The Last Train (Detective Hiroshi Series Book 1)
THE LAST TRAIN
Acclaim for Michael Pronko’s Essays on Tokyo
Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo
Gold Award: Readers’ Favorite Non-Fiction Cultural
Gold Award: Travel Writing Global E-Book Awards
Gold Award: Non-Fiction Authors Association
Gold Honoree: Benjamin Franklin Digital Awards
Silver Medal: Independent Publisher Book Awards
Indie Groundbreaking Book: Independent Publisher Book Review
Finalist: National Indie Excellence Awards
Finalist: International Book Awards
Finalist: Foreword’s Book of the Year Awards
Finalist: Independent Author Network
“Pronko is an insightful author capable of seeing a deeper beauty in everything he writes.” SPR Review
“…vividly captures the depth and beauty of Tokyo, bringing to life the city and the lifestyle.” Reader’s Favorite
“This book sparkles and succeeds as a love letter of sorts to Tokyo. The author’s writing is a joy to read, with wonderful phrasing and vivid descriptions.” OnlineBookClub.org
“This is a memoir to be savored like a fine red wine, crafted with supreme care by a man who clearly has fallen in love with his adopted city.” Publishers Daily Reviews
“Each of his essays brought me closer and closer to an appreciation of the complex and complicated place Tokyo is.” Reader’s Favorite
Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life
Gold Award: First Place Reader’s Favorite Awards 2015
Gold Award: eLit Awards 2015
Silver Award: eLit Awards 2015
Gold Award: Non-Fiction Authors Association 2015
“…a rare gem of exploration that holds the ability to sweep readers into a series of vignettes that penetrate the heart of Tokyo’s fast-paced world.” Midwest Book Review
“The author’s love for the city is evident…he has explored the place and soaked up every small detail about life in Tokyo.” Readers’ Favorite
“Beauty and Chaos is a spectacular read. The collection is masterful and unique.” SPR Review
“These pieces feel flowing and natural, perhaps because many arose simply from walking around, people-watching.” The Bookbag
“An elegantly written, precisely observed portrait of a Japanese city and its culture.” Kirkus Reviews
Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens: Essays on Tokyo
Gold Award: eLit Awards 2015
Silver Award: eLit Award 2015
“…a rare glimpse of the structure and nature of Tokyo’s underlying psyche.” Midwest Book Review
“An insider’s view of what life is really like in this pulsing, densely populated Asian metropolis.” Luxury Reading Blog
“Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens plunges into the minuscule details of what it is like to be a Tokyoite.” OnlineBookClub.org
For more on the Hiroshi thrillers: www.michaelpronko.com
Follow Michael on Twitter: @pronkomichael
Michael’s Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pronkoauthor
Also available by Michael Pronko:
Essays on Tokyo Life
Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life (2014)
Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens: Essays on Tokyo (2014)
Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo (2015)
Also in the Hiroshi Series
Japan Hand
Thai Girl in Tokyo
The Last Train is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents all come from the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
The Last Train
By Michael Pronko
First Kindle edition, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-942410-13-3
Copyright © 2017 Michael Pronko
First English Edition, Raked Gravel Press
All rights reserved worldwide. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author.
eBook Formatting by FormattingExperts.com
Cover Design © 2017 Marco Mancini, www.magnetjazz.net
For more on the Hiroshi thrillers: www.michaelpronko.com
Follow Michael on Twitter: @pronkomichael
Michael’s Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pronkoauthor
THE LAST TRAIN
by Michael Pronko
Raked Gravel Press 2017
「釜一つあれば茶の湯はなるものを数の道具をもつは愚な」千利休 ９７首
If you have one teapot, and can brew your tea in it, that’s enough. Having too many tools is useless.
Sen no Rikyū, Poem 97
The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter 1
She was as tall as he was, but he was twice as wide and at least a decade, maybe two, older. She held his swaying bodyweight upright with her arm tight around his waist. Her tall, strong limbs prodded him forward along the late-night street—another Tokyo couple after a night out.
His overstuffed suit and rambling walk marked him as a foreigner, and a very drunk one. His knees popped and locked like a cheap robot with rundown batteries. He swayed from the booze inside him, or something more, beyond the fatigue and freedom of Tokyo.
She was sober and focused, nodding absently at his sputtering comments. A long shawl, as thick and black as her hair, fell around her broad shoulders. Her tight summer dress pulled at her trim figure with every stride. Her muscled legs were bare except for the wide leather sashes of her sandals. She was a Tokyo woman, confident, directed and conscious of the city around her.
She pulled him toward the entrance of Tamachi Station away from the nearby warren of bars, eateries and all-night clubs filled with bar hoppers and boozers. She checked her watch, barely noticing the drizzle.
The trains would stop running soon.
Drunken, red-faced Japanese men in groups, or alone with a woman peeled off from one of the hostess bars, ambled along the streets with liquored-up gracefulness. Drunk together at night, they talked loudly and coarsely, acting boisterous and loose, though in the morning they’d return to quiet, meek company mode.
