Walk a few blocks from the Nakamura Detective Agency, down a few alleys, and eventually you’ll come to a seven-story building with the top floor housing a dimly lit shot bar named Sho’s.
Owned and operated by Shotaro Morita, the bar was large enough to accommodate a small stage area where jazz musicians would occasionally perform. Sho himself was an accomplished guitarist and would frequently entertain his customers.
Kyoko and her colleagues would often come here at night after a difficult day of work. On many more occasions, Kyoko would come solo. Once she opened the door, the sound of smooth jazz piping through the speakers gave her a sense of comfort. As such a regular customer, Sho recognized her as soon as she stepped in and flashed her a smile from behind the bar. He was a good twenty years older than Kyoko, with shaggy, shoulder-length hair and round glasses.
“Good to see you, Kyoko.”
“Hi, Sho. The usual.”
Sho nodded and filled a tumbler with ice, setting it on the counter while Kyoko took a seat. He took a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and filled the glass about halfway. Kyoko removed the pack of Seven Stars from her pocket and lit a cigarette. After a few drags, she picked up the scotch and sipped.
“Anything good on tonight?”
“Pretty slow during the week, you know that.” Sho picked up a pamphlet and set it on the counter. “But come by this weekend. Got a great performer coming up from Kagoshima.”
Kyoko studied the face of the young woman on the flyer. “Pretty. You sure it’s just her music you’re interested in?”
Sho chuckled. “You know I’m saving myself for you.”
“You’ll be waiting a long time, you old perv.” Kyoko heard the door to the bar open and looked over her shoulder. Saori and Nobu had arrived.
“Your friends here to steal you away from me?”
“Business, you know how it is. Could you—?”
“Don’t worry, I know what they want.”
Kyoko climbed off the stool and signaled to her colleagues. She walked over to a booth in the corner and slid onto one of the cushioned benches. Saori sat next to her and Nobu across from them both. A few moments after they sat down, Sho arrived with a mug of beer he set in front of Nobu and a chu-hi for Saori. Greetings and thank yous were exchanged before Sho left.
“Tell me what you found out,” said Kyoko.
“Ichikawa’s address, not much else on my end,” said Saori. “Tried to get my contact to send me a record of the calls he made, but I guess not even my charms are that good.”
“Nobu?”
“Made a few calls, meeting a guy later tonight,” said Nobu. “These kind of deals are usually done with fake names, but if I bring some pictures, might get lucky.”
“I went to Akane’s apartment. There’s definitely something fishy about her landlord. I did get him to let me into her place, though. She had a bulletin board of photographs, so I took a picture of it on my phone,” said Kyoko.
“Ichikawa on there?”
“Possibly. There are a lot of photographs.”
“Send it to me, I’ll show it to my guy.”
Kyoko took out her phone and brought up the photograph. She emailed it to Nobu and his phone beeped in his pocket a few seconds later. Before Kyoko put her phone back in her pocket, Saori grabbed her wrist.
“Can I see that?”
Kyoko nodded and passed her the phone. With her fingers, Saori zoomed in on the photo, scrolling from side-to-side. She pointed at one of the images.
“Look.”
Kyoko saw a purikura picture of Akane with another girl, holding peace signs over their eyes. The picture also had names written in hand-drawn hiragana characters. One was Aka the other was Aya.
“You recognize her?” asked Kyoko.
“Ayano Kuroki. Koibito was basically those two.” Saori fished through her bag and dropped a rolled-up magazine on the counter. “And if the magazines are to be believed, they were best friends.”
“What’s this?” asked Kyoko, picking it up. She scoffed when she read the title. “This is a tabloid.”
Saori shrugged. “Yeah, I know. But might be something useful in there. Mostly spins a tale that Akane was into drugs, that she’d clashed with her co-stars many times, and she was boy-crazy.”
“Not sure I trust anything in here, but this Ayano could be a potential source,” said Kyoko. “Good eye.”
“You turn up anything else in the apartment?” asked Nobu after taking a generous swallow of his beer.
“Used condoms in her garbage,” said Kyoko. “And I checked the trash schedule, there was a pick-up scheduled for that morning.”
