The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) Read online

  “This newspaper has yesterday’s date on it as well,” I said. I picked up the doujinshi and began paging through it. Mars Girl was there in all her violet-haired splendor, wearing an outfit just like Nicky’s. I skimmed the boxed illustrations and realized that these were the exact ones that papered the walls of Kunio’s apartment. He must have photocopied his originals to form this sample, which was bound in a simple plastic cover instead of the usual glossy paperback cover.

  I traced the story. Mars Girl was living in 1930s Japan, and she was staying with a family who seemed to believe she was a strange cousin from the country. She was asked to prepare rice on an old-fashioned stove, and there the conflict arose, because in outer space, as in modern Japan, electric rice cookers were the norm. After trying a variety of measures of rice and water, Mars Girl slipped off to a restaurant to buy rice. But in the restaurant, she encountered gangsters who were trying to extort protection money from the owner. She used a few swift karate moves to dispense of two thugs; however, the most sinister of them turned out to be a karate master who overpowered her and kidnapped her, taking her away in a cycle rickshaw. The gangster paid off the rickshaw driver in exchange for abandoning the two in the vehicle in an isolated spot under a bridge over the Sumida River. Then, over the course of five pages, Mars Girl’s kimono was unwrapped, and the next illustration was of a steam-powered train traveling through a tunnel. So Mars Girl was getting raped—a typical cartoon fantasy. However, my spirits rose when Mars Girl wrapped her legs around the gangster’s head in a surprise hold and broke his neck. With a bit of soy sauce, she dribbled an outline of the planet Mars on his face as the final humiliation before dragging him down to the river, where she discarded the body. The gory tale was wrapped up by Mars Girl returning to the rickshaw to discover a fresh boxed lunch, which she of course took home and managed to pass off as her own cooking.

  “Country girls can take a long time to prepare a meal, but the taste is superb,” the father of the household praised, while Mars Girl insisted—like a typical Japanese deflecting a compliment—that she was a terrible cook.

  I was surprised that I could understand as much of the story as I did. I looked up after what felt like just a few minutes and saw that I was alone. Where had Nicky gone?

  I called out his name, and got up and traced a path back to his apartment. He answered the knock on his door after a minute.

  “So you’re done reading?” he asked, looking at the material in my hand. “What do you think?”

  “Well—artistically speaking, the mural is superior to the comic. I’m planning to write about the comics, though. In fact, I could start by interviewing you about how much influence the circle has over the doujinshi’s content.”

  “I’d be happy to, but like I said, I have a matinee.”

  “You’re going to a movie?”

  He chuckled. “No. I’m running off to meet my hot Japanese girlfriend.”

  “Thanks for sharing so much information,” I said in my most sarcastic manner.

  “I’m kind of sorry for Japanese-American women.” Nicky looked at me thoughtfully. “Let’s face it, you can almost pass for Japanese, but your personality’s all wrong. You can’t possibly attract anyone here. You have boundaries, and they don’t. Japanese girls are kinky. They do things you couldn’t imagine.”

  I could have said a million things. Nicky, like so many of the foreign men I’d met in Tokyo, believed Japanese women had a peculiar combination of emotional purity and sexual willingness that made them the ultimate mates. I could tell that Nicky wanted to make me upset. He understood the kind of woman I was. Well, understanding women was his job.

  “It sounds as if you’re better off as a stripper than a student,” I told him.

  “Yeah. I dance for them, and they slip money in my pants. When they take me out before work–we call dates like that dohan–they always pay for the hotel rooms, the alcohol, the gifts. Everything!”

  “These are career women?” I was incredulous.

  “Hell, no! There are no career women here, that’s what’s so great! My girls are the babes you saw in the bar: students, office ladies, housewives. They can be twenty years apart, agewise, but once you’re inside, they all feel the same.”

  I couldn’t hide my disgust any longer. My grimace made him laugh.

  “Well, I’m going to see the others in the circle soon. I’ll tell them about your interest, and we’ll see if something works out.”

