Масахико Симада - Death by Choice

Kita was strangely calm in the face of this exposure of his identity. He answered with the same calm tone he’d spoken with till now.

“Congratulations. You uncovered me, you crook. I’m not Yukichi Fukuzawa after all. I’m Ono no Imoko,” he went on, giving the name of a famous bureaucrat in the court of ancient Japan.

“Whaddaya mean, you’re Imoko? Hey Kita, don’t mess with us buster. You’ll be dead tomorrow.”

“No, it’s the day after I’m going to die. If you want to kill me you’d better hurry.”

“Don’t push your luck!”

“Pay up that thirty million. Get those stupid Congressmen to foot some of it. That should bring it up to twenty-eight million or so. You can borrow the remaining couple of million from a loan shark.”

“OK. We’ll get the full amount ready. Come and get it.”

“There’s no time to go do that. Donate the lot to the International Red Cross for helping poor sick kids.”

“What?”

“The International Red Cross, you idiot. Donate thirty million to them in the name of Shinobu Yoimachi. I’ll check whether you’ve really done it or not.”

“What crazy nonsense is this? Are you in your right mind?”

“I’ll let the newspapers and television stations know. You don’t need to keep this thing a secret any longer.”

Kita put down the receiver and left the telephone box in high spirits. Now this abduction was really getting into gear at last.

Shinobu stared hard at him. She looked scared.

“They’re going to pay the ransom. So I win the bet.” Kita smiled at her, but she still seemed dazed.

They went back to the restaurant and ordered beer, grilled fish, and slices of raw devil’s tongue, while he plotted their next move. For some reason, Shinobu seemed displeased. She sat there with lips pursed, chin propped on hands, looking sulky.

“You really hate losing the bet that much?” Kita said teasingly. But at this, her eyes filmed with tears. “What’s up? This is weird.”

“Yeah, it sure is. Why do I have to get killed?”

“What’re you talking about?” said Kita, grabbing her hand. “I’m not really going to kill you!”

She squeezed his hand tight. “No, no, not you. They’re the ones who’ll kill me. I know exactly what they’re thinking,” she went on. “There’s no way they’re really going to pay that money. It won’t matter a damn to them if I die. They actually want you to kill me, Kita.”

“But why?”

“They want to shut me up, that’s why. They’ll be running round frantically working on the press right now, making sure that even if I spill the beans about the politicians it won’t get in the news. I know too much, see. It’s better if I’m out of the way. They’ll be bringing in the gangsters, who’ll finish me off and set it up so it looks like I’ve been killed by my abductor.”

“Hmm, I wonder. Anyway, let’s do what we can. We can’t quit now in the middle of the job, after all. I’ve been a plain old Mr Nice Guy till now, you know. The only thing I was good at was sacrificing myself for others, just like my old man. I’ve only got two days more to live. The final gesture I want to make is to act completely willful in some way. It’s asking a lot to want to involve you in this too, but please stick with me just a bit longer Shinobu.”

“I was the one who asked you to abduct me as a joke, but I never thought you’d throw yourself into it quite like this…”

“You’ve gotta promise to keep it an absolute secret. Don’t ever tell anyone I did it for fun, will you. This was a forced abduction, right? It wasn’t a put-up job. Don’t tell the truth to a soul. Promise me.”

Shinobu nodded, overwhelmed by the earnest tone of entreaty in Kita’s voice.

“You won’t get killed, don’t worry. I’ve been planning how to make sure you’re safe ever since last night. Just leave things to me.”

Shinobu nodded over and over, wiping her eyes with the napkin.

“You’re on the stage, aren’t you?” said the old woman who brought them their plate of devil’s tongue. Her gaze shifted from Shinobu to Kita and back again. Maybe their conversation had the look or sound of a play to her.

“Would there be a bank near here?” asked Kita.

The old lady drew a map on the table with her finger. “You turn left at the second set of lights, there’s a pachinko parlour here, and the bank’s right next door.” She added the observation that it was maybe not the best idea having the bank so close to the pachinko parlour.

Kita needed to withdraw the getaway money, but before he did so he stepped into the phone box with the plan of giving the news-starved media the information about the abduction of a star. He dialled Information for the number that would put him onto the press section head of one of the television stations. Then he rang and left a message.

“I’ve abducted Shinobu Yoimachi, and told her production company they have to donate the thirty million yen ransom money to the International Red Cross. Put this on your afternoon gossip show and the seven o’clock news. I’ll make a public announcement at three this afternoon.”

The person on the other end was evidently a professional, trained to deal with whatever message came through in the same businesslike way. “An abduction, right?” he said perfectly coolly, repeating to check facts. “Shinobu Yoimachi, you say?” “Thirty million yen.” “Three pm.” Well the message seemed to have got through, at least.

This was Kita’s plan. If he made the abduction public through the media, it would at any rate mean that those gangster businessmen wouldn’t so easily be able to shut Shinobu up. On the other hand, of course, it would make the abductor’s escape extremely difficult. For a start, the victim was a star known and loved in living rooms throughout the nation. If she was seized from the living room screens and seen walking about in the street, a patrol car would be onto her right away. Their only hope was to hole up somewhere where no one would see them. Kita had the vague idea of moving on to Niigata. He didn’t have any particular hiding place in mind, but he’d been there two years earlier, so he had a sense of the place. All he needed was not to get caught before Friday. On Friday he’d free Shinobu and let her loose on the media reporters. Then she could stand there live in front of the cameras and spill the beans about how she’d had to keep the wicked doings of the Congressmen a secret to save her own skin. This would then provide a chance for this star on the way out to leave her old identity behind and reinvent herself as the much-lauded heroine who pitted herself against social evils.

“Right, I’ll get our getaway money out of the bank and then we’re off to Niigata.” They left the restaurant, Kita’s arm around her shoulder, and called in at the bank.

“I need to buy some clothes and disguise myself,” Shinobu announced. Kita’s bank balance should by now hold the money he was owed for selling his organs. But when he slipped his cash card into the machine, he was confronted with something unexpected. The machine refused to accept his card. Even if the organ money wasn’t there, he should still have five hundred thousand left in his account.

“How much have you got, Shinobu?”

“About five thousand I think.”

“Any credit card? Any cash card?”

“All I’ve brought is the Bible. I left everything in the car. What’s the problem? Isn’t there any money?”

Kita had the gut feeling that this was the doing of Heita Yashiro. He knew Kita’s bank account number, so he could fix things so the cash card was invalid. He didn’t want Kita getting away, that was it. Yashiro had dealings with those gangster businessmen, and he’d probably already sent someone to finish Kita off. After all, he’d boasted that he could arrange things with an assassin for five hundred thousand yen, hadn’t he?