The Gate of Sorrows Page 13

  He picked up the phone and dialed. He still knew the number by heart. A voice like a stone Buddha came on the line.

  “Hello. What’s this about?”

  “It’s been a long time, Yamacho.”

  Silence, then a friendly response: “Is that Detective Tsuzuki?”

  “You remembered.”

  “How could I forget? I’m forever in your debt.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. How’ve you been?”

  “Not bad. Keeping busy. What about you? How’s the arthritis?” The last time they’d spoken, Shigenori had dismissed the pain and numbness in his leg as arthritis.

  “Actually I’m going under the knife soon.”

  “What? That bad, huh? When?”

  “Maybe the end of the month.”

  “Let me know when you go in. I’ll send flowers. Or maybe you’d rather have a fruit basket?”

  “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

  Veteran locksmith Choichi Yamabe, a.k.a. Yamacho, was close to Shigenori’s age. He’d run a shop out of a converted room in his home in Tokyo’s Suginami ward. Upon turning sixty, he’d handed the running of the business over to his apprentice and devoted himself to collecting and researching old locks.

  A locksmith’s business never sleeps. When the customer calls, he has to be willing to get out of bed and work through the night if needed. Yamacho was a big drinker with a case of cirrhosis, and the irregular hours had finally become too much for him.

  He also had another side, a clandestine side. Shigenori’s call was about that side.

  “Listen, Yamacho. I need a favor.”

  Here it comes, the laugh on the other end of the line seemed to say. “What do you need to get into? On the QT from the boys upstairs, I assume?”

  Shigenori smiled. Yamacho was so wrapped up in the Way of the Locksmith, as he liked to call it, that time had apparently stopped for him completely.

  “I’m out, Yamacho. Been retired a long time.”

  “You’re kidding!” His voice was shrill with surprise. “Say it ain’t so, detective. You’re that old?”

  “Only two years older than you. We’re both old as far as society’s concerned.”

  “You’re unemployed, then?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got time on my hands. I’m doing a little investigation, just keeping myself entertained. I need a key so I can come and go as I please.”

  Yamacho was a precious commodity, a locksmith willing to help out on black-bag jobs when you couldn’t get a warrant, or when you needed to see the inside of a place that just smelled wrong, even without signs of criminal activity. He’d never met a lock he couldn’t open, and he could make keys to match.

  If he was going to follow his nose, Shigenori had to be able to get in and out of the tea caddy building freely. He’d decided to get in touch with Yamacho after his first visit with Shigeru.

  “It’s a service door. I watched someone open it. It was one of those—I don’t know what you call that kind of key. The new type. It has little pits all over the surface.”

  “A dimple key. Is that all? No pass code? What about an alarm system?”

  “There probably was one, but the place is empty now. You won’t have to deal with anything sticky.”

  “Sounds simple, then. Where?”

  “Shinjuku. When can you get started?”

  “Tonight, if you want. Just send me the address and the layout and I’ll take care of it myself.”

  Yamacho always worked alone, preferably at night. He said the darkness helped him concentrate.

  “It might get a little messy if someone sees you. I’ll go with you.”

  “That would complicate things. If it’s just me, I can say I’m a lock researcher doing fieldwork.”

  Shigenori laughed. Yamacho hadn’t changed a bit.

  “How many keys we talking?”

  “One’s enough. You can give it to me at—wait, I didn’t tell you I’ve moved.”

  “Really? Give me your new address, then. Fax the whole thing. Unless the customer is tough, you’ll have a key in your mailbox tomorrow morning.” Yamacho always referred to locks as “customers.”

  “The building’s empty, so there’s no power. It’s pitch-dark. Be careful, okay?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “What’s the charge?”

  “I’ll leave the bill with the key. How’s the wife?”

  “In a lot better shape than me.”

  “Same here. Are all women like that? The older they get, the more energy they have.”

  “They’re stealing it from us old men.”

  Yamacho laughed. “You got that right.”

  Shigenori hung up with a pleasant feeling he hadn’t had in a long time. Toshiko had heard the whole conversation and was staring at him. “It’s lunchtime.”

  Shigenori hadn’t noticed the aroma of soba noodles.

  “What’ve you been up to recently? You seem so energetic. It’s strange.”

  “You think so? Maybe I’m just less grouchy now that I’ve got a date for the operation.”

  After lunch, Shigenori picked up his cane and small shoulder bag and left for the tea caddy building. If Yamacho was going to be there tonight, he wanted to walk the site again first.

  He made his way to the narrow street that ran behind the building. The barrier of piled-up chairs, tied firmly with rope, was just as before.

  No—it wasn’t. Someone had moved it.

  The concrete walkway was faintly scored. Someone had pushed, or pulled, the heavy barrier slightly out of position. The last time he’d been here, Shigeru had watched Aizawa, who was fairly strong, try and fail to budge the barrier. Someone had apparently tried a lot harder since then.

  He looked up at the building. Nothing seemed to have changed. No one had done any maintenance. The tea caddy building was as silent and deserted as ever.

  He peered through the barrier at the service entrance. The keyhole was in the locked position. The door had acquired a fresh coat of windblown dust.

