hey showed up a little past three in the afternoon. I was in the shower when the doorbell started ringing. By the time I got there, it was on ring number eight. I opened up, and there stood two men.

One in his forties, one in his thirties. The older guy was tall, with a scar on his nose. A little too well-tanned for this time of the year, a deep, tried-and-true bronze of a fisherman, not the precious color you get from the beach or ski slope. He had stiff hair, obscenely large hands, and a gray overcoat. The younger guy was short with longish hair and narrow, intense eyes. A generation ago he might have been called bookish. The fellow at the literary journal meeting who ran his hands through his hair as he declared, "Mishima's our man." He had on a dark blue trench coat. Both guys in regulation black shoes, cheap and worn-out. The sort you wouldn't glance at twice if you saw them lying by the side of the road. Nor were the fellas the type you'd go out of your way to make friends with.

Without a word of introduction, Bookish flashed his police ID. Just like in the movies. I'd never actually seen a police ID before, but one look convinced me it was the real thing. It fit with the worn-out shoes. Something in the way he pulled it out of his pocket, he could have been selling his literary journal door-to-door. "Akasaka precinct," Bookish announced, and asked if I was who I was.

Uh-huh.

Fisherman stood by silently, both hands in the pockets of his overcoat, nonchalantly propping the door open with his foot. Just like in the movies. Great!

Bookish filed away his ID, then gave me the once-over. Me in bathrobe and wet hair.

"We need you to come down to headquarters for questioning," said Bookish.

"Questioning? About what?"

"Everything in due time," he said. "We have formal procedures to follow for this sort of thing, so why don't we get going right away."

"Huh? Okay, but mind if I get into some clothes?"

"Certainly," said Bookish flatly, without the slightest change of expression. If Gotanda played a cop, he'd do a better job. That's reality for you.

The fellas waited in the doorway while I got some clothes on and turned off switches. Then I stepped into my blue top-siders, which the two cops stared at as if they were the trendiest thing on the market.

A patrol car was parked near the entrance to my building, a uniformed cop behind the wheel. Fisherman got into the backseat, then me, then Bookish. Again, like in the movies. Bookish pulled the door shut and the car took off.

The streets were congested, but did they turn on the siren? No, they made like we were going for a ride in a taxi. Sans meter. We spent more time stopped in traffic than moving, which gave everybody in all the cars and on the street plenty of opportunity to stare at me. No one uttered a word. Fisherman looked straight ahead, arms folded. Bookish looked out the window, grimacing like he was laboring over a literary exercise. The school of dark-and-stormy metaphors. Spring as concept raged in upon us, a somber tide of longing. Its advent roused the passions of those nameless multitudes fallen between the cracks of the city, sweeping them noiselessly toward the quicksands of futility.

I wanted to erase the whole passage from my head. What the hell was "spring as concept"? Just where were these "quicksands of futility"? I was sorry I started the whole dumb train of thought.

Shibuya was full of mindless junior high students dressed like clowns, same as ever. No passions, no quicksand.

At police headquarters, I was taken to an interrogation room upstairs. Barely three meters square with one tiny window. Table, two steel office chairs, two vinyl-covered stools, clock on the wall. That was it. On the table, a telephone, a pen, ashtray, stack of folders. No vase with flowers. The gumshoes entered the room and offered me one of the steel office chairs. Fisherman sat down opposite me, Bookish stood off to the side, notepad open. Lots of silent communication.

"So what'd you do last night?" Fisherman finally got going after a lengthy wait. Those were the first words I'd heard out of his mouth.

Last night? What was I doing? I could hardly think last night was any different from any other night. Sad but true. I told them I'd have to think about it.

"Listen," Fisherman said, coughing, "legal rigmarole takes a long time to spit out. We're asking you a simple question: From last evening until this morning what did you do? Not so hard, is it? No harm in answering, is there?"

"I told you, I have to think about it," I said.

