Iwata was sitting on his mother’s porch in the dark, looking at the street he’d half-grown up on. The lawns were perfect, the flowerbeds were mollycoddled, the driveways were clean. It was as if the people of Beech Avenue were forever preparing themselves for some regal procession that would never pass through.
Iwata wanted to go inside and look at the photos of Cleo, of Nina – he kept all his own in boxes – but he didn’t want to risk waking his mother. Instead, he sat back in the porch chair and stroked his chin bitterly.
Benedict Novacek was many things. A shitty little man who exploited people and peddled flesh. But Iwata had looked into the eyes of killers before. He had seen power junkies, he had seen manipulators, he had seen animals that had learned to talk and walk on two legs. Novacek was none of them. He was just a weakling.
Bebé Rivera was an unknown quantity. But if the missing girls were all in Mexico, how had Meredith come to be murdered on some train tracks near Skid Row? And if she had been to Mexico, then she had certainly come back alive. Joyce Carbone had said as much. Mr VIP dropped her and things changed.
‘Kosuke?’ Nozomi Iwata stood at the door in her dressing gown. ‘My god, what happened to you?’
‘The other kid started it.’
‘Come inside and leave the jokes out there.’
Iwata followed his mother indoors. She put the TV on so they wouldn’t be alone, then busied herself in the kitchen. A minute later she came out with two cups of brown rice tea and handed one to her son.
Their eyes automatically drifted over to the screen. It was the shopping channel. An all-terrain folding wagon with divider in a range of colours was available for just $83.98 in three easy payments.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look fine.’
A Calista set of twelve hot rollers with clips and travel bag had a final price of $59, available for four easy payments. ‘Mom, I need to talk to you.’
‘You’re leaving.’ She glanced at him. It wasn’t a question.
‘For a short while.’
‘Where will you go?’
A Joan Rivers jewelled oval pendant eighteen-inch necklace comprising antiqued gold tone and blue oval cabochon, framed by marquise-shaped beads in green, peach, pink and purple. The clearance price was $49.82 with $3.02 for shipping and handling.
Now this is not just about what you’re wearing, how you’re looking, or how you’re being perceived by the world. It’s about something more important than that. Something priceless. None of us can put a value on that, but if we were going to try, it wouldn’t be fifty bucks, would it, Ken?
No, it most definitely would not, Marie. So what is it about?
Great question. I’ll tell you. It’s about how what you’re wearing makes you feel.
‘I have to go pay a debt,’ Iwata said.
Nozomi took a breath and turned to face him. ‘Before you go, I need to talk to you.’
Iwata looked up and saw photographs of his wife and daughter. He had wanted to see them earlier; now, they felt like shameful ornaments. ‘I can’t talk now, Mom.’
‘Please, Kosuke. Please.’
Iwata stood and put his cup in the sink. He listened to the running water, keeping his back to his mother. ‘I don’t have anything to say.’
‘Well, I do.’ The loud desperation in her voice shocked him. ‘We never talk. All this time goes by and goes by and we never say anything.’
‘For what, Mom?’
‘Because I have to, son.’ Her old eyes were robin-egg blue in the moonlit kitchen. They were wet, and it was unbearable.
‘When I needed you …’ His voice stumbled. ‘You left me. You left me in the middle of nowhere. Years pass and you come back for me with America, with words. How can I forgive that?’
‘Kosuke, I’m not asking for forgiveness. I know you can’t … Son, I’m just asking you to understand me. Maybe if you –’
Iwata walked past her and stopped at the door. ‘I’ve already got my own regrets, Mother. I can’t carry yours too.’
Nozomi closed her eyes, then nodded to herself. ‘All right.’
Iwata left the kitchen and walked down the hall, ignoring the photographs. He opened the front door.
‘Kosuke!’ she called from the kitchen.
‘What?’
‘That box is for you.’
Iwata looked down at the white cardboard storage box by the door. For some reason it had a koi carp sticker on it. He picked it up and left.
Four a.m. Club Noir. Iwata was leaning against the wall, as far away from the bar as possible. He could not see Mara or Geneviève. His eyes kept returning to the bottles on the shelves above the bar. They gleamed in the neon like potions. For the first time in a long time, he craved them.
For years, he had not so much as considered a red-wine sauce but now he felt an angry thirst in his throat. He wanted to allow himself the fantasy of drinking. Of pills. The anti-gravity they promised. But allowing fantasy was the first step to relapse, and he could not accept that. Not while there was work to do.