The waiting chauffeurs and taxi drivers parked along the curb smiled to themselves. They could see the poised, pretty woman would have the plump, too-drunk foreigner’s money without any more work. He was clearly unable for much more of anything.
The drivers pulled at their uniforms, inhaled their cigarettes, and settled deeper into their patient wait along the curb.
She dragged him forward toward the trains, ignoring their stares.
Near the taxis in front of the station, the first driver in line cranked open the back door. The man swayed toward it, but the woman steered him past without a glance.
Under the glaring lights of the station’s vaulted entrance, she appeared even younger and prettier than out in the dark and drizzle. Her face, shrouded by thick hair, was a classic oval. Straight-cut eyelids arched over her strong-boned cheeks and her lips curved deliciously. As they entered the station, she took in the times of departing trains and gauged the distance from ticket machine to platform.
The man’s red cheeks, shiny brow and comb-over did not match his chic, European suit. His broad chest and full belly strained against his
tie-less, wide-collared shirt, one shirttail flopping out in front. He lurched after her toward the wall of ticket machines, missing a step, then another.
He disentangled his arm from hers and held up his hand in a gallant offer of buying the tickets. She dug in her purse for loose change. He looked up at the sprawling, overhead map of Tokyo train lines glowing like a stained glass window. Neat, bright colors rendered the immense circulatory system of the city into one readable grid, a maze of connections that led everywhere, or nowhere.
The man looked back and forth for a minute, and then twisted toward her in stuttering confusion. She brushed back her hair with her hand and dropped coins in for two tickets. It didn’t matter if she got the right price. He tried to make a joke, but she checked the departure board and hurried him through the gate toward the escalator for the silent ride down to the platform.
At the bottom, she steered him around a kiosk shuttered for the night. With his arm clamped in her grip, she walked him down the empty platform toward the end.
An express train shot by. The speeding mass of metal blasted the platform with a whoosh of air and noise that sent him reeling for a couple of sidesteps. Her shawl and hair danced up and around her, but she clutched him tight and kept going.
The yellow-lit windows of the passing train cars were close enough to touch. From inside, images of people safe and snug flashed by, like an old film off its sprockets. Drain channels on the outside of the car spit drops of rain onto the platform. At that speed, the long train passed through in seconds.
Silence and stillness followed.
She checked her watch again. The next express train would arrive in two minutes.
At the dark end of the platform, they stood alone. She propped him against a huge pillar that took up most of the platform, and then she pulled him around to face her, her arms locked on his, keeping him balanced. He leaned forward for a kiss. She gave him her cheek, but his head wobbled too much to kiss her on the first try.
Along the underground sweep of the station, eight other platforms lined up in parallel conformity. On each, a few passengers congregated near the escalators at the center of each platform, fingering text messages, reading tiny paperbacks, or staring off into the night.
If anyone had looked over, they would have seen the foreign man’s knees unhinging and his arms swinging. His whole body pinwheeled like a bulky doll, held up only by the strong force of her limbs.
She tugged him over to the yellow warning strips at the platform’s edge and squinted down the tunnel at the next express. She could hear it approaching. She craned her neck to see the front lights coming out of the darkness.
She placed her hands just above his elbows and looked into his face. He smiled back giddily and flopped forward, thinking she was going to kiss him again or whisper a sexy secret. Her lips were set as rigid as a Noh mask.
Then, with her left hand, she tugged his wrist down and pried her other hand under his arm. She planted her sandals and took a deep breath.
He looked at her with glassy-eyed confusion, swaying and blinking and nearly asleep.
She could feel the rumble of the train as it sped along the length of the platform toward them.
It was all over in one fluid motion.
In the confusion that followed the long, scared howl cut short by a muffled thump and harsh screech of brakes, no one noticed the woman gliding swiftly up the escalator.
She walked to the exit gate, kneed open the barrier and slipped out.
Behind her, the alarm sounded and uniformed attendants hustled out of the office, careful not to trip as they ran, knowing what to do, but not yet why. Startled passengers stared from the other platforms.
The woman walked with long strides toward the taxis, and the first in line opened its automatic door. She ducked inside and the door closed. The driver pulled off smoothly into the night.
“Yushima Tenjin Shrine,” she told the driver.
“Rain’s falling harder,” the driver said, stealing a glance at her in the rear-view mirror.
“What else can it do?” she said, leaning back for the ride.
Chapter 2
Hiroshi Shimizu’s cell phone went off as he stepped out of the elevator onto the open-air walkway outside his apartment building. He let it buzz in his raincoat pocket as he twirled his umbrella to spin off the rain. He stopped and looked over the city. No matter how late he worked this view over Tokyo always made him feel, for a minute, that another day was over.
And some of the night. It was just past two. The phone stopped buzzing, but felt heavy in his pocket. The irritating mosquito-buzz sound was one more thing he needed to change.
