“No more than satisfactory?” Kodama almost seemed to chide him.
“My apologies. I should have said ‘successful.’”
“Without suffering?”
“None was observed.” Toi saw no need to inform the master that his chosen subjects had been prostitutes, self-medicated to the point where feelings were irrelevant.
“Good news,” Kodama said. “You never disappoint me, Toi.”
“I hope not, Master.”
“Nor will you, on the great day of our revelation to the world.”
Toi wasn’t quite so sure, on that score. It was one thing to accept the master’s message, recognize the need for sweeping change, and to prepare for doling out divine judgment. Taking the final step, however, from the preparation to the execution, called for greater strength, greater resolve, than Toi had ever found within himself.
He was, in fact, the very spoiled man his father thought he was. From childhood, Toi Takumi had assumed the best of everything was his by right, because his father was a man of influence. Master Susumu and the Saikosai Raito had redeemed him from that wasted life, but was he strong enough in fact to justify his master’s faith?
And if he failed Susumu Kodama at the Great Reckoning, then what? Would he be excluded from the joys of Paradise on Earth?
“All shall be in readiness,” he promised.
“Is it feasible,” Kodama asked him, “to accelerate the schedule?”
“Accelerate?”
“Move up,” Susumu said.
“I don’t know, Master. Shall I ask?”
“Please, do. Preparedness, as you well know, encompasses all possibilities.”
“Hai, Masutā.”
“Excellent. Will you stay and share my lunch?”
Lunch with the master was an honor, but Toi understood that more was now expected of him. “I should speak with the technicians, Master.”
“Your devotion is appreciated, Toi.”
Flushed with pride, Toi rose and bowed again. Kodama saw him to the foyer, where he traded slippers for his shoes and bowed one final time before taking his leave.
Accelerate the schedule.
Tokyo was in for a surprise, and no one in the city would be more astounded than his father.
CHAPTER EIGHT
East St. Louis Avenue, Las Vegas
Vegas was a self-styled town that never slept, but there were lulls in the frenetic action. Strip clubs, like casinos, operated around the clock, but daylight had a tendency to thin the crowds seeking a lap dance or a cuddle in some tacky “VIP” room. On the seamy side of Vegas, which was most of it, the two requirements for a VIP were money and a willingness to part with it, but even those guys had to work or sleep sometime.
Night Moves did what it could to lure the lonely when they were between shifts from serving others, offering a chance for them to be served while their cash lasted, before they headed home or off to work. In case they tried to leave with pocket change, a bank of slot machines located in the strip club’s lobby beckoned with the hope of instant riches if they just spend one more quarter, one more dime, before they hit the street.
All smoke and mirrors, in a town that lived by sleight of hand.
Bolan walked into Night Moves at 11:35 a.m., its painted-over door closing behind him with a sigh that could have been interpreted as ecstasy or terminal fatigue. A bouncer manned the register inside, the club’s logo silk-screened across his T-shirt, strained by pumped-up pecs, with lightning bolts tattooed on each side of his shaved scalp.
“Morning, sport,” he growled. “Five dollars cover.”
“Is the boss around?” Bolan inquired.
“Ain’t seen him.”
“So, is that a yes or no?”
That made the bouncer blink, slow wheels revolving underneath his shiny dome, deciding how rude he should be to a potential paying customer. Like most Vegas inhabitants, he came down on the side of money. “If you’re lookin’ for him, best to come back in a couple hours.”
“No, that’s fine. I came in for the show.”
“Okay. Five dollars cover, like I said.”
Bolan brushed his jacket back, as if to reach for a wallet in his right hip pocket, then revealed the MP-5 K on its shoulder sling, muzzle extended by the black suppressor. “No cover today,” he said.
“Hey, easy, man, awright? You want the till, it’s yours. There ain’t much in it, though, and I don’t got the combination to the safe.”
“Don’t have,” Bolan corrected him.
“Say what?”
“Just lead the way.” A waggle of the SMG directed him.
“Whatever, man. Just take it easy, huh?”
