oward the end of May, by chance — as far as I know — I ran into one of the cops who'd grilled me about Mei's murder. Bookish. I was coming out of Tokyu Hands, the department store with everything for the home you ever wanted, and found myself squeezed up against him at the exit. The day seemed like midsummer, yet here he was in a heavy tweed jacket, entirely unaffected by the heat. Maybe police stiffs are trained to be insensitive. He was holding a Tokyu Hands bag like me. I pretended not to see him and was moving past when the undaunted detective spoke directly to me.

"You don't have to be so standoffish, you know," he quipped. "As if we didn't know each other."

"I'm in a hurry," was all I said.

"Oh?" said he, not swallowing the line for a second.

"I have to be getting back to work," I stammered.

"I can imagine," said he. "But surely even a busy man like yourself can spare ten minutes. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. I've been wanting to talk to you, business aside. Honest, just ten minutes of your time."

I followed him into a crowded coffee shop. Don't ask me why. I could've politely said sorry and gone home. But I didn't. We went in and sat down alongside young couples and clusters of students. The coffee tasted horrible, the air was bad. Bookish pulled out a cigarette and lit up.

"Been trying to quit," he said. "But there's something about the job. When I'm working, I gotta smoke."

I wasn't going to say anything.

"The job's rough on the nerves. Everybody hates you. The longer you're in homicide, the more they hate you. Your eyes go, your complexion starts to look like shit. You wouldn't know your own age. Even the way you talk changes. Not a healthy way to live."

He added three spoonfuls of sugar and creamer to his coffee, stirred well, and drank it like a connoisseur.

I looked at my watch.

"Ah, yes, the time," said Bookish. "We still have five minutes, right? Fine. I'll keep this short. So about that murdered girl. Mei."

"Mei?" I asked. I'm not snared that easily.

He twisted his lips, insinuating. "Oh, right, sure. The deceased young woman's name was Mei. Not her real name, of course. Her nom d'amour. She turned out to be a hooker, just like I thought. She may not have looked professional, but I could tell. Used to be you could spot the hookers in a second. The clothes, the makeup, the look on their faces. But nowadays you get girls you'd never believe in the trade. It's the money, or they're curious. I don't like it. And it's dangerous. Or don't you think so? Meeting unknown men behind closed doors. There's all types out there. Perverts and nut cases."

I forced a nod.

"But young girls, they don't know that. They think everything's cool. Can't be helped. When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck. Poor thing."

"So did you find the killer?"

Bookish shook his head and frowned. "Not yet, unfortunately. We did discover some interesting facts. Only we didn't publish them in the newspaper. Seeing as how the investigation is still going on. For example, we found out her professional name was Mei, but her real name was?Aww, what difference does it make what her real name was. The girl was born in Kumamoto. Father a public servant. Kumamoto's not such a big city, but he was next-to-top there. Family very well-off. Mother came to Tokyo once or twice a month to shop. No financial problems. The girl got a good allowance from them. She told them she was in the fashion business. She had one older sister, married to a doctor; one younger brother, studying law at Kyushu University. So what's a nice girl from a good home like that doing selling her tail? The family had a big shock coming. We spared them the call girl part, but their darling daughter strangled to death in a hotel room was pretty unsettling." I said nothing and let him continue.

"We looked into the prostitute ring she was involved in. It wasn't easy, but we managed to track it down. How do you think we did it? We staked out the lobbies of some luxury hotels around town and hauled in a few women on suspicion of illegal commerce. We showed them the same photos we showed you and asked a few questions. One of them cracked. Not everyone's got a tough hide like you, heh heh. Anyway, turns out the deceased worked for this exclusive operation. Superexpensive membership. Nothing the likes of you or me can swing. I mean, can you pay seventy thousand yen a pop? I know I can't. At that price, I'd just as soon screw the wife and buy the kid a new bike," he laughed nervously. "But suppose I could swing the seventy grand, I still wouldn't be good enough. They run a background check, you see. Safety first. They can't afford weird shit from customers. But also they prefer a certain class of customer. No way a detective can get membership. Not that law enforcement is necessarily a strike against you. If you're top brass, real top brass, that's another story. You might come in handy someday. But a cop like me, no way."

