A Dog in Water (5 page)

“Please, spare me …”

Katsuya’s laugh echoed around me. “So, ya finally learned how to talk to me, eh?” His weight vanished from my back. “If I do anything more to ya, you’ll probably go cryin’ to the cops, Junko be damned. So I’ll let you go like this.” I felt the sole of his boot on my left fingers. “Come back when you’ve got what it takes to try and kill me.” He bore down on my fingers. A nauseating sound came from beneath his boot and my whole body convulsed.

I heard footsteps walking away. I tried my damnedest to get up. It took a very long time to simply roll over onto my back.

Katsuya was long gone—I was all alone in the darkened alleyway. Blood flowed from my nose into my mouth, and my body felt feverish as if I’d been set on fire. I couldn’t tell anymore which body parts were hurting.

I gotta call for help
, I thought.
I gotta ask for an ambulance with my cell
. Yet my arm wouldn’t move. I couldn’t even summon the willpower to move it. I felt consciousness slipping away.

I could hardly breathe. Anxiety, that I might die at this rate, forced me to lift my head. I didn’t want to die. I was afraid of dying before I was able to do anything to Katsuya. I saw stars twinkling faintly in the dark sky overhead as my mind faded to black. It was then that I realized that I didn’t mind dying if I could exact revenge on him.

I woke up in very high spirits, feeling like humming a happy tune. The nurse told me I had woken up several times before, but I couldn’t remember any of it.

I felt practically no pain. If anything I was very comfortable lying in my hospital bed. Later I’d find out the hard way that that was thanks to the morphine they were dosing me with.

Junko was looking at me with a worried expression. I figured the police must have called my office.

“I’m so sorry. It’s my fault that you ended up like this.” She sounded like she was on the verge of tears.

“There’s no need for you to feel responsible. This is part and parcel with private detective work.” That was a lie. I had never gotten myself so badly injured even while I was on the police force.

Either immediately after or much later (I couldn’t tell), I was visited by two detectives from the violent crimes subsection of the Ushigome Precinct. I didn’t recognize either of them.

“Can you tell us what happened?” asked the younger one.

“Not really,” I replied.

“What kind of guys were they?” Clearly they thought this was the work of several men.

“Dunno. I was drunk, so I don’t remember.”

“Why were you at such a place?”

“I was drunk, so I don’t remember.”

“You were drunk at such an early hour?” asked the elder detective.

“Probably.”

“P.I.s can start imbibing in the afternoon? Cushy job there, Dick.”

“Quit the force and join my world.”

“No thanks. You better start reining in your drinking.”

The detectives left. The police don’t take an interest in complications between good-for-nothings, so long as it doesn’t affect ordinary citizens. It appeared that I had been branded a good-for-nothing. Not that they were off the mark.

Junko Tajima felt terribly responsible. She seemed to think my refusal to tell the police what had happened was born of my desire to protect her secret.

“It’s not about you. I didn’t tell them for my own reasons,” I said to her. That wasn’t a lie.

A thick metal wire had been slid into my nose to lift up and reset the collapsed cartilage. Apparently I’d yelled with a fury during the procedure, which was why I was now on morphine. An angular nose guard placed on the center of my face protected my nose, making me look
like Giant Robo, a cartoon character from my childhood.

I had two broken ribs and another fractured one. The ring and little fingers on my left hand had snapped, too. They checked my brain waves and also did a CT scan, but I showed no brain damage.

The first time I was able to walk myself to the bathroom, I was shocked by the color of my urine. The toilet filled with liquid the color of American coffee. Apparently I had suffered damage to internal organs. I’d heard that injuries to the kidneys result in blood in the urine.

My feelings of wellbeing didn’t last. Once the morphine cleared my system I was racked by pain. Analgesics had little to no effect. The gentlest of coughs sent a sharp pain through my chest. But pain I could handle, whereas the humiliation was harder to manage. I couldn’t get the sound of Katsuya Yamamoto’s laughter out of my head. I felt a constant hum of impatience and irritation, making it difficult to stay put in bed.

