Death in the Face

by Craig McDonald

  Hector decided to try and keep the man talking a bit while he raced to figure some way out of this mess—before he was summarily escorted out and tossed into a stinking fumarole by one of the giants looming either side of him.

  “You can’t really think possessing this damned weapon can truly change the political fortunes of Japan,” Hector said. “This threat of starving the West is certainly bad enough, but we still have the big bomb—probably many hundreds if not thousands of them, by now. We could make your whole adopted country look like Nagasaki or Hiroshima in just a few terrible minutes. And, anyway, the Japanese government is still somewhat held in check by American interests. I can’t imagine you and your Black Dragon cult have the skills or the scientific knowledge to bring this Flea Bomb off on your own. That prospect seems to me totally out of the range of possibility.”

  Béla Herczog laughed and drank more of his Japanese whiskey. He picked up the bundle of Hector’s clothes and tossed them at the novelist.

  Winching, Hector gingerly caught his clothes, hoping that if the cigarette pack given him by the quartermaster Burton was still in his suit pocket it would survive such reckless handling—would weather concussion from his catch.

  “Get dressed, Mr. Lassiter,” Herczog ordered.

  As Hector complied, the man said, “As you so often claim to be true of yourself, I’m not really much of a political animal, Mr. Lassiter. Politics are ephemeral. While I love Japan and find its aesthetics and appetites most closely conform to my own, I am, at base, a realist. Like you, I have concluded Japan will never be an imperial force, not like in the old days, not ever again. Similarly, I concede that I have more years behind than ahead of me, and so I will enjoy my time here, endeavoring as I can to experience the Japan I formerly loved while giving a wide berth to the Westernized abomination much of this country has become and will further continue to under your country’s presently indirect but lamentable and unavoidable stewardship.”

  Hector tucked his shirt into his pants, then zipped up and fastened his belt. He noticed for the first time his explosive cigarette pack, along with his recorder-radio, sat on the table next to the bottle of Satori whiskey. They were covered by his clothes, originally.

  Hector looked around frowning—his shoes were nowhere to be seen. Conforming to Japanese tradition, he expected they must be awaiting him by some door through which he was expected to make final passage on the way to his execution.

  Hector slowly picked up his sports jacket, subtly patting pockets—only his comb, two lighters and room key and fob remained in its pockets. Pretty thin pickings in terms of potential weapons.

  Staring out at the rain, showing Hector his back, Herczog said, “For me, those who covet the Flea Bomb for its perceived political power—Miss Branch representing a fine example of this delusional type—are merely useful tools. I don’t want the bomb’s schematics for political reasons, nor for games of power. Rather, I see in it profit potential on an unprecedented scale. Call me the ultimate capitalist. I will sell this thing not just to the highest bidder, but to any qualifying bidder. I will do that, over and over.”

  A terrible smile tugged at the corners of the near-lipless mouth. “And after all, how much of a threat can the thing pose if same as everyone on earth has possession of the weapon? Isn’t that the very underpinning of the terrible stalemate that allows those in America and Russia to sleep at night with all of those bombs you referenced proliferating on either side of your Cold War? I speak of course of this terrible balancing act of annihilation so chillingly labeled ‘mutually assured destruction’.”

  The man sniffed and contemplated his cocktail tumbler clutched in his single, functional hand. He said softly, “They declare money as the root of all the evil in this troubled world. Apparently, so is the concept of exclusivity. No, Mr. Lassiter, I think we can agree the world will actually be demonstrably better for my profit pursuit of the Flea Bomb. It’s the thing held in jealous exclusivity that poses the most dire threat to the innocent—if any such creatures really still exist in this world anymore. After all, your own glorious democracy no sooner developed the atom bomb than it felt immediately impelled to use the monstrosity, not just once, but twice, and in murderously short order—murder on an unprecedented and instantaneous scale.”

  Hector had nearly finished dressing. He fastened his Rolex and slipped his hands into his pants pockets, trying to act nonchalant—unafraid. He said, “You know full well that when even these pro-Japanese converts like Haven Branch learn how you’ve played them, this little hideaway of yours will very likely become your tomb, yes? Everyone is apt to turn on you, to seek your extermination.”

