by KJ Charles
He’d be even less pleased in about two minutes.
Chanko was breathing heavily behind me, and I felt a slight sway before he righted himself. He had a bullet in his chest. I had to get him out of here.
I had never been the prettiest hostess in the bar, not by a long shot, barely noticeable by the side of stunners like Kelly and Keiko. But nine weeks out of ten I was the highest earner. It was a bad week if I pulled in less than fifteen hundred dollars in tips, and I’d broken five thousand once. Because Keiko’s attention wandered, Kelly was a poor fake, Sonja could be caught looking openly bored and Minachan openly acquisitive, but when the men spoke to me, I listened with fascination. I was genuinely interested, charmed by their company, amused at their jokes. When they were with me, they could believe they were funny, interesting, wonderful guys, because they could see I thought so. They could read my sincere pleasure at their company in my smile and eyes, and you simply can’t fake sincerity.
Well, maybe you can’t. I can.
The yakuza was saying something quietly to Park, presumably assuring him that I was talking rubbish, and I raised my voice and interrupted him with absolute confidence.
“Excuse me! In a very short time, if our friends don’t hear from us, they will send the information to the police, to the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Kantō Hatsuka-kai. To the bōtaihō people, and journalists, and politicians. I think your kumi-chō might be upset if that happened. But perhaps I’m wrong,” I added, ducking my head in sarcastic mock humility. “Perhaps your honoured boss is more interested in screwing bar girls, like his brother was?”
Sonja gave a shrill gasp. Ii took an angry stride forward, and Chanko brought his gun up. The Japanese goons stirred threateningly.
Park just looked at me.
“You’re lying,” the kanbu snarled. “You have nothing.”
“Well, shoot me and find out,” I said contemptuously. “How do you think these people knew I was here?” I jerked my head at Chanko and Sonja, as if I had any idea how they’d turned up. “You know we have the information. If you kill us, it will go out, and make your life—and your boss’s life, and the lives of your allies here—very significantly worse.”
“Oh, we can make your life worse too.” He turned his gaze on Sonja with clear menace. “I think you wanted to protect your friend before—”
“Shut up, you creep.”
I don’t suppose he was used to women talking to him like that. He raised a furious hand, ready to hit me, and the Korean boss caught his arm before he swung, and said, “I told you no.”
They stared at each other for a long second, then Ii gave a tiny but perceptible bow, and let his hand drop. In front of his men.
I said to Park, in Korean, “So they lied to you about the disc?”
Ii’s mouth dropped open. Then he was snarling an order for me to use Japanese, while the Korean boss tilted his head to one side, looking at me with a fractional eyebrow lift.
“Why don’t you tell me,” he said. He was a good fifteen or twenty years younger than his opposite number, thin-featured, with very heavy brows over narrow, deep-set eyes, and a quirky mouth. It was an appealing, even an attractive face, if you didn’t have any instincts at all.
“The disc contained a very large amount of information about the alliance between your group and the Mitsuyoshi-kai. The proposed structure for your expansion into Tokyo. The plans for your alliance to undermine the Yamaguchi-gumi’s grip on illegal labour and the Kabuki-chō cocaine trade. The funding, from your North Korean drug routes and various other sources, including a money-laundering scheme via a large pet-food chain. There’s huge amounts of detail, pages of it, with names and financial projections, copies of emails with IP addresses, a whole dossier. It’s like the basis for a company merger, which I suppose is what it was. There’s everything except a Powerpoint presentation.”
Park’s face was absolutely still.
“It’s hundreds of years of jail time if the police get it. It’s a war if the Yamaguchi-gumi or any other syndicates get it. And one of the Brothers put it all on disc to take to a meeting, and he stopped off to meet a hostess in a love hotel, and her boyfriend hit him on the head and stole the briefcase it was in. Could you make him be quiet?” I added, jerking my head at the kanbu. He’d understood the names, if nothing else, and he was screaming at me to be silent, the gun swinging urgently to point at each of us in turn. Over my shoulder, Chanko’s knuckles were white as he gripped his own gun, but his arm wasn’t steady any more.
