Tokyo Noir: The Complete First Season

by J. Scott Matthews

  “For the company!” Vasili said, holding his glass up.

  “For the company,” the others groaned, clinking glasses.

  Then the drinking began in earnest.

  “Hey, why isn’t he part of this?” Chieko asked, motioning towards Jun sitting over by the wall.

  “Yeah! Get the Twins in on this,” Tengu said. “Which one are you sleeping with again?”

  “Both of them, I thought,” Kozu said.

  “Very funny,” Vasili said. “Jun does not like drinking, though he’s welcome to if he likes.”

  Jun shook his head.

  “What’s his problem?” Chieko said. “Such a serious face all the time. Like his dad just died or something.”

  “More like he killed him,” Kozu said, slugging away at his bottle. “Something sinister about that one.”

  “Jun?” Vasili said. “No, I kill his dad. Long time ago.”

  “I can never tell if you’re joking or not,” Tengu said. He turned to Jun. “Is he joking?”

  Again, Jun shook his head no.

  “Doesn’t help much,” Tengu said. “I can never tell if you’re joking or not either.”

  Once the drinking had progressed to a certain point, Vasili started the meeting.

  “I’ll go,” Tengu growled in his gravelly voice.

  Tengu usually kicked things off—partially because of his hotheaded nature, partially because he couldn’t hold his liquor very well. Which meant he couldn’t hold his tongue very well.

  “What the fuck are we doing about the attacks from the mainland?”

  “We are in holding pattern right now. Until Wu Lin has chance to—”

  “Fuck Wu Lin. The man’s in on it, or he’s too stupid to stop it. Either way, we can’t trust him.”

  “Please!” Vasili held up his hands in a placating manner. “We must give him chance.”

  “Why? Because he’s always been such a great guy to us?” Kozu sneered.

  “No. Because killing him would be costly. Might involve war with triads, which I don’t want.”

  “His organization doesn’t have to know,” Tengu said. “I can make it look like an accident. Like he just tripped … and fell into his own grave.”

  “Also is reason that he’s important connection for us. Nobody else can replace him right away for quantities of substances I am ordering.”

  “That’s it,” Chieko said, snapping her fingers. “There’s the real reason.”

  Vasili ignored her and kept looking at Tengu. “But, if I don’t get satisfactory answers soon, I send you on holiday to China. How’s your Cantonese?”

  “I can say ‘Fuck you’ in twelve languages, including Cantonese!” Tengu declared proudly.

  “And they say the education system is failing,” Chieko said.

  “Okay, Tengu. Keep your bags packed, just in case. And take that one soldier of yours with you. He speaks the language, yes?”

  “Lee? Yeah, native speaker, from the mainland.”

  “Alright, Chieko, what would you like to say to me that you’re normally too sober to say?”

  Chieko glowed slightly redder than normal, but she had always been able to handle her liquor well.

  “Fuck you,” she said evenly. “For making us do this. That’s what I’d say for starters.”

  “Duly noted. Anything else?”

  “Why are you having me pull back? Why the sudden ban on hosting outside our borders?”

  “Just a feeling, let’s say.”

  “About what? You’re keeping me in the same part of town as that sick fuck who’s eating people’s hearts—”

  “He’s not eating hearts, don’t spread that rumor,” Vasili interrupted.

  “—or having sex with their lungs—”

  “Not doing that either.”

  “—or whatever. And I get it, you’re careful. We’re all careful. But sometimes you’re like … overcautious.”

  “How long have we been doing these little drinking sessions of ours?” was Vasili’s reply.

  “I … I don’t know, a few years.”

  “With the same group?”

  “Except for Asuhara, yeah.”

  “Exactly. Other bosses lose people, replace people, all the time. But you’re still here. Is because I urge caution. Because making a little more cash now doesn’t mean shit if it’s stashed under your mattress in jail.”

  Chieko took another drink of shochu but remained silent.

