The Man With The Red Tattoo

by Benson, Raymond

  The Zephyr and the ZRX met again in front of them and this time they were obstructing traffic. A Honda Beat attempted to go around them but the biker nearest to it shouted obscenities at the driver.

  Bond looked back. The Inazuma was still there, blocking that way. They were trapped.

  The three bikers revved their engines and sat there menacingly.

  “Reiko-san, I believe we have encountered an extreme emergency.” He reached for his gun but she grabbed his arm.

  “No, James-san, do not draw your weapon. They are teenagers. They are probably unarmed. Maybe they have knives, but I doubt they have guns. Let’s walk calmly back the other way.”

  They turned and walked towards the Inazuma but the bikers continued to blast their engines. Then the ZRX burst forward violently, curved around a taxi and pulled up beside them. The rider shouted something at Reiko. Bond picked up the words “do not come back.” Before the biker sped away, he noted that the kid had blue eyes and blond eyebrows.

  “Come on,” Reiko said, walking ahead.

  “What did he say?”

  “That we should get our asses out of here and never come back.”

  The three cycles followed them onto the street and began to ride up and down the block, back and forth.

  “Good of them to take the trouble of escorting us out,” Bond remarked.

  They crossed at the intersection and walked into the next block. The other pedestrians seemed oblivious to what was going on, although some stopped to stare at the noisy motorcycles.

  The ZRX pulled to the side of the curb behind them, then it leapt forward to sideswipe the couple. Bond quickly grabbed a soaplands placard and swung it at the biker. The wooden sign smashed into the kid, causing the bike to skid on the road several metres ahead of them until it crashed into the back of a van. The biker rolled off and then got up fairly easily. The loose scarf hung around his neck and the blue eyes and blond eyebrows seemed to glow in the neon. He strode towards Bond and unwrapped a chain from around his waist. He was ready for a fight.

  Bond took a defensive stance and was prepared when the boy swung. Bond ducked as the chain cut the air a few inches above his head. By the time the thug had control of his weapon again, Bond had parleyed back. He stepped forward once again, this time swinging the chain above his head like a lasso.

  “Ki o tsukete!” Reiko shouted as she pulled a Glock M26 out of her handbag and pointed it at the hoodlum.

  The biker stopped swinging the chain.

  Reiko barked more words at him and he slowly backed away. Finally, he went to his fallen bike, picked it up, mounted, and kicked the starter. The engine roared. Again, he pointed his third finger at them, then sped away.

  “I take it that the situation evolved into an emergency,” Bond said.

  “Shippai shita wa,” she said, holstering her gun. “I was mistaken earlier. Besides he looked much older than a teenager, don’t you think?”

  “More like twenty-one, perhaps.”

  “I know him,” she said, pulling Bond onward and putting her handgun back in her bag. “His name escapes me, but he is a wellknown hoodlum. One of the bosozoku leaders. I can look it up at headquarters.”

  As the couple crossed the last intersection and walked out of Kabuki-cho the other bikers took off after their boss, making as much noise as possible.

  NINE

  MORNING MAYHEM

  THE EFFECTS OF JET LAG NOTWITHSTANDING, BOND COULD HAVE LANGUISHED in bed as his suite in the Imperial Hotel was among the most luxurious he had experienced. Bond had the perk of staying at first-class hotels because his cover sometimes necessitated it. On occasion he had to play the part of a rich playboy businessman who was accustomed to nothing less than the best. Miss Moneypenny had booked him into the Imperial without discussion.

  Bond liked hotels with unique histories. Not only was the Imperial originally built at the behest of Japan’s imperial family in 1890, but it was also one of the first hotels in the country to serve pork and beef dishes in its restaurant. The first building was designed to impress powerful international guests with the level of Japan’s modernisation after three centuries of isolation and it boasted the newest in western luxury. Frank Lloyd Wright designed a second incarnation of the hotel, and when it opened in 1923, it became Tokyo’s social centre for both foreign residents and tourists. There was a well-known story of how, one evening in the thirties, the ultra-nationalist Black Dragon Society invaded a posh dinner dance at the hotel and with drawn, razor-sharp samurai swords began harassing the well-heeled collection of frightened foreigners. The guests were held hostage for four days until the rebels finally surrendered to the military forces outside.

