Chapter 7 Chapter 5 During the waiting time

Mr. Miyashita's driver, Nakamura, took Mr. Maruyama's driver, Fukui, to the downtown area.This place is ten minutes away from the parking lot.They walked into a cafe selling pastry, which was spacious.They took a seat.Nakamura went to the counter and said to the girl, "Call for Nakamura or Fukui, please tell us." Nakamura returned to the table and sat down, picked up a hot towel and wiped his face vigorously.Deeper wrinkles appeared on the flushed face, and the eyes were too tired to open. "Looks like it's too late tonight." Nakamura said to Fukui. "The 'Boshu Club' at Tsuda Restaurant ends after eight o'clock!" Nakamura replied with a smile.

"It was like this in the past, but the presidential election in November is about to start. Of course, the momentum of the 'Banshuhui' is not the same as usual. Not only the congressmen have to prepare, but the financial sector also needs to work harder for this." "Boshuhui" is a fraternity association of members of the Tera Nishi faction and financial leaders who support Tera Nishi.The presidents, vice presidents, and directors of Japan's top companies all attend this meeting, and they have the opportunity to meet once a month. "Do you know the origin of 'Boshuhui'?" Nakamura said.

"have no idea." Representative Maruyama Koichi and secretary Arikawa are both from Osaka, so Fukui inadvertently used the Kansai dialect and quoted stories from the Kansai region. "Really? This is the story. One winter, when Hojo Tokiyai dressed up as a wandering monk and traveled around the world, he lived in a poor samurai's house in Sano, Ueno country. At this time, the owner of the house Genzaemon said:' There’s nothing to entertain, it’s cold, let’s warm you up.” As he spoke, he cut down the trees he’d treasured for many years and used them as firewood for the hearth. Genzaemon originally belonged to the Hojo family The vassal, he didn’t know that this wandering monk was his master Shiyai. Genzaemon said to Shiyai, if the master’s family has something to do, I will go to Kamakura to answer the call. Although I am poor, I have not sold these things to wait for this day. Things. While talking, he pointed out the old armor and the thin horse tied in the stable to Tokirai. Tokirai was very moved by this, and said: With such subordinates, the Hojo family will be safe and sound. .The 'bowl tree' got its name from such a story."

"I have no idea." Nakamura is a well-informed man.Not only know popular songs, but also horse racing.At this time, Nakamura half-closed his eyes and hummed in a deep voice.He fed half of it, opened his eyes and said to Fukui: "This song is 'Bowl Tree'." "Oh, you still learn to sing." Fukui sighed. "It used to be, but now I'm so busy that I don't have time to study." "The voice is pretty good, I admire you." "Thank you. According to the approach of the 'Boshu', we must strengthen the unity of the factions centered on Masayoshi Teranishi, and unite against the enemy when something happens. Its backing is the financial world."

"The enemy you mentioned, do you mean the opponent in this presidential election?" "maybe." "However, in this election, the current Prime Minister Gui retired due to old age, and he has been re-elected three times. The newspaper said that in order to refresh the people of the country, Premier Gui is going to give way to Si Xizhengyi." "It's Luo who is giving way." "Yes, yes! Absolutely. Newspapers, magazines, weeklies say the same thing." "Originally, Gui Zhong believed that he would resign after two terms, but he barely served three terms. He kept making mistakes when he was in power, and his popularity is already the lowest in history. If this continues, our party will fall into crisis. Due to this situation, it is the mood of Premier Gui to give up the throne to our old man!"

"Yes, it was in the newspapers." "What's more! When Gui took office as the third prime minister, he had a secret agreement with our old man Masao Tera Nishi. He said that he would give up the president's throne to him next time, so the two factions of the temple did not obstruct Gui's re-election for the third term." Nakamura paused for a moment. , changed the subject. "It seems that your old man is going to be a minister this time." "Really." Fukui put down the coffee he was drinking. "Elected six times as a member of parliament, served as the head of the Ministry of the Environment. I didn't serve as a minister in the previous two terms, and I will definitely join the cabinet this time."

