craving a cigarette as much as he did right then. But he did not have enough change left from the thousand yen to do anything about it. He had to settle for a can of Boss black coffee. He sipped it slowly and he leaned against the fence pole by the boom gates. He watched the trains pass. It was early afternoon and he was inexplicably starting to miss the certainty of that hot little box he had been confined in.
A car pulled up to the side of the road. So close to the crossing it created a dangerous bottle-neck. But there was not even the briefest of horn retorts in protest. With a car such as this, people knew better. A top of the range Mercedes Benz, black body and black tinted windows. It had yakuza stamped all over it. If a beating was meted out, or a murder committed, somebody would go to jail, but it would be a junior apprentice wishing to prove his loyalty to his masters. The actual offenders could therefore defend the honour of their criminal organisation with impunity. It was the way things were done and everyone knew it.
A man in a gaudy silver suit got out from the passenger side of the car. He was a big man and wore black sunglasses. He walked directly over to Taro.
‘Is this yours?’
He was holding Taro’s wallet. He opened it to the driver’s licence in the clear pocket to confirm it.
‘Yeah, that’s me,’ said Taro, peering at his dour mugshot.
‘Then come get it.’ The man returned to car and got into the driver’s suit.
Taro supposed he didn’t need to go that way. He could have run, if only he had the energy and somewhere else to go, but he had neither. So he went to car. The rear window hummed open to a man with a strong scented cigar in his fingers – each finger having a gold ring upon it. The man was fifty-something and had a neatly trimmed jaw-line beard. His eyes were coldly detached. His hard mouth dripped away into a disdainful sneer. He ran his fingers through his neatly groomed light brown hair. He was wearing a Tokyo Giants baseball jacket, the aircon cranked up to make it wearable in the afternoon heat.
‘Don’t mind the low temperature,’ he said. ‘I grew up in Hokkaido and that’s the way we do summers there. Koki tells me you’ve been spending time in a much hotter place.’ He turned his attention to his cigar as though he was having a simultaneous and entirely more enjoyable conversation with it. He waved at the smoke with the extended fingers of his smoking hand. A conductor with a hit symphony. His eyes returned to Taro. ‘Did you tell the police about your recent experience? Of course not. It’s not something you’d want to talk about. And we won’t talk about it either, suffice to say you’ve gone some part of the way to redeeming yourself.’ He shook his head admonishingly. ‘I have heard the recordings. The table you were occupying at the Bar Why Not was bugged with two microphones. I wanted to record for posterity a narcotics negotiation between us and some American marines. It was just by coincidence the participants shifted position to the cigarette machine and you replaced them at the table. In the long run it was probably for the best. Offering your friend out to strangers to test her fidelity obviously indicates you were heading in the wrong direction in life. You don’t deserve total blame for this. Modern teachers are only concerned with clumps of test scores that show themselves in a positive light. Ethics, morality and honour are all but considered irrelevant in this kind of education. As you might imagine, our mutual friend Aso is a hard judge of character. That is why, when he has something favourable to say about someone, I am inclined to listen. Of you, he said you did not break.In a sense that is obvious, for he had the authority to kill you if you made a nuisance of yourself. But the fact that he bothered to utter his praise verbally is credit to you.
‘As it happens there is a job opening up in my organisation that requires urgent filling. A hardened spirit is the essential characteristic the successful candidate must possess. My man is holding your wallet in the front seat. If you accept the position, he will put a gold American Express card into it. Would you like to know more?’
Taro’s curiosity was related to what kind of retribution a refusal would bring. He suspected a humouring smile would be the initial reaction. Inevitably, however, there would be no saying no.
‘Okay,’ said Taro.
