After Dark (6 page)

Mari does not respond to this remark.

“But maybe sometimes you don’t really have it together,” Kaoru says.

Mari gives her a slight frown. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s not a question of what I think. It’s part of being nineteen years old. I used to be nineteen myself once. I know what it’s like.”

Mari looks at Kaoru. She starts to say something, but decides she can’t make it come out right, changes her mind.

Kaoru says, “The Skylark is near here. I’ll walk you there. The boss is a buddy of mine, so I’m gonna ask him to take care of you. He’ll let you stay there till morning. Okay?”

Mari nods. The record ends, the automatic turntable lifts the needle, and the tone arm drops onto its rest. The bartender approaches the player to change records. He carefully lifts the platter and slips it into its jacket. Then he takes out the next record, examines its surface under a light, and sets it on the turntable. He presses a button and the needle descends to the record. Faint scratching. Then Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” begins to play. Harry Carney’s languorous bass clarinet performs solo. The bartender’s unhurried movements give the place its own special time flow.

Mari asks the bartender, “Don’t you ever play anything but LPs?”

“I don’t like CDs,” he replies.

“Why not?”

“They’re too shiny.”

Kaoru butts in to ask the bartender: “Are you a crow?”

“But look at all the time it takes to change LPs,” Mari says.

The bartender laughs. “Look, it’s the middle of the night. There won’t be any trains running till morning. What’s the hurry?”

Kaoru cautions Mari, “Remember, this fella’s a little on the weird side.”

“It’s true, though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night,” the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. “You can’t fight it.”

“My uncle used to have lots of LPs,” Mari says. “Mostly jazz records. He could never get himself to like the sound of CDs. He used to play his stuff for me when I went over there. I was too young to understand the music, but I always liked the smell of old record jackets and the sound of the needle landing in the grooves.”

The bartender nods without speaking.

“I learned about Jean-Luc Godard’s movies from that same uncle, too,” Mari says to Kaoru.

“So, you and your uncle were kinda on the same wavelength, huh?” asks Kaoru.

“Pretty much,” Mari says. “He was a professor, but he was kind of a playboy, too. He died all of a sudden three years ago from a heart condition.”

The bartender says to Mari, “Stop in any time you like. I open the place at seven every night. Except Sundays.”

Mari thanks him and from the counter she picks up a book of the bar’s matches, which she stuffs into her jacket pocket. She climbs down from the stool. The sound of the needle tracing the record groove. The languorous, sensual music of Duke Ellington. Music for the middle of the night.

T
he Skylark. Big neon sign. Bright seating area visible through the window. Equally bright laughter from the youthful group of men and women—college students, likely—seated at a large table. This place is far livelier than the Denny’s. The deepest darkness of the nighttime streets is unable to penetrate here.

Mari is washing her hands in the Skylark restroom. She is no longer wearing her hat—or her glasses. From a ceiling speaker at low volume an old hit song by the Pet Shop Boys is playing: “Jealousy.” Mari’s big shoulder bag sits by the sink. She washes her hands with great care, using liquid soap from the dispenser. She appears to be washing off a sticky substance that clings to the spaces between her fingers. Every now and then she looks up at her face in the mirror. She turns off the water, examines all ten fingers under the light, and rubs them dry with a paper towel. She then leans close to the mirror and stares at the reflection of her face as if she expects something to happen. She doesn’t want to miss the slightest change. But nothing happens. She rests her hands on the sink, closes her eyes, begins counting, and then opens her eyes again. Again she examines her face in detail, but still there is no sign of change.

She straightens her bangs and rearranges the hood of the parka under her varsity jacket. Then, as if urging herself on, she bites her lip and nods at herself several times. The Mari in the mirror also bites her lip and nods several times. She hangs the bag on her shoulder and walks out of the restroom. The door closes.

Our viewpoint camera lingers in here for a while, observing the restroom. Mari is no longer here. Neither is anyone else. Music continues to play from the ceiling speaker. A Hall and Oates song now: “I Can’t Go for That.” A closer look reveals that Mari’s image is still reflected in the mirror over the sink. The Mari in the mirror is looking from her side into this side. Her somber gaze seems to be expecting some kind of occurrence. But there is no one on this side. Only her image is left in the Skylark’s restroom mirror.

