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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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A Body in the Moat
Tony Concannon
Things hadn’t been going well for Yamada. The previous winter his cousin had died in a head-on crash into a bridge abutment on the highway. Yamada and the cousin had grown up in the same house in Fukushima after the cousin’s father had been killed in Manchuria in the war and they had been more like brothers than cousins. When they had been sixteen, they had come up to Tokyo together to find work. Now Yamada’s wife had shingles. They had four children.
“I can’t get any use out of her,” Yamada said in a loud voice.
The three men at the counter of his restaurant laughed at the lewd remark.
The restaurant was on a side street on the back side of the station. There were no tables, just the nine seats at the counter. Yamada opened the restaurant seven days a week from eleven in the morning to nine at night. He had no helper. Most of his customers lived in the neighborhood or worked in the numerous small factories spreading out from the rear of the station.
Yamada was frying sausages and cabbage for Mr. Inagi. He shook the heavy frying pan. A cloth was wrapped around his wrist.
“Is that wrist any better yet?” Mr. Inagi asked him.
Yamada turned to the counter. He was a short man with a round face. The lack of hair on his forehead made his face seem even rounder.
“The doctor said it wouldn’t get any better if I keep using it.”
“They found a body in the moat today,” Mr. Nakada told the other men.
“What moat?”
“The one around the Imperial Palace. I work across the street, in the Mainichi Shimbun Building.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know about it until it was all over. The kids in the college at the end of the building told me about it. They said it was a man.”
“I guess someone saw a hand sticking out of the water and told the Palace guards,” Mr. Nakada went on. “Then the police and everyone showed up.”
“I’ll have to look for it in the paper tomorrow,” Mr. Harada, the third man at the counter, said.
“It won’t be in the paper,” Mr. Nakada told him. “The Palace won’t let anything out.”
“But you said the police were there.”
“The Palace has its own police force.”
“They still have to investigate the body,” Mr. Harada said.
Yamada slid the sausages and cabbage onto a plate and placed it in front of Mr. Inagi.
“They’ll investigate it,” Mr. Nakada told Mr. Harada.
“It just won’t be in the paper.”
“It might be embarrassing,” Mr. Inagi added, “if it was some war veteran killing himself for the Emperor.”
“The kids said it was a middle-aged man.”
“They saw the body?”
“They saw it being pulled out.”
“Some office worker got drunk on Friday night and fell in,” Yamada said.
“Things like that should be in the paper,” Mr. Harada said.
“I’m all set here, Yamada. How much do I owe you?” Yamada told him.
“I want to go fishing,” Yamada said to the other two men when Mr. Harada had left.
“I haven’t been fishing since I was a kid,” Mr. Inagi said. “My older brother used to take me.”
“I go down to Chiba,” Yamada said. “Stay the whole day.”
“You should get someone to help you. Then you could take more days off.”
“Nobody wants to work in a place like this any more. Couldn’t pay them, anyway.”
“I’ll have another beer,” Mr. Nakada said. “Get yourself a glass, too.”
“Do you want some?” he asked Mr. Inagi.
“Why not?”
Yamada put the bottle of beer and two glasses on the counter. He held a third glass in his hand for Mr. Nakada to fill.
“Thank you.” Yamada drank half of the beer and placed the glass next to the stove.
“Harada is right. I wish there was a way to find out about that body in the moat,” Mr. Inagi said.
“Probably just some drunk,” Yamada said.
“Maybe. Could be a suicide. Strange. Happening right in Tokyo.”
“You never hear about missing persons unless it’s a child,” Mr. Inagi added.
“Look at how many husbands take off and disappear,” Mr. Nakada said.
“Wives, too.”
“Quiet night,” Mr. Nakada said to Yamada.
“It’s quiet every night. I’m going to close up early.”
“Kicking us out?”
“Take your time.”
Yamada came around the counter, slid open the door and turned around the curtain.
“It’s starting to rain,” he told the other two men when he shut the door. “There are a couple of umbrellas if you want to borrow them.”
“Bring us one more beer and we’ll call it a night,” Mr. Nakada said.
“Take your time.”
Yamada went back inside the counter. He took out a bottle of beer, opened it and placed it on the counter.
“Have some,” Mr. Nakada said, holding out the bottle.
He filled Yamada’s glass and then Mr. Inagi’s. Mr.Inagi took the bottle from Mr. Nakada and filled his glass.
“The more I think about it, the more I figure it was a suicide,” Mr. Nakada said.
“Why do it at the Imperial Palace?”
“Some small businessman in Kanda or Jimbocho. The way the economy’s been, a lot of little places have been going bankrupt. No one would ever know it was a suicide.”
Yamada was putting the food back into the refrigerator. He had already turned off the gas and swept the floor. When all the food had been put away, he wet a rag and began wiping down the counter. The water was running in the sink and he couldn’t hear what the two men were saying.
“How much do we owe you?” Mr. Nakada asked a few minutes later.
Yamada looked at the plates and bottles on the counter, added everything up in his head and told the two men. When they had paid and left, he washed the dirty dishes under the running water in the sink. He shut the water off, dried the dishes with a clean towel and stacked them on one of the shelves on the back wall. The empty beer bottles went into a crate under the sink. He left twenty thousand yen in the cash register and put the rest into his money purse. He came around the counter, turned off the lights and went out.
The rain was light. He locked the shop and started home. He lived less than a half a mile away, on the other side of the river. It was warm for early spring and he had no jacket. He was thinking about the body that had been found in the moat. Halfway across the bridge Yamada stopped. The previous year the city had shored up the banks of the river and put in walkways with benches. There were no lights and the water below was dark. The more he thought about it, the less likely he felt the man had fallen into the moat. It had to have been a suicide. But Yamada couldn’t imagine throwing himself into the cold water below. There must be easier ways to kill yourself if you really needed to. He heard voices coming toward the river and he continued on.