He finished his coffee and lit up another cigarette.

"So we went to the captain for a search warrant. It took three days to come through. By the time we set foot in the place, the whole operation had been cleaned out. Spotless. Not a speck of dust. There'd been a leak. And where do you think that leak came from?" I didn't know.

"C'mon, man, you're not dumb. The leak came from inside. I'm talking inside the police. Somebody on top. No proof, of course. But we grunts on the street know an inside job when we see one. The word goes out to get scarce. Sorry state of affairs. But predictable. And an operation like that one is used to this sort of thing. They can move in the time it takes us to use the toilet. They are gone. They find another place to rent, buy new phone lines, and just like that they're back in business. No sweat off their back. They still got their subscriber list, they still got their girls lined up, they barely been inconvenienced. And there's no way to trace them. The thread's cut. With this dead girl, if we had some idea what type of customer was her specialty, we could do something. But as it is, we gotta throw up our hands." "Don't look at me," I said. "You sure you don't know anything?" "Hey, if she was part of this exclusive call girl setup like you say, they'd know in an instant who killed her, right?"

"Exactly," said Bookish. "So chances are the killer was probably someone not on the list. The girl's own private lover, or else she was turning tricks on the side. We searched her apartment. Not a clue." "Listen, I didn't kill her."

"I know that," said Bookish. "I already told you that. You're not the killer type. I can tell by looking at you. Your type never kills anybody. But you do know something, I know that. You know more than you're letting on. So why don't you come out with it? That's all I want. No hard-lining. I give you my word of honor." "I don't know a thing," I said.

"Figures," Bookish mumbled, puffing his smoke. "This is going nowhere. Fact is, the boys upstairs aren't crazy about this investigation. After all, it's only a hooker killed in a hotel, no big deal. To them, that is. They probably think a hooker's better off dead anyway. The guys on top, they hardly ever set eyes on a stiff. They haven't got the vaguest idea what it's like to see a beautiful girl naked and strangled like that. They can't imagine how pitiful it is. And you can bet that it's not just police brass in on this prostitution racket. There's always a few upstanding public servants got their fingers in the pie too. You can see the gold lapel pins flashing in the dark. Cops develop an eye for this sort of business. We see the least little glint, and we pull in our necks, like turtles. Something you learn from your superiors. So that's how it goes. Somehow, the drift is, our Miss Mei's murder is just going to get buried. Poor thing."

The waitress cleared away Bookish's cup. I still had half of my coffee left.

"It's weird, but I feel close to this Mei girl," said Bookish. "Now why should that be? It doesn't figure, does it? But when I saw her strangled naked on that hotel bed, she did a number on me. And I decided, I made this pledge to her, I was going to get the fucker who did it. Now, I've seen more stiffs than I care to. So what's one more corpse, you say? This one was special. Strange and beautiful. The sunlight was pouring in through the window, the girl lying there, frozen. Eyes wide open, tongue hanging out of her mouth, stocking around her throat. Just like a necktie. Her legs were spread, and she'd pissed. When I saw that, I knew. The girl was asking me for help. Must seem remarkable to you, this soft touch I have. No?"

I couldn't say.

"You, you've been away a while. Got a tan I see," said the detective.

I mumbled something about Hawaii on business.

"Nice business. Wish I could switch saddles to your line of work, instead of looking at stiffs morning to night. Makes a fellow real fun company. You ever see a corpse?"

No, I hadn't. He shook his head and looked at the clock. "Very well, then, hope you excuse me for wasting your time. But like they say, small world running into you at a place like this. What do you got in your bag?"

A soldering iron.

"Oh yeah? I got some drainpipe cleaner. Sink in the house backed up."

He paid the bill. I offered to pay my portion, but he insisted.

As we were walking out, I asked casually if prostitute murders happened a lot.

"Well, I guess you could say so," he said, eyes sharpening slightly. "Not every day, but not only on holidays either. Any reason you're so interested in prostitute murders?"

Just curious is all.

We went our separate ways, but the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach still hadn't gone away the following morning.