Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan Read online

  “Tadao. Nice to see you, man.” Blake shook with Tadao and extended his hand to the other man. “Blake Adderly.” The man ignored the extended hand but gave a short, sharp bow. Blake shrugged, pulled his hand back, and still smiling, said, “What can I do for you gents? Or is this a social visit?”

  Tadao scowled. “No, it’s not. Bill, Lydia.” He nodded to us. “I knew you were coming here this morning. I was hoping to get here first.”

  “You guys all know each other?” Blake asked, smile still in place.

  “We did, years ago,” said Tadao.

  I said, “What are you doing here?”

  “This is Kenji Yokoshiro.” Tadao shifted uncomfortably and didn’t meet my eyes. “Yokoshiro-san is my oyabun.”

  “Tadao!” I jumped up from my chair as Yokoshiro, stone-faced, gave me and Bill the same short bow he’d bestowed on Blake. Oyabun is Yakuza for ‘elder brother.’ A kobun’s boss. “You said that was over! You said it never even began!” I barely remembered to keep my accent going for Blake’s sake while I yelled at him.

  “Oh, Lydia, Jesus! It would’ve been safer for you to believe that but it’s ridiculous. Once you’re in, even your big toe, you never get out.”

  Blake was frowning, Bill was glowering, I was once again open-mouthed, and Tadao looked at Yokoshiro. Yokoshiro nodded. Tadao loosened his tie, tossed it on Blake’s desk, and unbuttoned his shirt. A green dragon breathing red-and-gold flames curled around the left side of his rib cage.

  Yakuza tattoos are for services rendered and are strictly controlled. Eventually, an honored Yakuza soldier will be completely covered in them. Tadao seemed off to a fine start.

  “Okay.” Blake spoke firmly. It was his office and he was reasserting control. “Okay. Tadao, I guess you’re telling us you and your buddy are gangsters. Congratulations? Is that what I’m supposed to say? Now why the hell are you here? And put your clothes back on.”

  Tadao glanced at Yokoshiro again, and on the oyabun’s nod he buttoned his shirt and re-knotted his tie. “I used to date Lydia, long time ago. We had dinner last night. She told me about your plan to build sports car racing tracks, Blake. That’s why we’re here. Especially about the ones in Japan, but no, really all of them.”

  “You have a problem with the idea?”

  “No. We want a piece of it.”

  “Tadao—“ I began, but Bill put a hand on my arm.

  “Here’s the thing,” Tadao said to Blake. “We have money. We have connections. We think this is a great idea.”

  Blake narrowed his eyes. “Who’s ‘we’? You and Skinny here?”

  I drew in a breath, but Yokoshiro didn’t react to the diss. “It might be a good idea to show a little respect,” Tadao said. “Luckily for you Yokoshiro-san doesn’t speak much English. By ‘we,’ I mean me, Yokoshiro-san and … people above him. The rest of the family.”

  “Jesus. You guys talk about families, like the goombahs?”

  “Our family,” Tadao responded, “can be invaluable to you in getting this thing off the ground.” He paused. “We can also get in your way.”

  Blake regarded him for a long moment, then sat slowly in his huge chair. He nodded, gave a slow smile. “All right. I’m willing to talk.”

  “Mr. Adderly,” I said, trying hard to stay in the character I’d started with—no use confusing the guy—and still say what I needed to say, “you can’t seriously be considering—”

  “I’ll call you two if I need you. Thanks for coming.”

  Once again, I began to say something; once again, Bill cut me off. “We’d better go,” Bill said, cold eyes on Tadao. He stood. I was already standing, so the client chairs were now up for grabs.

  But Tadao wasn’t looking at Bill, or at me, and he made no move to sit. His eyes were on Yokoshiro, and Yokoshiro’s were on the glass-doored cabinet. Without moving his gaze he whispered in Japanese to Tadao.

  Tadao said, “Yokoshiro-san is asking about the globe in your cabinet.”

  Blake looked over his shoulder. “That? Rock crystal. As a matter of fact your sister gave it to me.”

  Yokoshiro whispered again.

  “He’d like to see it.”

