by KJ Charles
I didn’t know what I was going to do when the train ride ended. I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to go back, to face the truth. I already knew it.
Give her to me and you’re off the hook.
We got off at Nagatachō to change lines. The platform emptied quickly, late commuters hurrying home. I started walking too, but Chanko stopped me as the train pulled away, running a hand over his face, looking at the line map without seeing it.
“Chanko, are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced up at him, then around. An elderly man was taking his time getting to the exit. Apart from him, we were the last people on the platform.
“What are we doing?”
“Route.”
“Straight up the Yūrakuchō line to Kotake-mukaihara,” I said impatiently, as the old man shuffled out of sight. “We can walk back to—”
Chanko spun round, grasped my arm and physically hauled me sideways, lifting me half off my feet as he dragged me across the empty platform. I gave a gasp of protest, too shocked to be scared, and then I had my back against a pillar, breath knocked out of me by the impact, and he was leaning over, trapping me, with an expression of concentrated fury on his battered face.
“What the fuck,” he said, “what the fucking fuck was that?”
“What?” I squeaked.
“That—stunt.”
“Oh. That.”
Chanko slammed a hand against the pillar, over my head, the frustration eloquent in his body language at least.
“Yes. That. Yakuza. Guns. Jesus.”
“I had to do something—”
“Yeah, walk away. Every goddamned thing I think about is how to keep them off you, and I turn my back for five fucking minutes—”
“They had guns on you!”
“I don’t care!” he shouted, and the echoes rang on the tiles of the tunnel and the empty platform. “You got any idea what they’d do to you if they got you?”
“Yes!” I shrieked, too furious to care about the noise. “Of course I know, they’ve already done it.”
Chanko leant over, face taut with fury, inches from mine, voice suddenly very low and measured, through set teeth. “So why the hell did you walk right back into their hands?”
“Why didn’t you give me up?”
His breathing stopped. I couldn’t hear a sound except my own rapid pulse in my ears.
“You could have,” I said into the silence. “You could have left me there. Got off the hook. Walked away.”
“No. I couldn’t.”
“Nor could I.”
He was totally still then, mouth rigid, eyes very dark on mine. I stood and stared up at him, watching the blood ooze. A warm wind began to blow along the platform.
“Train coming.”
“Yeah.” He took a breath and straightened up. “Come on. Where’s Taka?”
“He went home.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Chanko said, and that was the last he spoke for the rest of the journey back.
Chapter Twelve
I don’t think Taka and Yoshi even heard us come in. They were standing in the LDK, both of them scarlet, yelling in each other’s faces and as angry as I’d ever seen them.
“Stupid superstitious moron!” Taka shouted. “Idiot! What the fuck did you think you were doing?”
That sounded familiar. I glanced up at Chanko, who shrugged.
“I had to, alright?” bellowed Yoshi. “And stop telling me what to do. I’m not a child!”
“You’re a cretin!” Taka yelled, and swung round towards us, not even noticing Chanko’s appearance. “Have you got any idea what this asshole did?”
“No, and I don’t care.” Chanko slung the case onto the worktop. “We got the case, and we got a problem.”
Yoshi turned angrily and stopped as his eyes widened. “Oh, my—Chanko-san, what happened? Kechan, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said as Chanko shrugged. “What did you do?”
“He only went and stuck his head into a snakepit. Retarded, superstitious—hundred-yen shop junk—dressing up—dumbass stupid cretin!” Taka explained.
I gaped at him. “Oh my God. Yoshi, you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” demanded Chanko.
“I went to the hospital.” Yoshi’s jaw jutted mutinously. “You left Nori-chan’s luck on the worktop. So I called a guy I know who works in the staffing department, I got a white coat and a clipboard and I wore my old glasses and I walked in with him—”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Chanko said in English, Japanese apparently failing him.
“You always say people don’t look beyond the clothes, Kechan, and you were right. It was really easy. It was fine, Ando was there as security, so he knew me. She was asleep, but I put it in her hand and told Ando to tell the nurse to take care of it, and I left. I mean, I was really careful going home, I got two buses, and…”
His voice faltered. So would mine, faced with an expression like the one Chanko’s bloody, battered face was wearing.
“I don’t figure I’m hearing this right,” he said. “You went to the hospital, which is surrounded by police and yakuza, to give Noriko-san that piece-of-crap lucky charm? Is that what you said?”
“Yes.”
There was quite a long pause.
Yoshi shifted slightly. “I don’t expect you to understand—”
“Understand?” shouted Taka. “You’re an idiot, I understand that.”
“She gave it to Kechan and look what happened. I had to give it back.”
“Let’s stop yelling.” Chanko’s voice was entirely calm. “Yoshi-san?” He started walking towards him.
“What?” said Yoshi, and then was forced to take a step back as Chanko didn’t stop, and another, and found his back against the wall. “Hey!”
Chanko looked down at him in complete silence for a long and unpleasant moment. Then he spoke in the same calm monotone.
“Say I want you to tell me something, Yoshi-san. Say I want it badly enough, I’m going to hurt you. How long do you figure you’re going to hold out before I make you talk?”
