“What? Kill you? Fuck you? I could have done both already, if I wanted. No, I’ve got other plans for you, my friend.”
Kazuhiko’s eyes had adjusted enough that he could see a little better, but the hangover combined with the shame wouldn’t let him look up at his interlocutor directly.
“Is there any way I can repay you?”
“It just so happens there is. You can do the exact same thing again. But this time at a location of my choosing.”
Kazuhiko still didn’t want to look the other man in the face, but he forced himself to glance up. Through the haze of the white light blinding him, all he could see was a shark’s grin gleaming back.
Chapter Seventeen
“Goddammit, where is it coming from?” Mei asked, peering up at the network of pipes that formed the ceiling.
“Just leave it,” Kentaro said. “I don’t have much time this morning, so if we can begin the meeting …”
“Alright,” Mei said. She walked over towards the whiteboard against one wall, facing the table. “But I’m going to find that leak.”
Kentaro checked his watch.
“Let’s get started. I’ve done what reading I can. Now I need you to help me and Detective Kentaro catch up the rest of the way. So, where are we with this case?”
She stood in front of her assembled task force beside an evidence board of her own making. She stared at each of them in turn, with no response forthcoming.
“Okay, I’ll be more specific,” Mei said, knowing that wasn’t the problem. “What were the last leads that Suga had you chasing down?”
“Well, you may just want to start from scratch,” Watanabe said. “I’m not convinced that he had us going in the right direction.”
“And why is that?”
“Well …,” Watanabe said, evidently not wanting to be the bearer of bad news. “Have you heard the death cult rumors?”
“I’m not interested in the media reporting on this—”
“Because he started them,” Watanabe said.
“Guy was crazy,” Ina chimed in from a near-horizontal reclining position in his chair. “He was more interested in chasing headlines than chasing the killer.”
“Yeah, we looked into the connection but didn’t find much there,” Kato said.
“Well, there was a doomsday cult linked to a string of families murdered last year,” Kentaro said. “So the idea could have some merit.”
“Yeah, but that was an isolated group. One that was caught,” Watanabe said. “Besides, when we checked into it, we didn’t see anything like what Suga was claiming. We think he …”
“Go on,” Mei said.
“We think the evidence was a little thin for his claims. He said that cult insignia were found near the bodies. But those tags are all over the city.”
“Yeah, man was a notorious media whore, after all,” Kato said.
Mei shot him a sour look.
“Pardon me, media hound.”
“Has any of the information on the victims pointed to a connection?” Kentaro asked.
The three of them shook their heads and muttered that it had not.
“Well, what about a link with organized crime?” Mei asked. “Has that possibility been raised?”
No response, aside from some shifting in chairs.
“No? Because our last victim, Tetsuo, has known links to organized crime in the form of Vasili Loginovski’s organization and the broader Kaisha. He was reputed to have been working as an intermediary for the construction industry. The first victim was presumed to be a street-level pusher, while the second has all the telltale signs of a visa tourist hostess-slash-prostitute. As for Suga, who else but someone of Vasili’s position would dare touch a cop and dream of getting away with it?”
“I’m not buying it,” Kato said. Ina shook his head.
“It’s possible, but not likely,” Watanabe said. “The Kaisha’s always been careful about getting rid of bodies. They don’t just dump them out in the open.”
“Maybe they’re getting careless,” Mei said. “They’ve been above the law for so long, maybe they’re starting to think we can’t touch them.”
More muttering and shaking of heads. Mei was starting to form her suspicions about who was on the take here already, and it wasn’t looking good. At least she had Kentaro as an ally.
“It’s certainly worth looking into,” Kentaro said. “But it can’t be the central focus of the case. I agree, it’s not like them, but anything is possible. For now, I think we work with the evidence available to us. How long until we get the DNA analysis and morgue report back from the factory murder?”
