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

like Scotch, and poured a little into each glass. While he did this, Yo-chan furrowed his brows as he held the end of the soldering wire with pliers and tried to jab it into the hole in the juice can.

“The hole is too small,” Monoi told him. “How thick is the solder?”

“One point six.”

“Then the hole must be one point five,” Monoi looked for the case of 1.5-millimeter drill bits in the tool drawer and placed it by Yo-chan’s hand. As he did so, Yo-chan took a swig of the whisky that Monoi had poured and whispered, “Ah, that’s good,” grinning for the first time.

For Monoi, though, whisky neat was too strong, and as soon as it touched his lips his face screwed up involuntarily. Yo-chan must have noticed, because he got up from his seat and brought over a cup of water from the sink without a word. He also produced a space heater from somewhere and placed it at Monoi’s feet. Monoi added some water to the whisky and paused to catch his breath. The space heater warmed his feet too.

Meanwhile, Yo-chan enlarged the hole in the can with the 1.5-millimeter drill bit and once again began pushing the end of the solder into it. This time the solder went in smoothly and, after wiping the plug he had made with the solder again with the towel, he smeared instant adhesive all around it. Then he snipped off the remainder of the solder with a pair of scissors, filed down the head, and after he had sandpapered it some more, he held up the bottom of the can for Monoi to see.

“Well?”

“Let’s see,” Monoi said. If the slight unevenness on the surface could be mended with a thin layer of putty and then coated with paint the same color as the aluminum can, it could be finished to a degree that would make the hole imperceptible to a layman’s eyes—that was Monoi’s opinion. No, if the objective was to fill in the hole that he made, instead of using a drill press that carved the hole cleanly, it would be better to pierce the can with a scriber or something to give a slight breadth to the edge of the hole, which would expand the joint area of the solder that was supposed to act as a plug. If it were up to me, that’s what I would do, Monoi thought.

“What are you going to do with that?” Monoi asked.

“I’ll put sand or something in the can of juice and make the nurses at the hospital drink it. As payback for throwing away my fingers.”

“You should present it to them with a decorative noshi gift tag that says, ‘Give me back my fingers,’” Monoi chimed in, and Yo-chan laughed a little, perhaps feeling better, and left it at that.

“More importantly, your fingers. Do they still hurt?”

“A little.”

Yo-chan set down the aluminum can, and pulled toward him the horseracing newspaper that had been left open. As he did so, some kind of thin booklet slipped out from beneath the newspapers. He picked it up—it was a color-printed pamphlet that said PC-98 Series.

“You buying a PC?”

“If there’s a cheap one. We’re entering the era when horseracing odds will all be computerized. That’s what Koh says.”

“Koh?”

“Katsumi Koh. The one from the credit union.”

“Oh, the one with the flashy suit . . .”

“He usually looks normal. Though not so normal inside his head.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“If he could, he says, he’d be someone different every day. A salaryman on Monday, a business owner on Tuesday, a gangster on Wednesday, a regular Japanese on Thursday, and a Zainichi Korean on Friday.”

Yo-chan relayed this without much interest, lazily resting both elbows on the newspaper as he hung his head. Monoi, for his part, had no hypothesis to offer about this credit union fellow. Despite the flashy attire of the man he had seen earlier this month at Fuchu, Monoi’s general impression had been based on how the guy carried himself and the look in his eyes—there was nothing specific to say about it, except that the guy seemed to belong to that particular vein of the shadowy underworld.

“You guys talk often?” Monoi asked.

Yo-chan, his nose still buried in his newspaper, answered, “Sometimes.” The columns for races ten and eleven tomorrow, the 18th, were already scrawled over with red pencil. Race eleven was a 2,500-meter GII handicap turf race. Yo-chan had drawn two circles around Foro Romano, a fifty-two-kilogram lightweight.

“You always hope for a lucky break, Yo-chan.”

“His workout times are good. I want this one to make the pace and hold the lead.”

“I think Romano will tire out a bit. The favorite Genève Symboli will break away, and it’ll come down to who goes after him . . .”

“You betting on Symboli, Monoi-san?”

“I’m going all-or-nothing on Saint Bid. He did well in the Tenno Sho.”

“Yeah, I have a feeling he’ll finish fast . . .” Yo-chan’s red pencil traced the circle already drawn around Saint Bid, and he went on muttering to himself. “For the second half of the race, it’ll come down to whether he can keep up with the horses in sixth, seventh, and eighth place . . .”

It was already near midnight, and Monoi’s eyelids had started to feel heavy as he listened to Yo-chan’s mumbling fade in and out. The late night hours always went like this, his companion a young man with enough stamina to go until morning once he got started on the horse columns. Anyway Monoi knew that if he were to go to bed at this hour, he would still awaken before dawn, get up to use the toilet and then, unable to fall back asleep, he would instead be yawning until noon the next day. Since he was up now, it was better for his health to stay up a little longer, and sleep soundly until morning.

The late autumn sea breeze that blew across the tin roof of the factory made a sharp, high-pitched sound. To Monoi’s ears,