"What minister?" "I don't know what to do. The members of the cabinet cannot be monopolized by the Sixi faction. We must consider the balance with other factions. The approximate ratio is four from the Sixi faction, three from the current Prime Minister Gui faction, and the remaining three are divided between the other two factions and the middle faction. .” In addition to the Prime Minister and the Chief Cabinet Secretary, there are 21 positions for ministers.The heads of the Administration and Management Agency and the Economic Planning Agency are high-ranking positions and should be held by big names.But MPs think ministers are better than ministers.Because being called "Minister So-and-so" feels very decent.

"What kind of minister do you think our old man should be?" Fukui asked with concern. "I'm not sure either, maybe I'll be the Minister of Posts or the Minister of Health and Welfare!" "That's not an important minister!" "It's not an important minister, but the post minister controls postal savings and telecommunications, especially radio communication, which is very useful for newspapers with radio stations. This is an important means for the Conservative Party to control public opinion tools. The health minister controls medicines , There is also a lot to write about here. It is not easy to be a minister."

The TV in the coffee shop was showing the seven o'clock news.The two were talking lively, but they didn't listen to a word of news.Suddenly Fukui had a complex expression on his face. "What happened to you?" "Knowing that the old man has become a minister, my wife should be proud again!" "why?" "When the old man was the Minister of the Environment, she immediately became proud. She bragged everywhere, as if her husband had also become a great person!" "It's great if my wife is happy!" "Being a minister's secretary is quite a character! What can I brag about if I'm just a driver? My wife doesn't even understand that."

"Old women are simple-minded." Saburo Fukui felt that Nakamura's words were too correct.When Mr. Maruyama was the head of the Ministry of Environment, his wife was happy for a while that she became the minister's driver, but Mr. Maruyama dismissed him as a minister. She felt that her man became the driver of an ordinary member of parliament, so she was depressed for three years.The complaints and complaints of the past few years also come from here. "Your old man is going to be a minister, he must be happy." Nakamura asked while drinking the rest of his coffee.