  Blake shrugged. “Why not?” He rummaged in his desk drawer for a key, opened the cabinet, punched a code into a discreet interior keypad, and took the globe out. I wasn’t positioned well to see the code, but what did it matter now? Blake handed the globe to Yokoshiro.

  Looking into the globe, the oyabun let out that Japanese guttural grunt that can mean either surprise or agreement. “Hoh!” He squinted and peered deeper. “Kitsunebi!”

  “I—” That was me, but Blake didn’t want to hear from me.

  “Bill? Lydia? It’s been great chatting with you. Like I said, I’ll be in touch.”

  “No, you—” I started, but Bill put a firm hand on my elbow and guided me out the door.

  Twenty minutes later Bill and I were sitting wordlessly under the awning of a sidewalk café around the corner from Adderly, Bascombe, Chase. The mist had thickened to drizzle, probably building up to the energy to actually rain. Bill was working on a second espresso and I was trying to get my oolong tea to warm me up.

  “Look,” Bill said.

  I turned where he was pointing. Just crossing at the corner were Tadao and Yokoshiro, both in sunglasses despite the weather, both striding with that intimidating gangster roll. Neither carried an umbrella. What do you guys plan to do, I wondered, if it really starts to rain?

  It seemed I was going to get a chance to ask. When they came abreast of the café they spotted us at our table.

  “Well. Lydia and Bill,” Tadao said. Yokoshiro bowed. “Mind if we join you?”

  I looked at Bill, looked back at Tadao, and shrugged. The two men threaded their way between the tables—ours was the only one occupied—and joined us under the awning.

  “Tadao—“ I began, but Tadao held up his hand to stop me. I was getting mightily tired of men not letting me finish my sentences, but I shut it, to see what he was going to say.

  He said nothing. He put the black leather man-bag on the tabletop and drew from it a silk-wrapped object. It was round, it seemed heavy, and when he unwrapped it with a flourish I could see it was, unmistakably, the rock crystal globe.

  “How about that?” he said with a smirk.

  For a moment I managed to keep a straight face. Then I cracked up. “You did it! You’re fabulous! You did it!”

  “Well, you teed him up. All we needed to do was swing.”

  “Took you long enough to show up,” Bill said, but he was grinning, too. “I was running out of B.S.”

  “You will never run out of B.S.,” I said. “You didn’t even get to ‘Lamborghini.’ ” I turned to the other man. “Kenji, right? Thank you. You were so scary I believed you myself.”

  Kenji Yokoshiro grinned. “I had a blast,” he said in perfect English. It should be perfect; Tadao had told us the young actor was from Sacramento. “Good chance to practice my gangster chops. That’s why I’m studying with Tadao in the first place, so if I get any gangster roles I can do my own stunts. So this is the right thing, huh?”

  “Great sentimental value to my sister,” Tadao said. “Just emotional blackmail on the part of that asshat. Now she’ll never have to see him again.”

  We all high-fived and then Kenji went in to get celebratory lattes.

  “So how did this happen?” I asked.

  “After we sealed the deal, I suggested to Blake that since Yokoshiro-san was so entranced with the kitsunebi-dama it might be a nice gesture to give it to him. A goodwill gift between friends. Before he could answer I explained to Yokoshiro-san what a generous man our new business partner was. With a bow and a thank-you, the whole nine yards. Yokoshiro-san was floored and offered his gold cigarette case in exchange. Mine, I mean. Gold-plated, I mean. Anyway, Blake
sort of had to give it to him, after that. Just like you said he would. Honest to God, it all went exactly like we worked it out, Lydia. You’re the genius.”

  “I’ve always said that,” Bill put in.

  “You’ve always said a lot of things.” I turned back to Tadao. “So you guys didn’t have to improvise at all?”

  “Blake doesn’t have enough imagination to make that necessary,” Tadao said. “One thing about the guy, he’s never surprising.”

  “What’s supposed to happen now?” I asked as Kenji returned with a tray of lattes.

  “He thinks we’re coming back tomorrow with one of the higher-ups. I told him to be sure to lay in a supply of good tea. I even told him where to get it. I have a friend with a tea shop. Might as well share the wealth.”

