The Floating Girl: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mystery #4) by Sujata Massey

of an emergency.
    I was worried, although there was no good reason. I had been anxious about Takeo because he had not been at his home Saturday night, and he’d turned out to be angry but unscathed. Kunio was a grown man who could take care of himself. The fact that he’d not spent the night in his apartment was probably because he was spending time with one of the admiring girls Nicky had spoken about.
    Wherever he’d been last night, there was still a chance that he had dropped by Show a Boy to pick up his mail. I called information to get the telephone number for the club, and dialed, hoping that someone other than Chiyo would answer.
    “Hai,” breathed a man with a scratchy accent.
    “Hello, is Marcellus there?” I asked.
    “Nobody’s here right now. Who’s calling?”
    Nobody except you, I thought. I hesitated before saying, “I have a question about the artist who painted the walls.”
    There was a pause. “Why?”
    Could this be Kunio on the other end? I chose my words carefully. “If he stops in for his mail, I would like to talk to him. It’s about an excellent publicity opportunity. One that goes beyond a magazine article.”
    “Maybe he doesn’t want publicity. That’s what I’ve heard.”
    “You mean a young man straight out of college doesn’t want to make money doing the work he loves?” I laughed softly, trying to make it sound like a joke. I had to get on the right side of this edgy guy, whoever he was.
    “There’s more to life than money. If you don’t know that, I’m sorry for you.”
    I struggled for an answer, but he hung up on me.
    The person on the other end of the phone had to have been Kunio. No matter how fast I made subway connections to Shibuya, he would be gone from Show a Boy by the time I arrived. Another idea was to stake out his apartment, but if he caught me doing that, it might alienate him further. I sighed. If Kunio ultimately refused to be interviewed, I could write a story without his participation. But Rika had probably already told Mr. Sanno that I was profiling Kunio. It would be a major embarrassment if I couldn’t come up with the subject.
    I made myself a cup of Darjeeling and sat down in my tidied apartment to think about the pros and cons. In the end, I felt the messages I’d left with Nicky and Chiyo were enough for Kunio to decide whether to get into contact with me. In the meantime, I would locate another interview possibility—a talented artist who would welcome the chance to be written up in a glossy magazine.
    Instead of trekking out to Animagine, I’d look for the new artist’s work at a manga shop in Tokyo. A likely location for one would be Harajuku, a booming retail neighborhood that drew teenagers like cats to an open can of tuna. It was only about a half hour’s subway ride to the west, but it had a completely different age demographic from the rest of Tokyo. There was no way to amble leisurely through the street. Instead, I was swept up in a dark blue wave of school-uniformed adolescents. I almost felt as if I were entering one of the schoolgirl comics that older men enjoyed reading, wondering how many of them would have liked being stuck in this moving mass of pigtailed soldiers who brayed with delight at a Ronald McDonald clown statue.
    The statue was a hazard to foot traffic, I thought sourly as I got swept into the tide of girls once more, the momentum stopping from time to time as friends decamped to get their pictures taken in booths or ran into record shops.
    “Excuse me, do you know where…” I tried to ask a teenager carrying a bag emblazoned with Doraemon, the robot cat from a famous television series, but there were too many shrieks for him to hear my question.
    Fortunately, I was a few inches taller than most of the teens, so I was able to see a gaudy clothing boutique that had mannequins in the window dressed as animation heroes and heroines. I broke out of the pack, apologizing to the dozen girls I bumped into during the