The room begins to darken. In the deepening darkness, “I Can’t Go for That” continues to play.

6

T
he Hotel Alphaville office. Kaoru sits at the computer looking grumpy. The liquid crystal monitor shows videos taken by the security camera at the front entrance. The image is clear. The time of day is displayed in a corner of the screen. Checking her penciled notes against the time on the monitor, Kaoru uses the mouse to make the image fast-forward and stop. The procedure does not seem to be going well. Now and then she looks at the ceiling and sighs.

Komugi and Korogi walk in.

“Whatcha doin’, Kaoru?” Komugi asks.

“Whoa, you sure don’t look happy!” Korogi adds.

“Security-camera DVD,” Kaoru answers, glaring at the screen. “If I check right around that time, we can probably tell who beat her up.”

“But we had all kinds of customers coming and going then. Think we can tell which one did it?” Komugi says.

Kaoru’s thick fingers tap clumsily at the keys. “All the other customers were couples, but that guy came alone and waited for the woman in the room. He picked up the key to 404 at 10:52, and she got delivered on the motorcycle ten minutes later. We know that much from Sasaki at the reception desk.”

“So all you have to do is look at the frames from ten fifty-two,” says Komugi.

“Yeah, but it’s not as easy as it sounds,” says Kaoru. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with these digital gizmos.”

“Muscles don’t help much, do they?” says Komugi.

“You got it.”

With an earnest expression, Korogi says, “I think maybe Kaoru was born at the wrong time.”

“Yeah,” says Komugi. “By like two thousand years.”

“Right on,” says Korogi.

“Think you’ve got me all figured out, huh?” says Kaoru. “Can you guys do this stuff?”

“No way!” they chime in together.

Kaoru types the time she wants in the search column and clicks her mouse, but she can’t bring up the correct frames. She seems to be performing operations in the wrong sequence. She clucks in frustration. She picks up the manual and flips through it, but can’t make sense of it, gives up, and throws it on the desk.

“What the hell am I doing wrong? This ought to bring up the exact frames I want, but it doesn’t. I wish to hell Takahashi were here. He’d get it in a split second.”

“But still, Kaoru, even if you find out what the guy looks like, what good’s it gonna do? You can’t report him to the cops,” Komugi says.

“I don’t go anywhere near the cops if I can help it,” says Kaoru. “Not to boast or anything.”

“So what’re you gonna do?”

“I’ll think about that when the time comes,” says Kaoru. “It’s just the way I’m made: I can’t stand by and let a son-of-a-bitch like that pull shit like that. He thinks ’cause he’s stronger he can beat up a woman, strip her of everything she’s got, and walk away. And on top of it he doesn’t pay his damn hotel bill. That’s a man for you—a real scumball.”

“Somebody oughta catch that fuckin’ psycho and beat him half to death,” says Korogi.

“Right on,” says Kaoru with a vigorous nod. “But he’d never be stupid enough to show his face here again. Not for a while, at least. And who’s got time to go looking for him?”

“So what’re ya gonna do?” Komugi asks.

“Like I said, I’ll think about that when the time comes.”

All but punching the mouse in desperation, Kaoru double-clicks on a random icon, and a few seconds later the screen for 10:48 appears on the monitor.

“At last.”

Komugi: “If at first you don’t succeed…”

Korogi: “Betcha scared the computer.”

The three of them stare at the screen in silence, holding their breath. A young couple come in at 10:50. Students, probably. Both are obviously tense. They stand in front of the room photos, settling first on one, then another, and finally choosing room 302. They push the button, take the key, and after wandering in search of the elevator, they get on.

Kaoru: “So these’re the guests in room three-oh-two.”

Komugi: “Three-oh-two, huh? They
look
innocent enough, but they went
wild
in there. You shoulda
seen
the place after they were through with it.”

Korogi: “So what? They’re young. They pay to come to a place like this so they
can
go wild.”

