Kojo Suzuki - Spiral

“I’m not sure there was anything like that in what I was given.” Junichiro didn’t sound entirely convinced. The way he spoke suggested that he hadn’t yet taken a good look at the items.

“Is there a word processor?”

“Yes. But I think it’s broken.”

“Was there a floppy disk inside it?”

“To be honest, I haven’t checked. I haven’t even taken it out of the cardboard box they handed it to me in.”

“Was there a video deck along with it?”

“Yes, but I threw it away. Was that the wrong thing to do?”

Ando’s breath caught in his throat. “You threw it away?”

“I can see why he’d be carrying around the word processor, because of his job, but why did he have a VCR with him?”

“Excuse me, but did you say you threw it away?”

“Yes. It was a total wreck. I’d arranged garbage pick-up for a TV the other day, so I had them take the VCR away at the same time. It was beyond repair. Anyway, I doubt Kazuyuki’ll mind.”

Ando had almost caught his two quarries, and now, at the last minute, one had eluded him. There’d been a good chance that the videotape that held the key to all this had been inside the VCR, and with luck he’d hoped to get his hands on both it and the floppy disk. He was kicking himself for not having contacted Junichiro sooner.

“Besides the VCR, there wouldn’t happen to have been a videotape, would there?” Ando said a little prayer as he asked.

“I don’t know. All I saw was the word processor, the VCR, and two black leather gym bags that probably belonged to Shizu and little Yoko. I haven’t opened them.”

Ando made sure Junichiro understood that he wanted to see them as soon as possible. “Would you mind if I paid you a visit?”

“That’s fine,” Junichiro agreed, surprisingly quickly.

“How about tomorrow?” Sunday.

“Let’s see. I’m playing golf with one of my writers, but I should be back by seven.”

“Well, then, seven it is.” Ando made a note of the time, and underlined it several times.

At just after seven o’clock on Sunday evening, Ando called at Junichiro’s condo in the Sarugaku section of Kanda. The neighborhood didn’t feel very residential. Junichiro’s building was surrounded by office blocks. The area was eerily quiet on Sunday evenings.

Ando rang the bell and heard a man’s voice from behind the door ask, “Who is it?”

“This is Ando. I called yesterday.”

The door opened immediately, and Ando was ushered inside. Junichiro was lounging around in a sweatsuit and his hair was wet; he must have just arrived home from golf and taken a shower. Somehow, from his voice on the phone, Ando had imagined him as a tall, nervous man, but in person Junichiro was heavyset and wore a genial expression. As Junichiro led the way into the apartment, Ando reflected that, of the three brothers, the eldest was an editor, the second a Japanese teacher, and the third a reporter for a major news organization. They’d all chosen fields that had them dealing with language, with writing, on a daily basis. Most likely, the eldest had been influential in this regard. Ando himself had been inspired to enter medicine by his older brother, who became a high school biology teacher.

Junichiro went to the closet in the hall and took out a cardboard box. The gym bags and the word processor had been stuffed into it.

“So. You’d like to take a look?” Junichiro sat down cross-legged on the floor and pushed the box in Ando’s direction.

“Thanks, I would.”

Ando first took out the word processor, jotting down the make and model. The machine’s shell seemed to have been rather severely damaged in the crash; the top wouldn’t open, and pressing the power button elicited no response. Standing it vertically on his knee, Ando noticed an eject button there on the side. It belonged to a slot, and peering into it he saw a blue floppy disk. He almost shouted for joy as he pressed the eject button. The machine produced a click that sounded to Ando like bingo! He took out the disk and held it on his palm for a moment, examining it back and front. The label hadn’t been affixed, so there was no title to be seen. But Ando knew immediately that this was what he’d been searching for. It had sounded right popping out of the slot.

He wanted to read the disk as soon as he could, and he said to Junichiro, “I’d like to check out what’s on here.”

“I’m afraid this machine isn’t compatible with mine.” Junichiro wouldn’t be able to use his word processor to open the files on the disk.

“In that case, would you mind if I borrowed the disk for two or three days?”

“It’s alright with me, but…”

“I’ll return it to you as soon as I’m done with it.”

“What’s on that disk, anyway?” Ando’s excitement had evidently communicated itself. Junichiro suddenly seemed curious.

Ando shook his head. “I don’t know, exactly.”

“Well, I’d like it back as soon as possible.” Now it appeared that Junichiro wanted to read it, too. Maybe his editorial instinct had been stirred.

Ando dropped the disk into his jacket pocket, and knew a sense of relief, but at the same time he was seized with a new desire. Those gym bags… He knew it was futile to hope, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility that the videotape was in one of them.

“Would it be too much to ask if I could see what’s in there?” He tried to choose his words carefully, somewhat embarrassed at the idea of going through a woman’s belongings.

“I don’t think there’s anything in there,” Junichiro laughed, but he handed over the bags. When he looked inside, Ando’s faint hope of finding the tape was finally dashed. Mostly the bags contained clothes and disposable diapers. Not what he was looking for. Just as he’d feared, the tape had been inside the VCR when it was trashed.

Still, he’d gotten his hands on the floppy disk, and he had to count that a success. He could hardly stand still as he took his leave. He’d check around at work to see if anybody had a machine that could read the disk. He couldn’t wait to see what was on it.

Ando poked his head into the Pathology Department office to see if Miyashita was in, but before he had a chance to say anything, Miyashita called out to him.

“Hey, just the man I wanted to see. Tell me what you think of this.” Miyashita was holding a printout of something, and he beckoned to Ando with his other hand. Beside him stood Nemoto, an assistant in the biochem lab. Nemoto and Miyashita were built so alike that anybody who happened to see them together couldn’t help but laugh. From their height and weight-five-three and easily over a hundred and seventy pounds- to the length of their legs, their girth, their faces, even their taste in clothes and their high voices, they were like two peas in a pod.

“Hey, I didn’t know you had a twin.” Ando uttered the same joke he always did as he approached them.

“Please, Dr Ando, don’t lump me together with this guy,” said Nemoto, grimacing. But it couldn’t have been too awful to be told he took after his colleague, two years his senior. After all, Miyashita was liked both for his personality and his learning, and had been pegged as a future candidate for full professor.

“Everybody keeps telling us we look alike, Nemoto. I’m telling you, it’s getting to be a pain in the butt. Why don’t you go on a diet?” Miyashita elbowed the younger man’s paunch.

“Well, if I go on a diet, you have to go on one, too.”

“Then we’ll be right back where we started!”

Then Miyashita offered Ando the printout he was holding, as if to put an end to the stale routine.

Ando spread out the printout he’d been given. He understood its contents at a glance. It showed the results of running a snippet of DNA through a sequencer.