Mercedes-Benz 500SEL

The Mercedes-Benz 500SEL is Cinnamon’s black, carefully maintained car and a recurring marker of his exacting routines at the Residence. Its nearly identical arrivals and departures make private order visible; its appearances at a fortified house and its concealed passage into a VIP garage also turn it into the principal trace by which outsiders try to investigate the secret activity there.

Appearance and Routine

At nine o’clock one morning, the Residence’s electric front gate swings inward and the Mercedes enters the driveway. Its car-phone antenna projects from the rear window like a newly sprouted tentacle. The black tires make a silent arc over the concrete and stop in their designated place with probably no more than two inches of variation. The movement is so repeatable that the car seems to follow a track laid down in advance.

The watching narrator sees Cinnamon step out after a pause. Wearing sunglasses, he scans the area, removes them, puts them in his breast pocket, and closes the door. The precise sound of the Mercedes’s latch is unlike that of other cars; for the narrator, it marks the start of another day at the Residence. Cinnamon’s arrival is not merely transportation, but a punctual boundary between the house’s waiting hours and its working day.

The car’s departure completes the pattern. After preparing food for the narrator and indicating what should be eaten for lunch, Cinnamon checks his appearance in a mirror, straightens his tie, and leaves with a smile. He plays a classical tape, opens the gate by remote control, and drives out over the same arc he traced on arrival. The narrator watches from behind a blind with a cup of coffee, as before. The repeated route and domestic gestures make the Mercedes part of a larger ritual of precision.

Cinnamon’s Relationship to the Car

Cinnamon’s disciplined use of the Mercedes has a precedent in his earlier car ownership. At eighteen he obtained his driving license after studying every available instruction book; practical lessons supplied only the experience books could not. He then bought a Porsche Carrera with savings earned while working for Nutmeg, replaced its parts and tires, and brought its condition to racing level. Yet he drove it only along the same short, congested route between his home in Hiroo and the office in Akasaka, rarely going faster than forty miles an hour.

That earlier routine illuminates the Mercedes without making the cars interchangeable. In both cases, a powerful vehicle serves a narrow, repeated course rather than speed or display. The Mercedes’s measured turn into the driveway and its precisely repeated stopping place extend Cinnamon’s preference for controlled movement into the daily life of the Residence. His car does not simply take him somewhere; its regularity helps keep the setting’s established order.

The House Under Observation

A magazine investigation turns the Mercedes’s routine into evidence. Over ten days, the reporters count twenty-one visits to the hanging house. The morning journeys are strikingly regular: the car arrives at nine and leaves at ten-thirty, with no more than five minutes’ variation from day to day. Afternoon appearances, by contrast, occur at irregular times, most often between one and three, and last anywhere from less than twenty minutes to an hour. The contrast suggests a commuter’s schedule in the morning and a less predictable pattern of other visits later in the day, though the tinted windows prevent the investigators from identifying the occupants.

The Mercedes is one element in a property designed to resist observation. The front gate is the only ordinary entrance; a narrow alley behind the lot leads nowhere accessible without crossing private property, and a high wall blocks the rear. People who press the intercom receive no response, and the investigators observe no mail or express deliveries. The reporters consider whether a closed-circuit camera is screening visitors, but cannot establish who is inside. The car’s predictable presence offers a clue, not a way through the house’s defenses.

The Hotel Trail and Secrecy

Unable to learn who uses the house by watching its gate, the investigators follow the slow-moving Mercedes through city traffic. They can track it only as far as the underground parking entrance of a first-class Akasaka hotel. A uniformed guard and a special pass-card system prevent their car from following it inside. The Mercedes is apparently parked in a VIP space, separated from ordinary guest parking and served by elevators reserved for VIP use, with no external indicators revealing passengers’ movements.

The hotel’s many public facilities make that restricted route especially effective. Guests can leave the car, use an exclusive elevator, and blend into a building busy with conference attendees, wedding parties, diners, and visitors. Management says that the special parking spaces are ordinarily leased only to specially qualified corporate entities after thorough background checks, but gives the magazine no details about the users. The investigation therefore reaches a destination without identifying a passenger or establishing the precise connection between the car, the hotel, and the house.

The Mercedes’s dual function shapes its significance. At the Residence it is conspicuous through repetition: punctual, black, and almost mechanically consistent. On the route from the house, it disappears into infrastructure built to conceal its occupants. The same precision that makes the car legible as a daily habit also makes it a frustrating instrument of secrecy, leaving observers with a schedule, a guarded garage, and an unanswered question of identity.