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

bottle himself. As Kano explained, the food hall in the basement of the Takashimaya department store in Futako-Tamagawa had been having a sale—all bottles, two thousand yen—so he had bought three, and then also picked up a freshly baked baguette and cheese, which he and his brother-in-law had been enjoying as lunch while they drank the wine. There was something rather provocative about the indolence and insouciance of the simple act of daytime drinking beneath the shade of a cherry tree, done right in front of the throngs of wholesome folks engaged in sports on the grounds of the riverbed. Besides, it may have been a bargain at two thousand yen a pop, but the rich, full-bodied red was certainly having an effect.

From the beginning, Negoro had been 90 percent sure that he wouldn’t be grilling Kano and Goda for material, but thanks to the wine, the remaining 10 percent uncertainty went quickly by the wayside, and he gave himself over to random and inoffensive conversation instead. They began talking about financial institutions that were certain to collapse by autumn, like Tokyo’s K. and Osaka’s K. and H., which led to a discussion of how, in wake of the financial insecurity, the problem of dealing with bad loans would come to the fore later this year.

“It’ll be the moment of truth for prosecutors,” Negoro said, egging Kano on.

“So you want me to find, among all the loans that went under, the ones I can hold liable for violations of the investment law, prosecute those responsible, and send them home with suspended sentences?” Kano said, laughing evasively.

“But Kano-san, with these tens of trillions in loans, you should be able to hold accountable both the lenders, who neglected to put in the effort to recover the funds, and the borrower, who failed to make an effort to pay back the money.”

“If it’s a question of responsibility, then the borrower or the lender should file a lawsuit first themselves.”

“It’s a waste of time to file lawsuits if there is no consensus to entrust everything to market mechanisms when dealing with bad loans. Those are your words.”

“Under the current circumstances, this country’s financial system won’t be able to go on. Neither the politicians nor the parties concerned have the ability to reform anything. That means it will go the way of natural selection, so we can just sit back and wait a while.”

Kano had sidestepped Negoro again, not once referring to the focus of the special investigative department of the Tokyo District Prosecutor’s Office, which was no doubt engaged in a clandestine investigation with a criminal prosecution in mind.

The conversation jumped haphazardly from the resurrection of the former political faction led by Sakata within the ruling party, with an eye toward the dissolution of the Lower House; then onto the future of the securities market, where light trading continued without any prospect of economic recovery; then back to whether there was any way to use financial records to expose how the bad loans were hidden through broker loans and debt shuffling tricks. Goda did not contribute, merely listened intently, his demeanor conveying a reasonable interest in each topic.

Kano was clearly a little concerned about Negoro’s motives for suggesting, a month earlier, that they get together, and he did not miss the chance to redirect the conversation. “What are you investigating right now, Negoro-san?”

“I wouldn’t call it an investigation yet, but there are signs that large sums of money are again moving around the brokerage houses in Kabuto-cho,” Negoro answered.

“Does this have to do with Hinode Beer?”

“It includes them.”

“Is that true, Yuichiro?” Kano asked Goda, who paused as he was gulping down wine to respond succinctly, “I doubt the police investigation would not be paying any attention to Kabuto-cho.”

What anyone would have imagined at the mention of money moving around Hinode stock, more than simply the presence of corporate raiders, were networks connected to the Okada Association. Kano knew just what kind of history Hinode had and, sensing how sensitive the issue was, he put a close to the subject with the vague comment, “This is where you come in, Negoro-san.”

“I guess you could say that,” Negoro answered in kind.

Then, Goda asked discreetly, “If you don’t mind, I’d love to hear more about what goes on in Kabuto-cho,” and so they gossiped a bit more. Goda talked about how last autumn, in a case where a securities guy killed himself with a pistol in a business hotel in Omori, the young detective who had been doing legwork in the financial district collected more offers for get-rich-quick schemes than evidence. Goda let it be known that he thought undercover police work in Kabuto-cho was a tricky business. Judging by his manner of speaking, Goda did not seem to have any ulterior motives other than the desire to hear about a world that was unfamiliar to him. Though never to the point of being rude, it appeared that his mind was off somewhere else the whole time—that nuanced gaze drifted absently from Negoro’s face to his former brother-in-law’s, and to the grassy landscape before them.

After a while, though, Negoro noticed that Goda’s stare had at some point fixed upon a lizard, around fifteen centimeters long, that had crawled up onto his sneaker. In that moment, the shadows vanished from Goda’s eyes, which shone like glass beads. He snatched the lizard by its tail and tossed it lightly into a field of grass, where it disappeared. It was a simple gesture, but as Negoro watched the rigid concentration in Goda’s eyes as he had watched the lizard, the only word that came to mind was cop.

Negoro turned back and tried to rejoin the interrupted conversation, but this time it was Kano who had an intensity at the corner of his eyes, as for a moment he gazed, as though transfixed, at the face of his former brother-in-law.

城山恭介　Kyosuke Shiroyama

Monday morning, May 8th. Shortly after six, Shiroyama received a call from the deputy manager of general affairs, who informed