Killing Commendatore: A novel (23 page)

“Sort of,” I answered.

She stared at me, like studying some rare animal. “You sure are a man of few words.”

It depends on who I'm talking with, is how I should have answered. But going there would have also made things long and complicated.

The coffee came, and I drank some. It tasted like coffee, but it wasn't all that good. But at least it was coffee, and piping hot. After this no other customers came in. The salt-and-pepper-haired man in the leather jacket, in a voice that carried, ordered a Salisbury steak and rice.

A string-section version of “Fool on the Hill” came over the sound system. Did John Lennon write that song, or Paul McCartney? I couldn't remember. Probably Lennon. This kind of random thought rattled around in my head. I had no idea what else I should think about.

“Did you come here by car?”

“Um.”

“What kind of car?”

“A red Peugeot.”

“What district is the license plate?”

“Shinagawa,” I said.

Hearing that, she frowned, as if she had a bad memory associated with a red Peugeot with Shinagawa plates. She tugged down the sleeves of her cardigan and checked that the buttons on her white shirt were done all the way up. She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Let's go,” she suddenly said.

She drank a half glass of water and stood up. She left her coffee, only one sip taken, and cheesecake, only one bite taken, on the tabletop. Like the remains after a terrible natural disaster.

Not knowing where we were going, I stood up after her, took the bill from the table, and paid at the register. The woman's order was included, but she didn't say a word of thanks, or make a move to pay her share.

As we left, the man with the salt-and-pepper hair was eating his Salisbury steak, seemingly bored by it all. He looked up and glanced in our direction, but that was all. He looked down at his plate again and went on eating, with knife and fork, his face expressionless. The woman didn't look at him at all.

As we passed by the white Subaru Forester, a bumper sticker on it with a picture of a fish caught my eye. Probably a marlin. Of course, I had no idea why he had to have a sticker with a marlin on it on his car. Maybe he worked in the fishing industry, or was a fisherman.

The woman didn't tell me where we were going. She sat in the passenger seat and gave me clipped directions. She seemed to know the roads. She must have been from that town, or else had lived there a long time. I drove the Peugeot where she told me to go. We drove along the highway for a while out of town and came to a love hotel with a gaudy neon sign. I parked there as directed and cut the engine.

“I'm staying here tonight,” she announced. “I can't go home. Come with me.”

“But I'm staying in another place tonight,” I said. “I've already checked in and put my luggage in the room.”

“Where?”

I gave the name of a small business hotel near the railway station.

“This place is a lot better than that cheap place,” she said. “Your room there must be shabby and no bigger than a closet.”

Right she was. A shabby room the size of a closet was an apt description.

“And they don't like women checking in by themselves here. They're on guard against prostitutes. So come with me.”

Well, at least she's not a hooker, I thought.

At the front desk I paid in advance for one night (again, no word of thanks from her) and got the key. Once in the room she filled up the bathtub, switched on the TV, and adjusted the lighting. The bathtub was spacious. It was definitely a lot more comfortable than the business hotel. She seemed to have come here—or someplace like it—many times before. She sat on the bed and took off her cardigan. Then removed her white blouse and her wraparound skirt. And took off her stockings. She had on very simple white panties. They weren't particularly new. The kind your ordinary housewife would wear when she went shopping at the neighborhood supermarket. She neatly reached behind her and unhooked her bra, folded it, and set it next to a pillow. Her breasts weren't particularly big, or particularly small.

“Come over here,” she said to me. “Since we're in a place like this, let's have sex.”

That was the one and only sexual experience of my whole long trip (or wanderings). Wilder sex than I'd expected. She had four orgasms in total, every single one genuine, if you can believe it. I came twice, but oddly enough didn't feel much pleasure. It was like while I was doing it with her, my mind was elsewhere.

“I'm thinking maybe it's been a long time since you had sex?” she asked me.

“Several months,” I answered honestly.

