Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge - eARC (16 page)

As she left I stood up and followed her out.

Either I or one of the other members of the team had been sitting in Saury for the last week. And most of the rest of the team was outside in the van waiting. As I exited the noodle shop they started to unload. The Jorogumo, if that was what she was, had turned in the opposite direction. That was okay. Jesse and Phil were sitting in Jesse’s car up that way. They got out and started walking towards her as I came up from behind. They were ostentatiously looking at a picture in Jesse’s hand.

The Jorogumo spotted them, they were being obvious, and turned into the alleyway next to Saury. I sped up and trotted around the corner, hand going under my windbreaker. As I turned the corner I drew my 1911 and started screwing the silencer on it. The Jorogumo was running now. I didn’t even bother to tell her to stop. I just shot her through the spine.

If she was actually a human, that was going to cause issues.

She dropped the bag and started limping, a pretty sure sign that I was dealing with a supernatural creature. The shot had gone squarely through her lumbar vertebrae. She shouldn’t have been able to walk at all. The bag spilled cash all over the alleyway and the stuff splurting from the wound wasn’t blood. It was a thick, green, ichor.

I trotted after her, firing several more rounds, until the Jorogumo was on the ground.

I reloaded as I approached, the rest of the team closing in on my position. The Jorogumo rolled over on her back and looked up at me with wide, helpless, pretty anime eyes.

“Please, help me,” she said, holding out her hand.

“Change,” I said, pointing the silenced pistol at her head.

Some people were gathering at the end of the alleyway, wondering what all the men with guns were doing. Someone screamed when they saw the wounded girl on the ground and started shouting for the police.

“I don’t know what you mean,” the Jorogumo said.

“A human female with seven rounds of .45 in her would be dead. Change.”

The thing hissed at me then rippled. It wasn’t the change of a werewolf, there was no writhing or bones cracking, it was just dropping the illusion. Suddenly I was looking at a five foot tall green spider.

“You sent a message,” I said in Japanese, focusing carefully on its neural center at the top of the abdomen. “Now we’re sending one back.”

I pumped it full of rounds until it stopped twitching.

“That’s for Kiyo,” I said, reloading. “He was my friend.”

* * *

“You had to do it right here in front of God and everybody?” the MCB agent asked. It was the same agent who had dismissed the idea of the killer being a Jorogumo.

“Jorogumo,” I said, pointing at the body. “One each.”

Jorogumo are naturally spider things and whatever they look like before they’re kill they revert to spider things on death. There was no need for a blood analysis. Jorogumo.

“Kiyoshi was a message from the new yakuza Isao,” I said.

“The what?” the MCB agent said.

“Try to work with me here. Yakuza, Japanese org crime…”

“I know what yakuza are,” the agent snapped.

“Isao, Laudable Man, big boss for a territory. There’s a new one in town the last few months. Arata Inoue. Inoue like the Senator. No relation. I hope. He’s been proving who’s boss. And he was using a Jorogumo to do it.”

“That’s a pretty serious accusation,” his partner put in.

“Are you guys seriously going to start trotting out rights of the accused at
this
point?” I asked, pointing to the body and the bag of currency. “You really think the Jorogumo picked up a bag of cash from Naoki-sama ’cause he liked her outfit?”

“She could have been shaking him down herself,” Agent One said.

“In which case she would have been afoul of the yakuza. Try to work with this thing called logic for a second. Last but not least,” I continued, pulling out the pictures.

“Don’t ask where these came from and I won’t have to lie. This is a picture of Inoue,” I said, flipping through the pictures I’d gotten from Snyder. “This is a picture of Inoue with his girlfriend. That’s the picture of the girlfriend we used to spot
this
Jorogumo. She kept the same guise so they’d know who to hand the bento box to. Cogito ergo sum, Inoue has been hanging out for the last few years with a Jorogumo. The Japanese businesses lately have been terrified of something going on with the yakuza. Japanese are in general terrified of the supernatural. They know damned well it exists. The reason they’re terrified is this Jorogumo at our feet.

“Arata Inoue killed Kiyoshi Moto using the Jorogumo which means he’s in violation of Federal Unearthly Code 68.158.6 Alpha. Sentence is death, no appeal. And there’s a PUFF line item.”

“If so, we’ll take it from here,” Agent One said.