  The current building replaced Wright’s fanciful hotel in 1970, and in 1983 the handsome thirty-one-storey Imperial Tower was added. Bond’s corner suite was on the thirtieth floor of the tower and it had a spectacular view of the city on two sides.

  Bond finally swung his legs out of the comfortable king-sized bed, stood and stretched. He opened the curtains and gazed out of the window.

  Tokyo lay before him, a sprawling, metropolitan machine.

  He and Reiko had agreed to meet early for breakfast and then she would take him to Tsukiji Fish Market for a chat with Kenji Umeki’s cousin. “Dress casually,” she had told him.

  Bond did his morning callisthenics, showered with first hot and then cold water, shaved, and dressed in a navy blue short-sleeved polo shirt, pale khaki trousers and a linen jacket. When he was ready, he went downstairs to find Reiko Tamura waiting for him in the lobby, right on time.

  She was dressed more casually than before, in a short-sleeved white blouse and vest, black Capri pants and a baseball cap. She looked years younger and the glasses made her look even more like a student.

  “Ohayo gozaimasu, James-san,” she said.

  “Good morning to you, too, Reiko-san.”

  “Come on, let’s go. It’s a twenty-minute walk to the fish market. We can have breakfast there.”

  “All right.”

  They walked out of the hotel, turned toward the Ginza and headed south-east towards the water. It was a beautiful day.

  “I have some news,” she said. “I identified that character on the motorbike. Remember I said that I knew his face? His name is Noburo Ichihara. He is socho of the bosozoku that Kenji Umeki was in. Socho means leader, the same as kaicho or oyabun in the yakuza. Ichihara has been arrested three times, served some time for assault. Wears contact lenses, that’s why his eyes are blue. And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “His bosozoku gang works for the Ryujin-kai branch here in Tokyo.”

  “Tiger told me about them. What does Ichihara do for them?”

  “Well, we have evidence that links him and several of his gang to a drug bust that occurred in Kabuki-cho a few months ago. It was the Ryujin-kai that was behind the operation, importing drugs into Tokyo and shipping them north to Sapporo and then points beyond. They use the bosozoku as carriers sometimes.”

  “Interesting. And what about our dead friend Kenji Umeki?”

  “Word on the street is that he was killed over some grievance between him and his gang bosses.”

  “Could this Ichihara character be Umeki’s killer?”

  “Possibly, although the finger cutting indicates that it was yakuza who did the killing. Sometimes members of a bosozoku have to commit a murder like that as an initiation to get into the parent yakuza. It’s usually not done to one of their own members unless he had done something really bad. It is a mystery. Hopefully the cousin, Abo, will know something.”

  They crossed Chuo Ichiba and entered the Tsukiji Fish Market, a huge wholesale market. Most of it was laid out under a roof that ran along the dock, where fishermen delivered the early morning catch to wholesalers, who then sold the product to fish shop owners and restaurant cooks who gathered there at the crack of dawn. The big tuna auction usually occurred at around five o’clock in the morning, but there was still a l
ot of action going on as Bond and Reiko arrived.

  The concrete floor was soaked in water and muck. Workers wore big rubber boots, some wore slickers over their torsos and they all had tools called tekagi that looked like gaffers’ hooks—a wooden handle about a foot long, with a nasty two-pronged hook on the end for picking up fish carcasses. Rows of tables lined the interior and all manner of sea creatures from exotic corners of the Far East were displayed, raw and, in some cases, still alive. Octopus, tuna, shellfish, salmon, shrimp and the more exotic catches such as eel, squid, fugu and shark were all available. The pathways between the rows were extremely narrow, just large enough for ta-ray, mini-motorised trucks with steering wheels in the centre, much like forklifts, to move through.