"You can't remember without thinking? This was yesterday. We're not asking about last August, which maybe you don't remember either," Fisherman sneered.

Like I told you before, I was about to say, then I reconsidered. I doubted they would understand a temporary memory loss. They'd probably think I had some screws loose.

"We'll wait," said Fisherman. "Take all the time you need." He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit up with a Bic. "Smoke?"

"No thanks," I said. According to Brutus magazine, today's new urbanite doesn't smoke. Apparently these two guys didn't know about this, Fisherman with his Seven Stars, Bookish with his plain Hopes, chain-smoking.

"We'll give you five minutes," said Bookish, very deadpan. "After that you will tell us something simple, such as, where you were last night and what you were doing there."

"Don't rush the guy. He's an intellectual," Fisherman said to Bookish. "According to his file here, this isn't his first time talking to the law. University activist, obstruction of public offices. We have his prints. Files sent to the prosecutor's office. He's used to our gentle questioning. Steel-reinforced will, it says here. He doesn't seem to like the police very well. You know, I bet he knows all about his rights, as provided for in the constitution. You think he'll be calling for his lawyer next?"

"But he came downtown with us of his own volition and we merely asked him a simple question," Bookish said to Fisherman. "I haven't heard any talk of arrest, have you? I don't think there's any reason for him to call his lawyer, do you? Wouldn't make sense."

"Well, if you ask me, I think it's more than an open-and-shut case of hating cops. The gentleman has a negative psychological reaction to anything that resembles authority. He'd rather suffer than cooperate," Fisherman went on.

"But if he doesn't answer our questions, what can we do but wait until he answers? As soon as he answers, he can go home. No lawyer's going to come running down here just because we asked him what he was doing last night. Lawyers are busy people. An intellectual understands that."

"Well, I suppose," said Fisherman. "If the gentleman can grasp that principle, then we can save each other a lot of time. We're busy, he's busy. No point in wasting valuable time when we could be thinking deep thoughts. It gets tiresome. We don't want to wear ourselves out unnecessarily."

The duo kept up their comic routine for the allotted five minutes.

"Well, it looks like time's up," Fisherman smiled. "How about it? Did you remember anything?"

I hadn't. True, I hadn't been trying very hard. Current situation aside, the fact was, I couldn't remember a thing. The block wouldn't budge. "First of all, I'd like to know what's going on," I spoke up. "Unless you tell me what's going on, I'm not saying a thing. I don't want to say anything that may prove inopportune. Besides, it's common courtesy to explain the circumstances before asking questions. It's a breach of good manners."

"He doesn't want to say anything that may prove inopportune," Bookish mocked me. "Where is our common courtesy? We don't want to have a — what did he call it? — breach of good manners."

"I told you the gentleman was an intellectual," said Fisherman. "He looks at everything slanted. He hates cops. He subscribes to Asahi Shimbun and reads Sekai."

"I do not subscribe to newspapers and I do not read Sekai," I broke in. Had to put my foot down somewhere. "And as long as you don't tell me why I'm here, I'm not going to feel a lot like talking. If you want to keep insulting me, go ahead. I've got as much time to sit around shooting the breeze as you guys do."

The two detectives looked at each other.

Fisherman: "Are you telling us that if we're polite and explain these circumstances to you, you'll cooperate and give us some answers?"

Me: "Probably."

Bookish, folding his arms and glancing high up the wall: "The guy's got a sense of humor."

Fisherman rubbed the horizontal scar on his nose. Probably a knife gash, and fairly deep, judging from how it tugged at the surrounding flesh. "Listen," he got serious. "We're busy, and this isn't a game. We all want to finish up and go home in time to eat dinner with the family. We don't have anything against you, and we got no axes to grind. So if you'll just tell us what you did last night, there'll be no more demands. If you got a clear conscience, what's the grief in telling us? Or is it you got guilty feelings about something?"

I stared at the ashtray.

