The Drowning City (Tokyo Noir Book 1) Page 8

  “Yes.”

  They arrived at Ara’s office to find they had already been introduced. Vasili was here in his official capacity as the President and CEO of VL Starpower, a talent agency that managed numerous recording artists, actors, television personalities, comedians, and assorted other talents. Talents who, as of three days ago, had been prohibited from appearing on any NHK programming for the foreseeable future.

  “Hello, Vasili-san,” Ara said to them with forced civility when they were seated. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” Vasili said. “You?”

  Vasili tended to be curter when speaking Japanese.

  “Just great!”

  “Really? Because you look like you’re sweating spinal fluid.”

  “Yes, I wanted to talk to you about this ban.” Frantic desperation fought it out with the fear evident in the man’s eyes.

  “A regrettable turn of events.”

  “As I’m sure you’re aware, our seven-to-ten weeknight block of entertainment and variety programming is our station’s bread and butter. And every day we run it with second-rate talent, we’re losing viewers. Soon this will start to eat into our advertising revenue.”

  “Yes, I understand that viewership is down significantly. As much as forty-eight percent for some programs, I hear. Unfortunately, I had to pull the talent I represent because of concerns over your news department’s recent … editorial positions on certain issues.”

  “Is this because of the airplay we gave the governor’s recent racist remarks? Because we have to give him—”

  “It’s not that,” Vasili said. He was well-acquainted with the governor’s feelings on foreigners. Governor Haraishi had even told him so personally. “I’m talking about NHK News’ recent rash of reports. The one about payday lenders I could overlook—you have to pretend to do real news every now and then.”

  Ara’s look soured but he didn’t reply.

  “But that was followed up by a three-part exposé on organized crime’s connections with the political world last week. And I’m told that is to be followed this week with a two-parter on police corruption and the yakuza. Now I found all of these—”

  “That last one hasn’t even aired yet!”

  “I have found, and will find, all of these to be unfair, biased, and completely spurious. That is why I pulled access to my talent. Because I cannot continue to materially support a station that airs such shoddy reporting.”

  Ara leaned back in his chair and looked at Vasili. “And if I were able to … amend our station’s news coverage, you would call off the ban?”

  “If the coverage on tonight’s show and over the weekend were to meet with my approval, they could be back as soon as Monday.”

  Ara nodded. He closed his eyes and rubbed them. “I’ll see what I can do. But if I do this, I need fireworks for next week. Some major gala special, some … some … I don’t know, something big to put us back on the map.”

  “How about exclusive access to the cast of the upcoming live-action Cowboy Bebop movie?”

  “I’ll take it!”

  “So glad to hear you say that. In exchange for that, I need you to keep me abreast of any reporting or other programming that might … upset my delicate sensibilities.”

  “How would I know what that includes?”

  “Use your best judgment. If you’re not sure, err on the side of caution and check with me or my associate here.”

  “Alright, but then I also need at least eight of the members of QT PIE to appear on programs during our evening block all next week. Going to need a couple of musical numbers from them too. And none of the fat ones.”

  Vasili looked at Kameko quizzically. “Fat ones? They’re contractually obligated to maintain a weight of forty-three kilograms.”

  “You know what I mean,” Ara said.

  Vasili blinked and shook his head. “Alright, deal?”

  Vasili stood and leaned across the desk with his arm outstretched.

  “Deal.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When Satoshi awoke the next evening, he could barely move the arm he had paddled to shore with. In fact, his entire body ached from the swim. Hisoka was gone; she had work tonight. Satoshi lay there in bed for a few minutes, not wanting to get up, but knowing he had to eventually. He had work to do.

  First he chewed up some aspirin and washed it down with a slug of cheap Suntory whiskey to try to take the edge off of the throbbing pain in his back and shoulder. He quickly dressed, throwing on his spare respirator and Demron overcoat, then set off into the night through the streets of Shibuya. It was drizzling lightly, which helped to cool the evening down a bit. Though it was still hot and muggy behind his respirator and face mask and under his heavy radiation-shielding Demron coat.

