The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) (26 page)

I couldn’t see her facial expression, but her movements became more agitated. She turned with a big splash and started swimming farther out.

As I floated and kicked, I thought about how the sequence of events must have gone. Kunio had confessed to Chiyo that his profits were going to the Hattori Copy Shop. Chiyo in turn told the Fish, who then hit the father up for a “tax”. Seiko knew about that, and she was trying to end her life as her own punishment for causing the problem.

Seiko was splashing only intermittently now. I paddled as fast as I could. If she went under, I’d be useless at retrieving her.

I wondered whether her slow movements were genuinely a show of weakness. Seiko was a sturdily built young woman who had overpowered a well-muscled young man. She was a much better swimmer than I. The only reason I had been able to close the distance between us was because I had the support of a boogie board. I was getting nearer, but another wave was headed my way. A big one. I watched it swell.

Seiko wasn’t aware of the coming wave. When it hit her, her naked body was picked up like a cheap plastic doll and spat out into the air. I couldn’t watch anymore; I made my body into a straight line so the wave would roll over me. The sound was deafening.

When the wave was gone, I raised my head and saw a hand in the water about twenty feet from me. I paddled over as quickly as I could, and let go of the board to try to haul up the body that matched the hand.

The body was Seiko. I’d imagined that if I caught her, she’d fight me, but she was limp as a noodle. Fortunately, she wasn’t dead. She was coughing as if she’d swallowed a ton of water, but her eyes were closed. The Valium must have taken effect.

Now it was up to me to get her to safety. The outlook was bad: I was a weak swimmer bringing in a woman incapable of movement, and perhaps in need of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But if I gave up, we both could die. And at least I had the boogie board.

Treading water, I managed to slide the board under her chest. She now hung over the board like a collapsed drunk at a table. There was no room for me on the board, but I could keep one hand on its side and kick, slowly moving us both toward the shore. The danger would be waves. If a giant one came, I didn’t know if we could both successfully hang on and ride.

We were still in water deeper than five feet, but I could see people swimming around. I took a hand off Seiko to wave for help. Nobody noticed. When I got closer, I would yell.

Just then, though, a familiar roar sounded behind me. A wave. I peeked over my shoulder and saw that it was tremendous and building. Seiko was lined up well on the board, but she didn’t have a firm grip on it. I awkwardly clambered on, making a tight hold with my own hands so she was sandwiched between me and the board. This was a move that skinny kids under ten could do with ease; it was decidedly awkward for women our size.

Seiko must have come to, because she moaned just as the wave shot up behind us. All I was conscious of was holding on to the board, which the wave threatened to rip away, along with Seiko’s body.

The next thing I knew, Seiko’s body and the board were gone. When my body came to rest, my nose was in sand. We’d been flung so far that we were in shallow waters. I shakily stood up in the thigh-deep water. Seiko and the board were still together, floating a few feet away. We were just a few footsteps to safety. I bent over and, with my hands, pulled the floating girl to the beach.

After the water had been pounded out of Seiko’s lungs, she was too zonked from Valium to talk to anyone. In fact, she fell asleep. All the rescue people and police and
manga
fans who had materialized were disappointed. As they crowded in around us on sand, talking on their radios, I saw a balding man standing at a distance in bathing trunks.

I looked straight at the Fish. He flashed me the peace sign and slowly moved off toward the road. I saw a Cadillac with long fins waiting. He got in the back, and the car moved off. I wondered how much he’d seen of the events at the beach—whether he’d watched me flail out in the water with Seiko and decide justice would be served if she or I, or both of us, died. Or maybe he would have swum in to help, if things got really bad. It was hard to know.

Lieutenant Hata told me to go home, get some rest, and meet him at the hospital next morning.

***

We went into Seiko’s room together. The sun was shining brightly through the window on her wan figure lying in bed. There was supposedly a law in Japan about every hospital room having windows designed so that patients would experience sun to uplift their spirits. But Seiko wasn’t smiling. When she saw me, she covered her face with her hands.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

Snapping on a tape recorder, Lieutenant Hata said, “Sorry about what, exactly?”

”Sorry for the trouble I caused you, Rei-san. I was with my father in the train station when he hit you on the staircase. I caught you because I didn’t expect you to fall that way, and I thought you might die. But I knew, I knew the whole time what happened.”