  “See, now, that’s improvising. It’s also so very you. And when you don’t come back?”

  “He’ll call me, I guess. He has my cell number. I’ll tell him, ‘So sorry, our wakagashira put the kibosh on it, later, dude.’ What’ll he do, sue for breach of contract?”

  “He’ll wish he hadn’t kicked us to the curb,” said Bill.

  “Or given away the kitsunebi-dama,” I said. “Now he has no leverage to get your sister to help him, either.”

  “Hey,” said Yokoshiro. “That thing—you don’t mean you think it’s really … ?”

  “Depends,” said Tadao. “You’ve met my sister. Think she’s a fox?”

  Yokoshiro grinned and reddened, so his opinion was clear.

  We drank our lattes, we admired the globe, Tadao rewrapped it in the silk cloth, and we all got up to leave.

  “I need to get home and wash off this damn stage paint,” Tadao said. “It itches. Kenji, I swear I don’t know how actors do it.”

  “Hazard of the trade.”

  “What are you guys going to do?” Tadao asked me.

  “We’ll give this back to Moriko, then we’ll head home.”

  Moriko practically jumped up and down when I handed her the wrapped globe. As she was untying the cloth her smile lit her whole face. “This is it, I can tell without even seeing it, oh Lydia—Oh, oh, oh! Thank you, thank you!” She cupped the kitsunebi-dama in both hands and gazed into it. Looking up, she said, “You saved my life.”

  “No,” I said. “We stopped you from wrecking it by marrying a jerk. Could you please put that thing away someplace safe?”

  After lunch, a lot more thank-yous until I finally had to cut that off as embarrassing, (“And you’d better be all over your brother, too, by the way”) and promises to visit more often, Bill and I left Moriko to dress for a late-afternoon function.

  “Sure you don’t want to come view the cherry blossoms with us?”

  “I so wish I could. But I have to go to this gathering.”

  “What kimono are you wearing?”

  “Completely different crowd, so I’m wearing the blue one again. Sort of to celebrate. Can I say thank you one more time?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Goodbye, and thank you.”

  We needed to pick up our bags at the B&B and head for the train station, but first, as afternoon gave way to evening, we went down to the Tidal Basin to view the cherry blossoms. The rain had been falling heavily while we were with Moriko, but, maybe since I’d be leaving soon, it had backed off and seemed to be giving up. By the time we reached the Tidal Basin it wasn’t raining at all. The trees along the walkways were swaddled in a thick mist. It made each new set of branches a surprise and the blossoms on them seem like somebody’s good idea. We strolled for a while in silence, enjoying the quiet and the softness.

  “Look,” I said to Bill, pointing off into the distance, “Those lights over there. What’s going on?”

  He peered where I pointed, and grinned. “I’ll be damned. It’s foxfire.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a kind of bioluminescence. Glowing fungus on dead wood in swampy soil.”

  “How poetic.”

  “But also, in Japanese art, it’s what the artists show when a group of kitsune gather in the woods. To view the cherry blossoms or whatever. They run away if you get too close, but if you see them from a distance it’ll look like that. Because they’ll all be carrying their kitsunebi-dama globes on their tails.”

  “Now that’s poetic. Especially given why we’re here.”

  We stood watching the flickering lights in the distance until a movement in the mist between the cherry trees caught my eye. “Hey! It’s Moriko!”

  “Where?”

  “Between those trees. I’d know that blue kimono anywhere. With the yellow flowers.”

  “I don’t see her.”

  “Right there—No, wait, I don’t anymore either.” I blinked. “I lost her in the mist.”

  “You sure you saw her?”

  “In that kimono? Definitely. I wonder where she’s going? Is there someplace here in the park where her gathering could be?”

  Bill didn’t know, and I didn’t either. But as we stared through the trees, I could have sworn I saw an isolated flicker of flame moving away into the mist. It approached the glimmering group in the distance, they gathered around it—at least, that’s what it looked like—and under the cherry blossoms, the foxfire danced.

