Taro nodded his assent, wishing he could face this moment with a few more clothes on. ‘I will not say anything.’
‘Akutagawa is young and very dangerous. He is part of the new breed of Japanese whose only loyalty is to money and whose only interest is the material possessions it brings him. Tokin picked him out from the bosozoku at a very young age and trained him and nurtured him in his deadly profession. Akutagawa is exceptionally talented at what he does, but he has grown arrogant and difficult to control. He has raised his asking price per kill to absurd levels. Tokin intends to bring him back to earth, and his prices along with him. The plan is simple enough. Tokin will hire him for a hit and then ensure its failure.’
Taro frowned. ‘Can he ensure failure?’
‘Tokin stands to save a lot of money if he can. That should give you some encouragement.’
‘Should it? Has Akutagawa ever failed in a job?’
Waneta smiled casually. ‘No, I don’t think he has, but this is the first time the client and the target will be working in collusion. Also, the contract has a ten day expiry clause, and it commenced at noon today. Warning and instructions will be sent to your phone. They’ll help keep you alive.’
Taro sat up and untangled his shirt from the pink bed spread. ‘Really? Tokin might save some money if I stay alive but he won’t lose anything if I don’t.’
‘He’ll lose the price of the hit. If he was happy to spend that kind of money, he wouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Can he afford a ticket to China?’
‘No, if you disappear like that, Akutagawa’s reputation will not suffer sufficiently, nor will his price. You need to stay in range whilst remaining away from his gun sights. A tricky enough task. But you will need to stay in Tokyo.’
Taro’s fingers were fumbling ineffectively with his shirt buttons. ‘So what do I do?’
‘For a start, you’d better stay away from your apartment. Gas, poison, a bullet, Akutagawa’s only dilemma would be choosing which way to kill you.’
Taro felt that. ‘I just moved in.’
‘Too bad. Tokin has ordered the hit on the grounds that you have become unhinged and made wild threats against him and those closest to him. Such a state of mind would certainly keep you away from home, especially if you were on the run from law enforcement. Suddenly Akutagawa would have his work cut out for him. You would be lurking in the shadows with half the police force after you. An assassin’s worst case scenario.’
Taro mulled over what he had heard while he finished dressing. He was starting to sweat through his shirt before it was even fully on.
Waneta sucked on her cigarette with pursed lips. ‘Tokin devised his plan during a night of heavy drinking. I daresay it’s unfortunate for you he didn’t drink so much he couldn’t remember it the next morning when he put it into effect.’
‘I should start drinking too if I want this plan to make sense.’
‘That is part of the plan, as a matter of fact, but I suggest you remain very sober as you do it. Tokin uses people and he is using you now. You need to keep your wits about you.’
Taro watched her edgily. ‘So what do we do now?’
Waneta shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask you to get dressed.’
‘That’s right. All you did was set me up against a killer.’
Waneta pulled the white sheet a little higher up on her breasts. ‘I’ve merely dabbed the antiseptic onto your heart. I’m afraid, now it’s time to insert the needle. There’s a message on the answering machine in your apartment. It’s not exactly for you. It’s intended for Akutagawa’s ears. He may have played it already. He doesn’t waste any time. It’s the trigger that will explain your dramatic fall into insanity. It’s an apology from your girlfriend, Hiromi.’
Taro swallowed hard with the mention of her name. ‘An apology?’
Waneta stabbed her cigarette into the bedside ashtray and smiled icily. ‘She is pregnant to another man. That man is Koki.’
31
‘You must be an excellent singer. Please, sing us a song.’ The hostess’s tense smile was concealed by the soft light of the karaoke bar. ‘You look like the guitar player in the Kinki Kids. Can you sing one of their songs?’
The light couldn’t hide Taro’s scowl. He snatched the microphone from the offering hand.
‘I’ll sing a song,’ he gnarled. ‘But not the Kinki Kids.’
‘Which song would you like then?’ replied the hostess, who was probably too young to legally drink at the bar she was working at. She edged the song book towards him as innocuously as possible.
Taro’s hand, nonetheless, slapped down hard upon it, stopping it dead.
‘You choose something.’
