by KJ Charles
“If Chanko can’t handle them, what are you going to do?”
“We both go or we both stay.”
“Yoshi. We can’t leave him in the house alone. And Nori-chan. You’re more use to them than I am. Look, just go, will you? Chanko can look after himself. Better than the rest of us, at least.”
“Oh, shit,” he said. “You do know, if you get killed, he’ll murder me.”
“I’ll be holding on to that thought,” I assured him. “Get going before they see you.”
“Want the knife?”
“Don’t be bloody stupid. Go.”
“Be seeing you,” he said at a slightly more normal volume, stepped away from the bus shelter and disappeared into the crowd. Just like that.
Bastard.
I leaned against the bus stop with my back to the yakuza, delved in my handbag for my little makeup mirror, and flicked it open to spy on Chanko over my shoulder.
It’s a lot harder to do than it looks. My hands were shaking, and I had the magnifying mirror uppermost when I opened it, so I had to turn it upside down, and at first I couldn’t even find him in the crowded images that appeared, but I shifted round slightly, and there he was, his free hand palm up, apologetic. Talking to a man, and there wasn’t any doubt at all what kind of man.
He was in his late forties, balding and with a sparse combover of the kind we called a barcode—black strands spaced over pale scalp. He was saying something to Chanko, his features exaggerated with anger, shaking a finger at him. The other guy, early thirties, was leaning forward in an aggressive stance, bullying, commanding.
They were pretty big guys, both around six foot. They weren’t big enough to posture like that at Chanko. But he was leaning back, looking apologetic. Subordinate, in fact.
Barcode jerked his head, and Chanko seemed to argue. His balance shifted too, onto the balls of his feet, and the other man opened his jacket slightly, revealing what was inside, and Chanko moved back, holding up a hand in acknowledgement. I could almost hear him saying, Okay, okay…
I risked looking round once they began to walk, Chanko in front, and saw them heading down a narrow alley that led off the street. I knew that alley. Yoshi had been sick down it at least once. It was a space for garbage skips that ended in a narrow area parallel to the street, so the whole thing formed a right-angled dead end, out of sight of the road. The yakuza were steering Chanko down it, and he had the case, and at least one of them had a gun.
Part of me was terrified. Part of me was panicking and palpitating and sobbing for Chanko or Taka or anybody to help me, to make the nightmare stop. And if I hadn’t had a lot of practice at turning off the emotions I didn’t want, ignoring fear and hate in favour of cold-eyed calculation, maybe I’d have wept or fled or given up right there.
Funny what comes in useful, isn’t it?
One big, deep breath, and I headed back along the street, giving just the briefest glance down the alley mouth to check nobody was waiting for me.
They weren’t. So I went down it.
There were three huge grey metal skips against the right-hand wall. I hopped silently over a stray garbage bag and slithered between two of the big stinking containers into the gap formed by their sloping sides, crouching low, not breathing through my nose, listening.
It wasn’t hard to work out what was happening. I was getting used to the sound of beatings.
A dull sound of fist against flesh. A crack. A deep grunt of pain; light, angry footsteps; another blow. And another.
Why wasn’t he doing anything?
Two rapid steps, like running, and a really hard impact, accompanied by a grunt of effort and a sharp exhalation, then a gasp. Someone spat, heavily, and then Chanko said, “Alright, you made your point.”
His voice was thick, and he spat again after he spoke, clearing his mouth.
“Shut up,” said a voice. “You put five of our people in hospital, you get what’s coming.”
“We want the girl,” said the other man. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know—” Chanko began over a scrape of feet, and I heard a hard blow and a hissing exhalation. Chanko breathing through his nose, keeping his temper.
They had to have guns on him.
“Stay down,” said the first voice, which sounded slightly adenoidal, though it might just have been an extreme Tokyo accent. “Don’t try anything. Now, where’s the fucking girl?”
