Non-Stop Till Tokyo (28 page)

I saw him hesitate. I don’t think I’d seen that before. There was that one long, horrible second of indecision as I came up alongside him, staring, and he said in a low, clear voice, not looking at me, “Keep walking,” swung round and headed back.

Just like that, he was gone, the sudden absence leaving me gasping and vulnerable and bewildered.

My whole body wanted to turn and gape, and I probably would have if Taka hadn’t grabbed my elbow and dragged me forward. I lurched with the effort not to stumble as the next few thoughts arrived in my head fully formed, faster than I’d known I could think.

We had to keep going. I wanted to run, but that would draw attention to myself. And—my left foot hit the ground with a jolt of pain—I wasn’t going to outdistance anyone who wasn’t on crutches.

Why did I want to run? I’d registered the shout in the vaguest way, part of the white noise of the street, but something had caught…

The speech form. The shouter had used an incredibly rude form, one that said he was speaking to the lowest scum of the streets. You wouldn’t speak like that to a friend, not in fun, not in anger, not at all. Whoever had called to Chanko meant nothing but ill.

And they had called him, no question.
Tsuarabu
meant nothing, but I’d been hearing Noriko’s voice in my head as I walked through the places we’d shared—her bouncy, rapid speech; her bright-eyed enthusiasm; her terrible English, making no attempt at the sounds that don’t belong in Japanese.
Boots bery high!
If Noriko tried for Tualavu, she’d come up with something very like Tsuarabu.

It had taken maybe two steps for that to come to focus in my head, squeezing all the breath out of my lungs, and I still don’t know how it was I didn’t falter, turn, scream, swear, cry. Frantic thoughts collided in my head. Yoshi’s suspicions; the name; the contemptuous speech. Was Chanko in trouble with an enemy?

Or with a boss?

“Taka…”

“Keep walking,” he said through his teeth. “I’ll double back.”

“Go home. You have to look out for Yoshi. I’ll do—something.”

He pulled me sideways, cutting across the crowd to reach a bus shelter by the side of the road, and checked the timetable as though escorting me to a bus, speaking under his breath. “Those are family, Kerry, what the hell are you going to do?”

“If Chanko can’t handle them, what are
you
going to do?”

“We both go or we both stay.”

“
Yoshi
. We can’t leave him in the house alone. And Nori-chan. You’re more use to them than I am. Look, just go, will you? Chanko can look after himself. Better than the rest of us, at least.”

“Oh, shit,” he said. “You do know, if you get killed, he’ll murder me.”

“I’ll be holding on to that thought,” I assured him. “Get going before they see you.”

“Want the knife?”

“Don’t be bloody stupid.
Go
.”

“Be seeing you,” he said at a slightly more normal volume, stepped away from the bus shelter and disappeared into the crowd. Just like that.

Bastard.

I leaned against the bus stop with my back to the yakuza, delved in my handbag for my little makeup mirror, and flicked it open to spy on Chanko over my shoulder.

It’s a lot harder to do than it looks. My hands were shaking, and I had the magnifying mirror uppermost when I opened it, so I had to turn it upside down, and at first I couldn’t even find him in the crowded images that appeared, but I shifted round slightly, and there he was, his free hand palm up, apologetic. Talking to a man, and there wasn’t any doubt at all what kind of man.

He was in his late forties, balding and with a sparse combover of the kind we called a barcode—black strands spaced over pale scalp. He was saying something to Chanko, his features exaggerated with anger, shaking a finger at him. The other guy, early thirties, was leaning forward in an aggressive stance, bullying, commanding.

They were pretty big guys, both around six foot. They weren’t big enough to posture like that at Chanko. But he was leaning back, looking apologetic. Subordinate, in fact.

Barcode jerked his head, and Chanko seemed to argue. His balance shifted too, onto the balls of his feet, and the other man opened his jacket slightly, revealing what was inside, and Chanko moved back, holding up a hand in acknowledgement. I could almost hear him saying,
Okay, okay…

I risked looking round once they began to walk, Chanko in front, and saw them heading down a narrow alley that led off the street. I knew that alley. Yoshi had been sick down it at least once. It was a space for garbage skips that ended in a narrow area parallel to the street, so the whole thing formed a right-angled dead end, out of sight of the road. The yakuza were steering Chanko down it, and he had the case, and at least one of them had a gun.