  “Just humor me, on this, yes?” Vasili continued. “I am having bad feeling lately. Like people are moving against us. Against me. Maybe I just have bad taste from business with Matsuo in my mouth. But maybe is something more. So we pull back a little, for a time. Is temporary. All things are temporary.”

  “Alright, next question, then,” Chieko said. “Why can’t I have girls?”

  Vasili sighed. It usually came back to this with Chieko.

  “Come on, it’s a perfect fit for my business. The guys at these parties always ask for women when they’re drunk.”

  “You have the swinger parties. Just have them bring their own girls. Problem solved!”

  “Come on, these are politicians, business magnates, lobbyists we’re talking about here. These guys can’t get their own women. Not having whores is just leaving money on the table.”

  “Here we go again, you and your whores,” Kozu said.

  “Don’t talk shit about whores,” Hikaru said. “If it wasn’t for prostitutes, you’d never get laid.”

  “Hey, I can get laid anytime I want! I don’t have to pay some dirty whore to get off!”

  “Gentlemen, please!” Vasili said. “What is wrong with whores? My mother was prostitute.”

  The table fell silent. The lieutenants seemed unsure if they were being baited, and no one wanted to take that bait in case he wasn’t joking. Vasili continued after a pause.

  “No prostitutes. Again, I have good reasons for this. First, is too close to business of Yoshii and Miyagi in Kabukicho. I have enough problems with that faction without them thinking I am moving in on them.”

  “Miyagi? I thought she just produced porn,” Chieko said.

  “And owns hostess clubs, and pink clubs, and more. Is closed loop, basically.”

  “But this would be different. Private parties, girls on demand, that sort of thing.”

  “Yoshii will not see it that way. And if he asks Matsuo to lean on me, he will do this.” Vasili closed his eyes and thought for a few moments. “Ask me again in month or two. Maybe I have different answer then. But for now is no.”

  Kozu just shook his head.

  “What?” Vasili asked.

  “It’s just weak, is all. You’re afraid to look like you’re challenging Yoshii and those assholes. So you block one of your lieutenants from earning more. That actually weakens us. It’s like a, what do you call it, self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  “Is not weakness to bide your time, wait for opportunity.”

  “Sure, I guess.” Kozu didn’t sound convinced.

  Chieko shook her head. “Money on the table.”

  “Well, then, here is idea: show me some initiative,” Vasili shot back. “You cannot think of other ways to earn? Then why are you here?”

  This elicited a round of cheers from the others. Chieko’s face flushed a deeper shade of red.

  “I’ll go again!” Tengu said. Judging from his red face, he was fully drunk now. “Why do you keep pulling my guys for other assignments?”

  “Just Satoshi, and it’s just been for a few jobs.”

  “You grooming him or something?”

  “Possibly.”

  Tengu nodded as if he had been expecting that. “He’s a good man. You could do a lot worse than put Satoshi in a leadership role.”

  “You are not upset about me taking him out from under you?”

  “Oh, when it happens, I’ll rage and yell. But only because he’ll be hard to replace. That combination of loyalty and competence is rare.”

  �
�What’s this job you’ve got him on now?” Kozu asked.

  “You know how these little chats are a chance for total honesty with us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, not this topic. Is off-limits. Just something I need him to do. Next question.”

  “I’ll go,” came a quiet voice that hadn’t spoken yet.

  Everyone’s head swiveled to look at Madoka as he spoke. He was heard from so rarely it was almost a special occasion. Vasili noted that his eyes were purple and green tonight.

  “Why the fuck am I here?”

  “Because we all really enjoy your company,” Vasili said. “Find you pleasant to be around, great conversationalist.”

  Madoka smiled his wicked grin. “I freak you all the fuck out.”

  That was true.

  “Now you do,” Kozu said. “I think I liked you better back when you were a chick.”

  “Too bad,” Madoka said. “I didn’t.”

  “Please,” Vasili said to Kozu. “Is inclusive workplace environment I am aiming for here.”

