Masako Togawa - The Lady Killer

“Hello, Mr. Tanikawa,” said Shinji, and the man started, spilling some of his beer.

“Nice to find you here!” Shinji continued.

“Who the hell are you?”

Shinji did not answer. Smiling in an obscure way, he looked Tanikawa straight in the eye and said, “How are the films doing, then?” As he spoke, he knew how a blackmailer must feel, for he saw his victim’s face darken and freeze as his words sank in.

“I said, who the hell are you?” Tanikawa finally spluttered.

It seemed that the reference to films had done the trick. Shinji took the pressman’s business card out of his pocket and handed it over.

“A newspaperman, eh? What do you want with me? And what do you mean by ‘films’?” He looked up from the card and stared at Shinji.

“Well, nothing in particular. I’d heard you work in the film-developing field, that’s all. Today, my business is to inquire about blood donors. You cooperated in the Rh-negative collection campaign last year, didn’t you? You won’t remember me, perhaps, but I was there.”

It was a shot in the dark, but it seemed to strike home. A look of relief gradually replaced the look of suspicion on Tanikawa’s face. At least the reporter was not onto his blue film business.

“Can’t say I remember, but maybe.”

“Have you given blood since?”

“No, never.”

“That’s funny. Haven’t the blood banks contacted you at all? I gathered from them that you gave blood in mid-January.”

“Not me. Must have been someone else.” His face was expressionless as he replied to Shinji’s leading question. It did not look as if he was lying.

“Oh, I’m sorry—must have been our mistake.” He had drawn a blank. Perhaps, after all, there were no fish in this pond in which he was dangling his rod. Or perhaps he had no bait, or even no hook, on the end of his line. He stood up to go.

“Hey, you’re not going already, are you? Stay and drink a bit.”

Shinji looked down at him. The man’s speech was slurred and his eyes were red; alcohol was beginning to tell. What a bore! But he was in no hurry to go anywhere else, so he might as well stay a while. The image of the back of the pudgy white hands of the bath girl floated before his eyes; he’d better have a few drinks and forget them.

“O.K., I’ll stay and join you.” And he sat down again.

“My round,” said Tanikawa magnanimously, and shouted for beer.

“Do you come here often?” asked Shinji, as much to make conversation as anything else.

“No, not really. I go to a Turkish bathhouse down the road.”

“Sounds fun. Any nice girls there?”

At first, Tanikawa did not answer. He raised his beer mug up to the level of his eyes and gazed through the amber liquor. And then, watching the rising bubbles, he began to speak in tones of self-hatred.

“I see a girl there called Yasue every three days. And damn all good it does me. No love or anything about it—purely a commercial transaction. You can buy anything with money, you know. And I know it, too, but somehow I’m unable to stop myself any more. I think I’m scared to stop; at least my life has some pattern the way things are. I am just a bloody fool!”

He was close to tears. He took a deep gulp of beer and went on.

“And it all started with one woman—it was her fault; do you understand me? Damn it! How cynical, how ludicrous life is! Look, I never went near a place like that until the end of last year! And there’s a date I can never forget—December seventeenth last year. It was my day off; I went down to Kabukicho in Shinjuku and saw a film and then went into a cheap bar. That’s where I met the woman; that’s where she came and sat next to me and spoke to me…” His head suddenly slumped forward, sending his glass spinning into the ashtray, which fell to the floor and shattered. The spilled beer spread over the counter and started to drip down.

“Let me take you somewhere else,” said Shinji hastily. He lifted the drunk man in his arms and, staggering under the dead weight, paid the bill and made his way outside.

Who could this woman be that Tanikawa had suddenly mentioned? Could there be anything to it? In the recesses of his brain, an indistinct female form took shape.

He staggered down the street, supporting Tanikawa, who was no help, but merely muttered again and again, “It was that woman, that woman…” Anything else he said was unclear.

Shinji hailed a taxi and dumped Tanikawa in the back, sitting beside him. “Mitaka!” he said. Tanikawa spread himself out so that his hair, which reeked of pomade, came close to Shinji’s nose, and put his feet on the white covers of the seat back in front of him. This displeased the driver, who told him to desist in sharp tones.

The car moved off. Shinji wound down the window so that the wind blew into Tanikawa’s face and shook him by the shoulder.

“And what did you do next—you and the woman?”

“Well, she took me to a bar and stood me several drinks. Then she said she had to go, but she wanted to see me again soon.”

“She paid for all the drinks? Or did you go dutch?”

“No, she paid for the lot. And when we parted she told me that she worked for a Turkish bath and would I come and see her? She promised me good service and gave me a piece of paper with the name and address of the bathhouse on it.”

“Have you still got it?”

“Yes—I’ve always kept it. Here, have a look.” And he delved into his wallet and finally fished out a scrap of paper. “There, if you don’t believe me!” His voice and his motions betrayed his drunkenness. Shinji took the paper and read it.

“Be sure to come at 9 p.m. the day after tomorrow. Don’t forget—I’ll be waiting for you. Kyoko.” It was written in pencil but was still legible. Down the side, she had drawn a crude map showing the way to Alibaba.

Nine p.m. on the nineteenth of December last. Another coincidence? Looking at the paper, he was reminded of the printed messages that call girls leave on parked cars—name, telephone number, and some message such as: “Lonely tonight? Give me a ring.”

“So you went there?” He handed the scrap of paper back to Tanikawa.

“Of course I did. And it was marvelous. You should have seen how she performed! And like a bloody fool, I thought she was interested in me! Why, she even refused a tip! She just said, ‘Please come again.’ So I went back the next day, but she was gone.” He screwed the slip of paper into a ball and hurled it onto the floor of the car.

“What kind of a woman was she?”

“Oh, she was nice! And how she gazed at me with her large eyes with their double lids! It was enough to make you swoon!”

“Big eyes; double eyelids. Was that all? Was there nothing else special about her? So that you could recognize her again, I mean.”

“Oh yes, she had a big mole at the base of her nose. It was really sexy! Could you really find her for me?” he cried in a maudlin fashion and then slumped over Shinji’s knees and began to snore.

Shinji picked the ball of paper up off the floor and slipped it into his pocket. The car turned off the Koshu Kaido and into the Suido-doro.

Who could that woman have been? She had stood drinks to a stranger in a bar; although a Turkish bath girl, she turned down a tip. And then she vanished into thin air. Why? What had she been up to?

Ahead, the road, illuminated in the headlights of the car, seemed to rush toward him. He had better report this to the old man as quickly as possible. The car swung left down the edge of Inokashira Natural Park, whose thick groves were the last remains of the forests that had once covered Tokyo, and then turned down a gravel path that ran along the edge of the Mitaka Brook. Soon he would be there.