Remote Control Read online

  fie closed the phone. Where to go? What to do? He was out of ideas, and he felt sure he was still being followed. As he glanced around, he realized these streets were on his old delivery route.

  He had let himself into Inai's apartment with the spare key hidden under the fire extinguisher. Now, with the curtains still closed tight, he was watching the T V. At first he liad kej)t the volume oh, but the solemn look on the face ol the announcer made him want to know what he was saying.

  I he apartment was a mess. T he table was buried under piles ol pa|)ers and j)ackages, and the Ixjxes stacked by the closet suggested he had been pic'piir-ing to move. Hut Aoyagi wasn't convinced tluU he'd be away loi a whole* year, despite what the building manager IkkI said about his |).iyiiig the ic*nl

  REMOTE CONTROL

  in advance. Maybe he didn't know how long he'd be gone; or, even if he had planned on a year, what was to prevent him from losing interest along the way and coming home early? Still, whatever his lorig-term travel plans were, Aoyagi was fairly sure that Inai wouldn't be coming back this afternoon. In all the time he'd made deliveries here, he had never once found him home at this hour. It was a place he could shelter in for a while.

  Noticing a Walkman sitting on the desk, he began openiiig drawers. In the bottom one, he found a tangle of cords, from which he extracted a pair of earphones. They turned out to he the kind he'd seen used with cell phones, with a tiny microphone attached, and he wasn't sure how to use them. With a hit more tugging at the mass of wires, though, he managed to unravel a pair of black earbuds.

  Every channel was replaying the same scenes. The limousine gliding down Higashi Nibancho, the camera moving in for a close-up of the dignified, determined profile. Then the little helicopter fluttering down from the textbook warehouse . . . and the explosion.

  Aoyagi gripped the remote. A remote-controlled helicopter? As the images scrolled past in an endless loop, he stared hard at the whirling toy. Was it just a coincidence? He took out his phone and began slowly punching a number. Koume Inohara's name came up on the display.

  "Oh dear, 1 just can't make this work. It must be me. Am I doing it right?" From the beginning, Koume Inohara had an odd way of speaking rather formally while sounding quite familiar. Her short frame, clipped speech, and slightly aggressive style somehow worked together. She had been busy for a while with the touch-screen on the job-placement terminal at the employment office and then suddenly turned to Aoyagi for help.

  "Let's have a look," he'd said, moving over to try her screen. It was frozen and he had no luck with it either.

  "Good," Koume laughed. "I'm glad it's not me." Her hair was shoulder length, dyed a light brown. "But how will I ever find a job if I can't even get the computer to work?" There was something appealing about her even when she was grumbling.

  "Maybe it thinks you need a little more time off," Aoyagi said, trying to cheer her up.

  THE INCIDENT

  "Maybe I do/' she laughed. And so they had struck up a friendship two months ago. He had run into her again when he went to check the job postings, and they had started having lunch together from time to time. One day she'd asked if he had any hobbies. He told her he didn't, and when he'd asked about hers she said it was a little unusual: "Remote-controlled model helicopters."

  He pressed the send button on his phone. "Be careful. Don't trust anyone," Morita had said. Aoyagi felt himself tense up when the phone rang. Trust and verify, he told himself. There was no answer and again he was told to leave a message. The voice was the same as the one on Kazu's recording. You again, he smiled to himself. She seemed to be the only one willing to take his calls.

  "It's me, Aoyagi," he said. "Sorry I've been out of touch. 1 saw the whole thing about the helicopter on the news. 1 couldn't believe it." He paused, not sure what else to say. "1 guess that's it," he added before hanging up.

  He remembered how innocent and happy she had looked when she invited him to come with her to fly the helicopter. "You won't believe how much fun it is!"

  On the TV, Kaneda's limousine was once again being engulfed by the explosion. The screen filled with smoke. There were glimpses of dark figures staggering around in the aftermath. He had been sitting with Morita nearhy when all this had happened. T hen there was the other explosion. Could it really have been .Morita's car? He tried to chase the scene from his head, with little success.