“The hell you will,” I replied. “Again, PUFF line item. You guys just do clean-up.”

“You’re not going to get into a fire-fight with the yakuza on my watch,” Agent One said. “We’ll turn this over to OrgCrime.”

“You can’t,” Doctor Nelson said as he wandered over from the crime scene. “What are you going to tell them? That a mystical Japanese spider-woman was being used as a hit-person by the yakuza?”

The agent for just a moment had the same look on his face as when I’d handed my mom the JROTC paperwork.

Stroke, stroke, stroke…!

“Special Agent,” I said, placatingly. “We’ll keep this discreet. We’ll keep this quiet. We’ll get the job done. No more problems for you.”

“Try not to do it right off a crowded street at lunchtime next time,” Agent Two said.

“Guaranteed.”

* * *

“So you want to kill a yakuza boss?” Doctor Joan said, taking off her glasses and rubbing her face.

“Whack, terminate with prejudice, however you’d like to put it,” I said. “The PUFF on a Jorogumo is fifty grand. Sixty for the human who had her in employ. The real problem is we have to not just kill him, but kill him in a certain way.”

“That doesn’t follow,” Doctor Lucius said. “What do you mean?”

“It’s cultural,” I said with a sigh. “If we just mow him down on a street corner, besides pissing off the MCB it will piss off the yakuza. We have to communicate, for them, very directly. It is, among other things, a matter of territories. From the yakuza standpoint, territory is not about land, it’s about spheres of influence. The Tong are the org crime for the Chinese. In this area, biker gangs and drug gangs handle the gaijin like us. The yakuza are the OrgCrime for the Japanese.

“But our sphere of influence is the supernatural. From their cultural perspective, MHI aren’t cops. We’re ronin, a mob vaguely affiliated with the government, with a specific sphere of influence. What we have to say to them, in terms they understand, is that not only did Arata Inoue break
their
regulations against use of the supernatural but he intruded on
our
sphere of influence. So we can’t just blow him up when his car starts. We’re going to have to secure him and kill him in a most Japanese fashion.”

“Kidnap him and, what, make him commit hari-kari?” Jesse asked.

“The correct term is seppuku. And, no, just cut his head off. All the way, by the way. Make it roll on the floor.”

“As opposed to part of the way?” Doctor Lucius asked.

“As opposed to part way. When an individual commits seppuku, they are wound tight in a sheet so they won’t sprawl and a second stands by with a sword. After they have disemboweled themselves with a properly prepared tanto, the second cuts their head down to the skin of the lower neck. Done properly the head simply drops into their lap, still attached to their body. To cut a head off cleanly, to make it roll, is an insulting way to die.”

“Isn’t that adding insult to injury?” Doctor Joan asked. “Killing him in an insulting way?”

“Yes,” I said. “But by intruding on our turf, their guy insulted
us
. We have to insult him back or we’re just punks in their eyes. It would be an insult to them if he hadn’t started it. As it is, it’s simply an insult to him.”

“You’re sure you understand the cultural implications?” Doctor Lucius asked.

“Perfectly,” I said, hoping I understood the cultural implications. The alternative was picking a fight with the yakuza. We had enough enemies. “The tough part is going to be capturing him rather than killing him.”

“He’s probably got bodyguards,” Louis said.

“Breaks of the game. From the POV of the yakuza, that’s understandable. From the POV of the local authorities, this is never going to happen ’cause it’s an MCB matter. Main thing we want to avoid, from a pure moral perspective, is innocent bystanders.”

The Doctors Nelson exchanged a glance. They were great with hunting monsters, but people were a different matter.

“This is one PUFF bounty I’m going to have to run past Earl first,” Lucius said.

* * *

Arata Inoue generally had very good habits for a gangster. His home and offices were well guarded and he always travelled with at least one body-guard and a driver. He generally varied his routine. The exception to that was Friday night. Friday night he always visited his favorite underground club. The club was so extremely Japanese, gaijin need not apply. He entered through the back. There were guards on the back and he had a bodyguard and given his background Inoue wasn’t going to be a slouch. But that was the weak point.

The sole issue was that he didn’t arrive at a regular time. He’d generally leave his offices around 2000 to go the club. But the times varied from 1700 to 2300. If he left “early” on Friday, 1700, he generally went somewhere for dinner before going to the club.

