by KJ Charles
—I wonder if any of the high rollers are coming in, I could do with the money, the tips are really down—
“Hey, baby,” said one of the men as another wolf-whistled. “You want some help scrubbing your back?”
“Too late now! Next time maybe!” I said with a strong Thai accent, gave him a flutter of lashes and flash of teeth without actually making eye contact, and dived into the dressing room. I shut the door, checking the room was empty, and leaned against it, trying to stop shaking.
I was in. It was fine. I could do this.
Another empty message, this one telling Minachan I was ready, and I prayed that our hastily improvised plan worked, that Taka had come up with the diversion he’d promised. Then I dropped the towel and adjusted the dress, blessing Lycra under my breath. A quick shake and comb of the wig, a slash of borrowed frosted coral lipstick—that had to be Yukie’s, none of the other girls would be seen dead with the colour—and brush of borrowed mascara. Check I still had my necklace, and I was ready to go.
If Minachan would just get on with it.
I was listening at the door, clutching my phone. Nothing. The deep tones of the men talking, the occasional rattle of high-heeled shoes, the distant amplified music and hum of chatter from the bar. No sound of any diversion.
What was I going to do, stay here all night?
And it was a weeknight. If things slowed up Mama-san might decide to settle down in her office, working on her two sets of accounts, only one of which went to the tax people.
Come on, Minachan.
I was beginning to think she’d bottled out on me when the noise erupted. Bellows, screams, crashes, becoming abruptly louder as the doors from the bar were flung open.
“Mama-san!” The panicked voice sounded like Keiko. “Mama-san! Come quick, it’s—” She cut herself off with a strangled screech of terror. I could hear yelling, stampeding feet, choruses of glass-shattering screams. And, underneath it all, roars of masculine laughter.
“What is going on?” Mama-san demanded.
A table hit the floor. The screams rose higher. I could hear Minachan squealing for help, Sonja’s rich laugh. There was a crash of glassware and a burst of cheers and applause.
“Mice!” screeched Keiko. “Millions of them! The bar is infested with white mice!”
There was a stunned pause.
Then Mama-san’s exclamation was drowned out by the guffaws of the lounging yakuza. “This I have to see,” one of them announced, and I heard the hasty tread of feet. The volume of chaos rose sharply as the double doors to the bar opened, and dropped again.
God bless Taka’s twisted little mind. I slipped out of the dressing room and into Mama-san’s office.
It was a small room, dominated by the large, old-fashioned desk, with drawers on either side of the generous kneehole and a modesty panel. The desk was positioned in the middle of the room, so that Mama-san faced the door as she sat, turning her back on the window and the truncated view of the next building a handful of metres away.
Mama-san’s monitor sat on top of the computer tower on her desk. The dusty screen was showing brightly coloured fish swimming around. I hit the space bar and it sprang to active life.
What now? Find the file. I searched by recent use, scanning for any of the suffixes Yoshi had drilled into me, all the time straining for the sound of approaching feet, and quickly saw a file that had been saved to the desktop two days ago.
The bloody desktop. I hadn’t even looked.
Without thinking, I clicked on it to check it was the right file, and then could have screamed as the programme began to load. The hard drive whirred and churned, agonisingly slow. I tried to close it, but my frantic clicking had no effect.
Shit.
I grabbed at my necklace, quivering with impatience as the video-player welcome screen appeared.
The necklace was a plain silver rectangle, about the size of a stick of gum but thicker, on a silver chain. It was okay if you like modern jewellery; too large for my taste, but then I wasn’t wearing it for the look. I pulled the stick from its close-fitting cap and checked the back of the machine to find the matching slot—USB port, whatever—that Yoshi had promised me would be there.
There were several empty slots. I stuck the thumb drive in the nearest one, and immediately a blue light began to flicker on and off at the end of its shiny silver casing, making it three times as obvious as it already was against the dull metal back of the computer and the grubby black tangle of wires.
