The Drowning City (Tokyo Noir Book 1) Read online

  THE DROWNING CITY

  TOKYO NOIR - S01 E01

  J. SCOTT MATTHEWS

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Offer

  Quotation

  The Future

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Last Chance

  Thank You

  Copyright © 2016 by J. Scott Matthews

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  SIGN UP TO RECEIVE A FREE COPY OF EPISODE II

  Want to get Episode II of Tokyo Noir, for free? Just sign up for my mailing list and you’ll receive a free copy. Don't want to get lots of emails from me? Good, I don't want to write them. That’s why you’ll only receive updates and notifications on new releases, as well as free books and other bonuses. Just follow the link above to sign up.

  Don't want to sign up, but want to keep reading? Episode II is available for purchase at the following link: GET EPISODE II

  極道しかない

  —Yakuza saying

  THE FUTURE

  Goddamn this eternal fog.

  If I’m to die today, so be it.

  I belong dead.

  But at least let me see the sun one last time.

  With these thoughts swirling through his head, Masa looked up at the thick gray fog wreathing the skyscrapers of downtown Tokyo like a mist-shrouded jungle. How many days had it been now since the sun last shone on this city? Since it penetrated that dense veil of dust, grit, and particulate choking the air? He couldn’t even remember. All he knew was that people weren’t supposed to live like this, in perpetual semidarkness. It did strange things to them. Made them do strange things in turn …

  He looked across the backseat at Satoshi. He couldn’t read what Satoshi was thinking, not through his respirator and face guard. Masa wasn’t wearing his own respirator. What would be the point now? he thought. Might as well take one last look at this city through my own eyes. Such as they are. Such as it is.

  This city had been slowly consuming him for the past twenty-seven years, and today it just might swallow him whole. But Masa mused that if he were to get caught in its gaping maw, it wouldn’t be because he fell into it. It would be because he had been pushed. By Satoshi, the only true friend he had ever had.

  All those years together. All those years spent growing up on the streets, getting into fights, walking the Path together, rising through the ranks. Throughout it all, the one constant in his life had been Satoshi. Watching out for Masa, standing up for him, supporting him through everything. Looking after him with the fierce determination of an elder brother. And while they weren’t blood brothers, they had been brothers-in-arms since as far back as he could remember.

  Which is why Masa found it strange that Satoshi was the one delivering him to his death.

  Because there was no doubt in Masa’s mind that that’s what Vasili had planned for him when Satoshi turned him in. An interrogation, followed by an execution. Knowing Vasili, whatever he had in store for him wouldn’t be quick and it wouldn’t be painless. Satoshi knew this. He had to. Maybe he just didn’t care anymore. Not that Masa blamed him. Not entirely.

  “You know—”

  “Shut up,” Satoshi snapped.

  Satoshi kept looking straight ahead. But even through the dull light reflecting off his visor, Masa could tell he had one eye fixed on him.

  “I’m just—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Would you—”

  “Wait until we get there.” He motioned to the taxi driver in the front seat.

  Fair enough. The driver was probably already leery after seeing a man who had clearly been beaten and was now handcuffed roughly tossed into the back of his cab. Luckily, he knew enough to just shut up and drive. Common people do well to stay out of the syndicate’s business.

  Masa went back to peering out at the skyscrapers of the Azabu Juban district. They would arrive at the AJX Building soon enough, then ride the interminable elevator up to Club Hyperion at the very top.

  The building loomed large up ahead, appearing out of the fog choking the city. Forty-five stories of dark, gleaming glass and chromed metal looking out over a city of shantytowns, slums, and vast stretches of empty desolation. All of it slowly sinking into the rising sea.

  And when that happens, not even that stupid wall they’re building is going to stop it, Masa thought as he stared at the city. A city he had once believed to be greater than anything on earth, but which he now saw as only existing on borrowed time.

  When the time comes, this city will meet an even greater power and be swallowed whole. Nature will run its course and reassert its superiority over the men as they try to turn back the tide. But it won’t turn back, it will swallow them alive.

  But Masa was getting ahead of himself.

  The taxi pulled to a stop in front of the building. Satoshi nodded at the driver, opened his door, and pulled Masa across to him in a single gesture. With his hands still handcuffed behind him, Satoshi had to manhandle him out of the cab and onto the sidewalk. Once outside, Masa realized that it was starting to rain, ever so slightly, and looked up at the sky. A cool droplet of water landed on his cheek, and another by his other eye. He sighed. Looked like there wouldn’t be any sun either way.

