Slow Boat

We read the human genome. Mar. 31: Mt. Usu in Hokkaido erupted—after the region had been evacuated. It was the first time volcanic activity had been predicted beforehand. The leaders of North and South Korea had their first tête-à-tête in fifty-five years. Aug. 12: an atomic submarine sank in the Barents. The entire crew—118 souls—perished. Milošević’s dictatorship fell. Naoko Takahashi won gold in Sydney. The 20th century came to an end.

Right on time. There’s a knock at the door. But you can’t come in if you don’t know the password. Millimetres behind the door, I whisper the prompt: “Chiang”.

From the other side of the door: “Kai-shek”.

Permission granted. I unlock the triple-bolt and let my comrade in. It’s Fumio Narazaki.

“Pretty little mess you got here. How about cleaning up every year or so?”

“I clean all the time—like, every other month.”

“And another thing,” Fumio Narazaki says, “do we need really need a password? It’s not like we’re samurai from the Edo period or something… Hey, where is everybody?” He looks around the room.

“Hate to break it to you…” I make a sour face. “It’s just us. The others are busy with their real jobs…”

“Seriously? It’s just us?”

“Sucks lemons, I know.”

“Shit,” Fumio Narazaki says, “my boss asked me to stay late, too. But I told him to take his overtime and stuff it. I came because you said this was the ‘case to end all cases’.”

“Oh, it is. It’s huge.”

“How huge?”

I point him towards the open notebook in the middle of the war zone that I call my room. Narazaki and I lean in—our heads almost hit—and we re-enter The Incidents of Coincidence. Just like we have since we were kids.

Case one: Private Residence. Arakicho, Yotsuya. An office worker on the way home from a ramen joint broke into her ex-lover’s apartment and killed him. The victim’s wife also sustained serious injuries. The suspect filled their mouths with large quantities of dried seaweed. Her confession: “He was never going to leave her… so I had to do something to shut his lying mouth for good.”

Case two: An office complex in Ryogoku’s third district. A taxi driver deep in debt killed three loan sharks. His weapon: a couple of chanko pots.

Case three: Numabukuro. On Asahi Avenue. A boy (sixteen years old) stabbed a housewife with a thirty-centimetre hunting blade purchased on the Internet. Over ten hours later, authorities learn that the victim was the suspect’s biological mother.

“Same as ever—the world’s totally unhinged…” Fumio Narazaki sighs. “I know snowballing interest can be a real nightmare, but to end the lives of a few loan sharks with ceramic pots…”

“There’s more, though. Check this out…”

I show him photos from the three crime scenes. I’ve circled items in red.

“Something hidden?”

“What do you think?”

“…”

“See that Starbucks cup on the ground? Caramel macchiato, according to the investigation. That’s the key to this bloody tale of ramen and revenge. The cup was the killer’s—she was sipping that macchiato moments before committing murder. It’s a fact. A fact that the authorities and the media have completely neglected.”

“Interesting.”

“Unusual, right?”

“Ramen and Starbucks? Highly unusual.”

“Next scene. Ryogoku. Shards everywhere, and… here.”

Fumio Narazaki eyeballs the photograph for a few seconds.

“A tall, right?”

“Precisely. Café latte.”

“And it was the driver’s drink?”

“These sharks don’t drink coffee. It’s been corroborated.”

“All right. What about Numabukuro? Got it… Next to the pool of blood. Let me guess. Café mocha?”

“Bingo.”

“Tall again, I see.”

Fumio Narazaki snarls.

Now for the hard question. What led these three Starbucks drinkers to commit murder? What’s the connection? First hypothesis: “Some kind of complex?” Maybe, maybe not. In no time, our conversation turns away from the three crime scenes. Back to the café that links them all.

“OK, OK—what about Starbucks?” I ask. “Guilty?”

“Wait, what’s the charge?”

“Crimes against Tokyo, I guess.”

“Not guilty. Got to say, I think Bucks has done more good than evil…”

“Seriously?”

“Beats McDonald’s—they only want families, family money. At least Starbucks is open to all types. People of all creeds and classes…”

“Starbucks was sort of exclusive… at least at first…”

“But it’s different now. Men and women, all ages, go to Starbucks—and they go for the coffee. It’s not like other chains, like Doutor, where people go to smoke. I dunno. My verdict: Starbucks has raised Tokyo’s quality of life.”

“I can get behind that.”

“Of course you can. It’s almost like, like Starbucks set us free.”

“Shit… That’s it.”

“What’s what?”

“Starbucks set us free…”

“Wait, from what?”

“From life’s unwritten rules. Like, suck it up, deal with it. All that. Now you can go to Bucks… Enjoy a caramel macchiato…”

“Yeah yeah yeah. The killers smelt the coffee—and woke up. Like, ‘I should end that fucking liar’s life. Fuck it, his wife had it coming, too…’”

“I guess that’s one kind of enlightenment…”

We sit there in silence for a minute.

“Pretty sure we cracked it.”

“Cool.”

Case closed. Time to celebrate. We open a bottle of sparkling wine and pour it into the Starbucks cups I’d prepared as evidence. We put the lids on and watch the bubbles ooze through the slits. Then we raise our grandes and take a swig.

Pop, pop, pop. Goodbye, my year 2000.