"I can't tell if he's happy or not, he's always dozing off in the car." "He is worthy of being a former minister of state. He can hold his breath. Although our old man pretends to be fine on the surface, he can't hold his breath anymore." At this moment, the girl from the coffee shop came over, "Is that Mr. Nakamura?" "Yes!" Nakamura turned his face away. "Come on the phone!" In less than a minute, Nakamura came back after answering the phone. "A message from the toll office of the parking lot told us to go back immediately. Tonight's 'Boshu meeting' ended so quickly!" Fukui looked at his watch, it was half past seven. Nakamura and Fukui came out of the cafe and ran through the crowd to the parking lot.Because Senator Maruyama and Senator Miyashita were always in a hurry to call a car, and they would yell at each other when they arrived later.In order to hurry, they had no choice but to run over, and finally arrived at the toll office of the parking lot.From the parking lot to "Tsuda", it takes ten minutes by car.At this time, five or six partners in the cafeteria opposite the parking lot waved to them.They continued down to the basement where the car was kept.At this time, a partner opened the glass door of the cafeteria and came out. "Did you watch the seven o'clock TV news?" "Didn't look." "Come here, then, and I'll tell you." "The old man from 'Tsuda' is calling us!" "We made that call to the café!" the young driver laughed. "What the hell are you doing!" "I'm sorry. I thought you were talking at the cafe and not watching TV." Nakamura and Fukui entered the cafeteria, the news program had already finished, and other drivers sat around the long table drinking tea. "What happened?" Nakamura asked standing up. "It's not a big event like the dissolution of the parliament or the general resignation of the cabinet, but a general traffic accident. It's also the last to be reported on the news program." Nakamura and Fukui heard that it was a traffic accident, and sat down in chairs with a sigh of relief. "Did an acquaintance of ours get into a car accident?" Nakamura looked at the faces of the drivers around him. "It's not a stranger either, it's Masaaki Kawamura, whom I often meet in the guild hall." "Is that the young Member of Parliament II?" "It's him? Mr. Kawamura's taxi had a personal accident." "Did Mr. Kawamura get run over?" Fukui said. "No." It was Nishikori Senator's driver Makino who shook his head.Nishikori Ukichi is the backbone of the Terasai faction and served as a minister. "It was Mr. Kawamura's taxi that hit the person. It is said that the location was a narrow road in Shibuya-ku, Yodaime 2-chome." Kawamura Masaki is a person from Kyushu.Father was a big man in the Conservative Party.After his father's death, Kawamura inherited his domain and has been elected four times as a member of parliament.He served as a minister of foreign affairs and belonged to the Itakura Tuijie faction, the third largest faction in the party. "How about the person who was hit?" Nakamura asked the driver Makino with his eyes wide open. "The news said that the person who was hit was a sixty-five-year-old woman. She was sent to the hospital by ambulance. Her life was not in danger." "Is it because the TV news broadcasts such news because the passenger is a member of parliament?" Fukui said beside him. "There is this factor, but not only this reason. When the car accident happened, Mr. Kawamura's attitude was a little abnormal." "Anomaly?" "After hitting the old woman, the car braked urgently. At this time, the passenger looked at the odometer, immediately paid the fare to the driver and got off. When the driver picked up the old woman who fell on the road, he didn't even look at it. I'm going to walk away quickly at a glance." "I'm afraid that I will hurt myself!" "Maybe. The surrounding people saw this situation and thought it was too shameful, so they chased him and stopped him. Only then did they realize that he was Mr. Kawamura. At first, the surrounding people didn't know that he was a member of Congress." "Just look at the member's badge!" "It doesn't seem to have a badge. The TV news didn't make it clear." "If you take off the member's badge..." Nakamura and the other drivers looked at each other. "It seems that he took out his business card after the police from the nearby police station arrived at the scene." Driver Muye said. "Why did Mr. Kawamura run away from the scene?" "Mr. Kawamura's situation was introduced in the TV news: He went to a public phone in order to call an ambulance." "Who called the ambulance?" Nakamura asked Makino. "Maybe the police called from the phone of the police station. Because it's TV news, I didn't clarify these details." "Is that all?" Fukui asked Makino. "It's over, it's interesting, so I asked you to listen." "We thought it was the old man calling us, so we ran over in a hurry and were sweating." Fukui wiped his face. "'Tsuda''s 'Hachiki Club' is coming to an end. Tsuda's maid brought the news, so I called you back." "Thank you!" Fukui thanked Makino. "About Mr. Kawamura who had a car accident..." Nakamura began to talk. "Mr. Kawamura often rides in luxurious foreign cars. The driver is a private secretary whose name I can't remember. It's a fat, red-faced man..." "Nabeya Kenzo!" Makino immediately called out his name. "Well, you're calling out names right away. What's your relationship with him?" "It doesn't matter at all. However, that fat and oily face is connected with the strange surname Nabe House. Once you see it, you will never forget it. You speak softly and have a bit of a stubborn temper. Island' waitress is the same as that old woman!" 