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

“The radio—? Anything else?”

“That’s it.”

“Sanno, huh. I’ll ask one of the guys who’s out at the evening session.”

This call ended briefly too. Sugano was a shrewd reporter with years of experience on the MPD’s Public Security Bureau beat. In addition to being a man of few words, he always thought of three things in the time it took a normal person to think of one, so with both younger colleagues and his contemporaries, he couldn’t hold much of a conversation. In spite of this Negoro had managed to be friendly with him for quite a while, though no matter how many years they had known each other, every time he heard Sugano’s voice he felt as if he were consulting a workbook that gave him all the right answers without offering any insight on how to solve the questions. Actually, Sugano was one of the heaviest drinkers on Toho News’s hundred-member-strong Metro section, but since he never mentioned it himself, not many people knew about it. That’s the type of man he was.

As soon as Negoro replaced the receiver, Tabe, famous for his keen ears, called out from his desk, “Something up?”

“No, not yet,” Negoro replied briskly, annoyed that he couldn’t really focus as he returned to his draft. For the time being he printed out the article to which he had added five lines, circled the revisions in red, handed it to the overnight reporter nearby, and asked, “Can you get this to copy?” Having left the matter up to Sugano, he felt confident that things would move forward without a hitch, but at the same time his own hands were now idle. The goose bumps from only a few seconds ago had also passed, so Negoro was at a bit of a loss.

Returning to his earlier draft, he continued writing—When it comes to thermal energy from urban waste—and looked at the clock. 12:10 a.m. By now, the beat reporter for MPD’s First Investigation Division, having been paged by Chief Sugano, would be in a hired car, rushing to Omori Police Department and Sanno Ni-chome. For a moment Negoro tried to remember how, fifteen or sixteen years ago, he used to go running around like that, but he could not immediately retrieve a single memory, and as he caught himself wondering if this were the fate of the brain cells of a third-rate reporter, his fingers had typed, When it comes to thermal energy from urban waste, its fate is . . . He deleted and retyped, When it comes to thermal energy from urban waste, its current state is . . .

The clock said thirteen minutes after midnight. Over at the copy desk, the direct line to the press box rang once, and the rim editor Takano grabbed the receiver. The call lasted a few seconds, and Takano turned and said something to Tabe next to him. Tabe’s head, with its hairline that had receded five centimeters, rose above his desktop computer as he shouted toward the layout desk across the aisle, “The front page and the Metro page, we might have to swap out an article!”

Then Tabe cried out in a voice that resounded through the entire Metro section, “There’s an unmarked police car in Sanno Ni-chome. They’ve also spotted vehicles from the investigation unit in the back lot of Omori Police Department.” Right away, the overnight reporters looked up, asking, “Something up?”

“Don’t know yet. In any case, the chief inspectors of the First Investigation Division and the Crime Scene Unit have not returned to their official residences. The police departments in each of the two areas are keeping mum. The kisha nook is waiting for the broadcast. Hey, Doi, make sure we have a residential map of the Sanno neighborhood. And keep the overnight staff in the photo section on standby.”

As he spoke, Tabe’s eyes darted to the large wall clock. Negoro also looked up at it. 12:16 a.m. No matter how much they pushed back, they had only an hour and a half until deadline. Whatever had happened, they wouldn’t be able to write much about it.

“Negoro, could you mark down two places where we can set up near Sanno Ni-chome and Omori Police Department?”

Negoro acknowledged Tabe’s directive with a raised hand. Setting aside his half-finished draft, from the files in his desk drawer he pulled out a list of the five hundred newspaper vendors in the entire metropolitan area. He had used this same list every time there had been an incident, so the pages were well worn and tattered. As he opened the list, he immediately thought of the vendor next to the post office at the intersection in Sanno Ni-chome, but it took a little while for him to call to mind the area where Omori Police Department stood.

Omori Police Department was located on the east side of Omori-machi Station on the Keihin Kyuko Line. It was where the Dai-Ichi Keihin highway branched off from Sangyo Road; at the fork in the road there was a Denny’s, and adjacent to the restaurant’s colorful roof was a small and inconspicuous four-story government building. On the same side of the street as the building, which could easily be overlooked if not careful, there were private apartment buildings and warehouses, as well as various small office buildings. The entrance of the police department faced the Dai-Ichi Keihin highway, and the rear exit faced Sangyo Road, and both sets of doors were shielded from view by the elevated road directly in front of them. Yes, that’s right, the entire area is like the bottom of a ravine, deprived of sunlight even during the daytime—as all these vivid details finally came back to him, he found a suitable vendor from the list and wrote down the telephone number. It was positioned along Dai-Ichi Keihin and about three hundred meters away from the police department, but with a pair of binoculars, it would be an ideal spot to stakeout the coming and goings of investigators.

He