I Can’t Find My Phone

Yuki Sembommatsu Edited by Louie

Chapter 1

The woman entered without saying a word. Shoji had just finished his second glass of scotch. As she removed her shoes he thought that there was nothing more awkward looking than a woman’s toes through the fabric of pantyhose.

She was sliding her finger lovingly across his bar counter that was made of the same expensive Swedish Green Marble as his matching floor. It was the same marble used in the United Nations General Assembly for the main desk and the wall behind it. All this easily cost more than his Mercedes. “How can you afford to live in the heart of Tokyo in this expensively furnished apartment?” She asked in a disinterested way.

“What’s it your business?”, Shoji said visibly annoyed, “All I want from you is to get rid of what’s in these boxes,” he said as he waved his hand as if to sweep them away.

She started rummaging through the three large boxes, each a 5 foot square that came up to about mid-thigh. The guy who came to look at these before her seemed to have no idea of their worth and gave Shoji an estimate that was only 10% of their true value. The bags smelled like Astrid, he thought, just after she finished performing an intense ballet.

The woman opened the gold zipper on the pure white lambskin Chanel bag and pulled out a watch and held it up like a fish she’d caught. “Looks like the bitch left it in there by mistake. I didn’t give her this!” he said, laughing hysterically. It was a Louis Vuitton watch that Astrid mentioned she wanted. He guessed it was worth about $20k U.S.. She must have gotten it from her new guy.

Astrid was now with a guy named Jessy. While Shoji, when they were together, supported her with his hard earned money, Jessy was a young guy who never worked a day in his life and lived off the money he got from his family’s estate.

Astrid had a fetish for high-end handbags and Shoji loved to indulge her in this. Occasionally Shoji would say, jokingly, something like, “Hey, you have only two hands, why do you need more handbags?” She was dating Jessy even when she was with Shoji.

The woman gave Shoji an estimate he thought was fair and he quickly signed an agreement. “I’ll be back tomorrow to pick them up,” she said and left without a word as just as she’d entered. He was glad he didn’t have to deal with sleazy pawnshops anymore.

The bags reminded him with his time with Astrid, the good times and the bad times, as he followed her to Stockholm, Berlin, New York - wherever she was performing. She’d been his angel then, but now she was a fallen angel with bent and broken black wings that could no longer fly.

The last time he saw her dance was in Prokofiev’s “Cinderella.” She’d always hated Prokofiev’s music but, when she danced, she lost herself and became Cinderella, to herself and to the enthralled audience.

The boxes were sent from Milan. Shoji searched for her tour information on his phone. It said they’d be in Rome tomorrow. When Shoji first saw her on stage her beauty was mesmerizing, almost hypnotic. Just like Arthur Miller wrote about his first meeting with Marilyn Monroe, he almost started to believe in God again.

Chapter 2

So Astrid was going to Rome with Jessy. Why had his angel flown away from him? Shoji broke down and cried, “I can’t find my phone!” But his phone was right there in his hand. He’d never lost his phone in his life, but he somehow felt this sudden feeling of panic that he’d lost his phone.

He heard an unexpected banging at his door. He’d canceled all appointments he’d had after he’d accepted the girl’s offer and was expecting no one. The banging was louder and was accompanied by a man’s voice demanding, “Open the door!”

Again Shoji was in a panic. “I can’t find my phone! I can’t find my phone!” he shouted as he searched his pockets with his right hand. Staring, almost catatonic, at the phone in his left hand he heard the men burst into his house.

The room was surprisingly cozy. Not like the cold, dark interrogation rooms you see in the movies. No, this room was bright and sunny with a canvas couch, plants on the windowsill and a round table, roughly seven feet in diameter, at which Soji and a detective both sat.

Shoji just sat there sadly, repeating, as if a mantra, “I can’t find my phone, I can’t find my phone, ...”

“Right there!,” the detective said pointing to the phone in Shoji’s hand, “You must’ve asked that a thousand times already.”

Shoji just looked at him like a lost little child and asked again, “Where’s my phone?”

“Right in front eyes, “ the detective said with great patience.

“I’m sure I lost it but, if you say so, I’ll believe you, “ Shoji said, looking at the phone on the table in front of him.

Just then the detective snatched his phone and said, “But we’ve gotta keep it. It’s evidence now.” Shoji said meekly, again like a child that wants something, “But you said I could keep it.”

