Tokyo Noir: The Complete First Season

by J. Scott Matthews

  Dextro-MXE (commonly pronounced “Dextro-Mex”), a combination of dextromethorphan and methoxetamine, could induce in the user an altered perception of time. That is, when it was dosed correctly. Getting just the right amount to avoid side effects was nearly impossible.

  Users experienced a marked slowing of time. For some, like Satoshi, it was like experiencing each moment in time as a single, discrete frame. Perfect for high-stakes situations. Other people saw the user’s response time as being slightly faster. Having a few extra milliseconds of reaction time when someone started swinging their gun your way, for example, could make the difference between getting shot and getting the drop on the other person.

  It had taken Satoshi a great deal of trial-and-error to get to the point where he could dose properly to achieve the desired effect. Even then, from time to time he still suffered some of the undesired side effects (dizziness, nausea, anxiety, even dissociation, hallucinations, and paranoia at times).

  Satoshi was trying to center himself now that the plan was in motion. They had gone through every step in great detail and laid everything out in sequence. Satoshi and Takeshi had foregone their usual respirator and Demron overcoat ensemble for lightweight bulletproof vests and goggles. Takeshi had a small handgun strapped to his thigh, while Satoshi had his own handgun plus a large shotgun strapped to his back via a tearaway strap. Both of them had large duffel bags and an assortment of other tools affixed to the end of the truck with rubber bands. That way they were secure, but would tear away easily when needed.

  Now, as Pura brought the truck up to full speed on the highway, Satoshi saw the road disappearing behind them as a series of fast-moving single-frame snapshots. The major discrepancy in each frame was the red-and-black armored vehicle fast approaching them. He breathed in, then out. Calmly. In, and then out, as the armored vehicle loomed larger.

  “You ready?” Pura said over his headset.

  “Ready.”

  “Then let’s rob this stagecoach.”

  All four men raised the bandanas bunched around their throats up over their mouths and got into position.

  “Hang on, something isn’t right here.” Hino was sitting up straighter in his seat now. “Hey, Tomioka, get ready back there. We might have trouble.”

  “Roger.”

  “What is it?” the driver asked.

  Hino unhooked the clasp holding his gun in place and did the same for the shotgun sitting in a standing rack on the floor.

  “That truck back there. The one gaining on us fast.”

  “The tow truck? What about it?”

  “It’s not a tow truck, it’s a flatbed. And we’re coming up on another one just like it.”

  “Oh, fuck!” yelled the driver.

  Before he could slam on the brakes, the two trucks converged. They smashed into the armored vehicle from each side, wedging it up between the two vehicles.

  “Stop!” Hino shouted.

  “I can’t!”

  “Go!” Pura and Johnny shouted in unison.

  “Going!” came the responses from Satoshi and Takeshi.

  Both men stood up from their crouches at the back of their trucks and ran to the ends of their respective cranes. The crane arms had each been fitted with swiveling attachments that were locked so that they would only move in a forty-five-degree angle inward towards the armored vehicle. Working with some spec sheets of the armored transport company’s vehicles, they had calculated exactly where their drivers would need to hit the vehicles to give them the optimal range of motion. Both Pura and Johnny had largely hit their marks, though Johnny was about a foot behind where he wanted to be, giving Takeshi a bit of a reach to get to the armored car.

  Once clipped in, both men pushed off from the trailer hitches at the ends of their trucks, sending them flying in towards the armored vehicle in smooth arcs from the ends of their swiveling crane arms. They quickly set two explosive charges each, one at every corner of the door. Then Takeshi set a fifth charge over the door handle as Satoshi swung back to his truck, where he removed the shotgun that had been strapped to his back. He looked over to see Takeshi swing back away from the door, just as all three vehicles lurched hard to the right.

  “Clear!”

