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

without the energy to even lift a finger, before he finally made a call to the corporate secretariat as Ms. Nozaki’s note had requested. Upon arriving downstairs at the underground parking lot, he found that more people than he had expected—a driver and three male employees—were waiting for him by his car. According to one of the employees, whose face betrayed his consternation, over a hundred reporters had been staked out in front of Shiroyama’s home in Sanno since early this morning. His family had not been able to step foot outside, he said, so it would be impossible for him to get out of the car without an escort.

久保晴久　Haruhisa Kubo

At half past seven Takeuchi, the cop from Marunouchi Police Department who was Haruhisa Kubo’s source, and Kitagawa, an assistant police inspector from Fukagawa Police Department who came along with him, showed up at the small Japanese restaurant in Funabashi, ascending to a tatami room on the second floor.

“Hello.” Takeuchi appeared first, sliding open the fusuma door and popping his head in, then bowing slightly with a sheepish grin. He called to the inspector behind him to follow. Kitagawa, taking his cue from Takeuchi, bowed his head and said hello in the same way. Kubo, who had been waiting for the two men, sat formally with his legs tucked beneath him and returned the greeting, thanking them for coming. “Pleasure’s all mine,” Takeuchi, who was used to these encounters, affably waved off Kubo’s formality. He then urged the inspector to sit down while he himself promptly took a cross-legged seat at the head of the table. Two or three seconds of awkward silence followed as Kubo sat facing the two detectives while they wiped their hands with hot towels.

“Please, have some beer.” The silence was broken by a female server who came in and filled each of their glasses. “I’ll be right back with the meal.” The men waited until she was gone before launching into casual pleasantries. It’s sure been cold lately. Where are you going to see the cherry blossoms this year?

Within Kubo’s realm of experience, for whatever reason, secret meetings with a source invariably started off in such a manner. And for him, this marked the beginning of a long few hours in which the thought that settled into the pit of his stomach was that he would be done for if he couldn’t get ahold of a story tonight.

“A lot of things being printed, huh? Six hundred million yen. They’ll contact Hinode later. And so on and so forth.”

Takeuchi, whom Kubo had known for going on three years, had quickly relaxed after a glass of beer. He broached the topic in a show of thoughtful consideration.

“Well, it’s the official word from the police so we have no choice but to print it accordingly. Ah, allow me,” Kubo said and topped up Kitagawa’s glass. Though unplanned, the beer they were drinking was Hinode Supreme. The inspector, who appeared to have never been in a situation like this, awkwardly followed Takeuchi’s lead, holding out his own glass and bowing his head as he thanked Kubo.

“I’m sure people will say whatever they want, but what we released came from the victim’s deposition so it’s difficult to say . . .” Just as Takeuchi carefully began to muddy the waters, the server returned with their meal.

“I hear the cherry blossoms will be late this year.” Kubo changed the topic.

“You, going cherry-blossom-viewing, Kubo-san?” Takeuchi laughed. “No way you have time for that.”

Once the server had set out the appetizers and disappeared, Kubo urged the two men to start eating. “Go ahead, please.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Takeuchi said, splitting his chopsticks, and the inspector did the same. After they had picked at the sea bream sashimi for a while, Takeuchi, who knew well enough how to return the favor of the dinner, pivoted the conversation to the main topic. “So, Kubo-san, this fellow here . . .”

“Name’s Kitagawa,” mumbled the inspector, since he hadn’t actually introduced himself to Kubo yet. The inspector had worked in records for CID at Shinagawa Police Department. He seemed about forty years of age, with reserved, contemplative eyes and a fair complexion that reddened at the cheeks. Kubo got the impression from the man’s rusticity that he must have been from Sendai or one of the prefectures farther north.

“Like I told you on the phone, Kitagawa says he remembers every case that was handled by the Shinagawa Department. It seems there was an incident from the nineties involving Hinode after all. Right?”

Urged on by Takeuchi, Kitagawa responded tentatively: “It was November 1990. A case of defamation and obstruction of business. Hinode had received letters and a tape from an unknown source, and they decided to file a complaint.”

“The letters and tape slandered Hinode?” Kubo asked.

“I didn’t see them in person, but I heard that the sender of the letter assumed the name of the Buraku Liberation League and it went on about employment discrimination at Hinode. The tape, on the other hand, was an audio recording of a letter in its entirety that had been sent to Hinode just after the war . . . That letter also mentioned the Buraku Liberation League.”

“Kubo-san, I told you on the phone, right?” Takeuchi cut in. “There’s a guy I know who worked out of Shinagawa Police Department back then. While the rest of us are up to our necks with work these days, he keeps yammering on about discrimination. Turns out this is what he was talking about.”

“Are you talking about Inspector Takahashi?” Kitagawa asked Takeuchi.

“No, Yamashita,” responded Takeuchi.

Kitagawa began muttering to himself. “Yamashita? I thought it was Handa who was working with Takahashi back then. Oh, that’s right. Yamashita took over after Handa.”

Takahashi, Handa, Yamashita—after committing the names of the three detectives from Shinagawa Police Department to memory, Kubo dug a little deeper. “Kitagawa-san, how did the investigation turn out after that?”

“We figured out who the sender of the letter was, so the chief ordered us to