Masako Togawa - The Lady Killer

The entrance was flanked by potted palms and rubber plants. Passing them, he came into the tiled outer hall, which was hidden from the inside by a wall covered in maroon and gold satin damask.

Within, the lights were low and faintly red. The red carpet had such a deep pile that it absorbed his footsteps, giving him a sense of secrecy. There was a table with a couch and several soft armchairs to one side of the lobby, where sat several men who had nominated girls and were waiting for them to be free. They were mostly reading magazines or watching TV listlessly; although there were several open bottles of beer on the table, nobody seemed to be drinking much.

He sat down, and a male attendant immediately approached him.

“Do you have anyone in particular you want to see?”

“Yes. Miss Yasue.” This was the girl who, according to the detective’s report, was favored by Seiji Tanikawa. “Miss Yasue, if I remember aright. You do have such a girl here?”

“Certainly, sir. Please wait for a few minutes,” said the attendant with fawning politeness. “May I get you a drink in the meantime—compliments of the house, of course.”

Shinji ordered a whiskey, and the attendant withdrew.

According to the detective’s report, Seiji Tanikawa frequented this establishment on Mondays and Fridays—the days when he had no night work. Normally, it appeared, he came here between seven and nine—the slack period.

He noticed that the lobby was permeated by a strange, heavy odor. It was, he decided, the smell of men who were about to unload their sexual desire.

Time crawled by. Occasionally a customer sitting by the table would get up and disappear within in answer to the attendant’s summons. But they were always replaced by new arrivals from outside, some of them drunk. Sometimes a woman in sandals, wearing a red-and-white-striped wrapper over her Turkish bath girl’s uniform of a red-striped brassiere and scanty pants, would emerge and see her customer off with a gay voice. Had Seiji Tanikawa gone home already, or was he still within?

As this thought crossed Shinji’s mind, the curtain parted and out stepped Tanikawa. Shinji recognized him, down to the lean body, from photographs provided by the detectives. His skinny figure was emphasized by the black polo-necked sweater that he was wearing tonight. He was followed closely by a diminutive girl—obviously Yasue Terada. Tanikawa walked straight past Shinji, displaying his sunken cheeks and haggard profile.

Yasue saw him off at the entrance, tapping his bony shoulder with familiarity. Tanikawa merely shrugged his shoulders and left without a word. For a man to visit this place twice a week …, Shinji, whose private life was as clean as a sheet of blank paper, thought. He watched Tanikawa’s retreating figure until it vanished from his view, convinced that in it he could sense a shadow of weakness; this man’s feet were sinking into the swamp of vice.

Yasue made her way back in, but was stopped by the attendant, who whispered something to her. She came over to Shinji, but when she saw his face she was taken aback.

“You are Mr. …” she started, but could not finish the sentence.

“It’s me—Yamada, remember?” Shinji lied fluently. “I came once before—some time ago.”

“Oh yes, of course, Mr. Yamada,” she replied cheerfully, conducting him out of the lobby. These girls, he reflected, had congress with so many men each day, maybe over a hundred a month, so there was no question of remembering the face or name of a customer who had only come once some time ago.

Following her, he gazed at the sensuous nape of her neck and felt moved to erotic expectations. “Will you take a steam bath first?” she asked. What an extraordinary question, Shinji thought at first, and then reflected that some customers might be shy whilst others probably only did come here for the steam bath. He decided to play the role of someone who was shy or unromantic and opted for the bath. She led him to the cubicle, but instead of undressing, he killed time with questions.

“That customer you just had—his name is Seiji Tanikawa, isn’t it?”

She was raising the lid of the steam chest, but she turned sharply toward him, a suspicious look on her face.

“Do you know him, then?”

“Well, it certainly looks like him, anyway. A bit embarrassing, bumping into him in a place like this.”

“He’s a regular of mine. Works for a film company, he says.”

“Does he come here often?”

“Twice a week.”

“He must be pretty well-off, then.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he makes money playing the stock market. Some of our customers come every day, you know. Maybe they’re addicted to steam baths.”

“I would say that that customer was more addicted to you.”

She laughed and was not displeased. “Not really. He had another girl before me, but she left, so he switched to me. I came here to work just when the other girl quit, so he was handed over to me. A sheer fluke.”

“I have heard a lot of people quit this job. Is it true?”

“Well, yes, I suppose you could say that in this business we have a high metabolism. As soon as a new place opens, everyone tries to join it for a better guarantee. People move a lot; I’ve been here six months, which makes me an old hand.”

“Oh. Well, as Tanikawa is older than you, he must have been coming here for quite some time, I expect. When did he start, do you know?”

“Pretty recently, from what he has told me. He says he only came here once before meeting me, and that was a mere two days before, too. He says he went back to see the same girl again, but she had quit, so he switched to me. But men are full of stories, so I don’t know.”

“And when did you start work here?”

Again, the woman became cautious. In place of her merry chatter, she spoke somberly.

“You are investigating something, aren’t you? Are you police, by any chance?”

“Do I look like a policeman? No, I’ve taken up divination recently,” he extemporized quickly, “and the theme of my research is the causal relationship between a person’s birthday and the day they take up any particular job.”

“You can’t fool me with that sort of tale. But if you want to know, my birthday is February sixth. And what day did I start working here? Just a moment.” And she removed her handbag from the locker and extracted a notebook.

“December twenty-first. And, oh my God, not one yen of tip that first day, I see.”

“December twenty-first. Half a year.”

“Yes, six months, and not a single day off. Every now and again I think of quitting this business,” she added, and Shinji detected a look of desperation in her eyes. “But then I take a look at my bank book,” she went on, “and my spirits soon recover, seeing it mounting up every day. When I reach my target, I’ll quit and set myself up in something else.”

She stood before him, and he looked at her chubby hands. Here she was, the innocent accomplice of men’s desires. Those chubby hands…

And then it came home to him.

If the date she had given him was correct, and if Seiji Tanikawa had not lied to her, then the day of his first visit to the Turkish bath would have been the nineteenth of December. The day, in fact, that Fusako Aikawa had been killed!

Mere coincidence? Or was there some hidden meaning? In that steamy room, he felt cold sweat start to his brow.

“I must go!” he said rapidly. “I’ve just remembered something vital I promised to do! Sorry!”

“But what about your massage?”

“Some other time.” And, grossly overtipping her, he fled.

If he was lucky, he might just catch Seiji Tanikawa in some nearby small restaurant.

Shinji found Seiji Tanikawa in a low-class establishment serving skewered chicken and beer. It stood in a narrow street full of similar places, which ran down to the back of the station. It was not the shop in the detective’s report, and Shinji was really very lucky to spot Tanikawa there, hunched over the counter facing the street and wearing his black polo shirt. When Shinji first saw him, he was inserting a skewer into his mouth, the sauce dripping down his front. He didn’t even bother to look up when Shinji came in and sat beside him. He was engrossed in his beer and chicken, and when not occupied with them he would sit gazing blankly into the middle distance.