Iwata closed his eyes. Even as a child he had been good at finding the truth. Ever since the bus station up in those mountains, he had been hypersensitive to it, waiting for reality to reveal itself again. The truth could not hurt him if he found it before it found him. And so he sought it constantly. At the orphanage he could see past why certain kids shouted and why others would hit out. When his best friend, Kei, disappeared a few months before they were due to leave, Iwata immediately deduced that the man responsible was the orphanage director.
But becoming police had not been down to some personal crusade. It was simply a logical career choice for a man with his natural inquisitiveness. From his first homicides on the cold banks of Lake Hinuma, through his years by the ocean in Chōshi PD, to his headline-grabbing apprehension of the Black Sun Killer in Tokyo, Iwata had always had a firm clarity. He always had the ability to see through other eyes, to imagine the angle, to see the logic in the lie. It was always there inside him.
But now Benedict Novacek was telling him that the truth would be found south of the border. He had implied there would be no coming back. After so long following cheating husbands and ensnaring perfunctory liars, at last Kosuke Iwata had a real case. He did not want it but he was absolutely bound to it, like a drinker’s hand on the neck of a bottle. If the truth was in Mexico, then Iwata would go. This was not a momentous occasion, it was an underwhelming homecoming.
Iwata turned to go. He passed the private rooms on his way out. But something stopped him. There were thick drapes, translucent fabric partitions, plump couches. Before each one, women were dancing on poles. Little Dragon’s ‘Pretty Girls’ was playing.
Iwata thought he’d seen something but now, in the red light, he was unsure. The only thing he felt with certainty was fatigue.
A hand emerged from behind a drape and beckoned. Iwata followed. He opened the drape to a loveseat. There was Mara enveloped in cushions and velvets, a dewdrop in a flower. She was leaning against the pole.
‘Mara.’
‘Who else?’ She slid down the pole like a flag lowered in tragedy and sat across from him. She had a wig on, of vivid scarlet, and a simple black bikini.
‘You disappeared.’
‘Like a ghost?’ She reached for Iwata’s hand and placed it on her calf. It was smooth at first, then rumpled with goosebumps. ‘See, flesh and blood.’
Leaning in this close to her, he could taste the spice in her perfume. Beneath olive skin and dark, small hairs on her arms, he could see the sea-green of her veins.
‘Mara, I think you’re in danger. There’s someone out there –’
‘Hush now,’ she whispered. ‘Lie back, relax.’
She eased him back on to the loveseat and folded his hands across his chest, a mother tucking in a restless child. Again he saw her tattoo, more clearly this time:
1:18 ISA–
A new song began and now Mara closed her lupine eyes in pleasure.
‘Ohhh, I love this one. “Locos” by León Larregui. The lyrics are so beautiful, I wish you could understand. It’s about how crazy we can be for love, how glad to have someone close to us.’
‘Mara, listen to me, there’s someone out there –’
She hopped back up to her pole and twirled. ‘There’s always someone out there, Inspector. We always have to watch out for someone.’
‘You don’t understand. He knows who you are –’
‘Who?’
Iwata saw her, the shape of her, the mass, the volume – yet, like a man crawling towards a mirage, he did not quite understand the sight of her, he could not trust his eyes.
‘Is Mara Zambrano your real name?’
‘You’re so good, aren’t you?’ She smiled gently, her whisper soothing. ‘So good at finding other people. But Inspector, tell me something. Have you ever searched for yourself?’
She brushed away the drape and then she was gone. Iwata wanted to reach for her. Wanted to hold her back. Wanted to give her a reason not to run. But this was sympathy for a bolting fox. Gone was gone.
It was dawn by the time Iwata had packed a small bag and was ready to leave his apartment. The sky couldn’t be called black and it couldn’t be called purple. It was some ugly word that men and women of language hadn’t yet bothered with.
Iwata took one last look at his mother’s white box with the koi sticker then opened the door. Outside, the Bronco wouldn’t start, the key drawing only wheezing coughs from the engine. Swearing, Iwata went back inside and called a taxi.
Half an hour later, he arrived at the Greyhound bus station. He bought pretzels, water and a ticket to Mexico. The bus opened its doors and Iwata got on along with passengers bound for home, bound for family. The driver honked his horn and pulled away. Iwata put his head on the window and closed his eyes. He would always be good at leaving.
A grey, rainy morning. Iwata leans against his Chōshi PD squad car. He has been called out early because of a fight between fishermen, which, in the end, has turned out to be nothing more than friends horsing around. Iwata smokes and watches the Tone River drift by. Tugboats blow their horns, heading out to sea. Tall grass on the riverbanks flutters in the wind like baby hair. Heavy clouds rush past as though late.
Iwata was once thankful to Chōshi, the only place that had given him a break and the means with which to raise his family. But now, a few years on, he resents it.