Yoshi swallowed, staring up defiantly. He didn’t answer.
“Let’s be realistic. I start breaking your fingers, it’s not going to be long. Ten minutes? Fifteen?”
“For God’s sake,” I said. “Stop it.”
“I’m a pretty reasonable guy,” Chanko went on. “Not like the two guys who were smacking me around an hour ago to find out where Kerry is. And I’m a fuckload tougher than you, Yoshi-san, and there are a fuckload more of them, and they have guns. So you think giving your friend her toy back was worth what would have happened if they’d caught you and tortured this address out of you? You’d talked fast enough, they could have been here waiting for Kerry when she got back. Was that worth it?”
“Stop it, Chanko,” I said. “I mean it. You’ve made your point.”
Chanko stared down at Yoshi for a couple of seconds longer, then stepped back. “Taka, check the case out. We got a problem. Another one.”
I went over to Yoshi, who sagged slightly as Chanko headed to the fridge.
“You really are a nutcase,” I said softly. “If you ever do something like that again, I’ll murder you. And I’m so glad you did it. Thank you.”
“I couldn’t not,” he said simply. “Kechan, really, that guy—”
“He’s pissed off with me, mostly.”
“Really?”
“And also you, yes.”
“Quite. Is that the case there? The case?”
I nodded.
“Wow,” said Yoshi. “But—isn’t that it? We give it back to them and they leave Noriko alone? Kechan, doesn’t this mean it’s over?”
“Ah. Well. That’s the problem.”
“Bastards,” Taka said, when I’d finished telling him and Yoshi about as much of the conversation in the alley as they needed to know, which is to say a fairly heavily edited version. I’d managed not
to make any eye contact with Chanko as I spoke. “Mind you, I can see their point. Corporate blackmail, loan sharking, prostitution, that’s yakuza territory. People understand that. But what they did to Noriko—that crossed a line. You don’t count, Kerry-chan. You’re foreign, illegal, you work in a dodgy business, you’re mixed up in this shit. But Noriko counts. What they did to her—if that gets out, the press and police and the organised crime squads will be down on the Mitsuyoshi-kai like a ton of shit. And on other yakuza activities too. The other families will hate them. They won’t want to let it get out.”
Yoshi nodded. “I think that’s right. You’re the link between Mitsuyoshi-kai and Noriko. Kelly is gone, it doesn’t sound like Hearn is any use—so if you disappear, if the police don’t find out you’re Nori-chan’s flatmate and Kelly’s colleague and what Kelly did, I don’t see how they can put it together. The family can’t let you live if there’s any chance you’ll talk.”
I ran my fingers over the cold, wet surface of my beer can, wondering if I could control my mouth enough to swallow. It felt fairly wobbly.
“Noriko-san too,” said Chanko, almost reluctantly. “She’s no danger to them now, but if she wakes up…it’s another loose end.”
“And you,” I told him. “You’re one too, they said so. And they know about Yoshi, and how can they be sure he hasn’t talked?”
“So why don’t we find out what it was they wanted back badly enough to start all this crap?” Taka reached for the case.
We clustered around as he pulled out a thin sheaf of papers and an unlabelled CD in a plastic case, which he swiped just before Yoshi grabbed for it. He sprinted upstairs as Yoshi took the papers instead, flipped through them, raised his eyebrows and handed half of them to me—three sets of stapled sheets on Mitsuyoshi-kai letterhead. Chanko searched the pockets and lining of the case as we read, and then tossed it down with a grunt of disgust.
“Nothing else here. What you got?”
“Three copies of an agenda for a meeting,” Yoshi said. “Point one, discussion of arrangements pertaining to issues of authority—that sort of thing. Point two, the company’s ongoing utility under changing circumstances. There aren’t any names, even of people attending. This is useless. Kechan?”
“Same, but in Korean.” I slapped the papers down on the worktop. “Business bullshit.”
“So the old man was going to a meeting. We knew that,” said Chanko. “Why would the Mitsuyoshi-kai be meeting with Koreans?”
“Business.” Yoshi shrugged. “Who cares? Look, I hate to say it, but what if the case was always a red herring? What if they just wanted the money back and to get revenge, and then they got angry, so they hurt Noriko, and the rest of it has all been the yakuza trying to keep that quiet? We’ve been assuming the case is some kind of magic solution to all this, something they need but—” He waved the papers. “This is nothing, it’s just crap. Nobody would kill anyone for this.”
I stared at him, then up at Chanko. “Do you think that’s right? What if I had just run away—would that have shown them I wouldn’t be a threat? Oh God, what if I shouldn’t have come back?”
“Except this stank from the beginning, and it still stinks. Taka, what are you doing up there?” Chanko yelled upstairs. “What’s on the disc?”
“Dunno,” Taka shouted back cheerfully.
“Why the hell not?”
“It’s protected to buggery.”
Yoshi went up the stairs like a jackrabbit. Chanko shook his head and followed, more slowly.
I stayed where I was, on a stool at the worktop, staring at the agendas but not really seeing them.
They were going to kill me, me and Noriko, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I’d played by their rules, and that had just turned out to be a game. And even if I could leave Noriko, it was too late to run. I had names now, and I had the case, physical evidence, and there was no way at all they would leave me be.
