Half Life: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 1)

by Patrick Sherriff

  “Oh, forgot you’re the online generation. Sheesh, unplug your smartphone and you could learn a thing or two from the old TV, you know. First off is Kim Yu Na. She’s 19, same as you. But she’s Korean and she’s the hot favourite for gold. Now stop making me talk and just watch.”

  Kim was beautiful. She slid into starting position and waited. Some classical music blared out and she was off. The commentator listed her moves. Double axle toe jump. Triple axle? No problem. Skate round the rink with one leg held above her head? Easy. Sexy and cool.

  “Now here’s Mao Asada. Same age, but she’s Japanese.”

  Mao was a girl, not a woman. She skated onto the screen. She breathed deeply and raised her arms to begin, hands wavering, eyes blinking quickly. The commentators were jumpy. She went through the same moves. At every jump the commentators held their breath, expecting her to fall, but she made it in one piece, smiling and moving to the end of her routine.

  “What did you think? Who do you want to win? Be honest,” he said.

  “Well, Mao didn’t fall over. But she skated like it was a school exam. But Kim, she was a natural. She made everything look easy. You want me to say I wanted Mao to win because she’s Japanese, but I liked Kim. She was better.”

  Uncle Kentaro took out a cigarette, tapped it twice on the calluses of his hands. He lit it and inhaled.

  “Good analysis, but you need to be looking past nationality, young lady.”

  “I was.”

  “Sharing a nationality is nothing to be proud of. Any fool can be born Korean, or Japanese. Why should I care whether some waif on TV has the same passport as me? Kim’s a natural-born skater, sure. Mao isn’t. She’s had to work at it, and she’d be better at pouring tea for the boss. But devoting yourself to a calling that you don’t feel in your bones, that takes something special.

  “Any natural can be a success, but to successfully defeat nature, that is divine. Besides, I’m old enough to be any of you girls’ father and that Kim makes me wish I was 30 years younger. That’s nothing but trouble.

  “Speaking of which, you might want to get something else to wear yourself.”

  He stood up awkwardly, opened the sliding doors to the futon closet, and pulled out a square package wrapped in string and brown grease-proof paper. He handed it to me. I took it in both hands. But it was so heavy, I dropped it onto the tatami.

  “That is on the house,” he said, gulping down his beer.

  I pulled at the string. Inside was a white haori kimono jacket, red hakama trousers and red hair ribbons. It was the uniform of the miko—the priest’s girl assistant.

  “Shinto Girl Scouts, Hana.”

  “I think I’m a bit old for that, Uncle Kentaro.”

  “You think again, young lady. You come home so late it’s early, you are dressed like a Roppongi whore and you only brought two cans? As long as you are living in my house, you have to follow my rules. Aunt Tanaka means well, but she can’t think beyond her own nose. She isn’t your real aunt, after all.”

  “You aren’t my real uncle.”

  “That’s not the point. My business is blessing cars, selling charms at New Year and blessing children, not partying with them. Show the priest some respect, would you?”

  “Sorry, I thought shinto was just about men in frocks waving sticks around.”

  “Ha! Don’t be so cheeky. All religions are about men in frocks waving sticks around. Now get changed out of your play clothes, I’ll be back in a minute, and then you can tell me what’s really bothering you.”

  He went to the kitchen and opened the fridge.

  I stared down at the bundle of clothes. I slipped out of the hot pants and T-shirt. My new clothes were musty and oversized, but warm. I tied my belt while the TV played the Korean national anthem and Kim took her gold medal.

  “So what’s the news?”

  Where to start?

  “I was supposed to tell a Japanese man on the phone about an American man, Aunt Tanaka told me to, but I don’t think I should. He wants to spend $100,000 to bring his daughter back home. But I think I could help him find her and then he could keep his money and his daughter could keep her Papa. It’s fate, or luck or something.”

  “So, you just lucked into this job?”

  “Yes, well, Aunt Tanaka…”

  “Aunt Tanaka arranged this all?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you want to help this American on your own?”

