by Laird Barron
Nanashi lighted a cigarette, grateful no one was interested in conversation. He sneaked glances at Muzaki in the rearview mirror, wondering how much of the heavy-lidded slothfulness was an act. Certainly, he was no one’s fool. Could he really be at peace? What did such a thing feel like? Already, Nanashi’s throat was dry. The need for a drink was an itch in the back of his mind. He hadn’t fallen from the wagon -- he’d leaped.
Their route was circuitous and took them through a series of off-ramps and access roads to a plain of broken slabs of granite. Decrepit paved lots looped as fractured geometric patterns into the distance. Koma parked among weeds and crushed glass and flattened bottle caps at the rim of a manmade crater. An abandoned derrick rusted down there amid pools of orange alkaline and pieces of ruined machinery, and rocks and gravel.
Amida rolled alongside. The doors clanked open and everyone got out, stretched, and lighted cigarettes with fancy lighters. Haru started snapping pictures, gesturing for his comrades to strike poses. They stood around making nervous small talk until Koma gave Amida a look. Amida dropped his cigarette and ground it under the heel of his loafer. He stuck his hands into his pockets and shuffled over to where Muzaki was peering into the pit. He stood so close to Muzaki, their shoulders brushed. A slender blade dropped from Amida’s sleeve and glittered in his hand.
Nanashi sat on the bumper of the Cadillac and folded his arms. His mind began to empty. The light was reddening. Had they driven so long? A seagull drifted past. Yuki, sweet Yuki, would be dressing for work. She’d be putting on her cocktail dress, dusting her cheeks with the barest hint of glitter. Nanashi’s father patted the couch -- on television the great Muzaki raised an opponent overhead, and the black and white crowd cheered. He wasn’t the one about to meet his fate, so why was it his life flashing before his eyes?
Muzaki laughed at something Amida said. He glanced over his shoulder at Nanashi and winked. He casually grabbed Amida by the belt, lifted him to his shoe tips, and flung him into space. Nanashi was so shocked at the slapstick aspect of the event, he chuckled. The other men froze in a tableau of department store manikins, cigarettes poised near their slack mouths, and Haru’s camera fixed to his eye. Muzaki ignored everyone, leaning farther out, hands on knees, to regard hapless Amida’s earthward trajectory.
The camera clicked. Jiki squawked and hopped into action, brandishing a steel jack handle with tape wrapped around the grip. He smashed Muzaki in the base of his skull with a hollow, ringing thunk. Muzaki didn’t flinch, so Jiki tried again, starting from his ankles and looping the jack handle in an overhand strike, as if he were splitting a log. This time, Muzaki took a small step and pitched forward and dropped from view. That broke the group paralysis, and in a stream, Jiki, Mizo, and Haru went whooping and scrambling after him.
Koma ran to the edge, fancy lemon hat in hand. He pulled at his hair with his other hand and made frequent unhappy exclamations about the scene below. A series of pops echoed from the pit. Then three more, much lighter ones followed by a bunch of shouting. Nanashi recognized the first gunshots as belonging to Haru’s .32 automatic. Haru had originally bought it for his girlfriend as a birthday present. She didn’t like guns and he lost his own pistol into a canal while drunk, so now he carried the puny .32 and hoped no one would notice to give him shit -- which everyone had, naturally. The second volley came from a .22 pistol, although it was a mystery who might be strapped with such an embarrassingly trivial caliber weapon. The .32 fired again. The shouting resumed, accompanied by cries of pain, but no more gunshots.
“What the fuck! What the fuck! Doesn’t anybody in this gang carry a real gun?” Koma sounded as if he were going out of his mind. He grabbed a chunk of loose rock and hurled it. “You fucking idiots! You can’t shoot a rhino with a pellet gun!” He ran back to Nanashi. His face was shiny with rage and terror. “You’ve got a cannon -- get your ass down there and do something! Blow his fucking head off!”
“No,” Nanashi said. He stared at his shoes. The very notion of departing the comforting gravity of the car bumper made him sick and dizzy.
You’ll have a rabbit’s chance.
“What? Go! Go!” When Nanashi didn’t answer, Koma screeched and began slapping him about the head and shoulders with his hat. “What’s wrong with you? Have you lost your nerve? Are you some kind of chicken?”