'Spring Island' is the name of a restaurant in Kagurazaka. "Well, very similar!" Fukui and Nakamura laughed together, the old men often took their car to Kagurazaka. "Then why doesn't Mr. Kawamura take a taxi instead of his nice car?" "Is there any reason here!" "The narrow road in Yoyogi 1-chome is in the east-west area of ​​Minami-Shinjuku Station on the Oda Railway, and the area is densely intersected with narrow ramps." Nakamura said. "Mr. Kawamura slipped away from the meeting this afternoon. Why did he take a taxi to that place?" Nakamura continued to ask. "You said just now that Mr. Kawamura took off the congressman's badge while taking a taxi, didn't you?" "The TV news report did not go into detail. But when he fled from the scene of the accident, he was chased by people around him, so he took out a business card with the title of a member of parliament. From this, it can be inferred that he did not wear a badge." "And what about your reasoning?" "It's a secret operation!" "Yes! It's a secret private visit." "There is no ghost, so there is no need to take off the member's badge!" Fukui, who was sitting next to him listening to Makino, remembered what he saw when he sent the old man to the Bei Building in Shinjuku this afternoon.A man and a woman sat in a taxi that stopped at a red light.One was Takuro Uura, Secretary Masayoshi Teranishi, who was wearing a very low top hat, and next to him was a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat. The two of them were silent without saying a word.The very low top hat and wide-brimmed women's hat made people feel that there was some secret inside, not to mention that the famous capable man Waipu took a taxi, which made people even more suspicious.Fukui connected Makino's inference that Masaaki Kawamura took off his badge and took a taxi with what he had seen about Uaiura taking a woman in a taxi. Nakamura said, "Mr. Kawamura was still young, when he was enjoying playing. But he didn't expect that his concubine lived in Yoyogi 2-chome." "Probably live in an apartment!" Makino said with a smile. "The apartments in that area are relatively remote, so they are not very conspicuous." "What do the women who live there do?" Nakamura asked. "Yeah, judging from the location, it might be a club in Shinjuku or the proprietress of a bar." "Shinjuku's Ward Office Road has become a bar street no less than Ginza. There are also several high-end nightclubs." "If that woman is in the bar, it may not be the proprietress, it may be the waitress. Mr. Kawamura is still young." This kind of chatting has become a kind of enjoyment for the drivers who are waiting for the banquet to end. "Could Mr. Kawamura, who is so pompous, hang out with a barmaid?" "That's right! He's the future star of the 'Renovation Club'!" Nakamura said imitating Kawamura's pompous look. The "Innovation Club" is a policy group composed of seven hardcore members of the Itakura Retirement Faction who have been elected three to six times.Members are in their thirties to fifties, and the oldest is the fifty-six-year-old convener Shangshan Zhuangping.He is the former head of the National Land Agency elected from the San'in region and has been elected six times.Kawamura is a prominent person in the Itakura faction, and the public opinion circles call it an "emerging force", and he is often reported. "Anyway, Mr. Kawamura took a taxi to fool around in the Yoyogi 2-chome alley. It's not clear." Makino said while pouring tea. "Where does Kawamura live?" Nakamura asked. "A member's dormitory in Akasaka." "Akasaka and Yoyogi are indeed two completely different directions." "I took a taxi in order to keep it secret, and there was a car accident. Mr. Kawamura was nervous enough at the time, can you understand it!" "Life is like politics. It's hard to predict what will happen next." Makino smiled. "Then, Mr. Kawamura left in his own car in front of the hall, and then went to a certain building. For example, he got off the car there, went out through the back door of the building, and took a taxi to a certain apartment. I messed around there for a long time, and then called a taxi back to the original building. This time I entered through the back door, and walked calmly to the door where the driver was waiting. Other congressmen probably do this when they want to fool around, and Mr. Kawamura does not. There will be exceptions." Makino's words caught Fukui's attention.Because, at two o'clock this afternoon, Fukui sent his old man, Representative Maruyama Koichi, from the assembly hall to R building.Maruyama waited two hours in front of the building before coming out.Fukui thought, just like what Makino said about Representative Kawamura, did Maruyama use the R building as a passage and went to "somewhere" by taxi? "Why are gentlemen willing to do such a thing in broad daylight?" Nakamura