Fuminori Nakamura - The Thief

I opened my mouth for the first time. “That’s crazy,” I muttered.

His smile didn’t waver.

“It’s not crazy. That nobleman was simply appreciating everything life has to offer.”

“You made that up, didn’t you?”

He laughed.

“No. To tell the truth, my lieutenant who planned the robbery made it up on the spur of the moment when he was drunk.”

“With you as the model?”

“That’s right. You catch on fast. In other words, from now on your life depends on me.”

He drained his glass.

“I’ve got the notes to your future inside my head. It’s extremely interesting, manipulating another person’s life. Now I’ve got a question for you. Do you believe in fate?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s the most boring answer. Was the young man’s fate really controlled entirely by the nobleman? Or was being controlled by the nobleman the young man’s fate?”

There was a knock at the door. When Kizaki answered a thin man in a suit came in. He put an attaché case on the table, bowed and left. Kizaki opened the case and took out several photos and papers.

“You’re going to do three small jobs for me. They really are trivial tasks. But if we use you, certain things we want to do will become much easier. First, steal this man’s cell phone in the next six days. Put it in the mailbox of an apartment we’ll tell you about. The guy’s home security system is state-of-the-art, so it would be hard to break into, and for various reasons we can’t kill him yet. As for why we want his phone, we need to find out who he’s talking to, quickly and smoothly. We could attack him on the street and grab it, but in this case it’s preferable that he doesn’t realize it’s been stolen, that he thinks he just dropped it.

“The second job is to take some small item, any item, from this man within seven days. A lighter would do. Some everyday object that will have his fingerprints on it. The point is that he mustn’t know it’s been stolen, just like the first man. The object will end up next to a dead body. Of course we’re not trying to get him convicted, but by making the police suspect him, pick him up for questioning, various other things will be revealed. His room is hard to break into, too. And get some of his hair, as well as the lighter or whatever. It won’t be easy, but do it anyway. I want two or three strands. Obviously they won’t look natural if they’re cut, so pull them out by the root, of course without him noticing. Put those in the mailbox, too.”

Keeping my face blank, I gazed at the photos. The man was pointing at them gleefully, as if this were a game.

“Finally, I want you to steal some documents from yet another man. You’ve got ten days. We don’t have a photo yet, but we’ll get one. One of my men made it into his apartment but couldn’t find the papers. It looks like he must carry them on him. He’s a coward, extremely nervous. He also carries a gun. You have to steal the papers in such a way that he doesn’t realize they’re gone for at least two days.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Impossible or not, you’ll do it. The documents are in a sealed envelope, so maybe he doesn’t know what’s in it. Once the envelope is opened it will probably lose half its value. Replace it with this dummy, which we had made by someone on the inside. They real papers should be in an envelope from this company, and the confidential documents should be stamped like this. But we’re not certain about that, so check before you make the switch. This can’t go in the mailbox. Give it to me directly.”

“And if I fail?”

“You die. Perhaps you think that’s unfair, but once I’ve got someone in my sights, that’s how it is. Don’t worry, I won’t kill the woman and her brat. Tension and a heightened sense of responsibility can stretch a person’s abilities to the max, but if you apply too much pressure it can have the opposite effect and lead to mistakes. And where possible it’s best not to create unnecessary corpses. The more dead bodies you leave lying around, even if it’s only one or two, the greater the chance is that things come to light. I only killed Niimi because he knew too much about my core business. I don’t murder people for no reason. I’m not just talking about you — that’s why I didn’t kill Tachibana either, even though he’s not much use to me. But if you refuse, then I’ll have no choice. I will kill the boy and his mother. It’ll mean more work for me, but that’s how I operate.”

He put the papers and photos back in the attaché case and pushed it across the table. I had to take it.

“I direct other people’s lives from behind a desk. Reigning over people like that — that’s like being a god, don’t you think? If there is a god, he appreciates this world more than anyone. When I’m controlling people I sometimes feel like I’ve absorbed them. Their thoughts and everything they’ve ever felt are inside me, like I’ve been invaded by lots of people’s emotions at the same time. You’ve never experienced it, so you won’t understand. It’s the greatest pleasure there is. Here, listen.”

He leaned towards me.

“In this life, the proper way of living is to make use of both joy and suffering. They are both merely stimuli that the world presents to us. So by blending them skillfully within you, you can use them in a completely different way. If you want to be steeped in evil, you mustn’t forget good. When you see a woman writhing in agony, laughter is unimaginative. When you see a woman writhing in agony, pity her, feel sorry for her, imagine her pain, imagine the parents who raised her even, weep tears of sympathy — while torturing her even more. That moment is just exquisite! Taste everything in the whole world. Even if you should fail at these tasks, taste the emotion that comes with failure. Savor with all your senses the fear of death. When you can do that, you transcend yourself. You can look at this world through different eyes. Straight after I brutally murder someone, the sunrise appears so beautiful, and I look at the smiling face of a child and think how adorable it is. If that child is an orphan, I may help her or I may kill her there and then. Even as I pity her! If gods or fate had personalities and emotions, don’t you think this is close to what they would feel? In this world where children and saints die outrageous deaths?”

At this point the man stopped talking. His voice, thick with alcohol, lay heavy and cloying in my ears. As always, he kept on smiling.

“Well, good luck.”

The first man, Kirita, was forty-two years old and lived in an apartment in Gotanda. His photo showed short hair and a well-tailored suit. He was a broker who acted as a go-between between unlisted companies and the mob. He’d offer to negotiate deals for start-ups who couldn’t get financing from the banks. If their business grew, their share price would go up and they’d make a big profit. In that case, the company that took the loan would never know that it came from the mob. All I needed from him was his cell phone, but it’s always difficult stealing from a specific target.

After committing the simple notes and the photo to memory, I strolled in front of Kirita’s condo. If there’d been a coffee shop nearby I could have watched through the window, but there was nothing like that, and just standing around on a residential street doesn’t look natural. When I saw the curtains of his room move, I looked down and walked off. Finding a park some distance away, I sat on a rusty bench. A mother and child were playing silently beside a narrow slide. I stared at the child’s head, thinking it was a piece of wood with a hole in it, but he was just wearing a paper bag. They were fooling around, the woman chasing after her fleeing son. I could see the entrance to the condo out of the corner of my eye, but it was too far away to see people clearly.