Weeds in the Jungle

by Stuart Parker

me, I will need more than just a name on a business card to prove it.’

  ‘That is being taken care of. Everything will be ready soon. Rest a few days here and then I will put you to work. Hiroshima will be your first stop. Our village has business interests there I would like you to straighten out.’

  ‘Alright,’ said Taro tentatively.

  ‘Don’t worry, I have faith,’ said Nobunaga, coming back to the table. ‘To straighten out one young person, is to straighten out the whole country.’

  50

  Namie Otani was a little older than Taro, twenty two or twenty three. She had long straight black hair and was tall and thin. She a little ungainly in her movements as though she still hadn’t quite grown into her body. But she was intelligent and good looking and Taro felt bad that she had come to know so much about pills.

  Taro had needed to go all the way to Hiroshima before he finally met her. It was midnight in a peeping-tom bar. Taro had heard about them but this was his first time to actually visit one. All the bottles were on high shelves, which compelled the female bartenders, who were wearing miniskirts and skimpy underwear, to climb ladders to pour their customers’ drinks. Taro couldn’t help but join the rest of the male patrons at the bar in looking up. He noticed that Namie was looking at him unimpressed.

  ‘It was your idea to meet here,’ he murmured.

  ‘I wanted to bring you back to reality,’ she said. ‘Nobunaga likes to fill a person’s head with postcard images of Okinawa but this is how he makes his money. Sleaze and greed. And we’re here to defend it.’

  ‘Nobunaga owns this bar?’ asked Taro, surprised.

  Namie nodded. ‘A large chunk of it. And he has his toes in many more like it all over Japan. And he wants us to make sure they’re running smoothly and without gangster interference. Do you know what that means for us? The Okinawans may have one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world but that’s because none of them have a job like ours.’

  ‘Nobunaga spent a long time camped out in Aokigahara Woods looking for the right people. If he wanted us dead, he could have gotten that by staying at home.’

  ‘We have both been given new identities and in case you didn’t notice they do not connect us to his village, not even to Okinawa. If we die, it will not come back to him. It will upset some other region’s life expectancy averages.’

  Taro shrugged. ‘My ID card says I’m from Fukuoka.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Well, we do this job or we run.’

  Namie’s voice darkened with the wisp of a smile. ‘You’re right, Nobunaga did find the right people.’

  ‘So, what brings us to Hiroshima? Nobunaga said you would have the details.’

  Namie stabbed her mashed up chewing gum onto the bar top and lit up a cigarette. ‘He wants the local cops here to like us, so we’re going to do a little favour for them.’

  Taro felt his throat tighten. ‘A favour for the police?’

  ‘There’s an ultra right wing group in town making too much noise in the campaign bus they tour around the city in. Screaming from their loudspeakers to close the U.S. military bases and for foreigners to leave Japan. Those kind of things. Such groups have been around for ever, but the problem with this group is they’re doing it in the main shopping areas around town and they’re taunting the police to do something about it.’ Namie pulled a face. ‘Basically, they’re skinheads getting paid to be angry by rich benefactors - yakuza bosses wanting to incite trouble, most likely. No hairdresser is ever going to miss them.’

  ‘What are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Pay their clubhouse a little visit. We’ve borrowed a certain politician’s car for the purpose. He won’t miss it. You see, he always takes a taxi when he cheats on his wife. The car is parked out on the street. There are tools in the boot.’

  ‘You’ve been busy then. What’s the rush?’

  ‘The group call themselves the New Japan Guard. Tomorrow they intend to disturb a United Nations congregation at the Peace Park. That would embarrass the police too much. So, we’re going to make sure they never get there.’

  ‘Alright. Tonight is fine by me. Who’s the politician?’

  ‘Yuki Amasaki. Heard of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, he’s only a politician. He’s been accusing the police of incompetence and corruption. We do the job and leave his car out the front of the clubhouse.’

  ‘I get it,’ said Taro. ‘If those ultra right wingers suspect Amasaki, he will be in need of some serious police efficiency. His life will depend on it.’

  ‘Nice plan, right? Sink two ships with the one torpedo. Or in this case we’ll be using sledgehammers and baseball bats.’

  ‘Sledgehammers and baseball bats?’