  “Kunio’s the one I really want to talk with,” I said.

  A loud banging noise came from the hall, startling me.

  “Sounds as if Kunio might have come home,” Nicky said.

  We went into the dingy hall, and indeed Kunio’s door was resolutely closed. Nicky tried to turn the doorknob.

  “Open up!” he bellowed, hitting the door.

  There was no answer.

  “It doesn’t make sense. The door was unlocked before, and now it’s locked,” I said.

  “Did you take my key ring with you on the way out?”

  I winced. “Your key ring?”

  “Yeah, I carried my key ring in with me, out of habit. It must be in there now. How irritating.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Maybe I could call a locksmith—“

  “Don’t bother. I don’t really care to water his plants anymore, especially since I know that he’s back. And I do have to leave. If I’m late for the matinee, my girlfriend won’t like it. She’s liable to whip me.”

  As Nicky spoke, he moved around the room, scooping up a child’s Mars Girl lunchbox and putting in it some subway and telephone cards, money, and a lipstick. He shooed me out of his apartment. From the doorway, he said, “I should be seeing another circle member this afternoon. I’ll ask if that person wants to speak with you. But I’ll ask only if you promise to let me call you. Don’t come creeping around the club again, or this building, okay?”

  “Sure.” I handed him my business card.

  “I’ll see if I can get you an interview. But if our comic runs in your magazine, we want to be paid.”

  “I’ll have to ask the magazine staff about that first,” I said.

  “See you.” Nicky brushed past me in a blur of taffeta and sweet perfume, a perfect she-boy on his way to the unknown meeting spot. It was only when he was halfway down the stairs that I realized I was still holding the Mars Girl prototype comic. The gap under Kunio’s door was too slim for me to slide it back.

  In the end, I took the prototype, knowing that I could tell Nicky, when he called, that I had it. The whole business about the door locking was strange. I wondered if Nicky had pushed the button on the doorknob of Kunio’s door, causing the door to lock after we’d left. He could have done that to force me to leave.

  It was risky visiting strange men in their homes. My mother and aunt and about a hundred other people had told me that during the course of my twenty-eight years. Now I had to agree.

  Chapter Eleven

  The message light was blinking on my answering machine when I got home, so I played back the tape, hoping for a message from Kunio Takahashi.

  Instead the caller was Takeo, apologizing for being snappish over the phone earlier in the day.

  “I was upset because I thought that something had happened to you. You’ve gotten in trouble before, and I guess I was expecting the worst. Call me when you have a chance.”

  My heart softened, and since I didn’t know Takeo’s cellular phone number by heart, I hunted around for my address book to find the number. Funny. The address book wasn’t in my backpack, nor was it on my telephone stand. I tried to remember when I’d last used it and finally remembered that it had been at the beach bar in Hayama. I’d taken it out to check the phone number of Takeo’s country house before I called using Rika’s friend’s cellular.

  Could I have left the book at the bar? If so, chances were that it was either lost in the sand or had been turned in to the Hayama police department’s lost and found. I couldn’t r
emember the name of the bar, but I bet Rika would. However, it was Sunday, so I couldn’t reach her until the next morning, when the Gaijin Times opened at 9 a.m.

  “Rei-san! Why aren’t you here?” Rika whispered into the receiver after I’d identified myself.

  “I have no reason to be,” I said, caught off guard. “I just called to ask if you know the name of the bar where we were Saturday night. I think I dropped my address book.”

  “It’s called Bojo. But listen, Mr. Sanno is here today. He wants a full status report of all the stories in progress.”

  “Really? But it’s just Monday!”

  “This is what happens when a Japanese authority takes over, Rei-san. We have to gambaru—give it our all.”

  “If he had told me to come to the office, I would have. But he didn’t say—”

  “Yes, you are at a disadvantage because you are a freelancer. Since we are all regular staff members, we came in on Monday as usual. And I really must go now, because Alec-san is waving for me to come back into the conference room. Just tell me one thing. May I give the progress report on your work? I would like to tell him what we discussed at the beach the other night.”