asked Makino with a wretched smile on his face. "That's because there are faction gatherings and other banquets at night, just like the 'Tsuda' holds the 'Boshuhui' now. So that kind of thing can only be done during the day. But after this kind of thing is done, there will be a banquet at night, and even There are second and third dinners. So dozing off at the next day's committee or council meeting is inevitable." Fukui thought of Maruyama in the car.On the way from the guild hall to Shinjuku R Building, Fukui saw through the reflector on the car that Maruyama was full of vigor, and the round eyes in black-rimmed glasses were very energetic, but after two hours, he came out of R Building and sat in the car. Maruyama was extremely sleepy.On the way to "Tsuda" in Akasaka, Maruyama had been drowsy all the time, and he was a different person from before reaching the R building.Fukui always thought that the dull Maruyama would not have a mistress. At this time, the people in the parking lot shouted: "Mr. Maruyama's driver, Mr. Miyashita's driver, Mr. Kawagami's driver, Mr. Harada's driver, Mr. Matsue's driver, and Mr. Hirata's driver, please go to Tsuda immediately. "The drivers all stood up at once. "The 'Boshuhui' seems to be over. Tonight is earlier than usual!" The drivers said to each other.It's eight twenty. The black cars lined up from parking lot A to "Tsuda".A row of black cars lined up on the left and right walls around the gate of the restaurant.The waiters in the restaurant are busy.Guests came out of "Tsuda" one after another.The door light shines on the face of the guests, from time to time.There are old people with white hair and bald head, and there are also middle-aged people with black and shiny hair.Bow-tie janitors in the foyer directed MPs' vehicles.Inside the door stood the female boss and a group of maids, but no geisha was seen.Because the road is narrow, cars can only pass in file, a luxurious and noisy scene. Councilor Koichi Maruyama's car ranked sixth, closely following that of Councilor Masanori Miyashita.Fukui in the driver's seat could see the back of Nakamura holding the steering wheel. The car in front stopped.The porter and maids in bow ties turned their heads and looked anxiously at the hall door.At this time, a tall man came out from the hall.Seeing half of his face illuminated by the light, Fukui recognized him as Takuro Gaiura, secretary of Masayoshi Teranishi.Now he does not wear the top hat he wears during the day, revealing smooth hair, a broad forehead, and a clear-cut face.Secretary Waipu probably came out to check on the car, but he was surrounded by people who suddenly appeared.They are journalists who are looking for Waipu.They knew that Gaipu was a special secretary lent to Masayuki Teranishi by He Hisahiro, a tycoon in the financial world.It is said that Sixi Zhengyi once "visited the thatched cottage three times" before inviting Waipu Zhuolang.In order to express their gratitude, Tera Nishi and his wife also went to He Jiuhong to pay their respects.The future presidential candidate Teranishi Masahiro and the financial liaison Takuro Ura are of course more valuable for interviews than other congressmen.In the eyes of the reporter, those little mundane MPs were not in their eyes.Fukui's driver saw the scene of reporters asking questions to Uaipu from inside the car, but of course he couldn't hear their questions and answers.Waipu Zuolang, who looked distressed, answered two or three vague sentences, then turned and went into the hall.At this time, four middle-aged congressmen came out from the lobby of the restaurant, got into the car and left together. "I have a familiar bar, go there. There are fun girls there!" A councilor organized another reception. "Let's go together in my car. Tell them to drive back in your car." The drivers who had been waiting for the congressmen all night just went back empty. Fukui thought to himself that his business was not over yet.Unlike young congressmen, Maruyama never hitchhiked.Like an elderly man, he would rather go to high-end restaurants than nightclubs and bars.Recently, in order to avoid the eyes of journalists, he deliberately chose an inconspicuous small restaurant.It's convenient for secret talks and fun here.The place Maruyama often goes to is the small restaurant in Kagurazaka.He went there, learned to sing ditties, had young prostitutes to accompany him, and sometimes played mahjong. After the car pulled out, Maruyama whispered to the driver: "To Spring Island." "Harushima" in Kagurazaka is a restaurant that Masaki Teranishi often goes to.It seems that after Teraishi and Nishikori arrived from "Tsuda", they are going to have another banquet. Maruyama in the mirror had his eyes closed, neither dozed off nor drunk, and seemed to be deep in thought.Did you consider what Nishida whispered in your ear?In Fukui's ears, the voice of that annoying "Yinai Shibo" reporter Nishida just said "I want to contact Mr. directly" just before boarding the car rang.It seems that "directly" means not through the first secretary.Fukui wondered if the reporters from the "Yinai Shibo" were aware of Arikawa's activities that Maruyama was worried about?

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