The informant showed up on the third day and gave me a plastic model kit of the battleship
Yamato
. I didn’t understand. What did he expect me to do with it when I had two fingers of my left hand still in a cast?

“I thought it’d help with your rehabilitation,” he explained un-apologetically. “At any rate, what the hell happened to you? You look like shit. Like I told ya, you should be packin’ heat for self-protection.”

He was right. If I’d taken his advice, I wouldn’t have ended up in this state. But if I’d had a gun then, I would probably have gone beyond mere self-preservation—putting aside whether that might not have been for the best.

The doctor told me I needed a week in the hospital, but I got myself discharged on the fourth day. My urine that morning was the color of weak black tea.

I arrived at my office around noon, but Junko Tajima wasn’t there. Though I’d checked out of the hospital, I didn’t have anything in particular to do. Or rather, there was nothing I could do. I lay on the couch and chain-smoked cigarettes.

When I’d asked her in my hospital room, Katsuya Yamamoto had not contacted Junko since that threatening message. He was probably in wait-and-see mode. Once he realized the police weren’t coming after him, he was certain to make another approach. I mused about what I could do when the time came.

I knew I was useless in such a state, but my heart was too troubled to let me sit by and do nothing. Thoughts bubbled up unchecked and floated away.

I still had a slight fever. My head was hazy, either due to the antibiotics or the painkillers.

When I opened my eyes, it was completely dark outside. I had fallen asleep at some point. I felt like I could sleep for a while longer, but I had to take my medicine. I ordered delivery from the Chinese place across the street.

The damage to my nose rendered the food tasteless. I ate less than half of the fried rice and dumplings. There was nothing interesting on TV.

I watched it anyway to kill time. I watched some stupid movie. Occasionally I found myself seized by an urge to go on a rampage. I kept watching the stupid movie to suppress it.

The nurses had kept me clean in the hospital, but I hadn’t washed my hair in days and my scalp itched. The skin underneath my cast itched, too. I thought about having a drink, but the increase in circulation might make the itching worse so I held off.

I began to regret leaving the hospital. What was I thinking? It was almost as if I’d left just to be able to smoke. Well, actually, that was rather important.

At around 11:00 p.m., when I was thinking about turning in, Junko Tajima suddenly appeared.

“Please find Koichi,” she said as soon as she walked through the door.

I didn’t take her meaning. She was very drunk.

“Please, calm down. Why don’t you sit down first and tell me what’s going on.” I indicated the sofa.

“I’m sorry to bother you at this hour …”

She sat down facing me and seemed to regain her composure somewhat.

“Um … How are you feeling?”

“A little better than absolutely awful,” I replied honestly. “So, what is it? Has something happened to Koichi?”

“Um, the other day, I think it was the day after you got hurt, he called me …” She wasn’t wearing any makeup. She seemed to have grown awfully gaunt in the three days I hadn’t seen her.

“You told him you’re in Osaka, right?”

“Yes, and he said he moved in the meantime.”

“Moved?”

“He told me he rented a single-occupant apartment near his office. He said the house in Setagaya was too big to live in alone, and he hated feeling his neighbors’ eyes on him when he took out the trash.”

“I see. So?”

“He won’t tell me his new address.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“His wife hired a private investigator ahead of divorce mediation. She’s looking for evidence that he cheated … That’s why he can’t be
seen going to my apartment, and we can’t see each other for a while …”

“That sounds logical. Are you dissatisfied?”

“I’m nervous. I feel like he’ll just drift away from me.”

I felt like I was listening to a junior high student talk about her crush. The skin under my cast itched. “I understand how you feel. You must feel like everything in your life is going to hell. But shouldn’t you trust him?”

“I just want to know. I want to know where he lives, at least. It’s not like I’m planning on just showing up on his doorstep, but if push comes to shove I’d like to know where I can find him. I want that peace of mind. I’d be able to bear being apart from him if I knew that much.”

“I think you’d cave as soon as you found out his address,” I said, not bothering to mince words. She was getting on my nerves. “Hasn’t Koichi avoided telling you because he knows what you’re like?”