The Korean’s eyes were reptile-cold as he turned on Ii. “Shut the fuck up, I’m listening to her,” he said in Japanese. “I said, shut up. Kim, shoot anyone who tries anything. Anyone. You, woman, go on.”
“In Japanese or Korean?”
“Korean.”
“The man who killed the Brother had a girlfriend who was a hostess at the bar where I work, and she made it look like I was the guilty one, set me up to confuse things. It was just supposed to be a distraction, but because she stole the briefcase, the Mitsuyoshi-kai panicked. They took in the guilty hostess, and they tried to find me too, and they sent that pervert over there, Oguya, to threaten my flatmate Katori Noriko into revealing where I was, and he and his friend attacked her. I had nothing to do with the murder, but they raped and beat Noriko anyway. To scare me, or just for fun. And they said they’d kill her if we didn’t find the briefcase.”
“They told you to go out and look for it,” he said.
“Yes. So I did. And we found it.”
“If you’re lying to me—”
“I’m not.” Yet. “Noriko is in a coma because of what they did to her. And they planned to kill us, her and me and my friends, even if we gave them the disc. We found that out. And then they kidnapped Sonja, the woman behind me, and—well, look at her. They did all that to my friends, and I had their disc. What would you do if you were me?”
He nodded like I was speaking pure reason.
“We took the disc, and read it, and copied it,” I said. “My friends have access to all the information—not these people, others, the Mitsuyoshi-kai don’t know who they are or where they are. And if they don’t hear from us by a set time, they’re releasing it to all the people we can think of who might want to have it.”
“What set time?”
“Soon.”
“I could of course make you call your friends,” he said.
“I’m sure you could,” I said frankly. “It wouldn’t do you much good, though, unless any of your men speak Swedish.”
“Swedish?”
“One of my friends is Swedish. If I don’t talk to him in Swedish when I call, he’ll assume I’ve got a gun to my head. If I do, you won’t know what I’m saying. Sorry.”
“You speak Swedish. As well as Japanese and Korean—”
“And English and German and Cantonese. And some others.”
“So what am I saying now?” he snapped at me in rapid, heavily accented Cantonese.
“You’re saying you don’t believe me,” I responded, my accent much better and my speech even faster. “What can I tell you, I’m good at languages.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” roared the kanbu. “Speak Japanese! Sir, I request you tell this woman to speak Japanese!”
“Shut up, you idiot,” said the Korean boss. “You deceitful, incompetent, disrespectful, lying turd, you’ll tell me all about this shitfest right now, or I’m going to fillet you like a fucking mackerel!”
Ii blenched. “I don’t have the authority—”
“If you don’t tell me, first I will shoot you in the hands, and then I will kill both of your men,” said Park. “And if your account differs from hers, if one of you is lying, one of you is going to die.”
He sounded like he meant it, and the kanbu looked at him and started talking, fast.
I shut my eyes and leaned back slightly. The back of my chair was bowing under the weight Chanko was putting on it. We needed to get him out of here. And I really
didn’t want to witness an inter-gang massacre either.
“Sonja, what’s the time?” I asked in Dutch.
“Are you out of your mind? What the hell are you doing, what are you saying? They’re going to kill us!”
“What’s the time?”
She took a deep, steadying breath. “Nearly twenty-five past.”
“Twenty-five past what?” I genuinely had no idea.
“Eleven. Kerry—”
“I’m doing my best, I promise. How’s the big guy?”
“I think he’s going into shock. He’s losing blood, badly, he’s soaked in it. Whatever you’re doing, you have to make it quicker. And the other thing is, our friend with the hair knows we’re here, and he’s on his way.”
“You’re joking.” I felt the sweat spring around my hairline. Taka was the number-one last thing we needed here and now, not just because he was a loose cannon, but because if they got Taka, they’d get his address, and then they’d have Yoshi.