  Bond and Reiko dodged a ta-ray that shot past them, forcing them to squeeze against a table, front to front. Their eyes met in a moment of intimacy, but the couple pulled away from each other without saying a word.

  The market was a beehive of activity. The place was utter chaos but in that uniquely Japanese way there was an efficient order to the madness. Workers shouted back and forth to their colleagues, the taray and forklifts zipped around carrying cartons of goods, men loaded delivery vehicles with produce, areas were sprayed down with hoses to wash away the offal and vendors hawked their stuff to anyone who walked by their stalls.

  The smell was particularly memorable.

  Bond dodged a forklift as Reiko led him through the thicket of workers into the inner bowels of the market. They walked past a group of men using their tekagi hooks on the biggest tuna carcasses Bond had ever seen. The heads and tails had already been removed and the white, barrel-shaped cadavers were being tossed from man to man as if they weighed as little as a rugby ball instead of hundreds of pounds each.

  Reiko led him through a maze of vendors to an area where several ta-rays were carrying cartons from a vendor to a delivery truck parked on the dock. She pointed at a rough-looking man in his thirties who was driving one of them.

  “That’s Takuya Abo,” she said.

  “Does he know you?”

  “Yes, I’ve talked with him before. Sometimes we use him as an informant.”

  The man glanced at them as they walked towards him. She waved and he glared for a moment, then pulled the ta-ray over to where they were standing.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded. He wasn’t happy.

  “We need to speak with you,” she said. “This is Commander Bondo-san from England.”

  “I can’t talk now! Are you crazy? This is the busiest time of the day for me!” he said, irritated.

  “When can we talk? It’s important!”

  Abo looked pained. Then, with a sullen look, he asked softly, “Is it about Kenji?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry about your cousin.”

  Abo inhaled loudly then nodded his head. Only then did he turn to Bond and bow slightly. He said in English, “Pleased to meet you. I am Takuya Abo.”

  Bond bowed and then shook his hand, which was rough and coarse. He couldn’t help but notice that Abo was missing his entire little finger.

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  Abo turned to Reiko and said, “Look, come back in a couple of hours. Go get something to eat. I can talk then.”

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll be back.”

  She led Bond back through the busy market until they came to an outlying area that featured a few fresh sushi restaurants in rows of one-storey barrack-like buildings.

  “Let’s have a sushi breakfast,” she suggested.

  They went into the narrow place, which was about ten feet wide, and sat at the counter with several workers, still clad in rubber boots. Reiko ordered several pieces of tuna, salmon, and fish roe for them to share, along with a tekka-maki, a tuna roll wrapped in seaweed cut into six portions, and a kappa-maki, a roll stuffed with cucumber. Bond ordered extra wasabi to mix with the soy sauce, as he was not fond of raw fish. But he was willing to give it a go.

  “That’s a very Western thing to do,” Reiko said.

  “I know,” Bond admitted. “But I like the feeling of the wasabi going up the back of my nose. Opens the sinuses.” He quickly changed the subject. “I noticed Abo’s missing finger.”

  “That’s how he was able to leave the gangs,” she replied. “After he had been in prison for three years, he asked the leader of Route 66 to let him go straight. He was told that if he offered his finger then they would let him walk away. Abo performed yubitsume and gave his whole finger to the leader. He gained great face doing that. Now Abo is katagi, the yakuza word for a straight citizen. It means ‘a person who walks in the sun,’ as opposed to the yakuza, who are men of the dark.”

  “Is this Ichihara fellow the leader who had Abo’s finger?”

  “Possibly. I am not sure how long Ichihara has been leader, but that is a good assumption.”

  They killed a little time after breakfast strolling through the market. Bond watched her as she examined and commented on the colourful varieties of seafood. Her intelligence combined with her vitality and good looks made her extremely attractive.

  When they walked out of the market and along the dock, she asked him, “Do you have a girlfriend, James-san?”

  He shook his head. “No. It makes life too complicated,” he said, surprising himself with the truth.

  “I know what you mean,” she said. “I can never keep a boyfriend longer than a couple of months. They get tired of my having to work all the time.”