“You think someone was with her the night she died?” asked Saori.
“No offense, boss, but I don’t think that proves anything,” said Nobu. “I mean, I forget to put my trash out all the time.”
“The basket was mostly empty. The only other things in there were bills and a receipt from the same day. So unless she didn’t have any trash for a week…”
“Ichikawa was with her the day she died,” said Saori.
“And either he’s a stud or he wasn’t the only one.” Kyoko took a drag on her cigarette and exhaled the smoke through her nostrils. “I found three condoms in the trash.”
Saori sipped her chu-hi. “One was probably Ichikawa, then.”
“He’s still my primary interest. But this landlord, Fukui, something about him didn’t sit right with me,” said Kyoko. “He said he had trouble remembering Akane, but when I asked if he’d ever seen her with any guys, he was pretty positive pretty fast that he hadn’t. Almost adamantly positive. And when I mentioned the day of Akane’s death, he looked scared.”
“You think he had something to do with it?” asked Nobu, taking another drink.
“He’s hiding something, I’m sure of it. When he took me to look at Akane’s apartment, he refused to come inside.” Kyoko tapped the cigarette against the edge of the metal ashtray on the table. “Acted like it was haunted.”
Nobu finished his beer and raised the empty glass so Sho could see. He then turned to Kyoko while waiting for his refill. “Superstitious old guys aren’t really rare.”
“Maybe not, but he also didn’t have an alibi—said he was watching TV and drinking when Akane fell. Something else. The bill I found was past-due. Yet Fukui said Akane paid her rent on the first of the month like clockwork.”
“Sometimes you gotta prioritize which bills you’ll pay.” Saori shrugged. “I’ve done that.”
“So have I. But she also had a number of expensive-looking dresses in her closet.” Kyoko paused to sip her scotch. “Akane’s parents said they gave her money on a few occasions. If she was hurting for cash, how did she afford rent and a closetful of high-priced clothes?”
“You think she was moonlighting as a hostess?” asked Nobu.
“There are a few clubs in the area,” said Kyoko. “There are times when those girls will go on dates with customers. The business isn’t strictly prostitution, but it has been known to happen. Fukui wasn’t exactly a model citizen. I saw a stack of old porn mags in his apartment and whenever he looked at me, he couldn’t stop staring at my chest.”
“He might’ve been a customer?” asked Saori.
“Might have explained how she was always on time with her rent when she couldn’t pay her other bills,” said Kyoko. “And we can’t check bank records because he said she always paid in cash.”
“My guy often hangs out near those clubs. I’ll take him to one,” said Nobu. “Get him liquored up and a girl on his arm, he might open up more than usual.”
“Right, it’s all for him,” said Saori.
“Just doing my job, kid.”
“Saori, I want you to go talk to this friend, Ayano,” said Kyoko. “Find out if she and Akane have kept in touch since she was fired.”
“Should I use a cover story or…?”
“If Ayano is really a friend, she’ll want to help with an investigation into Akane’s death. So try the honesty route for now. If that doesn’t work, we’ll think of something else.”
“What are you gonna do, boss?” asked Nobu.
“I’ve handed those condoms over to a friend of mine at the university, he’ll do some tests on them. Without anything to compare the samples to, we won’t know who was with Akane that day, but we will know how many guys it was.”
“Does this mean we’re officially taking on this case?” asked Saori.
Kyoko took another drink of her whiskey. So far, there had been a lot of questions raised by the investigation. Was Akane working as a hostess and occasional prostitute in order to make ends meet? Did her boyfriend find out about her double life and kill her? Or maybe Fukui was sleeping with her, got attached, and then enraged that she was also going with other men.
Of course, there was still the conventional theory—Akane Suzuki was a troubled girl who fell on hard times and took her own life. The photos suggested she was obsessed with her past life, the apartment was nothing to crow about, and if she was working in the mizu shobai—or ‘water business’ as the nighttime entertainment industry was called—then that could have also proven a motive for taking her own life.
“Boss…?” asked Nobu.
Kyoko was taken from her trance. There were still question whether this was murder or suicide. And regardless of what the answer was, Kyoko felt she had to know.
“We’re taking the case.”