Remote Control Read online

  "1 wonder if the professor noticed?" Aoyagi said.

  "1 don't see how he couldn't have. But he j)layed it j:)retty cool. He just sat there. But when Morita found out what had haj)[)ened, he was furious with Kazu for not telling him." Kazu had insisted that there was no way he could have said anything with the man sitting right there; and besides, he'd given him a signal: "Y(ju should watch out when I add that 'Mr.'" he had said.

  A(jyagi's cell j)hone rang at that point. It occurred to Haruko that it might he the restaurant, hut it was unlikely they'd he calling customers to contirm reservations, even in this rain. Aoyagi checked the display. "My mother," he said.

  "Your mother? It's not like her to tall, is it?"

  "No." He answered, hut his greeting was tool, lollowetl by a lt*w unen-thusiastic grunts. "No, same as always," he saiti, smiling loi the liisl lime.

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  Then, "No, what can you do? It won't do any good to say anything." And he hung up.

  "What was that all about?" Haruko asked.

  "My dad. In most ways, he's a pretty average guy, but he has this obsession with those lechers who feel up women on crowded trains. He can't stand them, has a fit every time you even mention them."

  "Nothing wrong with that," Haruko murmured, a bit put out by the new topic.

  "1 agree, but there are limits. CTnce, when 1 was in high school, my mother got a call from a lady who lived in the neighborhood saying he was at the train station making a scene. When we got there, he had this guy pinned down on the platform and he was beating the shit out of him. Apparently he'd caught him groping a girl on the train and pulled him off—which was okay, 1 guess, but then he couldn't control himself and started punching him."

  "What did you do?"

  "My mother was crying and tugging at him, and finally some station cops managed to separate them. It was pretty bad." Aoyagi looked as though the scene was playing out in front of him. "She was calling just now to say the same thing happened again. He caught another one and beat him up."

  "I'm not sure I blame him."

  "But he's driving my mother crazy, and then she calls me—though I don't know what she thinks I can do."

  "Still, in a way it's a good deed."

  "But he doesn't think about the consequences. He just reacts on the spot, goes berserk. That's not right. He needs to take a step back, do things deliberately."

  "All of a sudden, you're for deliberation?" she laughed.

  Aoyagi called the restaurant about the reservation. "They were pretty nasty," he said after hanging up. "I guess you don't cancel on a place like that at the last minute."

  "It's a famous restaurant, but that's still no reason to be rude," she agreed.

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  h

  Haruko Higuchi

  '"Mommy?" said Nanami. "Are you dreaming?" Haruko had been sitting at the kitchen table staring at the television. Every channel was showing footage of Masaharu Aoyagi. Nanami was playing on the floor, stopping from time to time to ask to be taken outside. What good was having the day off from kindergarten if she didn't get to go to the playground?

  "But the people on the TV said it's dangerous to go out today," Haruko lied. "There was that bad trouble downtown yesterday."

  "You mean the bomb? 1 think Daddy's worried. Somebody really important died."

  "That's right," said Haruko, thinking how odd it was that children learned so young about the concept—and the reality—of death. Maybe it was the TV, or manga, or video games. She remembered how dismayed she and her husband had been one day when Nanami, barely a toddler, had brought them a grasshopper she'd caught and announced that it had died. She had wanted to know where it had gone now that it was dead.

  Nobuyuki had answered without any hesitation, "It's not there anymore," pointing at the stiff little creature in her hand. "It's here." He pointed at her chest.

  "Here?"

  "In Nanami's heart," he said.

  T his had seemed a bit too sentimental to Haruko, but then again she supposed it was true that j)eoj)le lived on after death in the memories of the ones who loved them. T hey had laughed, though, when Nanami made a face and said it was "yucky" to have a bug inside her. She threw the thing across the rcKjm. Nol)uyuki had l)een forced to reassure her that it was good and dead, and would never get inside her. He had tossed the bug out the window.