“I can tell,” she said. “But how come? You can't be that unpopular with women.”

“There's a whole bunch of reasons.”

“You poor thing,” she said, and gently stroked my neck. “You poor thing.”

You poor thing, I thought, repeating the words to myself. Put that way I really did feel like I was a person to be pitied. In an unknown town, in some random place, with no clue what was going on, naked in bed with a woman whose name I didn't even know.

We had a few beers from the fridge, in between rounds. It was about one a.m. when we finally slept. When I woke up the next morning she was nowhere to be seen. She left no note or anything behind. I was alone in the overly huge bed. My watch showed seven thirty, and it was light outside. I opened the curtain and saw the highway running alongside the ocean. Huge refrigerated trucks transporting fresh fish roared up and down the road. The world is full of lonely things, but not many could be lonelier than waking up alone in the morning in a love hotel.

A thought suddenly struck me, and I hurriedly checked my wallet in my pants pocket. Everything was still there. Cash, credit cards, ATM card, license, everything. I breathed a sigh of relief. If my wallet had been gone I would have freaked. These sorts of things
did
happen, and I needed to be careful.

She must have left early in the morning, while I was sound asleep. But how had she gotten back to town (or back to where she lived)? Had she walked, or called a taxi? Not that it made any difference to me. Pointless speculation.

I returned the room key at the front desk, paid for the beers we'd drunk, and drove the Peugeot back to town. I needed to get the luggage I'd left at the business hotel near the station, and pay for the one night. Along the way into town I passed by the chain restaurant I'd gone to the night before. I stopped and ate breakfast there. I was starving, and was dying for some coffee. Just before I pulled into the parking lot I saw the white Subaru Forester. Parked nose in, with that marlin bumper sticker. The same Subaru Forester from the night before. The only difference was where it was parked. Which made sense. No one spent the whole night in a place like that.

I went inside the restaurant. As before, hardly any customers. Like I expected, the same man from last night was at a table, eating breakfast. The same table as the night before, wearing the same black leather jacket. Like last night, the same black golf cap with the Yonex logo resting on the tabletop. The only difference from last night was the folded morning newspaper on top of the table. A plate of toast and scrambled eggs was in front of him. It was probably just served, steam still rising from the coffee. As I passed him, the man glanced up and looked me in the face. His eyes were even sharper and colder than the night before. There was a sense of criticism in them, or at least that's what it felt like.

I know exactly where you've been and what you've been up to
, he seemed to be telling me.

That's the whole story of what happened to me in that small town along the seacoast in Miyagi. Even now I have no idea what that woman, with her petite nose and perfect teeth, wanted from me. And it was never clear to me if that middle-aged guy with the white Subaru Forester was really following her, or if she was running from him. Whatever was going on, I happened to be there, and through an odd series of events spent the night in a garish love hotel with a woman I'd just met, and had a one-night stand, the wildest sex I'd ever had. But I still can't recall the name of the town.

“Could I get a glass of water?” my married girlfriend said. She'd just woken up from a short postcoital nap.

It was early afternoon, and we were in bed. While she slept I stared at the ceiling and recalled the events in that small fishing town. It was only a half a year before, but it seemed like events from the distant past.

I went to the kitchen, poured mineral water into a large glass, and returned to bed. She drank down half of it in a single gulp.

“Now, about Mr. Menshiki,” she said, placing the glass on the nightstand.

“Mr. Menshiki?”

“The new information I got about Mr. Menshiki,” she said. “What I said I'd tell you later?”

“Your jungle grapevine.”

“Right,” she said, and drank more water. “According to my sources, your friend Mr. Menshiki spent quite a long time in Tokyo Prison.”

I sat up and looked at her. “Tokyo Prison?”

“Yeah, the one in Kosuge.”

“For what crime?”

