2.11 Nails

After searching my apartment high and low for a full two hours and bagging up what scant evidence of wrongdoing there may have been, most of the agents were now allowed to leave. Hardly better than common thieves, the stinking lot of them, they carried away all three of my Macs; the two cell phones; my passport and gaijin card; as well as the Modafinil and Campho-Phenique from my fridge. Nakata assured me I'd get it all back as soon as possible—tomorrow afternoon at the latest, he said.

Yeah, right.

Although the pile of shoes at the entry to my apartment had grown smaller, a mountain of paperwork remained for me to fill out. Most of the forms, from the document that accompanied my urine sample to the release forms for all the evidence that had been hauled away and passwords for my computers, needed to be itemized, signed and stamped.

I’m driving nails into my own coffin.

Had this been Beirut, the whole affair might have ended with a few kind words and a handshake greased with a generous baksheesh. Had I been in the States, a lawyer would have been by my side, stonewalling. I couldn't have been further from either place. I knew that I had to make at least a token effort to appear as if I were cooperating, otherwise they would throw in the can for a month just for being impudent.

Only once the last piece of paperwork was signed and stamped could the last of the cops, including Nakata and Ozawa, go.

Ozawa got up off the sofa where he had been sitting all morning. He asked me one more time if I knew why the police had come to my place. I made a show of giving the question some deep consideration, and shook my head.

"Nope."

He gave me a blue card with a map to his office on the back of it. At the bottom, he'd scrawled his name and phone number.

"We want you to show up here at nine-thirty, Sunday morning. If for any reason you can't make it, if, say, you become sick, or come down with a cold, or get busy with something, whatever, call this number, okay?"

"Don’t worry. I will be there," I answered with admiral determination. In the back of my mind, I was seriously considering lamming it.

"In the meantime, I want you to think carefully about what might have happened around you," Ozawa said, gesturing to the dining table, "and tell us anything you can. You understand?"

"Yes."

"Okay, see you Sunday."

Nakata also gave me a card with his contact information. Looking at the card, I learned for the first time that he wasn’t a cop after all; he was from Customs.

As soon as they left, I locked the door and went to the living room where I dropped heavily onto the couch and clutched my head to keep it from screaming open.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No. 6 is now available on Kindle.