His building was eight stories high and sat on a hill whose steep slope was tiring to climb at the end of a long day. In the morning, the angle seemed to rush him downhill toward work faster than he wanted. From below, the city looked gray on gray with the heavy rain, but once he was eight floors up, the nightscape of Tokyo unveiled itself like a glistening dream. All the way to the horizon, the city’s lights flickered white and orange and yellow beneath the grey shroud of the sky.
The nameplate on his thick metal door needed changing, too. The clunk of the deadbolt and the creak of rusted hinges welcomed him home. Inside the door, he toed off his shoes in the genkan entryway: an in-between space crowded with still-damp shoes, broken umbrellas and used insoles. He pulled the newspapers, three days’ worth, out of the metal door slot and slipped them onto the recycle pile. Here and there on the tile, dark spots of mold sprang up, feeding on the dust and humidity.
The phone buzzed again.
Requests from overseas detective bureaus for more information about his reports and cases often came in at night from other time zones. As the de facto liaison between the Tokyo police department and their overseas counterparts, he had to answer. Officially, all he was supposed to do was investigate white-collar crime inside Tokyo, but he ended up working with other countries’ police departments more often than not. Crime leapt over boundaries with ease.
Hiroshi gave in and answered. The call was not from overseas, but from Takamatsu who called him as drinking companion and a friendly ear more often than Hiroshi cared for. Takamatsu was lead detective in homicide, which was officially Hiroshi’s division. They had nowhere else to put him. Takamatsu was his senpai and mentor, and his connection to the rest of the department.
“Let’s get a drink another night. I’m tired,” Hiroshi said.
“I need your English,” Takamatsu said. “Finally, something for you to do.”
“You picked up some foreigner?”
“Foreign, yes, but hard to pick up.”
“What?”
“Tamachi station. Drink after. You’ll need it. This one’s messy.”
“Messy English?” Hiroshi asked, but Takamatsu hung up.
Something in Takamatsu’s voice told him this was more than an excuse for drinking.
Hiroshi draped his wet raincoat over the hall door, deciding whether to ignore Takamatsu’s request and get some sleep or go as he knew he should. Officially, he wasn’t required to do anything except office work, but Takamatsu kept dragging him to crime scenes and on-site interviews.
Hiroshi had been lucky to land a job where he could use his English and skip most meetings, so he felt obligated to help Takamatsu when asked. Almost always, helping him out just meant joining Takamatsu for a drink. Tokyo’s work culture demanded drinking and talking outside normal working hours and working in homicide doubled those demands.
In the living room, a blanket was draped over the sofa. Pizza boxes lay scattered on the coffee table and the kitchen tables. An unreturned sushi delivery tray on the sideboard needed rinsing. His stereo was still on, the blue light glowing on the half-empty bookshelf.
In front of the bookshelf were stacks of ABC International Movers boxes. The boxes flopped open, exposing women’s clothes on hangers, a hair dryer, Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionaries. Two empty rolls of packing tape r
ested on top. He’d forgotten, again, to get more.
On top of one of the boxes rested a photo of him and Linda—his former fiancé—posed together by the Charles River in Boston. They were both dressed in T-shirts and jeans. The well-washed cotton pulled at his broad shoulders and draped her full bosom, their faces smiling like teenagers surprised to find themselves in their 20s. Her big smile dimpled her cheeks and her blond hair hung loose.
In another photo, framed, he and Linda sat on a moss-covered rock in the garden of a Japanese onsen hot springs hotel. She smiled self-consciously in a wisteria-patterned yukata robe with bright green obi circling her waist. Next to her in a dragon-and-cloud pattern with a dark brown obi, Hiroshi looked like a samurai, square-jawed and serious, his hair hanging long and thick.
He set the photos back in the box, Boston, Tokyo—both lives equally impossible—and dropped his hand into a tangle of kimonos. Linda loved all the black silk with small designs of white or gold forming chrysanthemums, peonies, waves or winding streams. Understated elegance fascinated her after they moved to Tokyo, and she came home with a discreet purchase every other day: kimonos, wood carvings, ceramic cups. But perhaps it was all too understated.
He ruffled the kimonos in the boxes, and flipped over the ugly cardboard top. He was through with women for a while. It was a feeling he’d never had before. He had always been running after them, bored when they liked him, but finally happy to settle in with Linda. Then she gave up on him. Or on Japan, he wasn’t sure. Maybe he didn’t know how to make the best things in his life last. The job as financial investigator with the homicide branch so far had lasted longer than anything else.
Taking care of white collar crime impressed no one he ever mentioned it to, since almost no one understood it except the criminals themselves. Blackmail, credit card theft, identity scams, none of it was sexy. Or so Linda said.
He pulled his coat back on, and at the genkan, shoehorned on dry running shoes, unused since Linda left. He grabbed the umbrella with the fewest broken ribs and let the heavy metal door clang shut behind him, dropping the deadbolt with his key.