‘So let’s talk,’ the man said. ‘My name is Tokin Mikoto. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m the boss. You will do things as they are required. These actions will be varied and will never be linkable back to me. But you can be assured every action will have been approved by me and, more importantly, will be of value to me. Your account balance will tell you that. You will have quiet months and busy months, so your salary will fluctuate. But I will guarantee you an income of two million yen over a twelve month period. No matter what. In other words, you will become one of the very few workers in my organisation who is guaranteed.’ He went back to his cigar, though this time his attention remained with Taro as he puffed. ‘What you experienced in Aso’s hands will be considered one of two things: punishment or training. If you accept my terms as a guaranteed worker, it will have been training. Then your bank balance will reflect the value I have placed on it. But don’t get too excited because no training can be placed above actions that bring profit or strength to the organisation.
‘If you do not choose to accept my offer, you had better put down the past few weeks as fair comeuppance for subjecting a beautiful girl to such callousness and degradation. We would never meet again and indeed if our names were ever mentioned in the same breath by anyone on this whole planet, it would mean certain death for you.’ He glanced at his enormous, glistening gold watch. ‘Unfortunately, we are on our way to the mortuary to pay our respects to another young man. Suicide. It seems he was troubled with the nature of the work he was doing for me. Still, he did his family the great service of not mentioning any of his grievances in a note. You have by tomorrow to decide your course of action. Your position will be activated then.’ His eyes tightened their focus on Taro. ‘Go get your wallet. My man knows better than to reach over the back seat. Get out the car and he’ll hand it to you through his window. Inside the wallet you’ll find some instructions. Thank your lucky stars that your predecessor’s lack of stomach means there’s a position available. If there wasn’t any urgency, I’d have left you in that room with Aso-san until you really got used to it.’
He dismissively waved Taro out of the car. Taro complied so promptly he was almost riding the back of the hand. The front passenger window opened just far enough for the wallet to stick out. Taro warily plucked it away.
The car moved away then, putting his toes in some danger. He stepped back in time and watched the car muscling its way into the traffic. It was quickly absorbed to become just another drop in the dense flow of metal, glass and rubber. Taro followed its progress until the last of its black roof was lost from sight. He opened the wallet, looking past the driver’s licence to the gold American Express card and folded slip of paper. The wallet had never felt so full.
18
Taro decided to take the job for one simple reason: he couldn’t bear to face his mother. He put a note under the door which said he was fine and that due to a new job he would be very busy for the foreseeable future.
He spent the night at an internet café in Ikebukuro. An overload of soft drink from the drink machine ensured it was mostly a sleepless night. Sleep was not particularly welcome anyway. Asleep he would not be able to feel the wallet with the gold card was safely pressing against his hip. He wondered if this could really be the stroke of luck he so desperately needed. Rarely had someone with so little money felt like he had so much to lose.
Blurry eyed he did an internet search on Tokin Mikoto. Tokin turned up mostly in social pages: smiling at cocktail theatre openings or embassy receptions. He was particularly prevalent at the functions of the Japan Russian Friendship Society.Many of the shots had him in the company of stone faced burly men cast in the same mould as Aso. It gave Taro moment to pause, for they did not seem like particularly nice people to get mixed up with. But alone in his internet cafe booth with sickening coughs
and sniffs emanating from those on either side he could think of no other direction for his life to take other than the place and time on the strip of paper neatly folded in his wallet.
And so it was. Midday at the Yoyogi Park lake in central Tokyo. Taro sat on a wooden bench and nervously watched the synchronised fountains putting on an acrobatic display of jetting water. He hadn’t been to the park for several years and had forgotten how big it was. With all the picnickers and exercisers and people just wandering around for some respite from Tokyo’s bustle, he would be hard pressed to pick his contact in advance.
The anxiety at the idea of being stood up was another clear indication of just how much he needed this, whatever this might have been. He waited an hour and was set to wait another ten when someone joined him at the bench. A foreign woman.
‘Your name?’ she asked perfunctorily.
Taro looked at her quickly. She was somewhere in her thirties - probably deep in her thirties - but her olive complexion was carefully looked after and she wore a soft, sweet scent. From her accent he could tell that she was South American. Taro turned away shyly but he hadn’t seen enough so he