  “Yes.”

  He sucked air between clenched teeth. “That’s not a good idea in Japan.”

  “Are you going to tell me about hammers and nails?”

  “I was going to tell you about saving for a pension. You don’t want to end up like me, do you?”

  “But, it’s not so difficult, I’ll just try to find this girl. She’s like me. She’s on Twitter. All I have to do is get some telephone numbers, pass them on to the American, and then he can find his daughter. It will be easy.”

  “Easy?”

  Uncle Kentaro would have won gold if sucking air through teeth was an Olympic sport.

  “Anyone else know about this?”

  “No. But, there was a nasty boy.”

  “Go on.”

  “His name’s Ono. He was a customer at Aunt Tanaka’s. He went to Abiko Junior High School. He wanted to hurt me. He knew about the phone call even though I didn’t tell him anything about it. He said he works for Shachou, it’s a family business, I think they sell Mercedes cars. But he was also working for Tachibana-san, another customer. Tachibana-san works for the prime minister, and he wants me to work for the prime minister too.”

  “That can't be right. I think you are confused, Hana.”

  “But not about this, Uncle.”

  I gave him Tachibana-san’s business card and he went silent for a long time and made wrinkles in his forehead.

  He gulped his beer down, got up and disappeared into the kitchen. Water ran, the microwave dinged and metal clattered in the sink. He came back with a mug of black coffee in his hand.

  “You must find the girl. You made a promise. It doesn’t matter who you made a promise to. Nobody made you take the offer. You promised to find her, not to do your best, not to do half the job and wash your hands of it. You should find her, you felt that in your bones. But now, you must find her because her life is in danger—and you put it in danger. You have handed her to the yakuza.”

  “What?”

  He cuffed the side of my head.

  “Are you deaf as well as stupid? You lucked into this job? Like a lucky win, a lucky hand? You just happened to land a job from an American who has silly money? Where there’s luck and money, there’s yakuza. You stole that job from the gangsters, or they wanted you to steal it. Either way, for you, the result is identical.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “OK, you don’t understand, Hana-chan. Understand that you chose this fate by your actions, not anyone else’s. And there are consequences.”

  He sat silently for a moment, then said: “Who have you told about this?”

  “Just you.”

  “That’s something.”

  “I’ll be careful, I’ll be fine. I can look after myself.”

  “No you can’t. Do you know what you are dealing with here? We’re talking 80,000 gangsters. We’re talking connections to the prime minister. We’re talking an underworld that is on top.”

  “I don’t care about yakuza, I don’t care about things I don’t have anything to do with. Why should I?”

  Uncle Kentaro frisked himself, found his packet and shook a cigarette loose.

  “Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time there was a sweet Korean-Japanese kid living up in Korea Town, Shin-Okubo in Tokyo. His Papa was a fishmonger. Only his Papa liked drinking shochu and wasn’t too smart with money. Got into debt playing pachinko. So he had to borrow some from the street lender just to feed his wife and kid.

  “Of course, the yakuza had their claws into him by then, at th
e rate of 10 percent interest every 10 days. He had no way to pay them back, no way to feed his family, nowhere to run to. The distance between a friendly loan and threatening to kill your youngest child isn’t very far.”

  He lit up the cigarette.

  “OK. What happened then?”

  “Papa’s body was found in Tsukiji fish-market when his co-workers came to work on Friday. They found him in a stall with his hands severed. He was dead, but his debts were still live. His wife and kid had to disappear.”

  “And?”

  “And what? What you need to know is this: The yakuza don’t care that you are innocent. They have no honour. That chopping off fingers business and loyalty to the boss doesn’t cut it anymore. They won’t have mercy on you because you are a girl. They won’t give you a break because your Papa is dead. They will come after you and they will take what they want from you. Do I have to spell out what they are prepared to do to you, or what they might have planned for this Emi girl?”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “Maybe not. Luck will only carry you so far, princess. Since they don’t care, you have to.”

  I looked down at my feet.

