Non-Stop Till Tokyo (17 page)

“Keep it calm and stay in Dutch,” I warned her. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, fantastic. What do you think?”

“I think we’ve all been royally screwed by the bitch-queen. Are you still working at the bar?”

“Just about. I’m getting out soon, though, they’re pissing me right off. Where are you?”

“Arse end of nowhere. I got chased out of town, the family have nearly caught me twice. With guns.”

“No way. Oh, God, this is really bad. What happened? Did you have anything to do—”

“No, I did not. It was the bitch, Miss Selfish, you know who I mean. She set me up to confuse things.”

“But the, you know, the people are after you too.”

“They’re easily confused,” I snapped. “Did you hear about my flatmate?”

“Nor—”

“No names! Yes, her. She’s in hospital. Brain damage.”

“Min—the shortarse said she got beaten up,” said Sonja softly. “I didn’t realise it was so bad. Those sons of bitches.”

“Yeah, well, they’re still threatening her. And the rest of us. Sonja, I need some help. Nothing to get you in trouble, but there might be a way out of this mess, and I need a hand to find it. Are you on?”

“You? How? Me? For what?” Sonja sounded bewildered, but there was a spark of interest there. I’d bailed her out enough times to know that she had no fear, and very little sense of danger.

“I need inside information,” I told her. “Plus I need someone who knows—ah—you know, the place where all the foreigners hang out.”

“What is this no-names shit?”

“Your phone might be tapped,” I said, feeling ridiculous. “No, seriously. Look, just take my word for it, okay?”

“Whatever.” Sonja stifled a yawn. “What do you want me to do?”

“Tell me about the others, for a start. Is, ah, Round-Faced Girl okay?”

“No. She’s got herself hooked up with one of the family, and he’s slapping her about.” Sonja’s voice tightened with anger. “Some fucker she knew from somewhere else. Apparently he made a pass at her one time and she knocked him back, and it looks like he’s been holding a grudge. She’s scared to death. Zombie eyes. Remember Kimiko?”

I remembered. She’d been a sweet, quiet girl who flinched at sudden movements and never made eye contact. She hid the bruises well, but we all knew. Eventually, Minachan and I found the addresses of some women’s refuges and tried to talk to her. Kimiko bowed repeatedly and thanked us in a voice rendered almost inaudible by humiliation, and never came back to the bar. One of Nature’s victims, Minachan had said.

Minachan. “How’s Very Small Girl?” I asked.

“Very pissed off. Been waiting to hear from you. I wouldn’t say anything to the others. They’d do anything to get the hell out of this, and I don’t blame them. And don’t trust, you know, Mummy, either.”

“I don’t plan to trust anyone,” I said. “Can you come and meet me tonight? Keep it quiet and don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

“Okay. Where
am
I going?”

“You remember that place we went a couple of times, and we had teriyaki mackerel and there was a long grey hair on the plate?”

“Euw. Yeah, I know, okay. When?”

“Tonight, call it seven? If you can get away without being followed.”

“What am I, James Bond? Nobody’s following me, nobody gives a fuck.” She snarled. “I tell you what, Miss Selfish did the right thing stoving one of the bastards’ heads in.”

“If she hadn’t landed us all in the shit, I’d agree with you.”

Chanko raised a brow at me when I ended the call. “What was that, Swedish?”

“Dutch. I was talking to Sonja from the bar, and if the yaks have anyone who can speak Dutch, I’ll be impressed. I arranged to meet her tonight, that bar in Ekoda.”

“What?”

“She says they aren’t being followed. And I’ve had a few ideas about how we go about finding the boyfriend.”

“Hang on. You already got stitched up by your mama-san and another girl, remember?”

“Sonja’s different. For a start, she’s got a European passport, she can get a long way away without needing a visa. For another thing, she’s never done what she’s told, or anything in her own best interest, in her whole life.”

“Well, that puts my mind at rest.”

I glowered at him.

“Okay, assuming she doesn’t sell you out to the yaks, you think it’s a good idea to drag her into this?”