Komugi: “Well,
I’m
still young, but you don’t see
me
goin’ wild.”

Korogi: “That’s ’cause you’re not horny enough.”

Komugi: “Think so? I wonder…”

Kaoru: “Hey, here comes number four-oh-four. Shut up and watch.”

A man appears on the screen. The time is 10:52.

He wears a light gray trench coat, is in his late thirties, maybe close to forty. He has on a tie and dress shoes like a typical company man. Small wire-frame glasses. He is not carrying anything; his hands are shoved deep into the pockets of his trench coat. Everything about him is ordinary—height, build, hairstyle. If you passed him on the street, he would leave no impression.

“Looks like a totally ordinary guy,” says Komugi.

“The ordinary-looking ones are the most dangerous,” says Kaoru, rubbing her chin. “They carry around a shit-load of stress.”

The man glances at his watch and, without hesitation, takes the key to 404. He strides swiftly toward the elevator, disappearing from the monitor.

Kaoru pauses the image and asks the girls, “So what does this tell us?”

“Looks like a guy from some company,” says Komugi.

Kaoru shakes her head, looking at Komugi with apparent disgust. “I don’t need
you
to tell me that a guy in a business suit and tie at this time of day has got to be a company guy on his way home from work.”

“Sorrreeee,” says Komugi.

Korogi offers her opinion: “I’d say he’s done this kind of thing a lot. Knows his way around. No hesitation.”

“Right on,” says Kaoru. “Grabs the key right away and heads straight for the elevator. No wasted motion. No looking around.”

Komugi: “You mean this ain’t his first time here?”

Korogi: “One of our regular customers, in other words.”

Kaoru: “Probably. And he’s probably bought his women the same way before, too.”

Komugi: “Some guys like to specialize in Chinese women.”

Kaoru: “
Lots
of guys. So think about it: he’s an office worker and he’s been here a few times. There’s a good possibility he works in a company around here.”

Komugi: “Hey, you’re right…”

Korogi: “And he works the night shift a lot?”

Kaoru scowls at Korogi. “What gives you that idea? He puts in a day’s work, stops off for a beer, starts feelin’ good, gets hungry for a woman. That could happen.”

Korogi: “Yeah, but this guy wasn’t carrying anything. Left his stuff in the office. He’d be carrying something if he was going home—a briefcase or a manila envelope or something. None of these company guys commute empty-handed. Which means this guy was going back to the office for more work. That’s what I think.”

Komugi: “So he works all night?”

Korogi: “There’s a bunch of people like that. They stay at the office and work till morning. Especially computer-software guys. They start messing around with the system after everybody else goes home and there’s nobody around. They can’t shut the system down while everybody’s working, so they stay till two or three in the morning and take a taxi home. The company pays for the cabs with vouchers.”

Komugi: “Hey, come to think of it, the guy really
looks
like a computer geek. But how come you know so much, Korogi?”

Korogi: “Well, I wasn’t always doing this stuff. I used to work at a company. A pretty good one, too.”

Komugi: “Seriously?”

Korogi: “Of course I worked seriously. That’s what you have to do at a company.”

Komugi: “So why did you—”

Kaoru snaps at them: “Hey, gimme a break, will ya? You’re supposed to be talking about
this
stuff. You can yap about that shit somewhere else.”

Komugi: “Sorry.”

Kaoru reverses the video to 10:52 and sets it to play frame by frame, pausing it at one point and enlarging the man’s image in stages. Then she prints the image, producing a fairly good-size color photograph of the man’s face.

Komugi: “Fantastic!”

Korogi: “Wow! Look what you can do! Like
Blade Runner
!”

Komugi: “I guess it’s handy, but the world’s a pretty scary place now if you stop and think about it. You can’t just walk into a love ho any time you feel like it.”

Kaoru: “So you guys better not do anything bad when you go out. You never know when there’s a camera watching these days.”

Komugi: “The walls have ears—and digital cameras.”

Korogi: “Yeah, you gotta watch what you’re doing.”

Kaoru makes five prints in all. Each woman studies the man’s face.