“That’s not what I said. I said your phone was right in front of you,” the detective explained.

A woman in a black suit entered silently, approached the table, and without stopping, made a swift motion that removed phone from the table. She left as silently as she had entered. He recognized her as the woman whose bare feet he thought looked so ugly seen through the material of her pantyhose.

“Listen Shoji,” the detective said, “We’re not here to discuss the whereabouts of your phone.” Shoji saw before him a delicate little ballerina spinning tiptoe on one leg to the music of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from “The Nutcracker.” Every time she spun around a shower of rainbow colored stars flew from her like a fireworks display.

Irritated at being ignored by Shoji the detective said, “Now what’s with you, Shoji?”

Shoji poked the spinning little ballerina in the small of her back. She lost balance and fell into the palm of his hand. She was yelling at him and he began laughing hysterically. She was small as a little bird and, in her deep red costume looked like a red canary. She was hopping on one leg alternating left and right. There were red feathers flying as she hopped and they tickled his nose so that he sneezed. The sneeze was so violent that it almost knocked her from his palm. Shoji laughed and saw that she was mad at him again.

Chapter 3

The detective made a call and a young man entered. The detective walked over and whispered to the man, “We need to get this guy checked out. Mentally I mean. Something’s a bit off about him.”

The detective, now completely fed up with Shoji said, “This is the last time I’m gonna ask you: Who sent those three big boxes full of expensive handbags?”

(My beautiful half-Swedish half-Japanese ex-girlfriend Astrid. She’s got a fetish for high-end handbags.)

“And how can an accountant live in an expensive house and drive a Mercedes?,” the detective continued.

(Yeah I’m an accountant, a high-end accountant and undercover. I’ve saved many international corporations from going bankrupt. I’m undercover because I’ve caught many powerful people who’d want revenge. I’ve even driven some to suicide.)

“At this point we’ve gotta tell you that we brought you in because we’ve been investigating a gang that steals clothing, watches, jewelry and the kind of high-end bags that you had at your place.”, the detective added.

(I’m too smart to get involved in that kind of stuff. Too risky and too little profit.)

“Why do you keep staring at your hand.”, the detective asked not really expecting an answer.

(She’s my canary, red canary and she sang and danced for me. Only for me)

Shoji let his ballerina down onto the table and she flew away on her red wings and, before her tiny body dissolved, she waved goodbye, winked and blew him a kiss that sent a shower of multicolored stars his way.

“We’re going to send you for an medical evaluation. The evaluation will take place in this facility. Do you want to say anything before you go?”, the detective asked.

“I can’t find my phone,” Shoji said again in the voice of a sad, lost little child.

“We’ll give your phone back after we’ve done a thorough search for evidence,” the detective reassured him.

Chapter 4

The detective, whose last name was Habana, visited Shoji as he was getting checked out by the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist told Habana that Shoji exhibited symptoms some of which pointed to akathisia, a condition that is characterized by uncontrolled movement such as fidgeting, and catalepsy, which is characterized by the inability to move. The psychiatrist was young. When he crossed his legs in the chair Habana saw that the pattern on his socks was of an astronaut riding on a rocket.

The psychiatrist said excitedly, “The symptoms your suspect is exhibiting, both akathisia and catalepsy together, are very rare these days because we now have widely available medicines to treat them. I, personally, have never seen both these symptoms in a single patient before, only in some videos from the 1960s that were shown in medical school. I wish I could keep him here for a while for observation.”

Habana chuckled and asked, “So can we cut to the chase here? What’s your diagnosis of Shoji as it stands?” The psychiatrist replied with a smile, “Well he’s a psychopath with an IQ of 140, Habana, but that’s only one of his personality disorders. He’s human, after all so let’s not forget that. For this kind of personality disorder there have been many advanced studies done and many kinds of treatments available.”

Habana asked the psychiatrist, “One thing I’ve noticed: can you tell me why is he always looking for his phone.”

“I wouldn’t take that too seriously. There could be lots of reasons for it but it’s not really that important,” he said with an even bigger smile. Habana’s gut told him this was important to his investigation so he pressed him for an answer. He knew that the National Police Agency hired only the best doctors, “...but I want to know. It’s central to my investigation.”

