! If gods or fate had personalities and emotions, don’t you think this is close to what they would feel? In this world where children and saints die outrageous deaths?”

  At this point the man stopped talking. His voice, thick with alcohol, lay heavy and cloying in my ears. As always, he kept on smiling.

  “Well, good luck.”

  13 The first man, Kirita, was forty-two years old and lived in an apartment in Gotanda. His photo showed short hair and a well-tailored suit. He was a broker who acted as a go-between between unlisted companies and the mob. He’d offer to negotiate deals for start-ups who couldn’t get financing from the banks. If their business grew, their share price would go up and they’d make a big profit. In that case, the company that took the loan would never know that it came from the mob. All I needed from him was his cell phone, but it’s always difficult stealing from a specific target.

  After committing the simple notes and the photo to memory, I strolled in front of Kirita’s condo. If there’d been a coffee shop nearby I could have watched through the window, but there was nothing like that, and just standing around on a residential street doesn’t look natural. When I saw the curtains of his room move, I looked down and walked off. Finding a park some distance away, I sat on a rusty bench. A mother and child were playing silently beside a narrow slide. I stared at the child’s head, thinking it was a piece of wood with a hole in it, but he was just wearing a paper bag. They were fooling around, the woman chasing after her fleeing son. I could see the entrance to the condo out of the corner of my eye, but it was too far away to see people clearly.

  After about four hours a man in a cream coat with a shoulder bag walked out and headed off in the opposite direction. I couldn’t see his face but I hurried after him, thinking it might be Kirita. He was hunched over like a shrimp, his unusually long fingers splayed. Just as I reached the entrance, the automatic door opened again and another man came out. A black coat, carrying a black satchel. That’s him, I thought, taken by surprise. I lowered my head and pretended to be hunting in my pockets for cigarettes. Taking his phone without him realizing it, so that he thought he’d lost it, seemed an impossible demand. I tailed him, keeping my distance.

  He went to a drug-store and then to the station, where he met up with a fat man in a café. His wallet was in the left inside pocket of his suit, but he kept his cell phone in his satchel. It looked like it would be hard to steal it while he was inside, so I waited for him to leave. I thought about lifting it on the train, but when he came out and said good-bye to the fat man he got into a taxi. I took the next cab and told the driver to follow the car in front of us. The driver was still young, so I kept having to
give him exact instructions, like to stay in a different lane and keep another car between us.

  Kirita got out in Akasaka and went into a basement bar. The interior was large, with a stage for performers, and incredibly crowded and noisy. I found a seat at the counter, thinking that this might be my chance. I ordered a weak cocktail and rested my arms on the wooden surface, which had darkened with age.

  An hour or more passed. As Kirita grew more intoxicated, his voice became louder and his gestures more exaggerated. He was laughing, his reptilian mouth open wide. The other guy was young, maybe a student. Papers were spread out on the table but Kirita barely glanced at them.

  He took his cell phone out of his bag, made a call, and then replaced the phone in the satchel on the floor. I was hoping he would put it in his jacket, but no such luck. Seeing how drunk he was, if I took his phone today he would easily believe that he’d lost it, and I didn’t know when I’d get another opportunity like this. Plus his was the earliest of the deadlines Kizaki had given me. When the waitress approached his table I stood up.

  The toilets were on his other side, away from me. I headed towards them, adjusting my pace to that of the waitress. She put fresh glasses on his table, and just as she bowed and turned to leave I tripped her, as if by accident. She tumbled over and the glasses on her tray shattered spectacularly. I pretended to lose my balance and fell down too, but while everyone turned at the loud noise they were all looking at the waitress lying on the floor in her short skirt. When I checked on Kirita, he was facing her in surprise and touching his shoulder, which was slightly damp. Still crouching, I used my coat like a cape to cover his bag. I slipped my left hand through the hole in my pocket, and was able to open the zipper. The young man stood up and started to say something to Kirita. As the waitress struggled to her feet she tugged at her skirt, which had ridden up, and opened her mouth to apologize. With the bag completely concealed under my jacket, no one could see anything. I put my left hand inside, hunted quickly for the phone, hooked my finger through the strap and slid it into my sleeve. Kirita started to rise to help the waitress. Pulling my hand out of the satchel, I braced my legs to stand. Just as I felt the warmth escaping from my throat, the phone in my sleeve shrilled loudly.