Harajuku Sunday (7 page)

It took me about another forty minutes to get home, counting a brief stop at my neighborhood grocer's for milk.
 
Right when I made the final turn to my street, however, what I saw were two police cars, lights spinning, parked directly in front of my apartment building.
 
I couldn't help but wonder if for some bizarre reason, they're there for me.
 
Without really making it a conscious decision, I decided I'd visit the neighborhood bar, a tiny little Japanese 'izakaya' pub run by the "Chief," an old Japanese man who used to run a bar in
Yokosuka
and who thus manages a surprising English.
 
Two or three hours later, after having downed a trio of Kirins and my little plastic shopping bag of milk now room temperature, I decided to call it a night for the second time that evening, and this time, when I turn the corner to my apartment, the street was deserted.

This mysterious little incident leaves me once more hyped up, paranoid, and unresolved, so it's almost a relief to get a message on my answering machine a few days after I meet up with Soren:

"Hi Richard Ufuo.
 
This is Tom Fannet from the U.S. Embassy Tokyo.
 
I'm the chief of security here, and my job is to ensure the safety of all
U.S.
nationals in a foreign country, including you.
 
I was hoping you might be willing to come in and have a little chat.
 
This is purely, 100% voluntary.
 
We've heard there's been some sort of incident involving threats to a
U.S.
national, and we hope you might help us tell us what you know.
 
Again, you certainly don't have to come in if you don't want…. "

I don't remember the exact wording Fannet uses.
 
But despite his repeated bland assurances that my cooperation is completely voluntarily, he and I both know perfectly well that I don't really have a choice in the thing, not after police cars, not after rumors of Chinese boyfriends pulling out knives.
 
So the next day in the afternoon I get permission from my boss to run some errands, and I hop over to Akasaka.

Receptionist: "Hi, can I help you?"

"Yes, my name is Ritchie Ufuo, I received a call from Tom Fannet to come in and speak."

The woman looks bored.
 
"Uh, yes, let me see if he's available."

Hurried talking and back and forth, hand over the handset despite the two inches of plexiglass.
 
Then the little panel in the window slides open.

"Mr. Ufuo?
 
Mr. Ufuo did you say?
 
He'll be right out."

"Now aren't you impressed that I can just walk in and get Tom Fannet."

"You wouldn't believe it."

Fannet comes out and welcomes me inside the secured area of the embassy in a big, generous cop-like sort of way.
 
He turns out to be a balding middle-aged man with a mustache and a
New York
accent.
 
We go down the hallway to his office, a fairly decent sized one, piled high with paperwork, and with the walls covered in various certificates and accolades.
 
There's a picture of him shaking hands with President Clinton and a window that looks out into the embassy parking-lot.
 
With a noncommittal expression, he begins.

"So, Ritchie, thanks so much for stopping by.
 
Some tea or coffee maybe?"

"Coffee would be great."

The security chief presses a button on his phone and has some coffee sent in.
 
We make some small talk, and when I describe my job at the company as involving a constant brokering of relationships between the risk-averse Japanese management and the new possibilities opened by cutting-edge IT coding, he does seem genuinely interested.
 
But there's also this detectable moment when he switches over to talk business; his entire posture in his chair changes.

"So Ritchie, our meeting today is in many ways completely unnecessary, but I wanted there to be open and honest communication.
 
I don't want you to feel that you aren't a part of the process."

"Okay."

"If you're feeling uncomfortable about certain developments, I do want you to know that your rights and prerogative are respected, and nobody is being allowed to just make claims that are accepted without due consideration for your assessment about things."

"Sir, is this about the police cars in my neighborhood a few days ago?"

Fannet raises an eyebrow, keeping his cards very close.

"You saw police cars?"

"Japanese police vehicles right in front of my apartment."

"But nothing happened, right?
 
Nobody's booked you or accused you for anything."

"I don't need even blue lights."

Fannet continues to look me in the eye.
 
Maybe just because I don't really have any aces up my sleeve, I accept the gambit.

"Look, Mr. Fannet, let's skip the bluffing: I live in Kita-Shinjuku.
 
To get there, I need to pass through Shinjuku Station.
 
I stop into the station bookstore almost every week.
 
The bookstore owner will back me up.
 
I mean, go get the station camera if you don't believe me, because she's not saying that I actually approached her, is she?"

Fannet looks out the window.
 
His heaps and heaps of papers on his desk each topped by dark binders.
  
The
New York
accent now seem to intensify ever so slightly.

"Ritchie, there are relationships involved which bring their own agendas… "

"But you need to rely on actual evidence.
 
If I run into Dominique by complete coincidence and I don't touch a hair on her head, then how does that all add up to bringing the cavalry out?"

A slightly mollifiying voice: "You may have heard that a Chinese national has been arrested…"

"So I've heard.
 
But if he pulled out a knife out on somebody, of course he needs to be charged on those charges."

Fannet nods his head.
 
"Look here, there's no need to worry.
 
Anyway, we understand Mr. Le is of foreign citizenship, so we can't really comment on the situation.
 
We are in full communication with the Chinese embassy about the situation…"

I look Fannet in the eye as he launches into his bureaucratic newspeak and there is a definite unspoken message in the way his eyes don't leave my face.
 
