The Last Train

Chapter 4

Chapter 4Away from the station, Takamatsu lit a cigarette. “That smell,” he said inhaling deeply.

Hiroshi tried to keep all his senses in check.

“I know a little place close by here,” Takamatsu said.

Hiroshi put up his umbrella.

Takamatsu ignored the rain, and flipped up the collar of his silk jacket.

On the small streets farther from the station, the interior lights of convenience stores and gyudon rice-and-meat shops spilled onto the wet pavement like shards of a shattered mirror. A motorcycle shot by. Faint lights glowed from small snack shops and standing bars.

“I guess you’re going to dump the contents of his wallet on me?” Hiroshi asked.

“They’re all in English. A notebook and some documents, too.”

“There are people to do that, you know.”

“No one as good as you. Why do you think I got you the job in the first place?”

“Tell me again.”

“Crime’s globalizing. Hiring you was easier than learning English myself.”

“I thought I was hired to drink with you?”

“That, too. There’s also his cell phone messages.”

“Messages? That’ll take ages.”

“Think how long it would take me.”

“I have a lot of other cases.”

“The encryption guys should have the password cracked by morning. They get paid double what we make.”

Takamatsu made several turns, each street narrower than the last to where the street was so narrow they had to walk single file, as if already inside.

“It looks like a suicide.”

“How things look and how they are…” Takamatsu shrugged.

“I’m supposed to be money transfers, accounting blackmail, investment scams…”

“Yes, yes and chatting with the Interpol guys. Strictly speaking, you are inside the homicide department.”

“Eventually, I’ll be moved to my own department,” Hiroshi sighed and stopped.

Takamatsu turned back to him. “Eventually, but not today. Anyway, we’ll soon find he’s been killed for money. Money’s your area.”

“How do you know?”

“A guy like that is all about money.”

“A guy like what?”

“Dressed like that with a pretty woman late at night.”

“You’re not even sure she was with him. And you only saw her for an instant. From behind.”

“Every woman in Tokyo looks great from behind.”

“Is that the kind of thinking you use to solve cases?”

“You have to think more like a Japanese. You were in America too long.” Takamatsu started walking again, turned two more corners, and ducked under an overhanging sign into an even narrower alleyway.

“I’ve already got extra budget,” Takamatsu said, clipped and confident. “First thing I made sure of.”

“From where?”

“The up-and-ups want anything with a foreigner solved quick and quiet.” Takamatsu stopped and turned back to Hiroshi. “Also, this isn’t the first foreigner to end up like this.”

“Like what?”

“Killed by a train. There were others.”

Hiroshi scoffed. “You think they’re connected because they’re foreigners?”

“I know so.”

“How many others?”

“Depends on how you count.”

Before Hiroshi could say anything more, Takamatsu grabbed a rough wooden handle jutting out from a wood-paneled wall under a large cedar ball. A section of the wall rolled sideways. It was an opening so low they had to bend over double and sidestep in. When they stood up inside, they were greeted by a booming, “Irrashaimase!” from the master, who reached up to turn down the volume on the television. There were no other customers.

Takamatsu apologized with slyly exaggerated excuses for not having come for a long time and introduced Hiroshi to the master with formal language. Hiroshi bowed. Takamatsu hung his jacket on a hook and loosened his tie as if he owned the place. He slicked back his hair, which hung to his collar, and rolled up his sleeves with three crisp folds.

Takamatsu checked his cell phone for messages, took off his watch and slipped them both into his jacket, settling astride one of the large cuts of log topped with thick indigo cushions that served as stools.

From a small warmer, the master drew out two steaming-hot white towels with tongs. After wiping their faces and hands with the towels, Hiroshi un-cricked his back and Takamatsu stretched his neck and shoulders in circling motions.

“You always…” Hiroshi said, but Takamatsu shushed him.

“Now is the time to reflect,” he said in a soft voice.

Hiroshi rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. He breathed in and leaned back as if he had just sunk into a hot bath.

The master leaned over the counter to set teensy dishes of pickled vegetables—crinkled and vinegary—on the counter. He fired up one of the small gas burners under a large pot of miso soup and wiped down the wooden cutting board. He cleaned his long sushi knife with a white towel.

The master pulled back a brown curtain over a glass-sided refrigerator filled with sake bottles. He pulled out two small chilled glasses from the top shelf and set these on the upper counter inside small, square, cedar wood boxes.

The master shuffled the dozen or so bottles inside the fridge until he found the ones he wanted. Carrying these to the counter, he hoisted the large bottle of cold sake and, cradling it in the crook of his arm, poured out the clear, clean liquid. The sake flowed gently over the top of the lip of the glass into the box, arousing the aroma of cedar and fresh rice. He poured out sake from a different bottle for Hiroshi and placed both bottles on the counter so that each displayed the artful calligraphy of their labels.

They bowed down like penitents to take the first sip without spilling. Then they plucked up the small, thumb-sized glasses for a silent toast before downing the second gulp. Finally, they poured the spillover from the cedar box into the glass, took another sip, and set their half-full glasses back inside the wet cedar boxes.

The master ascertained they were satisfied, glancing up as he set down two small dishes of pickled vegetables, and then he turned back to prepare for whatever they might order.

Hiroshi reached for a pair of chopsticks from a black-lacquered, glass-top box. He pulled apart the wood with a crackle, brushed off the splinters, and held them up in the air for a bite of the pickles.

Seeing the chopsticks in mid-air, the pickles suddenly looked unappetizing. Leaning back, he set his chopsticks down, folded his arms and said, “I don’t feel so hungry.” He took another sip of sake and looked at the rough grain of the wood walls.

Takamatsu looked at Hiroshi’s chopsticks, and remembering the chopstick work of the body cleanup squad on the tracks, he left his chopsticks untouched, lit another cigarette and studied the label on the sake bottle in front of him.