“So your father killed Nicky Larsen?” I asked.

“No, no! I did it. I—I had to.”

“He made you?” I asked, incredulous.

“Let her speak freely,” Lieutenant Hata whispered to me, and Seiko did. The words poured out. Seiko heard from Kunio that Chiyo had accidentally let the Fish and his group know that a
doujinshi
artist was using her business as a mailing address. The slip had occurred because someone had left
Showa Story
mail lying on the bar, and the Fish asked about it, sensing a new source of income. He’d first asked Kunio for the money; Kunio had protested that any money they made went to their printer, to cover his costs. Then the Fish changed tactics and demanded money from Mr. Hattori.

Mr. Hattori became very frightened and sent a bill to Kunio, trying to prove that he wasn’t bankrolling or making money from
Showa Story.
He also yanked Seiko out of school and told her to shut down the circle. Kunio, being Japanese, had understood the threat immediately; he’d left his apartment for a while because he didn’t want the
yakuza
to come after him. But Nicky, with his all-American ideas of capitalism, had been unwilling to desist. His plan was to translate all the existing issues of
Showa Story
and sell the series on the U.S. market. He wanted to do more Japanese issues as well, and even said that he would draw the comics if Kunio wouldn’t.

“So you were in a very difficult situation,” Lieutenant Hata said at the end of Seiko’s recital.

“Yes. If the
yakuza
became involved in my father’s business, his life would be ruined. My mother’s life would be, too! If only Nicky had just been willing to stop, the way Kunio had been. But Nicky was a typical foreigner. Handsome and charming, but he didn’t understand how to fit in with others. He cared only for himself.”

As Seiko finished speaking, I thought about whether her description of foreigners applied to me. Did Takeo see me this way? Was my problem at the
Gaijin Times
my fault?

“What happened on Monday, the day that Nicky Larsen died?” Lieutenant Hata asked.

“I went to my father’s shop to work and told him that I needed free time between one and three that day.” Seiko spoke in a rush, and I sensed she wanted to unload her sad experience for good. “I told him that I would like to attend a presentation on new photocopying equipment in Akihabara. He thought it was a good idea.”

“You went to meet Nicky for the matinee,” I said.

“That’s right. My family has a car, which I drove to his apartment. Nicky had always wanted to, um, do it inside the car. I think that is an American tradition. Is that true, Rei-san?”

I blushed. “I think in movies and such it is, but probably not in real life. It’s quite—risky.”

“Nicky loved risk. I didn’t.” Seiko cried softly for a minute. “He liked to do this thing where he would stop breathing for a few seconds at the time of… you know, the time of the most pleasure.”

“What exactly happened during your last time with Nicky?” Lieutenant Hata continued the questions.

“He asked me to draw a stocking tightly around his throat. We’d done it about ten times before. He was enjoying the time in the car so much, he insisted I use one of my stockings.”

“Where was the car parked when this was going on?”

“By a vacant warehouse near the river. I knew the place had gone out of business, because we used to pick up goods there, and now it’s closed. So I thought it would be a safe spot to make love.” She cried again. “We did, and when it was time for him, he signaled me with his hand. I pulled the stocking, and everything flashed before my eyes: the problems with my father and the
yakuza,
how stubborn Nicky was. I knew the problems would all go away if Nicky stopped breathing.”

She paused and stared out of the window for a long time. Then she looked directly at me.

“I was thinking about what it would be like to keep pulling on the stocking. I didn’t realize until a minute later that I’d really done it. His eyes were wide open, but they didn’t see anymore. And he was not breathing.”

“Oh, my God.” I put my face in my hands, unable to look at her.

“I ran out of the car and into the warehouse, which was unlocked, thinking maybe there was a telephone, I could call the ambulance for help. But of course there was no telephone; it was closed. I went back to the car, and the body was there. I started thinking about how now I was a murderer, that my father could trade me to the
yakuza
as an employee or something and they would stop asking him for money.”

“Did you do that?”