  I pointed out that it was dangerous for her to promise a story to Mr. Sanno that I possibly might not be able to deliver. “Can you just say I am in the process of tracking down a promising doujinshi artist?”

  “I’ll try,” Rika said. “Yes, that is a good idea. I will say that is why you are not here. You telephoned to apologize and say that you are in the midst of a very important interview with Kunio.”

  “Please don’t say his name, since it might not—” work out, I would have said, but Rika had already chirped a cheerful good-bye.

  I was no closer to getting my hands on my address book, so I tried to do something meaningful with my afternoon while waiting for either Takeo or Kunio to telephone me. I decided to straighten up my apartment, collecting in the process any phone numbers and addresses that I’d jotted down on slips of paper. It was amazing how sloppy I was. There were phone numbers scrawled on the backs of torn envelopes and restaurant menus. Many of the numbers had been written down without an identifying person’s name.

  Kunio’s apartment had been far tidier than mine. I thought about how there had been a few things on the table, but no real clutter of notes and magazines and dishes, as was the style in my place. It looked as if he had just stepped out—though that couldn’t be, I realized.

  A naturally tidy person would not leave a half-full beer on the table a full day after he’d started to drink it. He would have thrown it away. And the futon was damp. It obviously had hung out overnight and soaked up the previous night’s rain. Nobody, if he were sleeping at home, would leave a futon outside.

  So what had happened?

  I imagined one scenario. Nicky had come home late at night, and Kunio, relaxing in his own apartment, had heard him. He might have left fast to avoid a confrontation over the borrowed money.

  No, I decided, Kunio must have left at an earlier time the day before. Otherwise he would have brought in his futon. Nobody would leave a futon hanging out overnight, unless he hadn’t come back home because of an emergency.

  I was worried, although there was no good reason. I had been anxious about Takeo because he had not been at his home Saturday night, and he’d turned out to be angry but unscathed. Kunio was a grown man who could take care of himself. The fact that he’d not spent the night in his apartment was probably because he was spending time with one of the admiring girls Nicky had spoken about.

  Wherever he’d been last night, there was still a chance that he had dropped by Show a Boy to pick up his mail. I called information to get the telephone number for the club, and dialed, hoping that someone other than Chiyo would answer.

  “Hai,” breathed a man with a scratchy accent.

  “Hello, is Marcellus there?” I asked.

  “Nobody’s here right now. Who’s calling?”

  Nobody except you, I thought. I hesitated before saying, “I have a question about the artist who painted the walls.”

  There was a pause. “Why?”

  Could this be Kunio on the other end? I chose my words carefully. “If he stops in for his mail, I would like to talk to him. It’s about an excellent publicity opportunity. One that goes beyond a magazine article.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want publicity. That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “You mean a young man straight out of college doesn’t want to make money doing the work he loves?” I laughed softly, trying to make it sound like a joke. I had to get on the right side of this edgy guy, whoever he was.

  “There’s more to life than money. If you don’t know that, I’m sorry for you.”

  I struggled for an answer, but he hung up on me.

  The person on the other end of the phone had to have been Kunio. No matter how fast I made subway connections to Shibuya, he would be gone from Show a Boy by the time I arrived. Another idea was to stake out his apartment, but if he caught me doing that, it might alienate him further. I sighed. If Kunio ultimately refused to be interviewed, I could write a story without his participation. But Rika had probably already told Mr. Sanno that I was profiling Kunio. It would be a major embarrassment if I couldn’t come up with the subject.

  I made myself a cup of Darjeeling and sat down in my tidied apartment to think about the pros and cons. In the end, I felt the messages I’d left with Nicky and Chiyo were enough for Kunio to decide whether to get into contact with me. In the meantime, I would locate another interview possibility—a talented artist who would welcome the chance to be written up in a glossy magazine.