Bookish snapped his notepad shut and slipped it into his pocket. For thirty seconds, no one said a word. During which time, Fisherman lit up another Seven Stars.

"Steel-reinforced will," said Fisherman.

"Want to call the Committee on Human Rights?" asked Bookish.

"Please," Fisherman and his partner were at it again, "this is not a human rights issue. This is the duty of the citizen. It's written, right here in your favorite Statutes of Law, that citizens are obliged to cooperate to the fullest extent with police investigations. So what do you have against us officers of the law? We're good enough to ask for directions when you're lost, we're good enough to call if a robber breaks into your home, but we're not good enough to cooperate with just a little bit. So let's try this again. Where were you last night and what were you doing?"

"I want to know what's going on," I repeated.

Bookish blew his nose with a loud honk. Fisherman took a plastic ruler out of the desk drawer and whacked it against the palm of his hand.

"Listen, guy," pronounced Bookish, tossing a soiled tissue into the trash, "you do realize that your position is becoming worse and worse?"

"This is not the sixties, you know. You can't keep carrying on with this antiestablishment bullshit," said Fisherman, disgruntled. "Those days are over. You and me, we're hemmed in up to here in society. There's no such thing as establishment and antiestablishment anymore. That's passe. It's all the same big-time. The system's got everything sewed up. If you don't like it, you can sit tight and wait for an earthquake. You can go dig a hole. But getting sassy with us won't get you or us anywhere. It's a dead grind. You understand?"

"Okay, we're beat. And maybe we've not shown you proper respect. If that's the case, I'm sorry. I apologize." Bookish's turn again, notepad open again. "We've been working on another job and hardly even slept since yesterday. I haven't seen my kids in five days. And although you have no respect for me, I'm a public servant. I try to keep society safe. So when you refuse to answer a simple question, you can bet it rubs us the wrong way. And when I say things are looking worse for you, it's because the more tired we get, the worse our temper gets. An easy job ends up being not so easy after all. Of course you got rights, the law's on your side, but sometimes the law takes a long time to kick in and so it gets put in the hands of us poor suckers on duty. You get my drift?"

"Don't misunderstand, we're not threatening you," Fisherman interjected. "He was just giving you a friendly warning. He doesn't want anything bad to happen to you."

I kept my mouth shut and looked at the ashtray. A plain old dirty glass ashtray without markings. How many decades had it sat here on this desk?

Fisherman kept slapping his hands with the ruler. "Very well," he gave in. "I'll explain the circumstances. It's not the procedure we follow when asking questions, but since we want your respect, we'll try things your way."

He picked up a folder, removed an envelope and produced three large photographs. Black-and-white site photos, without much in the way of artistry. That much was clear at a glance. The first photo showed a naked woman lying facedown on a bed. Long legs, tight ass, hair fanned out from the neck up. Her thighs were parted just enough to reveal what was between them. Her arms flung out to the sides. She could have been sleeping.

The second photo was more graphic. She was turned over, her pubic area, breasts, face exposed. Her legs and arms arranged stiffly at attention. Her eyes open wide, glassy, her mouth contorted out of shape. The woman was not sleeping. The woman was dead.

The woman was Mei.

The third photo was a close-up of Mei's face. Mei. No longer beautiful. Cold, ice cold. Chafe marks around her neck.

My mouth went dry, I couldn't swallow. My palms itched.

Mei. So full of life and sex. Now cold, dead.

I stopped myself from shaking my head, from showing any reaction. I knew the two guys were watching my every move. I restacked the three photos and casually handed them back to Fisherman. I tried to look unaffected. "Do you know this woman?" asked Fisherman. "No." I could've said yes, of course, but then I would've had to tell them about Gotanda, who was my link to Mei, and his life would be ruined if this got out to the media. True, he might have been the one who coughed up my name. But I didn't know that. I'd have to risk it. They weren't about to bring up Gotanda's name.