“Suzuki said he’d have the morgue report done today. The blood and DNA tests will take a week or two, even with them fast-tracking it.”
“Alright, what about witnesses at the scene?” Kentaro asked.
“We tried but couldn’t find any,” Watanabe said. “The people living on Tsukishima and the other reclaimeds are mostly homeless drifters. They disappear like smoke in the fog when police come around asking questions.”
“So where does that leave us?” Mei asked.
There was no response.
“Gentlemen! Glad you could make it!”
Satoshi’s voice echoed throughout the dirty garage. The three men on folding chairs arranged in a semicircle in one corner looked up. Satoshi walked over and set down the plastic convenience store bags loaded with cheap beer, shochu, mixers, and snacks.
“Good to see you again!” Johnny said, cracking open a can of Asahi Dry and holding it aloft. The contents fizzed over the top and splattered onto a grease stain on the floor. “Thought you had outgrown your old friends.”
“Never.” Satoshi cracked his own beer. “Cheers!”
“Cheers!” Pura and Takeshi said, slamming their beers together.
“You got a seat for me?” Satoshi asked, looking around.
“There’s a step stool over there that’ll probably hold you if you open it up. We’re out of folding chairs.”
“And here I sprang for actual beer instead of happoshu,” Satoshi muttered as he fetched the stool. “So why’d you have us come all the way out here to meet?”
“I don’t know, you’re the one that called us,” Takeshi said.
“No, I mean, why did you ask to meet here in … whatever the fuck this is?”
“Because we’re on duty tonight,” Johnny said. “We’ve been working night shift security for this construction outfit for a while.”
“So, shouldn’t you be outside guarding the construction equipment?” Satoshi asked.
“You’re not my supervisor,” Takeshi said.
“Yeah, we’re probably also not supposed to drink on the job. But since nobody ever comes to check on us, I’d say we’re safe. It’s a pretty cushy gig.”
“What about you, what’s your story these days?” Satoshi asked Pura. “Feel like I haven’t seen any of you in ages.”
“Working as a chef at an izakaya. Nothing too fancy, but not one of the chains either. And the three of us still hang out—you’re the one that dropped off the face of the earth.”
Satoshi sighed and sipped his beer. It was true. Johnny and Takeshi used to work with Satoshi and Masa for Taichi, way back in the day. Pura had never taken the Path himself, but used to freelance every now and then to supplement his bartending and cooking gigs. They had been tight back in the day.
But when Taichi’s crew had disbanded, Satoshi and Masa had been taken in by Osammy while Johnny and Takeshi had gone to work for a different crew. Eventually Satoshi had found himself out of their orbit.
Looking at them now, they seemed to be almost exactly the same as he remembered. Fat, goateed Pura, the lovable fuckup that you couldn’t help but love, despite all his fuckups. Tall, gangly Takeshi, with a sarcastic smirk permanently painted on his eminently punchable face. And Johnny (or Jae-yoon) Lee, a good-natured Korean who had been born and raised in Japan.
“Well, it’s good seeing your ugly faces again,”
Satoshi said, raising his beer to them.
“Yeah, you too, I guess,” Takeshi said with a shrug.
This prompted laughter and a wanking motion from Satoshi.
“You still running with Tengu’s crew?”
“More or less. But The Rock keeps pulling me off for these special missions of his.”
“Hmm, sounds like he might be grooming you for upper management,” Takeshi said.
“Yeah, could be. I don’t know what that guy’s thinking half the time.”
“What about your old buddy Masa? You still see him much?” Pura asked. Ever the guileless one.
Satoshi stiffened but then realized that there was no way they could know about his assignment.
“Haven’t been in touch with him lately. He was working under Vasili for a while after Osammy’s crew dissolved. But he sort of went off the deep end.”
“Sounds about right,” Johnny said. “He was always a scary motherfucker.”
Murmurs of agreement greeted that comment.
“Yeah, I heard he blinded a guy in a club with a broken bottle. I wouldn’t want to tangle with him.”