I winced at that but held firm. “Look, she’s in it already. She can run more easily than the others. And, mostly, she knows Roppongi like the back of her hand.” I never went to the gaijin ghetto if I could help it—absurd prices for the worst food and service in Tokyo. But its febrile neon multinational craziness was Sonja’s spiritual home. “If Kelly’s been around Roppongi with this alleged boyfriend, we’ll find out. If we can find him, we might have a chance at finding this bloody bag.”

I called Yukie next. Her phone was switched off, which might have been because she was asleep, except I’d never known her to voluntarily disengage from communications before.

“Hi, Yukie-chan,” I told her voicemail. “I just wanted to say goodbye. I found this guy, he’s kind of nice, a big Hawaiian. He’s taking me to his home, which is…I guess it’s really good for me, but I wish it hadn’t ended like this. I suppose we won’t see each other again, because I’m not coming back, I’m too scared, and it’s not fair because I didn’t have anything to do with all this. I hope things are better for you soon, honey. I wish things were different, but…I’m sorry. Look, the boat’s going to leave soon, I have to go. Take care.
Sayonara
.” A permanent goodbye.

“Little tear in my eye there,” said Chanko when I hung up. “So I don’t guess you trust her?”

“Sonja said she’s being slapped around by that yakuza. She sounded spaced when I spoke to her before. Maybe you were right, she did tip him off. ‘Hiroyuki-san says’,” I mimicked sourly.

“Mmph,” he said, and then, “Samoan.”

“What is?”

“Me. Not Hawaiian.”

“Oh, okay, sorry. Though I mostly said Hawaiian because then someone might think we’re heading for Okinawa.”

“Devious.”

“From now on, it’s devious all the way.”

We hit Tokyo well before the evening rush, and made it through the winding, narrow streets relatively quickly. Chanko kept up a muttered running commentary of annoyance as he mounted pavements and squeezed by stallfronts.

“You should get a smaller car,” I told him.

“Not mine. We gotta ditch it in Kotake-cho, actually.”

“It was borrowed, right?” I asked cautiously. “Or hired, or something?”

“Borrowed will probably do,” agreed Chanko, and I decided to leave it there.

The car went into an underground garage—Chanko had the access codes, which was slightly reassuring—and we walked about half a mile to Ekoda, where Taka lived. We’d taken our time on the drive, wanting to get there after nightfall.

The area is pretty low-rise, with a few five- or six-storey mansion blocks in the standard grey tile and concrete, and quite a lot of small but pretty houses in dark wood with sloping tiled roofs. Taka’s place had a plum tree out the front, and the deep-pink winter blossom glowed like a red cloud in the gathering sodium-tinted darkness.

He opened the door and stood silhouetted in the light for a second before stepping back with a welcoming cry of “
Yoku irasshaimashita!
”

Very polite. I pushed Chanko in first, as the more conspicuous of us, and stood shivering outside while he pulled off his boots, then took his place on the
genkan
and shut the door behind me. Taka and Chanko were exchanging the grunts that pass for communication between men. I bent down to unzip my boots and buy some time.

The last time I’d seen Taka, I’d told him to go fuck himself for a drug-crazed bastard and never to contact me again. Since then, he’d been instrumental in saving my life and Yoshi’s sanity. I don’t know what the etiquette books recommend you say in this sort of situation.

I straightened up. He was looking at me, his long, narrow eyes glittering, waiting for me to speak.

“Taka,” I said. “What have you done to your hair, man, it looks like shit.”

I thought I wasn’t going to get away with it for a moment. Then his face split into his gleeful, charming, totally untrustworthy smile, and he swung forward, holding up a thin hand in salute. “You’ve got no sense of fashion, that’s your trouble.
O-genki de
?”

“
Okagesama de
,” I replied truthfully. It’s a routine exchange—
Are you well?
Thanks to you
—but for once I meant the response literally, and Taka’s look acknowledged that.

“Come on in,” he said, and since there was no room to get by Chanko in the corridor, he gestured at him to head into the sitting room.

