tell anyone else to walk around carrying a pistol. I say it to you because you’re you. You’re too damn precarious.”
I ordered a refill on my ginger ale.
“Carry a gun and you might use it and kill your opponent. You’ll have to think twice first. That’s my thinking, that maybe you’d start skirting violence a little. But you go ignore my advice and nearly get yourself killed …”
I was really getting sick of his blathering on. Why did this man care so much about me, anyways?
“Compared to you, that young lady knows when to listen. Well, she’s gotta see to protecting herself, don’t she, given how you’ve ended up.”
The hell are you saying? What’s this about Junko Tajima?
“She asked me for a gun along with a fake ID so I introduced her to a dealer.”
My fork stilled. My appetite died instantly.
She was planning to take the matter into her own hands. Having lost faith in me, she intended to kill Katsuya Yamamoto herself for the sake of her and her unborn child’s happiness.
“Listen, to be honest I think you’re a little nuts. Not that I mind that there’s one P.I. like you out there …”
I wiped my mouth with my napkin and lit a cigarette. Then I told the informant: “All right, I’ll heed your advice.”
The gun dealer set up the meeting at a public housing complex over in Katsushika. Large eight-story buildings all at least thirty years old crowded the area. They had the air of old-style projects.
I entered one of the buildings and got into the elevator. The inside was riddled with graffiti. I got out on the seventh floor and stepped into a dim, vacant elevator hall encased in cement and nothing more. Several cheap tricycles printed with anime characters sat abandoned. I walked down the long, narrow, dingy corridor. Sooty dust-covered steel doors continued endlessly.
I rang the intercom at exactly 1:00 p.m. as appointed.
“Come in, it’s open,” came a male voice.
I opened the door and walked in. It was terribly filthy. I guessed ithad easily been ten years since anyone had cleaned the place. If there hadn’t been a pair of black suede shoes by the entrance, I wouldn’t have bothered to remove my own footwear.
Two men were sitting in what would normally serve as the living/dining area. They sat facing each other across a small table next to the kitchen. One was chubby and past middle age, while the other seemed to be about mine.
“Sit, over there,” the older man said. He was missing a front tooth. He closely resembled the owner of a porn shop I’d investigated once upon a time. This man was apparently the arms dealer. He had indicated a sofa set that seemed to have been hauled away from someone’s curbside trash.
“If you’re with a client I can come back later,” I said.
“No, this is a regular customer of mine from way back. He came to check up on the old fogey since it’s been a while.”
“Don’t worry about me. Just think of me as a staffer,” said the regular. He seemed indistinct—medium build, shortish hair, forgettable face. If his suit were a little less fine he’d pass as an assistant manager at some small company. Yet his eyes were strange. At first I thought he was blind since they didn’t seem to be beholding anything. When they met mine, however, I had the opposite impression. It was as if he saw right through me to the wall behind my back.
What kind of a man would be a regular customer of an arms dealer? Only one answer presented itself.
The spongy inside of the sofa bulged out of the fabric at random. I sat down.
“Want some coffee?” asked the old man. I shook my head and lit a cigarette. “Mr. Informant tells me you’re a trustworthy guy.”
I didn’t know how to respond. “Yes” would sound odd but there was no point in acting coy. “I won’t cause you any trouble,” I said.
The old man grinned, exposing the gap in his front teeth. “Ah, I like his attitude. Manly,” he remarked, turning for agreement to the
I ordered a refill on my ginger ale.
“Carry a gun and you might use it and kill your opponent. You’ll have to think twice first. That’s my thinking, that maybe you’d start skirting violence a little. But you go ignore my advice and nearly get yourself killed …”
I was really getting sick of his blathering on. Why did this man care so much about me, anyways?
“Compared to you, that young lady knows when to listen. Well, she’s gotta see to protecting herself, don’t she, given how you’ve ended up.”
The hell are you saying? What’s this about Junko Tajima?
“She asked me for a gun along with a fake ID so I introduced her to a dealer.”
My fork stilled. My appetite died instantly.
She was planning to take the matter into her own hands. Having lost faith in me, she intended to kill Katsuya Yamamoto herself for the sake of her and her unborn child’s happiness.
“Listen, to be honest I think you’re a little nuts. Not that I mind that there’s one P.I. like you out there …”
I wiped my mouth with my napkin and lit a cigarette. Then I told the informant: “All right, I’ll heed your advice.”
The gun dealer set up the meeting at a public housing complex over in Katsushika. Large eight-story buildings all at least thirty years old crowded the area. They had the air of old-style projects.
I entered one of the buildings and got into the elevator. The inside was riddled with graffiti. I got out on the seventh floor and stepped into a dim, vacant elevator hall encased in cement and nothing more. Several cheap tricycles printed with anime characters sat abandoned. I walked down the long, narrow, dingy corridor. Sooty dust-covered steel doors continued endlessly.
I rang the intercom at exactly 1:00 p.m. as appointed.
“Come in, it’s open,” came a male voice.
I opened the door and walked in. It was terribly filthy. I guessed ithad easily been ten years since anyone had cleaned the place. If there hadn’t been a pair of black suede shoes by the entrance, I wouldn’t have bothered to remove my own footwear.
Two men were sitting in what would normally serve as the living/dining area. They sat facing each other across a small table next to the kitchen. One was chubby and past middle age, while the other seemed to be about mine.
“Sit, over there,” the older man said. He was missing a front tooth. He closely resembled the owner of a porn shop I’d investigated once upon a time. This man was apparently the arms dealer. He had indicated a sofa set that seemed to have been hauled away from someone’s curbside trash.
“If you’re with a client I can come back later,” I said.
“No, this is a regular customer of mine from way back. He came to check up on the old fogey since it’s been a while.”
“Don’t worry about me. Just think of me as a staffer,” said the regular. He seemed indistinct—medium build, shortish hair, forgettable face. If his suit were a little less fine he’d pass as an assistant manager at some small company. Yet his eyes were strange. At first I thought he was blind since they didn’t seem to be beholding anything. When they met mine, however, I had the opposite impression. It was as if he saw right through me to the wall behind my back.
What kind of a man would be a regular customer of an arms dealer? Only one answer presented itself.
The spongy inside of the sofa bulged out of the fabric at random. I sat down.
“Want some coffee?” asked the old man. I shook my head and lit a cigarette. “Mr. Informant tells me you’re a trustworthy guy.”
I didn’t know how to respond. “Yes” would sound odd but there was no point in acting coy. “I won’t cause you any trouble,” I said.
The old man grinned, exposing the gap in his front teeth. “Ah, I like his attitude. Manly,” he remarked, turning for agreement to the
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