  "Is he a bad man?" Nanami whis|)ered now. Haruko looked up iit the screen to see a j)icture ol Aoyagi from his days as a delivery driver. Unsure Ikjw t(j answer, she reached tor her mug on the table.

  "1 don't think so," she murmured.

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  "He's not?"

  "No, he's just a regular man. I bet you'd like him." She stopped herself from adding "as much as your mother did."

  They showed a close-up of Aoyagi, with a somber voiceover. "At the time, he was a fresh-faced hero, but looking at this picture riow, it seems clear that something darker was lurking beneath the surface." The shot showed him looking back over his shoulder, and there was, in fact, something a bit sinister about his expression seen at such close range. •

  "Bad man!" Nanami shouted, accustomed as she was to reacting to TV cues.

  In spite of herself, Haruko was impressed at how effectively they had made Aoyagi into a villain, though their image had nothing to do with the character of the man she'd known. If an insistent photographer had yelled his name from behind until he turned around, the shot might well have looked like this. But it took a certain devious skill to extract the expression from its context and emphasize the negative side of it.

  As she stared at the picture, it seemed to blur, and that horrid fish from the game long ago swam across the screen. "Don't settle for too little," it said, giving her a nasty look. Was it possible that Aoyagi had taken the advice to heart and decided he had to do something big? A moment later, she was watching the owner of a toiikutsu restaurant being interviewed, and—perhaps it was just her imagination—something about his face reminded her of the fish as well.

  The man reported that Masaharu Aoyagi had been in his restaurant when the prime minister's parade was getting started. "It was before noon, so the place was still empty. He sat right in that chair, eating lunch and watching TV." He bristled when one of the reporters asked whether he was absolutely sure it was Aoyagi. "You don't believe me? Of course it was. We give free seconds on rice, and twice he called me over to ask for more. Didn't leave a single grain in his bowl. Pretty weird, don't you think? Who has an appetite like that before he goes out and kills somebody?"

  Haruko was so absorbed in the TV that she didn't hear Nanami at first.

  "Mommy? Mommy, what's the matter?"

  "Nothing's the matter, honey." Didn't leave a single grain in his bowl? Aoyagi?

  She wanted to scream at the TV that he didn't eat like that, not even after

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  she'd teased him endlessly. Or maybe he'd changed after they split up. After all, when they were together, she would never have imagined he could turn into someone who managed to rescue that actress. So maybe he'd also turned into someone who didn't eat like a slob. It wasn't out of the question.

  For some reason, Nanami was no longer in the room. She called her name and ran out into the corridor. When she reached the front door, she was crouching there putting on her shoes.

  "Mommy won't take me out, so I'm going myself."

  "Okay, okay," Haruko said, slipping into her own shoes. "Wait a minute and we'll go together."

  Three other mothers had brought their children to the park near their building. While the kids swarmed over the swings and slides, the women talked about the assassination. Haruko knew the names of the children but not the mothers. She doubted thev knew hers, either.

  One of them said how frightened she was. "But it doesn't even seem real," said another. "And the man who did it is probably right here in Sendai. We were living in Niigata until last year, but we knew all about the deliveryman. He was on TV a lot
."

  "W'ell, you can imagine what it was like here, in his hometown," said another woman. "F’verybody was talking about him, at least for a while. 1 actually saw him once," she added. Her child was dinging to her leg like a koala in a eucalyj^tus tree.

  "Mrs. Higuchi, you've been here in Sendai all along, haven't you?" said another woman with two koalas of her own.

  "Yes," she admitted. "But, you know, that man seems pretty normal to me, pretty much like anybody else, except that he rescued that woman." The words slipped out before she knew she'd said them. But to her relief, the other mothers seemed to agree—reminding each other that he was just a delivery-man, and a particularly good-looking one at that.

  Nanami, who had been hanging about lollowitig the conversation, suddenly S|)oke up. "1 like him, too," she said. "He's |)ietty." The women burst (jut laughing.

  "Still," one of them said, now frowning, "you can't tell a book by its cover."