“Oh, no. When I was calm, I took a tarpaulin from the trash outside the warehouse and brought it to the car. I wrapped it around Nicky, dragged him to the river’s edge, and there I threw him. Then  drove back to the copy shop. My father asked where was the literature from the Akihabara photocopying demonstration. I said I’d forgotten it. He said, ‘You’ve been with that American, haven’t you? I can tell.’ Then he hit me; that was the black eye that you saw. After he hit me, I told him he’d never need to worry about Nicky again, and he said, ‘It’s a good thing you’re finally listening to me.’ Seiko paused. “Soon after that, it was reported on television that Nicky had died. I think my father guessed that something might have happened in the car, because he had it cleaned the next day. But he never asked me any questions. I think he believes I did it to save our family.”

It almost seemed like an accident, I thought. Manslaughter, with a cover-up. Curious about one thing, I asked Seiko, “Why did you make the
Mars Girl
marking on his forehead?”

“I didn’t do that. He did it himself. He liked to draw on both of us during those moments. I washed my forehead off in the river. Oh, I should have just drowned myself then. I’m going to be put to death, aren’t I?”

“Capital punishment is usually only exercised in situations of premeditated murder,” Lieutenant Hata said. “Of course, I can’t speak for the judge who will hear your case. But I will tell him that you were forthcoming with the story.”

I left the hospital that afternoon and never saw Seiko Hattori again. She was transferred to a police-controlled sanitarium. The word was the government wanted to try her for manslaughter, not murder.

Curiously, Seiko became something of a cult heroine. The fact that she’d suffered abuse from her father for a relationship with a foreign boy made the Seiko-Nicky story one of star-crossed lovers. I hadn’t tried to play it up that way in my article for the
Gaijin Times
—I’d just written furiously for three days. My article came in on time, but I told Mr. Sanno that he would get it only if Alec and Rika had no editorial involvement. I just didn’t trust them.

Rika and Alec stormed about it. In fact, I heard from Karen that they broke up, and when Rika’s internship ended, she was not asked to reapply. Rather typically, Alec got to keep his job; I wondered if Rika would think twice about sleeping with someone in a Japanese office next time.

In the end, Norton Jones, the boring, slightly pompous business editor, edited my story. He asked me to clarify a few points, and he rewrote my lead, but otherwise, the story was just as I would have told it. Nicky and Seiko were the cover story of the next month’s issue, and with Kunio Takahashi’s permission, sections of his best work for
Showa Story
were included. Mr. Sanno decided to print a complete Japanese translation of my article, to run side by side with the English version, so for the first time anyone could remember, Japanese people bought the magazine. When the issue sold two hundred thousand copies, Mr. Sanno declared he’d discovered a winning formula. Japanese people liked being able to read what foreigners were saying about them, especially if it was conveniently translated. Frequent Japanese-English translations, in addition to
manga,
were going to make the
Gaijin Times
a hot new publication.

A week after the article was published, Kunio called me. He had decided, in light of all the fabulous publicity that had resulted, that he wanted me to represent his artwork. He’d decided that this was a golden moment.

I told him that I hated gold unless it was antique and gilding the edge of a screen. I was going back to selling antiques; no more dabbling in writing about modern art or artists. It was a dangerous distraction.

When I told Takeo the story of that conversation, he hugged me and said, “Does this mean you care for wood? For paper? The simple things that make up a simple Japanese house?”

“Well, of course,” I said, kissing him. “My life’s work is furnishing houses.”

“Now that this house is fixed up, I’m thinking of doing another. The real estate market is depressed enough that I could actually buy an old house, then fix it up and sell it.”

I shook my head. “There’ll never be another house like this one. And it’s in your family! How can you think of such a thing?”

“I’m not saying I’d give up this one,” he said. “In any case, I couldn’t. Not with Natsumi’s half ownership.”

“Oh, right.” I frowned.

“In any case, I’ll be bringing up the matter of buying more houses with my father when he comes for dinner tonight.”

“You didn’t invite him knowing I’d be here, did you?”

“Of course I did. He was most impressed with your article, particularly the way you managed to keep our family name and house out of it.”

“Well, I didn’t see the point of bringing up anything that happened on your grounds, because I’d hate for it to become a tourist spot.” I’d have to see Takeo’s father that night. Did this mean I had to cook? Feeling completely frazzled, I asked, “What does your father like to eat?”

“Relax. I’ve ordered a platter of sashimi from the best place in town. It will be delivered half an hour after we’re finished.”

“Finished what?” I asked.

Takeo began to shimmy out of his shorts, and I could guess the rest.