There was no way I could hide the thumb drive jutting out towards anyone who entered the room, but I peeled the handy square of masking tape off my phone, where Taka had stuck it earlier, and pressed it down over the light. That was going to have to do. Anyway, I should be out of here with it before anyone came in.
On the screen a grainy image had started to play: an empty doorway. That had to be it.
I shut the bloody obstinate programme down and quickly told the machine to copy the file to the flash drive, as per Yoshi’s drill. A dialogue box popped up, showing the file was copying, with a status bar filling in with green to tell me how long it would take. There was very little green showing yet, and I cursed Mama-san’s cheapness—why couldn’t she upgrade her blasted hardware? Come on, come on…
There was a sudden increase in the noise level. Someone was coming through the double doors from the bar.
Shit. I looked around hastily and then froze in breath-sucking terror as I saw the window. There were no curtains, no blinds, and the screen, with the telltale dialogue box still up, was brightly reflected in the glass.
“Mama-san,” shrilled Minachan. “Hang on a minute. Wait!”
I stabbed out a finger that stopped short as I realised there weren’t any buttons on the front of the monitor.
“Later. I need to call the building management.” The sharp tap of a fat woman’s stilettos was approaching the door.
I grabbed the sides of the monitor, running my hands down them, couldn’t find an off button.
“No, right now!” shouted Minachan. “That bitch Yukie has run off, and if you think I’m going to be left alone out there—”
How the hell did I turn on the screensaver? Start—control panel—display. Come on, come on…
Outside, Minachan was ranting unstoppably.
“—I’m the only one pulling in any damn money these days, seeing as these bastards have driven away our two best earners, and now Yukie is dumping it all on me and you’re going to let her, well, I’m not putting up with it. You want me to go right now, is that what you want?” Her voice was high and furious, and rising sharply in volume, almost drowning Mama-san’s order to be quiet and calm down.
The dialogue box with the screensaver tab appeared at last. I hit Preview and dropped under the desk, rolling onto my back. The modesty panel ended several inches above the floor, but if I clutched my knees to my chest and kept my bare legs up, only my black dress would be visible, and surely nobody would notice it in the badly lit room. Surely.
The door opened.
“No I will not calm down!” Minachan shrieked in a pitch mostly audible to dogs and then burst into hysterical tears.
Mama-san’s business was being destroyed by organised crime; she had a barful of rodents, drunk men and screaming women; and if anyone called the health-and-safety people while the mice were visible, she’d end up with a certificate for lack of hygiene in a food-serving establishment that she’d be forced to display in a prominent position for the next year, if the bar lasted that long. That would have been enough for most people, without an unprecedented feud erupting between the two most reliable girls she had left. I wasn’t surprised she was sounding fraught.
“I will call the building management. You go and find Yukie and bring her here. I’ll deal with this. Go.”
She sat down heavily in her office chair, which was at an angle to the desk, and I held my breath. Her legs were about eighteen inches from me. I stared at her fat ankles, the t
ops of her navy patent-leather shoes cutting into the flesh, the plump calves and sheer tights.
If anyone walking by her door noticed the shining silver flash drive sticking out of the back of the computer, if she hit one single button on the keyboard to turn off the screensaver, I was screwed. And if my phone vibrated—
It was at that point that I realised I’d left it on the desk.
The chair rolled forward slightly as Mama-san grabbed the receiver of her landline. I tried not to breathe or sweat or exist. There was something sharp underneath me, and my legs were trembling as I kept them in the air, but I couldn’t risk bracing my feet against the side of the desk in case she felt the movement.
“Yes, mice. Some joker has dumped a sack of white mice in the Primrose Path bar—yes, that’s what I said, mice. …well, how should I know?”
My chest was cramped with the curled position, and with fear. How long could this go on before Mama-san noticed me? Would she hand me over the yakuza if she did?
Of course she would.
“I don’t care. Get somebody up here. This is what I pay a maintenance charge for. …I don’t care if the contract specifies it or not.”