  Instead of trekking out to Animagine, I’d look for the new artist’s work at a manga shop in Tokyo. A likely location for one would be Harajuku, a booming retail neighborhood that drew teenagers like cats to an open can of tuna. It was only about a half hour’s subway ride to the west, but it had a completely different age demographic from the rest of Tokyo. There was no way to amble leisurely through the street. Instead, I was swept up in a dark blue wave of school-uniformed adolescents. I almost felt as if I were entering one of the schoolgirl comics that older men enjoyed reading, wondering how many of them would have liked being stuck in this moving mass of pigtailed soldiers who brayed with delight at a Ronald McDonald clown statue.

  The statue was a hazard to foot traffic, I thought sourly as I got swept into the tide of girls once more, the momentum stopping from time to time as friends decamped to get their pictures taken in booths or ran into record shops.

  “Excuse me, do you know where…” I tried to ask a teenager carrying a bag emblazoned with Doraemon, the robot cat from a famous television series, but there were too many shrieks for him to hear my question.

  Fortunately, I was a few inches taller than most of the teens, so I was able to see a gaudy clothing boutique that had mannequins in the window dressed as animation heroes and heroines. I broke out of the pack, apologizing to the dozen girls I bumped into during the process, and tried to creep backward against the tide to reach the shop.

  “Do… you know… where I can find a manga shop?” I was slightly breathless when I approached the store’s salesgirl who was dressed in the tiger-skin costume worn by Urusei Yatsura, a female demon from an anime program that used to be on television.

  “There isn’t a retailer in this neighborhood anymore. But there is a coffee shop called Anime Kissa,” she said.

  “Does it have any connection to manga?” I asked because the word anime was associated with TV and video, not printed matter.

  “Yes. If you go in and pay four hundred yen for a coffee or tea, you are allowed two hours’ time to read the magazines in stock. It’s a good way to catch up on series.”

  “So I can’t actually take any comics out of there?” I asked.

  “That’s correct! But who wants to buy what you can get for free?” She laughed gaily. “Actually, that’s the kind of saying that my mother tells me, but she doesn�
�t mean it in reference to manga!”

  Two blocks later I turned left at a vintage jeans shop, looking for Anime Kissa. A narrow doorway led into a room that was filled with so much smoke that I had a coughing fit. The room looked almost like a library, because the walls were lined with bookcases filled with paperback comic magazines. None of the teenagers or office workers looked up to notice the intruder.

  I went to the shelves, preparing to make a systematic sweep. According to the rules posted near the entry in Japanese and English, I wouldn’t have to buy a drink until I’d brought my desired manga to a table. Then, as soon as a waitress met me to take the refreshment order, the two-hour clock would start ticking. If I ordered more drinks or something to eat, I could stay even longer.

  I quickly passed the rows and rows of commercial comic books in favor of a few shelves of doujinshi in the back. There was one Showa Story comic with an appealing cover of Mars Girl landing on the deck of a classic Imperial Navy ship.

  I took that along with an armload of about a dozen other amateur artworks, found an empty table for one, and began reading. In my case, reading meant skipping over kanji that I didn’t know, so I was actually plowing through books at the same speed as the people around me. I read my way through two iced coffees and a piece of pumpkin cheesecake. I was looking for the spark of something interesting. Instead, what I found were monotonous copies of popular series, with the added excitement of sexual situations. Very boring, although I supposed that to some, these comics might be titillating. The only comic book I liked was Showa Story.

  I noticed more of customers in Anime Kissa were reading commercial comics than doujinshi. The bookcase where I’d gone to pull out some doujinshi was receiving no traffic at all. The only person who had picked up an amateur-designed comic was a young man in sunglasses who was chain-smoking with a doujinshi in front of him and an iced coffee at his side. I thought about approaching him for an interview—Have you heard of Showa Story? Why do you like doujinshi?—but I noticed with scorn that his head was not even tilted toward the page. It was aimed instead in the general direction of where I was sitting.