"Take another look," Fisherman said slowly. "This is extremely important, so do look again carefully before you answer. Have you ever seen this woman before? Don't bother lying to us. We're not babes in the woods. We catch you lying, you'll really be in trouble. Understand?"

I took a lengthy look at the three photographs. I didn't want to look at all, but that would have given me away. "I don't know her," I said. "But she's dead, right?" "Dead," Bookish repeated after me. "Very dead. Extremely dead. Completely dead. As you can see for yourself. This fox is naked and dead. Once a very fine specimen, but now that she's dead it cuts no ice. She's dead, like all dead people. You let her decay, her skin starts to crack and shrivel, the rot oozes out. And the stink! And the bugs. Ever see that?" Never, I said.

"Well, we've seen it plenty. It gets to where you can't even tell that it was a woman. It's dead meat. Rotten steak. And once the smell gets in your nose, you don't think of food, let me tell you. It's a smell you never forget. True, if you let things go for a long, long, long time, then all you got are bones. No smell. Everything's all dried up. White, beautiful, clean bones. Needless to say, this lady didn't make it that far. And she wasn't rotting either. Just dead. Just stiff. You could tell she had to be some piece when she was warm. But seeing her like this, I didn't even twitch.

"Somebody killed this woman. She had the right to live. She was barely twenty. Somebody strangled her with a stocking. Not a very quick way to go. It's painful and it takes time. You know you're going to die. You're thinking why do I have to die like this? You want to go on living. But you can feel the oxygen drying up. Your head goes foggy. You piss. You lose the feeling in your legs. You die slow. Not a nice way to die. We'd like to catch the son of a bitch who killed this gorgeous young thing. And I think you're going to help us.

"Yesterday at noon, the lady reserved a double room in a luxury hotel in Akasaka. At five P.M., she checked in, alone," Fisherman recounted the facts. "She told the desk her husband would show up later. Phony name, phony telephone number. At six P.M., she called room service for dinner for one. She was alone at the time. At seven P.M., the empty tray was put out in the hall. The DO NOT DISTURB sign was hanging on the door. Checkout time was twelve noon. When the lady didn't check out, the front desk called her room at twelve-thirty. No answer. The DO NOT DISTURB sign was still on the door. There was no response. When hotel security unlocked the door, the lady was naked and dead, exactly as you see in this first photograph. No one saw the lady's 'husband.' The hotel has a restaurant on the top floor, so there's a lot of people going in and out. Very popular place to rendezvous."

"There was no identification in her handbag," said Bookish. "No driver's license, address book, credit cards, no bank card. No initials on her clothing. Besides cosmetics, birth-control pills, and thirty thousand yen, the only item in her possession, tucked, almost hidden, in her wallet, was a business card. Your business card."

"You're going to say you really don't know her?" Fisherman tried again. I shook my head. I wanted to give these guys all the cooperation I could. I really did. I wanted to see her killer caught as much as anyone. But I had the living to think about.

"Well, then, now that you know the circumstances, why don't you tell us where you were last night and what you were doing," Bookish drummed on.

My memory came rushing back. "At six o'clock I ate supper at home by myself, then I read and had a couple of drinks, then before midnight I went to bed."

"Did you see anyone?" asked Fisherman.

"I didn't see anyone. I was alone the entire time."

"Any phone calls to anyone? Anyone call you?"

I told them I didn't take any calls. "A little before nine, one came in on the machine. When I played it back, it was Work-related."

"Why keep the answering machine on, if you're at home?"

"I'm on a break. I don't want to have to talk business."

They asked for the name of the caller, and I told them.

"So you ate dinner alone, and you read all evening?"

"After washing the dishes, yes."

"What was the book?"

"You may not believe it, but it was Kafka. The Trial."

Kafka. The Trial. Bookish made note.

"Then, you read until twelve," Fisherman kept going. "And drank."

"First beer was around sundown. Later brandy."

"How much did you drink?"

