552
After her husband’s death, she continued to live alone in that enormous mansion.
No doubt she had a few servants, so she wasn’t totally alone. She had two children,
and her son had taken over the company. The son had three children. Her daughter
had married and died fifteen years ago of an illness. She left no children behind.
This much was easy to find out. But once he tried to dig deeper into the woman’s
background, a solid wall loomed up out of nowhere, blocking his way. Beyond this,
all paths were closed. The wall was high, and the door had multiple locks. What
Ushikawa did know was that this woman wanted to keep anything private about her
completely out of public view. And she had poured considerable effort and money
into carrying out that policy. She never responded to any sort of inquiry, never made
any public statements. And no matter how many materials he raked through, not once
did he come up with a photograph of her.
The woman’s number was listed in the Minato Ward phone book. Ushikawa’s
style
was to tackle things head on, so he went ahead and dialed it. Before the phone
had rung twice, a man picked up.
Ushikawa gave a phony name and the name of some investment firm and said,
“There’s something I would like to ask the lady of the house about, regarding her
investment funds.”
The man replied, “She isn’t able to come to the phone. But you can tell me
whatever she needs to know.” His businesslike tone sounded mechanical,
manufactured.
“It’s company policy not to reveal these things to anyone other
than the client,”
Ushikawa explained, “so if I can’t speak with her directly now, I can mail the
documents to her. She will have them in a few days.”
“That would be fine,” the man said, and hung up.
Ushikawa wasn’t particularly disappointed that he couldn’t speak to the dowager.
He wasn’t expecting to. What he really wanted to find out was how concerned she
was about protecting her privacy. Extremely so, it would appear. She seemed to have
several people with her in the mansion who kept a close guard over her. The tone of
this man who answered the phone—her secretary, most likely—made this clear. Her
name was printed in the telephone directory, but only a
select group could actually
speak to her. All others were flicked away, like ants who had crawled into the sugar
bowl.
. . .
Pretending to be looking for a place to rent, he made the rounds of local real estate
agencies, indirectly asking about the apartment building used as the safe house. Most
of the agents had no idea there was an apartment building at that address. This
neighborhood was one of the more upscale residential areas in Tokyo. These agents
only dealt with high-end properties and couldn’t be bothered with a two-story,
wooden apartment building. One look at Ushikawa’s face and clothes, too, and they
essentially gave him the cold shoulder.
If a three-legged, waterlogged dog with a torn-
off tail and mange had limped in the door, they would have treated it more kindly than
they treated him.
553
Just when he was about to give up, a small local agency that seemed to have been
there for years caught his eye. The yellowed old man at the front desk said, “Ah, that
place,” and volunteered information. The man’s face was shriveled up, like a second-
rate mummy, but he knew every nook and cranny of the
neighborhood and always
jumped at the chance to bend someone’s ear.
“That building is owned by Mr. Ogata’s wife, and yes, in the past it was rented out
as apartments. Why she happened to have that building, I don’t really know. Her
circumstances did not exactly demand that she manage an apartment building. I
imagine she mostly used it to house their employees. I don’t know much about it now,
but it seems to be used for battered women, kind of like those
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