  “OK, so what should I do?”

  06:42

  Uncle Kentaro stretched his arms out to his sides, sucked air through his clenched teeth again and cracked his neck twice. Then he brushed the ash flecks from his clothes.

  “Let me tell you something about luck, Hana. Luck is a ceramic fox. When I was a young man, I drove cabs and limousines. It was the thing to do back in the bubble years. You couldn’t do anything without someone throwing money at you. Everyone was lucky before the bubble burst.

  “Well, as luck would have it, I got a regular gig ferrying bankers from Nihonbashi to Abiko. They paid a pretty penny for the privilege of avoiding the crowds on the Joban Line. The big boys at the Industrial Bank of Japan and Yamaichi Securities had their hands on more money than they knew what to do with. That was back when the land value of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was worth more than all of California. On paper anyway.

  “So?”

  “So the bankers sought the advice of the wisest of the wise. A fox. An inari no less, who guards the entrance to this shrine. Now, of course, stone foxes can’t speak. But money flows from the mouth of the fox. With the right oracle who can tell the lost bankers which stock to buy and which to sell. At his height, our stone fox controlled ¥10 billion in investments. Any fool could make money in 1990. Even a stone fox.

  “The luck went south, though, in 1991 when the bubble burst. The stock market lost 80 per cent of its value. The oracle fell on hard times and actually did some jail time for fraud.”

  “You were that oracle?”

  “No. Aunt Tanaka was. I was just the driver. But here’s the thing. She’s in the shack at the bottom of the hill now and I’m at the top. Who is to say inari isn’t lucky? Just that luck is always after the fact.

  “You have picked the side of the loser, but sometimes two losers together can become the winner. Let’s look on the bright side: If it is as easy to find this girl as you predict, you can get to her before the yakuza do. And if you can’t find her quickly, well, then neither can they. But don’t doubt for a second they will find her, and you eventually. A hundred-thousand bucks buys their interest. And you are going to need help.”

  He sprang up and nodded for me to follow. In the entrance hall, he slid open the shoe cupboard and brought out two pairs of geta wooden sandals.

  We clattered out into the morning.

  Uncle Kentaro bowed at the threshold to the worship hall. I followed and bowed. We left our sandals at the entrance and stepped barefoot over the tatami to the honden sanctuary, with its paper screen doors shut ahead of us.

  He knelt. So did I. He bowed to the floor. So did I. Then we both sat upright.

  “OK,” he said, “here’s what you do. You find this girl. You hand her over to her Papa, but you let the yakuza know about it. And after it’s done, you hand over all the money to them…”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “It’s not, but it’s the right thing to do. You don’t tell anyone else about it. Nobody need lose face if nothing is made public. Once your intentions are public knowledge, you have no leverage.”

  “What?”

  “If you humiliate the yakuza, they won’t let you forget it. But you do have a way to find her, right?”

  “Already have. On Twitter.”

  “Hmm. Ain’t digital technology grand? But you need your analogue wits about you. You look shattered. Get a couple of hours rest.”

  “Now? I don’t have time. I have three days to find Emi. I’ve got to start before the 80,000 yakuza are after me, right? And I don’t know what to do next.”

  “There are many unknowns in this world. But one known is you have to shut down for an hour or two. Can’t be helped. Try. There’s a futon in the cupboard. Just make sure you are resting with your head facing to the north.”

  “For good luck?”

  “No, so you can see this,” he said, taking a portable TV out of a cupboard. “I’ve got no extension cord. Nothing better to anaesthetise you than those inane cooking shows.”

  “I like the news in English.”

  “Yeah, same difference.”

  Transcript: English Cable News Network

  Hikaru Hayashi: In the land of the rising sun there’s an old adage, that you don’t want to be the nail that sticks out, and that seems to be the case here in Tokyo for the yakuza. Until now, paying off the gangsters was just another cost of doing business in Tokyo. But now, police are hoping the threat of jail time will make the cost of joining hands with the yakuza too much to bear. I’m here with Koji Tachibana, director of global communications at the Prime Minster’s Office. Mr. Tachibana, is this the end of the road for the yakuza money-machine, the so-called nine-fingered economy?