  Takeshi nodded and blew the door. The force of the blast was nearly enough to blow the door off. It hung on a single hinge at its lower left corner for a few moments before falling away. The heavy metal door sent sparks flying as it bounced and clattered down the highway. Satoshi was about to swing back when the vehicle lurched again, this time to the left, making him lose his footing.

  “Keep it steady now!” Satoshi yelled into his headset.

  He lined himself up to swing back over.

  “Trying!” came the reply. “He’s not making it easy!”

  Yeah, why would he? Satoshi thought as he swung back towards the door.

  “Radio, this is vehicle forty-three, we’re under attack. Repeat: we’re under attack on the Metropolitan Expressway Route 5 just beyond Misono. We are unable to stop. Requesting immediate assistance. Attackers appear armed and dangerous.”

  “Roger that, vehicle forty-three,” crackled the reply over the radio. “Assistance is on the way. Stop as soon as you can and deploy the defense system.”

  “Roger that,” Hino said.

  “I don’t know if we can.” The driver was sweating, apparently on the verge of panic.

  “Can’t you stop?” Hino asked, removing his gun from its holster.

  The driver slammed on the brakes, causing the vehicle to lurch hard. But it didn’t slow them down much.

  “They’ve got us wedged up somehow! I don’t have much contact with the ground!”

  “Can you electrify us?”

  “Not unless we’re fully stopped!”

  “Dammit!”

  “Well, do something about it!”

  As the driver yelled, he threw himself into the wheel, causing the vehicles to shudder.

  Hino slid open the small window that served as a gun port on his side of the vehicle. He angled himself to take aim at the fat dude driving the other truck, who was just a few feet away. The other driver was leaning into his own wheel, glancing back and forth between the armored vehicle and the road ahead. He glanced over and seemed to notice Hino taking aim for his head, but his face didn’t register any fear. Hino fired.

  The glass spiderwebbed where his bullets struck, but the glass held. All he was doing was making it harder for the other driver to see. And that wasn’t good enough.

  “It’s bulletproof!” he shouted, starting to panic.

  “Of course it is!” the driver shouted, frantically twisting the wheel. “Shoot the tires!”

  Hino looked out. The front of the vehicle had been retrofitted with metal plating that stuck out and over the front tires. This made it nearly impossible to hit them from his angle.

  “Shit, they’ve covered it! I don’t have a clear shot.”

  “Can you get a better angle? Or ricochet a shot off the pavement?”

  Hino hadn’t thought of that. He angled himself as best he could and fired.

  Satoshi swung back in front of the gaping hole in the back of the armored vehicle, then instantly kicked himself back over towards his truck. As expected, several rounds of gunfire followed him as he swung back. When it stopped, he tried again, this time hooking his feet under the armored vehicle’s bumper. He raised his shotgun and pulled the trigger.

  He didn’t have to be a master marksman with a shotgun at this range to take out his target. The rubber round caught the man right in the chest. Even with a round of rubber ammunition hitting him in his bulletproof vest, the sole defender in the back of the vehicle went down instantly.

  “We’re good!” he said. “Let’s start unloading.”

  With that, he unclipped and pulled himself into the cab of the armored vehicle. He was followed quickly by Takeshi.

  “Hey, that guy’s still moving!” Takeshi said, pointing to the guard writhing on the floor.


  Satoshi looked down as he unfolded one of his duffel bags, then removed his shotgun from his back again. He pumped it once and then fired another rubber round directly into the guard’s stomach from point-blank range, sending him into a fresh spasm.

  Given the guard’s body armor, it wouldn’t be enough to kill him. But the shotgun had enough kick to break a few ribs at such close range, rubber pellets or no. This was Satoshi’s compromise to get the guard out of the picture without killing him. After all, he was just doing his job. Same way they were.

  Satoshi and Takeshi set about scooping the large shrink-wrapped bricks of cash into their bags from the shelves on either side of the vehicle. The constant lurching made it difficult, but they were able to quickly fill three of the four bags they’d brought despite the movement of the vehicles.