  They weighed about ten to fifteen pounds per jacket, which was a good deal of weight to be constantly shouldering. They had become all the rage since the ghost of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor had caught fire and begun burning, pumping out unknowable quantities of radiation. Radiation that would reach Tokyo when the winds were right. Now with the fog you never could tell if the air you were breathing was just full of particulate matter that would rip your throat and lungs to pieces, or dosed with enough radiation to give birth to a cancer in you.

  He walked down the hill from the Aoyama area where they lived, passed under the tracks of the Yamanote Line and came out into Shibuya Crossing, right by the Hachiko Entrance. The sight always overwhelmed him.

  Not just for the hundreds of people always milling about by the Hachiko statue or moving through the enormous intersection, but also because this part of the city was lit up brighter at night than it was in daytime, a result of the neon arms race waged on the buildings fronting the intersection. The massive advertising billboards aimed at the crossing now had to compete with several small blimps that constantly circled overhead. Ads blared from video billboards mounted on the blimps, just adding to the sensory overload.

  Satoshi took all of this in at a glance and pushed forward, through the massive intersection with its swarms of people and down through Center Street. He passed ramen shops and standing bars, bookstores that dealt exclusively in porno and comic books, restaurants, sex shops, and back alleys that contained more of the same, only seedier. He was surrounded on all sides by throngs of people all similarly attired in respirators and radiation-shielding jackets, save for a few brave souls willing to risk the fog. He felt the crush of people all around him, the added weight from his heavy jacket combining to make him feel even more claustrophobic. Plus, he still wasn’t used to seeing a sea of faces half-hidden behind respirators and eye masks over radiation-shielding overcoats.

  It didn’t help that the Center Street he remembered from his youth looked decidedly different now. He remembered coming here with Masa and their other friends when they were younger. Shibuya had been an amazing neon-drenched playground of bars and clubs where something was going on at all hours of the day. But lately it seemed different to him. Grimier. Whether the place had changed or just his perspective on it had, he couldn’t say.

  At the end of the street, he turned off onto a side street, then into another back alley, putting distance between himself and the glowing neon theme park that was Center Street. He started to breathe a little easier (even if it was still the same rubbery-tasting, filtered air from his mask) now that he was away from the crowds. He had arrived at his destination.

  He walked along a squat concrete building that looked abandoned, save for a row of filthy windows set at street level from which a yellowish glow emanated. In the middle of the building, there was a staircase carved out of concrete that led down to a black wooden door with a sign that read Frenchy’s Bar. He pushed the heavy door open and walked down the stairs.

  “Hola, Satoshi! Que pasa, man?” Frenchy called from behind the bar when he saw him enter.

  Same old Frenchy’s, with its bare concrete walls, crude wooden furniture handmade from cheap wood and repurposed packing
crates, and long bar set against one entire wall. Same old Frenchy too, Satoshi thought as he removed his respirator and smiled at the heavyset, dark-complexioned man behind the bar sporting a bushy mustache and cowboy hat. Satoshi thought he looked like the villain from an old American Western movie, or maybe the cartoon logo for a brand of Tex-Mex food.

  “How are you, Frenchy?”

  Satoshi sidled up to the bar next to some Caucasians who had clearly been drinking for some time.

  “Eh, not so bad,” Frenchy said, already pouring out two shots of tequila. It was an unwritten rule that regulars had to do a shot of tequila with Frenchy upon arriving. Yet Satoshi had never seen Frenchy really drunk. They clinked glasses and downed their shots, Satoshi chasing his with a lime.

  “Wait, you’re Frenchy?” slurred one of the drunk guys next to them. “Why do they call you that?”

  “Because I’m Mexican,” Frenchy said without a trace of irony. The guy looked like he had more questions, but instead he turned back to his friends.

  “Hey, is your better half around tonight?” Satoshi asked, switching to Japanese.

  “Fuck you. And yeah, Ryu’s in back. What do you need?”

  “Gotta ask him something.”

