“I don't know… Several years ago, a guy dressed in a panda costume murdered a woman in a Tokyo park. He caught the train home afterward. True story,” Durban added, just in case I was waiting for the punch line. I imagined a panda with bloodstained fur sitting cross-legged in the train, surrounded by Japanese workers heading home, everyone reading their newspapers. I said, “Do you think that's relevant to what we've got here?”
“No. What you said about someone using the shark as a murder weapon just reminded me.”
Whether the shark had anyone inside it before it struck its victim, who knew? But it certainly had someone inside it now — Dr. Tanaka, or at least most of him.
FOUR
The Tokyo uniform gave us a lift to the Roppongi area in his patrol car. It was 1430 hours and already dark. The falling snow was light and dry. The wipers pushed the snowflakes around the windscreen like shredded paper and they swirled in bright spirals in our headlight beams. I looked into the swirls and felt like I was falling. It was hypnotic. I broke the spell by checking out the side window. There was enough neon bouncing around from all the signage to fry insects. “I'd like to talk to Tanaka's partner — the other scientist — and also to the ship's master,” I said, picking up the thread where I'd left it.
“I'll arrange it.” The look on Durban's face said, You got suspicions?
I elaborated. “It was at least twelve hours before anyone realized Tanaka was missing. I'd like to have that time accounted for.” I didn't say that I'd come all this way and I needed to return home with something more substantial than a receipt for my minibar bill at the Hilton and a shark's tooth on a chain around my neck. Remembering the tooth, a present from the coroner, I pulled it from my jacket pocket. It was basically a blue-white equilateral triangle, each side over an inch in length. Serrations dimpled two of those sides and it came to a wicked point. I pictured a mouth full of these little steak knives attached to a fish that hit with the force of a runaway Cadillac. It wouldn't have been a very nice way for Dr. Tanaka to leave the party.
“You been to Tokyo before?” Durban asked.
“No,” I said.
“What are your first impressions?” She took her hat off and tamed her straw-colored hair, running her fingers through it. I smelled lavender.
“It reminds me of a pinball machine I used to play, lit up for five times bonus and extra ball.”
Durban smiled. “You want to grab something to eat?”
I didn't need to give the invitation too much thought. The alternative was heading back to the Hilton and reading the hotel's brochure on its extensive range of gym equipment. “Sure. What you got in mind?”
A short while later we were sitting on high stools eating raw fish, delivered by a stream of robots. A glorified cigarette machine with red lips and bumps on its chest area crafted to resemble breasts on a cold day delivered something to us that jiggled on the plate. The machine said something in Japanese in a breathy voice that sounded like it wanted to exchange brake fluids with me. Before I could say “Domo arigato,” the only words I'd managed to learn from the Lonely Planet phrase book, the machine did a one-eighty and rolled off into the crowd.
To kick the evening off, I said, “So, what do you call a woman with one leg?”
“What?”
“Eileen. What do you call a Japanese woman with one leg?”
Durban shrugged.
“Irene.”
She laughed. “That's not funny.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Maybe I need to work on my delivery.” An awful sound coming through the ceiling speakers distracted me. There was a karaoke stage. A businessman sweating sake was tonguing the microphone, his tie loosened and his belly hanging over his belt like he was six months pregnant. The song was vaguely familiar but at the same time not. And then I recognized it, The Beatles' “Hard Day's Night”—in Japanese. If I were one of the Fab Four, I'd be suing him for damages. Several women who were far too young and pretty to be accompanying him clapped excitedly, adoringly. This had to be the sort of behavior men paid for. Escorts, obviously.
“Those women — they're not what you think they are,” said Durban, doing a little mind reading.
“No?” I said. “What do I think they are?”
“I saw the way you looked at them.”
I wondered how I looked at them and decided not to respond with another question, in case Durban mistook me for a shrink.
“Japanese women handle things differently from Western women.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, they missed the whole feminist thing here. In fact, this place is almost feudal in some of its attitudes toward women. The men believe they are superior beings. The women don't challenge that belief. Not directly, anyway.”
“So, are you talking complete subservience to every male whim?” I found myself smiling at the two young Japanese women. Superior beings, eh? One of the women caught me looking at her and twittered to her friend. They both giggled at me from behind their hands.
Durban set me straight. “I meant, made to feel like superior beings.”
“Thanks for ruining it,” I said.
She shook her head. “Haven't you figured it out yet?” she said. “Yes, dear… No, dear… whatever. It's always an act. The women here work with what they've got. It's just a different angle.”
“So, despite appearances, they're no different from the women back home?”
“And what are we like?”
“You want an example?”
Durban nodded. “I can take it.”
“OK… A man goes to the doctor and brings his wife along. He has a checkup. Afterward, the doctor calls her into the office. He says, ‘Your husband is extremely sick, and his fragile state is compounded by huge amounts of stress. If you don't follow my instructions explicitly, he'll die. In the morning, you have to let him sleep late. When he gets up, you have to fix him a good breakfast. Do not stress him out with chores. At lunch, make him something really delicious. Let him sleep in the afternoon. For dinner, cook something special again. Be nice, friendly, and for God's sake don't load him up with your own problems and concerns. The name of the game is to reduce his stress levels to zero. If you can do this for just one month, your husband will regain full health.'
“In the car going home, the husband asks his wife, ‘So what did the doctor say?'
“She replies, ‘You're gonna die.' “
Durban laughed. “Yep,” she said. “That's us.”
A tune from a well-known musical began playing in her jacket pocket. Durban pulled out her cell, then excused herself to answer it, turning toward a plate of raw salmon brought to us earlier by a fembot.
“This place one of your favorites?” I asked when she snapped her cell shut and put it in her pocket. I wasn't sure what I liked least, the food or the entertainment. I chewed on something cold and rubbery, which, come to think of it, was also a suitable metaphor for the music.
Durban nodded. “One of my regular haunts. It's cheap and it's authentic Tokyo. You ever eaten jellyfish before?”
“Never,” I said.
“You have now.”
It squeaked between my teeth like a piece of inner tube as I chewed. “Actually, it's not bad,” I conceded. “Have some. Show me how it's done.”
Durban shrugged and picked a few strands out of the bowl with disposable chopsticks. What I wanted more than anything was to spit my mouthful out and go find a hamburger. The sake was good, though, and it killed the taste of the cuisine. Maybe that's why they served it. I reached for the flask.
“No, no — you never pour your own sake. It's bad luck,” said Durban. I switched cups and filled hers instead. She drank it down, perhaps a little too eagerly.