We set a watch on his office and waited. The club was in the Salmon Bay warehouse district. From the exterior, it looked like nothing but a warehouse. The cars parked around it should have been a clue as to its real nature. According to the org-crime file I’d read, they knew it was a center for prostitution and gambling but they’d never had enough probable cause for a search warrant.

We’re MHI. Our probable cause had just been cremated and the ashes buried in Potter’s Field. Well, most of it.

“You sure you’re up to this?” Doctor Joan asked for the umpteenth time.

“Oh, yeah.” There would be at least two guaranteed shooters and the boss. My target was the bodyguard. Louis had the driver. Jesse would watch one door and Phil the other. Brad was cradling an M-79 loaded with a bean-bag round. He’d used the grenade launcher in Vietnam and was a sure hand with it. Doctor Joan was back-up shooter and get-away driver.

Each of us had a secondary target. Louis, for example, was also packing an M-79 although his was slung. The trail car, which wasn’t trailing the gangster but headed our way by another route, had Doc Lucius and Timmy packing more heat. If worse came to worse and we couldn’t do “discreet,” we would have to bail. We couldn’t endanger bystanders, and legally if they’re not PUFF applicable our private company just can’t go around shooting people.

“Just try to make sure he doesn’t make it through the door,” Doctor Joan said as the signal flashed. The target was entering the basket. She started the van. “And try not to get killed yourselves.”

The timing was tricky. We had to get there as he was exiting the car. If he was well out of the car, he’d be into the club like a shot and we couldn’t go after him. Civilian casualties would be guaranteed. If we got there when he was still in the car, the car would drive away and we’d be in a car chase trying to follow a souped-up Acura in a Ford Econoline.

Our timing was good enough. He was out of the car but stopped well away from the door to the club when we rolled up. The van doors opened, we rushed out, and all hell broke loose.

The bodyguard, who was standing behind his boss covering his back, got nailed in the teeth with a bean bag. Inoue pulled out a Sig and fired twice, missing me with both shots. Say what you will about the yakuza, they don’t spend nearly enough time on the range.

I shot him in the kneecap as Brad came around the vehicle. Another beanbag round and the local yakuza Laudable Man was tagged and bagged.

The snatch and grab was over in seconds. We were gone before the first person came running out of the club. A couple of shots were fired in our direction but we were history.

* * *

On the way out I called a certain number.

“Hello?”

The voice was pure American. No wonder the yakuza bosses didn’t trust this guy.

“We have a matter to discuss,” I said in Japanese. “Be at warehouse nineteen in the Mason Industries Park in three hours. Come alone.”

“Who is this?” Michael Oshiro asked.

“I think that will become obvious in just a moment,” I said in English with a slight southern accent. “When your phone starts ringing off the hook.”

* * *

When Michael Oshiro, wearing a very nice suit, arrived, alone, at Warehouse Nineteen, he was met by two people in ski masks who politely led him into the warehouse.

The Mason Industries Park had been in receivership for years. Mason Industries had declared bankruptcy in large part because of the Environmental Protection Agency having conniption fits over all the toxic waste scattered around the property. Given that it was a Superfund site which had never gotten the funding for cleanup, it was going to sit there for a long time.

In the middle of the warehouse Arata Inoue was kneeling under a Coleman lantern. His hands and feet were secured with plastic handcuffs and rigger tape was over his mouth. The guy had a mouth on him.

I was standing next to him, wearing a suit about as nice as Mr. Oshiro’s, with Sword of Mourning sheathed in my hand. No ski mask. This had been my idea, and I was the one who was supposed to understand the cultural issues, so Earl had said this was my party. It turned out my boss was surprisingly familiar with Japanese organized crime.

“Good morning, Mr. Oshiro,” I said in Japanese. “Please come in. We mean you no harm.”

I emphasized the “you.”

“There will be repercussions for this insult,” Mr. Oshiro said, politely.

“The insult is already given.” I’d managed to get MCB to let me keep the head of the Jorogumo. I removed it from a box at my feet and held it up. “This is an insult to both my clan and the clan of Agama-kai. The Old Fathers perhaps are slightly unknowledgeable in certain areas. There may be a belief that in the United States, with our silly laws and our rights and loopholes that indulge the needs of the guilty, certain actions are acceptable.”