Ways to Die in Tokyo, page 23
“Dude,” says Marini, “I’ve been waiting. Where are you?”
“Public restroom at the top of Sendaizaka. You have to come get me. There are cops everywhere.”
“Hang tight, I’ll be right there.”
The Suburban arrives six minutes later, Marini’s music thumping low. Fisher bursts out of the stall, dashes out of the restroom, dives into the back seat of the SUV.
“What happened?” Marini says, giving him a startled glance before pulling away from the curb. He eases the car down a narrow street toward Shirokane. He pulls his shades down on his nose with a finger, eyes Fisher in the rearview, brow knit with consternation, the Route 69 pendant dangling there beneath his gaze. “What happened? Why are you all wet? Where’s your shirt?”
Fisher rubs his face with his hands. “Just go.”
Marini turns, glances down at Fisher’s feet, obviously looking for the bag. Not seeing it, his frown deepens for a fraction of a second.
The AC inside the SUV is blasting. Fisher takes his cap off.
Marini shoots him another glance. He takes a rag from the glovebox and holds it out to Fisher. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you without hair.”
Fisher mops his brow with the rag, ignoring the comment.
They come to the stoplight at the top of Sendaizaka Hill.
“Hank.”
“Yeah.”
“I gotta ask.”
Fisher opens his eyes. “Yeah?”
“Where’s the money?”
“Meguro Station.”
“Meguro Station,” repeats Marini.
“I put it in a coin locker.”
Marini nods. “Okay, good. That’s good. What do you say we run over there and get it and then we’ll go somewhere you can rest and we can talk. That sound all right?”
Fisher isn’t even listening at this point. He keeps seeing Mari on the floor of her kitchen, blood pumping out of the wound in her stomach. Suddenly he remembers his call with Marini last night. He’d given him Mari’s address, and Marini had promised to send someone to protect her.
I’ll get one of my cop buddies to keep an eye on her.
He stares at Marini. Had it been a lie? Anger surges up into his throat. “Where was your buddy, Pete?”
Marini frowns at him in the rearview. “Huh?”
“You said you’d send a cop to keep an eye on my friend last night,” says Fisher, clenching and unclenching his jaw. “Remember?”
Marini’s frown deepens. One hand on the steering wheel, he makes a placating gesture with the other. “Hold on.”
“She was stabbed! Where the fuck was your guy?!”
“What are you talking about?”
Fisher’s head fills with a red fog. “Someone broke into her apartment and tried to kill her,” he shouts. “You told me last night you’d make sure she was safe!”
“How do you know this?”
“I was just there!” Fisher leans forward and grabs the top of the front passenger seat. “I found her on the floor. She was bleeding out. I called 119 and…” Tears well in Fisher’s eyes.
Marini’s mouth drops open. “Jesus. Hank, I —”
“Where was your friend, Pete?” says Fisher, his voice hoarse with emotion.
Marini turns right onto Meiji-dori Boulevard, pulls over, and puts the car in Park. He turns in his seat and faces Fisher. “I called my buddy like I said I would, okay? I gave him the address, and he was supposed to keep watch outside her apartment. But there was a bank robbery this morning, okay? First one in a long time in Japan. He must have gotten pulled away. I’m sorry, Hank, I really am, brother.”
Anger and confusion churn in Fisher’s chest.
Marini shakes his head like he’s pissed. “It was Shota, Hank. It had to be.”
He’s right, Fisher thinks. It had to be Shota. His crew stabbed Terry and left him for dead and then they cut Akio’s throat. It can’t be a coincidence that Mari was attacked with a knife. The gang must have gone to Lounge O looking for information on Fisher’s whereabouts. Threatened the girls and gotten Mari’s address from one of them. Guilt pangs in Fisher’s chest.
They arrive in Meguro ten minutes later and park curbside in front of Atre 2. Marini turns in his seat. “We’re going to make sure no one else gets hurt, but you have to trust me.”
Fisher nods.
“What’s the locker number?”
Fisher tells him and gives him the combination.
Marini gets out of the car and runs off. He returns with the bag in less than five minutes, puts it in the back of the SUV, and climbs back behind the wheel.