I had my head in my hands when Chanko came back in.
“You okay, Butterfly?”
“Not great,” I said without looking up. “Not fantastic. They’re going to kill me.”
“I’m not planning to let them.”
He came up behind me and put both hands on my shoulders, and I leaned back into him, shutting my eyes. “I’m frightened, Chanko. I’m really frightened.”
“You sure looked it, back in the alley,” he said, his hands stroking down my arms. “Faking them out like that with a bit of goddamn plastic. You scared the crap out of me, you know that?”
“Sorry.”
“Shouldn’t have done it. Not worth it.” His fingers ran lightly over the nape of my neck, tweaking a stray bit of hair. I shivered. “And too damn risky. Didn’t you figure they had guns?”
“I knew they did.”
“So what if I hadn’t moved fast enough?”
I shrugged. “I knew you would.”
His hands paused, then tugged gently at my shoulders, turning me round. I swivelled obligingly on the stool, noticing that he’d washed away the remaining blood and grime and applied some plasters, and he cupped the side of my face, running a thumb gently over my lips.
“I guess you already figured out, I’ve done a lot of things I ain’t proud of. But no goddamn yakuza is so much as touching you or your friends while I’m still breathing, and that’s a promise. Understand?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“C’mon.” He tugged me gently off the stool. “You look exhausted. Up.”
“Shouldn’t we—”
“The guys are settled in for the night. Taka’s called his people and doubled the security on Noriko, and got Ando to call in an anonymous warning to the cops. I don’t see you and me got anything else we can do tonight, not till we see if the disc is any use. So you’re going to bed.”
In the study, which was nominally my bedroom, Taka and Yoshi weren’t looking like they ever planned to move again.
“Forget it.” Chanko pulled the study door shut and steered me into the bedroom we’d shared last night. “You crash out here. I can sleep downstairs.”
“There’s no need.”
He looked down at me with a slight frown. I looked back up. He ducked down and his mouth was on mine, and the kiss was incredibly gentle for all of two seconds, and then harder and hotter and fiercer as I grabbed at his thick hair and he lifted me clear off my feet and I wrapped my legs around him.
After a ferocious minute or so, he pulled his head back, breathing hard.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “That’s the need, Butterfly. I better go.”
“Stay,” I said. “Please.”
“Don’t do this to me, babe. We need to talk.”
“I know we do. I don’t want to. Let’s not.”
“God, you scare me,” he said, but he carried me over to the bedroom door, and kicked it shut.
And maybe he was three times my size and maybe he hurt people for a living, but that huge, powerful body was impossibly gentle, absurdly careful, till I had to tell him I wasn’t glass and I wouldn’t break. And I didn’t. Not on the outside.
The inside is my business.
The morning light woke me far earlier than I wanted to wake up. I lay there for a while, staring up at the ceiling, listening to Chanko breathe. He was awake, but if he wanted to play asleep, I could live with that.
I never did this. I was never reckless, never stupid. I never had sex with anyone who mattered, even when the stakes were merely possible social embarrassment. And I didn’t get involved with violent men. One grab, one shove, the slightest sign of aggression, and I was out of there. That was an unbreakable rule, and it had worked well for me. I didn’t have violent men in my life—until people had started trying to kill me, and I needed one.
I rolled over on one side, looking at the marks of the beating he’d taken for me. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The cuts and bruises had darkened during the night, the torn skin on his cheek was scabbing at the edges, and the eyebrow
split had obviously reopened. A dark line ran from it down his temple, like the track of tears.
I reached out and ran a hand over his warm chest.
“Hey.” Chanko didn’t open his eyes. “How’s the short-term thinking working out for you?”
“Like the man who jumped out of the plane without a parachute. Fine so far; ask me again when I reach the ground.”
He grinned, and then it faded, and we lay in silence for a few minutes, because the big unspoken question pretty much blotted out every other topic of conversation.
“Oh, God,” I said finally. “Okay. Talk to me.”
He exhaled heavily. “Yeah. You really ain’t going to like this.”
“You were a member of the yakuza family who are currently trying to kill me. Is it going to get much worse than that?”
“No. No, that pretty much covers it.”
I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. “So what happened? How in God’s name did you end up joining the Japanese mafia? Don’t they have gangs in the States?”
“Hell, yeah. I ran with a bad crowd when I was a kid. My sister pulled me out of that, long story, I went back to school, learned Japanese, studied sumo, got a place in a stable here. Okay? Seemed pretty good. But… Thing is, where I come from, a guy disrespects you, you deal with him. Here, it’s part of the game, down to your place in the system, and you’re meant to take it, and I couldn’t. And it’s pretty bad being a junior and a lot worse if you’re gaijin, and not white either, and you might have noticed, I got a temper. And then there was this girl.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah, well. So what happened was, basically—what I did—ah, shit. Look, the yakuza leaned on me, okay? Lots of money riding on the bout. Take a fall. Worth your while.”
“They wanted you to take a fall?” I said incredulously.
“Yeah.”
“So what did you do?”
“Took it.”