The Ongoing Diary of Casey Neal

Ichihara Does Not Lose Well

(March 2020)

“Are you okay-dough-kay?” DK leans over and says to me.

We’re sitting at a bar, drinking vodka that’s flavored with something coarse and gingery.  It’s getting late, and the music is gaining volume.  Some kids are playing a new thing called Videorama, others are dancing.  The bar is full of people talking Japanese so fast it feels like machine gun speak to me.

I’m not sure how to answer him.

The case is a mess.

Ichihara has people working angles on Charlie Cooper that seem just wacky. He’s touching on every contact again, asking questions about Charlie Cooper and his relationship to academic institutions, but there’s just nothing there.  He’s got an assistant traveling to the US to track down every other Charlie or Cooper or anything close who might have been in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.  I suggested he pay a private firm to do the footwork, something that I assume he’s done though he hasn’t told me anything about it.

And every night he stays later and later in the office.

I suspect that by now he just isn’t leaving.

My own situation is better, but only by comparison.

I’m getting antsy.  I’m tired of Japan, to be honest.  And I’m feeling the need to be back in my own place–except, of course, several times a day I think about Don-o and what he might be doing now.  I even incorporated him into a story or two of mine–or at least made oblique references to “old friends” who I would like to see again, anyway.

But he’s not taking the bait.

“I’m worried about Yuni,” I finally say.

DK nods and squints up his eyes.  He waves to the bartender and says something in Japanese that by now I’m certain is “another round.”

“Ichihara does not lose well, though his Transmitters give him many opportunities to learn.”

The drinks come.  They’re okay.

“I want to help him more.”

“You already make many good articles.”

“Yeah, I know.  But I just don’t see the answer.”

“Ichihara not see answer, so I don’t see you will.”

I laughed and drank the alcohol.

“Let’s go get him,” Dk said as if he had suddenly been struck by the next Theory of Relativity. “Go, how you say … drag his sorry behind out here.”

I look around at the crowd.

“Yeah. He needs a day off.”

We down the drinks, DK pays, and off we go.

#

When we draw near the office we see Ichihara making his way down the stairs. His topcoat is long behind him, and he ducks his head to light what may be his millionth cigarette for the day.

DK starts to call out to him, but something makes me put my arm out and shush him.

Ichihara exhale smoke into the nighttime. It blows away to the northeast.

He looks resolved, standing there with his frame set, he smokes again, drops the butt, then grinds it out on his shoe, letting the smoke drift as he drops the remains into a trash bin.  Then his shoulders raise with his breathing and he begins to walk. to the train station.

It’s dark, but I motion DK to follow him.

He makes his way to Akabane-iwabuchi station and for just a moment I think Yuni Ichihara may be so resolved because he’s planning to commit suicide by stepping out in front of a train.  It’s possible, I suppose, thinking the stereotypical things I think about the Japanese and honor and hara kiri, thinking that makes me cringe even as I think them. But resolves my personal problems by buying a ticket on the Saitama Rapid Railway Line.  I’ve seen Yuni Ichihara dialed into details before, but tonight his focus is so complete and so far away that I think we could be standing beside him and he would miss us. Still, I we take our time, and I pay for a pair of tickets.

We take a car behind him.

“You watch the left side, I’ll watch the right,” I tell DK as we settle in. “Don’t let him leave this train without us.”

He nods.

I watch the station work as we leave. Japan wouldn’t work without it’s rail lines.  They are the workhorses of the country, and even at this hour the train’s cars are well filled.  The Saitama line connects Tokyo with the Saitama prefecture, which I know is Yuni Ichihara’s home. It is also nearly twenty years old, though the Japanese keep it so clean you cannot tell it.  I stand on the rail, watching lights pass as it jostles me and the vodka I’ve drunk around.

I am tired.

Really tired.

The train slows and I shake my head to help me focus.

He passes up the Kawaguchi Motogō stop, then Minami Hatogaya, Hatogaya, Arijuku, and Tozuka-angyō before coming to Higashi Kawaguchi. It is here that DK motions to me, and we step off the train in unison.

I glance at my phone to see it is 11:53 PM.

It’s obvious to me now that DK is concerned, too, and this makes matters worse.

The night is not as lit here in Higashi.

DK frowns when we lose Ichihara for a moment, then my eyes pick up the flow of his topcoat, and we’re moving again.  It’s cold, and the air and the movement has chased away any lethargy I had been feeling earlier.

“Where is he going?” I whisper to DK.

“Cannot tell.”

So we follow the chief inspector as he stalks the streets of his city.

I smell dope at one point, and I hear things in the night that you don’t hear in the daytime. Television floating on the nighttime, voices.  I hear whispers of ghosts and I see homeless here, too, curled up in the darkest corners of the city under cardboard and plywood.

Somethings are too big for even baseball to fix, think in a stray moment, then I laugh at myself. As if baseball were a magic thing.  As if baseball were the wand of God.

The streets have become narrow now.

Lights are far between, or shattered.

Still Ichihara walks.

He has not, I realize, looked behind him even once.  He has not indicated he has heard our footsteps, or indicated that he has been anywhere near as afraid as I have been.  A car speeds past us from behind, JapRap blaring. DK and I shy away, but Ichihara just moves on.  It’s like he’s batman, slipping through the streets of Kawaguchi as if he owns them.

He turns down an alley, and then another.

I think we’ve lost him, but then I hear his voice speaking.

“Arigato.” That part I get, but the rest is like drinking a splash of water.

I press myself against a wall, DK behind, and I peer around the corner to see Ichihara in the darkness created when you mix midnight with a single thin bulb.  He is at a doorway marked with symbols that make my stomach turn over. Another man it there. Very large. Japanese, with a beard parted in two plaits.

DK pulls at my sleeve–he wants to see, too.

A woman appears at the doorway then.

She is older than old.

Hair gray and as thick as straw, back stooped, face etched in wrinkles that run as deep as the sky above.

She points in our direction, and speaks a word or two that I cannot hear. Ichihara’s shoulders slump.

He turns to us, then.

“Come forward,” he says.

His words sounding clipped and leaden, and I they are as much an accusation as they are a command.