2.02 Knock-Knock

If only I could stop time with the snap of a finger. I would have snapped my finger right then and there, freezing the hands on the clock at eight-o-three that Thursday morning, the sixth of July 2006.

At two minutes past eight I was still running on the assumption that all the hard work and perseverance I had put into the last three years was finally starting to pay off. With each step I had taken over the years I believed I was putting distance between the mistakes I had made in the past and my present self. I was redeeming myself, or so I believed. Who knew that I’d only been running in circles, a mutt chasing mindlessly after its own tail?

The day of reckoning had come, and it was now waiting on the other side of my front door.

The knocking grew louder.

At first, I thought that it must be my friend Jean. It wasn’t unusual for him to pop by at the oddest times and push me out of my nest. We had been spending more time together recently now that he had decided to leave Japan for good. But then, with a building like mine where anyone can walk in off the street, I couldn’t be sure. Some real characters come a-knocking at the most bizarre times--harried salesmen pushing dubious products, fervent Jehovah Witnesses from Korea pushing their dubious religion.

Then again, maybe it’s FedEx with my cousin’s package . . . ’Bout time.

The knocking turned into loud pounding.

“Jesus, I’m coming already.”

I looked through the peephole, but couldn’t see anything. Someone was covering the hole with his hand, making me suspect that it was Jean after all.

Ah, if only it had been.

Opening the door, I found a motley rabble of men standing outside in the hallway. A beefy one in front, wearing wrap-around sunglasses and blue coveralls, flashed a badge.

"Police."

"Yeah, right," I said, barely able to suppress a laugh.

Badge or no badge, he looked like a common street thug with his shaved head, scraggly beard and those sunglasses. If this goon was a cop, then I was a man of the cloth.

"Someone put you up to this, right?" I said, grinning. “Was it J . . . ”

And just as I was thinking that I really ought to speak with the building manager to see if we could get some kind of card-lock system to keep the riffraff out, the cops stormed into my apartment, one after the other like circus clowns tumbling out of a VW bug. So many, I lost count.

Funny thing is, though, and I'll never forget this, as they rushed in through the door they all paused to remove their shoes at the entry. It made me wonder if cops in Japan were in the habit of loosening their shoelaces before raiding a suspect’s home.

At any rate, there was a heap of rubber and canvass, a pyramid of sneakers, at the entry by the time they had all come in.

Only then did it hit me that this wasn't an elaborate practical joke after all.

© 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.