He speaks languages, he crushes his competition in test scores, he even has international police training. Yet month after month Personnel politely ignores him. Initially, Tokyo had been a professional goal, somewhere his skills could be put to use. Given what he could bring to the table, Iwata had been confident it would be only a matter of time.
But by now the rejection is personal. After several years in the police force he has worked only a handful of murders. His day-to-day has more to do with floods or farming squabbles than anything else. His studies are decorations on a dead Christmas tree. And when, perhaps once a year, a dismembered body is found floating in the bay, it will be kept at arm’s length by his superiors. Iwata will want to investigate, but the second tattoos are noted on the torso it will be dismissed as another difference of opinion between gangsters.
It starts to rain. Iwata crushes out the smoke and looks up and down the road. When he’s sure there’s no one, he reaches into his glovebox for the whisky. He rips open a sachet of honey, squeezes it into his mouth, then takes a long swig.
‘Kosuke?’
Iwata turns to see his partner’s wife. ‘Hoshiko. What are you doing here?’
‘I had some errands, then I felt like a drive. I thought I saw your squad car number …’
Iwata nods. He can’t be bothered to think of a response. A scathing wind picks up and he wipes away cold, meaningless tears. He crushes the last of the honey into his mouth, then takes another swig, his voice deeper now. ‘What do you want, Hoshiko?’
She looks around, her black hair flayed madly by the wind. She is wearing a stupid mauve puffa jacket, yellow rain boots and a rainbow umbrella, which for some reason he finds preposterous.
‘I just wanted to check …’ Hoshiko looks at the floor. ‘That you’re okay.’
He raises the bottle. ‘Never better.’
She walks over uncertainly. ‘Could I have some?’
Iwata frowns but hands over the bottle. She takes a small, pathetic sip and wrinkles her turned-up nose as she swallows. ‘I don’t like that.’
‘Yeah, well. This isn’t the country club.’
‘Do you mind if I stay a while?’
Iwata looks at her. They have shared dinners together, day trips, nights out. But they have never had a single conversation alone. For a while, he encouraged Cleo to socialize with Hoshiko, but she always pushed back. Watching her playing with the bottle, her plain eyes taking in the river, Iwata can see why.
‘How is Taba?’ he asks emptily.
‘He’s back at home. Things are better.’
‘Hm.’ Iwata cannot think of anything he wishes to discuss less than his partner’s shitty marriage. He clears his throat, takes the bottle away from Hoshiko and twists on the cap. He returns it to the glovebox and zips up his coat. ‘Well, I better go. Please tell him I’ll see him soon.’
‘Kosuke?’
‘What?’
‘Can you wait a second?’
He checks his watch. ‘What is it?’
‘I just need to talk to you.’
For the life of him, Iwata cannot envisage a single topic in this world that they would need to discuss. He feels saturated by her, almost as though her hollowness might envelop him.
‘I really do need to head off. You know how it is.’
‘Okay. But do you –’
‘Do I what?’
‘Do you think that I …’
‘Hoshiko, what is it?’
She turns around, unbuckles her belt, then pulls her jeans down to her thighs. Her pale buttocks are rippled with goosebumps, a solitary mole on the right.
‘Do you want me?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Do you want it?’ She juts her body out towards him. Her pubic hair is pitch black, her labia greyish. He does not want Hoshiko but before he can stop to consider the emptiness of it he is fucking his partner’s wife against the police car.
Iwata is sick of being a good man. He is sick of his beautiful wife. He is sick of being a father. He is sick of the existence that everyone assumes he is happy in. Somehow the banality of Hoshiko’s body feels natural. The wind carries the smell of her up to his nostrils and he turns his head away. He sees himself in the side mirror, the pointless bucking of his hips, the pointless emptying of his balls into this lonely woman, as though he were fucking the Tone River itself.
Iwata pulls out and rips up a wet clump of grass to clean himself. Hoshiko tries to kiss him, tries to tell him that she has always felt this way, but he pushes her away.
‘You’re crazy,’ he laughs. ‘Go home.’
Hoshiko’s mouth drops opens but she just looks at her yellow boots, Iwata’s semen dropping on to the dark concrete between them. She pulls up her jeans, picks up her umbrella and walks back to her car. As she opens the door Iwata calls after her.
‘Hoshiko? Don’t you fucking tell anyone. Understand?’
She begins to slam her face against the steering wheel, the horn resounding like clownish chuckles in the morning cold. Iwata gets in the squad car and drives away – a sick feeling in his stomach.
That night Cleo will ask him how he got grass in his underwear. Iwata makes up an excuse and swears to himself he’ll never do something like that again. Within three days he’s is back by the river, Hoshiko bent over and grunting as before.