  "You're right. And it's bad enough it he did this thing at the par.ide, but

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  they're saying on TV that he was also caught groping a woman on the train. 1 draw the line there," she said. Startled, Haruko turned to stare at the woman.

  "It was apparently a while back, but someone saw him running away after it," said another woman.

  "Why would a handsome guy like that go after women on the train?"

  "They say it's a sickness, that they can't stop themselves. It doesn't matter what they look like, or how they do with women otherwise. 1 guess they need the danger to get their kicks."

  "I guess," Haruko mumurmed.

  "I hope they catch him soon," someone else put in. "But you know, there's a weird guy who's been hanging around here, too," she added.

  "I heard he tried to talk to Ken on the playground."

  "I wonder if that could be this Aoyagi? ..."

  They seemed to have decided that Aoyagi was responsible for every crime that had been committed recently in the whole country, and that his capture and imprisonment would usher in a new era of peace and security. It might have been funny if it weren't so frightening. What if she told them now that she had once dated this Aoyagi? She was sure they would turn on her instantly, and that she and her family would be driven out of the neighborhood. Hiding her feelings as best she could, she lingered a few minutes while Nanami pulled up the grass at her feet.

  Unexpectedly, one of the mothers turned to Haruko and commented that she must be about the same age as the suspect. It may have been nothing more than an idle observation, but it struck her as odd. Unsure how to answer, she hesitated, and then muttered something vaguely, as if she hadn't quite understood. Anyway, at that moment Nanami tugged at her sleeve.

  "Mommy, I have to go potty," she said.

  Haruko said a hurried goodbye and left the park as quickly as she could.

  "Can you make it home?" she asked as they came to an intersection.

  "Don't worry. Mommy," her daughter said. "I don't have to go."

  "But you just said—"

  "I knew you didn't like talking to those ladies," Nanami said, twirling a branch she had picked up somewhere.

  "You mean you were rescuing me?" Haruko laughed. Nanami had a habit

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  of using this ploy to escape uncomfortable situations herself; but her mother now had a new appreciation for her little trick. "You clever girl," she said.

  "Did 1 help?" she asked.

  "You certainly did."

  "Good!" Nanami shouted. "Then i'll help next time, too."

  "Okay," said Haruko. "We'll have a signal. When I scratch my nose, you say you need to go pott’."

  As they were walking home, Haruko found herself thinking again about the charge that Aoyagi had been caught molesting a woman on a train. Could he really be such a monster? She said the last word aloud without quite realizing what she was doing.

  "Monster? Where?" said Nanami, looking around frantically and sticking her arms out in the pose of the hero from one of her TV shows.

  Haruko remembered how much Aoyagi's father had hated these people, how he had caught a few of them on the train and then beaten them up. She had been rather curious about him, but when they actually met—the one and only time—he proved to be a short, well-built man, the judo teacher type, who impressed her as serious and stable rather than some sort of lunatic.

  They had been on their way to Disney Resort and had stopped in at Aoyagi's parents' house. He had said he just wanted to introduce her and they'd be on their way, but they had insisted on making them dinner. To their credit, they didn't seem to assume they were engaged, but his father had stopped at one point to say how glad he was to see them together. "My son may seem a bit thick at times," he said, "but his heart's in the right place."

  "You really think so?" Aoyagi's mother laughed, smiling at her husband.

  "Well, at least he's not the type to ever bother a woman on the train," said his father. "He miglit be caj)able of killing someone, but never of molesting them."

  Haruko kxjked startled. "Really? T hat doesn't sound too reassuring some-Ikjw."

  "Don't get me wrong," he added quickly. "I'm iiot condoning murder. But there are times when killing somebody is unavoidable—sell-delense, lor instance, or if y(ju were protecting your family. It's a 'never say never' kind ol thing."

  "Is it?" Haruko murmured, sup|)ressing a giggle.

