The Salaryman's Wife (16 page)

“How?” I nearly jumped on her.

“Harumi was killed by a drunk American driving on the wrong side of the road. I was very worried about the daughters, but by then I had married and was living with my husband’s family, so I could not take care of the girls. Harumi had a friend who raised them in Yokosuka.”

“How did Setsuko’s sister, Keiko, die?” I wanted to stay on track.

“Setsuko told me that in her teens, Keiko became
very wild. She gave birth to Mariko outside of marriage and spent her time in the bars taking drugs with the American sailors. One time she had a bad reaction. She jumped off a building, and that was it.”

“And Keiko’s little daughter Mariko?” This was one of the saddest stories I’d ever heard.

“Setsuko made sure she was taken care of, and she is now working at a bank…quite a suitable place for a young lady. Of course. I haven’t seen her. I would like to, now that she is the only one left.”

“Which bank?”

“I don’t know exactly, but it is a good one in Tokyo.” Mrs. Ozawa paused. “The last time we met, Setsuko asked me to consider leaving some inheritance for Mariko. She said the Ozawa family’s pattern of casting off women must be broken. At the time, I said to her, dear niece, I am sympathetic, but the young woman in question is not any kind of blood relation.” She blinked back tears. “I was wrong. Setsuko walked out on me when I told her I wouldn’t help Mariko. I never heard from her again.”

In the space of this conversation, my picture of Setsuko Nakamura had altered. If Mariko really existed—I reminded myself that Mrs. Ozawa had never seen her, and Mariko’s mother, Keiko, was conveniently dead—Setsuko had tried to do a great thing for her.

“I am not feeling so well. I would like some more sake…” Mrs. Ozawa was struggling to stand. I helped her up and commandeered her out the room, thinking more sake was probably not a good idea for a depressed woman who weighed less than ninety pounds. I would
have to watch over her. Hearing brisk steps coming toward us, I looked up and saw Mr. Nakamura.

“What is it?” Mrs. Ozawa asked, not understanding why I’d stopped moving.

“Please go ahead, Mrs. Ozawa. I’ll meet you,” I said, going into a deep bow and mumbling the customary funeral greeting Hikari had told me would be correct should I come face to face with the impossible.

“Fujita-san? Thank you for coming. Have you spoken to Arae-san?” he said softly, not at all his usual manner.

“
Eh to
…” I hedged.

“Well, please see her about what to do. The toilet room needs to be cleaned up, fresh soaps and towels set out…”

If I were a Sendai employee, I’d obey him without question. Maybe this was some sort of test. I murmured my agreement and kept bowing until he turned on his heel. When Hikari had run off to the kitchen to take care of responsibilities, I had thought it strange. Now I understood the reality of O.L. Hell.

I found the powder room in the hallway near the front door. Rummaging below the sink, I came up with a powdered cleanser. Just behind the toilet was a little brush in a stand decorated with a snowman. I knelt to dislodge the brush and was drenched by a jet of water that shot up from the center of the toilet.

Water continued to spray upward as I sprang back, realizing I’d set off the toilet’s bidet function. I found the
STOP
button on the side of the seat a few seconds too late. The floor, cabinet, and walls were sprayed with water. Karen’s suit, too.

I mopped it all up with the three tiny towels Mr. Nakamura had asked me to replace and cast about in vain for fresh towels. Someone knocked on the door and I knocked back, signaling my occupation.

“Rei?” Hikari’s voice at the door led me to crack it open at last.

“I’ve created a flood here,” I said needlessly as she looked in and gasped.

“People have been noticing you!” Hikari moaned. “Miss Arae asked me who you were. I told her you were from the daughter of somebody in Mrs. Nakamura’s tea society, but she heard from somebody else that you were a Sendai O.L.!”

“Who’s Miss Arae?” I was lost.

“Miss Arae is head of the secretarial group. She is talking to Mr. Nakamura right now. I’ll get the coats. We’ve got to get out.”

Hikari and I jogged down the cul-de-sac slowly because of our high heels and caught a taxi on the main road. Once inside, Hikari pulled a small red leather book out of her handbag. “Setsuko’s telephone book. I found it in the kitchen.”

I flipped on the taxi’s dome light and began leafing through tiny pages filled with handwritten
kanji
. “Thanks. I can follow up on anyone who looks interesting.”

