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

Sitting next to the inspector, for a fleeting moment Handa wondered why he would suggest this, but Hatano himself did not inquire further, he simply replied, “I’ll come by tomorrow.”

Takahashi acknowledged him and stood up, so Handa followed. Hatano gave no other response, and since he made no move to show them out, the two took leave on their own, but as they opened the front door, they ran into a woman standing just outside. The woman asked them who they were in a sharp voice.

Handa fumbled for a reply while Takahashi succinctly responded and followed up with a question. “We’re from the Shinagawa Police Department. Are you Dr. Hatano’s wife?”

“What’s wrong?” the woman asked, rooted to the spot. “Did my husband do something?”

“No, no. We just came to ask him a few questions. No need to worry.”

Takahashi had barely finished speaking when the woman rushed past them, with such force it seemed she might crash into the front door, before disappearing inside.

On the elevator ride down, Takahashi muttered, as if just now remembering it, “Her suit was Valentino, seven hundred thousand yen. Her Hermès Kelly bag, eight hundred thousand.”

The surface of Handa’s mind tried to recall the appearance of the woman they had just encountered, but his only impression was that of a woman in her forties, with a garish visage that showed no signs of aging, sporting what seemed like a freshly-set coiffure. He did notice that she was put together in a chic black ensemble from head to toe, but the labels were beyond his ken.

“By the way, does this case really require a written statement?” Handa inquired.

Takahashi immediately replied, “You don’t know who Shin’ichi Nishimura is?”

“You know him by name?”

“Of course I do. There’s only one Nishimura with a centimeter-wide mole on his chin. He’s a second-generation Zainichi Korean, and his real name is Hoyeol Kim. He’s been on the list of corporate extortionists for ten years.”

So here was the target of the White Collar Crime Unit. The knowledge finally generated a small ripple on the pond within Handa’s head, but not one big enough to cause his bobber to move. He merely responded, “I’m sorry I wasn’t aware.”

Takahashi looked suddenly irked, as if he hadn’t realized he was working with someone so stupid, and he started walking ahead. Handa followed him sluggishly.

“Where are we going now?”

“To a loan shark’s. We need more info on Nishimura. Listen. This Nishimura has nothing whatsoever to do with the BLL. Nor is he associated with Hinode. But this man used the BLL’s name to get to a dentist he had never met before, and for no charge he handed over an internal document from Hinode that who knows where he got. If this doesn’t smell fishy, I don’t know what does.”

“I see.”

So this is my life from here on, Handa thought.

The moment he looked up at the leaden sky above the residential street, out of a years-long habit, a second daydream slipped through Handa’s mind. It was another simple fantasy, in which one day out of the blue he slams down an envelope with the words Letter of Resignation onto his boss’s desk. But the image soon faded feebly, without giving him much pleasure. At this point there was not a single circumstance that would make Handa’s resignation matter to anyone. There was no reason for his boss, the police department, or MPD to be surprised, or for any of them to turn blue in the face trying to convince him to retract his decision. It was not as if anyone would fear or regret his resignation.

Handa accompanied Inspector Takahashi until dark as he made the rounds to several loan sharks in Shinjuku as well as the offices of a few financial brokers, after which they returned to the department, where Takahashi outlined Shin’ichi Nishimura’s profile and modus operandi, then he ordered Handa to review each of the briefing points for the interview with Hiroyuki Hatano, set to take place tomorrow, the 18th. Nishimura currently worked as an errand man for several corporate underlings of a large crime syndicate called the Seiwakai. Among those in Seiwakai’s employ was an influential underground financial group known as Okada Association, and the issue was whether Nishimura was somehow connected to this Okada group, and so on. Handa finally understood that, quite simply, for Investigation unit two, who handled financial incidents, Hinode’s complaint letter was nothing but a fortuitous excuse.

When he finally left the department just before nine that night, he saw that the light in the second-floor window where homicide was located still shone brightly, but the indignation it roused was somewhat dulled. Diagonally ahead on his way to Shimbamba Station, the glimmering office buildings of Hinode Beer and Sony rose into the night sky above Kita-Shinagawa. Like stars fallen to earth, their beauty never ceased to amaze him.

Handa gazed up at the cluster of gleaming high-rises. Although he knew that each one was populated by workers who wore out their shoes trying to make an extra yen, he still felt nothing in common with them and, faced with another wave of alienation, he looked away.

On his walk to the station, that other self—like a devil on Handa’s shoulder—blustered, Just watch, I’ll quit soon enough. Chastened, Handa wondered, How many years have I been saying that? The reality was that he had no choice but to go on working tomorrow and the next day, gaining back his self-respect and confidence only in his dreams. No matter how fed up he claimed to be, the thought of getting a new job at a security company where he’d end up directing traffic at some construction site practically made him want to die from anger.

Handa got on the still crowded train, stood in silence gripping the strap, and got off at Kojiya Station. Weaving through the tiny shopping district around the station where only the neon signs of the pachinko parlor blinked away, he came out