The hostess went about the song selection painstakingly, glad to be doing something for her customer that did not involve the pressure of an exchange of words. Although there was more space between her and Taro than with a customer she felt comfortable with, her sweet fragrance was still thick about Taro’s nostrils, stirring up his blood more than the whiskey he had been drinking so profusely.
‘How about this one?’ The hostess excitedly plugged in the song’s numbers. ‘Are you ready?’
‘I’m ready.’ Taro leaned back on his barstool and surveyed the smoky hostess club around him. As the music started, he screamed what he saw into the microphone: ‘The guy in the corner looks like he was born in a squat toilet. And his girlfriend looks like she was already slopped in there ready to keep him company.’ He laughed callously. ‘He fell out of an arsehole as big as that fat guy over there. A stinking arsehole that should have been blocked up with cement.’
The hostess shuddered, her smile dissolving into a fit of cheek twitching. Taro took encouragement from it.
‘No one’s going to make me pay for my drink in this filthy place,’ he roared. ‘Any glass that this master’s grimy fingers have been on is not worth the price of some whore’s lipstick smeared across the rim.’
A giant hand enveloped Taro’s upper arm. The heavyset man had been scouting for customers out by the train station exit, and now he was here, fulfilling that other part of his job brief: dealing with problem customers. If he had been aware of the extent of Taro’s problems, he may have been less polite.
‘Your song is finished,’ he said calmly. ‘It is time for you to leave.’
The man was standing over Taro intimidatingly. A lot of cloth had gone into his black suit.
Taro eyed him coldly. ‘The only kind of person that can get me to leave a bar is a lot more beautiful than you,’ he said loudly and gestured at the hostess. ‘More beautiful than that too. I’m not going to lower my standards just because I’m in a dump.’
The man’s grip tightened and started to pull Taro upward. It was the direction Taro was headed anyway. He sprung up into a vicious head-butt, plucking out the man’s earpiece and wrapping the wire around his neck. He plonked down with the man, applying enough pressure to prevent the man’s fingers sliding in underneath.
‘My mistake,’ said the master, dropping onto his knees beside Taro with much of his brush-over trailing behind. ‘I didn’t realise you were a man worthy of so much respect. We don’t get many of your type in here. Of course, your drinks are on the house. It is an honour to serve someone like you.’
Taro looked into the frightened eyes and felt stronger. ‘I should do something to repay your generous hospitality. How about I teach your man a lesson? You don’t kiss someone unless your hope is for getting that kiss back in kind. It’s the same with hurting someone. Pain is simply a form of communication. I speak it fluently enough.’
The man in the black suit was starting to go limp. Taro released the choke hold and rolled him onto the master’s feet. ‘That completes the lesson for today.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘But I have lessons to give other people as well.’ He fetched a pen and notebook from the pockets of his own suit. He scrawled onto a random page “It doesn’t matter how big you think you a
re, you’ll fall. Quickly name your baby, because soon I will be naming your death.” He tore out the page and slapped it down onto the bar. ‘Give this to the cops when you call them.’
‘We would never contemplate calling the police,’ said the master.
‘Yes, you will. Someone has to protect you from me.’ Taro kicked the writhing bouncer in the stomach. ‘Tell the cops that message is for Tokin.’
32
‘Hi. Do you have a light?’
The fashionable young woman nodded. She left her cigarette in her mouth while she fetched it out of her purse. It was a pink stick, the kind sold at convenience stores. Taro leaned into its flame. He held her by the wrist a moment longer, admiring her elaborately painted nails, red and white swirls.
‘That’s nice work. Did you do it yourself?’
The woman nodded.
Taro let her go and put his cigarette into that hand. He smoked it casually. He felt safe enough here. A designated smoking area at one of the myriad of Tokyo Subway Station exits. There was no reason for him to be there and so there was no reason for a hit man to know he was there. Just another pin prick on Tokyo’s convoluted subway map. Somewhere near the Imperial Palace. And it seemed all roads around here led to the Imperial Palace. Or was it just that all no-through roads led to the Imperial Palace?
A rush of people filing past the smoking area meant another train had come and gone in its endless passage through the bowels of Tokyo. Taro stared at them