  "Which is why 1 say that there's a remote possibility that Masahtim might

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  kill someone—there's no way of knowing until he's confronted with the situation. But no extenuating circumstances, nothing would ever make it okay to attack a woman like that. No one could ever tell you he felt up a woman ori a train to protect his children. That's what I'm trying to say."

  "Well, thanks for that. Dad," Aoyagi said. Sometimes he found it hard to believe that he was related to this man. "But you're right about one thing," he added. "I'd never be able to bother a woman on the train—not after seeing how you beat the crap out of those guys."

  "You don't mean 'not able to,' dear," his mother started to correct him.

  "Yes he does," his father broke in. "He'd never be able. He's not strong enough."

  Haruko and her daughter walked along holding hands. "Could he really have?" Haruko murmured, lost in her thoughts.

  "Could he really have?" Nanami echoed. As she smiled at the girl, Haruko wondered how Aoyagi's father was taking the news that was all over the TV. Not only were they blaming the assassination on their son, they were accusing him of having molested women in the months leading up to it. She found herself worrying about his parents, realizing their house must already be surrounded by reporters and cameras. "Are you all right. Mommy?" Nanami said, pulling on her sleeve.

  Haruko took her cell phone from her bag and scrolled through the address book to Morita's number. She pressed "send." After a few rings, a young woman answered. Haruko explained that she'd been trying to call Morita.

  "Nobody here by that name," the woman said and hung up.

  It was the number he'd given her last year when they'd run into each other at a department store by the station. She had never called him, nor he her, and she realized the number might have been wrong from the start. Next she tried calling Kazuo Ono, their old friend Kazu. They, too, had exchanged numbers the last time they met. Now she dialed without allowing herself time to reconsider.

  The phone rang over and over, and she had the sinking feeling that both Morita and Kazu had gone somewhere beyond her reach. Though they'd been out of touch, she had always felt she could contact them if she wanted, but now that she was trying, they were nowhere to be found.

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  "Hello," said a voice at last, but instead of relief, Haruko felt a flash of disappointment. It was a woman's voice.

  "Excuse me," she muttered, unsure what to say. She thought she should apologize and hang up.

  "Hello?" said the voice again. "Is that Ms. Higuchi?"
/>   "Yes?" Haruko blurted out, startled to be called by her name. Nanami looked up.

  "This is Kazuo Ono's phone. Your name came up on the incoming-call screen. He's mentioned you—you were friends in college, weren't you?"

  "Yes, that's right!" Haruko said. She felt as though this woman was her last hope of a connection with the outside world.

  "Tm Kazuo's girlfriend. He can't talk right now." The woman's voice had grown quieter.

  "1 see," said Haruko. "Can 1 ask why?"

  "He's in the hospital, and he's unconscious."

  "The hospital? Is he sick?"

  "He got hurt last night."

  "Hurt?"

  "Hurt?" said a little echo. Nanami was squatting at her feet, playing with a pile of twigs.

  "1 found him at his apartment. It looked like somebody had beaten him up. He was covered with cuts and bruises."

  "1 don't understand," Haruko said, her voice rising. "Who beat him up? Was he robbed?" Somehow, she was sure he hadn't been, even as she asked the question.

  "You know .Mr. Aoyagi, don't you?" the voice on the other end of the line asked.

  "Aoyagi? Yes, why?"

  "Weil, 1 think he rescued Kazuo. At least, that's what Kazuo told me when we were riding here in the ambulance."

  "He saved Kazu? But he's in a lot ol trouble himsell," Haruko said.

  "T hat's what 1 thought. 1 don't know what's going on."

  As she stood with the phone to her ear, Haruko recalled more ot her visit t(j Aoyagi's |)arents, as though suddenly drawn bat k to that tkiy long ago.

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  ''One year in elementary school they told us to write an essay about our winter vacation/' Aoyagi said. He sat frowning next to his father. "Everybody else wrote about what they did on New Year's Day, but 1 wrote a little masterpiece called 'Perverts Must Die,' a title and topic supplied to me by my dear old dad." Haruko bent double with laughter, but Aoyagi's father seemed un fazed.