  “Start taking these out! I’ll fill the last one!” Takeshi said into his headset.

  “Roger!”

  Satoshi went to clip himself and the first bag into the crane. Suddenly, the armored car lunged sharply to the right, sending him sprawling into the shelving on the side of the vehicle.

  “Fuck!” Pura shouted.

  That was the moment when things stopped going right slowly and started going wrong very quickly.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Vasili eyed Mei placidly for a long while without speaking. She refused to break his gaze. After a moment, Vasili’s attention was drawn to his assistant, who was now busy hawking up blood into her sink and washing his face. When he turned around, Mei got a slight hit of satisfaction from seeing that his face was still smeared with blood. Looked like she had broken his nose too.

  “You alright?” Vasili asked in heavily accented English.

  “Fine, fine.”

  “And her,” Vasili said, nodding his head in Mei’s direction. “Your assessment?”

  His assistant smiled appreciatively and nodded his head. “Yeah, not bad! A little slow, maybe, and her style’s a bit orthodox. But certainly creative when pressed.”

  Vasili grunted and turned to Mei. “That is most I hear Jun say in one stretch in long time. You made quite an impression, it seems.”

  Mei remained impassive.

  “Eh, you speak English?”

  Mei just glared at him. He sighed.

  “Very well, we shall speak Japa—” Vasili started to say in guttural Japanese.

  “Jesus, yes, I speak English.”

  “Oh good,” he said, slipping back into English like a man putting on an ill-fitting glove. “Well, I will dispense with formalities. Is like we are good friends already.”

  Mei said nothing. She was regretting her decision to let him speak English. His Japanese was ugly, but his English was a bloodbath. Just articles being massacred left and right.

  “I will get to point. You are trying to catch serial killer. I also want him caught. So I propose we work together to accomplish this. Not directly, of course, but through my associates, if you will.”

  “I will not.”

  “I have many contacts, many friends, many people who tell me many things. My resources can be of assistance in your investigation.”

  “Thank you for your offer. But you’ve got to understand my reluctance to accept your help.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’re a criminal. It would be a deal with the devil.”

  “Nothing is proven. Is rumor and lies. I’m foreign businessman in Japan, people say things that aren’t true to hurt me.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “Besides, even if I were criminal, there is long history of cooperation between criminals and police in Japan. Think back to Mitsuru Asuhara. He cooperated with police for years, turning in criminals, giving information, bringing them gifts. They said he was on first-name basis with everyone at local police station. In exchange, police agree not to enforce some bad laws, let him operate in peace.”

  “Of course they cooperated. He had the families of two cops that wouldn’t go along with him murdered. Kids and all.”

  “Eh, I don’t know this side of story. Point is, we can help each other more by cooperating than by fighting.”

  “And what if I say no? You’re going to kill my family?”

  “Why bother? Is just father now. Besides, if you say no, you will not be troubling me. Not from Fukushima.”

  There it was. He wasn’t even playing coy anymore. Endo was just a puppet, with Vasili pulling the strings—making his voice come out from Endo’s mouth.

  “And why would you help me?” Mei asked. “What do you get out of it?”

  Vasili laughed. “Do not be stupid. What do I get out of it? He killed close personal friend and business associate of mine. I owe him for that. Plus, earnings suffer when people are afraid to go out for fear of getting killed. Is bad for business.”

  “What a humanitarian.”

  “And naturally, if someone is wanting to frame me, is in my best interest to stop them. Is not so hard to understand, no?”

  Mei scoffed. “Framing you? All the evidence points to you being the killer.”

  “Of course it does. That is what framing means. I am gentle man, soft like lamb. Everyone say so.” He looked over his shoulder at his assistants, who both nodded vigorously. Though the woman seemed to be suppressing a smile.

