Research notes:
-Apparently the polite thing to do in Japanese is call your friend's mother "mother" but we don't do that in english so here's my best localization
-The IRL Detective Zenigata Heiji novels started being published in 1937, and I think that in the Lupin universe, these were Historical Fiction books that baby Zeni obsessed over, probably in part because they gave him an escape from the tumultuous ending and aftermath of WW2.
-Zenigata's mother is loosely inspired by the stories I've heard about Miyazaki Hayao and his relationship to his own mother
The sun was setting as they returned to the precinct, tired and hot from the trek back from the train station. Lupin longed to hot-wire one of the cars he'd seen around the city—there had been an adorable red Daihatsu parked just down the street from the depot. But it would certainly blow his cover if he suddenly showed up driving an automobile all of a sudden, in this economy, with so few cars around in the first place. Oh, he missed his Mercedes. It would have fit right in during this era, too. If only he could have hitched it along for the ride.
They split at the station plaza without discussion—Zenigata to the lockers, Lupin to his office to make sure the little sniffler he stole it from hadn't moved back in while he was gone. It wasn't as if Lupin planned to be here for much longer! The guy could have it back when he was done with it.
Someone coughed behind him, politely, and tapped his shoulder. Lupin tried not to jump. The mysterious tapper turned out to be one of the low-level cops he'd chatted with yesterday on his rounds. Not memorable. No idea what he wanted. Lupin liked a bit of station gossip as much as the next internationally wanted thief, but now really wasn't the time.
"Yes?" Lupin said. "Only I'm in a bit of a hurry–"
"Where were you this afternoon?" the officer asked, frowning vaguely. "The commissioner was looking for you a couple hours ago, but no one knew where you were."
Crap. He didn't think he'd be noticed so quickly.
"Ahh," Lupin said, "so sorry, I had to go back to my hotel to deal with some issues. They haven't put in flushing toilets here yet, you know."
The officer winced. "Oh. Alright then. Well, the commissioner is gone for the day, but he wants to speak to you tomorrow morning."
"Don't you worry, I'll be there avoir la pêche," Lupin assured him.
"What?"
"With bells on," Lupin said, and flicked the brim of the officer's hat. "Good job, finding me! Anyway, I really should…"
"Inspector Mori!" shouted the unmistakable voice of Zenigata, freezing Lupin in his tracks.
The sound of that voice always filled him with such a strange mix of dread and anticipation. Like a course of electricity in the executioner's chair, he never felt so aware of the blood in his body as he did when Zenigata's shout flooded through him. Holding still under that onslaught was a thrilling agony—how many times had he been in disguise, just like this, only to hear his name ringing down the halls?
But, of course. This wasn't the Zenigata he knew, and that wasn't his name. Lupin swallowed down a strange twinge in his throat and put on a smile.
The young man was bearing down on him like a steam engine, now, out of his uniform jacket and down to his shirtsleeves.
"Heyyy, Zeni-chan," Lupin said with a bright little wave.
There was a mortified little flicker of a glance at the cop Lupin had been talking to. Zenigata coughed into his fist and attempted to look unaffected, while still fully hunching in on himself. "Inspector Mori, would you please come to dinner at my house?"
Lupin blinked. "Sorry, that's funny–I thought you just invited me to dinner."
The unmemorable officer looked between the two of them with renewed interest, but Lupin shooed him off as hard as he could without actually pushing the guy. When he turned back to Zenigata, the younger man had uncurled marginally.
"You're visiting from somewhere else, right?" Zenigata said, fiddling with the brim of the cap in his hands. "My mother suggested. I, um. Told her about what happened yesterday. She insisted I bring you along next time I had the chance. To… repay you."
The very idea of Zenigata having parents was so patently absurd that Lupin was almost intrigued despite himself. Surely he'd cracked open on a cliff somewhere like an eagle, fully formed, hat and coat and all.
"I'm flattered that you think so highly of me, Zeni-chan," Lupin said, lightly. "But I'm really not much of a family man. Home cooking would just be wasted on me! I don't think your mother is the sort of lady I usually have dinner with."
The growing redness of Zenigata's face morphed from embarrassment to outrage. "My mother is at least as much of a lady as any you've ever had dinner with, and if she says you're coming, then you're coming!"
Zenigata then grabbed him by the arm, hauled him out the door, and led him home.
Well. Lupin supposed there was always later, when it came to the evidence locker.