She crossed her legs with an angry motion. The tip of her heel missed my cheek by maybe a centimetre, and I jerked involuntarily. The desk vibrated slightly, and I felt every muscle in my body contract.
Mama-san wasn’t saying anything, and I couldn’t hear anyone speaking on the other end of the line, not over my thundering pulse. I shut my eyes tight to hold back the panic. Had she noticed the movement? Don’t look down, don’t look down here, Christ, please don’t look down…
“Not good enough,” said Mama-san, and for a horrible second I thought that was it.
“No. You send someone up now, no arguments. Five minutes.” She slammed the phone down. I allowed the pent-up breath to seep out.
She remained still for a moment. Then a pudgy arm came down towards the bottom desk drawer where she kept the peach brandy. Her whole body began to tilt sideways and forward as she reached, which would bring me inexorably into her line of sight, no no no…
“Mama-san?” said Sonja from the door. “Sorry to bother you—”
“Minachan and Yukie are having an argument.” Mama-san straightened slightly. “I know. Just…go calm them down, please.”
“There is that,” agreed Sonja. “But I thought you should know, one of the missing links out there thought it would be funny to drop a mouse down Keiko’s back, and one of her regulars hasn’t seen the joke. There’s a bit of a ruckus.”
“Which regular?” said Mama-san in the tones of one who already knows the answer.
“That one. VP Stalker.”
The chair shot back and away from the desk as Mama-san heaved herself up and almost ran out of the room. I couldn’t blame her. The last thing she needed was the vice-president of finance of a significant non-governmental agency getting a smack in the mouth from a yakuza goon over a bar girl. Or a mouse.
“Clear for the moment,” said Sonja softly in Dutch.
I rolled out from under the desk and stood up on cramped legs. Sonja was lounging against the doorframe, fishing a cigarette out of her tiny bag, blocking the door with her back to me. She looked a lot more casual than I felt.
I hit a key to bring the screen to life and saw the file had finished downloading. Go. Close the dialogue boxes, grab the flash stick, don’t forget the bloody mobile phone, and now I could get the hell out of here.
“Are we clear?” I murmured.
“Mm-hmm.” Sonja didn’t look round. She pushed herself upright, strolled towards the double doors and paused in front of them to light her cigarette, blocking the entrance. I hurried towards the vestibule, and escape. Five metres to go, four…
A male form appeared at the other end of the corridor, coming from the kitchen. Solid, medium height, broad face, razor cut—
Jun.
“No more mice! No more bloody mice!” I screamed, putting my hands over my face in a sob-muffling gesture, and ran for it.
Maybe I could have played it cooler, except that I couldn’t. I had no doubt he’d recognise my face; my dress was covered in dust and I had no shoes on; and mostly I had nothing at all left in the tank. No lies, no nerves, nothing. I just needed to get out.
I fled through the vestibule, pulled open the door, slammed it behind me and sprinted down the fire escape like the hounds of hell were after me. My bare feet slipped painfully and the metal was wet and cold and sharp-edged, and the three flights had never seemed so long.
I hit the ground running, twisted my head to check for pursuit, and stepped straight onto broken glass.
The pain knifed up my leg, strangling the scream into an airless whimper. I rocked on my other foot for a second as the dizzying wave of agony washed over me, and a huge, dark figure moved silently out of the shadows under the fire escape towards me, and this time I shrieked aloud.
“Jesus, shut up,” snarled Chanko, and swept me off the ground like I weighed nothing at all. One minute I was sweating cold and shaking, the next I had my arms round his neck and the weight off my foot, and we were in the next alley, out of sight of the back door, and heading for the bike.
“God, you scared me.” My voice was shaking so much it didn’t sound at all like mine. I pressed my face into his chest, feeling like I might cry. “God. I nearly had a heart attack. What were you doing there?”
“What were you doing in there?” he retorted. “You said max fifteen minutes.”
“How long was it?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Well, that’s hardly—were you going to come in after me or something? You were, weren’t you?”