Taka’s pretty tall, five eleven, with a wiry build and speed-freak thinness that make him seem taller. Silhouetted against Chanko, he looked like he was made of pipe cleaners. And his hair…whoa. It was a ludicrous pompadour, black at the roots, orange to within about three inches of the end, then dyed white-blond, and adding about four inches to his height.

Chanko was looking at him too. “You know, Kerry’s right,” he rumbled. “Your hair does look like shit.”

“You said you liked it before.”

“Yeah, but, you know. I wasn’t actually looking.”

“Bastard,” said Taka amicably, then yelled up the stairs. “Yoshi! Come down, Kerry’s here.”

“How is he?” I asked quietly.

Taka shrugged. “You want beer?”

Chanko indicated that he wanted beer very much and led the way into the LDK—the living/dining/kitchen space that took up most of the ground floor. I waited in the hallway for a few moments, until a voice from above said “Kechan?” almost with horror.

Yoshi looked awful. His eyes were red and bagged, his skin was sallow grey, and someone had chopped off most of his hair into an unflattering, short bowl cut. His shirt looked like he’d slept in it, and for a couple of nights at that.

“Oh, Yoshi,” I whispered, and met him halfway up the stairs. We gripped each other’s hands tightly, the closest he was going to come to a hug.

“Kechan, why are you here?” he demanded. “This is so stupid—”

“Only if they know you’re here,” I pointed out. “Otherwise it’s as good as anywhere and a lot better than Chubu. Come and meet Chanko, and for heaven’s sake don’t tell him he’s tall. He knows.”

I dragged him in and made introductions, since if they’d met before, Chanko clearly hadn’t remembered. Yoshi’s eyes widened as he took in Chanko’s bulk, and he received a long, level gaze in return, very obviously sizing him up. I felt Yoshi bristle next to me. But they exchanged bows and the standard courtesies, and if there was anything incongruous in Chanko saying “
dōzo yoroshiku
” (literally meaning something like “please take care of me”) to a computer geek who was a foot shorter and about two hundred pounds lighter, none of us acknowledged it.

We settled around the low table on floor cushions, avoiding the usual clutter of gadgets, modernistic lights, piles of magazines and clothes and the entrails of disembowelled computers that Taka gathered around him, and I brought everyone up to date on the background, our adventures in Chubu province, the yakuza bag, the threats, the seventy-two-hour deadline—sixty-four hours left—and the boyfriend theory.

I can’t say it was easy. Taka had always had the attention span of a hyperactive child, but now he was twitching as though…as though he’d recently put something illegal up his nose, in fact. Yoshi was shaken to the core, biting his nails, his eyebrows set in a frown that looked like it hadn’t left his face for days, and it didn’t help that he kept staring at Chanko. Chanko had relapsed into stony impassivity, and that in itself was making me nervous.

“So,” I concluded. “Let’s work on the theory that the boyfriend has the bag, to start with.”

“I like that.” Taka shifted around on his cushion for about the twentieth time. “Makes sense, good sense, good thinking.”

“It makes sense that someone else has this bag,” agreed Yoshi. “Not necessarily a boyfriend, though. It could be a female accomplice.”

I doubted that. “Kelly isn’t the kind of girl who has female friends.”

“Because she’s too pretty?” Taka said helpfully.

“Shut up, Taka.”

“So what now?” he demanded, tapping his fingers on the tabletop. “Where do we find the boyfriend?”

“I’m going to look for him.” I ignored Yoshi’s squawk. “We’re meeting a hostess friend this evening, a girl I trust. She might know something.”

“Hostess? Bring on the babes!”

“Shut up, Taka. Anyway, you’ve met her before. Remember Sonja, the Dutch girl?”

“Wow, Mama!”

“Take that as a yes.” Chanko shook his head.

“No,” said Yoshi. “No way. Kechan, this is a really bad idea. What if the yakuza follow her? What if you get caught looking for this man?”

“There’s no reason I should. We don’t think the yakuza know this guy exists, remember? I mean,
we
don’t know he exists, not for a fact. And the yaks last saw us in Kanazawa, and since then I’ve let them think we’re going south. They aren’t going to be looking in gaijin bars in Roppongi.”