Aomame also had a taste for Kansai accents. She especially enjoyed the mismatch between vocabulary and intonation when people born and raised in Kansai came up to Tokyo and tried to use Tokyo words with Kansai pronunciation. She found that special sound to be strangely calming. So now she made up her mind: she would go for this man. She was dying to run her fingers through the few strands of hair he had left. So when the bartender brought him his Cutty Sark highball, she said to the bartender loudly enough so the man was sure to hear her, “Cutty Sark on the rocks, please.” “Yes, ma’am, right away,” the bartender replied, his face a blank.

The man undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie, which was a dark blue with a fine-grained pattern. His suit was also dark blue. He wore a pale blue shirt with a standard collar. She went on reading her book as she waited for her Cutty Sark to come. Discreetly, she undid the top button of her blouse. The jazz duo played “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” The pianist sang a single chorus. Her drink arrived, and she took a sip. She sensed the man glancing in her direction. She raised her head and looked at him. Casually, as if by chance. When their eyes met, she gave him a faint, almost nonexistent smile, and then immediately faced forward again, pretending to look at the nighttime view.

It was the perfect moment for a man to approach a woman, and she had created it. But this man said nothing. What the hell is he waiting for? she wondered. He’s no kid. He should pick up on these subtle hints. Maybe he hasn’t got the guts. Maybe he’s worried about the age difference. Maybe he thinks I’ll ignore him or put him down: bald old coot of fifty has some nerve approaching a woman in her twenties! Damn, he just doesn’t get it.

She closed her book and returned it to her bag. Now she took the initiative.

“You like Cutty Sark?”

He looked shocked, as if he could not grasp the meaning of her question. Then he relaxed his expression. “Oh, yes, Cutty Sark,” he said, as if it suddenly came back to him. “I’ve always liked the label, the sailboat.”

“So you like boats.”

“Sailboats especially.”

Aomame raised her glass. The man raised his highball glass slightly. It was almost a toast.

Aomame slung her bag on her shoulder and, whiskey glass in hand, slipped over two seats to the stool next to his. He seemed a little surprised but struggled not to show it.

“I was supposed to meet an old high school girlfriend of mine here, but it looks like I’ve been stood up,” Aomame said, glancing at her watch. “She’s not even calling.”

“Maybe she got the date wrong.”

“Maybe. She’s always been kind of scatterbrained,” Aomame said. “I guess I’ll wait a little longer. Mind keeping me company? Or would you rather be alone?”

“No, not at all,” the man said, though he sounded somewhat uncertain. He knit his brows and looked at her carefully, as if assessing an object to be used as collateral. He seemed to suspect her of being a prostitute. But Aomame was clearly not a prostitute. He relaxed and let his guard down a little.

“Are you staying in this hotel?” he asked.

“No, I live in Tokyo,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m just here to meet my friend. And you?”

“In town on business,” he said. “From Osaka. For a meeting. A stupid meeting, but the company headquarters are in Osaka, so somebody had to come.”

Aomame gave him a perfunctory smile. I don’t give a shit about your business, mister, she thought, I just happen to like the shape of your head.

“I needed a drink after work. I’ve got one more job to finish up tomorrow morning, and then I head back to Osaka.”

“I just finished a big job myself,” Aomame said.

“Oh, really? What kind of work do you do?”

“I don’t like to talk about my work. It’s a kind of specialized profession.”

“Specialized profession,” the man responded, repeating her words. “A profession requiring specialized techniques and training.”

What are you, some kind of walking dictionary? Silently, she challenged him, but she just kept on smiling and said, “Hmm, I wonder …”

He took another sip of his highball and a handful of nuts from the bowl. “I’m curious what kind of work you do, but you don’t want to talk about it.”

She nodded. “Not yet, at least.”

“Does it involve words, by any chance? Say, you might be an editor or a university researcher?”

“What makes you think that?”

He straightened the knot of his necktie and redid the top button of his shirt. “I don’t know, you seemed pretty absorbed in that big book of yours.”

Aomame tapped her fingernail against the edge of her glass. “No, I just like to read. Without any connection to work.”

“I give up, then. I can’t imagine.”

“No, I’m sure you can’t,” she said, silently adding, “Ever.”

He gave her a casual once-over. Pretending to have dropped something, she bent over and gave him a good, long look at her cleavage and perhaps a peek at her white bra with lace trim. Then she straightened up and took another sip of her Cutty Sark on the rocks. The large, rounded chunks of ice clinked against the sides of her glass.

“How about another drink?” he asked. “I’ll order one too.”

“Please,” Aomame replied.

“You can hold your liquor.”

Aomame gave him a vague smile but quickly turned serious. “Oh, yes, I wanted to ask you something.”

“What would that be?”

“Have policemen’s uniforms changed lately? And the type of guns they carry?”

“What do you mean by ‘lately’?”

“In the past week,” she said.

He gave her an odd look. “Police uniforms and guns both underwent a change, but that was some years back. The jackets went from a stiff, formal style to something more casual, almost like a windbreaker. And they started carrying those new-model automatic pistols. I don’t think there have been any changes since then.”

“Japanese policemen always carried old-fashioned revolvers, I’m sure. Right up to last week.”

The man shook his head. “Now there, you’re wrong. They all started carrying automatics quite some time ago.”

“Can you say that with absolute certainty?”

Her tone gave him pause. He wrinkled his brow and searched his memory. “Well, if you put it that way, I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I know I saw something in the papers about the switch to new pistols. It caused quite a stir. The usual citizens’ groups were complaining to the government that the pistols were too high-powered.”

“And this was a while ago?” Aomame asked.

The man called over the middle-aged bartender and asked him when the police changed their uniforms and pistols.

“In the spring two years ago,” the bartender replied, without hesitation.

“See?” the man said with a laugh. “Bartenders in first-class hotels know everything!”

The bartender laughed as well. “No, not really,” he said. “It just so happens my younger brother is a cop, so I clearly remember that stuff. My brother couldn’t stand the new uniforms and was always complaining about them. And he thought the new pistols were too heavy. He’s still complaining about those. They’re 9mm Beretta automatics. One click and you can switch them to semiautomatic. I’m pretty sure Mitsubishi’s making them domestically under license now. We almost never have any out-and-out gun battles in Japan; there’s just no need for such a high-powered gun. If anything, the cops have to worry now about having their guns stolen from them. But it was government policy back then to upgrade the force.”

“What happened to the old revolvers?” Aomame asked, keeping her voice as calm as she could.

“I’m pretty sure they were all recalled and dismantled,” the bartender said. “I remember seeing it on television. It was a huge job dismantling that many pistols and scrapping all that ammunition.”