  “As usual. Say, man, you alright? You look like shit.”

  “Thanks. Got a lot on my mind, I guess.”

  Just then Ryu appeared, hauling a quarter keg out from the back. Satoshi nodded to him, and after he finished wrestling the keg in place, Ryu came over.

  For a skinny guy, Ryu was surprisingly strong. Unexpectedly strong, even, given his stick arms. Which was probably why he also moonlighted as a bouncer at Last Resort, an after-hours nightclub. The guys who ended up picking themselves up off the pavement from the alley behind the club with a broken nose or a dislocated shoulder never saw it coming from Ryu. Being the bouncer and sometimes bartender/drug dealer at a major club in Shibuya meant Ryu knew everything about everyone’s business. Sometimes before they even knew themselves.

  “What’s up, Satoshi?” Ryu said. “You alright? Heard you had a little trouble on your boat ride the other day.”

  “How the fuck do you know that already?”

  “I hear things.”

  “I’ll bet. You have a minute to talk? I’m buying.”

  Ryu looked to Frenchy, who nodded. Satoshi and Ryu retired to a table with a tall bottle of Sapporo and two glasses. Satoshi outlined his problem for Ryu.

  “Well,” Ryu said after much careful thought and analysis, “seems like you’re pretty much fucked.”

  Satoshi sighed. “Kinda hoping you’d have something more for me there.”

  “What do you want me to say? If Vasili gave you an order, you better fucking do it. You know how this works.”

  “He also gave me the option to pay him back. So I was wondering if you had heard of any get-rich-quick schemes that might be out there.”

  “Well, there are always things floating around, but none that are easy.”

  “Like tracking down Masa and bringing him in alive would be easy?”

  “True. Is that why you’re looking for an out here, because you’re afraid of Masa?”

  Satoshi looked down at the table for a while without answering.

  Ryu held both hands up apologetically. “I mean, no offense if you are! Hell, that guy scares the shit out of me, too. I mean, just the other day I heard—”

  “It’s not that,” Satoshi said. “He and I go back a long way. And while we’ve drifted apart, I still don’t feel comfortable doing him like that.”

  “Yeah, plus the rumors I’ve heard on that guy … I mean, holy shit, you’re almost better off doing anything else.”

  Satoshi just nodded. “Right, so speaking of anything else … what have you got for me?”

  “Well, I’ve heard about a few things. One might fit the bill, if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty.”

  “I don’t mind getting my hands dirty. So long as it’s just dirt and not blood.”

  “Sure, I guess that’s possible. If you plan it right. Won’t be easy, though. I mean, you’re going to need a disciplined crew with the right gear, and that alone is going to—”

  “Would you just tell me what it is already?”

  So he did.

  Now it was Satoshi’s turn to be philosophical. “Fuck me. That’s impossible.”

  “Not impossible, just difficult. And if your only other option is to go after Masa, difficult is the easy way.”

  Vasili felt like a fool, standing out in the drizzling rain under a slate-gray sky, holding a green plastic phone receiver against his ear and listening to the other side ring and ring. He tried to reach his fixer at the Port of Guangzhou several more times throughout the day, each one equally unsuccessful. Strange, his contact Wu Lin was usually good about keeping in contact. But then again, his packages usually didn’t explode en route, so things had probably gotten fucked up somewhere along the way.

  If he didn’t get through to him soon, he’d have to send some people over to sort the matter out. Just another problem to solve, another blown gasket in the machine gumming up the works further down the line.

  Later, in his office in Club Hyperion, he was working on some paperwork when Jun walked into his office with the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. It was the closest his normally stone-faced assistant ever got to smiling.

  “What?” Vasili said.

  “Did you see the news tonight?”

  “No.”

  “They talked about the financial scandal for a while, followed by a lengthy progress report on the Greater Kanto Barrier. The last piece was a hard-hitting exposé on the best facial soaps for each skin type.”

  “Good. Glad to see they’re covering important news now. I need you to get in touch with Arekusuandaa’s widow. Find out when the funeral will be so we can pay our respects.”

