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

he turned to him, putting a hand over the receiver he had tucked between his ear and shoulder. “That fire in Itabashi, apparently it’s arson. What do you want to do?”

“Just keep it below the fold,” Tabe said brusquely. On the six-man Metro desk, Tabe was the most blunt. Judging from the tone of his voice, it seemed unlikely that there would be any last-minute prime scoops for the final edition. With this thought in the corner of his mind, Negoro continued to type up his draft.

Over on the Political desk, which was preparing for the nationwide local elections, things seemed a bit busier, with continuous calls coming in from the Prime Minister’s Official Residence and the reporters gathered at the Hirakawa kisha club. Just a moment ago, their slot editor had run over to the Layout desk across the aisle and even now an argument could be heard from that direction. “With this election as dull as it is, why not hit ’em with a headline like aoshima in the lead?” followed by, “Can’t you be a little more reasonable? It’s the front page!”

Across from the Political desk, there were still about five or six people on Foreign, but aside from their slot editor crying out in a high-pitched voice, “Call New York!” no other sounds rose above the fray. On the other side of Foreign was the Business section where—thanks to a recent string of financial scandals, the strong yen, and slumping stock prices—reporters were coming and going even at this hour, leaving their computers connected to the internet, the screens streaming figures from markets overseas.

Further over, where the National, Culture, and Sports sections were side by side, several people still lingered, but nothing about their desktop computers or mountains of files suggested anything notable would crop up. Beyond them the photo room was partitioned off. While a few overnight photographers should have been around, they might either be taking a nap or getting some coffee, since there hadn’t been any signs of them running out on assignment.

The news room floor, measuring roughly 1,300 square meters, was illuminated by the same overhead lights as during the day, yet it appeared slightly dim, and even though there were nearly a hundred people spread out everywhere, the atmosphere could be described as both lively and quiet, enveloped in a fog of ennui unique to these late hours of the night. Looking around him, Negoro noticed how each section had one or two televisions on which brightly colored images danced on the screen without any sound, and in his mind they appeared like underwater mirages of Ryugujo, the Dragon Palace Castle.

He rubbed his eyes, wondering if something was wrong with them, and just then Tabe’s voice came hurtling toward the Reserve section.

“Hey, Negoro, about your series. Would you mind cutting the chart and adding five more lines to the main text to adjust? We secured an interview with a member of the credit association so I’d like to run it there.”

Negoro raised a hand and replied, “Okay.” He saved the draft he had been working on for tomorrow and pulled up today’s draft instead. If he were to cut out the chart that detailed the recycling process, those five lines allotted him only seventy characters in which to explain it.

He tried adding a sentence—In the process that begins with the production and output of industrial waste and ends in its permanent disposal, the technology and costs required for handling it become progressively more expensive for in-house disposal, reuse, and recycling—and as he was counting the number of lines again, the overnight reporter covering the Ministry of Health and Welfare called out to him. “Negoro-san, telephone.”

Reaching for the phone with an outside line, Negoro looked at the clock out of habit. 12:05 a.m.

The caller was the chief of CID at the Setagaya Police Department, whom Negoro had been friends with for going on fifteen years. When he was thirty, Negoro had been assigned to the MPD beat, but he had struggled. As bad as he was at finding sources, he was at least as inept at socializing. He had never gotten used to the police force, no matter how much he tried, and thus he had little incentive to try harder, but he still maintained cordial friendships outside of work with a handful of detectives he had gotten to know over time, and this guy was one of them.

“Negoro-san, I might not be able to make it to the rose show tomorrow after all,” the chief said.

This formidable man, who held a fifth dan in judo, had begun growing roses in his garden at home in Komae ten years ago, and since then he had been busy creating new rose hybrids and submitting them to international competitions. Negoro, on the other hand, lived in an apartment building and had no garden, but acting on a whim to take advantage of the chance to admire at least a flower or two, he had promised to go see the rose show at the Jindai Botanical Garden tomorrow afternoon.

“Did something happen?” As Negoro asked this, he noticed that the chief was not calling from his home phone but from the police department, and he wondered if there could have been an incident.

“Seems like something happened in Sanno. You should check it out.”

“Sanno, in Ota district?”

“Something’s going on with the department radio.”

After this brief exchange, the call ended. It took about two seconds for him to get goose bumps from the realization that—for the first time in a long while—one of his sources had leaked a story. In the past, all the hairs on his body would have stood up at once. Negoro quickly reached for the receiver of the direct line to their nook in the kisha club at the MPD.

“This is Negoro. Did anything happen in Sanno, in Ota district?”

“No.” The person who picked up was Tetsuo Sugano, the chief reporter. “Everything’s quiet here.”

“A friend just called, he said something’s going on with the