As the hot water began to soak into his parched skin, a heartfelt sigh escaped him. His blood vessels expanded, a sweat broke out on his forehead – and then suddenly the bathtub he was lying in began to spin down a whirling hole.
Here we go again, thought the doctor. He tried ducking his head under water and massaging his temples, but things went on spinning. He felt seasick, as if he was in a boat on rough seas. This just didn’t make sense. He jumped out of the bath, grabbed his bathrobe, and began to pace the room.
As long as he was moving, he discovered, he didn’t feel dizzy, but as soon as he lay down it was back again. Maybe a good stiff drink would improve things a little. He tossed back a beer from the minibar and tried a few warm-up exercises. Soon after, his room service clubhouse sandwiches arrived, so he set to and sated his appetite in hopes that would work. But once he leaned back on the sofa it wasn’t long before the room began to heave up and down and tilt from side to side on a rough sea, and then it was back spinning again. He drank another beer, then emptied two mini bottles of whisky, but the goddamn spinning just went on. He felt he would vomit unless he got up and started pacing the room again.
This was all Kita’s fault!
There was no question. It was Yoshio Kita, the man who’d disappeared into the North Pacific on Friday, who was behind this dizziness. The doctor had no idea if he’d really died or not, since he hadn’t personally managed to check the corpse. This was what was getting to him, and making his middle ear act so strangely.
As a general rule, if someone smashes through a guardrail and plunges fifty feet into the sea inside his car, he’d have an eighty percent chance of dying. What’s more, since this particular man chose to do this as an act of suicide, the odds would surely be higher than usual. But no body had been found. The doctor had failed to lay his hands on the cornea and organs he’d paid for. He had been ejected from the story without a chance to ascertain anything for himself, and there was nothing he could do about it. Except somehow get through this dizziness.
Rest was denied him. He was forced to keep on going, round and round, pointlessly. He was being ordered to keep going, keep trying, or else he’d just spin in place. And who was doing the ordering?
The doctor pulled back a few days. Just who was it that had given him his orders and involved him in this chain of events? Heita Yashiro, that’s who. But he’d settled things with that guy already. If you made your living dealing in other people’s lives, you could only say it served you right to have a kidney stolen. And it was a safe bet that Yashiro, though he was probably still alive for a while yet, wouldn’t want to lay eyes on the doctor again. It was too late to get that kidney back now. It was tucked away inside someone else’s belly, busy filtering out the poisons. Yashiro had done quite a bit to poison the world, but at least his kidney would be helping someone else get rid of some. Meantime, some of his own poisonous dealings had caught up with him and shortened his life considerably.
So who had ordered the doctor to try to save Kita, then? Shinobu, of course. He had no idea whether he’d managed to do as she’d asked or not, in the end. Still, he felt he had to report in to his employer. He picked up the phone and rang her. He found on his cell phone a message from her, almost a prayer for Kita’s safety.
They hadn’t found Kita’s body, he informed her. She wanted to meet right away, she said. She added, however, that wherever she went she was inevitably trailed by gangsters, gawkers, and cops. Could he come to her place, in the guise of a consulting doctor? And make sure to dress the part as obviously as possible, please.
Well at any rate, now that he’d been given the task of making his final report he was at least freed from his dizziness for a while.
He shaved, carefully parted his hair, put on a tie, picked up the Boston bag of medical equipment he’d been carting everywhere, and hailed a taxi. Upon arrival, he swept ostentatiously into the flat, white coat fluttering, before the eyes of the doubtless lurking onlookers crouched in their cars or hidden in the shadows.
Shinobu had undergone a change in the last two or three days. She had a new poise and dignity about her. Yet there was also an air of unswerving determination, quite unlike the single-minded devotion of those few days. Could it be that this over-the-hill idol was suddenly drawing fresh breath now that the eyes of the world were on her again?
“You’ve changed,” the doctor observed bluntly.
“I’ve lost three kilos in the last five days,” she replied, gazing at him levelly. The doctor flinched a little before the strength in her eyes. This was not the look of a girly idol who flirts and fawns.
“I imagine they’ve grilled you to death over it all. You’re the only one who knows the details of the abduction, after all.”
“The cops have kept the pressure up. They’re trying to claim the abductor and I were in cahoots, and it was all a put-up job. I spent another five hours being questioned yesterday. And once the cops were done, it was the turn of the reporters. I’m worn out, let me tell you. Then the production manager’s been fleeced of all that money, so he’s going to use me to the hilt to make up for his losses. I have a half-day off today, then tomorrow I’m back on the treadmill again – magazine interviews, appearance on a talk show, recording discussions, discussions about appearing in some TV drama. In the next few months I have to decide about my future, so I’m being as nice as I can to everyone.”
“You sure no one’s eavesdropping?” the doctor murmured nervously.
“No, we’re fine in here. This is Daddy’s flat. I can’t go back to my own, it’s too dangerous. But they’ll be turning their attention to this place, too, before long.”
She wouldn’t be sleeping properly, he guessed. There was no way she could call a halt to this show-in-a-million she’d set in motion. She’d have to keep up the lies till the day she died. If they ever learned the truth about that abduction, they’d arrest her as an accessory to fraud. If she ever did get the urge to confess, the safest way would be to use a public broadcast. She’d be arrested, true, but at least she’d be free of the harassments of the production manager and the gangsters and politicians. They were bound to smell something fishy about this whole abduction story. And if they started following up their hunch, all they had to do was ask at the inn at that hot springs resort where the two had stayed, and the answer would be clear. Then it would be only a matter of time before they figured out that it was Shinobu herself who was behind all their problems. They’d wipe her career, for sure. Mind you, God knows what kind of career she had to look forward to anyway.
The cops weren’t completely satisfied that she was a victim, yet there was no way they could really set her up as an accomplice either. How could they find a motive that would stick? The only theory that would hold water was that she had been driven by her ambition to get back into the public eye. The mass media were playing up the claim that this former idol was using her misfortune to her own advantage. Meanwhile, the public was on the side of Shinobu and her unknown abductor. Many were saying that even if the whole story proved a farce, they should be let off lightly because, after all, they had helped sick children. Some sympathizers were even saying that thirty million yen was cheap at the price, while fans claimed Shinobu had grown up thanks to her abduction, and cynics spoke of “the starlet whose comeback cost a bomb.”
The names of the production manager, the gangsters, and the politicians who’d put up the ransom money had been publicized. They’d been made to squirm by being asked to explain themselves and clarify whether they intended to recover their money. In response, they had been forced to unanimously declare that Shinobu Yoimachi had their unwavering support and that they were delighted that she had come back safe and sound. This being the case, they were happy to have been able to help those unfortunate children with their donation.