Fuminori Nakamura - The Thief

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A literary crime masterpiece that follows a Japanese pickpocket lost to the machinations of fate. Bleak and oozing existential dread,
is simply unforgettable. The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections…. But he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the Thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.

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At one in the morning we climbed into a van and changed inside. As we put on the clothes, which somehow fitted us perfectly, the sharp smell of body odor filled the interior. The other guys lifted the mat from the floor and opened a black hatch.

“The swords are in this seat here,” said the tall man as he stuffed our clothes into the hole. “We can put drugs in here, anything. We can even use it for people.”

We waited for a while. Finally the door opened and a man I’d never seen before got into the driver’s seat. He nodded briefly to the others and started the car. Threading our way through the narrow streets, stopping occasionally at traffic lights, we drove through the darkness of the city.

We smoked without speaking, staring blankly out the windows. My eyes idly followed a man on a bike. I noticed how well dressed a middle-aged couple in a car next to ours were. Christmas was approaching and the lighting displays on the houses were striking. Shiny Santa Clauses clambered up walls and every house glittered with rows of red and green and blue lights.

“He’s just the driver,” the tall man explained. “So when he’s dropped us off he’s going to hide the car somewhere for a while. We can’t leave a suspicious vehicle parked in front of the house. If everything goes well, I’ll call his cell and he’ll bring it back. We’ll get the money and when I give the signal you come back to the car first with these guys. I’ve got a few things to tidy up afterwards so they can’t report us straight away, like tying them up and cutting the phone lines. Anyway, we have to be quick.”

We went over a railway crossing and made our way quietly up a gentle slope. The surroundings gradually grew darker as we left the houses with their competing Christmas illuminations behind. When the tall man said, “There it is,” I looked up and saw a large new two-storey building. Its design emphasized its overall squareness and made me think of a trendy office block. The garden wasn’t all that big but the trees in the lawn were mismatched, as though they’d been picked up and planted willy-nilly. It was the old man’s Tokyo house, the tall guy explained. The neighborhood was full of similar wealthy houses, and the paths and streetlamps were similarly well maintained.

We put our helmets on inside the van and were handed swords sheathed in identical scabbards. They weren’t your typical Japanese swords, just crude oversized kitchen knives, with no dignity or elegance, solely designed to inspire fear. Kizaki’s men checked the area as the car crept slowly forwards, then came silently to a halt.

“I’ll go first and open the door,” whispered the guy in the green windbreaker, who hadn’t said a word the whole time. “Remember, Niimi is the only one who talks. You two keep your mouths shut.”

He got out of the car, put the knife in his belt, carefully opened the gate and walked to the entrance. At that moment the porch light came on. I gasped, taken by surprise. He was trapped in full view in the middle of the garden. Tachibana started to say something but the tall guy held up his hand to stop him.

“It’s just a light,” he said. “It’s only the light that comes on. We checked the house thoroughly. It’s not connected to anything. There’s no one around, so it doesn’t matter. It’s just a security gadget.”

Buzzcut put the key in the lock, opened the door a fraction and waved. We all climbed out and walked in a black line through the brightly lit garden to the porch. I remembered the dry throat, the tension I felt long ago in my cat burglar days. The van started to move quietly away. The tall man made sure that we were all inside and then closed the door softly.

A black hallway stretched away from the entrance, cold and still. I recalled the thrilling sense of being out of place that comes with entering someone else’s house without taking your shoes off. I followed Tachibana and Ishikawa down the corridor to the woman’s room before the bathroom at the rear. The old man was probably in his own bedroom on the second floor. The others climbed the stairs slowly and vanished into the shadows. We were supposed to tie the woman up and take her up to the old man’s room.

We stopped outside the wooden door and took a deep breath. Ishikawa eased it open and we went inside. The room was big and dark, but a shape was visible in the bed in the corner. Ishikawa moved closer, holding the duct tape, which he had already cut into lengths. If the woman fought back, he and Tachibana would restrain her while I threatened her with the sword. I gripped the scabbard, holding my breath. Ishikawa was used to walking without making a sound. Just as he was about to stick the tape over her sleeping mouth, Tachibana stepped on something. There was the harsh sound of cracking plastic, and I turned towards him. From the bed I heard her low, indistinct voice. Ishikawa put his hands on her head and over her mouth and whispered something in her ear. She nodded several times, but her body struggled instinctively, emitting harsh breaths and faint moans before finally growing quiet. Ishikawa switched on the bedside lamp and Tachibana drew his sword gently so she wouldn’t panic. The woman looked at his long blade, at Ishikawa’s arms, at me standing by the door. At Ishikawa’s prompting she got out of bed, breathing violently through her nose. She was wearing nothing but a camisole, with no underwear. Ishikawa made her sit in the center of the room and tied her hands behind her with cord.

She was beautiful, tall and slender. With her arms bound, her breasts moved noticeably beneath her camisole. She was squirming with terror, long legs stretched defenselessly in front of her. Fearful for her life, she had forgotten her body entirely. All her curves were completely exposed, giving off a scent of perfume. In her fear and peril her body drew our attention like moths to a flame, without her even being aware of it. In front of the light Ishikawa checked that her hands were secure, whispered to her again and then cut another length of tape and placed it over her mouth. This terrified, beautiful woman seemed to stand out from her surroundings, blocking out everything else. Images of Saeko flashed before me. After a while I realized I was staring and looked away.

I could tell that both Tachibana and Ishikawa were touching her no more than was necessary. Ishikawa covered her with a thin cotton blanket from the bed, and then grasped her bound arms and raised her to her feet. With her wedged between them they climbed the stairs. The strong smell of her shampoo mingled with the body odor of the unknown man’s windbreaker I was wearing.

Light seeped from the old man’s bedroom on the second floor. I could hear faint voices, and when we opened the door the light was glaring. The three men stood in the large room with their swords drawn. A gray-haired man was slumped on the floor like an insect, his arms trussed tightly with rope.

Kizaki’s men looked at us and the woman for a moment and then turned back to the old man, talking to each other in Chinese. The old man watched them wide-eyed. They gestured to us and we took out our swords as well. The old man didn’t say a word, just stared at us, his eyes bulging unnaturally.

“We’re not going to kill you, so open the safe.”

I noticed that the tall man wasn’t speaking broken Japanese, but rather feigning the slight accent of a foreigner who was quite fluent.

“Please….”

The old man’s voice was as hoarse as the cry of a wild bird.

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

“But if you kill me, you won’t get the safe open.”

He was making a feeble show of resistance, but his voice shook and he was drenched with sweat.

“My boss said he didn’t care one way or the other. I can kill you or I can let you live. If I decide to kill you we’ll take the safe with us, open it back at the shop. Makes no difference either way. Okay, I’ve had enough. Do it.”

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