  “What I’m trying to ask is: why do you have me doing what I’m doing?”

  “What exactly is it that you do again?” Tengu said. “Still not clear on that.”

  “Yeah, besides act like an androgynous weirdo?” Kozu said.

  “What’s androgynous mean?” Tengu asked him.

  Kozu snorted. “Shit, Tengu, did you even make it to high school?”

  “Briefly. Had to drop out in junior high to support my family.”

  “Are you done?” Vasili said. “Madoka is running a laboratory for me. Several laboratories, actually. He is trying to reproduce some of the substances we import from overseas.”

  “But the question is why?” Madoka said. “Even with these recent problems, it’s still cheaper and easier to import drugs than make them here.”

  “It is,” Vasili agreed. “For now. What happens when Barrier is complete? Importing gets harder. Producing drugs here becomes cheaper and safer than trying to run the barricade.”

  “You think they’ll use the Barrier to restrict trade?” Chieko said.

  Vasili just shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything yet. But it would not surprise me. Plan for the best, but prepare for the worst. Is my motto.”

  “Makes sense,” Madoka conceded.

  “Alright, Hikaru. Have not heard from you tonight. Go ahead, tell us what’s eating you.”

  Hikaru glanced up. His expression didn’t change.

  “Nothing from me, boss,” Hikaru said. “Happy as a clam.”

  “Uh-huh. Still don’t want to talk about it?”

  “Nothing to talk about.”

  “Good, glad to hear it.”

  In the back of his mind, Vasili knew he shouldn’t push the matter. The wound was too fresh and he was too drunk to handle this delicately. But with his brain swimming in vodka, Vasili couldn’t help opening that wound. He needed to know if it was infecting Hikaru.

  “So just to confirm, but you don’t resent me right now for allowing your cousin to be killed? Right? And you’re not going to act against me because of it?”

  Everyone looked at Hikaru. Hikaru, in turn, glared daggers at Vasili. Finally, he picked up his glass, finished his drink, and set it down.

  “Exactly,” he said, getting up to leave.

  After the business drinking session, he and his lieutenants had continued drinking for fun. Without realizing it, he had finished off the rest of the vodka bottle. Vasili barely remembered getting home that night. Somehow Jun must have been able to wrestle him into the car, then upstairs into his bed. He lay on top of the bed, still clothed, wishing the room would stop spinning.

  Scenes and images from long ago flashed through the haze of alcohol clouding his brain. A disassembled engine lying in a thousand pieces on his workbench at the garage. A hooded man squirming on the frozen ground illuminated only by car headlights. The frozen flowers lying on his mother’s snow-covered grave. He saw the city of Norilsk from the backseat of the sedan as Konstantin drove them to his first job. Remembered how he hadn’t even realized what was expected of him on this “job” until Iosef had pressed the gun into his hands. Iosef, smiling and winking and saying, “What? You’ve already made your bones. This should be nothing for a seasoned killer like you.”

  Then he was hurtling forward in time, until he was standing in Shibuya Crossing on his first night in Japan. Konstantin and Bogdan were next to him, all of them turning around slowly as they marveled at the sight before them in gape-mouthed awe. Soon they were gone, and he was alone in Japan.

  He remembered the nearly condemned apartment he’d lived in when he first started working for Moto’s crew. He could afford better once he started earning, but not many landlords would rent to foreigners. Especially not foreigners who couldn’t point to a legitimate employer. Especially not foreigners who had yakuza tattoos all over their body for some reason.

  He thought back to the young kid with a black eye and bruises on his skinny arms who he would see sitting on the dirty staircase of that shithole tenement. He remembered how he would shy away when Vasili went to tousle his hair. How sometimes he’d hear screaming and shouting from the apartment he lived in.

  He recalled the night he was in his apartment, drunk after a night of drinking with his crew, when he heard shouting and banging from the boy’s apartment. He walked downstairs to see a man screaming at a woman out in the hallway. He was shoving her into the wall at points as if to punctuate what he said. Vasili could see the young kid looking on wide-eyed and frightened from the doorway as his mother cried. Vasili’s pace never slowed as he approached the man in the hallway.