Except they had his address already, because how else had Oguya found me?
“Sorry,” Sonja said.
The Japanese guy stopped speaking abruptly, and I realised the Korean boss was holding up a hand and looking at Sonja.
“You’re Swedish, are you?” he said in Japanese. “Do you speak Korean too?”
“I’m not Swedish, I’m Dutch—from the Netherlands. I don’t speak any Korean. Or Swedish. Sorry.”
“You speak Dutch too?” he asked me. “Who are you?”
“I’m just a hostess. Look, I’m sorry to seem insistent, but you should know the information goes out at twelve, so—”
“Yes, your friends will send it,” said Park. “Unless we find them first. I believe we have names, don’t we, Ii-san?”
“Oh yes, we know who they are.” Ii came in hard and belligerent, obviously relieved to be back on Park’s side for the moment. “Toyoda, that’s the name. We know where he lives, and his family—”
“Why do you idiots keep talking about Toyoda like he’s involved in this?” I demanded. “The guy’s a salaryman.”
“He’s a computer programmer,” said Ii. “A ‘hacker’.” He pronounced the word with audible quotation marks. “How else did you get this information from the disc?”
“He’s not a hacker, he’s an office grunt in an IT department,” I said. “He just got sacked for incompetence. You want to know how we got your password? It was in the briefcase.”
Chanko’s hand, cold and heavy on my shoulder, tightened slightly as Park said, “What?”
“I was checking through the briefcase, and the first thing I found was a business card with this cryptic message written on the back. Banzuiin and some numbers. It looked like a password, so we gave it a try. You know, when people get too old to remember their passwords, maybe it’s time to stop trusting them with secret information?”
“Liar!” Ii’s face was dark purple, and he raised a furious hand.
“Excuse me,” Park said. “Ii-san…your people put all this information onto a disc, then put the password into the bag containing the disc?”
“No. She’s lying.”
“How did they break the disc, then?”
“I don’t know, Park-san.”
“Well, you’re not much use then, are you? Song, get those assholes on the line. I want the new waka-gashira, Matsui.”
“Wait a moment, Park-san!” said Ii urgently as the Korean soldier flicked open his mobile. “She’s lying, it’s to protect her friend—”
“You just told me the disc was protected,” said Park. “You said it was entirely secure and safe for the Brother to carry this information around Tokyo. So if she’s lying, so were you. Were you lying to me, Ii-san? I don’t like it when people lie to me.”
Ii’s mouth worked. “No, Park-san, but—”
“Was the information properly encrypted, or just password protected?”
“I don’t know, Park-san.”
“It was password protected, wasn’t it?”
Ii looked at the floor. “Yes, Park-san.”
“And you allowed Mitsuyoshi-san to set his own password, didn’t you?”
“Park-san, Mitsuyoshi-san insisted—”
“Technical genius, was he? Knew what he was doing?”
“No, Park-san, but—”
“If you let a geriatric use a shitty guessable password in the first place, does it even matter if he writes it down as well?”
“I have the greatest respect for Mitsuyoshi-san—”
“Shut the fuck up. You’re an idiot.”
The yakuza opened his mouth, and Park looked at him. He swallowed, and his eyes dropped. “Yes, Park-san.”
“Matsui, sir.” Song passed over the phone to Park, who broke into rapid, furious speech. I tried to swallow but my throat felt dry. Ii was doubtless no more than a middle-ranking executive, but Matsui the waka-gashira was the underboss, the second in command of the whole family. If Park was able to speak to a waka-gashira in the insulting tone he was using…
I might have underestimated who the hell this guy was.