“Don’t you want me to look at it first?” Hikari sounded crushed.

“Well, I’m sure I have more time to work on it than you. Maybe I should go through it myself.” I
didn’t trust her to know the things I wanted to find.

“Really? I heard you had to have the autopsy translated.”

“Well, medical language isn’t my thing, but personal names are easy. I’ve studied
kanji
for years.” Not very successfully, but she didn’t need to know that.

“May I see the book once more?”

“Sure.” I handed it back, thinking that I couldn’t believe we were fighting over it. Maybe we were fighting about something else.

She returned the book after a minute and I slipped it into my purse.

“It’s kind of you to lend it to me,” I said, trying to make up for my rudeness. “You must be very fond of Hugh to go to this trouble.”

Her face flushed. “Not so fond. Not fond enough to be stupid.”

“That makes two of us.” Yet, as we lurched over the pitted road leading to the train station, I doubted myself.

Mariko was going to be one in twelve million, if she had stayed put within Tokyo city limits. I spent Wednesday searching through Setsuko’s book without luck. Neither was she among the many Ozawas listed with Tokyo directory assistance. Thinking it over, I concluded that she might have married and changed her name, or might have no telephone at all.

Mr. Ota called to get a report on how the
tsuya
had gone, and I asked immediately for the latest on Hugh.

“Things are proceeding. While I was visiting, the British consul made a visit to ensure his conditions were adequate. We all had a chance to talk.”

“Do you think he’ll get out? The two day period is up today.”

“The police chief in Shiroyama is keeping him longer. There’s a legal loophole he’s using while he tries to gather evidence.”

“Can’t the consul help?”

“The British consul cannot supersede the Japanese police. By the way, what’s this about your withholding the address book? Miss Yasui could have had it translated in a matter of hours.”

“I’m using it for my research,” I said, although I’d only made out half the names so far. “If you want me to give it up, have Hugh confirm it. I’m not giving it up until then.”

“I thought I told you he’s not allowed telephone calls. The most he could provide was a floppy disc. He had messages on it to half of Tokyo, a big headache for me.”

“Is there a message for me?”

“Yes, there is,” he said grumpily. “I will fax it to you.”

“When?” I couldn’t believe he hadn’t volunteered the information earlier.

“This afternoon, maybe.”

“Listen, the only fax I have access to is at Nichiyu. If you could send the document at a set time, I’d be able to intercept it without anyone noticing. What about five minutes after three?”

“Three-oh-five then, Miss Shimura, and don’t forget to bring me the address book soon, please.”

Mrs. Bun watched me run to the fax machine when it suddenly stuttered at four minutes after three. It was only a report for Mr. Katoh.

“Rei’s doctor is faxing her medical record, and she’s afraid we’ll all snoop in it,” Richard smoothly
lied. He made me blush, adding to the effectiveness of the ploy. At 3:08, the machine started again, spitting out a cover sheet with Mr. Ota’s letterhead. A second page followed with blurry typed writing. I grabbed them tightly against my chest and sprinted from the room, Richard at my heels.

“Come on, Rei. I’m involved!”

“Sorry, babe.” I slammed the women’s lavatory door in his face, curled up on the cracked vinyl chair by the sinks and began reading. The message had been neatly typeset into a memo form addressed
To Rei Shimura, from HG, regarding incarceration
. I half-smiled at that, but stopped quickly as I read on.

It wasn’t the way he talked, this patronizing, unemotional set of commands. Yet I had no doubt he’d written it. I read it over a few more times and wandered slowly out to the hall, where Richard was waiting. Without saying anything, I gave him the letter.

“He sounds stodgy. Like an old man,” Richard concluded.

“It’s probably the way lawyers are trained to write.” Irrationally, I was upset at my friend’s criticism. Maybe Richard was right; it certainly wasn’t the kind of letter a person would write to someone he was romantically interested in.

“Mmm, I don’t know. He seems to be taking things too seriously. He’s got no sense of humor.”

“Richard, prison is a serious place!” The letter was so depressing that only one thing was clear in my mind: he needed to get out. Then I could look into his eyes and figure out where we stood. And I would find Mariko, even if I had to visit every bank in town.