  “What the fuck do you—” was as far as the man snarled before Vasili’s heavy fist caught him in the chin. The man went down, spitting blood. Vasili picked him up by the scruff of his neck and slammed him into the wall. The man went down again, and stayed down this time. Then Vasili turned around and went upstairs without a word, needing to sleep.

  The kid would smile when he saw him after that, finally even worked up the courage to speak with Vasili on occasion. Vasili started asking the kid to run little errands or do odd jobs for him. The kid never talked much, but he was happy to do them.

  “If I paid you for these errands you run …,” Vasili had said one day after the kid had served as a lookout for him.

  “My stepdad would take the money and drink it away,” the kid had replied.

  “I’ll hold on to it for you, then.”

  He remembered when the kid had disappeared for a while without a trace. It took him some time to get the truth out of his terrified mother. When he did, he went to visit the kid in the hospital. The boy had a glazed look as he stared at Vasili from his bed, his arm in a sling. He barely spoke. When a nurse helped the kid to the bathroom, Vasili noticed he was limping, and he came back with a red dot on the back of his hospital gown just below his waist.

  Vasili visited the kid again a few days later. Still, the kid would barely speak. Vasili gingerly set down a bag of candy and manga comic books on the tray over his bed. Or tried to, at least. His hand was swollen to twice its size. He could barely open and close it. The kid looked up at him wide-eyed. Vasili just nodded.

  “He was supporting us. My mom doesn’t have a job.”

  “You will support them,” Vasili said. “You work for me now.”

  The kid looked at him and nodded. There was no fear in his eyes. Since then, Jun had never shown him fear, only devotion.

  It was then that he awoke with an explosive inhalation, gasping for air as the vision faded. He felt hot, still flush with alcohol, and it was making him sweat. He stared straight ahead at the wall for a few moments, then became aware of movement in the room. A dark shadow padded over to him, and set a hand gently on his shoulder as it crouched down in front of him.

  “You okay?”

  “Jun?” Vasili asked, struggling to prop himself up.

  “I didn’t want to leave you. You seemed pr
etty drunk.”

  “I’m fine, Jun. Get some sleep.”

  Jun nodded and went back to the chair he had been sitting in.

  “Jun, get some sleep in your own bed. I need you rested.”

  The shadow paused, then padded towards the door. Vasili still couldn’t see straight.

  “Jun?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re a good kid, Jun. A good kid. Always have been.”

  Jun nodded. In the light from the door crack, Vasili even saw him smile.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Satoshi stared up at the crumbling building. The exterior was covered in mold, the top wreathed in fog and smoke. He knew that the building was nowhere near as ominous as he made it out to be, but somehow it still exerted an outsized pull on him. The shadows cast by his memories made the place seem even darker than it really was.

  The building was the old tenement Masa had lived in with his dad and younger brother when he was growing up. The kids on Tsukishima had said that Masa had mentioned going home to Yotsuya. This had to be what he meant.

  It had taken Satoshi a while to find the place again. He had memorized the labyrinth of side streets and back alleys that separated the place from the train station in his youth. But it had been a long time since he actually walked them. Every step of the way, he saw Masa, just out of reach. Always up ahead, down the next alley.

  The building still seemed to be partially occupied, judging from the lights on in different rooms. The place had been a shithole slum back then. It didn’t look like time had improved it any.

  Even now, as he stared at the building, he saw Masa, Pura, and himself standing off to the side of the building in a distant memory from long ago. Young Masa was shaking his head and smiling as he fumbled with something in his hands.

  “Okay, but I’m telling you you’re going to lose,” Masa said.

  “Make it two thousand yen, then,” a young Pura said confidently.

  “You too?” Masa said to Satoshi, who nodded.

  “Okay, here we go.”