Part of me was terrified. Part of me was panicking and palpitating and sobbing for Chanko or Taka or anybody to help me, to make the nightmare stop. And if I hadn’t had a lot of practice at turning off the emotions I didn’t want, ignoring fear and hate in favour of cold-eyed calculation, maybe I’d have wept or fled or given up right there.

Funny what comes in useful, isn’t it?

One big, deep breath, and I headed back along the street, giving just the briefest glance down the alley mouth to check nobody was waiting for me.

They weren’t. So I went down it.

There were three huge grey metal skips against the right-hand wall. I hopped silently over a stray garbage bag and slithered between two of the big stinking containers into the gap formed by their sloping sides, crouching low, not breathing through my nose, listening.

It wasn’t hard to work out what was happening. I was getting used to the sound of beatings.

A dull sound of fist against flesh. A crack. A deep grunt of pain; light, angry footsteps; another blow. And another.

Why wasn’t he doing anything?

Two rapid steps, like running, and a really hard impact, accompanied by a grunt of effort and a sharp exhalation, then a gasp. Someone spat, heavily, and then Chanko said, “Alright, you made your point.”

His voice was thick, and he spat again after he spoke, clearing his mouth.

“Shut up,” said a voice. “You put five of our people in hospital, you get what’s coming.”

“We want the girl,” said the other man. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know—” Chanko began over a scrape of feet, and I heard a hard blow and a hissing exhalation. Chanko breathing through his nose, keeping his temper.

They had to have guns on him.

“Stay down,” said the first voice, which sounded slightly adenoidal, though it might just have been an extreme Tokyo accent. “Don’t try anything. Now, where’s the fucking girl?”

“I don’t know. Look, she hired me to get loan sharks off her back. I got her ass out of Matsumoto, put her on a train, that’s it. Then she calls and asks me to go pick up this fucking case from some friend of hers. That’s all I know, okay? How the hell was I supposed to know she was in hock to you? She’s only a goddamn hostess, how the hell much can she owe you?”

“It’s not about money,” said the other man harshly, with an accent I placed somewhere in the Kinki area. “And you knew it was us when Soseki came through the door.”

“Who’s Soseki?” said Chanko blankly.

“You broke two of his ribs in that love hotel, you fat gaijin son of a whore!”

There was a really bad sound then. Something solid colliding with skin, splitting, tearing. A silence filled with hard breathing.

“Yeah,” said Chanko finally, and spat again. “I broke a guy’s ribs. So who the fuck is he that I’m supposed to know who he is?”

“Soseki Eiji. One of our guys, worked in Himeji. Tattoos up his neck.” The guy from Kinki sounded slightly frustrated now. “Gambler, dice player. Came up here after the business with the Chinese backstreet casino. Don’t tell me you don’t remember that.”

“Hell, I heard about it, sure. But I never met the guy. Didn’t recognise him, didn’t see any tattoos, no idea he was family. I mean, shit, I’m very sorry. Please excuse me. I made a mistake.” Formal phrases. I wondered if he was bowing. “But I wasn’t expecting a guy from Himeji to come through the door in Kanazawa when it’s supposed to be Tokyo loan sharks. What was Soseki doing up there anyway?”

“Redressing his mistakes,” said Adenoids. “Like you’re going to, you turncoat bastard. Starting by telling us everything you know about this girl.”

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Chanko said. “Whatever you want. Except, I don’t know if any of the shit she told me is true, so—”

“Don’t make excuses!”

“No, sure, but seems like she was lying her tits off the whole way. Says it’s loan sharks. It’s not, right? Says, ’cause I asked, it ain’t family business. That’s a lie too, right? Says this briefcase she needs me to get has nothing to do with it, and there won’t be any trouble, which is bullshit too; and she says the people after her went for her friend, raped her, put her in hospital. Well, that ain’t true either if it was you guys, right?”