  Koji Tachibana: Hello. Well, first off, this is not a matter for the national government, it’s a matter for each municipality.

  Hikaru Hayashi: Why is that?

  Koji Tachibana: Well, it’s the nature of Japan. Local governments have been able to move faster than the central government. And while it’s too early to say how effective these individual measures will be, yes, they are concrete steps toward an effective end to the scourge of anti-social elements.”

  Hikaru Hayashi: Some might say that anti-gang legislation stalled nationally when the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate paid ¥5 million to an adviser to the Prime Minister. Would you agree?”

  Koji Tachibana: I don’t know who might say such things. This sounds like the sensationalism typical of the foreign press, who rarely understand the Japanese language let alone the culture. Present company excepted, of course. And if I may say, the press would get it right if they didn’t apply foreign rules to Japanese ways.

  Hikaru Hayashi: You didn’t answer my question.

  Koji Tachibana: There is no question to answer.

  Hikaru Hayashi: Well, we asked four people on the streets of Tokyo what they thought: Will a law to ban doing business with yakuza make a difference?

  Man on street 1: I think it’s good. But it may be bad. Because wouldn’t that just make the yakuza angry?

  Woman on street 1: They are not all bad, the yakuza. They helped after the Kobe earthquake to give out aid when the government couldn’t. It’s not black and white.

  Man on street 2: If laws made any difference, they’d make it illegal to pass laws.

  Woman on street 2: Japan is a safe country. There’s hardly any crime and you can leave your wallet on the train and someone will hand it in. That’s because we follow laws.

  Hikaru Hayashi: This is Hikaru Hayashi reporting from Tokyo.

  09:05

  Uncle Kentaro finished revving the engine and we lurched off in his Mini.

  “Uncle Kentaro, will I ever be smart enough to be on TV?”

  He laughed.

  “It’s nothing to do with smarts.”

&nb
sp; “But Koji Tachibana is smart. Hikaru Hayashi is smart. They speak native English and Japanese and are on the news. I serve ramen at Aunt Tanaka’s. They must be smarter than me.”

  Uncle Kentaro hit the accelerator.

  “They may be smart, Hana, but you don’t get good jobs just by being smart. They are kikokushijo, pure-bred Japanese. Their fathers would have been sent to the USA by their companies. So, they spent their teenage years at American high schools, then walked in to good US colleges on their father’s company paycheque. And then back to Japan, where they’re as American as apple pie but as sweet as only Japanese blood can be. The rest is just good connections.”

  “Well, maybe I can make good connections.”

  Uncle Kentaro didn’t suck his teeth.

  “Maybe you can, Hana.”

  He waited for me to climb the slope to the Ryokan Tomimasu inn. At the entrance, I turned to wave, but Uncle Kentaro had already disappeared down the side street. I wished I could too. I wanted to be far away from here, to be a different person. But when I saw my reflection in the sliding doors, I already was different. I was wearing the red robes of the miko not the hot-pants of the ramen waitress. Appearances are important, everyone says so, not just Aunt Tanaka.

  Mr. Blackmore was sitting on an antique cherry-wood bench in the lobby, trying not to put all his weight on it. He wore the same jeans and shirt as last night. And was running his fingers around the brim of his hat. His chin looked dirty like Uncle Kentaro’s.

  “Get any sleep? Enjoy your breakfast?” I asked.

  “That’s a ‘heck no’ on both counts. Seems they don’t serve food folks can eat or have beds folks can sleep in. Kind of a disadvantage in a place to eat and sleep.”

  “It’s traditional.”

  “Traditional, huh? Whatever, we were put on this Earth to make an effort. What news of Emi?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking. She’s not here in Abiko. But I know a way to find her. She likes reading, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then let’s go to the library.”

  Mr. Blackmore’s brow creased. “Library?”