“I don't know the details, but I imagine it had something to do with money. Tax evasion, money laundering, insider trading—something of that sort, or perhaps all of them. He was imprisoned six or seven years ago. Did Mr. Menshiki tell you what kind of work he does?”

“He said it was dealing with tech, and information,” I said. “He started a company, and some years ago sold the stock for a high price. He's living now on the capital gains.”

“ ‘Dealing with information' is a pretty vague way of describing it. Nowadays there're hardly any jobs not connected with information.”

“Who told you about him being in prison?”

“A friend of mine whose husband's in finance. But I don't know how much of that information is true. Someone heard it from someone, and passed it along to someone else. You know how it is. But from what I can make of it, it doesn't seem groundless.”

“If he was in Tokyo Prison that means that he was put there by the Tokyo district prosecutor.”

“In the end they found him not guilty, is what I heard,” she said. “Still, he was in detention for a long time, and had to endure a very intense investigation. They extended his incarceration a number of times, and wouldn't grant bail.”

“But he won in court.”

“That's right. He was prosecuted, but wasn't given a jail sentence. He apparently remained totally silent during the investigation.”

“My understanding is that the Tokyo district prosecutors are the cream of the crop,” I said. “A proud lot. Once they set their sights on someone, they have solid evidence before they arrest them and charge them. Their win rate in court is really high. So the investigation they did while he was in detention couldn't have been half-baked. Most people break down under that kind of scrutiny, and sign whatever the prosecutors want them to. Ordinary people wouldn't be able to stay silent under that kind of pressure.”

“Still, that's what Mr. Menshiki did. He must have a strong will and a sharp mind.”

Menshiki wasn't your average person, that was for sure…A strong will and a sharp mind were indeed part of his repertoire.

“There's one thing I don't get,” I said. “Whether it is for tax evasion or money laundering or whatever, once the Tokyo district prosecutor arrests you, it's reported on in the newspapers. And with an unusual name like Menshiki, I would remember the case. I used to be a pretty avid reader of newspapers.”

“I don't know about that. There's one other thing—I mentioned it before—but he bought that mountaintop mansion three years ago. Almost forcing the owners to sell. Other people were living there then, and they had no intention at all of selling the house they'd just built. But Mr. Menshiki offered them money—or maybe pressured them in some other way—and drove them out. And then he moved in, like some mean-spirited hermit crab.”

“Hermit crabs don't drive away what's living in a shell. They just quietly take over the leftover shell of a dead shellfish.”

“But there must be some hermit crabs that are mean.”

“I don't get it,” I said, trying to avoid a debate over the ecology of hermit crabs. “If what you're saying is true, why would Mr. Menshiki insist so strongly that it had to be
that house
? So much so that he drove the residents out and took over? That must have taken a lot of money and effort. And that mansion is really too gaudy, too conspicuous, to suit him. It's a wonderful house, for sure, but I just don't think it fits his tastes.”

“Plus it's too big. He doesn't have a maid, lives alone, hardly ever has guests over. There's no need to live in such a huge place.”

She drank the rest of the water.

“There must be some special reason why it had to be that house,” she went on. “I have no idea why, though.”

“Anyway, he's invited me over to his place on Tuesday. Once I actually visit I might learn more.”

“Make sure you check out the secret locked room, the one like Bluebeard's castle.”

“I'll remember to,” I said.

“For the time being, things have worked out well.”

“Meaning—?”

“You finished the painting, Mr. Menshiki liked it, and you got a hefty payment for it.”

“I guess so,” I said. “I guess it did work out. I'm relieved.”

“Felicitations, maestro,” she said.

It was no lie to say that I felt relieved. It was true that I'd finished the painting. And true that Menshiki had liked it. And also true that I was happy with the painting. And equally true that this resulted in a nice, healthy amount of money coming my way. For all that, though, I couldn't feel totally pleased with the way things had worked out. So much around me was still up in the air, left as is, with no clues to follow. The more I wanted to simplify my life, the more disjointed it seemed to become.