  A harsh laugh. He said, “That’s the pulp fiction writer in you speaking, Lassiter. That’s the fantasist with the too big and crazy imagination. All blood and thunder and overgrown-adolescent nonsense. My God, these silly books you write, Mr. Lassiter. . .? At least your friend Fleming has the ability to deny his untoward fantasies when called upon them by critics. He can say Bond is just a mere fiction and escapist fare. But how to defend or deflect such criticism when you actually use yourself as a character in your own novels, as you have done these last years? The man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives, indeed. This sad ego projection of yours named Hector Lassiter who moves like some aging lothario and bon vivant through your fictional world, cosseting his appetites and animal passions with liquor, expensive meals and too young women—what a sad and clumsy ego projection he is, indeed. What embarrassingly naked wish-fulfillment.”

  The one-armed man poured himself yet another drink. Clearly, he was an alcoholic, Hector decided, bent on getting there and soon, as a recovering alcoholic friend had once put it in describing that numbed, elusive state that all problem drinkers chase like opium smokers chase the dragon.

  Herczog said, “I hope you appreciate that I at least gave you a chance to go out like that man with his low drives and animal passions that you write so much and so nakedly about. I let you have a last bit of time as a man with that delectable young flower before sending you to your death, as I will do now. If nothing else, exploiting your lust made it that much easier to strip you, quite literally, of your defenses. Now, I’m really quite finished with you, Mr. Lassiter. Allow me therefore to at last formally introduce your attendants.”

  Smiling and bowing at his outsized minions, Herczog said, “Please to meet Mr. Amon Wada and Mr. Chikao Kida. Mr. Wada and Mr. Kida are retired Sumo as you’ll already have deduced from their splendidly imposing physiques. Mr. Wada, particularly, was once a quite famous Rikishi—a Sumo wrestler. Now his skills are wholly mine. You see, Mr. Lassiter, though venerated and honored while in public life and competition, the prospects for such wrestlers once they leave the ring are quite bleak indeed. Their lifestyles and diets drastically shorten their life spans. Their old age is usually one riddled by myriad health concerns, by arthritic aches and paralyzing pain before they finally succumb to some fatal attack—usually of the heart—and well in advance of their non-sumo Japanese peers.”

  Hector could easily believe that last: He estimated Mr. Wada went two-hundred and seventy pounds, easily. Mr. Kida, who still wore a topknot, seemed closer to three-hundred pounds. Both men seemed ready to explode out of their matching black suits and even their black wingtip dress shoes.

  Herczog continued, “So these former champions, happily for us all, are now devoted to my service and well-compensated for little missions like the one I have called them here to perform for me tonight.”

  Béla Herczog smiled at his Sumo wrestlers and said, “Mr. Wada, Mr. Kida, you will escort Mr. Lassiter on a one-way visit to our private nocturnal Crocodile Hell. Please do so right now. Mr. Lassiter has made it clear he is no longer of any use to me, as I’ve argued. He is, in fact, a threat to me, as I have also made clear this evening. This is a justifiable act on my part, so if Mr. Lassiter resists before you get him there, shoot him in the head and complete his journey to that particular Hell even if it m
eans you’re simply transporting his corpse. Is this all understood? I much prefer him to meet his death with eyes wide open—deep down, as a writer, I think even he might appreciate that gesture—but if it’s his lifeless body you feed to the crocodiles, that will be his decision, ultimately.”

  5 / Suitcases with Teeth

  The last of the light was quickly failing as they reached Oniyama Jigoku—a particularly special “Hell” that Tiger had off-handedly remarked was noted for more than the usual stinking sulfurous pools of varying hues that drew all the tourists, foreign and domestic, to Beppu.

  This particular “Hell,” the Japanese journalist had confided, was also noted for using its extremely warm waters to facilitate the breeding of more than eighty different variations of crocodile—some of those species among the largest and most fearsome in the world.

  Dusk now fallen, the Sumo wrestlers keyed themselves into the empty park with a chilling familiarity bordering on the routine: The tourists were long gone and there wasn’t even a security guard on duty to patrol the place for the evening.

