Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

courthouse kisha club at the time, had snagged a lead from a source at the public prosecutor’s that a big-shot politico and an ultranationalist were behind the uproar over the founding clan of Chunichi Mutual Bank’s transferring their shares over to a third party. However, a year went by and Negoro had been unable to get any traction on the lead. In 1991 came the announcement that Toei Bank, a major city bank, was to absorb Chunichi Mutual. By that time Negoro had moved on to a different beat. When a leak from the public prosecutor finally brought to light the so-called “S. Memo” scandal—a former Minister of Finance had reportedly promised to support Toei’s bailout of Chunichi Mutual Bank, with a big-time ultranationalist playing go-between—Negoro figured that a police investigation would finally excavate the crime. But in the end, the scandal concluded with a group of corporate raiders and the executives at Ogura Transport being charged with malfeasance. Negoro still carried a vivid memory of his regret at not being able to dig deeper into the story.

Negoro swiftly racked his brain, looking for an immediate response. It was unlikely that this guy Toda, calling the Metro section of Toho News now, would have contacted Takeshi Kikuchi back then about the scandal. Kikuchi had always worked for the Osaka bureau; even though he had been transferred to the Tokyo Metro section in the late ’80s, he had returned to Osaka by 1990, and so he had never been part of the reporting team for the Ogura Transport and Chunichi Mutual Bank Scandal, which broke the following year.

So the guy on the phone and Kikuchi must have come into contact earlier, on a different case. Or perhaps, like Negoro, Kikuchi had sniffed out the story on Ogura and Chunichi early on while he was still in Tokyo and had been sleuthing around for information. But Negoro had no personal relationship with Kikuchi, thus he had no way of knowing which might be the case.

“Back then our slot editors rotated being in charge,” Negoro offered a lie for the time being. “If this is about Ogura Transport and Chunichi Mutual Bank, I was also on the reporting team so I may be able to help you.”

Negoro could feel the caller hesitating for a second or two on the other end. “Just so you know, I’m not leaking this for money,” the man said. Following, unexpectedly, with “This is about Hinode.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll tell you what kind of company Hinode is. If you were on the reporting team you might have heard this already. In 1990, when Chunichi Mutual Bank was busy trying to buy back the shares that had fallen into the hands of a third party, the Chunichi president Akita went to Hinode asking for a large deposit. That was January tenth, 1990. But Hinode didn’t agree to it. Remember, the date of the S. Memo was February seventeenth. After Akita secured the memo, in late February he sent a letter to the Ministry of Finance saying that Chunichi Bank could be rehabilitated. By the way, on February sixteenth—the day before the S. Memo—Terata, the president of Toei; Suzuki, the chairman of Hinode; and ‘S.’ from the Liberal Democratic Party met up at the Hotel Okura. The special investigation section must also know about this meeting on the sixteenth.”

“I see.”

Negoro had instinctively grabbed a ballpoint pen and was dashing all this down, running back through his memory to confirm to himself that there was no mention in his reporter’s notebook of the meeting at the Hotel Okura back on February 16, 1990.

The gloomy voice on the phone droned on. “And here’s the important part. At that meeting on the sixteenth, it was agreed that Hinode would absorb Ogura Transport and that it would guarantee part of Ogura’s bad debt, which Chunichi Mutual Bank had been carrying. Point is, this was a sham negotiation, based on the prereqs that came out in the S. memo.”

“Was Hinode confident about Chunichi’s recovery when it joined the negotiations?”

“I’ve got no idea if Hinode was in on it all along. In order to save face for S. and make Chunichi’s fraudulent loan to Ogura Transport look plausible, Hinode had to, as they agreed, at least appear to make an effort to bail out Ogura Transport. But in the end Hinode reneged and the ultranationalist who acted as mediator, Zenzo Tamura, ended up losing face. I’m not saying that’s the reason Hinode’s president was kidnapped, but that’s the kind of company Hinode is. The men who threw dirt on S. by refusing to take a stake in Ogura, and those who severed ties with the Okada Association—they’re all current executives at Hinode. And their boss is Kyosuke Shiroyama.”

“Excuse me, but do you mind telling me how you know all this about Ogura, Chunichi, and Hinode?”

“What I’ll tell you is that it all starts with Hinode. Not counting extortionists, there’re at least a hundred men in this country who, hearing that Hinode’s president had been kidnapped, thought it was just deserts—including me. But there’s not a single national paper with the balls to rip Hinode’s mask off because they’re all scared of offending one of their advertisers. I called to say as much.”

At which point, he hung up.

Negoro had unconsciously reached for the drawer to pull out his old reporter’s notebook, but his hand stopped short and instead he picked up the notes he had jotted down. Having just risen out of his chair, he now took his seat again and looked more closely.

A single point drew his particular interest. Whenever something happened, a correlation diagram of political and business circles always surfaced, but none had ever included the name of an individual with ties to Hinode. Whether or not it was true, here was a leak connected to Hinode. However, this current incident of the president’s abduction did not appear to be linked to the hard-liners and extortionists. Even if it were true that Hinode was involved with the