"Two cans of beer, and then I guess a quarter of a bottle of brandy. Oh, and I also ate some canned peaches."

Fisherman took everything down. Also ate canned peaches. "Anything else?"

I tried, but it really had been a night without qualities. I'd quietly read my book, while somewhere off in the still of the night Mei was strangled with a stocking. I told them there was nothing else.

"I'd advise you to try harder," said Bookish with a cough. "You realize what a vulnerable position you're in, don't you?"

"Listen, I didn't do anything, so how can I be in a vulnerable position? I work free-lance, so I hand my business card out all over the place. I don't know how this girl got ahold of my card. Just because she had it on her doesn't mean I killed her."

"People don't carry around business cards that don't mean anything to them in the safest corner of their wallets," Fisherman said. "We have two hypotheses. One, the lady arranged to meet one of your business associates in the hotel and that person killed her. Then the guy dumped something into her bag to throw us off the track. Except the card, that single card, was wedged too deep in her wallet for that. Hypothesis number two, the lady was a professional lady of the night. A prostitute. A high-class prostitute. The kind that fulfills her duties at luxury hotels. The kind that doesn't carry any identification on her person. But for some reason the john kills her. He doesn't take any money, so it's possible he's a psycho, a nut case. Those are our angles. What do you think?"

I cocked my head to the side and kept silent.

"Your business card is the central piece of evidence in this case," said Fisherman leadingly, rapping his pen on the desk.

"A business card is just a piece of paper with a name printed on it," I said. "It's not evidence. It doesn't prove anything."

"Not yet it doesn't." He kept rapping on the desk. "The Criminal ID boys are going over the room for traces. There's an autopsy going on right now. By tomorrow we'll know a lot more. So you know what? You're going to wait with us. Meanwhile, be a good idea if you start remembering more details. It might take all night. Take your time, you'll be surprised at what you can remember. Why don't we start from the beginning? What did you do when you woke up in the morning?"

I looked at the clock on the wall. Ten past five. I suddenly remembered my date with Yuki. "I need to call somebody first, okay?" I said to Fisherman. "I was supposed to meet someone at five. It was important."

"A girl?" questioned Fisherman.

"Right."

He held out the phone to me.

"You're going to tell me that something came up and you can't come," Yuki said immediately, beating me to the punch.

"Something unforeseen. Really," I explained. "I'm sorry, it's not my fault. I've been hauled down to the Akasaka police station for questioning. It'll take too long to tell you about it now, but it looks like they're going to hold onto me for a while."

"Police? What'd you do?"

"I didn't do anything. There was a murder, and the cops wanted to talk to me. That's all."

"What a drag," Yuki remarked, unmoved.

"I'll say."

"You didn't kill anyone, did you?"

"Of course I didn't kill anyone. I'm a bungler, not a murderer. They're just asking about, you know, circumstances. But I'm sorry I'm going to let you down. I'll make it up to you."

"What a drag," said Yuki, then slammed down the receiver in her inimitable fashion.

I passed the phone back to Fisherman. They had been straining to listen in, but didn't seem to come away with much. If they knew it was a thirteen-year-old girl, you can be sure their opinion of me wouldn't have shot up.

They had me go over the fine points of my movements all day yesterday. They wrote everything I said down. Where I'd gone, what I ate. I gave them the full rundown on the konnyaku yam stew I'd eaten for dinner. I explained how I shaved the bonito flakes. They didn't think I was being humorous at all. They just wrote everything down. The pages were mounting fast.

At half past six they sent out for food — salty, greasy, tasteless, terrible — which we all ate with relish. Then we had some lukewarm tea, while they smoked. Then we got back to questions and answers.

At what time had I changed into pajamas? From what page to what page of The Trial had I read? I tried to tell them what the story was about, but they didn't show much interest.

At eight o'clock I had to take a leak. Which they let me do alone, happily. I breathed deeply. Not the ideal place to breathe deeply, but at least I could breathe. Poor Mei.