  Viewers were told there were roadblocks on all the highways in and out of Sendai, and that service on the Bullet Train and all the local trains and buses had been susj)ended. "It is unclear whether this crime was the work of an individual or a grouj), but someone was controlling that helicoj)ter and we have every reason to believe that j)erson is still at large in the city of Sendai." T he serious-faced s|)eaker was identified as a "writer" by the caption at the Ixjttom of the screen. Aoyagi had the eerie feeling the man coukl see him through the T V screen, see him sitting here in Inai's aj)artment.

  They also replayed a news conlerence given by the police. TTie assistant divisi(jn chief from (jeneral Intelligence in the Security Bureau Wiis tloing the talking, a baby-faced man named Ichitaro Sasaki, who seemed mmsuiilly calm and collected given the circumstances.

  from his exj)erience with the media two years earlicM, Aoyagi knew how

  REMOTE CONTROL

  uncomfortable it was to liave a microphone shoved in your face. When they kept pushing it closer and closer and repeating their questions, you felt as though you had to say something, even if it made no sense.

  So he was impressed by Sasaki's ability to remain calm in the face of a roomful of shouting reporters. His attitude seemed to suggest that the more the reporters indulged in wild speculation, the more determined he was to conduct a thorough and careful investigation. When they had run out of steam, he made a short statement.

  "The fact that the crime occurred in Sendai may be the one bright spot in this tragedy. Thanks to the Security Pods that were installed here last year, we've been able to collect a great deal of information, and I'm convinced we'll soon have the culprit or culprits in custody."

  Aoyagi had seen the Security Pods around town but he didn't know much about them. They had appeared quite suddenly, perhaps because the police had failed to make an arrest in the case of a serial killer who was terrorizing the city. You could spot them in the bushes around a hotel, in the corner of a pedestrian underpass, in public parking lots, and they lined all the major streets at intervals as regular as the city's famous zelkova trees.

  "They've got the suckers everywhere," one of his fellow drivers had told him when they first began popping up around town. "Now they'll know everything we're up to."

  "Everything?" Aoyagi had wondered.

  "They're like those cameras that catch you speeding and take a picture of your license plate, but these catch you at everything else."

  "Like what?" Aoyagi said, not convinced that the cute little pods could be so insidious.

  "Well, for one thing, they'll know when we park illegally to make a dropoff. And I heard they can eavesdrop on your cell phone."

  "What about privacy laws?" said Aoyagi. "They can't listen in when you haven't done anything wrong."

  "Which is why they're not telling anybody." There was something plausible about his friend's paranoia, and yet the pods looked innocent enough, sitting right out in the open for everyone to see.

  Aoyagi stared at his phone. He wasn't sure why they'd want to know who called who or how they'd use the information, but it was unsettling to think

  THE INCIDENT

  that the device in his hand was always sending out a signal. He was about to turn it off when it suddenly began to vibrate and the display lit up with the name of the incoming caller.

  "Kazu," he said; as he pushed the talk button.

  "Aoyagi, my long lost-friend," Kazu's voice said.

  "'Long-lost friend'?" said Aoyagi. "What are you talking about?" Kazu had never used such fancy language.

  "Well, you are," he said. "A long-l
ost friend."

  .•oyagi didn't have time to argue. "Sorry to call out of the blue, but I was wondering if you could put me up at your place tonight."

  "My place?" His tone made it clear he didn't think much of the idea.

  "I'm not sure," .Aoyagi hurried on, "but it looks like I'm about to be homeless."

  "What happened? Did they kick you out?"

  "I lost mv kev." It was the first lie that came into his head, but it would have to do. "I can't get in touch with the manager, so 1 was hoping I could crash with you. .Are you still in the same apartment?"

  "Yeah, the same place. But do you think you can get a key tomorrow?"

  T he gears turned in Aoyagi's head. He could come back here to Inai's if he had to, so maybe there'd be no need to impose on Kazu. "I think so," he said.