Kaoru: “The enlargement is grainy, but you can pretty much tell what he looks like, right?”

Komugi: “I’d definitely recognize him on the street.”

Kaoru twists her neck, cracking and popping the bones, as she sits there, thinking. Finally, an idea comes to her: “Did either of you guys use this office phone after I went out?”

Both women shake their heads.

Komugi: “Not me.”

Korogi: “Or me.”

Kaoru: “Which means nobody dialed any numbers after the Chinese girl used the phone?”

Komugi: “Never touched it.”

Korogi: “Not a finger.”

Kaoru picks up the receiver, takes a breath, and hits the redial button.

After two rings, a man picks up the other phone and rattles off something in Chinese.

Kaoru says, “Hello, I’m calling from the Hotel Alphaville. You know: a guest of ours beat up one of your girls around eleven o’clock? Well, we’ve got the guy’s photo. From the security camera. I thought you might want one.”

A few moments of silence follow. Then the man says in Japanese, “Wait a minute.”

“I’ll wait,” says Kaoru. “Till I turn blue.”

Some kind of discussion goes on at the other end. Ear on the receiver, Kaoru twiddles a ballpoint pen between her fingers. Komugi belts out a song using the tip of her broomstick as her mike: “The snow is fa-a-a-a-lling…But where are yo-o-o-o-o-u?…I’ll go on wa-a-a-a-iting…Till I turn blu-u-u-u-e…”

The man comes back to the telephone. “You got the picture there now?”

“Hot off the press,” says Kaoru.

“How’d you get this number?”

“They put all kinds of convenient features into these modern gizmos.”

A few more seconds of silence follow. The man says, “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be at the front door.”

The connection is cut. Kaoru frowns and hangs up. Again she pops the bones in her thick neck. The room falls silent.

Komugi speaks hesitantly. “Umm…Kaoru?”

“What?”

“Are you really gonna give those guys the picture?”

“You heard what I said before: I’m not gonna let that bastard get away with beating up an innocent girl. And it pisses me off he skipped out on his hotel bill. Plus, look at this pasty-faced salaryman son-of-a-bitch: I can’t stand him.”

Komugi: “Yeah, but if they find him, they might hang a rock on him and toss him into Tokyo Bay. If you got mixed up in something like that, there’d be hell to pay.”

Kaoru is still frowning. “Nah, they’re not gonna kill him. The police don’t give a shit when those Chinese guys kill each other, but it’s a different story when they start bumping off respectable Japanese. That’s when the trouble starts. Nah, they’ll just grab him and teach him a lesson, and maybe cut off an ear.”

Komugi: “Ow!”

Korogi: “Kinda like van Gogh.”

Komugi: “But really, Kaoru, d’you think they can find the guy with just a photo to go on? I mean, it’s a big town!”

Kaoru: “Yeah, but once those guys make up their minds, they never let go. That’s the way they are with stuff like this. If some guy off the street gets away with making them look bad, they can’t keep their women in line, and they lose face with the other gangs. They can’t survive in that world if they lose face.”

Kaoru takes a cigarette from the desktop, puts it in her mouth, and lights it with a match. Pursing her lips, she slowly releases a long stream of smoke at the computer screen.

On the paused screen the enlarged face of the man.

T
en minutes later. Kaoru and Komugi wait near the hotel’s front door. Kaoru wears the same leather jacket as before, her woolen hat pulled down almost to her eyes. Komugi wears a big, thick sweater. She clutches herself across the chest to ward off the cold. Soon, the man who came to pick up the woman arrives on his big motorcycle. He stops the bike a few paces away from the women. Again he keeps the engine running. He takes off his helmet, rests it on the gas tank, and deliberately removes his right glove. He stuffs the glove into his jacket pocket and stands his ground. He is obviously not going to move. Kaoru strides toward him and holds out three copies of the photo.

“He probably works in a company near here,” she says. “I think he works nights a lot, and I’m pretty sure he’s ordered women here before. Maybe he’s one of your regulars.”

The man takes the photos and stares at them for a few seconds. They don’t seem to interest him especially.