A fair few blocks away from the station, Zenigata did eventually feel that it was safe enough to release Lupin's arm instead of physically dragging him the entire way. The Zenigatas didn't live too far from there, which was a mercy for Lupin's tired feet. As they walked, the steam that had animated Zenigata at first started to peter out, and he started looking more nervous.
"Starting to have second thoughts?" Lupin inquired.
"I don't have those," Zenigata lied.
He led them down a neighborhood that seemed a little more scorched than the ones they had passed before—a little more elegant too. Had this one survived the firebombing mostly intact, maybe?
Zenigata brought them to the door of a two story wooden house, called out, and then let himself inside. His hat went onto a coat rack, his shoes under a bench, and his jacket in a heap on the floor.
"Ma!" he shouted, "I brought the Inspector! For dinner! Like you wanted!"
There was a clatter, and then a round woman's face poked around the corner into the hall. "Baby!" she shouted, and then loped the rest of the way out to greet them. Her kimono was tied up around her elbows, and on her left arm up to the elbow there was a gleaming steel brace for the crutch she leaned on.
Zenigata caught her as she threw herself at him, easily spinning around her weight. Lupin jumped and yelped as the rubber tip of the crutch nearly walloped his shin. She glanced at him, somewhere between apologetic and sheepish. Her feet, one more heavily than the other, met the ground as her son set her down again.
"And here I thought you'd find some reason not to bring him to dinner," Ma Zenigata said, dryly. "There wasn't a very pressing appointment of his, hm? He didn't suddenly have to return to headquarters?"
"Ma," Zenigata complained.
"Hah," Ma Zenigata said, and turned to Lupin. "It's very nice to meet you, Inspector Mori. Thank you for making it on such short notice."
Belatedly, Lupin turned on his charm. He beamed, leaned in, and kissed her hand. "The pleasure is entirely mine, I assure you. I never turn down the chance to have dinner made for me by a beautiful young woman."
"Ahaha! Yes well, I hope you want soba. I only have soba. Do you like it hot? Too much chili gives me heartburn."
She went off, still talking, without seeming any care that she'd left the two men in her hallway.
Lupin considered, briefly, jumping out the window. He could be out of here and down the road in less time than it would take them to wonder where he'd gone. As he turned to eye the window in question, he caught sight of Zenigata's face and stuck there.
He was smiling. It was such a knowing, fond smile. In the cool autumn, it radiated off him like the warmth of a brewing teapot.
"You guys are close, huh?" Lupin asked.
Zenigata shrugged, still smiling. "It's just us these days. Pop's been gone a couple years now." He rolled up his sleeves, tucking the cuffs up around his elbows. "I should go help her with the stove. She has a hard time getting the wood in. Come sit in the kitchen, it's warmer there."
Feeling as if Zenigata had him on some kind of inexplicable tether, Lupin followed him into the kitchen. He watched as the woman and her son traced a well-rehearsed pattern of steps along the floor. Lupin sat at the edge of it all and felt like a space alien, like the zookeeper in a menagerie on Pluto. Occasionally, Ma Zenigata would lope over to him and shove some bit of fried batter or tofu into his mouth, demanding to know if he liked it and if it was any good.
Invariably, it was good.
Lupin had never lived in a house like this, nor ever really visited one. As a child he'd eaten with the maids, many nights, but you were never one of the maids, when you ate with them. This domestic sphere, with its wood burning stove and discolored wall hangings, with its easy clumsiness, might as well have been the moon to him.
The closest he'd ever come to something like this was with Jigen, in their series of ever changing safehouses, long into his career as a fugitive and escape artist. The place he'd grown up was as dangerous as it was beautiful, full of traps and hidden pitfalls. It had been a fortress, a reminder of deadly necessity, even when it lay still and quiet. You must be ever mindful, the voice in his memory told him; the rabbit makes its home in the briar patch—
"But the thorns never cease," Lupin murmured.
"Inspector?" Zenigata said, pausing to wipe soy sauce off his face.
Lupin broke his reverie. "It's nothing," he said. "Hey, can I have some more of those fried bits? I'm starving. Ma Zenigata! Can I have more of those fried bits?"
They had dinner. It was delicious. More Goemon's type of thing than his—Lupin wished he could shove a bowl of this into those grumpy little hands—but plenty good by any standard. The Widow Zenigata chattered through the whole thing, occasionally asking Lupin questions that he had to fabricate answers to on the spot. Where was he from, where was he born, had he ever been to America, he looked American, did he speak English?
"You bet," he said, slapping a broad American grin on his face to match the words. Then he slurped up his second bowl of noodles and changed languages again. "Not as good as my French, though."
