The Setting of the Sun
Rokesmith

Disclaimer: Weiss Kreuz, its characters, indices etcetera belong to Takehito Koyasu, Kyoko Tsuchiya and Project Weiss. This fanfic was written for fun rather than profit and any resemblances to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. Raymond Chandler's novels are the property of Random House.

Author's Note: This piece of fanfiction is my attempt at a full and as faithful as possible loving homage to work of Raymond Chandler in his Philip Marlowe private detective stories (The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window, The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister and The Long Goodbye). In fact, it might be easier to describe it as a crossover, transplanting Weiss' Tokyo into the same world as Philip Marlowe's Los Angeles. It is set in 1947, but does not attempt to give an accurate portrayal of post-war Tokyo anymore than Chandler wanted to write about real pre- and post-war LA. It contains elements borrowed from most of the novels listed above, but adapted to fit the Weiss characters. If you enjoy this, I really recommend you look up Chandler's books. I hope I've done them justice here, but I could never match them.

Chapter One: The Bargain of the Century

The office is on the fourth floor of a building in Shibuya that's only still here because no one's gotten around to demolishing it yet. Take the elevator up and walk half way down a corridor painted by a committee with a really cruel sense of humour and you'll find a door with Youji Kudou, Investigator painted on it by a man convinced that his next job would be writing haikus for the Emperor. The office to the left sells insurance. The office on the right is a theatrical agent this month. Last month it sold office supplies. Have some fun wondering what it'll be next month.

Through the middle door is a waiting area that smells of old cigarettes and older coffee. There are three chairs that don't match and a small table with a couple of newspapers on them. Read one if you've forgotten what happened last year. There's another door with Private written on it by the same guy, who's still waiting for his call. On the other side of that there's a desk, a chair, some cabinets and a window with a view of the billboard across the street. There'll also be a man in one of three suits who'll smoke as he listens to your problems. Then he'll solve them for you, and he'll ask you for nothing more than thirty-five thousand yen a day plus expenses. He's the bargain of the century.

The clouds that had been threatening for the last few days had finally arrived, and they'd brought friends. The rain had started slowly but by lunch time the streets were rivers. I watched it till I was hungry enough that it was worth getting wet and ran across the street for some ramen. My coat and hat were still wet on the hanger when someone knocked on the outer door so softly it could have been the rain wanting to hire me. They knocked again, then the door opened and closed.

I buttoned my jacket and straightened my tie. I unbuttoned my jacket again and opened the office door. There was a kid on the other side looking like he was waiting to see the principal. He was wearing a mass-produced suit at least a size too big for him and a green cap. He'd been clothed by the army. It didn't look like they'd done a good job of feeding him.

"You're younger than you sound on the phone, Hidaka-san," I said.

He had to stop himself saluting. He took his hat off and bowed. I bowed back.

"A friend called you, Kudou-san. He picked you out of the book because he said he met you during the war."

"What's your friend's name?"

"Kase."

"What did he do?"

"First Army, Third Independent Mixed Brigade."

"China?" I asked.

He nodded, but didn't say anything. You could tell a lot about a man from what he did during the war, especially if he'd enjoyed it.

"And you?"

"Ken Hidaka, Lance-Bombardier, Second General Army, Hundred-Forty-Fourth Division."

He stopped himself saying something at the end. It was probably 'sir'. They'd let me wear four stripes with two stars during the war to make my job easier. As far as the kid was concerned, I might as well still be wearing them.

I stared at him, trying to work out what a kid that small could have done in the artillery. He must have seen a lot of people thinking it.

"I was a radio operator," he said.

"I was in Naval Intelligence," I told him.

The kid nodded but didn't say anything. When a man says he's in Intelligence, no one with any asks him about it. The kid was smart enough to know the drill.

"So why did you come to see me, Hidaka-san?"

He must have realised I wasn't going to sit down until he did, so he sat. I sat too and lit a cigarette. I offered one to him but he didn't take it.

"I think someone's bribing soccer players." He said it very quickly, like he was afraid if he didn't he wouldn't say it at all.

"Are you a fan, Hidaka-san?"

He looked at his shoes. "I'm a player. Kase said you'd probably recognise my name."

I pointed at the paper. "I do, but there are a lot of Ken Hidakas in this city. I guess one of them had to be the one who kept goal for FC Tokyo. Your team's doing pretty well, isn't it? Who do you think is being bribed?"

"I don't know." He must have had fascinating shoes, he was looking at them more than at me. "Someone on the team, or maybe more than one person. I don't know. We're doing well, but we should be better, I know it. In practices we're the best team in the country, but when we play other teams the strikers miss shots, the midfielders screw up tackles and passes, and no matter how many times I tell them the defenders keep leaving holes in the formation and I can't save everything! Kase says he can't see it but I can!"

The agent next door would have heard him by now. He realised it too, and went back to memorising his shoes. This was a keeper who the papers said could know where a shot was going before the guy taking it did, but he couldn't have been more confused if he'd shown up to find his team playing baseball.

"Who's Kase?"

"Kase? He's a friend from the orphanage I grew up in. We met up again after the war and spent some time teaching kids there soccer. One day some scouts came by saying they were looking for players for the J-League and we ended up playing for FC Tokyo. He's a striker."

I let the way he said it slide, and asked, "Do you know why anyone would pay players to play badly but not so badly they throw games?"

"No," Ken said. "But wouldn't it be obvious if they did?"