The doctor replied, “Just think of it this way: the statement ‘I can’t find my phone’ is a poem that’s been living inside him. Poems don’t need an explanation. If every poem needed to be explained then it would no longer be poetry. Just feel the poem and its meaning will reveal itself to you. When he says, ‘I can’t find my phone’ it could just be a metaphor for something he feels he’s lost and is looking for. It can be a thing or it can be something more abstract, like a feeling he’s lost.”

Habana was surprised to hear the word “poem” in the psychiatrist’s explanation. It was the opposite of what might be called a “clinical” explanation. Just then a nurse poked her head in to tell the psychiatrist that his next patient was waiting.

“One more question if you don’t mind,” Habana said, “Do you think is he’s involved in a gang in any way?” The psychiatrist answered emphatically, “No. He’s much too smart for that.”

And, at that, the meeting left Habana even more confused.

Chapter 5

After the psychiatric evaluation yielded nothing useful to the detectives, Shoji was sent home, but under house arrest. The Ministry of Finance, curious about his sources of income, began searching through his past tax returns. No one really knew who Shoji was, not even the people he worked for. Corporations, who were under mountains of debt, called him in to rescue their companies. He was given carte blanche to do what was necessary to achieve this end, which included firing people from the lowliest janitor to the highest executive. To him people were just numbers in an equation that he had to balance to make the company’s cash flow positive again. A perfect job for a genius psychopath. He destroyed lives with a single keystroke in a bookkeeping spreadsheet.

That night, when Shoji went to bed he whispered, “Goodnight detective, sweet dreams.” Habana let his team know that Shoji knew where all the surveillance bugs, both audio and video, were planted. All the trouble they went through to install and conceal them had, after all, been a waste of taxpayer money.

As Habana had determined that Shoji was not a member of a gang or criminal organization, Shoji put his investigation on the back burner and let the Ministry of Finance take over. They turned up lots of receipts from very high-end boutiques.

Hearing this, Habana dashed over to Shoji’s place and asked, “Why didn’t you tell us you had receipts for all those bags?” “Why detective, I’m an accountant. We always keep receipts,” he said slyly. Somehow Habana felt he and Shoji were forming a connection. He was beginning to get an understanding of what Shoji’s psychopathic behavior was all about. He began to understand that he and his team were just one of the cards in the game Shoji was playing.

Chapter 6

“My watch!” she said genuinely surprised when she opened the box.

“Your watch? I told you I was gonna buy you another one,” Jessy said not understanding why she said that.

Astrid held the box out to him, “Look, this came in the mail. It’s the watch I thought I’d lost.”

The box was small and ordinary until he noticed something, “Look, this thing is from Japan! And there’s a slip of paper in the bottom. It says ‘I found your watch in you Chanel bag, but I still can’t find my phone.’” he read aloud, “That guy is just sick!” he said and tore up the note.

Shoji had mailed Astrid’s $20,000 Louis Vuitton watch by regular mail with no return address. “How the hell did he know my address?”, she said. Astrid and her fiancee Jessy had just moved from Stockholm to this flat in downtown London last week. She hadn’t told anyone about the move. Not family, not friends, not even the company she works for. Then she remembered Shoji’s hacking skills that came with his profession. Sometimes he’d have to break into the computer systems of the competitors of the companies he worked for in order to give them a leg up and make their companies profitable again.

“Astrid, forget about him. We’re gonna be late for the concert. Come on, it’s your favorite pianist.” Jessy urged

Astrid tried to put Shoji out of her mind. She focused on the news she got this morning that she’d been selected as one of the top ten prima ballerinas in the world. Jessy was wearing a fancy tuxedo with fine embroidery on the lapels and Astrid was wearing a long, scarlet dress that made her look like a princess in one of her many ballet roles – Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker or Swan Lake.

When Astrid and Jesse arrived at the concert hall the orchestra was already tuning up and the audience was seated. When the pianist walked on the stage in a sparkling golden gown, Astrid hurriedly opened her clutch to set her phone to “mute.” The clutch just another of the fetish bags that Jessy had gotten her.

She was surprised to find her phone already glowing inside her clutch. She looked and read the text, “Astrid, help me please...I can’t find my phone,” followed by the sound horrible laughter. Soon the laughter was drowned out by the heavy rain of notes of the music of Rachmaninoff.

The End

#thriller  #psychopath #inkitt #Novel

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