Free I Am a Japanese Writer by Dany Laferrière Page B

me tell you how it goes,” the older one says. “You’re her pimp. She shows up to give you her money. You do some coke together. Then all of a sudden she really gets on your nerves, I can understand that .... What I don’t get is why you threw her out the window when you could have got rid of her down the stairs. A little fall downstairs wouldn’t bring me running. . . But you were too stoned to know the difference, am I right?”
    I don’t answer. He turns to the younger cop, who is gaping in amazement at his seamless demonstration.
    “That’s thirty years of experience, kid .... Now let’s run him in, I’ve got other things to do tonight.”
    I don’t stir from my chair. I know this is only the beginning. I’ve seen too many episodes of Columbo . The young cop (if it isn’t his first day on the job, it’s his second) moves towards me, ready to handcuff me. If this really is about the Hideko business, that happened days ago. If they had the slightest suspicion that a murder had been committed in this apartment, the whole neighborhood would be sealed off. And they wouldn’t have sent these two assholes (a young one and an old one), but a whole army. These two have just dropped by to see if there isn’t any coke on the premises. Just don’t move— that’s all I have to do. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything. On the other hand, I’m starting to have serious doubts that any of this has even happened. As Paul Veyne reminds us, “truths themselves are simply imagined stories.” For him, what is imaginary can become reality. I could have been drunk and brought a woman back here with me, and then she threw herself out the window, and I fell asleep afterwards. The next day, with the fragments of images that lingered in my head, I dreamed up the whole story. It’s true that I did go to see Midori at the Café Sarajevo, but I didn’t feel well, and I left after the Kiss Inc. show. Instead of walking home, which would have calmed my nerves and my stomach, I took the subway. The closed-in atmosphere didn’t help. I was reading Basho with my eyes on the Chinese girl across from me. I lost consciousness as I was leaving the train, and she had the presence of mind to catch me before I fell. Aren’t I building a new story because of the police? Did she come back with me? I have no idea. But something did happen. The morning after my illness, I stole the landlord’s newspaper in front of the building, and that’s when I saw the girl’s body on the sidewalk—right under my window. On page one. The shock of seeing yourself publicly involved with death. Death is a misunderstood star. It wears dark glasses in order to go incognito. It attracts everyone’s eye. In an instant, a nobody who dies becomes a somebody. Maybe I was too quick to conclude that she’d fallen from my window, just because she was lying underneath it. I was thinking like the police, who see murder wherever they go. For every murder, they need to find fifteen suspects. And never the right one. So I’d better think fast. First of all, this is not a fiction film. Next, which death are we talking about? Maybe Zorba pushed the beautiful Helena out the window. Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, right? But I don’t think it’s a good idea to embark on that kind of discussion with two cops on a Thursday night.
    The young cop starts pushing me to one side to slap on the cuffs.
    “Now, wait a minute,” the older one says. “You have to wait till he goes along with my little demonstration . . . You got something to say?” he threatens me, moving in closer.
    He’s turning up the heat. I can see in the young cop’s eyes that he feels the difference too. He doesn’t know what might happen in this room either.
    “I already talked to the police.”
    “And who the hell are we?” he bursts out.
    He rolls his nightstick along my thigh. We move into the sexual mode, the most dangerous part. The slightest reaction could be taken as a