Zenigata looked impressed. In French, more haltingly, he said, "I've been learning. I want… to grasp all the international languages. Because fugitives, in Japan—if I can speak their language, the case will be given to me!"
Dead right, Lupin thought, unfortunately for me …
"So studious!" he said, aloud. "I never would have pegged you for the intellectual type."
Zenigata winced; at the same time his mother made a face at him.
"My son could be anything!" she said, ostensibly to Lupin, although she was looking at Zenigata. "My son could have been the finest sales coordinator on the western seaboard! Better than his father, even! But no. He wants to be a policeman, like his ancestor."
Lupin raised his brows. This was new. He'd always assumed Zenigata came from a long line of cops, right back on to the first one. Heiji Zenigata was the only family Lupin ever heard him talk about.
Mrs. Zenigata turned to Lupin properly, now. "He comes home, ten years old, in the middle of a war, and he tells me he wants to be a policeman! That's fine, boys have their phases. But it goes on and on, Heiji this, Heiji that, sometimes I think we never should have taken him to see that movie—"
"Ma, please," Zenigata begged, "not in front of the Inspector…"
"Always with one of those detective books in his hand," his mother went on, warming to the topic, "we couldn't get him to put them down! Well, I thought, it's good for him to read, and the schools are falling apart, what does it hurt? But it's been ten years, and now he's gotten himself a job, and I never see him anymore–"
"You'd never see me if I worked in an office either!" Zenigata protested.
"And would you be chasing men with guns up and down Tokyo?"
Lupin glanced at Zenigata, thinking of today's adventure with Mamoh One and Mamoh Two—apparently Zenigata was thinking the same thing, because with wide eyes and a pale face, he shot Lupin a pleading grimace.
Lupin mercifully deigned not to bring up their field trip. Out of pity, of course, not because he was afraid of Ma Zenigata turning on him. Obviously.
The conversation meandered on from there, leaving Lupin behind. Talk of neighbors, temple visits, shopping lists. School friends, relatives, a girl who kept coming around protesting that she had made too much food and of course Koichi-kun should really have some, since it was just going to waste anyway…
Lupin tightened his grip on his chopsticks, and then set them down.
It had never before occurred to him that he might not have been the beginning and ending of Zenigata's world.
At the soonest possible polite interval, Lupin began making his excuses. Late night, long day, you understand. He withstood the fussing as long as he could, and then ducked out of the kitchen, collecting his hat and jacket from the hall in barely controlled haste.
Quaint middle class kitchens were no place for Lupin the Third. Lots of fun, thanks for the tour, but he really ought to be going now.
The temperature had dropped while he entertained this little novelty—the door was cold against his hand as he went to leave, and for some reason that stopped him where he stood.
He heard the shuffle of weight in the hall behind him. He'd know that body anywhere, in any place.
Hand still to the door, Lupin said, "Walk me home?"
Whatever face Zenigata made, Lupin didn't see it. After a beat, in an uncertain voice, Zenigata said, "Yes, of course, Inspector."
Twenty years had changed the texture of night in Tokyo. It felt lonelier. The darkness, the sounds—unfamiliar, muted, but reminiscent of places Lupin had known before. Wind whistled above the curved streets, through the eves of crowded houses.
The silence was unbearable.
Lupin cleared his throat. "So your mom didn't want you to be a police officer, huh?"
"She's exaggerating to entertain you," Zenigata replied. "We don't fight about it really. She knows it's important to me."
"Yeah?" Lupin glanced sidelong at him. "Why's it so important to be a cop, anyway?"
Zenigata ducked his head bashfully. "Ah, I mean… you're an officer, you understand."
Lupin made a noncommittal noise.
"It's just… life is so confusing, but when you're on the job, there's always a right answer…" Zenigata trailed off. "I want to be like Heiji was. I want to solve mysteries, and stop crime, and put the world in order. I know I'm just a beat cop right now, but I believe in my future. I'll work hard, I'll climb the ranks, and then I'll be somebody people can rely on—someone people respect!"
Bit by bit, the bashfulness shed off him like scales, until he was alive in the moonlight, animated by that peculiar earnest sincerity.
"That's the kind of life I want to live," Zenigata said, "to know who I am, to live honorably, to fight the good fight. No challenge is too much!" He raised a fist, grinning wildly. "Give me a hundred men and I'll knock them all down! I'm ready for anything! Midnight chases! Shootouts on rooftops! Rescuing ladies in need, catching bad guys!"
He was all but shining, his eyes sparkling.