“This new breed, man, they’re fucking terrifying. No respect for anything,” Johnny said, shaking his head.
“Kids these days, it’s not like it was in the old days,” said Takeshi, who Satoshi figured at no older than twenty-seven.
“Here we fucking go,” Pura said. He tore into a bag of pizza-flavored potato chips and settled in.
“Because those guys had class! Those old-school yakuza were some stand-up guys!”
“Hear, hear!”
“Yeah, like Okazawaya. That guy was a pillar of his community. Used to lend people money to keep their homes when developers tried to force them out. You don’t see that kind of chivalry much anymore.”
“Or how about … who’s that guy that stole all those Demron coats from the government and gave them out?”
“The Rubber Baron!” Satoshi and Pura said simultaneously.
“Such a stupid nickname!” Johnny cackled from his corner. “Demron’s not even rubber.”
“Now there was a hero,” Takeshi said. “Stole all these coats that the government wasn’t using and made them available to the people. Even ran that website where he would post radiation readings from his own Geiger counters from around the city since the government’s figures were bullshit.”
“Legend. The man was a legend.”
“Alright, well, are we gonna fucking talk about the past all night, or work on our own legacies some?” Takeshi asked. “What is this job you wanted to talk about, Satoshi?”
“Could be a pretty sweet payday for us, if you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty. I’m talking upwards of five hundred million yen if we get the whole score, split four ways.”
Pura whistled. “Wow, with that kind of cash, Johnny could almost pay someone enough to fuck him.”
“Fuck you, fat man,” Johnny said with a smile as he rubbed his hands together. “But why bring a score like this to us? Why not handle it through your regular crew?”
“Tengu doesn’t need to know about this. Thing is, I kind of need the money. Either I pay Vasili a shitton of money that I don’t have, or I have to do this other job. And it’s one I really don’t want to do.”
“Must be pretty bad if you’re scared to do it. What are we talking here?”
“I don’t want to get into it. I don’t even want to think about it. And I won’t have to. Because I’m going to get the money to pay Vasili back and make you guys rich in the process.”
“So what do we need for this job?” Johnny asked.
Satoshi looked over in the corner of the garage. There he saw the short, squat, boxy front of a truck’s cab attached to a flatbed trailer. The flatbed was empty, save for a large crane from which a heavy metal chain drooped down to pool on the bed below in a rusty heap.
“Think you can get another one of those? We’re going to need two.”
The other three exchanged a glance with one another. Then Johnny smiled and began rubbing his hands together.
“I like where this is heading already!”
“Hold on, what’s the target?” Takeshi asked.
“Sometime between one and three in the morning on April twenty-third, this coming Thursday, an armored vehicle will transport about five hundred million yen in old banknotes from the Bank of Japan’s Head Office in Tokyo to its Banknotes Operation Center in Toda City. But it’s never going to get there, because we’re going to intercept it along Route 5.”
Takeshi whistled through his teeth. “A modern-day stagecoach robbery, I like it! You’re quite the traditionalist there, Satoshi.”
“Wait, you want to take down one of the BOJ’s armored vehicles?” Johnny asked incredulously. “You know those fuckers are electrified, right?”
“Yeah. But not while they’re moving, they aren’t.”
“… but the fact that victims two and three had more of their organs removed seems to be a clear sign that the killer is maturing.”
Mei was staring at a point on the bar’s wall as she reasoned it through in her head. She hadn’t touched her beer yet. The others were on their second drinks, and in Watanabe’s case his third. But he was the only other one contributing, so she didn’t mind.
“Except for victim number four,” Watanabe said. “Unless you see that as an outlier that didn’t go according to plan.”
“Exactly. But what would make him abandon the scene like that? Fear of detection? Because I don’t—”
“Look, I thought you called us out here to have a drink and get to know one another,” Ina said. “Not to get us to put in unpaid overtime.”