  He carefully paced the perimeter of the building. The main entrance was locked tight, but here and there, the cobwebs in the padlocked chain were missing. Someone had touched it.

  For several minutes he stood in front of the entrance, arms folded, thinking. He sat down on the low cinder-block wall that surrounded the building and drew an access map and a sketch of the site, with a warning. Someone was here. Watch your back.

  He went to a nearby convenience store and faxed the map to Yamacho. He’d decided this was the perfect location to begin a clockwise sweep of the neighborhood. He would go in a circle, moving outward gradually. Working alone, this was the most efficient strategy.

  Shigenori had been living in Wakaba long enough that most of the shop owners in the neighborhood recognized him. He would tell them his doctor had said he should get out and walk. He could strike up a conversation and try to steer it to the tea caddy building. “It’s bad for the neighborhood to leave that building empty.” “Someone should open up a business there.” “Mr. Tsuzuki, no one’s going to do that in this economy.”

  Many of the buildings in the neighborhood were apartment houses with businesses on the ground floor. The restaurants and bars opened in the evening. Now was the time of day for beauty shops and clinics, and clean massage parlors that would treat stiff shoulders in fifteen minutes. These businesses had usually been operating for a relatively short time and had shallow roots in the area. Some of them had no view to the street and probably wouldn’t be a good source of eyewitness testimony. “Someone broke into the tea caddy building again, not too long ago. Did you notice anything suspicious? I’m the crime prevention rep for the district association.” “I see, thanks for keeping an eye on things, but we didn’t see anything.” And so it went.

  Commercial buildings had security
guards. Condominiums had building supervisors. Shigenori used his security rep cover story, but came up empty here too. When he asked a building supervisor if there had been complaints by residents about suspicious events, he got an earful. Why was the district association running around digging into stuff like that?

  He missed having his police incident notebook. When he pulled it out, somehow it always commanded respect. At the same time, he realized that he missed the notebook more than he missed his old job.

  He walked on, stopping now and then to rest his leg. At the end of his second circuit, someone called him by name. A woman in an apron was bowing from the front door of a florist on the first floor of a condominium. Shigenori recognized her from the party: Mrs. Yamada. She was one of the rotating subdistrict reps.

  “Thanks for coming the other day,” she said.

  Shigenori returned the bow. “I had a very nice time.”

  “On your way somewhere?”

  “No, just taking a walk.”

  “Maybe you’re looking for that old man and his cart?”

  Shigenori was surprised by this direct question. “The one who lives in Hyakunin?”

  Mrs. Yamada nodded. “They say he’s been missing quite a while.”

  “Someone claiming to be a relative was asking after him at the party.”

  “Yes, I heard about it afterward.”

  “Do you know this Mr. Ino?”

  Mrs. Yamada glanced around furtively and took a step closer. “The thing is, we have to separate all of our recyclable garbage. It’s a city rule. The old man used to come around like clockwork and pick it up from us. It was his only source of income, and, well, I don’t think he was doing any harm.”

  It made sense. Florists take many deliveries every day. They would have a lot of cardboard boxes, and having someone take them off their hands more often than the regular trash collection would be convenient. Although he lived alone, Kozaburo’s trash-collecting efforts created ties with the community.

  “He lives like a pauper, but some people say he’s really quite wealthy,” Mrs. Yamada added.

  “Is that so?”

  “Maybe some shady person was stalking him.”

  The possibility had occurred to Shigenori. In fact, it was all too possible.

  “But you could see he was growing weaker recently. Somehow you had to feel sorry for him.” She touched her temple. “He talked to himself constantly. He was seeing and saying strange things. My husband was worried about him too. ‘That man shouldn’t be living alone,’ he said.”

  “Strange things? What sort of things?”

  “You know, like he was dreaming or something. He was strangely excited. ‘Mrs. Yamada’—he tells me—‘early this morning a giant bird, like some kind of monster, swooped right over my head and flew away.’ ”

  Shigenori’s heart thumped once, hard.

  She smiled. “He used to go around to condos and apartment houses before the garbage truck came and grab the trash he was looking for. He had to be up early to collect as much as he could. He was already on the streets before dawn, sometimes starting in the middle of the night.

  “I’m not surprised he thought he saw something. In the dark a person can see all kinds of things. At the beginning of last spring, I think it was, he was running around telling people he saw the ghost of a little girl at that intersection up the street, right where there was a hit-and-run.”

  A ghost could be a trick of vision, or an overactive imagination. Maybe a hallucination. What about a giant monster bird?

  “When did he tell you about the bird?” Shigenori asked.

  “Wait—you’re not serious, are you?”

  “Of course not. It’s just that there might a little bit of a coincidence.”

  Mrs. Yamada scrutinized Shigenori warily.

  “When was it? Could you recall the date?”

  “Well … early December. Yes. There was something like a typhoon, do you remember? I saw him the next morning.

  “As soon as the weather clears, here comes Mr. Ino pulling his cart. He told me once that the day after a storm is a good time to pick up things that blow into the street. He said he made good money then.”

  Shigenori took his notebook out of his bag. He didn’t keep a diary, but he never failed to note the weather each day. It was a habit from his days as a detective.