“I don’t know. Look, she hired me to get loan sharks off her back. I got her ass out of Matsumoto, put her on a train, that’s it. Then she calls and asks me to go pick up this fucking case from some friend of hers. That’s all I know, okay? How the hell was I supposed to know she was in hock to you? She’s only a goddamn hostess, how the hell much can she owe you?”
“It’s not about money,” said the other man harshly, with an accent I placed somewhere in the Kinki area. “And you knew it was us when Soseki came through the door.”
“Who’s Soseki?” said Chanko blankly.
“You broke two of his ribs in that love hotel, you fat gaijin son of a whore!”
There was a really bad sound then. Something solid colliding with skin, splitting, tearing. A silence filled with hard breathing.
“Yeah,” said Chanko finally, and spat again. “I broke a guy’s ribs. So who the fuck is he that I’m supposed to know who he is?”
“Soseki Eiji. One of our guys, worked in Himeji. Tattoos up his neck.” The guy from Kinki sounded slightly frustrated now. “Gambler, dice player. Came up here after the business with the Chinese backstreet casino. Don’t tell me you don’t remember that.”
“Hell, I heard about it, sure. But I never met the guy. Didn’t recognise him, didn’t see any tattoos, no idea he was family. I mean, shit, I’m very sorry. Please excuse me. I made a mistake.” Formal phrases. I wondered if he was bowing. “But I wasn’t expecting a guy from Himeji to come through the door in Kanazawa when it’s supposed to be Tokyo loan sharks. What was Soseki doing up there anyway?”
“Redressing his mistakes,” said Adenoids. “Like you’re going to, you turncoat bastard. Starting by telling us everything you know about this girl.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Chanko said. “Whatever you want. Except, I don’t know if any of the shit she told me is true, so—”
“Don’t make excuses!”
“No, sure, but seems like she was lying her tits off the whole way. Says it’s loan sharks. It’s not, right? Says, ’cause I asked, it ain’t family business. That’s a lie too, right? Says this briefcase she needs me to get has nothing to do with it, and there won’t be any trouble, which is bullshit too; and she says the people after her went for her friend, raped her, put her in hospital. Well, that ain’t true either if it was you guys, right?”
“Don’t ask,” said the guy from Kinki. “Looks like the bitch is going to die on us.”
My nails bit into my palms. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.
“What?” Chanko said. “The family did that? Why?”
“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The words were callous, but the Kinki-accented voice was ringing with anger.
“But—the hostess said it was a few guys. She was lying about that, right? Right?” Pause. “She wasn’t lying. And the other girl wasn’t even involved?” Chanko sounded genuinely disgusted. “Hell, Harada-san, you can’t tell me that’s right. Since when does the family order shit like that? That’s no way to run a business.”
“They weren’t following orders,” snarled Harada.
“What, a whole bunch of guys ran amok? No chain of command? And you’re pissed at me?”
“Fuck you,” said Adenoids, but Harada was talking over him, voice rising, justifying himself furiously.
“Two guys, don’t get the wrong idea—”
“Two more than you used to put up with,” Chanko snapped back.
“Soseki and that pampered bull-necked psycho are a disgrace to the family!” shouted Harada. “So don’t even thin
k—”
“It isn’t your business, amekō,” Adenoids interrupted loudly, and Harada cut himself off. “Now. Where’s the hostess?”
“Headed down south. Shinkansen. Said she was going to Osaka, get a plane, but she talked about Okinawa a lot. All I know.”
“Not enough.”
“Look, you got the case. You already said it’s what you wanted. Why’d you need the girl? What did she do to you?”
“Nothing,” said Harada. “But she knows about a lot of things she shouldn’t. You know how these things work. It’s just her bad luck.”
Silence.
“You’re going to kill her,” Chanko said. “Case or not. Aren’t you?”
“There’s too many loose ends.” Adenoids’ nasal voice was so deliberately casual that it was clear he was enjoying himself. “The hostess is one and her friend’s another. And you’re a third.”
“Hey, I don’t know shit about this.”
“So what if you don’t? You think you can walk out on us, cross us, put five of our guys down, and there won’t be consequences?” A slap, open-handed and hard.