“Yeah, I would have just gone home and drank on my own if I had known that was the case,” Kato added.
“Sorry,” Mei said. “It’s just that I don’t understand how the puzzle fits together, and it’s gnawing at me.”
“Yeah, eating me up too,” Kato said nonchalantly. He drained his glass and poured himself another from the pitcher on the table.
“But you’re right. Let’s talk about you guys now. I want to get to know my team. How about you, Kato, what’s your story?”
“Not much to say, really. Started out as a beat cop in Kawasaki. Made assistant detective in a year, detective two years later, then two years as a detective. Got transferred here last year.”
“That’s a pretty quick rise through the ranks.”
“Yeah, well, you get a lot of practice in Kawasaki. Place is practically infested with crime and criminals. Plus, my partner and I had the highest clearance rate in the station when I was an assistant. As a detective, I did better than ninety-nine percent clearance.”
Ina looked appreciative. Mei and Watanabe exchanged a glance. They both knew that clearance rates that high never came from good police work alone. Mei decided not to pursue the matter.
“Why did you go into police work?”
“Well, kind of more as a stepping stone, really. I wanted to join the Patriot’s Guard in a leadership role. But most of the people in charge had some sort of military or police experience. I didn’t want to enter as some grunt volunteer, so figured I’d get some experience and join them.”
“Patriot’s Guard?” Watanabe asked.
“They were an extralegal police force. Keeping the peace, public patrols, that sort of thing. They’ve since merged with another outfit. Now they’re called the Dark Army.”
“I’ve heard of the Dark Army,” Watanabe said. “You really want to join those thugs?”
“They’re not thugs, they’re peacekeepers. And yeah, someday I do. I’m just looking to the future. Budgets for police forces are getting cut nationwide, while the Dark Army just keeps growing. Soon, they’ll replace us.”
“He’s right, you know,” Ina said. “Plus they don’t have to deal with all this paperwork and unnecessary restrictions that we do.”
“Much more efficient,” Kato said.
“They’re thugs,”
Watanabe said. “Plain and simple. We have restrictions, yeah, but they exist for a reason.”
“Yeah, to protect criminals,” Kato said. “They can get results, because they’re not hampered by all this bullshit we have to put up with.”
Watanabe just shook his head sadly.
“Alright, we’re getting off topic here,” Mei said. “How about you, Ina? How did you get into police work?”
“I joined about five years ago. Worked my way up the same way, but I was based out of Tama City. Not much action there.”
“What made you want to be a cop?”
“Kind of a long story.”
“I better order us another round, then,” Watanabe said.
“Well, you remember that guy they used to call the Rubber Baron? He stole a bunch of Demron coats that the government had earmarked to give out to needy families. Then he sold them at inflated prices to the same people.”
“I remember reading about that case, yeah,” Watanabe said. “He supposedly set up Geiger counters around the city, then released juked numbers to show that the radiation was worse than it actually was.”
“Yeah, exactly. He created a panic so that he could profit off it. Left a lot of people without proper radiation wear in the process. One of those people was my dad. He couldn’t afford coats for the entire family, so he went without. Died of lymphoma a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mei said.
“Yeah. He could have gotten cancer from anywhere, but still. Seeing that Rubber Baron guy get away with it made me so angry. Then there was another case soon after. Okazawaya, I think his name was. Forced people in his district to take out these exorbitant home loans they didn’t need. Anyone who refused was beaten or driven out, some just disappeared. Collected from those people for years until most of them went bankrupt. Then he sold off their properties to a developer and pocketed millions. Seeing guys like that profit by taking advantage of ordinary people made me so angry. I wanted to do something about it.”
“That’s noble,” Mei said.
“Yeah, about as good a reason as any,” Watanabe agreed.
“What about you?” Mei asked the older man. “Why did you get into this line of work?”
Tokyo Noir: The Complete First Season Page 11