  Sliding his respirator sideways and swinging it around to the back of his head, Satoshi pulled him through the empty lobby. He pushed Masa towards one of the banks of elevators against the side of the building, shoving him into one of the glass-backed elevators as its doors opened.

  “You know,” Masa said as Satoshi went to press the button, “we can still just walk away from this. Just leave here and forget all this.”

  Satoshi seemed to consider this briefly, his hand hovering in front of the button marked “44.” After a moment he pressed it, the semicircular button now illuminated from behind.

  “It’s too late for that now.”

  “Now that you’ve pressed the button, you mean?”

  “Now that you …” Satoshi trailed off.

  Masa could tell that his friend was trying hard to keep his emotions in check. That Satoshi, ever the stoic. Once he had composed himself, he turned to Masa and spoke.

  “I didn’t want it to be this way.”

  “But now you do?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk. What happened to us, Satoshi? When did it go wrong for us?”

  As Masa asked this, he watched
as the elevator slowly ascended through the floors, bringing the city into view through the glass panel. It always surprised him to see it like this, to gain a new perspective on the city that he usually only saw from street level. But from here he could see the wealthier districts along the aboveground train lines. These contrasted with the relative squalor and decay creeping in among the areas along the now-defunct underground train lines. From above, it almost looked to Masa like the very city itself was rotting away. Eaten away by cancer, just like a quarter of its inhabitants.

  Satoshi didn’t answer.

  “Come on, with all the history we share, I think you at least owe me a proper send-off. Sachiko kept warning me this day would come, but—”

  “Sachiko? That Sachiko?”

  “Yeah. We talk. Sometimes.”

  “Huh. I guess you never really got over her.”

  “Well, you know,” Masa said, his smile faltering, “we were close.”

  “Were. But you fuck up everything eventually.”

  That threw him, but he recovered quickly and plastered the grin back on his face. “Come on now, look who you’re talking to! It’s me! Masafiro!” He hated that nickname, but Satoshi always thought it was funny to drop an ‘f’ in where the ‘h’ should be in his name as a twist on the language. “We had some good times. Let’s try to remember those before Vasili has me killed.”

  Satoshi eyed him suspiciously, but said nothing.

  “Like that time we went to the shore down in Zushi. You remember that? How we could barely fit everyone in the car on the way over there?”

  Satoshi went back to staring straight ahead. “Well, most of that was your doing, as I recall.”

  “Sure was! Lotta girls that day!”

  Satoshi looked away in disgust. He never could compete with me in terms of numbers, Masa thought.

  “Or how about Osammy the Whale? Man, we couldn’t have asked for a better boss than that guy when we were coming up. Taught us his version of baseball in that parking lot, you remember? Remember the crack of the bat in that empty lot?”

  “I’ll never forget it.”

  “Of course not! You even broke the bat that one time!”

  This elevator was notoriously slow, but even at its glacial pace, they were rapidly approaching the top floor. Last stop, coming up. Not much time for Masa’s final parting shot.

  “Look, I know what’s waiting for me on the other side of those doors,” he said, keeping his voice as free of reproach as possible. “But before that happens, I just want to say that you’ve been like a big brother to me all these years. Even when I made that hard. Even when being associated with me made things difficult for you, you still stuck by me. Mostly, anyway. I appreciate that.”

  Satoshi glanced at Masa, but did nothing more than nod.

  “It’s like you raised me, brought me up, even. And even though I turned out rotten, I don’t blame you. Which is why I know—don’t think, but know—that someday you’re going to make a great father. Someday.”

  Satoshi looked like he’d been slapped but was trying hard not to show it. His jaw muscles clenched and unclenched spasmodically, as his hand did the same. For a moment Masa thought that he was going to lose control, but he soon regained his composure. Satoshi always was the controlled type.

  Two sides of the same coin, we are, Masa thought to himself.

  “You … you …”

  Satoshi was practically choking on his own words. But there was no time for that now. The elevator was arriving.

  Masa thought he should probably be more worried about what was to come. Or rather, he should probably make himself look more worried. He wasn’t actually concerned about his own gruesome death and dismemberment at Vasili’s hands, for a very good reason.

  Because he was already through the cuffs. And Satoshi was the one walking into a trap.

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Two minutes to showtime, people!”