Nanashi shielded his face from the blows. He wept in pain and humiliation. Koma kept slapping him with the ridiculous hat. He only stopped when Mizo jogged past them to the rear of the other car and sprang the trunk. The bow-legged little man grabbed a red fireman’s axe. He huffed and puffed. His baggy clothes were splattered with blood. His face was swollen and agonized like a man in the throes of an orgasm.
Koma said, “What the fuck is going on down there? Whose axe is that?” Mizo shook his head, too winded to speak. He scurried off. Koma put his hat on and walked heavily to the edge of the quarry. He stood there for a while, observing the ruckus. His shoulders slumped. Eventually it became quiet, and he said, “Holy fuck,” a few times. He walked back to the car and stood before Nanashi. His eyes were glassy. “Holy fuck,” he said. “Good thing somebody brought an axe, I guess.” He joined Nanashi on the bumper. He dug around in his jacket and removed a pack of cigarettes, and cursed to find it empty. As he balled the pack in his fist, his cell phone began to play a tinny melody.
Nanashi stood and moved away from the Cadillac to compose himself. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and blew his nose. Behind him, Koma finally answered the phone. After a long pause, he said in a perfectly calm voice, “What do you mean it’s off?”
Part Two
The Maze of Knives
They journeyed into darkness.
Nanashi drove because Koma was far too shaken by contemplating his possible fate once they returned to the city. Haru tended Amida in the back seat. Amida’s suit was tattered. He’d broken his arm in the fall. His nose was crushed into a jellified lump. He’d bled so severely blood coagulated in a bib on his chest, caked his face like a rubber mask. He moaned whenever Nanashi changed lanes too quickly, or hit a bump, or touched the radio volume. Koma moaned too.
Jiki and Mizo were stuck in the Honda with Muzaki’s mutilated corpse. Mizo was driving. His headlights trailed a few car-lengths back and Nanashi distracted himself from fantasies of impending doom by speculating about the current conversation going on in the Honda. They, being idiots, meant this line of conjecture didn’t go far. The last he’d seen them, the two were laughing hysterically, gore soaking their clothes. Jiki had made a comment that provoked Mizo into chasing him around with the axe until Koma screamed that he was going to have their fingers cut off if they didn’t shut the fuck up.
Instead, Nanashi’s mind went to Muzaki’s bulk wrapped in a tarp and rammed into the back of the car. It had taken forty-five minutes and Mizo, Jiki, and Haru’s combined efforts to drag him from the pit. Nanashi was powerless to tear his gaze away from the whole clumsy, awful mess, right up until Haru kept slamming the door on Muzaki’s shoeless foot as it dangled. Uncle Yutaka wanted the corpse returned to headquarters, although he didn’t say why. Nanashi suspected it was because he and Uncles Nobukazu and Ichiban were sentimental enough to think the famous wrestler deserved a proper ceremony. This displeased Haru, Jiki, and Mizo, who unanimously agreed that burying Muzaki in the quarry and pretending none of it had ever happened was the best plan. Amida probably agreed with the consensus view, but his grunts and gurgles were unintelligible.
The way Nanashi figured, all of them were already dead men. Dead rabbits, if one preferred.
“What a day,” Koma said. He turned on the radio and scanned through the channels. He turned the radio off. He suddenly beamed like a child. “You are in a lot of trouble when we get home. Uncle is going to be angry with you. This is all your fault, Nanashi-san. He will blame you completely.” This seemed to give him comfort and he patted Nanashi’s arm affectionately. “Got a cigarette?”
Nanashi pushed in the dash ligh
ter. When it popped, he stuck two cigarettes into his mouth and lighted them. He handed one to Koma. The headlights washed over a sign warning of steep grades and sharp turns ahead. The road curved into a forest. He glanced at the side mirror.
Koma sighed. “What a day, what a day,” he said, still smiling. “If only Uncle called a few minutes earlier, it would’ve been a happier ending. This means war with the Dragon. Surely they’ll be gunning for us all. We will need to take precautions. Change where we eat, get our dry cleaning done -- I won’t be able to show my face at the Palace of the Sunfish until we settle our scores. No more packages. The magistrate who was blown to bits in Kyoto…that was the Dragon. The sneaky bastards love letter bombs. This is terrible.”
