by Barry Eisler
I turned the corner at the end of the street I was looking for. A heavily built Japanese kid with a shaved head, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, was leaning against the wall. I made him as a sentry. Sure enough, at the other end of the street, there was his twin.
I walked past the first guy. After a few steps I turned my head casually to look back at him. He was watching me, speaking into a radio. This was a quiet street and I didn’t look like one of the pensioners who lived in the neighborhood. The call felt routine: somebody’s coming, I don’t know who.
I walked on and found the address—an unremarkable two-story building with a cement façade. The door was old and constructed of thick metal. Three rows of large bolts ran across it horizontally, probably attached to reinforcing bars on the other side. The bolts said Visitors Not Welcome.
I looked around. Across from me was a blue corrugated shed, ramshackle, its windows caved inward like the sunken eyes of a corpse. To the right was a tiny coin laundry, its three washers and three dryers arranged facing each other in neat rows as though set out to be taken away and discarded. The walls were yellowed, decorated with peeling posters. Spilled laundry powder and cigarette butts littered the floor. A vending machine hung tilted from the wall, advertising laundry soap at fifty yen a packet to customers who might as well have been ghosts.
There was a small black button recessed in the mud-colored brick to the right of the building’s door. I pressed it and waited.
A slat opened at head level. A pair of eyes regarded me through wire mesh from the other side. The eyes were slightly bloodshot. They watched me, silent.
“I’m here to train,” I said in curt Japanese.
A moment passed. “No training here,” was the reply.
“I’m judo fourth dan. Your place was recommended by a friend of mine.” I said the dead weightlifter’s name.
The eyes behind the slat narrowed. The slat closed. I waited. A minute went by, then another five. The slat opened again.
“When did Ishihara-san recommend this club?” the owner of a new pair of eyes asked.
“About a month ago.”
“It took you a long time to arrive.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been out of town.”
The eyes watched me. “How is Ishihara-san?”
“Last I saw him, he was fine.”
“Which was when?”
“About a month ago.”
“And your name is?”
“Arai Katsuhiko.”
The eyes didn’t blink. “Ishihara-san never mentioned your name.”
“Was he supposed to?”
Still no blink. “Our club has a custom. If a member mentions the club to a nonmember, he also mentions the nonmember to the club.”
No blink from me, either. “I don’t know your customs. Ishihara-san told me this would be the right kind of place for me. Can I train here or not?”
The eyes dropped down to the gym bag I was carrying. “You want to train now?”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
The slat closed again. A moment later the door opened.
There was a small antechamber behind it. Cinder-block construction. Peeling gray paint. The owner of the eyes was giving me the once-over. He didn’t seem impressed. They never do.
“You can train,” he said. He was barefoot, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I placed him at five-feet-nine and eighty kilos. Tending toward the burly side. Salt-and-pepper crew cut, age about sixty. Past what I sensed had been a formidable prime, but still a hard-looking guy with no bullshit, no posturing.
“Sore wa yokatta,” I replied. Good. Behind the burly guy and to his right was a smaller, wiry specimen, dark-complected for a Japanese, his head shaved to black stubble. I recognized the bloodshot eyes—the same pair that had initially regarded me through the mesh. Though slighter than the first guy, this one radiated something intense and unpredictable.
The smaller guys can be dangerous. Never having been able to rely on their size for intimidation, they have to learn to fight instead. I know because, before filling out in the army, I had been one of them.
The antechamber was adjacent to a rectangular room, about twenty feet by thirty. It smelled of old sweat. The room was dominated by a judo tatami mat. A half-dozen muscular specimens were using it for some kind of randori, or live training. They wore shorts and T-shirts, like the guy who had opened the door, no judogi. On a corner of the mat, someone was practicing elbow and knee drops on a prone, man-shaped dummy. The dummy’s head, neck, and chest were practically mummified with duct tape reinforcements.
In another corner, two heavy bags dangled on thick chains from exposed rafters. Large bags, seventy kilos or more. Man-sized. A couple of thick-necked guys with yakuza-style punch perms were working them, no gloves, no tape, their blows not quick but solid, the whap! whap! of knuckles on leather reverberating in the enclosed space.
The lack of wrist and finger tape interested me. Boxers wear tape to protect their hands. But you get dependent on the tape, and then you don’t know how to hit someone without it. Even Mike Tyson once broke a hand when he hit another fighter bare-handed in a late night brawl. In a real fight, you break your hand, you just lose the fight. If you were fighting for your life, you just lost that, too.
And no judogi. That was also interesting, especially in tradition-loving Japan. Purists will tell you that training with the judogi is more realistic than without, because after all, people rarely fight naked. But modern attire—a T-shirt, for example—is often more like naked than it is like the reinforced, belted gi. Training exclusively in the gi, therefore, while traditional, is not necessarily the height of realism.
All signs that these were serious people.
“You can change in the locker room,” the salt-and-pepper guy told me. “Warm up and you can do some randori. We’ll see why Ishihara-san thought this would be a good place for you.”