  Keiko Matsura was frantically trying to find the governor before his speech. The recent rains had turned the construction site into a swamp that kept sucking her high heels off when she tried to clomp through it. She ended up taking her shoes off altogether, stockings be damned. She never should have signed off on this stupid publicity stunt.

  “Where’s the governor?” she asked another aide.

  “Elvis? I think he’s getting his makeup done. Check behind the stage!”

  Furious, she rounded the makeshift stage that had been set up for the occasion to see the governor having finishing powder applied to his leathery face.

  Governor Eichi Haraishi. Aka Governor Etchi. Aka Elvis.

  Every time she saw that stupid pompadour haircut and those throwback pinstripe suits, it made her cringe. He looked more like a cheap gangster from some long-ago era than the governor of one of the world’s largest megalopolises. It was hard managing the governor’s image when he insisted on dressing like it was still the 2030s.

  “Governor Haraishi, there you are,” she gasped.

  A diet of mostly coffee and cigarettes hadn’t prepared her for this kind of exertion. And breathing the dense fog that constantly shrouded the city wasn’t helping matters any. She was kicking herself now for going without her respirator.

  The governor wasn’t wearing his mask either. He absolutely refused to wear it for public appearances. It was one of the factors credited for his perpetually raspy voice, along with his pack-a-day habit.

  “What is it, lovely?” he rasped.

  She cringed but ignored the remark. “Just wanted to review a few changes with you. The final version of your speech is in the teleprompter. Try to stay on message this time. The news probably isn’t going to devote too much time to this, so hit those soundbites and make them count.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Also, I took out your references to the ‘foreign menace,’ because—”

  “Now hang on, that’s an important topic—”

  “Yeah, I know, that sentiment has played well for you. But today is neither the time nor the place. Today is all about building, creating, positive aspects. Let’s save that for when we need to stir up some … less positive emotions. You don’t want those messages to get mixed.”

  “All right,” the governor grumbled.

  “Just keep hitting the major points: Tokyo is a city beset by environmental devastation. But we will triumph over this through cutting-edge technology and the indomitable spirit of the Japanese people. Rebuilding better and stronger. And keep hammering the party name and our new slogan in the Q&A. Keep working in the phrase ‘Genyoto: Building a brighter future, together.’”

  Just then a dense bank of the fog blanketing the city was blown on the wind through the construction site, creating a temporary whiteout.

  “Motherfuck these factories and their goddamn smog,” the governor said from somewhere nearby. “Couldn’t we have them shut down for just a day? It would help our message resonate if the people could see the sky for once.”

  “No, we can’t shut them down. And remember, no complaining about the fog. It’s mostly from the Barrier construction.”

  “But the RDP pushed that one.”

  “Yeah, but in their infinite wisdom, our party’s elders decided to go in on it with them. So now we’re stuck with it too.” She shook her head. “I told them bipartisanship doesn’t work.”

  “So I have to pretend to like it?”

  “If it’s mentioned, just say it’s a sign of progress or something. A growing pain.”

  “Fine, fine.”

  He was like this every time he was denied something. It didn’t fill Keiko with reassurance that the governor of one of the world’s great cities was about as emotionally mature as a third-grader. But then again, a lifetime spent in the dogfight that was city politics hadn’t exactly given her an optimistic view of humanity.

  “Thirty seconds to go!”

  The governor’s makeup girl untucked the cloth
from the front of his shirt, and he began striding towards the podium. He was like a reverse cockroach, always scurrying towards the brightest, most well-lit spot when the cameras came out. Keiko found a position off to the side of the stage to watch. Anytime he was in front of the cameras, her entire body tensed up. She had no way to control what he said then. All she could do was hope and pray that he would stay on script. He rarely did. And when he didn’t, it usually fell to her to clean up his mess.

  The cameraman facing him began counting down from five, and then it was the governor’s turn to shine.

  “Thank you all for joining me here today! As you know, it’s been nearly twenty years since Tokyo’s underground water discharge tunnels were overwhelmed by the flooding of 5/13, which inundated the underground subway lines and rendered them unusable. While progress is being made on the Greater Kanto Barrier, it will still be several years before it is able to fully shield the capital region from the encroaching tide.

  “For too long has this great city gone without reliable transportation to so many of its neighborhoods, leaving isolated pockets of people cut off from the larger city. Such pockets have turned into hotbeds for crime and criminality. But today I am here to announce an initiative to reclaim some such sections of the metropolitan region! Indeed, it is a bright new day, for …”