I started the next morning with the English-language telephone directory. I tried bank personnel departments in alphabetic order, identifying myself as a long-lost friend of Mariko Ozawa’s. I quickly found out Aoyama Bank didn’t release personal information about employees. The same policy was in effect at the
next two banks. I needed a more compelling story. Then I came up with a truly devious idea.

“I wish to register a complaint about a bank employee who made an error with my account last week, Mariko Ozawa…”

The receptionists all instantly went into a defensive, hyper-courteous mode. “Could you please wait for a minute? We will check that…” They would come back, triumphant. “We have no employee by that name. Perhaps the honorable customer was mistaken?”

I had luck midway down the list when I called JaBank. “Mariko Ozawa? In foreign exchange at the Shinjuku branch? The personnel manager you need to speak to is named…” I took down the name carefully and assured the clerk I’d follow up.

That afternoon, Richard and I were sent to a kitchen store in Shinjuku to look at the English language signs that had been created for a Nichiyu espresso maker that could also steam milk to make caffe latte. “Latte” had been misspelled “ratte”, and Richard argued it wasn’t worth changing because there was no letter
L
in Japanese. We pronounced the word “ratte” ourselves to be understood by anyone at Nichiyu.

“The problem is the word looks like
rat
,” I said. “Who’d want to drink something called caffe rat?”

“Rats are considered very clever animals in Japanese folktales. They’re loved by everyone! Let’s keep it.” Richard had the kitchen section manager and two clerks nodding in support.

“If we allow one misspelled sign, the misspelling might make its way into the brochures and packaging. How can Nichiyu ever hope to compete against Braun and Krups if our brochures are written in Jinglish?”

“Find me one expert who says people even read the brochures,” Richard scoffed.

“Okay, I’ll find a second opinion,” I insisted, wondering who I could ask. Mrs. Chapman, maybe? She was as typical an American as I could think of, and I doubted she’d approve of any Jinglish brochure.

The argument over the espresso maker was postponed for now. We said our good-byes to the department store team and walked toward the train station, Richard pointing out how close we were to Mariko’s bank.

“Lets go there. It’s just one subway stop away.”

“Richard, we’re working! I don’t know about you, but this job means something to me. I’d like to keep it.”

“We’re not expected back for a while. If we’re a half hour late, what’s the problem? We can say we got caught in bus traffic. Vouch for me, and I’ll vouch for you.”

He became distracted on the way when he spotted a branch of his favorite source for leather and denim, New Boys Look. I had no patience to wait while he shopped, so we agreed to meet after I found Mariko. It was almost three o’clock, bank closing time.

JaBank was on Shinjuku Dori, underneath the super-sized TV screen where Chisato Moritaka was
singing “Jin Jin Jinglebell.” The bank was considerably more sedate, with a cordial employee who showed me upstairs to the foreign exchange section. A moon-faced woman in her mid-twenties was counting out yen to a foreigner with a backpack.

“Is Miss Ozawa here?” I asked as she finished the transaction and prepared to call the next person in line. I was surprised that someone sharing Setsuko’s bloodline could be so plain.

“Please take a number if you want assistance,” the clerk sing-songed.

“Don’t be so uptight, Hatsue!” A young woman with dark curls rose from a sea of desks behind the customer service counter. “I’m Ozawa.”

There was something undeniably cocky about the way Mariko Ozawa stood with her hands on her hips. Her navy uniform fitted her a little too tightly and her makeup was exaggerated, as if she were trying to put ten years on top of her twenty-something. She tapped a scuffed high heeled shoe impatiently and stared me down.

“I’m here on a family matter.” I handed her my card and bowed.

“I have no family.” She chewed on her full lower lip, smearing purple lipstick.

“I’m from America,” I said, deliberately vague in the face of her eavesdropping coworkers. “My Japanese isn’t so good.”

She gave me a long look. “I’ll be off in ten minutes. Wait right there.” She pointed with a dragon-lady fingernail to a small couch in the customer waiting area. I opened the latest edition of
Tokyo
Weekender
but kept sneaking looks upward to make sure she wouldn’t vanish on me.

Promptly at three she came back, carrying a fake fur coat and a black bag with
MOSCHINO
written across it in big brass letters. I watched it swing against her hip as she led me out a back exit, past a guard who looked at both of us carefully and recorded something in a notebook.