Yes, yes, Nanashi thought Koma had it right. This was terrible. Then he glanced in the mirror and saw Mizo’s headlights make a hard right onto an access road and vanish into the darkness. He tried to recall what lay down that road--an estuary, a canal, something on that order. A chill stole over him and he experienced a split second premonition of evil that caused him to swoon. The car lurched and Koma swore, not aware of the drama unfolding behind them.
What could it mean?
“Shit, we are definitely in trouble.” Nanashi coasted onto the shoulder until bits of grit and gravel crunched under the Cadillac’s wheels, then switched the hazard flashers on and smoked his cigarette. He fished out a flask of whiskey and had a sip while Koma stared at him incredulously. Nanashi observed a stream of headlights the mirror, daring to hope, but none belonged to Mizo’s Honda.
Haru stuck his face over the front seats and said, “What is it? Why are we stopped? Give me some of that booze.”
Nanashi gave him the booze and when Haru had drunk greedily, Nanashi handed the flask to Koma who also took a long, shuddering drink. Nanashi said, “The twins split.”
“Split?” Koma’s eyes were wild. He rolled down the window and twisted in his seat to look backward along the highway. “Where the hell are those clowns? How could they get lost? Idiots! Now is the time to stick together!”
“Not lost. Just gone.” Nanashi rubbed his eyes.
“Dumbass. You should’ve said something.”
“Oh, no,” Haru said. “Those crazy bastards. I always knew something like this was bound to happen. The cowards have run away. Scurried into the night like rats.”
Nanashi didn’t think that was the case--the twins were stupid and stupidly fearless. Neither would think to flee the coming apocalypse until they were trapped in a cellar and being flayed alive by Dragon enforcers. He kept his peace, however.
“But wait.” Koma slumped into his seat. “Those idiots don’t run from a fight. Is it possible we’ve been betrayed? Did the Dragon get to them? We pay them like shit, that’s for sure.”
Haru snatched the flask and shook his head between gulps. “No way. The Dragon only wants them for fish bait. Even those two retards wouldn’t be that dumb.”
This was true. Once upon a time the twins had crossed the rival gang in such a spectacular fashion that there could be no rapprochement under any conceivable circumstance. The twins had gained their celebrated status as dreaded Heron enforcers after the legendary feat of storming a fortified stronghold and executing eight soldiers of the Dragon Syndicate who’d assembled to plot an attack on the Heron Clan. It was a slaughter of such magnitude (the soldiers were renowned assassins and all around tough guys) and conducted with such ruthlessness and audacity that the criminal underworld buzzed for months afterward. Uncle Nobukazu, the twins’ patron, basked quite smugly in the afterglow. He was said to have visited the duo in their private hospital room (as they’d suffered serious injuries during their heroics), waiting upon them hand and foot with sweets, cigarettes, and liquor.
Yes, the Terrible Two managed to murder eight foes at a single go, however, the feat wasn’t quite as heroic as the storytellers later made it out to be. For one thing, the rival gangsters had gathered in a shabby motel, not a fortress sanctum. For another, the Dragons hadn’t assembled to assault the Herons, they’d been summoned by the syndicate elders to await orders for escorting a shipment of designer clothing they’d extorted a small corporation into selling them on the cheap. Nothing exotic or particularly important about the job, which was why all of the men involved were either foot soldiers or hard cases long past their prime. The Terrible Two got wind of the caper from a little creep on the periphery of the Dragon Syndicate, a shiner of shoes and fetcher of sake who’d taken a kick in the ribs from one of his betters and decided to get revenge. The creep happened to share a needle in a den with two likely friends and thus history was written.
As it happened, the twins had recently come into possession of ancient surplus military hardware including an AK-47 and a real live functioning flamethrower circa WWII. Neither of the goons had the foggiest clue regarding the care and operation of a pack of crayons much less a lethal antipersonnel device. Be that as it may, after gleaning the basic mechanics from a how-to internet video, the Terrible Two packed the flamethrower and some guns into a sports car Mizo jacked from behind a seedy tavern and away they went, both of them fidgeting from the coke they’d snorted that afternoon.