A padded door muffled the music pulsing from the club’s main showroom, volume rising as the bouncer pushed through, Bolan giving him sufficient distance so that he couldn’t spin and slam the door in Bolan’s face, but staying close enough that neither could he bolt and run.
The showroom wasn’t dark, exactly, but the lights were muted, keeping customers’ attention on the long stage where a single dancer went lethargically through moves she’d made a thousand times before. Four customers were widely spaced along the catwalk, nursing drinks and watching with as much enthusiasm as the stripper showed for them.
Apparently, they saved the star material for prime time at Night Moves.
“Office,” Bolan said, raising his voice to make it heard over the strains of Jackyl wailing “Down on Me.”
The bouncer tipped his head in the direction of a curtained doorway, barely noticeable at the far end of the showroom’s bar. The bartender was cleaning up and didn’t seem to notice them, eyes on the dancer while he ran a towel along the bar. They reached the curtain, slipped through and proceeded past the restrooms—“Hounds” and “Foxes”—to a staircase, climbing to a door marked PRIVATE.
“You should think about this, man,” the bouncer warned. “You don’t know who you’re messin’ with.”
“Inside,” Bolan replied.
“Your funeral.”
His escort turned the doorknob without knocking, stepped across the threshold and to one side, saying, “Mr. K, you got a visitor.”
Hal Brognola’s file had not contained a photo of the Yakuza thug behind the office desk, but if it had, he probably would not have looked as startled in it as he did right now, first interrupted at his work, then staring down the muzzle of a gun.
“What’s this?” he asked, remaining seated, both hands dropping out of sight below the desktop.
“I’ll take whatever’s in the safe,” Bolan replied, “and leave a message for your boss.”
“Who says I’m not the boss?”
“You’re up too early. Safe. Now.”
Mr. K turned toward the bouncer, swiveling his chair. “You disappoint me, Rico. When I’m done here, we’ll discuss your future.”
Something in the man’s tone tripped a switch in Rico’s head. His face and scalp flushed crimson, as he spun toward Bolan, growling through clenched teeth. Bolan triggered a short burst, point-blank range, that made a bloody ruin of the bouncer’s left shoulder, flinging him back against a bank of filing cabinets before he hit the floor.
Mr. K was covered well before his hidden pistol cleared the desktop. “Make it count,” Bolan said, finger on the subgun’s trigger. “If you’re up to it.”
“You will regret this, you son of a bitch.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. Last chance for the safe.”
Mr. K set down his piece and rose, an unimpressive five foot six if that, and crossed to where a wall safe stood exposed above the filing cabinet closest to his desk. “Take my advice and spend this money quickly. It’s the last you’ll ever see, gaijin.”
The safe door opened, showing stacks of banded currency. Mr. K stepped back and faced Bolan with a mocking smile.
“This isn’t Tokyo,” Bolan said. “You’re the gaijin here.”
The narrowing of the man’s gaze signaled a coming move.
> Cutting it short, the Executioner shot him in the face.
* * *
Button Willow Drive, Las Vegas
JIRO SHINODA MISSED his soldier’s first knock on the bedroom door. It took another, more insistent rapping to cut through his dream of lounging on his party boat, cruising Lake Mead, and drag him back to bleary-eyed reality.
“What the hell do you want?” he croaked, as he sat up in bed.
“Boss?”
The bedroom door was open six or seven inches. Yoshinoro Shiroo had his face wedged in the crack with one eye showing.
“What, for God’s sake?”
“We’ve got trouble, boss,” his number two told him, as he stepped inside and shut the door.
Shinoda waited for a moment, then said, “Well?”
“Somebody hit the club. They took out Koichi and cleared the safe. The morning bouncer’s messed up, too.”
Koichi Choshu ran the club in Shinoda’s absence. He had been in Vegas longer, but the oyabun had passed him over as kyodai in favor of Jiro. A loyal family underling, he hid his disappointment well and followed his boss’s orders to a T.