  Warily walking ahead of Mr. Wada and Mr. Kida, Hector had to assume Béla Herczog had paid well for his prideful, after-hours run of this horrid place—it was a kind of paid-for killing ground. The two massive former athletes clearly felt fully assured that this was their own private Hell, so to speak—their nocturnal devil’s playground.

  According to Tiger, rumor also had it the odd, suicidal Japanese man or woman would occasionally break into the park after hours to hurl themselves into the crocodile pools.

  They were swiftly and wholly devoured soon upon breaking the water’s surface, Tiger said. No evidence was left by morning to appall or to frighten the next day’s visitors—not a scrap of flesh or clothing would be found.

  Running escape and attack scenarios through his feverish mind, trying to think of some viable way out of his seemingly hopeless situation, Hector found himself absently reaching into his pocket for his Zippo and Pall Malls to calm his nerves—to focus his mind through familiar routine and sorry muscle memory.

  But he inadvertently grabbed hold of the wrong cigarettes—instead pulling out the explosive pack of supposed Japanese smokes given him so many days ago by the strange little armaments quartermaster, Alec Burton, and which Hector had asked for before being escorted out of Herczog’s palace. Béla Herczog had agreed that a condemned man certainly deserved a last smoke or two and handed the pack over.

  A grunt followed as Hector’s hand dipped into his coat, then there was a vise like grip on his arm, just below the elbow. Mr. Wada confiscated the cigarette pack from Hector. “You won’t need that, but I might—smoking suppresses the appetite, and I’m still trying to shed some weight. I have a child on the way. I’d like to see him grow up. And, anyway, in less than a minute, you surely won’t need anything, not ever again, you know.”

  The Sumo wrestler again had said all that in far better English than Hector had once anticipated or had any reason to expect to hear. Despite that fact, the ride over had been one spent in an eerie silence, jammed up tight against Mr. Kida in the backseat of a claustrophobic, two-door Toyota Publica.

  With the two Sumo wrestlers packed inside along with six-two Hector, the tiny car had seemed more than a little like some overstuffed child’s toy.

  Hector gestured at the cigarette pack and said rather too desperately, he knew, “Your boss felt differently. Please let me smoke.”

  The Sumo shook his head and said, “He is him and I am me. I am here now and he will never know of any of this.”

  The ex-Sumo roughly thrust the confiscated cigarette packet into own his right suit coat pocket. At first Hector winced, fearing the man might break the fragile vials inside with his rough handling. But nothing like that happened and Hector dejectedly re-pocketed his Zippo.

  That other cigarette lighter—the one that was effectively a lethal, single-use torch—was still there in the same pocket, but it struck Hector as a fruitless weapon measured against these two equally lethal wrestlers.

  In a drizzling cold rain, they approached the statue of a huge, nearly naked red devil with yellow horns and a protuberant yellow belly button. The demonic idol was perched atop a squat stone by an iron gate.

  From behind that gate, more curtains of steam rose toward the moon.

  Hector could hear commotion in the water to the accompaniment of gulping reptilian roars and vibrato belches, some of which sounded more than a little like the gunning of motorcycle engines. Hector assumed it was the overlapping sound of all of the crocodiles, calling out in the night.

  From stands of calmer reeds and weeds, the more soothing sound of crickets trilled.

  Mr. Wada opened the squeaking, rusting gate with another skeleton key and Mr. Kida motioned with a gun that Hector should lead the way along a narrow, wooden boardwalk opening on to similar rickety walkways.

  The other pathways separated—or in a couple of cases, actually crossed over—neighboring, steaming hot pools. Each of the concrete-walled water basins below abounded with now strangely motionless white-gray crocodiles. Hector estimated that a few of the huge reptiles would measure more than fifteen feet long, nose tip to tail.

  Hector tried to recall all that he knew about crocodiles. There had been alligators in Florida proper, of course, but dwelling in Key West as he had for so many years in the 1920s and ’30s, Hector rarely encountered even those predators.