He shrugged, gently bumping me up and down.
“What did you plan to do exactly? There’s at least three yakuza in there. And a shedload of mice,” I added, with an involuntary giggle pulling at the corners of my mouth.
Chanko sat me carefully on the bike, scowling at my foot, and draped my coat round my shoulders.
“Mice worked, huh?”
“Oh, yes. Where did he get them?”
“Place they breed ’em for labs and pet shops. Backup plan was snakes. Got your gizmo?”
I clutched the flash drive, hanging securely round my neck. “Yes.”
He gunned the engine and we slid off into the night.
The drive back felt a lot longer than the one there, with the hot throbbing in my foot and the freezing air. Neither of us had a helmet, and I prayed we wouldn’t get pulled over, but mostly I wrapped my arms around Chanko’s thick waist and rested my face against his back, and let the adrenaline ebb away.
It felt like Round Two had gone to us.
Yoshi was standing in the corridor as the door opened and Chanko carried me into the house. He stared at me as though I’d grown an extra head. And he looked at Chanko with something very like hatred.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded.
“I trod on glass,” I told him, suddenly acutely embarrassed. “My foot’s killing me.”
Yoshi started to say something, but Taka was already demanding, “Did you get it? Where’s the stick?”
I handed over the necklace before he garrotted me with the chain in his enthusiasm to get at the data.
Yoshi looked shocking, grey and lost. Taka’s eyes had a febrile glitter, and he kept wiping his nose on the back of his hand. It didn’t seem like either of them was in a fit state to do anything. Taka sprinted up the stairs anyway, and Yoshi frowned at my foot, then followed more slowly as Taka yelled for him.
Chanko dumped me on a cushion in the LDK with my foot up on the table while he went to check the bathroom for antiseptic and tweezers, then gave up and went to the twenty-four-hour combini down the road. I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes, just breathing, not even opening them when I felt his strong, warm hands unexpectedly gentle around my ankle.
“Your feet are freezing,” he muttered. “Lemme get this shit out first, then yo
u need a bath or something.”
“Is there much—ow!”
“Not much. Don’t wriggle,” he added as I attempted to jerk my foot out of his grip. I might as well have tried to squirm out of a mantrap. “Stay still, damn it.” He flexed my foot, angled a lamp to check the wound, swabbed it with cotton wool soaked in antiseptic.
“Ow.”
“Stop moaning. Lucky it’s not worse. Look where you’re going next time.”
“What next time?” I snapped. “Ow, God, that hurts. Do you know what you’re doing? When were you a doctor anyway?”
“You pick up bits and pieces,” he said, managing to make it sound like an answer. “Talk me through what happened in there.”
With breaks for wincing, swearing and begging, it took me most of the next fifteen minutes of tweezers and probing to tell him the story. At least it took my mind off things, and he seemed to be listening.
“Your girls did good,” he commented as he washed the wound out with battery acid or something, and I gripped the cushion and bit my lip. “Didn’t think it was a great idea at first, calling them, but man, they’re scary ladies. Just putting on a dressing now and we’re done. You hostesses all like that?”
“We’re the crème de la crème. The girls are okay, incidentally. I got a text while you were at the shop, saying the bar’s closed down for the night and there wasn’t any trouble. Not for them, anyway.”
“Bitch for your mama-san, though.”
“Yeah, well, tough.” He released my foot and I flexed it experimentally. “That feels much better. Thanks. No, Mama-san can go to hell. She’d have shopped me if she’d seen me. God, when she went for the bottle—I really thought that was it.” I’d meant to laugh about it, but the words didn’t come out like that, and suddenly I was shaking. “I thought—I thought—”
“Hey.”
He moved next to me, seating himself cross-legged. I thought he might put his arm round my shoulders but instead, and with no leverage, he picked me up as easily as though he were reaching for a beer and sat me on his lap like a child, although not quite.
“You’re okay,” he said calmly. “You did good. It’s okay.”