“When you say took him out—”
“He’s dead, boss. That’s confirmed. The cops are there.”
“Have they called here?” Shinoda asked.
“Not yet.”
“Well, when they do, tell them I’m coming down.”
It wasn’t far to drive. Shinoda lived in Summerlin, northwest of downtown Vegas, seven miles from Night Moves, give or take. His house was midsized for the ritzy neighborhood, running about eight hundred grand and offering a scenic view of Red Rock Canyon to the west. He kept a plane at North Las Vegas Airport, three miles east, but didn’t feel a need to flee the state that morning.
Not yet, anyway.
Dressing in haste, but still with style, he hoped this was a simple robbery, the perp too stupid or high to realize who he had chosen to rip off. If that turned out to be the case, Shinoda would flip a coin, decide whether he left it to the local police or put his soldiers on it. Either way, the punk responsible was dead as soon as he learned his name.
But if it wasn’t simple, if this was the trouble he’d been warned about, then he was in deep trouble. All eyes would be watching him from Tokyo, to see how Shinoda handled it, and there was only one acceptable outcome. He had to identify the enemy, eradicate him and preserve his standing in the family.
Shinoda had completed the required eight-hour firearms training course to earn a nonresident carry permit, and he had no intention of leaving his pistol at home, even though he traveled with armed guards, all similarly licensed. In his own mind, it enhanced his status to be packing, and it certainly enhanced his confidence.
Choosing a Beretta 8000 from his small but diverse collection of pistols, the Yakuza crime boss clipped its nylon holster to his belt, secured the weapon and smoothed the lines of his tailored jacket to hide it as best he could. The license in his wallet meant he didn’t have to hide it, necessarily, but Shinoda was a businessman in Vegas, not some gangbanger fresh off the boat, trying to wow the lowlifes.
“Ready, boss?” Yoshinoro Shiroo asked from the bedroom doorway.
“Ready. Bring three of our men and leave the others here to watch the house.”
“I’ve got it covered.”
Shinoda had to think about who would replace Koichi Choshu at Night Moves, but his priority right now was finding out who’d staged the raid and robbed him of his treasurer.
His treasurer, and some $300,000 from the strip club’s safe.
Shinoda should probably have banked that money—some of it, at least—but he liked having cash accessible immediately, if he needed it, and IRS reports of cash deposits larger than $10,000 were a royal pain. If he couldn’t get the money back, he’d have to compensate his oyabun somehow, and bringing back the bandit’s scalp would only be a small down payment on that debt.
But it would please Jiro Shinoda greatly, all the same.
* * *
Akasaka, Tokyo
KATO ANDO HAD not been able to identify whomever Toi was visiting in Asakusa, much less to determine what they talked about, but he had marked the address and would make up that deficiency before reporting to his oyabun. The block, the building’s number and the floor should be enough. He would locate the building’s manager and use his powers of persuasion to find out who occupied the floor in question. Once he had a list of names in hand, the rest should not be difficult.
No one refused him, once they got a look into his eyes and understood that they were dealing with the Sumiyoshi-kai.
Once Ando realized that he could not trace Toi to a specific flat, he decided to wait on the street until his master’s son emerged, then trail him back to Akasaka’s metro station. It was good practice to follow him, avoiding being seen, although he wondered whether Toi would even recognize him if they had collided on the street. The young Takumi seemed to have so little interest in his father’s business that he might not know members of the family he’d seen each week, for years on end. It was a shame, and Ando wished that he could spare his master any further pain on Toi’s account.
With any luck, perhaps he could.
It was the same scene on the metro, always crowded, though the lunchtime rush hour was not on them yet. Tokyo’s crowding made inhabitants susceptible to various diseases, ranging from the flu and colds to cedar pollen allergies, and many wore surgical masks while walking on the street or riding bicycles. Pollution also fouled the air, less visible at night with all the neon blazing, but by day it fogged the streets, producing fog reminiscent of nineteenth-century London. It was paradoxical, for such a tidy people as the Japanese, but that was the reality. The pollution did not bother Ando, born and raised inside the pressure cooker, but he wondered sometimes if it might cut into tourist dollars for the family.