  As he surveyed these lazing in the moonlight, watching the men with lustful intent, Hector found himself irresistibly drawn to the giant crocs’ yellow-grey eyes with their vertical slit pupils, almost evoking the eyes of felines. Then he remembered that, yes, crocodiles indeed preferred to hunt by night. And now along had come Hector Lassiter, set to be offered up to the beasts in this twilight time when they were at their most feral.

  Mr. Wada gestured at one of the biggest of the reptiles and said, “That one is a saltwater crocodile. They are the biggest and meanest of the breed, and I mean anywhere in the world, man. They eat anything they can reach, even other smaller crocodiles. So I recommend you try to land close to one of them—then put your head close to its mouth. That will end it fast for you. Otherwise, they like to get you by the leg or by an arm, then they jerk you under. They roll over and over and can tear off your arms and legs just by twisting them clean off, one at a time, before they go for the rest of your body.”

  Mr. Wada grinned, showing two gold, front teeth.

  Hector looked again at the giant, armored crocs—resembling nothing so much as dinosaurs as they lazed languidly in their steaming pools, motionless save for the slithering, tracking motion of their dead, cats’ eyes that followed the three men—the three figures they surely regarded as food, but currently frustratingly out of reach.

  Losing hope, Hector thought, These are what are going to finally kill me, these goddamned, vile suitcases with teeth.

  Wetting his lips—his mouth was now very dry, though his palms and the rest of his body were quite damp—Hector said, again rather desperately to his own ears, “Whatever that man you work for is paying you, I can promise my government will double it. Let me leave here, and I’ll see that you’re well compensated and given protection. I can promise you my government will—”

  Another short and harsh chuckle that brought him up short. Mr. Wada said, “All you can promise me talking that way is a quick death. Please just be quiet now, Lassiter. After all, you’re already shini-tai. You just don’t seem to admit it.”

  “I don’t speak your language,” Hector said bitterly. “And, anyway, why do you speak such good English?”

  “In wrestling terms, shini-tai means you’re already a dead body,” Mr. Kida explained.

  So, the other spoke English, too. Mr. Kida added, “And we speak English so well because we were born in Hawaii.”

  “Then we’re fellow Americans,” Hector said. “You should be on my side, per force.”

  Mr. Wada scowled at that patriotic plea and motioned again for He
ctor to lead the way along a particularly rickety, arching wooden bridge that spanned the largest of the steaming pools teeming with crocodiles. The wooden planks groaned under the weight of the Sumo.

  Hector guessed this particular crossways must be used by tour guides or the like to feed or perhaps to rouse the crocodiles to some activity for the sake of entertaining daytime visitors. Either way, it was clear to Hector this was meant to be his terrible destination. His time was at last up.

  Nearly devoid of last scraps of hope, the novelist slowed, then half-turned to measure distances. He visualized himself successfully executing the move he had in mind, then Hector again drew back a clenched fist as if to telegraph a punch.

  Mr. Wada merely laughed and raised a beefy arm to block any ineffectual blow that Hector might hurl his way.

  Instead, Hector lashed out with his left foot, striking the big sumo wrestler in the side. He was aiming for the pocket where the explosive pack of cigarettes now nested.

  Impact—the soft but telltale sound of tinkling glass. Deadly chemicals were already mixing.

  Mr. Wada grunted, then clutched unsuccessfully at Hector’s ankle.

  But Hector was already moving as swiftly as he could away from the Sumo—running headlong toward what appeared to be a virtual dead-end, but really, in the moment, Hector was simply intent upon putting as much distance as he could between himself and the still-startled ex-wrestlers.

  As Burton the quartermaster had warned, the actual interval between the impact of Hector’s kick and the resulting explosion was appallingly scant.

  A hot rushing gust of air robbed Hector’s lungs of oxygen, then slammed him down hard on the wooden planks and set his ears to ringing.

  As he watched, Mr. Wada seemed for a moment to evaporate or even to disappear into the rising steam, but that steam was now a livid pink.

  Mr. Kida—standing immediately behind his vaporizing comrade—let out a short, harsh scream, then seemed to actually shrink in stature.