Ten minutes later, they pull up in front of a ten-story apartment tower not far from the Tengenjibashi freeway entrance. Marini parks in one of the four parking spaces out front. He cuts the engine, grabs a blue hoodie from the passenger seat, and hands it to Fisher. “Put this on.”
Fisher does as he’s told. Marini retrieves the gym bag from the cargo area of the vehicle, and Fisher follows him into the building. The lobby has that new building smell. They take the elevator up to the tenth floor, then Marini leads Fisher down a carpeted hallway to the room farthest from the elevator. There’s a security keypad next to the door. Marini punches in the code, then opens the door and steps aside to let Fisher in.
The lights are on. At about four hundred square feet, the place isn’t much bigger than Fisher’s own apartment in Shinjuku. The difference being that this place isn’t a rat hole. It’s got a small, albeit real kitchen, recessed lighting everywhere. Beige plush carpeting in the living room, with a comfy-looking sofa and chair, big flat-screen TV on one wood-paneled wall, and a print of that famous Ansel Adams shot of El Capitan on the other. A hint of spice in the air, some kind of macho potpourri or something. It’s a nice place. The rent can’t be cheap. How can a government employee afford a place like this?
As if he’s read Fisher’s thoughts, Marini says, “Friend of mine owns the place. He lives down in Okinawa most of the year, only comes up to Tokyo every once in a while. I get to use it the rest of the time.” He takes a bottle of water from the fridge, tosses it to Fisher, and gestures toward the living room. “Make yourself comfortable. Try to relax, all right?”
Fisher’s head feels like it’s full of buzzing insects. He couldn’t relax if he wanted to. He keeps thinking of Lisa, Justin, and James, keeps telling himself that he has to get them to safety before they end up like Mari. Oh God, Mari. But beneath his twitching nerves is an undercurrent of fatigue so deep, it makes his bones ache. He needs to sit for a moment. Just for a moment so he can catch his breath and clear his head. He goes to the sofa and takes a seat, opens the bottle of water, and drains it in a few thirsty gulps. The sofa like quicksand under him. Pulling him down.
Marini’s voice from the kitchen: “I’m going to put this in the bedroom, okay?” He pats the bag under his arm.
Fisher nods, suddenly drowsy. Whatever you say, Pete. He closes his eyes. Immediately he sees Mari lying in a pool of blood, followed by the image of Lisa and the kids on the sidewalk outside their apartment tower. He opens his eyes.
No. He can’t sleep. He tries to rise, but it’s as if his legs are giving his brain the middle finger. Fuck off, we’re not going anywhere.
Sounds from the kitchen. Marini rummaging around in the fridge. Did he already take the bag into the bedroom? “You want a sandwich?” Marini says over his shoulder. “Got some roast beef.”
Fisher’s stomach growls at the mention of food. He doesn’t remember the last time he ate. He hears himself say, “Sure,” and feels the velvet fist of exhaustion close tight around him. He decides he has to trust Marini. He can’t protect Lisa and the kids without the man’s help.
But first he’ll rest here for a little longer.
Marini works on the sandwich, talking the whole time. Fisher’s brain is too addled to make sense of the words. He leans back into the sofa, floating. Eyelids heavy, but everything else light as a feather. He can’t help his family if he’s running on fumes, can he? A few minutes’ rest, that’s all he needs. When he wakes up he’ll be recharged and ready to go.
By the time Marini brings the sandwich over to him, he’s fast asleep.
Chapter Forty-Eight
From the window of his second-floor office in Kabukicho, Aikawa Yasuhiro watches three sparkly girls down on the street, dressed to the nines with perfect hair and perfect faces, walking and talking, pointing this way and that. Girls out for a night on the town.
They pass a fat foreigner in a tent of a T-shirt standing outside a 7-Eleven store, Yankees cap on his head, snow-white mustache that makes him look like an old walrus. He stares at the three girls with sad, hungry walrus eyes. His mustache moves, and the girls turn in unison, flash him a collective look of disgust, and run off.
Aikawa chuckles. He can’t blame Mr. Walrus for trying. Kabukicho is a red light district after all. He imagines it’s probably hard for foreigners to tell the whores from the good girls.