Chanko spat again. “What you got in mind?”
“You’ll know when it happens, you worthless son of a bitch,” said Adenoids. “You’re going to see the Brother.”
“Is that so.” There was just a little edge to Chanko’s voice now, very slight, but it was screamingly obvious to me, and I wondered if the yakuza heard it too.
They both had guns, that much was clear. They intended to take him away, and if they did, they were unlikely to let him go afterwards. I didn’t think he was planning to come quietly, whatever the cost.
I should have told Taka to come back and help. I hadn’t. Chanko wasn’t armed, and neither was I. All I had was the stupid baton, which would do nothing against two guns. The stupid baton with its matte black handle.
“Get up, pig. You’re coming with us. Don’t even think about trying anything.”
A noise of feet, the yakuza moving, and I pulled myself upright from my stinking hiding place, stepped silently over the bags.
“Move, now!” shouted Harada.
“Hey,” Chanko said, and I thought, There he goes, and then I was round the corner with the spring-loaded end gripped between two hands and the handle pointing at the three men.
The yakuza had their backs to me, facing Chanko, who was rising to his feet. I screamed, “Drop the guns!” and glared at their astonished faces as they swung round.
The baton handle looked nothing like a gun barrel. In the dark of the alley, only dimly illuminated by the dull, refracted sodium light from the street, and with the shock, it might have fooled them for two seconds.
Fortunately, Chanko barely needed one.
While the yakuza were still turning to face me, in that first fraction of startled time, he kicked hard. The younger man went flying forward, the gun skittering out of his hand, and Chanko had already turned and slammed Barcode’s arm against the wall and was driving a punch into his stomach, then swinging back to the other man, who was scrabbling for the gun. His hand closed on it, and he started bringing it up as he rose, except I had the baton the right way round now, and I brought the loaded end whipping down onto his elbow, aiming for the ground below as Chanko had taught me, and what do you know if there wasn’t a crack, and a jar that numbed my arm, and the thud of the gun falling again.
All the blood vanished from his face as he stared at a floppy hand that he couldn’t seem to make function, and then looked at me.
I hurt him, I thought, and then, Noriko, and I swiped the baton at his head. He lurched out of the way, face contorting with rage, dancing sideways towards the gun and turning to grab it with the arm that still worked. I swung the baton at his groin and he leapt back, a reflex defense that took him right into Chanko’s reach.
Chanko punched him in the back of the neck, and his head snapped forward, and I hit him across the temple with my baton, and his head jerked back, and I hit him again, and there was a nasty feeling of something hard giving way, and he went down. Simple as that.
I stared at him. I wanted to hit him again, or to run like hell, or to throw up.
There was a flurry of action, a crunch and a grunt, and the other man dropped his gun with a rattle onto a pile of foil noodle trays. Chanko had him jammed up against the breezeblock by the face and groin. He held him there, and he turned to me.
I put my hand to my mouth.
There was blood all over his face. It was pouring down from an open gash on his brow, oozing from an ugly gouge on his cheek, trickling from his nose and set mouth where one lip was torn. A mark on the other cheekbone was red and already beginning to swell, and the look in his shark-black eyes was all the reason you’d ever need to be scared of the dark.
“Butterfly,” he said. “You ever do what you’re told?”
The voice was almost right, but not quite. His jaw was rigid, and a cold thread of rage tightened his vocal cords, clipping the words, and for a second I saw only the brutal, bloody giant, and I swallowed hard.
“This guy—” I managed.
Chanko looked down at the man on the ground. Then he punched Barcode in the stomach and left him staggering as he stalked over to the other guy and kicked him in the head. He swung back to the older goon, taking a vicious grip on his sparse hair, the other hand drawing back to strike—
“Wait,” gasped Barcode through a mouthful of blood. The voice identified him as Harada. “Joe-san, stop. That girl—hand her over. It’s not too late. I’ll talk to them. I can wipe the slate clean.”
“No,” said Chanko.