“Not good enough,” the Korean said into the phone. “I already told your kanbu here, it doesn’t matter if she’s lying or not. You people have been culpably careless, disgracefully irresponsible and fucking stupid— Well, you should have found out. You brought in these people— I’m speaking, Matsui, don’t interrupt me. You’ve exposed us, and yourselves, and made a bad situation into a clusterfuck, and as you clearly can’t deal with it, I will. You can tell that decrepit old fart, your boss, that I am significantly displeased with him, and his senile dead brother, and his useless minder.” He shot Ii a satanic glare. “I will be speaking to him myself. Shortly.” He stabbed the off button savagely and turned on Ii.
“We’re going back to your office.” His street-Seoul accent was coming through very strong. “Right now. Letting the old fool take this fucking disc to a fucking love hotel with the fucking password on a fucking business card. You dickwipe.”
“Park-san, I swear, I didn’t know it was in there!” wailed Ii.
“Sir, these people.” Song gestured at the three of us as we stood watching: Sonja shorn and half-naked, me tied to a chair, Chanko grey and sweaty and bleeding. “What should we do with them?”
“It’s quarter to twelve,” said Park. “Do you think we can get to these friends of theirs in fifteen minutes, Ii?”
“We could make them call,” muttered Ii, eyes on his shoes.
Park gave him a withering look, then turned to me. “You didn’t kill the old man, did you?”
“No. I had nothing to do with it.”
“So you got involved because—”
“The Mitsuyoshi-kai sent two psychopaths to hurt my friend.”
“Are you getting this down, Ii?” asked Park. “So if your friend hadn’t been attacked—”
“I’d just have run away. I didn’t want to be involved.”
“But now you have the disc, and your friends are ready to use it. Ii, I hope you understand all this.”
Ii really didn’t look well. I wondered why, just for a second, and then it came to me like a punch in the gut.
“You sent Oguya and Soseki to Noriko,” I said. “Didn’t you?”
Ii looked at me, his eyes full of hate and fear, and I was suddenly thrashing in my chair, screaming at him, jerking at the plastic bonds round my wrists, regardless of the pain. “Bastard, you bastard, why did you do it, you fucking bastard!” I rocked back and forth, desperate to get at him. “I’ll kill you, you shit!”
Sonja grabbed at me, and Park was snapping something, but I couldn’t stop screaming. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d been able to get free, but the fact I couldn’t was sending me into frenzy, and one arm of the chair splintered as I fought against it, ignoring the shouts.
It was Chanko’s deep voice that got through to me. All he said was, “Butterfly,” but the pain and effort it cost him was audible, and it was enough.
&n
bsp; Noriko was still alive, and so was Chanko. There was everything to play for. Everything to lose.
I threw my head back, clamped my aching jaw, forced the screams back down. The room was silent as everyone stared at me. I breathed hard, licked my lips, finally got my voice back under control.
“Excuse me. Sorry about that.” Come on, Kerry, get a grip. You need Park on side. Play it cool, he likes cool. “You should know, we have done some things already. Made it look like the Mitsuyoshi-kai are trying to blackmail connected people. Set things—quite a lot of things—up to cause trouble for them. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Song rubbed a finger over his top lip as if thinking, hiding his mouth with his hand, but his eyes were gleaming.
“If you need to know details, I’ll gladly give them,” I went on. “I mean, I’d hate to cause any trouble.”
“Shut up, Song,” Park said as his man choked. “You’re telling me this because…?”
“I’ve got no reason to cross you, and I really wouldn’t want to anyway,” I said. “Given the choice, I’d rather be friends.”
“I’m sure you would. Tell me, then.”
I did a quick rundown of our morning’s work. Ii glowered. Song was grinning openly.
“Very neat,” said Park when I’d finished. “And you’re a hostess. Just a hostess.”
I gave him a wry smile. “Yes, but I’m planning a career change. Something less dangerous. Nuclear waste disposal, or shark hunting.”
His lips twitched slightly, then the expression faded, and he looked at me for what seemed like minutes. I could hear my heartbeat, Chanko’s shallow, painful breathing. I was sweating badly. Had I heard the lift ping or was it on another floor or just my imagination? Taka, go away!
Finally Park nodded as if reaching a decision.