  “I could not hurt fly,” Vasili continued with a smile. After a beat, the smile vanished, replaced by a malevolent intensity. “But if I wanted someone to hurt fly for me, I could have it done quietly, professionally. Bam!” He smashed one massive hand down on the table hard enough to make the window rattle. “No more fly! No more problem! So why would I kill fly in obvious way? In unprofessional way?”

  Mei considered this. It was a point that had been gnawing at her. This wasn’t the usual style of killings from the Kaisha, but she had largely brushed over this in her haste.

  “So how do you see this … collaboration working?” she asked.

  “We share, like good friends do. I tell you what we know, you tell us what you know. We work together to put this murdering bastard away faster. Is less deal with devil and more … let’s say mutually beneficial collaboration.”

  “With the devil,” Mei added.

  “Sure, fine, whatever. What is your answer?”

  Mei didn’t reply right away. Her head was swirling, and she was being pulled apart down the center. There was no way she could deal with this scum. But if she didn’t …

  “Okay, let me try that again,” Vasili said.

  He was growing irritated, losing his patience.

  “I rephrase. We work together to catch killer faster, which is in both our interests. Is option one. Or you go to ghost town that used to be Fukushima, where you join hazard crews. Is option two.”

  Mei still said nothing.

  “I hear that since it catch fire it has burned for nearly four years straight now. Radiation so bad nothing survive long there. Everything gray, dead, lifeless. Of course, maybe you like it there. Maybe you thrive in that environment, I don’t know.”

  Mei swallowed hard and put her elbows on the table. She covered her mouth with her hands.

  “If I do this for you, it’s a onetime thing. We work together on this and this alone. Once we catch this bastard, I go right back to trying to put you away.”

  “Detective Kimura, I expect nothing less from you.” He leaned forward with one giant paw held out. “We have deal?”

  Mei had to swallow harder this time to dislodge the lump in her throat. She stuck out her own hand, which was quickly swallowed up by his.

  “We have deal,” she said sadly.

  “Oh, is not so bad. We can do good work together. Fight evil, save lives. Two heads are better than one, yes? Is saying.”

  “Sure. Another saying goes something like ‘People who fight monsters should be careful to not become one themselves.’”

  The woman smirked. “Close enough, I guess.”

  Vasili looked at Mei for a long while without speaki
ng. Then he smiled.

  “So I am monster? Yes? You think I am criminal? Hmm? Want nothing more than to see me in jail, right? Well, you may get your wish, but be careful what you wish for. Maybe you think you know how world works. You think is good guys and bad guys, and you’re good and I’m bad. But real life … is more complicated. Shades of gray within shades of gray.”

  Mei scoffed, trying to look hard. “I never would have made a deal with the devil if I had known he was so fucking boring.”

  Vasili laughed. “That’s funny! You’re funny! Funny policewoman!” His smile died suddenly. “You can laugh, but I will say this: when you peer behind the curtain and see the machinery actually at work, it changes you. Because only thing worse than this machine running is if it were to grind to a halt.”

  And without another word, Vasili and his assistants departed. Mei was left Mei to puzzle over his cryptic comments, in the apartment that she no longer felt safe in.

  She honestly didn’t know if selling her soul to keep her job was the right choice, but she sincerely doubted it. She found herself wondering what her father would do in this situation. That just upset her more, because she knew even he would have walked away from this with his integrity intact. But not his daughter.

  No longer needing to act tough, Mei walked to her bedroom and looked out from the window. The bright lights of the city reflected off the tears that streamed silently down her cheeks.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Got it!” Hino shouted.

  He was finally able to get a bullet to ricochet off the concrete below into the other truck’s tire. He knew he’d hit it because the outer tire instantly sagged as it deflated, then got sucked under the inner tire. This caused the truck to lurch away from them, giving his driver a chance to pull their vehicle to the right somewhat before the other vehicle recovered and slammed back into them.

  The driver stood on the brakes. And while they were still wedged between the two trucks, they seemed to have better contact with the road now. So when he jammed on the brakes, it sent their vehicle careening from side to side, pulling the other trucks with it.