24




The Signal Turns Red

*

The Long Arm Reaches Out



Cinnamon was not alone when he arrived at nine o'clock the next morning. Beside
him in the passenger seat was his mother, Nutmeg Akasaka. She had not been here in
over a month. She had arrived with Cinnamon unannounced that time too, had breakfast
with me, and left after an hour or so of small talk.
Cinnamon hung up his suit coat and, while listening to a Handel Concerto Grosso (for
the third day in a row), he went to the kitchen to make tea and toast for his mother, who
had not yet eaten breakfast. He always made perfect toast, like something to be used in a
commercial. Then, while Cinnamon straightened up the kitchen as usual, Nutmeg and I
sat at a small table, drinking tea. She ate only one slice of toast, with a little butter.
Outside, a cold, sleety rain was falling. Nutmeg said little, and I said little-a few remarks
about the weather. She seemed to have some thing she wanted to say, though. That much
was clear from the look on her face and the way she spoke. She tore off stamp-sized
pieces of toast and transported them, one at a time, to her mouth. We looked out at the
rain now and then, as if it were our longtime mutual friend.
When Cinnamon had finished with the kitchen and started his cleaning, Nutmeg led
me to the "fitting room." This one had been made to look exactly like the "fitting room"
in the Akasaka office. The size and shape were virtually identical. The window here also
had two layers of curtains and was gloomy even during the day. The curtains were never
open more than ten minutes at a time, while Cinnamon was cleaning the room. There was
a leather sofa here, a glass vase, with flowers, on the table, and a tall floor lamp. In the
middle of the room stood a large workbench, on which lay a pair of scissors, scraps of
cloth, a wooden box stuffed with needles and thread, pencils, a design book (in which a
few actual design sketches had been drawn), and several professional tools, the names
and purposes of which I did not know. A large full- length mir ror hung on the wall, and
one corner of the room was partitioned off by a screen for chang ing. The clients who
visited the Residence were always shown to this room.
Why Cinnamon and his mother had had to make an exact reproduc tion of the original
"fitting room" in this house I had no idea. Here there was no need for such camouflage.
Maybe they (and their clients) had become so accustomed to the look of the "fitting
room" in the Akasaka office that they were unable to come up with any new ideas for
decorating this place. Of course, they could just as well ask, "What's wrong with a fitting
room?" Whatever the reason for having it, I myself was pleased with it. It was the "fitting
room," not any other room, and I felt a strange sense of security there, surrounded by all
kinds of dressmaking tools. It was an unreal setting, but not an unnatural one.
Nutmeg had me sit on the leather sofa, and she sat down next to me.

"So. How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Not bad," I answered.
Nutmeg was wearing a bright- green suit. The skirt was short, and the large hexagonal
buttons came up to the throat like one of those old Nehru jackets. The shoulders had pads
the size of dinner rolls. The look reminded me of a science fiction movie I had seen a
long time ago, set in the near future. Almost all the women in the movie wore suits like
this and lived in a futuristic city.
Nutmeg's earrings were large plastic things, the same exact color as her suit. They
were a unique deep green that seemed to have been made from a combination of several
colors, and so they had probably been special-ordered to match the suit. Or perhaps the
opposite was true: the suit had been made to match the earrings- like making a niche in
the wall the exact shape of a refrigerator. Maybe not a bad way to look at things, I
thought. She had come in wearing sunglasses in spite of the rain, and their lenses had
almost certainly been green. Her stockings were green too. Today was obviously green
day.
With her usual series of smooth linked movements, Nutmeg drew a cigarette from her
bag, put it in her mouth, and lit it with her cigarette lighter, curling her lip just slightly.
The lighter, at least, was not green but the expensive-looking slim gold one she always
used. It did go very well with the green, though. Nutmeg then crossed her green-
stockinged legs. Checking her knees carefully, she adjusted her skirt. Then, as if it were
an extension of her knees, she looked at my face.
"Not bad," I said again. "The same as always."
Nutmeg nodded. "You're not tired? You don't feel as if you need some rest?"
"No, not especially. I think I've gotten used to the work. It's a lot easier for me now
than it was at first."
Nutmeg said nothing to that. The smoke of her cigarette rose straight up like an
Indian fakir's magic rope, to be sucked in by the ceiling ventilator. As far as I knew, this
ventilator was the world 's quietest and strongest.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
"Me?"
"Are you tired?"
Nutmeg looked at me. "Do I look tired?"
She had in fact looked tired to me from the moment our eyes first met. When I told
her this, she gave a short sigh.
"There was another article about this place in a magazine that came out this morning-
part of the 'Mystery of the Hanging House' series. Sounds like the title of a horror
movie."
"That's the second one, isn't it?" I said.
"It certainly is," said Nutmeg. "And in fact, another magazine carried a related article
not too long ago, but fortunately no one seems to have noticed the connection. So far."
"Did something new come out? About us?"
She reached toward an ashtray and carefully crushed out her cigarette. Then she gave
her head a little shake. Her green earrings fluttered like butterflies in early spring.
"Not really," she said, then paused. "Who we are, what we're doing here: no one
knows yet. I'll leave you a copy, so you can read it if you're interested. But what I'd
really like to ask you about is something that somebody whispered to me the other day:

that you have a brother- in- law who's a famous young politician. Is it true?"
"Unfortunately, it is," I said. "My wife's brother."
"Meaning the brother of the wife who is no longer with you?"
"That's right."
"I wonder if he's caught wind of what you're doing here?"
"He knows I come here every day and that I'm doing something. He had somebody
investigate for him. I think he was worried about what I might be doing. But I don't think
he's figured out anything else yet."
Nutmeg thought about my answer for a while. Then she raised her face to mine and
asked, "You don't like this bro ther- in-law of yours very much, do you?"
"Not very much, no."
"And he doesn't like you."
"To put it mildly."
"And now he's worried about what you're doing here. Why is that?"
"If it comes out that his brother- in- law is involved with something suspicious, it could
turn into a scandal for him. He's the man of the mo ment, after all. I suppose it's natural
that he would worry about such things."
"So he couldn't be the one leaking information about this place to the mass media,
then, could he?"
"To be quite honest, I don't know what Noboru Wataya has in mind. But common
sense tells me he'd have nothing to gain by leaking things to the press. He'd be more
likely to want to keep things under wraps."
For a long time, Nutmeg went on turning the slim gold lighter in her fingers. It looked
like a gold windmill on a day with little wind.
"Why haven't you said anything to us about this brother-in-law of yours?" Nutmeg
asked.
"It isn't just you. I try not to mention him to anybody," I said. "We haven't liked each
other from the beginning, and now we practically hate each other. I wasn't hiding him
from you. I just didn't think there was any need to bring up the subject."
Nutmeg released a somewhat longer sigh. "You should have told us."
"Maybe I should have," I said.
"I'm sure you can imagine what's involved here. We have clients coming to us from
politics and business. Powerful people. And famous people. Their privacy has to be
protected. That's why we've taken such extreme precautions. You know that much." I
nodded.
"C innamon has gone to a lot of time and trouble to put together the precise and
complicated system we have for maintaining our secrecy- a labyrinth of dummy
companies, books under layers of camouflage, a totally anonymous parking space in that
hotel in Akasa ka, stringent management of the clientele, control of income and expenses,
design of this house: his mind gave birth to all of this. Until now, the system has worked
almost perfectly in accordance with his calculations. Of course, it takes a lot of money to
support such a system, but money is no problem for us. The important thing is that the
women who come to us can feel secure that they will be protected absolutely."
"What you're saying is that that security is being undermined."
"Yes, unfortunately."
Nutmeg picked up a box of cigarettes and took one out, but she just held it for a long

time between her fingers without lighting it.
"And to make matters worse, I have this fairly famous politician for a brother- in - law,
which only increases the possibility of scandal."
"Exactly," said Nutmeg, curling her lip slightly.
"So what is Cinnamon's analysis of the situation?"
"He's not saying anything. Like a big oyster on the bottom of the sea. He has
burrowed inside himself and locked the door, and he's doing some serious thinking."
Nutmeg's eyes were fixed on mine. At last, as though recalling that it was there in her
hand, she lit her cigarette. Then she said, "I Still think about it a lot-about my husband
and the way he was killed. Why did they have to murder him? Why did they have to
smear the hotel room with blood and tear out his insides and take them away? I just can't
think of any reason for doing such a thing. My husband was not the kind of per son who
had to be killed in such an unusual way.
"But my husband's death is not the only thing. All these inexplicable events that have
occurred in my life so far- the intense passion that welled up inside me for fashion design
and the way it suddenly disap peared; the way Cinnamon stopped speaking; the way I
became swept up in this strange work we do- it's as though they were all ingeniously pro -
grammed from the start for the very purpose of bringing me here, where I am today. It's a
thought I can't seem to shake off. I feel as if my every move is being controlled by some
kind of incredibly long arm that's reaching out from somewhere far away, and that my
life has been nothing more than a convenient passageway for all these things moving
through it."
The faint sounds of Cinnamon's vacuuming came from the next room. He was
performing his tasks in his usual concentrated, systematic manner. "Haven't you ever felt
that way?" Nutmeg asked me.
"I don't feel that I've been 'swept up' in anything," I said. "I'm here now because it
was necessary for me to be here."
"So you could blow the magic flute and find Kumiko?"
"That's right."
"You have something you're searching for," she said, slowly recross-ing her green-
stockinged legs. "And everything has its price."
I remained silent.
Then, at last, Nutmeg announced her conclusion: "We've decided not to bring any
clients here for a while. It was Cinnamon's decision. Because of the magazine articles
and your brother-in - law's entry on the scene, the signal has changed from yellow to red.
Yesterday we canceled all remaining appointments, beginning with today's."
"How long will 'a while' be?"
"Until Cinnamon can patch the holes in the system and we can be sure that any crisis
has been completely bypassed. Sorry, but we don't want to take any chances- none at all.
Cinnamon will come here every day, as he always has, but there will be no more clients."



By the time Cinnamon and Nutmeg left, the morning rain had cleared. Half a dozen
sparrows were washing their feathers in a puddle in the driveway. When Cinnamon's
Mercedes disappeared and the automatic gate closed, I sat at the window, looking at the

cloudy winter sky beyond the tree branches. Nutmeg's words came to mind: "some kind
of in credibly long arm that's reaching out from somewhere far away." I imagined the arm
reaching down from the dark, low- hanging clouds- like an illustration from a sinister
picture book.