They spent half the evening locating the flophouse motel where their quarry lurked, then circled the joint a dozen times in an effort to scope the opposition. Jiki took a turn at the wheel and rear-ended another car and received a warning from the police. Lucky for him there was a major traffic accident across town and the distracted cops didn’t run the plates on the stolen car or happen to glance in the backseat where deadly weapons were stacked in plain view.
Phase Two saw them creeping through a field of shrubbery and broken glass until they were huddled outside the roomful of over-the-hill yakuza. The Dragons were drunk and drugged up. Some slept, others sat around in their underwear, smoking grass, playing cards, and scratching flabby guts while cops and robbers shot each other on the television. Jiki and Mizo were not quite so foolish as to charge in, guns blasting, not quite so ferociously suicidal. In any event, Mizo was particularly intrigued to see what havoc he could wreak with his new toy, which he’d strapped to his back and primed for action.
The gang was oblivious to their impending doom, with the exception of one fellow sitting cross-legged on a bed next to the window. This gangster was so stoned he had no clue what to make of the wand slipping between the blinds, and actually cocked his head to peer down the nozzle right before Mizo squeezed the trigger.
The entire motel went up in flames. People, yakuza and innocent guests alike, shrieked and died as smoke boiled and the black sky was painted hellish hues of orange and red. The Terrible Two fled for the car, laughing and hooting in hyena joy, and all might’ve gone perfectly if Jiki, who drove because Mizo was still lugging the flamethrower, hadn’t decided to cruise past the scene of the inferno to gloat over their victory. A Dragon enforcer staggered from the conflagration clad only in shorts--hair smoldering, face slagged from the intense heat--and unloaded his dual automatic pistols. Jiki panicked and floored the accelerator and the yakuza stood in the middle of the road with action hero aplomb, popping off a few final rounds at their disappearing taillights before he collapsed in a smoldering heap and died. Meanwhile, a bullet punched through the car’s rear window and ricocheted from the tank on Mizo’s back. He screamed in surprise and Jiki swerved all over, tires screeching, rubber burning, and somehow during the confusion the flamethrower got set off again and turned the car into a fireball Jiki promptly steered off the street and into a canal.
Satan apparently watches over his own because both men survived with minor burns, a few broken bones, and singed scalps. Hailed as heroes of the clan, only a handful of insiders ever knew the reality: The Terrible Two were a pair of craven, fucking morons. Famous fucking morons, now.
The Dragon Syndicate were not amused.
By the grace of iron-strong custom and venerable gangster tradition regarding truces were Jiki and Mizo kept from being summarily abducted and
tortured and fed to the fishes. Sadly enough.
Nanishi said, “So much for the honor of ninkyō dantai,” and laughed.
“What now?” Haru said in a thick voice. Amida moaned.
“We can’t return to the office without the corpse.” Koma had taken the cell phone from his pocket, but obviously lacked the courage to ring Uncle Yutaka with the current news. Things were likely tense around the gang clubhouse. “Okay, piss on it. Move over, I’m driving.”
Koma and Nanashi traded places, although Koma didn’t get moving right away. The four of them hunched for a while in the shadows, sporadically illuminated by the hazards and the flare of passing headlights. Nanashi shut his eyes and the black motes aligned like a Venus flytrap’s teeth snapping together.
The ghost of Muzaki whispered, There are those who claim that Time is a ring. I have found it to be a maze, and my own role that of the Minotaur. Rabbit, O rabbit. Welcome to the maze.
* * *
One often falls in dreams. In this case, Nanashi had the sense of traveling at great speed, like a bullet shot through the heart of a void. His eyes opened and blackness resolved into light and sound. Music scratched from a vinyl record -- Black Betty by the venerable Ram Jams. Karaoke was quite popular with the yakuza and he’d learned all of the classics--Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Clash, and dozens between. How many slobbering drunk renditions of “Green, Green Grass of Home” or “Folsom Prison Blues” had he delivered at yakuza bar haunts over the years? Lots and lots, was the answer.
The woman gave a short, stifled cry when she saw him in the middle of the hallway between the bathroom and bedroom. He would’ve said something to reassure her except for the inconvenient fact that his insides were on the verge of erupting. The vertigo felt similar to falling from an apartment window toward the upward rushing concrete.