  "But other than being homeless, what have you been up to, my old friend?" Kazu said.

  "I quit my job," Aoyagi told him, noting that he was now an old friend. "I'm collecting unemployment at the moment."

  "Is that so?"

  "How about you? What's up with you?"

  "Can you talk?"

  "Sure." T he question seemed strange, as though Kazu was worried about using up Aoyagi's cell phone minutes. "It's been a while; 1 thought we could catch u|) a bit."

  "So what are you doing?" Kazu said.

  "1 just t(jld you. I'm uneinployetl."

  "1 meant, what are you doing right now?"

  "Talking on the jrlione with you," he said.

  "I kiKJW, but where are you calling from?"

  REMOTE CONTROL

  "I'm at a hotel," Aoyagi lied. He could hardly say that he was being chased by the police and had broken into a stranger's apartment.

  "Well," Kazu said abruptly, "call me again if you need anything." And with that he hung up. Aoyagi stared at the phone in his hand. The parade was still making its endless way across the TV screen, but he couldn't bring himself to put the earbuds back in. The only thing he could figure out in all of this was that no one seemed to be able to figure anything out. That's why the TV showed the same pictures ad nauseam, and the talking heads yammered on about nothing. He held out the remote and switched it off.

  The light faded behind the curtains and shadows spread along the walls. Aoyagi rose and made another circuit of Inai's room. The pile of boxes brought a thin smile to his lips. Many of them still had packing slips attached to them, including some he must have delivered himself. He felt as though he was meeting an old traveling companion iii an unexpected spot.

  Somewhere in the middle of the stack, he noticed a box with markings from a well-known brand of health foods. Moving some other boxes, as though playing a giant game of Zenga, he managed to extract this one and put it on the floor. It was full of a kind of energy bar that he had often eaten when he was too busy to get a real meal. He wasn't sure why Inai would have bought a whole case of them—some sort of closeout deal or promotion—but that didn't stop him from stuffing handfuls of the bars into his bag. It was out of character for him to take something like this, but he noticed that the expiration date on the bars was already past and comforted himself with the thought that he could replace the ones he was taking with a fresh supply later.

  He moved a few more boxes to reach the closet door. On a shelf inside was a small library of guidebooks and other materials relating to outdoor survival, as well as field guides to plants and insects. Maybe Inai really was off on an adventure. On the bottom shelf was a futon and, next to it, a length of white rope. Squatting down and pulling these out, he found a tightly rolled sleeping bag right at the back.

  The other shelves in the closet held Inai's clothes, shirts and sweaters folded and arranged as neatly as in a shop window. And behind them, a knitted cap. The colors were a bit too bright for his taste, but he put it on and went to have a look in the bathroom mirror. Not a bad start on a disguise.

  Back in the living room, he opened his bag again and tried to make room

  THE INCIDENT

  for the rope and the cap. But now the zipper wouldn't close. Another trip around the apartment. He was amazed how quickly lie was overcoming his scruples—but he had little choice. He found a backpack, navy blue and nondescript but bigger than his bag. Unzipping it, he began repacking.

  Another peculiarity of Inai's housekeeping: his refrigerator was full of CDs rather than food. It was turned off, so the disks weren't cold, but it still struck Aoyagi as a strange place for music. Unlike the neatly folded clothes, the CDs had been stuffed in at random—and if the disks were here, where was the food, anyway? He decided Inai must eat out all the time and had therefore pressed his refrigerator into service as a media cabinet. He noticed a little sticky note on the door: "Today, you are a CD rack." It was even dated. He wasn't sure whether the note was a suggestion to the refrigerator or a reminder to himself, but there was no doubt that Inai was one strange character.

  As he was trying to close the refrigerator door, a stack of disks fell over and several of them slid out onto the floor—and there they were, amid the scattered cases: the Fab Four, walking across Abbey Road.