  Taro, the big boss, always has the most beautiful handkerchiefs. They really are something, silk or linen, embroidered with the letter T in Western style. That’s why I was surprised to see him lay one of his best across the guillotine splicer when Goro and Oni-Chan dragged that hapless fool theater owner across the projection booth.

  “I can understand a small business owner like yourself fearing the expense of insurance,” said Taro in that ribbiting thunder voice of his. He is fat, big-bellied like a bullfrog, and the succulent immensity of him buttoned beneath a fine Italian shirt makes me tingle with pleasant recollection. He lights a cigarette and the clik-fsshh of the butane flame rides above the fool’s yammering pleas like the clear peal of a temple bell, above all his stupid entreaties as they put his hand down hard on the splicer and spread his trembling fingers. I think it is so interesting how some people’s hands swell like blood sausages and others turn white and clammy when gripped hard by the wrist for so long. You really cannot guess by looking at them first.

  “We are only a thirty-seat theater,” the fool drools. “Please, this is a family endeavor. I only want to see my children eat rice again.”

  Taro snorts. “If you wanted your children to eat rice, you should have paid fealty and come to me for aid.” He bends over the sobbing man. “The gaijin occupation will feed your family, huh?” He sees me looking and darts his eyes to me, and I enjoy a moment of frisson over how my cherry lipstick and emerald silk dress are a rich distraction for him in this dull booth, with its floor-to-ceiling racks of funereal film canisters and stained cinder-block walls and the camphor stink of decaying celluloid. But the projector is oiled and immaculate. The fool is smart enough to take good care of that.

  Taro gives me a measured stare, and I know him intimately enough to recognize anticipation in his expertly impassive face. He knows how I am like him, how the part of our hearts that flinches at atrocity has no electric quickness anymore, and the secret that only people like us understand: how all that death has left us austere and shining, like ivory. He loves how my face moves only when I will it to do so, and no pleasure or horror can persuade it otherwise.

  For instance, I can see that the blade of the guillotine splicer is going to be dull, and won’t gain enough momentum on its tiny arm to sever the top knuckle of the fool’s left pinky finger, no matter how hard Goro or Oni-Chan slams it down, or how many times. And even though there’s a pair of scissors on the table I make no move to suggest swapping one for the other, because I know Taro intends to make this man pay with the tools of his trade. And I’m right about the splicer, and the fool’s scr
eams rend the air—it’s going to take forever—but then Oni-Chan surprises me by placing his whole weight on the blade beneath his palm and, red-faced, ssnnnTHOK, there’s a satisfying snap, like a crisp stick yielding beneath your feet during an autumn stroll.

  And as they haul the gibbering, bleeding fool down the stairs, Taro steps behind me and seizes the breasts I’m so proud of, touches under my skirt to ascertain how wet I am, betrays nothing as he pats my cheek, pat, pat, PAT, until it stings. “We’ll burn this place down in a week,” he says, licking his curious finger clean. “In the meantime, show something.”

  So I run my hands across the dusty stacks, looking for something complete in six reels. Not like it matters, but I have projectionist’s pride. Even if this is the last theater standing in Asakusa’s sixth district, even if Taro’s yakuza owns the “Turkish bath” to the right and the “hostess bar” to the left, even if anyone coming in here will be looking for the cheapest, darkest space they can find on the quick, I will still show a movie the way it’s supposed to be shown. My father would expect nothing less.

  And I find it: something foreign, complete in six reels, the celluloid seething only slightly at the edges from nitrate decay. I heft the first pungent reel onto the projector, snapping shut the fireproof sarcophagus before threading it through the machine’s metallic guts. The sprocket holes are buckled but not too damaged to catch on the teeth of the gears. I flip the switch and the metal lurches to life. The glass in the booth window is broken but the still-clinging shards don’t hurt the picture quality too much. I quickly cover the lens so the audience won’t see the leader: the crosshairs ending in arrow points, the fluttering numbers winking in and out, the final “3” blinking and departing. The only spectator in the audience is a bundle of old trash bunched up in one seat, but I still block the projection beam with my small hand because the leader is not meant to be seen. It is a private communiqué between film and projectionist. It is its final kiss out the door before meeting the big wide world. This is the proper way. He taught me.