Not the “it’s different” or “excuse me, but…” of normal speech—just the bare, shocking, unacceptable “no” sounding more brutal than a blow.
“We’ll kill you otherwise,” Harada said. “You know that.”
“You’ll kill her.”
“She’s dead anyway. Give her to me now, and you’re off the hook for everything. All debts paid. You have my word, Joe-san.” He sounded desperate, sincere. “I can make this work. You could walk away. You could come back—”
“Sure I could,” Chanko said, and punched Harada in the face, aiming not just beyond the target but right through the wall.
The yakuza slid to the ground, boneless, leaving a glistening trail from his scalp on the breezeblock. Chanko picked him up with one bloody hand, dragged him to the nearest skip. He opened the lid and heaved the dead weight up, tumbling it inside. He kicked the other guy again and, when he didn’t move, did the same to him. Then he shut the lid and threw the bolt.
I could have asked if there was enough air in there for two men, or if anyone would check before the contents went straight into a garbage grinder. I didn’t.
Chanko was breathing hard, controlled, not looking at me. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. You’ve got blood on your face.” My voice didn’t sound terribly normal, either.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does. You look—” I couldn’t think of a way to say it. “Frightening. Come here. No, down here.”
He hesitated, then dropped into a half-crouch in front of me, looking through rather than at me. I sloshed some water onto a tissue and reached tentatively for his face, wiping off the blood and saliva and sweat, dabbing at the cuts, feeling the anger and adrenaline and humiliation pulsing through him with every breath, feeling my own pulse pounding through my fingertips as they skimmed his skin. It was very dark around us suddenly, and very cold and very close.
I crumpled up the fourth saturated tissue, stuffing the filthy thing in my bag, and reached for another.
“Hurry it up. Need to go.” A bit more blood trickled down from his lip as he spoke, and without meaning to, I reached out and stopped it with the tip of my finger. His breath caught, and his eyes snapped on to mine, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe either.
I could feel warmth, and bristles, and the tension that thickened and tightened the tendons and muscles under the skin,
but the only thing I could see was the savage hunger that leapt in his dark eyes, blotting out everything else. And now I was so far out of my depth that I might never come back, but I moved my fingertip anyway, sliding it along his lip, and felt his mouth open slightly for it, and if he’d reached for me then…
My hand shook.
He jolted like I’d slapped him, and he gave a grunt of something like fury and shoved himself to his feet, so hard I jerked backwards.
“Chanko?”
“C’mon.”
He grabbed the briefcase and strode off, up the alley. I skipped to keep up, favouring my bad foot, as he walked straight across the wide pavement, not breaking stride through the thick, flowing crowd, which parted like the Red Sea around him while I fought my way through as it closed up behind.
By the time I’d caught up, a cab had already stopped, mostly because he was pretty much standing in front of it. The driver wasn’t looking happy.
“Roppongi,” Chanko told him.
“Do we want to—” I began.
“Get in.”
The traffic was almost as thick as it had been earlier, and we were a lot more memorable now. I wondered if he knew what he was doing. His body was rigid with suppressed tension, and he was staring straight ahead as if I wasn’t there, hardly moving, except that his right hand was clenching and flexing, the fingers curling into a fist and spreading wide again.
Blood was trickling down over his eyelid. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Your eyebrow’s still bleeding. Hold this to it.”
I held out a tissue. He didn’t notice that either. I hesitated, then twisted in my seat and put it to his brow.
“Don’t,” he said harshly, and grabbed it from my hand.
He stopped the cab well before Roppongi, on Kottō-dori, and we stood waiting while it accelerated away. There were several stations in the area, and the closest, Omotesandō, was at the intersection of several lines. The driver would inevitably remember us if asked, but he wouldn’t be able to guess where we’d gone.
Chanko didn’t speak then, as we walked up to Omotesandō or as we stood on the train. But when I staggered, jolted by the speed and force of its movement, he grasped my shoulder and pulled me to him, fingers digging in hard, holding me against his body and keeping me there long after I had my balance.