“Your bank has a lot of security,” I commented.

“A teller was attacked a couple of weeks ago, so they’re being careful.”

“Robbery?”

“More likely someone’s lunatic boyfriend.”

“I met your great aunt, Mrs. Ozawa. She had no idea what had become of you,”

“It’s supposed to be that way,” she snapped. “I’ll have nothing to do with the Ozawas.”

“You look so different from the Ozawas, with your height and that great curly hair—where do you get it done?”

“It’s not a perm, okay? It’s natural, and I hate it. In junior high, the girls pulled it all the time to make it more straight, more Japanese. It got so bad I dropped out.”

“What happened to you after that?” I’d heard how terrible bullying was in the schools.

“I started working.” She glared at me and I kept quiet during the rest of our walk through the east side, watching the businesses around us change from clothing stores to slightly seedier pachinko parlors to strip bars and the soaplands where prostitutes worked. This was Kabuki-cho, the infamous red light
district I’d blundered into while naively searching for “public relations” work during my early days in Tokyo. I pulled my parka around my body and tried to ignore the doorway droolers.

“Don’t speak. You’ll embarrass yourself and me,” Mariko said, pausing at the entrance to an establishment with the proverbial green door—this one decorated with a neon silhouette of a woman’s hourglass figure. We entered a small, extremely dark room. I quickly deduced it was a hostess bar from the couples at tables: businessmen with large tumblers of whiskey, brightly-dressed younger women nursing doll-sized glasses of oolong tea. All were enjoying a late liquid lunch or early happy hour. I gave a Western man with a teen-age Asian girl in his lap a particularly dirty look as Mariko hustled me by.

A middle-aged woman with eyeliner drawn up garishly around the corners of her eyes strode out from a bar loaded with glistening bottles of liquor. Judging from her glittering gold and diamond jewelry, she was probably the Mama-san who ran the place.

“We aren’t hiring,” she called out to me. I smiled and bobbed my head while Mariko yelled back I was just a friend. She led me into a back room cramped with racks of clothing and lingerie, shut the door and started undressing.

“This must be your part-time job?” I was at a loss for better words.

“You have a problem with it?” Mariko challenged.

“No. It’s just that I only knew about JaBank.”

“How was that, anyway? You’re such a snoop.”

“Mrs. Ozawa knew that you were at a bank somewhere, so I made some phone calls.” I paused. “I actually called bank headquarters and said I had a complaint against you in order to find out where you worked. I hope it doesn’t get back to you.”

“I got some stupid phone call, but because I don’t work with customers, it made no sense. I told them it was a mistake.” She walked directly in front of me and turned around, indicating I should zip up her short, spangled blue dress. Her back was as smooth and golden as her face; she must have lain nude in a tanning bed to achieve that look in the Tokyo winter. “You still haven’t told me how you met the Ozawas.”

“We met at your aunt’s
tsuya
.” Mariko said nothing, so I clarified, “The one for Setsuko Nakamura in Hayama.”

Mariko was fussing with her hair, attempting to pin it up, seated in front of a mirror. “
Obasan
hosted somebody’s
tsuya
? I can only hope it was her husband.”

“Your aunt…” I was going to have to break the news of the death. I swallowed hard and said, “Setsuko is the one who passed away. I’m so sorry.”

Mariko sat still for a long moment. Then she swiveled around on the dressing table stool, half of her hair up and the other half hanging down. “Tell me again.”

She sounded genuinely stunned, but it could have been an act; hostesses were trained to read people, give them whatever made them feel comfortable. Mindful of this, I spoke carefully. “She froze to death outside a
minshuku
in Shiroyama. It was ruled an
accident but now the police think she might have been slain.”

“I don’t believe it. Aunt Setsuko was the last family member I had.” Her purple mouth quivered.

“Your mother died when you were little, right?”

She nodded. “I was just a baby. My father didn’t think he could take care of me and work, so he went off to Okinawa, Aunt Setsuko told me. I don’t remember him at all.”

“Who raised you?” She was alone in a way that was so complete that my suspicions toward her started to fade, replaced by pity.

“Kiki, you saw her out there.”

“Why do you even work at the bank?” I was curious about that, because I knew hostessing paid at least twice as much as clerical work.