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

him, and his first impression that he belonged to that dark underworld remained unchanged.

Nevertheless, this did not take into account Koh’s undoubtedly complex psychology. He felt an emotional distance toward all Japanese people, yet at the same time, he himself said that when it came to other Zainichi he was “at odds with everything from their values to their speech.” Handa, the detective, and Nunokawa, the ex-army man, treated Koh as different simply because he was a Zainichi.

“If you say so, Handa-san, I’ll loan you a million if you promise to give me back thirty percent of your winnings, ” Koh said from behind Monoi.

“You better look for another victim,” Handa spat out. Koh snickered again. Yo-chan was still glaring at his newspaper, the headphones from a portable radio in his ears. Nunokawa, stifling one of his many yawns of the day, stole a glance at the group of young women occupying the space about three seats away from them, a single furrow appearing between his brows. In the last two or three years, it seemed that horseracing had even become wholesome entertainment for young people, as the number of teenage girls and student-types had increased considerably. Lady had been attending the races for ten years already, and she now watched gaily, rocking the bench beneath her.

Below them, the 3,100-meter steeplechase had started on the dirt track. Each man—Monoi and his friends—raised his head slightly, watching the horses as they ran on the dirt track beneath the overcast sky. Seen from afar, the movements of the horse and jockey that leaped to the front looked awkwardly mechanical, like a crankshaft going round and round. When one of the jockeys took a spill halfway through the far turn of the first lap, Nunokawa’s daughter, who hated to see anyone falling from a horse, let out a full-throated scream.

After sweeping past the grandstand, the pack of horses slowed the pace for the backstretch of the second lap. The horse wearing the number six, High Beam, started to inch forward about midway through the straightaway. “There he goes,” Monoi said and patted the girl’s back, and the girl whirled her neck in broad circles and tried to say something. At the final obstacle before the fourth turn, a couple more jockeys fell in succession, and with two more horses out of the race, the final surge of ten horses in the homestretch ended with High Beam breaking out to the finish line.

“Look at that, number six won,” Monoi said to Lady, but the girl, having seen the falls right before her eyes, was lolling her head downward as she began to sob, which made Nunokawa growl, “Cut it out!”

Behind them, persistent as ever, Handa continued to pester Koh. “How can tens of billions of yen be moved around so easily in the first place? Explain this to me.”

Monoi strained his ears a little to listen in on them now.

“You can’t make money without circulating it. Every time money moves, someone benefits. That’s why it goes around,” Koh said.

“Then in the case of Chunichi Mutual Savings, who circulated the money and how, and who benefited from it?”

“They all circulated it together, and each of them benefited. Listen. Those guys, first they looked for a flash point to take advantage of. Chunichi Mutual Savings was a triple whammy: management in trouble; an accounting fraud; infighting between management and the founding clan who were their top shareholders. Next, they created a fixed-race scenario. Then they recruited those who wanted in on it. They had their plan. All they had to do was execute it.”

“You mean how one day out of the blue the founding clan sold their stock holdings to a third party?”

Right, that’s what had happened. Monoi himself briefly contemplated the course of events that had been reported in the media. Using Zenzo Tamaru, a businessman with political ties, as their middleman, the founding clan of Chunichi Mutual Savings had sold off their stock holdings to a third party, and it was speculated that the management of Chunichi Mutual Savings, finding themselves cornered into this third-party takeover, had been promised support by the influential politician from the Liberal Democratic Party known only as “S.”

In addition, there was talk that “S.” had received money in return for his aid, and that the murky twelve-billion-yen loan Chunichi Mutual Savings had made to Ogura Development for the land purchase and development costs for a golf course was used as a slush fund. The charges against the two executives of Chunichi Mutual Savings who had already been arrested were related to this loan. Incidentally, according to the newspapers, the three billion from the twelve-billion-yen loan that was suspected of being in violation of investment law had been loaned to Ogura Development through a keiretsu-affiliated nonbank. This matter had been exposed due to a lack of registered documentation when the broker loan and the revolving mortgage were established. The land Ogura had originally purchased for the golf course was a mountain forest worth only about one billion yen, and of course no golf course was ever constructed. And S. had not given any support to Chunichi Mutual Savings either.

Ultimately, the current of money did flow to its predetermined destination. After a while Kihachi Takemura, the third party to whom the stock holdings were transferred from the founding clan, sold off the shares to Toei Bank, and eventually in 1991, Chunichi Mutual Savings was absorbed into Toei Bank. As Koh had said, it was clear that things had unfolded according to a plotline someone had planned out, meaning that the founding clan of Chunichi Mutual Savings; Kihachi Takemura, who received the stock transfer; Toei Bank; the businessman with political influence, Zenzo Tamaru; and the unknown politician had all worked together to circulate the money.

“If that’s true, where did the loan to Kihachi Takemura for the funds to buy the founders’ stock holdings come from in the first place?” Handa pressed on.

“Takemura? He’s an old ally of Zenzo Tamaru, so with one