  “Do you work out of the country?”

  “Most of the time. I am here now because of the upcoming G8 conference. Otherwise, I’d probably be in Korea, China, Thailand or somewhere. Lovers won’t wait. I found that out the hard way.”

  Bond shrugged and said, “Tangential encounters are more practical for people in our profession than they are for the rest of the population.”

  She glanced at him sideways and smiled seductively. “You think so?”

  He wanted to kiss her but the Japanese frowned upon public displays of affection. She read his mind though.

  “Go ahead, if you want,” she said.

  He leaned in and pressed his mouth lightly against hers. Her lips were soft and tasted a bit salty from the breakfast. She was delicious.

  When their mouths separated, he continued to stare into her almond eyes.

  “Sugoi!” she whispered. It was the Japanese equivalent of saying, “Wow.” Then she smiled and said, “We had better get back to Abo.”

  They walked back through the market, which by noon had calmed down considerably. The vendors were still selling their wares furiously, but the loading, the unloading and the truck traffic had diminished.

  Abo was sitting on his truck eating a sandwich and drinking cola, looking out over the dock and the waterway that snaked out of Tokyo to the ocean.

  “Abo-san,” Reiko said, “we are back. Now is a good time?”

  “As good as any,” he said.

  “My condolences for the loss of your cousin,” Bond said.

  “Thank you. But Kenji was asking for trouble. It wasn’t going to be long before something bad happened. I had tried to get him out of that business, but he never listened to me.”

  “Abo-san,” Bond said, “your cousin told us that he had information pertaining to Mayumi McMahon’s whereabouts. Do you know anything about this?”

  The man sucked air through his teeth and said, “All that Kenji told me was that she was in Sapporo, working in the water trade.”

  “She’s a prostitute?” Bond asked.

  “Soaplands girl,” Abo corrected. There was a difference, apparently.

  “Do you know why the Ryujin-kai would have Umeki-san killed?”

  Abo stuffed the sandwich wrapper into a paper bag and wiped his mouth with the outside of the bag. “The Ryujin-kai didn’t kill my cousin.”

  “Oh? Who did?”

  “A kappa killed him.”

  Reiko said, “You are not serious.”

&n
bsp; Abo shrugged.

  Reiko explained. “A kappa is a mythical creature that appears in Japanese folklore. It’s a type of vampire, I guess. It lives in ponds or rivers and is said to resemble a cross between a human and a turtle or a frog. They can be remorseless killers. Their heads are misshapen—their skulls have a depression in the top that holds a little water. They say that if that water spills, then the kappa will lose its powers. They supposedly have a strong sense of loyalty to anyone who does them a good turn. Spare the life of a kappa and he’ll be your friend forever. And they like to eat cucumbers. One of the rolls we had for breakfast is called a kappa-maki because it has cucumber in it.”

  Bond narrowed his eyes. This was nonsense, of course, but an instinct warned him not to ignore Abo. He turned back to the man and asked, “What makes you think that a kappa killed Kenji?”

  “Because Kenji told me that a kappa was stalking him. Apparently he saw him a couple of times. Listen, I could get in very big trouble if I am seen talking to you.”

  “This is important, Abo-san,” Reiko said.

  “So is my life,” Abo said. “When I got out of the bosozoku, I made a vow not to talk to the authorities about anything! I have already acted as informant on two occasions for you people. Route 66 are becoming suspicious. I was sent a warning the last time. Why don’t you go away now?”

  “Please, just a couple more questions, Abo-san, and we’ll leave you alone,” Bond said. “Have you heard anything about the Ryujin-kai being involved with the deaths of the McMahons? You know about that, right?”

  “Yes, I read the newspapers. It is no secret that McMahon-san was an enemy of the Ryujin-kai. I do not know any more about that, but I do know that the Ryujin-kai is working on something big.”

  “What do you mean?” Reiko asked.

  “Something top secret. I have my sources. I don’t know what it is, but they are preparing something with that nationalist, Goro Yoshida.”

  At last! An important piece of the puzzle. “Yoshida? Are you sure?”