This Zenigata, who was like Zenigata should be in every way—his stupid face, his stupid voice, his incautious optimism—and yet didn't know Lupin, had a life outside of him… it made Lupin itch.
I'm right here, he thought. Look at me! Don't you care?
"How cowardly," Lupin said.
Stunned and wounded, Zenigata stopped in his tracks.
"It doesn't matter to me what you do," Lupin said, fixing his gaze on the moon. "The world is the world. There are good men, I even know one or two of them. But don't mistake honor for respectability, kid."
"What are you trying to say?" Zenigata demanded. "The law is the law! Good people don't break the law."
"Isn't it breaking the law to search a suspect's house without a warrant?" Lupin asked. "So should I arrest you, Zeni-chan?"
He grabbed Zenigata by the wrist, hauling him in close, in a parody of all their future midnight arrests. The younger man caught himself on the collar of Lupin's coat, eyes wide. The bob of his throat was visible in the moonlight.
"But I'm a policeman–" Zenigata said, "Don't we have… authority? People are supposed to do what we say."
"Is that what does it for you?" Lupin asked, catching Zenigata's chin in his other hand. "You know, I'm your superior. Will you do whatever I want, too?"
Lie detector hand to pounding wrist, Lupin stood there holding him under the lights of a drowsy city.
A thrill raced through him, voracious, like the feeling of having a prize just in reach at last—that first moment when the glass case comes off the statue, finally able to touch, to take. Maybe it was the cold that Zenigata trembled with. His broadness filled Lupin's arms, his warmth clouded between their bodies.
Lupin let out a deep breath, filling the air with silver vapor. This Zenigata was just a kid. There wasn't any point in fucking with him like this. He released both chin and wrist.
"Just… Decide for yourself what's right and wrong," said Lupin, "or they'll point you like a gun at whoever they want, guilty or innocent and you'll go marching off without a word. If you're only doing it because someone told you to, you're no better than a soldier."
"That's not true!" Zenigata protested. "Those aren't the same at all! A policeman would never act dishonorably–"
"Why not?" Lupin said. "One day you'll find out it doesn't matter. No one cares whether a crime was committed, if it was done by the right people. Some day you'll be asked to step down off a politician's case, and you'll have to choose between that shiny badge and the evidence in your hands—"
He cut himself off. Someday, he thought, you'll choose right. And I won't think twice to expect it of you, because I know you, and I know your heart is in the right place, even when your mouth is in the wrong one.
"...Have you had to do that?" Zenigata asked.
"Mmn," Lupin said. He started walking again, picking up a brisk pace.
Once upon a time, Lupin's grandfather had left him the world—the world and everything in it, like an endless sprawl of presents to be torn apart and discarded at will. There was a horrible kind of freedom in knowing you were not answerable to anyone. All the gold and tinsel and bodies strewn on the floor–
"I've decided for myself what kind of person I want to be," Lupin said. "As long as I know what I'll choose, I know who I am."
It was hard, sometimes, to remember. He hadn't always been this person. But when he started to slip, seeing Jigen, hearing his voice–knowing what he expected Lupin to be–would remind him. A long time ago, Jigen had told him to be the merciful one. God only knew, he'd tried.
"I've decided for myself what kind of person I want to be. For example," he added, touching the side of his jacket where his Walther was holstered, "I only kill in self defense. That way, I never regret it."
He dropped his hand. This Zenigata was looking at him, so young and credulous, full of awe—Lupin jolted, rubbed his nose, and laughed a little. Taking himself too seriously. It was Zenigata who did it to him.
"Or at least, that's the idea," he said more lightly. "Are we still going the right way? I get all turned around on these back streets."
Zenigata bobbed his head vaguely and took a step forward to lead the way. As the road wound out into the depth of Tokyo, he seemed to be thinking deeply. His brow creased, his hands in his pockets, he walked beside Lupin as if he was on the other side of the world.
The city passed in doors and high dark windows, under two toned streetlights, blue and yellow.
"I want to live without regrets too."
Lupin glanced at him, at his face cut with blue and yellow light. Zenigata stared straight ahead.
"You're right, that's all. I'll choose for myself. And even if it kills me, then I'll never regret what I have to do."
Blue light along his cheekbone, yellow light along his nose. Lupin the Third was a rogue, but Inspector Zenigata was a knight; in moments like this, with determination shining in his eyes, you saw it and understood. A fool and an idiot, but a hero too.
"Don't worry," Lupin said. The smile on his lips felt bittersweet. "I know you won't."
Zenigata startled, stiffened, and then with an embarrassed-but-pleased air, led the way on into the night.