I nodded. "Yes. Yes it would. What do you want me to do?"

This time he only glanced at his shoes. "Find out who's being paid. Find out who's paying them. Find out why. Then we can tell the police. Can you do that?"

"I can try."

Ken finally relaxed. It had only taken him ten minutes.

"How much should I pay you?"

"My standard rate is thirty-five thousand yen a day," I told him. "Plus expenses, but I'll tell you what those are."

"So how much for a week?"

A week's a good round figure for most clients, so I knew the answer without thinking about it: "Two hundred and forty-five thousand."

Ken took a cheque book out of his pocket and wrote it out in slightly less time than it would have taken him to count out the money in cash. I read it, hoping my bank had a good stock of magnifying glasses.

While he was writing the cheque, I'd taken a piece of typewritten paper out of a pile in my draw. Ken gave the kanji a brave go without the katakana to help him out, but eventually gave up.

"What's this?"

"It says that I'm working for you, in case I have to prove it to someone. Can you sign it there and there and put the date at the bottom. It's the seventh of October. I'll use this only as a last resort. I won't mention your name unless I absolutely have to."

"Maybe they'll think it's a different Ken Hidaka." Ken grinned at me and suddenly I couldn't believe he was past twenty.

"Maybe." I couldn't help smiling back. "And if you have a phone number I can contact you?"

I wrote down the number he gave me and gave him one of my cards. He stood up again so I stood up. He gave me a stiff bow so I gave it back and then followed him into the waiting room.

"I'll call you if I find out anything," I told him.

"Thank you, Kudou-san," he said.

Then he walked through the office door and down the corridor sounding like he wanted to run. I listened to him go, wondering what there was to thank me about. I hadn't done anything yet, and I already had a feeling that once I did, people weren't going to be bowing to me in the street. But I had nearly two hundred and fifty thousand yen on my desk from a kid who was so earnest I didn't think anyone could successfully say no to him, so I thought I'd better start earning it.

I smoked another cigarette and listened to the rain playing an inverted ride pattern on the window. Once I was sure lunch break was over I picked up the phone and called the Asahi. Two minutes of brittle-sounding secretaries before I heard a voice like a slow dance with Rita Heyworth.

"Hello, Youji. What can I do for you?"

"I was just calling to ask how your day was, Mayumi," I said.

"You should get better at lying to women, Youji. What do you want?"

"Are you still friendly with the guys on the sports desk?"

"Friendly enough that if I ever get bored of working here I'll let one of them propose to me," Mayumi answered.

"Supposing I wanted to place a bet, a big one, and I wanted to do it quietly. Who would I go to?"

"What's this about, Youji?" She wasn't talking like a movie anymore.

"Could you just ask them? As a favour to me."

She might have sighed, but I might just have been optimistic. "Okay, Youji. I'll ask and call you back."

She hung up without saying goodbye. I had a drink to stop myself staring at the phone. Then I read paper for stories about FC Tokyo and found out the word used most often to describe their playing was 'average'.

The phone only got to ring once before I picked it up. "Genji Koga," Mayumi said. "He's got an office in Shinagawa. He calls himself a chartered accountant, but he's you want to talk to."

"Thanks, Mayumi. I owe you dinner."

"Youji... they didn't tell me much about Koga, but they told me he's not someone you mess with. They said he'd be in prison if he didn't keep making witnesses disappear. Just be careful."

"I always am."

She hung up to stop herself from saying something else. I listened to the empty line for a minute, hoping it would tell me what to do next. I'd just put it down when the door opened and a hat and coat came in. It took me a while to realise there was someone inside them. He was a kid too, but this one was wearing a navy jacket under his coat and was solid enough to win a frigate action. He was very focussed, and that made me nervous. Focussed people do, I worry what happens to the people they focus on.

"Are you Youji Kudou, the investigator?"

"No. I'm Youji Kudou the acupuncturist. Lie down on the desk and I'll see if I can't find somewhere to stick something."

The kid took his hat off and shook water over my floor. "Did Ken Hidaka just hire you?"

"I'm sorry. If he was my client, part of my fee covers confidentiality."

"Did he hire you to look into match fixing?"

I didn't bother to answer this time. I gestured to the chair but he stayed standing in the doorway. If he stood there much longer I was going to have to fit him with hinges.

"Did he tell you he's taking money too?"

"Why would someone hire me to investigate match fixing if he's was in on it?"

He shrugged. "Maybe he wants a bigger cut."

"If you want to boss me about in my own office you'll have to pay me first." I stood up. "Who are you and why are you so interested in this anyway? Lose a bet on a sure thing?"

"Akira Hibana. I've got proof that Hidaka's taking money."

"Then take it to the police."

"The police won't help me," Hibana said, "but you can."

"How?"

He took a card out of his pocket and wrote something on it. "Meet me here at six," he said. "And come alone."

Then he put his hat back on and walked out of my office before I had a chance to tell him that saying stuff like that doesn't make you sound tough, it just sounds like you've seen too many movies.

I looked at the card. It was from a hotel in Shinjuku near the station, and it wasn't one of the ones that businessmen stay at. He'd written a room number on the back, along with the time of the meeting, in case I forgot during the next three hours. I could have spent the time sitting, listening to the jazz number the rain was playing in the street and wondering what Hibana was selling and why he hadn't told me the price, but I had to get to Shinagawa to place a bet.

To Be Continued...