I nodded and headed to the locker room. It was a dank space with a floor of dirty gray carpet. Its half-dozen battered metal lockers were positioned on either side of a solid-looking exterior door, secured with a combination lock. I changed into cotton judo pants and a T-shirt, but left the jacket in the bag. Best to blend.
I returned to the main room and stretched. No one seemed to take particular notice of me—except for the dark-complected guy, who watched me while I warmed up.
After about fifteen minutes he walked over to me. “Randori?” he asked, in a tone that was more a challenge than an invitation.
I nodded, averting my eyes from his hard stare. In my mind, our contest was already under way, and I prefer my opponents to underestimate me.
I followed him to the center of the mat, slightly meek, slightly intimidated.
We circled around each other, each looking for an opening. In my peripheral vision I saw that the other men had paused in their workouts and were watching.
I snagged his right arm with my left and dropped under it for a duck-under, a simple and effective entry from my high school wrestling days in America. But he was quick: he dropped his arm, crouched, and cut clockwise, away from my entry. I immediately switched my attack to his left side, but he parried nicely there as well. No problem. I was feinting, feeling for his defenses, not yet showing him what I could do.
I withdrew from attack mode and started to straighten. As I did so, I saw his hips swivel in, caught a blur off the right side of my head. Left hook. Whoa. I shot my right hand into the gap and ducked my head forward. The blow snapped across the back of my head, then instantly retracted.
I took a quick step back. “Kore ga randori nanoka? Bokushingu janaika?” I asked him. Are we doing randori, or boxing? I looked more concerned than I actually was. I’ve done some boxing. Not all of it with gloves.
“This is the way we do randori around here,” he answered, sneering.
“With no rules?” I asked, mock-concerned. “I’m not sure I like that.”
“You don’t like it, don’t train here, judoyar
o,” he said, and I heard someone laugh.
I looked around as though unsure of myself, but it was really just a routine check of my surroundings. Adrenaline causes tunnel vision. Experience and a desire to survive ameliorate it. The faces around the tatami radiated amusement, not danger.
“I’m not really used to this kind of thing,” I said.
“Then get off the fucking tatami,” he spat.
I looked around again. It didn’t feel like a setup. If it were, they wouldn’t have been dancing with me one at a time.
“Okay,” I said, scowling to look like a soft guy trying to look like a hard guy. Playing the victim of idiot pride. “We’ll do it your way.”
We squared off again. I logged his feints. He liked to lead with his right foot. His timing was regular—a weakness for which his quickness had probably always compensated.
He liked low kicks. Right foot forward plant, left roundhouse kick, return to defensive stance. I took two such shots to my right thigh. They stung. They didn’t matter.
The right foot came forward again. When it was a few millimeters above the tatami and he was fully committed to planting it, I shot straight in, my right hand hooking his neck from behind, my left hand darting in just behind his right ankle. I used his neck to support my weight, dragging his head down and ruining his balance. I drove through him, my elbow leading the way at his chest. His ankle was blocked and his body had nowhere to go but backward to the tatami.
I kept the ankle as he fell, jerking it northward and spinning clockwise so that I landed facing the same direction he was in. I was straddling his leg and holding the ankle in front of me. In one smooth motion I caught it in my right biceps, wrapped the fingers of my left hand around his toes, and clamped down in opposing directions. His ankle broke with a snap like the sound of a mallet on hard wood. Freed of its moorings, the foot arced savagely to the right. Tendons and ligaments tore loose.
He let out a high scream and tried to use his other leg to kick me away. But the kicks were feeble. His nervous system was overloaded with pain.
I stood up and turned to face him. His face was I’m-going-to-puke green and beaded in oily sweat. He was holding the knee of his ruined leg and looking bug-eyed at the dangling foot at the end of it. He hitched a breath in, then deeper, then let out a long wail.
Ankle injuries hurt. I know. I’ve seen feet lost to land mines.
He sucked in another breath and screamed again. If we’d been alone, I would have broken his neck just to shut him up. I looked around the room, wondering if I was going to have trouble from any of his comrades.
One of them, a tall, long-legged guy with an Adonis physique and peroxide-dyed, close-cropped hair, yelled out, “Oi!” and started to come toward me. Hey!
The salt-and-pepper guy cut in front of him. “Ii kara, ii kara,” he said, pushing Adonis back. That’s enough.
Adonis backed off, but continued to fix me with a hostile stare.
Salt and Pepper turned and walked over to where I was standing. He bore an expression of mild amusement that was not quite a smile.
“Next time, use a little more control when you put in a joint lock,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact.
The dark-complected guy writhed. Adonis and a couple of the others went to help him.
I shrugged. “I would have. But he told me ‘no rules.” ’
“That’s true. He’ll probably be the last guy who suggests that to you.”
I looked at him. “I like this place. You guys seem serious.”
“We are.”
“It’s all right for me to train here?”
“Between four and eight every evening. Most mornings, too, you can work out from eight to noon. There are dues, but we can talk about that another time.”
“You manage the place?”
He smiled. “Something like that.”
“I’m Arai,” I said, with a slight bow.
