Lady Joker, Volume 1 Kaoru Takamura (ereader ebook .TXT) 📖

countless buildings found all over the city, a shingle bearing an inscrutable company name outside, furnished with a desk and a telephone. Beside a messy stack of market newspapers and stock chart books, a man wearing a Rolex watch talks on the phone, sums of money in the tens and hundreds of million rolling smoothly off his tongue, his eyes dull and empty. At night, the same man lazily throws up his feet in the corner of an upscale club and tosses back whisky and water, then takes a taxi home, casually handing a ten-thousand-yen note to the driver and saying, “Keep the change.” Of the various financial strata that existed in the world, the one into which Kikuchi had submerged himself might have been the most chilling. Kikuchi had rid himself of any scent of being a former newsman.

After replacing the receiver, Negoro again reflected on the strange phone call from the man named Toda. When Toda met Kikuchi nine years ago in Osaka, Kikuchi would no doubt have said he was a reporter with the Metro section of the Osaka bureau of Toho News—so why had Toda called the Tokyo office? If he had thought to call here because the Hinode incident had occurred in Tokyo, it was still strange for him to mention the name of a reporter from the Osaka Metro section. It made no sense to Negoro.

It also puzzled him why a day laborer from Kamagasaki knew so much about the series of events that had transpired while Chunichi Mutual Bank was busy managing its cash-flow problems. But it was not Toda, the former would-be labor activist who once worked for Hinode, who left a woolly and sour aftertaste in Negoro’s mouth—it was Takeshi Kikuchi. His former colleague’s transformation notwithstanding, so many things about the call that just ended disturbed Negoro. Kikuchi’s voice had not brightened at the unexpected call from his former workplace nor had he shown much interest in the conversation. The way he talked about a day laborer he only met once while covering a story nine years ago was, however, oddly vivid.

Without much thought, Negoro jotted down Takeshi Kikuchi. Some kind of corporate raider? in his reporter’s notebook. There was no way he could have dabbled in speculation on a journalist’s salary, so he must have borrowed capital or been tasked with managing funds, or else he had been assisting a group of corporate raiders. Whatever the case, if one were to trace the source of his funds, one would bump up against a financial institution or shadowy connections. During the Ogura-Chunichi scandal, Negoro had spent more time than he would have liked delving around in such realms, and he knew the obvious places to look for immediate information, in addition to having a few hunches of his own.

And speaking of hunches, Negoro wondered if Kikuchi could somehow be tied to Kimihiro Arai, the representative of Takemitsu, the group of corporate raiders that had bought up shares of Ogura Transport. The parties that circulated money underground had various links with one another, so as a matter of simple probability, a potential connection was better than zero. Were such a point of contact to surface, it was also likely not Toda but Kikuchi himself who knew the backstory about what had transpired with Ogura and Chunichi Mutual Savings. It was even possible that Kikuchi had given the information to Toda for some reason.

Realizing his bad habit had taken over, Negoro put away his notebook. Since he became a reporter, he had a tendency for negative thinking, which only worsened his distrust of others. His wife, from whom he had separated ten years ago, had often wondered cynically whether his inability to believe in people meant he wasn’t capable of trusting her, either, and she had been right. These days, he tried to be more receptive to what others might have to say, but now that he was willing to listen, no one was talking.

Figuring it must be time for the meeting, Negoro glanced up at the wall clock and saw the looming figure of Haruhisa Kubo, a reporter who worked out of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department kisha club. Kubo was always dressed in a business suit that was much too tight for his body, a backpack stuffed with a laptop, camera, and other equipment slung over his shoulder. His unsophisticated appearance made it impossible to imagine him as anything but a newsman. He would show up unexpectedly at the main office wearing an earnest expression that betrayed his obvious intention to pick up a story and would make the rounds, striking up conversations here and there before disappearing again.

“Negoro-san, how’s your back feeling?” Kubo asked him with a somewhat weary smile.

Negoro beckoned him and slid him the notes he had just taken during his call with Kikuchi. “Tell me, Kubo. If such a man were to call a newspaper office saying there are at least a hundred men who bear ill will toward Hinode, what would you think?”

“Is this a tip-off?” Kubo asked, leaning forward. The look on his face said that he was thirsty for any story just then.

“It’s hard to say. It seemed like there was more to the story than just that call,” Negoro replied.

“Given his background, he could be connected to the BLL.”

“No. What the man wanted to talk about was the Ogura-Chunichi scandal. As you know, Hinode was involved with the rehabilitation of Ogura Transport, so I wouldn’t say there’s no connection.”

“If it’s tied up in the Ogura-Chunichi scandal, then maybe he’s with the Okada Association . . .”

Kubo was a sober, hard-boiled reporter, but at the same time he always seemed tormented, never at ease. Especially when he was stretched thin by a major incident, his eyes grew even more distracted. Whereas a sharp professionalism pervaded the hundred-member-strong Metro section at Toho News, the look in Kubo’s eyes here and now revealed the neurosis typical of reporters on the police beat, who strained under their