Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

He was still looking at the ground, unmoving.

“I joined JL. We were strapped for cash, and by chance I saw Kaori on the street. A weird coincidence, it was almost scary. I figured I might be able to get some money out of her, because I thought she still had ties to the Kukis. But someone was tailing her. A private eye. I knew him. He used to work for Shozo Kuki. A long time ago he was asking questions about me, I don’t know why. That got me thinking. Since Shozo had disappeared and was probably dead, maybe this time it had been Fumihiro who hired him. Another detective, a woman, was secretly filming Kaori in a bar. Not doing anything special, just her daily routine. I thought there must be romance in there somewhere. Apparently Fumihiro had gone missing, but I thought he might be stalking her on the sly. And I thought that could work out well for us. If I could team up with him, money wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Since I figured his life was probably pretty twisted, I thought we might get on. One of our gang is light-fingered, so I got him to tail the woman detective, and he saw her calling someone who was probably her client. The easiest person to tail is someone who’s tailing someone else. She was saying something about photos and recordings of Kaori. He stole her cell phone for a few minutes and looked at her call history for the time she made that call. I was willing to bet that number would be Fumihiro’s.”

He sighed and started playing with his water bottle.

“But I was too hasty. I made up my mind too quickly, even though my hunches are usually right. But it’s okay, this interesting guy turned up. I’ve decided to let you join us. You’re crazy, aren’t you? I can smell it.”

“Join you? No way.”

He laughed.

“But you seem really interested.”

His cell phone rang and he looked at the screen. It seemed to be an email, and he frowned slightly. Though I was nervous about my surroundings, I couldn’t show it by looking around. I could see two men who hadn’t been there before, in front of the office block on the other side of the fence, but they soon disappeared behind the building.

“And we’re not exactly peace-loving. We don’t care what we do to Kaori. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to threaten you. You look like a prickly bastard, and I guess threats wouldn’t work anyway. If money isn’t an issue for you, just a donation from time to time would be fine. You can afford to hire Shozo Kuki’s private eye, and looking at your clothes, you’d probably hardly even notice it. If you helped us we’d show you some good stuff.”

“What are you up to, exactly?”

He stood up, still holding his phone, and stowed the water bottle in his pack.

“We’re attacking all accepted values. Authority, class differences, shared perceptions. We don’t care what happens to the social structure — revolutions are for suckers. Our target is people’s collective consciousness. It’s like throwing a cream pie in their face.”

By now it was raining quite heavily.

“Come see me again, and I’ll give you some specific examples. You’re not the type to tell the cops. You’re not a loser. You hate people, don’t you? And you don’t give a damn about society. I can see it in your face. I’ve got a gift for spotting kindred spirits. But I’ll tell you one thing. If we move right away from ethics and morality and common sense, a completely different world will emerge. Sort of as a bonus. Okay, see you.”

And he walked off, getting soaked by the rain. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but while I wasn’t looking the people outside the convenience store had gone, and so had the cars behind me. Ito was already a long way off and I didn’t have the energy to follow him. The homeless guys’ battle over the drinking fountain was growing louder. The bottle of cyanide in my bag suddenly felt heavy again.

I WENT INTO a run-down bar with blue lighting and asked for whiskey. Parking myself on a stool with uneven legs, I rested my elbows on the counter. I’m not sure why but I got drunk quickly. Faint jazz was playing on the sound system. I couldn’t make out a melody.

I wondered what Shintani thought of his own life when he was alive, before I took his identity, turning the question over idly in my head. Had he really killed Sae Suzuki? If he had, I’d end up being hunted by the police for something I hadn’t done. I had a vision of Aida’s slit-like eyes and remembered that he was involved in the Yajima investigation too. As my PI had said, if the police found out that I really did have a connection to Yajima, I’d be in trouble. If Aida worked out that I was Fumihiro and that I was keeping an eye on Kaori, he’d immediately draw a line from me to Yajima, with Kaori right in the middle. So together with Sae’s death, Aida might end up hounding me either way, if stopped being Shintani or if I stayed as I was.

I had murdered my father, who had fully intended to make me experience hell, and taken another person’s face and identity. You could say that everything had become weirdly distorted because I’d broken the rules so many times. I hadn’t expected to meet someone from the cancer line like that. Ito had said that he’d sometimes come to spy on the estate. He’d seen me when Kaori and I were living in peace, and also when, as he put it, “Something bad had happened to me.” I thought about what kind of life he must have led. Before my father had died at my hands he had talked about “an even greater evil.” Certainly I was surprised that Ito was a member of JL, but given his background, perhaps it wasn’t so odd after all. For one thing, his father was a leader of Rahmla. And he’d asked me to team up. I wasn’t sure what to do about him. Plus I was watching over Kaori, and I didn’t know what I was going to do there either. I had no idea why I was doing all this stuff when I was trying not to exist. Nor did I understand why I’d ended up crying in my sleep for murdering Yajima, as that woman had told me.

The plastic surgeon claimed that fate was driven by the combination of people’s character, heredity and environment, and those of the people around them. I didn’t know where those threads would lead, or how much they knew, but I thought that over time they must lead somewhere. What would happen in the future? What would I do? What would happen to me? I was raised by my father to be a cancer, so Kaori and I should have been doomed from the start. We’d dodged that, but I’d paid a price for it. However, in the perverted life caused by my violations of society’s rules, I’d committed more violations, so presumably in the future I’d grow even more perverted. Did I break the rules deliberately? Was that my tendency?

As my vision blurred with drunkenness, I phoned the woman I’d picked up in the d’Alfaro. After six rings she answered in a quiet voice. The background was raucous, and I figured she was in a bar somewhere.

“Um, it’s me. I mean, we met the other day …”

“Ah.”

The noise died away.

“Look, I was wondering if we could meet now? Of course I’ll pay you.”

“That’s okay … hey.”

She must have moved somewhere because there was no sound at all.

“The other day you didn’t tell me your number, but now I can see it clear as day.”

“Ah.” I snickered. I figured that letting her see my number was just an aberration, not deliberate. “Yeah, I guess I slipped up.”

“Are you drunk? Where are you?”

“Ikebukuro, but I’ll come to you. You in a bar?”

“Yeah, but I’m just leaving. I’m in Shibuya.”

“Okay, in front of the station. Thirty minutes.”

I hung up and tried to stand. I was definitely a bit drunk. I paid my bill and as I headed through the low doorway my cell phone rang again. I thought she was calling me back to tell me that something had come up, but it was the detective.