  He went back into the living room. Pulling the connection out of the TV, he plugged the earphones into the stereo, put the CD in the tray, and pressed the button to skip to "You Never Give Me Your Money" at the beginning of the medlev.

  As the quiet piano music started, he could feel himself relax. Before he knew it, he was curled up on the floor, clutching his knees to his chest. T he familiar voice murmured softly in his ears, and the shifting rhythms began to make him sleepy. It was still early, but he was exhausted. Maybe he hoped everything would go back to the way it had been if he could only sleej:). He had the feeling Paul was whis|)ering to him over and over—"All good children go to heaven."

  At S(jme point, the music had ended and the disk had stopped. Aoyagi was almost asleep, but the sound from the intercom made him sit bolt upright. Pulling ()i the earbuds, he looked around lor his backpack. He got up and j)eered d(jwn the liall toward the door.

  The intercom rang again and his eyes searched the room. The monitor, complete with a video screen, was next to the light switch. He could see the manager and hear him telling the two men in the ceiitiM ol Hu* picture

  REMOTE CONTROL

  that this was the only empty apartment in tlie building. Two men in suits, though they didn't look like the two from his own building.

  "Open it," one of them told the manager.

  The camera must have been mounted above the door, since it looked down on the men, making them seem almost like children waiting for a friend to come out to play. But the charm of the scene was lost on Aoyagi, whose heart was racing. How could they have found him here?

  What could have led them to Inai's building? There was some chance they were going door to door in Sendai, in which case it was just a matter of time before they got to this apartment, but to arrive so quickly at the one place he'd chosen to hide—it seemed a little too easy. The monitor clicked off, perhaps on an automatic timer.

  He padded down the corridor as quietly as he could. For some reason the front door seemed a long way off. Dizzy from the fear they'd come bursting through it, he almost stopped short. But his feet kept moving under him, and he stepped down into the cement-floored entrance hall. He could hear them just outside. After checking that the chain was latched, he grabbed his shoes and retreated down the passage.

  A sliver of evening sky was visible through the gap in the curtains as he shouldered his new backpack. It held the contents of his old one, plus the energy bars and the rope. He turned back to the boxes for a moment, wondering whether there was anything else he should take.

  The intercom sounded again, and he looked at the monitor. The men were still staring at the door, the manager behind them holding the fire extinguisher. His hand fumbled under the canister. "The spare ought to be here," he said.

  "Could somebody be in there?" said one of them.

  Aoyagi could see the manager reach into hi
s pocket and hand over his own keys. The lock clicked as he got up, pulled the rope from his pack, and headed for the balcony.

  He could hear the door opening behind him and the chain going taut. Someone called out. Shouldering his pack, he turned long enough to push over the mountain of boxes. They were heavier than he'd thought, but he was able to bring them down in a hip-deep pile in front of the door. It wouldn't slow them down for long. Several of the boxes had broken open as they hit the floor and their contents scattered. He felt bad about the dam-

  THE INCIDENT

  age, but he also noticed something useful in the mess and without thinking shoved it in his pocket.

  At this point, the chain must have given way and he heard the door swing open. Someone called his name and footsteps came down the hall. He pulled aside the curtains, opened the sliding door, and stepped out onto the balcony. As he wrapped the rope around the rail, the rows of houses stretching away in the evening light seemed unusually peaceful, in contrast to the shouting in the room behind him; apparently the boxes had worked better than he'd hoped. After one more loop around the rail, he let the rest of the rope fall—not quite to the ground but close enough.

  Then something exploded. The window next to him shattered, and Aoyagi covered his face in his hands. Shards of glass rained down around him. As if in a dream, he threw his leg up over the railing, then hesitated, wondering whether the rope was properly secured.

  "Aoyagi! Stop!" yelled one of the men. He swung the other leg over the railing and hung from the rope. There was a creaking noise and his body rocked to one side, pulled by the heavy backpack. T he railing groaned.

  He grasped the rope in both hands, wrapped his ankles around it below, and began sliding down. At the second floor, he checked the distance to the ground: just a little more and he could jump.