When I got back, Bookish wanted to know about my solitary telephone caller that evening. Who was he? What did he want? What was my relationship with him? Why didn't I call him back? Why was I taking a break from work? Didn't I need to work for a living? Did I declare my taxes?

My question, which I didn't ask, was: Did they actually think all this was helpful? Maybe they had read Kafka. Were they trying to wear me down so that I'd let the truth escape? Well, they'd succeeded. I was so exhausted, so depressed, I was answering everything they asked with a straight face. I was under the mistaken impression that I'd get out of here quicker that way.

By eleven, they hadn't stopped. And they showed no sign of stopping. They'd been able to take turns, leave the room and take a nap while the other kept at me. I hadn't had that luxury. Instead, they offered me coffee. Instant coffee, with sugar and white powder mixed in.

At eleven-thirty I made my declaration: I was tired and wasn't going to answer any more questions.

"Aww, c'mon, pul-eeze," Bookish said lamely, drumming his fingers on the table. "Listen, we're going as fast as we can, but this investigation is very important. We have a dead lady on our hands, so I'm afraid you're going to have to stick it out." "I find it hard to believe these questions have any importance at all," I said.

"Petty details serve their purpose. You'd be surprised how many cases are solved by petty details. What looks like petty isn't always petty, especially when it comes to homicide. Murder isn't petty. Sorry, but why don't you just hang around a while. To be perfectly frank, if we felt like it, we could designate you a prime witness and you'd be stuck here as long as we liked. But that would take a lot of paperwork. Bogs everything down. That's why we're being nice, asking you to go through this with us nice and easy. If you cooperate, we won't have to get rough."

"If you're sleepy, there's a bunk downstairs," Fisherman said. "Catch a few hours of shut-eye, you might remember something."

Okay, a few hours sleep would be nice. Anywhere was better than this smoke-filled hole.

Fisherman walked me down a dark corridor, down an even darker stairwell, to another corridor. This was not boding well. Indeed, the bunk room was a holding tank.

"Nice place, but can I get something with a better view?"

"All due apologies. It's our only model," said Fisherman without expression.

"No way. I'm going home. I'll be back tomorrow."

"Don't worry, we're not locking you in," said Fisherman. "A cell is just a room if you don't lock the door."

I was too tired to argue. I gave up. I stumbled in and fell onto the hard cot. Damp mattress, cheap blanket, smell of piss. Love it.

"It won't be locked," Fisherman repeated as he shut the door with a cold, solid thunk.

I sighed and pulled the blanket over me. Someone somewhere was snoring loudly. It seemed to come from far off, but it could've been in the next cell. Very disturbing.

But Mei, Mei! You were on my mind last night. I don't know if you were alive at the time, but you were on my mind. I was slowly taking off your clothes, and then we were making love. It was our little class reunion. I was so relaxed, I thought someone had loosened the main screw of this world. But now, Mei, there's nothing I can do for you. Not a damned thing. I'm sorry. We lead such tenuous lives. I don't want Gotanda to get caught up in a scandal. I don't want to ruin his image. He wouldn't get work after that. Trashy work in a trashy world of trashy images. But he trusted me, as a friend. So it's a matter of honor. But Mei, my little Goat Girl Mei, we did have a good time together. It was so wonderful. Like a fairy tale. It's no comfort to you, Mei, but I'll never forget you. Shoveling snow until dawn. Holding you tight in that world of images, making love on deductible expenses. Winnie the Pooh and Mei the Goat Girl. Strangling is a horrible way to die. And you didn't want to die, I know. But there's nothing I can do for you now. I don't know what's right or wrong. I'm doing all I can. This is how I live. It's the system. I bite my lip and do what I got to. Good night, Mei, my little Goat Girl. At least you'll never have to wake again. Never have to die again.

Good night, I voiced the words.

Good night, echoed my mind.

Cuck-koo, sang Mei.