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

had peeled out, aiming for and crashing into him, but the police steadfastly refused to file it as anything other than a hit-and-run, stating a lack of evidence of deliberate intent. Facing pressure on various fronts during his recuperation at the hospital, Negoro ultimately chose to remain silent. Tandem to that silence was the noxiousness of the era and society that he lived in, as well as of himself—a stench that now permeated him.

Negoro mechanically reinserted his telephone card and dialed a number he had not planned to call.

“I really appreciated your call last Friday night,” Negoro said. “Thanks to you, we were the first to report it.”

“Who knew it would turn into such a huge deal? It’s crazy,” said the chief of CID at the Setagaya Police Department, who had answered at his home in Komae.

“By the way, it seems I’m being tailed again.”

“Any idea who?” The chief’s tone shifted immediately. “Did you see his face? Where did it happen?” he peppered Negoro with questions.

“In Shimbashi. Two guys came within ten meters of me. I didn’t recognize them, so I don’t know who they’re working for. I think one of them might be foreign. Something odd about his hairstyle.”

“Negoro-san. I’m going to send one of my men to show you some mugshots. Once we know which hooligans we’re dealing with, we can start digging around. I’ll give you a call at 8:30 tomorrow morning.”

Negoro paused. The chief raised his voice impatiently, “Negoro-san? You there?”

He was thinking of how, after the hit-and-run four years ago, this friendly police chief had also been one of the people who told him to “just forget about it.”

“Thank you, sorry to trouble you,” Negoro replied generically, ending the call as once again he mulled over the powerlessness of the police force, of the victim, of the newspapers, and of this country, Japan.

He proceeded to insert his phone card again and dialed another number.

“It’s the Sanseido Bookstore in Kanda,” he said as soon as the call connected.

“This is the second time today. Is something the matter?” the special prosecutor asked.

“No, I just forgot to tell you this morning. I don’t think I’ll be able to go home for a while, so if you need to get a hold of me please call the Chidori-ga-fuchi news room. It doesn’t have to be today or tomorrow, but please make time to meet with me soon. And send my regards to Goda-san. Sorry to bother you so late.”

Negoro ended the call without waiting for the prosecutor’s reply and exited the booth.

Now should I chase down Kikuchi? he wondered to himself afresh, but he still couldn’t decide. Negoro knew that, ever since being threatened and almost run down by a car, his zeal as a Metro reporter had vanished. Instead, he had wandered into a dead-end, haunted by an apathetic cynicism about the ways of this country—beginning with its very existence as a nation down to the flavor of its instant noodles. Of course his cynicism included doubts about the quality of his writing over his twenty-three-year career as a journalist, but more than that, this skepticism stemmed from the fact that, above all, his heart was no longer moved by this society and era he lived in, overflowing as it was from every corner with stuff, noise, and greed.

Trudging with his bad foot along Sotobori-Dori in search of a taxi, Negoro continued to ponder whether to follow up on Kikuchi, but he knew he lacked his former motivation. His sentiments were predictable enough, but as he lost himself in a new train of thought, he began to feel somewhat ashamed. Did it make any difference in the end to rot from evil or to rot from hatred and cynicism? Was there any distinction between contributing to the contamination of society and the era he lived in, and spending his life abhorring such a state of affairs?

Negoro looked down at his watch and was surprised to see that it was already ten-forty. By the time he leaned into the street to hail a taxi, his attention had already turned to the deadline for the thirteenth edition of the morning paper.

3

Haruhisa Kubo

Tuesday, March 28th. When the phone rang at 3:30 a.m., Haruhisa Kubo leapt up from the sofa in the press nook and reached for the receiver.

“Hello, MPD division.”

“We’re sending over the morning editions now. You’ve been scooped.”

Every day before dawn, the Metro section of the Osaka bureau faxed the morning editions of all the national newspapers to the Tokyo bureau so they could check the front pages. These faxes were only ever appended with a phone call when the message was, “You’ve been scooped.”

Scooped.

Since being assigned to the police beat two years ago, Kubo had lived in fear of this word, running around in a never-ending battle for stories. He still wasn’t sure whether being scooped was a matter of bad luck or lack of skill. Not that there was any room for such thoughts in his mind—the compulsory reaction of a police beat reporter upon learning that he’d been scooped was for the blood to drain from his face as the word “failure” floated before his eyes.

Still reeling from the shock, Kubo picked up the papers the fax machine had spat out. The vertical headline on the first of the Metro pages read: company grudge? suspicious tape from 1990. On the second faxed page, a horizontal headline: mysterious tape sent to hinode. On the third: trouble back in 1990?

Being scooped by three out of the six national papers would be enough to get him fired, depending on the substance of the articles. Kubo pored over the pages to see if his competitors had included anything more than what his sources had told him last night.

All three papers reported roughly the same story. In November 1990, Hinode Beer received a letter invoking the name of a certain organization and accusing them of employment discrimination during their hiring process. Hinode Beer also received a slanderous cassette tape from