leave no impression.
“Looks like a totally ordinary guy,” says Komugi.
“The ordinary-looking ones are the most dangerous,” says Kaoru, rubbing her chin. “They carry around a shit-load of stress.”
The man glances at his watch and, without hesitation, takes the key to 404. He strides swiftly toward the elevator, disappearing from the monitor.
Kaoru pauses the image and asks the girls, “So what does this tell us?”
“Looks like a guy from some company,” says Komugi.
Kaoru shakes her head, looking at Komugi with apparent disgust. “I don’t need you to tell me that a guy in a business suit and tie at this time of day has got to be a company guy on his way home from work.”
“Sorrreeee,” says Komugi.
Korogi offers her opinion: “I’d say he’s done this kind of thing a lot. Knows his way around. No hesitation.”
“Right on,” says Kaoru. “Grabs the key right away and heads straight for the elevator. No wasted motion. No looking around.”
Komugi: “You mean this ain’t his first time here?”
Korogi: “One of our regular customers, in other words.”
Kaoru: “Probably. And he’s probably bought his women the same way before, too.”
Komugi: “Some guys like to specialize in Chinese women.”
Kaoru: “Lots of guys. So think about it: he’s an office worker and he’s been here a few times. There’s a good possibility he works in a company around here.”
Komugi: “Hey, you’re right…”
Korogi: “And he works the night shift a lot?”
Kaoru scowls at Korogi. “What gives you that idea? He puts in a day’s work, stops off for a beer, starts feelin’ good, gets hungry for a woman. That could happen.”
Korogi: “Yeah, but this guy wasn’t carrying anything. Left his stuff in the office. He’d be carrying something if he was going home—a briefcase or a manila envelope or something. None of these company guys commute empty-handed. Which means this guy was going back to the office for more work. That’s what I think.”
Komugi: “So he works all night?”
Korogi: “There’s a bunch of people like that. They stay at the office and work till morning. Especially computer-software guys. They start messing around with the system after everybody else goes home and there’s nobody around. They can’t shut the system down while everybody’s working, so they stay till two or three in the morning and take a taxi home. The company pays for the cabs with vouchers.”
Komugi: “Hey, come to think of it, the guy really looks like a computer geek. But how come you know so much, Korogi?”
Korogi: “Well, I wasn’t always doing this stuff. I used to work at a company. A pretty good one, too.”
Komugi: “Seriously?”
Korogi: “Of course I worked seriously. That’s what you have to do at a company.”
Komugi: “So why did you—”
Kaoru snaps at them: “Hey, gimme a break, will ya? You’re supposed to be talking about this stuff. You can yap about that shit somewhere else.”
Komugi: “Sorry.”
Kaoru reverses the video to 10:52 and sets it to play frame by frame, pausing it at one point and enlarging the man’s image in stages. Then she prints the image, producing a fairly good-size color photograph of the man’s face.
Komugi: “Fantastic!”
Korogi: “Wow! Look what you can do! Like Blade Runner!”
Komugi: “I guess it’s handy, but the world’s a pretty scary place now if you stop and think about it. You can’t just walk into a love ho any time you feel like it.”
Kaoru: “So you guys better not do anything bad when you go out. You never know when there’s a camera watching these days.”
Komugi: “The walls have ears—and digital cameras.”
Korogi: “Yeah, you gotta watch what you’re doing.”
Kaoru makes five prints in all. Each woman studies the man’s face.
Kaoru: “The enlargement is grainy, but you can pretty much tell what he looks like, right?”
Komugi: “I’d definitely recognize him on the street.”
Kaoru twists her neck, cracking and popping the bones, as she sits there, thinking. Finally, an idea comes to her: “Did either of you guys use this office phone after I went out?”
Both women shake their heads.
Komugi: “Not me.”
Korogi: “Or me.”
Kaoru: “Which means nobody dialed any numbers after the Chinese girl used the phone?”
Komugi: “Never touched it.”
Korogi: “Not a finger.”
Kaoru picks up the receiver, takes a breath, and hits the redial button.
After two rings, a man picks up the other phone and rattles off something in Chinese.
Kaoru says, “Hello, I’m calling from the Hotel Alphaville. You know: a guest of ours beat up one of your girls around eleven o’clock? Well, we’ve got the guy’s photo. From the security camera. I thought you might want one.”
A few