Someone brought a stretcher. The dark-complected guy was gritting his teeth and whimpering. Someone admonished him, “Urusei na! Gaman shiro!” Shut up! Take the pain!
“Washio,” he said, returning the bow. “And by the way, did you know that Ishihara-san died recently?”
I looked at him. “No, I didn’t.”
He nodded. “An accident at his gym.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Is the gym still open?”
“Some of his associates are running it now.”
“Good. Although I have a feeling that, from now on, I’ll be spending more time here, anyway.”
He grinned. “Yoroshiku.” Looking forward to it.
“Yoroshiku.”
I stuck around for another two hours. Adonis glared at me from time to time but otherwise kept his distance. Murakami never showed.
Washio’s questions about Ishihara’s death were neither surprising nor particularly unnerving. The weightlifter’s death looked like an accident. Even if they wondered whether the truth might be otherwise, they had no more reason to suspect my involvement than they did anyone else who had worked out there.
Of course, if I received further inquiries on that subject, particularly any pointed ones, I might change my assessment.
I came the next day, and the day after that, but still no sign. That was fine with me. It felt good to be back in Tokyo and I thought I could afford a few days there if I continued to be careful. Besides, getting in a workout on the job is great. Not quite the wholesome life of an aerobics instructor, but it beats sitting in a van all night on surveillance, drinking cold coffee and pissing in a plastic jug.
On the fourth day, I dropped by in the evening. Three sequential occasions in the same place at the same time was as much as my paranoid nervous system will allow. I was surprised to see many of the same faces. Some of these characters worked out twice a day. I wondered what they did for a living. Crime, probably. Be your own boss. Flexible hours.
I exchanged greetings with Washio and some of the others whom I had gotten to know, then changed in the locker room. One of the heavy bags was open, and I started working it with knee and elbow combinations. Drills of one-minute attack, thirty-second rest. I used a small clock on the wall to time myself.
My speed and strength were still good. Endurance likewise. Recovery times aren’t what they once were, but a steady diet of liquid amino acids for the muscles, glucosamine for the joints, and Cognamine for the reflexes all seem to help.
During one of the rest periods, I felt people pause in their workouts, felt their attention shift. The atmosphere in the room changed.
I looked over and saw someone in a poorly fitting double-breasted navy suit. It had wide lapels and overly padded shoulders. The kind of suit that’s supposed to impart a swagger even when you’re standing still. He was flanked by two burly specimens, more casually dressed, with yakuza punch perms. From their size and deportment I assumed they were bodyguards.
They must have just come in. The guy in the suit was talking to Washio, who was paying close and somehow uncomfortable attention.
I watched, and noticed other people doing the same. The newcomer couldn’t have been more than five-feet-eight, but his neck was massive and I put him at about eighty-five, ninety kilos. His ears were deformed masses of protruding scar tissue that would stand out even in Japan, where such scarification is not uncommon among judoka and kendoka.
Washio was gesturing to various men who were training. The newcomer was nodding. It felt like a briefing.
The thirty-second rest was up. I returned my attention to the bag. Left elbow. Right uppercut. Left knee. Again.
When the one-minute sequence was done I looked over. Washio and the newcomer were walking toward me. The bodyguards remained by the door.
“Oi, Arai,” Washio called out when they were a couple meters away. “Chotto mate.” Hold up for a minute.
I picked up a towel from the floor and wiped my face. They came closer and Washio gestured to the man next to him. “I want to introduce you to someone,” he said. “One
of the backers of this dojo.”
I already knew who he was. Per Tatsu’s briefing, the left cheek was flattened, with the opposite side exhibiting what looked like a golf-ball-sized fissure pocked with jagged edges. I imagined a dog getting hold of him there and hanging on even as he shoved the animal away.
Something told me the dog had come out the worse.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck pop up, a fresh surge of adrenaline dump into my veins. My fight-or-flight reaction is finely honed, and this guy’s presence was making it sing.
“Arai desu,” I said, bowing slightly.
“Murakami da,” he said with a nod, his voice not much more than a growl. “Washio tells me you’re good.” He looked doubtful.
I shrugged.
“There’s a fight tomorrow night,” he went on. “We put them on from time to time. Most people pay a hundred thousand yen to attend, but members of the dojo get in free. You interested?”
A hundred thousand yen—I’d been in the right neighborhood about the economics of these things. And if this guy was comfortable issuing the invitation, someone must have checked me out. I was glad that I’d had Tatsu backstop the Arai identity.
I shrugged again and said, “Sure.”
He looked at me, his eyes flat, as though focused somewhere behind and through me. “The fight starts at ten o’clock sharp. People get there a little early for betting. We’re doing this one in Higashi Shinagawa, five-chome. Just across the canal from Tennozu Island.”
“The harbor district?” I asked. The area is part of Tokyo but wasn’t a place I ever frequented while living in the city. It’s in Tokyo’s southeast, the home of meat processing plants and sewage disposal, of steam power facilities and wholesale warehouses, all of it fed and fattened by Tokyo’s great port. I supposed the attraction was that it would be deserted at night.