After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,22
moments of silence follow. Then the man says in Japanese, “Wait a minute.”
“I’ll wait,” says Kaoru. “Till I turn blue.”
Some kind of discussion goes on at the other end. Ear on the receiver, Kaoru twiddles a ballpoint pen between her fingers. Komugi belts out a song using the tip of her broomstick as her mike: “The snow is fa-a-a-a-lling…But where are yo-o-o-o-o-u?…I’ll go on wa-a-a-a-iting…Till I turn blu-u-u-u-e…”
The man comes back to the telephone. “You got the picture there now?”
“Hot off the press,” says Kaoru.
“How’d you get this number?”
“They put all kinds of convenient features into these modern gizmos.”
A few more seconds of silence follow. The man says, “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“I’ll be at the front door.”
The connection is cut. Kaoru frowns and hangs up. Again she pops the bones in her thick neck. The room falls silent.
Komugi speaks hesitantly. “Umm…Kaoru?”
“What?”
“Are you really gonna give those guys the picture?”
“You heard what I said before: I’m not gonna let that bastard get away with beating up an innocent girl. And it pisses me off he skipped out on his hotel bill. Plus, look at this pasty-faced salaryman son-of-a-bitch: I can’t stand him.”
Komugi: “Yeah, but if they find him, they might hang a rock on him and toss him into Tokyo Bay. If you got mixed up in something like that, there’d be hell to pay.”
Kaoru is still frowning. “Nah, they’re not gonna kill him. The police don’t give a shit when those Chinese guys kill each other, but it’s a different story when they start bumping off respectable Japanese. That’s when the trouble starts. Nah, they’ll just grab him and teach him a lesson, and maybe cut off an ear.”
Komugi: “Ow!”
Korogi: “Kinda like van Gogh.”
Komugi: “But really, Kaoru, d’you think they can find the guy with just a photo to go on? I mean, it’s a big town!”
Kaoru: “Yeah, but once those guys make up their minds, they never let go. That’s the way they are with stuff like this. If some guy off the street gets away with making them look bad, they can’t keep their women in line, and they lose face with the other gangs. They can’t survive in that world if they lose face.”
Kaoru takes a cigarette from the desktop, puts it in her mouth, and lights it with a match. Pursing her lips, she slowly releases a long stream of smoke at the computer screen.
On the paused screen the enlarged face of the man.
Ten minutes later. Kaoru and Komugi wait near the hotel’s front door. Kaoru wears the same leather jacket as before, her woolen hat pulled down almost to her eyes. Komugi wears a big, thick sweater. She clutches herself across the chest to ward off the cold. Soon, the man who came to pick up the woman arrives on his big motorcycle. He stops the bike a few paces away from the women. Again he keeps the engine running. He takes off his helmet, rests it on the gas tank, and deliberately removes his right glove. He stuffs the glove into his jacket pocket and stands his ground. He is obviously not going to move. Kaoru strides toward him and holds out three copies of the photo.
“He probably works in a company near here,” she says. “I think he works nights a lot, and I’m pretty sure he’s ordered women here before. Maybe he’s one of your regulars.”
The man takes the photos and stares at them for a few seconds. They don’t seem to interest him especially.
“So?” he asks, looking at Kaoru.
“Whaddya mean, ‘So?’”
“Why are you giving me these?”
“I kinda figured you’d wanna have ’em. You don’t?”
Instead of replying, the man unzips his jacket and puts the photos, folded in half, into a kind of document sack hanging across his chest. Then he raises the zipper to the base of his neck. He keeps his eyes fixed on Kaoru the whole time.
The man is trying to find out what Kaoru wants in return for supplying him with this information, but he refuses to ask the question. He holds his pose, mouth shut, and waits for the answer to come to him. But Kaoru faces him with arms folded like his, aiming her cold stare at him. She is not going to back down, either. This suffocating stare-down goes on for some time. Finally Kaoru breaks the silence with a well-timed clearing of her throat.
“Just let me know if you find him, okay?”
The man grips the handlebar with his left hand and rests