Good girls and bad girls. Touts and tourists. Hosts and whores.
Kabukicho’s got them all.
Originally a swamp called Tsunohazu, Kabukicho became a duck sanctuary in the Meiji Period (1868 to 1912), which gave way to a water purification facility in 1893, then a school for girls in 1920. Then came the war and Uncle Sam’s firebombing of Tokyo, and the area was burnt to the ground like most of the rest of the city and most of its people too. After the war, a failed plan to build a kabuki theater inspired the name that would eventually become associated with the area and a different kind of swamp. Nowadays, the place is full of bars, nightclubs, host and hostess bars. Massage parlors, strip clubs, brothels, and peep shows.
It’s also home to the offices of 120 different organized crime groups, including Aikawa’s.
His phone buzzes. It’s Hashimoto, no doubt calling to give him the latest on Hank Fisher’s movements.
“I just sent you a video,” Hashimoto says.
Aikawa puts the phone on speaker, sets it down on his desk, then settles into his ergonomic chair and opens the messaging app on his laptop. The icon for the video pops up. Aikawa clicks on it and watches with surprise and amusement as Hank Fisher runs shirtless up Sendaizaka Hill with what looks like blood all over his hands and shirt.
“What’s he doing? Is that blood?”
“I think so.”
Aikawa shakes his head, watching Fisher on the screen pumping his legs and arms as Hashimoto and Ryu trail a hundred yards behind him in their car. Incredible.
“We followed him from Meguro to an apartment building in Azabu Juban,” says Hashimoto.
Fisher reaches the top of the hill, turns left into a side street, and ducks into a tiny public restroom. The video ends. Aikawa hits replay and strokes his big chin. He feels a migraine coming on. He started getting them when he was in his teens, and it wasn’t until he was well into his thirties that he finally saw an orthodontist who told him the headaches were likely caused by his pronounced underbite. A malformation of his jaw, it could be fixed but would take several surgeries, the orthodontist had said, and even then there was no guarantee that the migraines would stop. So Aikawa decided to live with them.
He takes a bottle of Tramadol from the top drawer of his desk, shakes out a pill, and dry-swallows it. Rolls his shoulders a few times and massages the back of his neck.
Hashimoto is still talking. “He goes inside, and me and Ryu wait for him to come back out. Ten minutes go by, fifteen, twenty. We’re thinking, anytime now he’s gonna come out. Then we hear the sirens. First we don’t think nothing of it, probably another geezer kicked the bucket. But the sirens keep getting closer and closer and then we see the fire truck coming up the street, lights flashing. Thing pulls up right outside the building Fisher went in. Couple cops on bikes race up, park, and run inside with the paramedics. Me and Ryu, we’re waiting there in the car for, like, ten minutes, and then all of a sudden Fisher comes charging out all covered in blood. He takes off like a shot, then he stops, rips off his shirt, and runs again. Ryu and me, we’re tripping.”
This Hank Fisher character is something else. First, he injures Sato, one of the people he’s working for, at the meeting the other night at Club Deluxe. Aikawa was there, saw the whole thing happen. One moment Sato was standing there looking lost amid the chaos of the brawl that had broken out, and the next Fisher had thrown him on his head. According to Aikawa’s sources, the very next day Fisher was strong-armed by Aoyama Shota into stealing a gym bag full of money from one of his uncle’s stash houses. Whereupon Fisher made off with the stolen money, leaving a dead body behind.
It’s crazy. Like something out of a TV show.
What happened next, though, was even crazier. Suzuki found out his nephew was behind the robbery and put a hit out on him. A hit on his own nephew. Then, a day later, the old man dropped dead from an apparent heart attack. Emphasis on apparent, because the word on the street is that Aoyama had the old man killed in a pre-emptive strike.
Nice family.
Anyway, rumor has it that Fisher is running around with a hundred million yen, and Aikawa would very much like to relieve him of it. So when a one-armed bookie named Emoto called him two days ago, saying he’d spotted Fisher going into an Internet café in Meguro, Aikawa sent Hashimoto and Ryu out to tail him. So far, though, they’ve followed him around for the past forty-eight hours and gotten not one glimpse of the infamous bag of cash.