Do not associate with Shan, for if you do so, you do so at your own peril.
 
Do not cross us; we are on the hunt.
 
Our conversation resumes, and Fannet stonewalls as before, but for my part, and I believe I am not calculating in doing so, merely one individual backed up in a corner, I believe I communicate in return that I will not be a patsy for unfounded charges and that even if I am not wealthy or infinitely connected, I am not helpless, there is not nobody back home who would back me up.
 
I will not be subject to charges and false accusations, and I get this out.

"So what happened, dude?
 
I heard Shan went psycho at Soren's party and pulled out a knife, people were terrified and running out of the place.
 
I've always said that dude is bad news."

It's Herrera who's the first to get to me, and though he's gleeful and laughing and demanding to know What Happened, I make him tell me about his night first, that wild party of Latinos who filled up an entire limousine, laughing and calling out and waving taken-off t-shirts at the uptight Japanese populace.
 
"Well, we hit up Vanilla and we totally partied out all day.
 
Good times.
 
Now as for Shan?
 
He really pull out a knife?"

"Dude, I don't know anything about Shan.
 
From what I saw, I thought he was already gone.
 
If he did pull a knife out, though, I agree he does need to go to jail.
 
That's totally uncool—you can't do that."

Herrera cocks his eyebrow.
 
"And you know Soren's completely disappeared."

"Disappeared?
 
Like he's missing?
 
I just saw him a week ago!"

"Well you're one of the few.
 
He left a message on his voicemail saying he needed to take a little vacation, and then later, it was just changed to saying he needs to focus on work and thanks everyone for turning out.
 
People tried to call his company but the operator won't let them through, and you know, you can't just bother somebody at work for personal life stuff.
 
So nobody can reach him."

"Wow that's weird," I say, thinking it so.
 
"How about the girl?
 
Any news on Dominique?"

Herrera almost looks scared.
 
"Nothing, man.
 
You know her father's the senior trade commissioner for US-Japan relations?
 
He's a big shot in the Republican Party, some guy who's going to actually run the whole thing one day.
 
And Dominique's a psycho girl.
 
Basically if she came up to you putting a gun to her own head, crying she's going to kill herself, you're the one who's going to end up shot somehow, god knows how."

Later, it seems to no small part Soren's over-reaction to things, or perhaps what is really a not unsignalled premeditated life decision to withdraw from the social scene and get serious about work, has its part in exacerbating events as they unfold.
 
When I first met him, he was in some sort of disgrace.
 
My entry into his life inspires one last run in the sun, but he had always been planning to buckle down.
 
It just had to happen this way.
 
He abruptly departs from the social scene, which throws certain comments and tones of voice of especially the last six months in new perspective, turning what might be a private affair into some important, secretive Big Thing that becomes the primary subject matter for all young
Tokyo
.
 
I don't even in good faith hold the end of our friendship against him, as it was grounded in a superficiality and spontaneity that would have eventually doomed it if not that year, then quite possibly the next.
 
But if Soren doesn't go completely hermit, if he doesn't completely undergo a 180 degree reversal from life-of-the-party to far-off-seen individual, if Soren just throws a small dinner party or something just to show his face, maybe people are far less likely to get excited, maybe people won't be saying things like "did you hear about the murder?"
 
"Isn't it true there's some crazy stalker Chinese guy who's targeting all Americans?" "Have you heard of some twisted sex game going on in Roppongi Hills and the girl nailed three guys?
 
I think that guy Ritchie is involved…"

Unfortunately for Shan, he's picked the worst possible time for flashing a knife at an American girl.
 
Only nine months prior, an American girl by the name of Dolores Blair who worked at a hostess bar was killed by her old boyfriend from back home, her body discovered in an alley by trash collectors the next day.
 
The resulting uproar was covered in the international press, especially before it turned out the killer wasn’t Japanese.
 
So, Dominique on arrival at the embassy that night, we are months later to discover, is not saying, "Oh, I hung out with this lowlife Chinese dude and he pulled a knife on me," but crying and repeating hysterically "This is another Blair, This is another Blair, This is another Blair, he's trying to kill me, he's trying to kill me, he's trying to kill me, somebody protect me from the crazy stalker, oh my god I’m going to die" in her statements to the embassy security staff surrounded by three layers of locked doors.
 
Lurid news coverage carried by the foreign press had been putting pressure on
Japan
for six months to reform its "soapland" culture, and no matter what the local police do, they find themselves under criticism, making them a bit more jumpy and sensitive to foreign demands than usual.
 
And third, but I feel real, the suicide of Blair's killer, the weird army drop-out social-recluse who nobody knew quite well, has left a strange feeling of a lack of resolution, a sort of challenge to our collective foreigner's society.
 
We want our criminals to grovel on the stand, begging for mercy and striving their hardest for one sweet more moment of life, only to be ruthlessly punished by the collective judgment of the community.
 
This gives you closure: this makes you say, it's true--criminals are all cowards in the end, this lets you sleep comfortably at night.
 
But for Blair's killer to kill himself too?
 
Somehow this lacks closure.
 
Somehow everything is just unresolved and unpunished.