“That can’t be …” She seemed to take it harder than I’d intended. Maybe it was the alcohol.

“Your problem is not that you don’t know Koichi’s new address. Your problem is Katsuya Yamamoto.”

“Then why don’t you do something about him?!” A look of regret came over her face the instant the emotional words leapt from her mouth. She probably recalled my current incapacitation. And the reason for it.

I stopped bothering to try and hide my irritation. “Are you telling me to at least find out Koichi’s new address, for crying out loud, if I’m going to be useless about Katsuya?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“I may be in a sorry state and groaning with pain, but can’t I handle a simple search? Is that it?”

“I-I’m sorry, I …”

“To be sure, the one-week period I promised you isn’t up. But I don’t recall agreeing to track down the whereabouts of some partner in an adultery.”

At a loss for words, Junko looked like she might burst into tears.

“Let me be clear. My policy is not to search for persons who have
gone missing of their own volition unless I am retained by a family member. Any detective agency worth their salt will tell you the same. A private eye can’t be aiding and abetting a stalker, you see …”

“I’m not a stalker!” She started crying, covering her face with both hands as her shoulders trembled.

With amazing speed, self-hatred consumed me. What reason did I have to reproach her? She was the victim. She’d been violated and threatened and plunged into fear. She was on the brink of losing everything. What was so wrong with her voicing her anxieties? I was the only one with whom she could be open.

I’d taken it out on her. Humiliated by my trouncing at Katsuya’s hands and frustrated by my inability to do anything since, I’d merely unleashed my vexation on her. I could sense the pang of guilt growing inside me.

I searched in vain for the right words to say to her. At some point she stopped crying. With her head hung low she stared vacantly at her fingertips.

“I’m pregnant,” she said abruptly.

“What?” The totally unexpected announcement unsettled me more than a little. I felt even guiltier.

“I found out yesterday. It’s Koichi’s, of course.”

There was no doubt about that, since it had only been ten days since Katsuya’s assault. For her to already give a positive test, she must have been impregnated several weeks before.

“I was planning on giving him up. I was prepared to have to run someplace far away. But now I don’t know what to do.”

Koichi Yamamoto was heading towards divorce with his wife. Junko Tajima was pregnant with his child. She was so very close to getting her hands on some happiness. Until that happened. Until Katsuya came along.

Under normal circumstances her pregnancy would be cause for celebration, but thanks to Katsuya, now there was one more human being who was destined for unhappiness. Fortune and misfortune seemed as ever two sides of the same coin.

After some hesitation I told her, “Have that informant introduce you to a forger and get a false driver’s license in Koichi’s wife’s name. He’ll make you one that would fool anyone but a cop. The informant can give you the details.”

Templates for fake IDs came from real licenses culled from lost wallets picked up by hired indigents. Use a computer to design it, print it out, mount it on the base and laminate it and you’ve got a piece of forgery that’s almost undetectable. So long as a cop doesn’t check it against the police database there’s no worry about getting caught.

Junko gave me a dubious look.

“Show the ID to any detective agency and they’ll look up Koichi’s new address immediately. I’ll do what I can to help.”

She stood up from the sofa and silently bowed her head before walking towards the door.

“Please give me a little more time. Someone like Katsuya Yamamoto can’t get away with doing as he pleases forever. One day he’ll receive divine punishment,” I said.

Junko opened the door and walked out.

It was clear she no longer expected anything from me. I hadn’t abandoned her; she had turned her back on me. Suddenly I felt chagrined, as if she’d berated me as being incompetent.

I’d tried to come across to her as a dependable man, an able private investigator. Yet, not only had I not taken any effective measure against Katsuya Yamamoto, but he’d seen right through my plans and slapped me down. I’d pissed myself and begged for him to spare my life. Even discharged from the hospital I was unable to take action and ended up venting my frustration on Junko. That was the sort of man I appeared to be.

But I wasn’t about to accept that. I was supposed to be a trifle more decent.

I had to prove it. To her, and to myself.

I didn’t know yet what in the world I should do to Katsuya Yamamoto, but I decided to start with what I could.