“Do I look like a policeman? No, I’ve taken up divination recently,” he extemporized quickly, “and the theme of my research is the causal relationship between a person’s birthday and the day they take up any particular job.”
“You can’t fool me with that sort of tale. But if you want to know, my birthday is February sixth. And what day did I start working here? Just a moment.” And she removed her handbag from the locker and extracted a notebook.
“December twenty-first. And, oh my God, not one yen of tip that first day, I see.”
“December twenty-first. Half a year.”
“Yes, six months, and not a single day off. Every now and again I think of quitting this business,” she added, and Shinji detected a look of desperation in her eyes. “But then I take a look at my bank book,” she went on, “and my spirits soon recover, seeing it mounting up every day. When I reach my target, I’ll quit and set myself up in something else.”
She stood before him, and he looked at her chubby hands. Here she was, the innocent accomplice of men’s desires. Those chubby hands…
And then it came home to him.
If the date she had given him was correct, and if Seiji Tanikawa had not lied to her, then the day of his first visit to the Turkish bath would have been the nineteenth of December. The day, in fact, that Fusako Aikawa had been killed!
Mere coincidence? Or was there some hidden meaning? In that steamy room, he felt cold sweat start to his brow.
“I must go!” he said rapidly. “I’ve just remembered something vital I promised to do! Sorry!”
“But what about your massage?”
“Some other time.” And, grossly overtipping her, he fled.
If he was lucky, he might just catch Seiji Tanikawa in some nearby small restaurant.
Shinji found Seiji Tanikawa in a low-class establishment serving skewered chicken and beer. It stood in a narrow street full of similar places, which ran down to the back of the station. It was not the shop in the detective’s report, and Shinji was really very lucky to spot Tanikawa there, hunched over the counter facing the street and wearing his black polo shirt. When Shinji first saw him, he was inserting a skewer into his mouth, the sauce dripping down his front. He didn’t even bother to look up when Shinji came in and sat beside him. He was engrossed in his beer and chicken, and when not occupied with them he would sit gazing blankly into the middle distance.
“Hello, Mr. Tanikawa,” said Shinji, and the man started, spilling some of his beer.
“Nice to find you here!” Shinji continued.
“Who the hell are you?”
Shinji did not answer. Smiling in an obscure way, he looked Tanikawa straight in the eye and said, “How are the films doing, then?” As he spoke, he knew how a blackmailer must feel, for he saw his victim’s face darken and freeze as his words sank in.
“I said, who the hell are you?” Tanikawa finally spluttered.
It seemed that the reference to films had done the trick. Shinji took the pressman’s business card out of his pocket and handed it over.
“A newspaperman, eh? What do you want with me? And what do you mean by ‘films’?” He looked up from the card and stared at Shinji.
“Well, nothing in particular. I’d heard you work in the film-developing field, that’s all. Today, my business is to inquire about blood donors. You cooperated in the Rh-negative collection campaign last year, didn’t you? You won’t remember me, perhaps, but I was there.”
It was a shot in the dark, but it seemed to strike home. A look of relief gradually replaced the look of suspicion on Tanikawa’s face. At least the reporter was not onto his blue film business.
“Can’t say I remember, but maybe.”
“Have you given blood since?”
“No, never.”
“That’s funny. Haven’t the blood banks contacted you at all? I gathered from them that you gave blood in mid-January.”
“Not me. Must have been someone else.” His face was expressionless as he replied to Shinji’s leading question. It did not look as if he was lying.
“Oh, I’m sorry—must have been our mistake.” He had drawn a blank. Perhaps, after all, there were no fish in this pond in which he was dangling his rod. Or perhaps he had no bait, or even no hook, on the end of his line. He stood up to go.
“Hey, you’re not going already, are you? Stay and drink a bit.”
Shinji looked down at him. The man’s speech was slurred and his eyes were red; alcohol was beginning to tell. What a bore! But he was in no hurry to go anywhere else, so he might as well stay a while. The image of the back of the pudgy white hands of the bath girl floated before his eyes; he’d better have a few drinks and forget them.
“O.K., I’ll stay and join you.” And he sat down again.
“My round,” said Tanikawa magnanimously, and shouted for beer.
“Do you come here often?” asked Shinji, as much to make conversation as anything else.
“No, not really. I go to a Turkish bathhouse down the road.”
“Sounds fun. Any nice girls there?”
At first, Tanikawa did not answer. He raised his beer mug up to the level of his eyes and gazed through the amber liquor. And then, watching the rising bubbles, he began to speak in tones of self-hatred.
“I see a girl there called Yasue every three days. And damn all good it does me. No love or anything about it—purely a commercial transaction. You can buy anything with money, you know. And I know it, too, but somehow I’m unable to stop myself any more. I think I’m scared to stop; at least my life has some pattern the way things are. I am just a bloody fool!”
He was close to tears. He took a deep gulp of beer and went on.
“And it all started with one woman—it was her fault; do you understand me? Damn it! How cynical, how ludicrous life is! Look, I never went near a place like that until the end of last year! And there’s a date I can never forget—December seventeenth last year. It was my day off; I went down to Kabukicho in Shinjuku and saw a film and then went into a cheap bar. That’s where I met the woman; that’s where she came and sat next to me and spoke to me…” His head suddenly slumped forward, sending his glass spinning into the ashtray, which fell to the floor and shattered. The spilled beer spread over the counter and started to drip down.
“Let me take you somewhere else,” said Shinji hastily. He lifted the drunk man in his arms and, staggering under the dead weight, paid the bill and made his way outside.
Who could this woman be that Tanikawa had suddenly mentioned? Could there be anything to it? In the recesses of his brain, an indistinct female form took shape.
He staggered down the street, supporting Tanikawa, who was no help, but merely muttered again and again, “It was that woman, that woman…” Anything else he said was unclear.
Shinji hailed a taxi and dumped Tanikawa in the back, sitting beside him. “Mitaka!” he said. Tanikawa spread himself out so that his hair, which reeked of pomade, came close to Shinji’s nose, and put his feet on the white covers of the seat back in front of him. This displeased the driver, who told him to desist in sharp tones.
The car moved off. Shinji wound down the window so that the wind blew into Tanikawa’s face and shook him by the shoulder.
“And what did you do next—you and the woman?”
“Well, she took me to a bar and stood me several drinks. Then she said she had to go, but she wanted to see me again soon.”
“She paid for all the drinks? Or did you go dutch?”
“No, she paid for the lot. And when we parted she told me that she worked for a Turkish bath and would I come and see her? She promised me good service and gave me a piece of paper with the name and address of the bathhouse on it.”