  “The typhoon arrived at four in the afternoon. It was stormy all night.”

  The storm had died down around five in the morning. The sky suddenly cleared and the temperature rose, typical for a typhoon.

  Mrs. Yamada, early this morning a giant bird, like some kind of monster, swooped right over my head and flew away!

  On the morning of the fifth, as soon as the weather cleared, Kozaburo Ino had gone out with his cart, not waiting for December’s late sunrise, and seen—what? Whatever it was, it had made enough of an impression for him to collar the florist and tell her about it.

  And the same day, he’d vanished. At least that was what the young man calling himself Morinaga had said when he interrupted the New Year’s party.

  “Mrs. Yamada, did you notice when Mr. Ino stopped coming by?”

  “No. It’s not like he came every day. I thought he might’ve changed his route. I found out from someone at the party that he’d disappeared.”

  Shigenori had to determine when Kozaburo had gone missing and under what circumstances. He thanked Mrs. Yamada quickly and walked on.

  Shigeru had told Kenji to find his friend the liquor-store owner. Shigenori had listened and remembered them. He had no trouble finding the store. It was small and somewhat fancy, on the first floor of a small condominium building.

  The owner was young, probably thirty or so. The shop seemed to have a history; there was a row of framed sepia-toned portrait photos on the wall behind the register. Shigenori asked about them and learned that the owner’s family had been running the shop for four generations. As soon as he mentioned Shigeru’s name, the owner was ready to share any information he had.

  “Yes, a young man named Morinaga was here. A university student.”

  “Did he say that’s what he was?”

  “He seemed very nervous, which made me a little suspicious. You never know these days. I asked for proof. He showed me his student ID. He said he was related to Ino through his maternal grandfather.”

  That’s got to be a lie, Shigenori thought. But at least he’s using his real name. Have to give him credit for that.

  “What sort of questions did he ask?”

  “Lots. Problem was, I don’t know much about that old man. I didn’t even know his name. I see him go by now and then with his cart, that’s all.”

  “So you didn’t give him any of your trash for recycling?”

  “It’s against city regulations.” Strictly speaking, he was right. “Morinaga was asking about Asahi House. He was pretty nosy, actually. Wanted to know what kind of person the landlord was, what kind of people lived there, that sort of thing.”

  “What kind of place is it? I hear the landlord doesn’t live in the neighborhood.”

  “No, but he’s a reputable person. Sort of a philanthropist. The tenants are all old people living alone, with nowhere else to go. The rent is practically free. It’s the zoning laws. Even if they tear the place down, the owner won’t be able to build anything there anyway.”

  “Yes, I hear the building dates back to the occupation.”

  “By the way, that student told me he heard from the radio that the old man was missing.”

  “It was on the radio?” Shigenori was startled.

  “We have a little local FM station. I listen to it sometimes myself. He told me someone was appealing for information about where the old man might be.”

  “Do you know where I can find it?”

  “No need to go there.
Just look at the website. They keep a log of the announcements.”

  The owner obligingly pulled up the station website on the laptop behind the register. There was a chronological list of requests for music and on-air announcements. Shigenori backtracked through the list until he found it. The appeal for information about Ino’s whereabouts came from Yasushi Kadoma, the owner of a local coffee shop.

  “Is this shop nearby?”

  “Go out, turn right, then left at the first corner. Straight on from there, second corner on the right.”

  Shigenori had already overextended himself. His leg was beyond the pain and tingling stage; it was almost completely numb. It was difficult even to lift his foot off the ground. Leaning heavily on his cane, he trudged unsteadily until he could see the sign for Kadoma Coffee. By then he was drenched in cold sweat.

  But he hit the jackpot. The owner was nattily turned out with a small mustache, slicked-back hair, and a red vest that was fashionable in some bygone era. Shigenori took a seat inside. After he’d caught his breath, the owner told him his story.

  “The morning of the fifth—it was still dark—Kozaburo told me he was sure he’d seen a birdlike monster. A huge, black bird, this big”—Kadoma spread his arms wide—“flew over his head.”

  As soon as the weather cleared before dawn on December 5, Kozaburo Ino had left his apartment to collect trash for recycling. Along his route, he stopped at the florist, told Mrs. Yamada he’d seen a huge bird, and then presented himself at Kadoma Coffee at six thirty, as he did every day.

  Kozaburo was a regular customer. The shop opened at seven, but perhaps because he knew other customers would be put off by his appearance—and because being gawked at was unpleasant for him as well—he showed up every morning before business hours and took a wrapped breakfast home. He’d never eaten inside the shop.

  Kadoma agreed that the old man seemed strangely excited that morning. “He said he’d seen something fantastic. He could hardly wait to tell me about it.”

  Like the florist, he had noticed Kozaburo acting increasingly oddly of late, and he hadn’t paid much attention to this latest episode. Kozaburo had been wearing several layers of clothing against the cold, but they were damp from the wind and rain. Concerned that the old man might catch cold, Kadoma had given him a towel and invited him to sit by the kerosene stove. Kozaburo did not go into the shop. Though he looked cold, he was excited.