58
“No, not at all,” the man said, though he sounded somewhat uncertain. He knit his
brows and looked at her carefully, as if assessing an object to be used as collateral. He
seemed to suspect her of being a prostitute. But Aomame was clearly not a prostitute.
He relaxed and let his guard down a little.
“Are you staying in this hotel?” he asked.
“No, I live in Tokyo,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m just here to meet my friend.
And you?”
“In
town on business,” he said. “From Osaka. For a meeting. A stupid meeting, but
the company headquarters are in Osaka, so somebody had to come.”
Aomame gave him a perfunctory smile.
I don’t give a shit about your business,
mister
, she thought,
I just happen to like the shape of your head
.
“I needed a drink after work. I’ve got one more job to finish up tomorrow morning,
and then I head back to Osaka.”
“I
just finished a big job myself,” Aomame said.
“Oh, really? What kind of work do you do?”
“I don’t like to talk about my work. It’s a kind of specialized profession.”
“Specialized profession,” the man responded, repeating her words. “A profession
requiring specialized techniques and training.”
What are you, some kind of walking dictionary?
Silently, she challenged him, but
she just kept on smiling and said, “Hmm, I wonder …”
He took another sip of his highball and a handful of nuts from the bowl. “I’m
curious what kind of work you do, but you don’t want to talk about it.”
She nodded. “Not yet, at least.”
“Does it involve words, by any chance? Say, you might be an editor or a university
researcher?”
“What makes you think that?”
He straightened the knot of his necktie and redid the top button of his shirt. “I
don’t know, you seemed pretty absorbed in that big book of yours.”
Aomame tapped her fingernail against the edge of her glass. “No, I just like to
read. Without any connection to work.”
“I give up, then. I can’t imagine.”
“No, I’m sure you can’t,” she said,
silently adding,
“Ever.”
He gave her a casual once-over. Pretending to have dropped something, she bent
over and gave him a good, long look at her cleavage and perhaps a peek at her white
bra with lace trim. Then she straightened up and took another sip of her Cutty Sark on
the rocks. The large, rounded chunks of ice clinked against the sides of her glass.
“How about another drink?” he asked. “I’ll order one too.”
“Please,” Aomame replied.
“You can hold your liquor.”
Aomame gave him a vague smile but quickly turned serious. “Oh, yes, I wanted to
ask you something.”
“What would that be?”
“Have policemen’s uniforms changed lately? And the type of guns they carry?”
“What do you mean by ‘lately’?”
“In the past week,” she said.
59
He gave her an odd look. “Police uniforms and guns
both underwent a change, but
that was some years back. The jackets went from a stiff, formal style to something
more casual, almost like a windbreaker. And they started carrying those new-model
automatic pistols. I don’t think there have been any changes since then.”
“Japanese policemen always carried old-fashioned revolvers, I’m sure. Right up to
last week.”
The man shook his head. “Now there, you’re wrong. They all started carrying
automatics quite some time ago.”
“Can you say that with absolute certainty?”
Her tone gave him pause. He wrinkled his brow and searched his memory. “Well,
if you
put it that way, I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I know I saw
something in the papers about the switch to new pistols. It caused quite a stir. The
usual citizens’ groups were complaining to the government that the pistols were too
high-powered.”
“And this was a while ago?” Aomame asked.
The man called over the middle-aged bartender and asked him when the police
changed their uniforms and pistols.
“In the spring two years ago,” the bartender replied, without hesitation.
“See?” the man said with a laugh. “Bartenders in first-class hotels know
everything!”
The bartender laughed as well. “No, not really,” he said. “It just so happens my
younger brother is a cop, so I clearly remember that stuff. My brother couldn’t stand
the new uniforms and was always complaining about them.
And he thought the new
pistols were too heavy. He’s still complaining about those. They’re 9mm Beretta
automatics. One click and you can switch them to semiautomatic. I’m pretty sure
Mitsubishi’s making them domestically under license now. We almost never have any
out-and-out gun battles in Japan; there’s just no need for such a high-powered gun. If
anything, the cops have to worry now about having their guns stolen from them. But it
was government policy back then to upgrade the force.”
“What happened to the old revolvers?” Aomame asked, keeping her voice as calm
as she could.
“I’m pretty sure they were all recalled and dismantled,” the bartender said. “I
remember seeing it on television. It was a huge job dismantling that many pistols and
scrapping all that ammunition.”
“They should have just sold everything abroad,” said
the thinning-haired company
man.
“The constitution forbids the export of weapons,” the bartender pointed out
modestly.
“See? Bartenders in first-class hotels—”
Aomame cut the man off and asked, “You’re telling me that Japanese police
haven’t used revolvers
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