Loud

Chapter 2 - Rob Meets Cynthia

Not far from the ramen shop, Rob sat on a low wall and something tickled his neck. He shimmied away from a row of plants and their pointy leaves and searched the sidewalk, but Nobu was already lost in the crowd. Stairs on the left led down to an Irish bar. Its open wall and basement level patio channeled conversation and music to the street. Down there, loud English-speaking men failed to outwit each other.

Rob's swank apartment building was nearby, but over here seedy clubs and bars dominated the neighborhood, even though ordinary people and families walked around freely. A man shoved a flyer at Rob. It advertised one free drink, cheap admission, and girls, girls, girls. Rob rejected it with a tight smile.

At least two communities, the privileged and the underclass, coexisted here. A lack of puritanical drive among the Japanese and a lack of indiscriminate violence among the criminals made it possible. The criminals focused their violence on the girls. The ones he had seen with Brian Keating did not look coerced, but Rob knew the deal. If minors were available, coercion played a part.

He would get a clearer idea in a couple of days, but Makiko misjudged him. Rob had never been a monster like Brian Keating. Nobu misjudged him too. Rob was committed to exposing any wrong doing, especially crime against minors, if it took place.

A passing woman made eye contact. He remembered her. In January, she had offered to give him a massage. He shook his head, and she made her way down the street, soliciting others. Rob was no prude but sometimes sex was so putrid. To hell with Keating and his ilk. Damn them for destroying sex.

Rob got off the wall and brushed off his butt. At times, he worried he lacked the patience to congeal in Tokyo for a year while waiting for Makiko's forgiveness.

But Roppongi could bear fruit in other ways too. Realistically, he probably could not stop a Hollywood powerhouse like Keating from molesting minors, but he might be able to figure out who supplied the girls and mess that up. The photographs he had would not end Keating's career, but they might spook Keating into handing over a suitcase of cash. Lord knows, his money could be put to better use. Nobu could accomplish something with it. And if blackmail backfired, the messy revelations might embarrass Keating. Makiko would learn that her father was not a pervert or predator, but a good guy. The world was so complex. Sometimes blackmail was justice, because injustice demanded radical action, radical solutions, and risks. Blackmail was crazy, but Rob's instincts had won him a Pulitzer, and he still trusted them.

Rob glanced up and down the crowded street. What was visible in Roppongi struck him as trite, untrue. The ordinary crowds on the sidewalk were a lie too. Keating's story festered hereabouts. Evil lurked below the surface. For the first time in a long time, Rob felt like using his camera.

***

Around 12:30 a.m., Rob tired of scouting Roppongi's side streets. The promising places, the ones most likely to harbor secrets, refused to admit foreigners, a problem for another day. He wandered back toward the subway station near his apartment building. On the way, he vowed to put Brian Keating out of his mind, at least until after meeting Makiko. He did not know how Yukiko would behave or what Makiko expected. Nervousness about that probably drove his obsession with Keating. He had to relax, exercise, eat well.

He passed a doorway opposite the subway station, steep stairs led up, and a purple wall on the second floor muffled dance music. Tomorrow, he would visit a temple or other quiet place. Tonight, a nightcap. Then bed.

He took the stairs two at a time. Inside, young Japanese people danced on a small strip of floor. A wrinkled Caucasian man with gray chest hairs stood in the aisle. Another old foreigner breast-gazed from a barstool. Boring. A quick walk through in case the place hid something interesting, then home.