  “There’s to be a funeral?” Jun asked. “But wasn’t he already cremated?”

  Vasili looked up at him. “I can never tell if you make joke, or are serious.”

  “Yeah, I think I got that from you. But why a funeral for him after he went behind your back?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t piss on that traitor to put him out. But we still have obligation to his family.”

  “How so?” Jun asked.

  “We don’t owe him anything, not anymore. But his wife, his family, they did nothing wrong. They need to be taken care of.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Besides, far as anyone knows, he took his life of his own accord for the Kaisha. Is lie, but is lie we must make people believe.”

  Jun nodded. A flash of motion caught his eye from the doorway as Kameko flew into the room.

  “Something you need to hear,” Kameko said, approaching her boss. “Tetsuo was found murdered.”

  “Tetsuo … our Tetsuo?” Vasili said.

  “Yeah. They found his body in some abandoned warehouse out on Tsukishima. He was strangled, then gutted, as if the serial killer had done it. Or it was meant to look that way.”

  Vasili closed his eyes. Not Tetsuo. Not now. He felt the others’ eyes upon him.

  “How do you intend to respond?”

  “With war. With calculated fury and measured rage.” He thought for a moment. “I want you to find out who replaced Suga as lead detective on serial killer case. I know is not one of ours. We may need to pay him a visit sometime soon.”

  Once his assistants were gone, Vasili walked over to the large windows extending the length of his office and peered out. He saw soot-caked skyscrapers, squat tenements, traffic lights, concrete, glass, metal, and wood stretching out for miles in every direction under the darkening sky. He saw a million places for invisible enemies to hide, lurk, and wait for their opportunity, where they could peer out from behind cracks and crevices in this urban jungle to take their shot at him.

  The siege had started.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The next day, Satoshi went to visit his
mother. The sense of guilt telling him it had been too long was overpowering by this point, prompting him to go. Since her train line had been largely submerged a few years back, Satoshi elected to ride the Kawasaki Ninja he used to cut through the city’s congested streets.

  “Oh,” she said upon opening the door.

  “Hi, Ma.”

  She waved him in as she retreated back into her apartment.

  “I got you something,” Satoshi said, taking the bottle of pills out and tossing it to her.

  “My fludarabine?” she asked, picking up the bottle. “Oh, no. This is FR. Don’t they have FC? This stuff upsets my stomach.”

  “Sorry, best I can do right now. Looks like there might be a shortage of medication for the time being.”

  “I heard something about that. Some terrorists bombed a ship in Tokyo Bay, killed a whole bunch of people.”

  As she spoke, his mother walked over to a window that looked directly into a brick wall from the building several feet away.

  Satoshi just nodded. “Yeah, I heard something about that.”

  “Did you know them?” she asked, her tone sharper than before. “The men on the ship? Were they friends, or brothers, of yours?” She lit the end of a cigarette and blew smoke out the window.

  “I … no, Ma, I didn’t know those guys. I wish you wouldn’t smoke.”

  “Why not?” his mother asked. “I’ve already got cancer.”

  As she spoke, she slowly exhaled a second puff of smoke from her nostrils that hung in the air between them.

  He was so used to speaking in English for syndicate business that when he spoke in Japanese, the nuances of the language sometimes caught him off guard. None more so than the phrase for contracting cancer. In Japanese, the phrase literally means “to become cancer.” And sitting there now, watching his mother through the blue haze of cigarette smoke hanging in the air between them, he saw the brutal honesty of the phrase. His mother truly had become cancer. It had suffused throughout her so thoroughly that cancer was all that was left of the woman.

  Things that should have died within her had stayed alive, metastasizing until they had taken on a life of their own. Just as cancer hijacked the body’s own processes and turned them against it, his mother’s sadness had hijacked her, throwing everything about her out of balance. It had hollowed her out a long time ago, leaving just a husk of the former host. His mother had died a long time ago, when his father had disappeared. All that was left was just tissue that was living without sentience, an organism just going through the motions.