“What happened after he went into the bathroom?”
“Another foreigner comes rolling up in a black SUV and picks him up. We follow them back to Meguro, and they park outside the station, and the big guy gets out and runs down into the subway. And here’s the good part: Guess what he was carrying when he came back out?”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Fisher wakes with a start from a dreamless sleep, no idea where he is. He sits up. It’s nearly dark outside, fading dusky light visible through the open curtains on his left. He looks around the room: big flat-screen TV. El Capitan on a wood-paneled wall. He’s at Marini’s place. A jumble of images cycles through his brain: Mari, covered in blood; Akio’s bloody corpse; Terry with tubes going in and out of him; Brownie’s body in the blue bucket; Justin and James in the video with the chubby woman in the park.
Where’s Marini? How long has he been asleep? He springs off the sofa. “Pete?”
The bedroom door opens and Marini walks out. He smiles. “Hey, you’re up. Dude, you were out like a light.”
“What time is it?”
Marini checks his watch. “Seven thirty.”
Panic seizes Fisher. He’s lost the whole day.
“I stepped out for a few hours after lunch, and you were sawing logs,” says Marini. “Came back about four, and you were still out.” He goes to the kitchen and opens the fridge.
Heart pounding, Fisher says, “We need to go. Now.”
Marini comes into the dining room carrying the sandwich he’d made earlier for Fisher on a plate. “Go where, Hank?”
“To Lisa’s. We should go and just get them.”
Marini sets the sandwich down on the table. “You already tried to do that, remember? You think we can just waltz over there now and ring the bell and they’ll just come with us? You want to kidnap them? Is that it?”
Fisher remembers the look of anger on Lisa’s face when he grabbed her wrist and tried to get her to watch the videos Shota sent him: Asshole! Marini is right. Short of kidnapping them, there’s no way to get Lisa and the twins to safety. “I don’t know,” he says, his voice clipped with frustration, “but we have to do something.”
Marini says, “Don’t worry, dude. I have an idea.” He gestures at the sandwich. “Why don’t you get some food in you first; then we can talk.”
Fisher looks at the sandwich. Suddenly he’s ravenous. He grabs it and devours it, eating so fast, he barely tastes it.
Marini watches him with a bemused expression.
Swallowing the last bite of the sandwich, Fisher looks at Marini, expectant, fully awake now, resuscitated by the rest and the infusion of calories.
The sound of a toilet flushing. A faucet running.
Fear slams into Fisher like a battering ram. He shoots a glance at Marini as he pops up out of his chair. He fucking knew it, he knew Marini was going to double-cross him. Fisher jerks his head toward the source of the noise in time to see a door open and a man emerge from the bathroom. He’s tall and wiry. Grizzled with a salt-and-pepper buzz cut, hooded eyes, and a mustache over a thin line of a mouth. He’s wearing a white T-shirt under a thin blue blazer and faded jeans. Fisher glances toward the door, gets ready to run for it.
“Hank!” says Marini. “Chill!”
Synapses firing all at once, Fisher’s eyes flick back and forth between the grizzled man and Marini. “What the fuck is this?”
The grizzled man stares at him, expressionless, perfectly still.
Marini says, “This is Nitta-san. He’s a friend.”
A friend? Fisher shakes his head. If this guy is a friend, why didn’t Marini tell him about him earlier? “Nuh uh. No way.”
Marini widens his eyes in a pacifying expression and motions toward the dining table. “Hank, sit.” His tone calm, soothing.
“Who is he?” says Fisher.
Nitta reaches inside his blazer and produces a leather wallet, flips it open, and shows Fisher a badge.
Oh fuck.
Fisher is suddenly dizzy with fight-or-flight. He looks back and forth between Marini and the cop. There’s nowhere to go. It’s as though he’s unwittingly stepped into one of those movie booby traps where you’re walking along in the forest and suddenly you’re yanked off your feet and hanging upside down from a tree. His mouth fills with a bitter taste. Marini’s betrayed him after all. How could he be so stupid? He grimaces and looks at the cop. “I didn’t kill anyone.” Marini and Nitta look at each other, then back at Fisher.