  ‘Absolutely. It’s going to be messy.’

  51

  The two Rottweiler dogs patrolling the compound finally dropped. It could have turned out differently, for one of the strips of baited meat had got caught on the top of the razor wire. Fortunately, the dogs had been willing to share.

  Namie cut through the base of the fence with wire cutters. She had kept her black slacks from the bar, but had changed her t-shirt for a darker colour and her high heels for military boots. Also, she had tied her hair back in a tight Chinese tail. She crawled on her elbows through the hole she had created and sprinted into the compound. Taro was impressed with her athleticism. He had to settle for a more cumbersome effort himself, weighed down by the sledgehammer and baseball bat in his hands and the gun tucked into his belt.

  The sinister looking black bus with the old imperial Japanese flag on the side was parked facing a chained gate. Its windows were black tinted and there were two loud speakers set up on the roof. Behind the bus the fibrocement clad single storey clubhouse was a faint outline in the darkness.

  Namie reached the front of the bus and edged along to the back wheels where she knelt down. Taro figured she was slashing tyres. He meanwhile dropped the baseball bat and started hammering the bus with the sledgehammer. He put deep dints into the side panels and pounded the window grills with enough force to crack the glass. He worked his way down the bus, hitting harder and harder, gaining confidence that the New Japan Guard clubhouse was either empty or the ultra-nationalists inside were particularly heavy sleepers. By the time he had reached the back of the bus Namie was no longer there. What air had been in the tyres she had slashed was now well and truly gone. Just as Taro turned to see where she might have gone, the bus engine roared to life. He hopped back quickly as the bus reversed sharply, slamming through the front of the clubhouse. The cheap quality cladding offered little resistance and the bus buried itself almost all the way within. The engine cut out and Namie emerged with a sly smirk through the gaping hole the bus had created.

  ‘Whoops, I don’t think that was a garage,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘But it will suffice.’ She noticed Taro’s surprised gazed and added, ‘I was slashing tyres when I noticed the keys stuck to the undercarriage. My father taught me how to drive a truck. He didn’t teach me how to use it to abandon a family with one, but what I just did must have felt somewhat similar. Well, I hope he felt something.’

  ‘I can see it works better than this,’ said Taro. He tossed away the sledgehammer. ‘But you’ve left me with nothing else to bash.’

  ‘So, let’s go get a drink.’ She tossed away the keys after the sledgehammer. ‘And don’t fret, there’s other work for us to do tonight.’

  52

  ‘A double bourbon whiskey,’ ordered Taro, ‘and not so much ice that I can’t see it.’

  ‘And I’ll have a Black Russian,’ said Namie. ‘Same goes with my ice. And you should know we have no intention of paying for our drinks.’

  The waiter, who was having trouble filling out his shirt, hurried away. Billy Holiday was playing on the stereo - a modern day version had been performing on the small, corner stage with a backing guitarist but had just finished her set. The Night Glow was an intimate blu
es bar in a basement in downtown Hiroshima. The lights were down low and so were the voices of the patrons, who were lightly scattered amongst the dark wood tables and the bar. The walls were decorated with an eclectic mix of memorabilia and the staircase leading up to street level carried photographs of celebrity visitors including a newsreader and a television comic.

  The drinks arrived in the hands of a much older man. He had shiny silver hair and an embarrassed smile. He was smartly dressed with a white vest over a black silk shirt. His trousers were also black and his shoes were an immaculately polished brown.

  ‘I hope you are comfortable in my establishment,’ he said with a cultured, sophisticated air. ‘May I join you a moment?’

  He set the drinks down on the table before dragging across a chair from another table. Proximity brought into focus the deliberateness of his brush-over hairstyle and the sparkle of the diamond stud in his left ear.

  ‘Is this your place?’ asked Namie curtly.

  ‘Yes, it is. My name is Ohara.’

  Namie looked him over. ‘Do you run a bar so you can dress like that?’

  Ohara shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Customers expect me to dress a certain way. Class brings taste to a drink just the way a clean glass does.’

  Namie picked up her Black Russian and swallowed a significant portion. She nodded approvingly. ‘Nice glass.’

  ‘Would you like another?’

  ‘Yes, another just like it.’

  ‘My waiter informs