At Asakusa Station, Toi chose the Sobu Main Line heading southwest. Ando was last to board the same car, nearest to the door for exiting when they had reached their destination, elbowing his way inside before the pushers had a chance to help him. One of them had seemed inclined to shove him all the same, but Ando’s glare had stopped him short, the man wise enough to see the folly of putting his hands on this particular stranger.
The train sped toward its destination, still unknown to Ando. He had counted seven stops before Toi made his move, at Akasaka Station, stepping from the car and moving with the crush toward escalators on his left. Ando remained roughly forty feet behind him, keeping Toi in sight.
Akasaka was a residential and commercial district in the larger ward known as Minato. It was not a tourist draw but featured decent restaurants, including an abundance of Korean eateries that prompted locals to call the neighborhood Little Korea. Akasaka catered chiefly to businessmen and bureaucrats from the neighboring Nagatacho government center, while catching some nocturnal overflow from the Roppongi nightlife district. Also close at hand was one of Tokyo’s most popular entertainment and shopping areas for young people, renowned for its shopping, restaurants and fashion houses. Overall, it might be called the hub of Tokyo.
And what drew Toi Takumi there, on this day, after quarreling with his father? Ando wondered.
He trailed his target to a relatively seedy side street, hanging farther back as the foot traffic thinned and he became more visible to any backward glance. Halfway down the second block, Toi slowed his pace and did look back, the first time he had shown any concern about security since bolting from his father’s home. Ando feigned interest in a window filled with power tools, imagining what they could do to flesh, and watched Toi from the corner of his eye until the young man relaxed and ducked into a doorway numbered 35.
The building was commercial, renting space to lawyers and accountants, two temp agencies, several doctors’ offices, one dentist and a driving school’s headquarters, among other tenants. Ando reached the single elevator just in time to see its lighted indicator stop on the third floor, housing three offices and s
omething called Saikosai Biometrics. Trusting logic, he decided that the floor had to be Toi’s stop, and called the elevator back to follow.
* * *
South Las Vegas Boulevard
BOLAN PARKED OUTSIDE the huge Fashion Show mall to count his cash, leaving on the SUV’s air-conditioning and watching passersby in case they tried to peer through the tinted glass. His take was larger than he’d hoped, $260,000 and some change, a total guaranteed to put Jiro Shinoda on the warpath. Anger muddled thinking, and if Bolan’s luck held out, the Yakuza kyodai would begin to make mistakes.
Especially if Bolan pushed some more, to keep him off balance.
He could go directly to Shinoda’s home, but that kind of work was better left for darkness, still some seven hours off by Vegas time. Another option was to find a room and sleep, but Bolan had already rested on the flight out from New Jersey and had energy to burn.
Brognola’s file on Jiro Shinoda listed seven other local businesses he owned or had investments in, providing Bolan with a list of targets that could fill his afternoon if he was so inclined. Metro police would soon be on the case, if they weren’t already, but they were spread thin in Clark County, with some 3,200 officers covering eight thousand square miles of territory, with two million year-round residents and an average 3.5 million tourists per month. Like any other force, its members split their time between guarding the rich and cleaning up after the rowdy poor, both of which Las Vegas had in abundance.
And now, it also had the Executioner.
Bolan had listened to the news since hitting Night Moves, and there’d been no bulletins about the shooting. Shinoda would have liked to keep a lid on it, no doubt, avoiding scrutiny and any nagging questions from the IRS about his looted safe, but that would have depended on who found the bodies in the upstairs office. Would the first call have gone out to EMTs, or to the boss?
Bolan considered it, deciding that the bouncer he’d left wounded was unlikely to be seen again in Vegas. That didn’t bother him, but Bolan knew he had to try harder at his next stop, to create a stir and put Jiro Shinoda on the hot seat with authorities, fighting a two-front war to keep his little fiefdom safe and sound.
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