“Don’t ask,” said the guy from Kinki. “Looks like the bitch is going to die on us.”

My nails bit into my palms.
Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.

“What?” Chanko said. “The family did that? Why?”

“She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The words were callous, but the Kinki-accented voice was ringing with anger.

“But—the hostess said it was a few guys. She was lying about that, right? Right?” Pause. “She wasn’t lying. And the other girl wasn’t even involved?” Chanko sounded genuinely disgusted. “Hell, Harada-san, you can’t tell me that’s right. Since when does the family order shit like that? That’s no way to run a business.”

“They weren’t following orders,” snarled Harada.

“What, a whole bunch of guys ran amok? No chain of command? And you’re pissed at
me
?”

“Fuck you,” said Adenoids, but Harada was talking over him, voice rising, justifying himself furiously.

“
Two
guys, don’t get the wrong idea—”

“Two more than you used to put up with,” Chanko snapped back.

“Soseki and that pampered bull-necked psycho are a disgrace to the family!” shouted Harada. “So don’t even think—”

“It isn’t your business,
amekō
,” Adenoids interrupted loudly, and Harada cut himself off. “Now. Where’s the hostess?”

“Headed down south. Shinkansen. Said she was going to Osaka, get a plane, but she talked about Okinawa a lot. All I know.”

“Not enough.”

“Look, you got the case. You already said it’s what you wanted. Why’d you need the girl? What did she do to you?”

“Nothing,” said Harada. “But she knows about a lot of things she shouldn’t. You know how these things work. It’s just her bad luck.”

Silence.

“You’re going to kill her,” Chanko said. “Case or not. Aren’t you?”

“There’s too many loose ends.” Adenoids’ nasal voice was so deliberately casual that it was clear he was enjoying himself. “The hostess is one and her friend’s another. And you’re a third.”

“Hey, I don’t know shit about this.”

“So what if you don’t? You think you can walk out on us, cross us, put five of our guys down, and there won’t be consequences?” A slap, open-handed and hard.

Chanko spat again. “What you got in mind?”

“You’ll know when it happens, you worthless son of a bitch,” said Adenoids. “You’re going to see the Brother.”

“Is that so.” There was just a little edge to Chanko’s voice now, very slight, but it was screamingly obvious to me, and I wondered if the yakuza heard it too.

They both had guns, that much was clear. They intended to take him away, and if they did, they were unlikely to let him go afterwards. I didn’t think he was planning to come quietly, whatever the cost.

I should have told Taka to come back and help. I hadn’t. Chanko wasn’t armed, and neither was I. All I had was the stupid baton, which would do nothing against two guns. The stupid baton with its matte black handle.

“Get up, pig. You’re coming with us. Don’t even think about trying anything.”

A noise of feet, the yakuza moving, and I pulled myself upright from my stinking hiding place, stepped silently over the bags.

“Move, now!” shouted Harada.

“Hey,” Chanko said, and I thought,
There he goes
, and then I was round the corner with the spring-loaded end gripped between two hands and the handle pointing at the three men.

The yakuza had their backs to me, facing Chanko, who was rising to his feet. I screamed, “Drop the guns!” and glared at their astonished faces as they swung round.

The baton handle looked nothing like a gun barrel. In the dark of the alley, only dimly illuminated by the dull, refracted sodium light from the street, and with the shock, it might have fooled them for two seconds.

Fortunately, Chanko barely needed one.

While the yakuza were still turning to face me, in that first fraction of startled time, he kicked hard. The younger man went flying forward, the gun skittering out of his hand, and Chanko had already turned and slammed Barcode’s arm against the wall and was driving a punch into his stomach, then swinging back to the other man, who was scrabbling for the gun. His hand closed on it, and he started bringing it up as he rose, except I had the baton the right way round now, and I brought the loaded end whipping down onto his elbow, aiming for the ground below as Chanko had taught me, and what do you know if there wasn’t a crack, and a jar that numbed my arm, and the thud of the gun falling again.