“I think it was a hit,” I said.
“Like a mob hit?” Doctor Nelson said. “Believe it or not, there’s not never as much organized crime activity as it appears. A lot of what is blamed on the mob in certain places is covers for monster activity. Las Vegas and New York especially.”
“But this was a hit.”
“Why some random waiter?” Doctor Nelson said. “Or was he masquerading as a random waiter?”
“Kiyoshi? He was from Miyagi prefecture. He was a foreign student at the University studying math. We used to chat about second order variables so just say he really knew his math. That and violin. I even had him over to the apartment to do some duets and jamming. His mother’s name was Kocho, his father’s was Kazumi. He was an only child. His parents are going to be devastated. And they weren’t the target. His dad is a salaryman and his mom is a homemaker. No target there.”
There was an argument going on in the back. I could see it through the pass-through. Most gaijin wouldn’t even recognize it as an argument but it was. The owner, Naoki, was in a heated discussion with his manager, Hyousuke. They looked as if they were having a polite conversation. I couldn’t lip read Japanese that well but I caught the name “Isao.” It might be a name and it might be a title. It translated as “Laudable Man” and was one of the titles used by the yakuza, equivalent to “Don” or maybe “Capo” in the mafia.
Yakuza were Japanese organized crime. Mafia in other words. They didn’t like to be referred to that way since yakuza roots went back further than Mafia. They’d been doing organized crime when Europe was still in the Dark Ages.
“Do yakuza in Japan ever use the supernatural for leverage?” I asked Doctor Nelson.
“Oh, gods, no,” Doctor Nelson said. “I attended a seminar in Japan two years ago about Japanese monster hunting techniques and that subject came up. The Japanese yakuza are dead set against anything supernatural. They have contracts with Japanese monster hunters to handle it for them.”
“Refresh my memory from training. What is the penalty for using the supernatural in commission of a crime. In this case, murder.”
“Conspiracy to use the supernatural in a murder is the same as necromancy,” Doctor Nelson said. “Automatic death penalty. No rights, no appeal. But you’d better be able to prove it if you’re going to file for the PUFF. I assume you’re talking about a human. What are you thinking?”
“I think…I need to see a man about a horse…”
* * *
Lieutenant Paulding’s office was buried in the basement of the King County Sheriff’s office. And he didn’t seem real happy to see me for some reason.
“How’s the arm?” he asked.
“I’m slowly being turned into a T-800,” I replied.
“You don’t have the height to be Schwarzenegger,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I need some information on organized crime. You know about the guy behind the bento place?”
“MCB is saying giant spiders,” Paulding said. “We quietly put out the warning to sewer maintenance. They’re usually the first people who go missing with those.”
“Too many stray cats and dogs in the University district for there to be giant spiders,” I said, ticking off on my fingers. “They always stun their prey and take them back to a lair. No silk at all in the area. They tend to drip the stuff from time to time, if nothing else. Not giant spiders.”
“I heard you’re saying Jorogumo,” Paulding said, leaning back. “Which makes even less sense. Those things are rare as shit. Maybe extinct.”
“In the US. I think it’s a recent immigrant.”
“So you’re thinking org crime is using a Jorogumo as a hit…thing?” he said, rubbing his chin. “That would be bad.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Kiyoshi was left there as a message. I’d say that the message was: Pay up or else. So…what do you know about Seattle’s org crime?”
“Not much,” Paulding admitted. “My beat’s complicated enough. Guy you want to talk to is Lieutenant Snyder with Seattle PD. He’s the head of their OrgCrime unit.”
“I doubt he’d talk to me without a reference.”
“I’ll give him a call.”
* * *
“Whatever this is, I do not want to know…”
Lieutenant Kenneth Snyder, Seattle Police Department, was a heavy-set, balding older guy wearing a cheap brown suit who looked as if he’d been serious beef-cake when he was younger. Now if you didn’t pay attention he looked like a worn-out beat cop. If you didn’t pay attention. ’Cause the guy had really sharp eyes.
He also had a much nicer office than Lieutenant Paulding.
“I just need to know if there’s been any major changes lately in the yakuza ranks,” I said. “Notably, the Laudable Man if there is one. The Japanese term is Isao.”
“I know about Isao,” Snyder said. “Having said I don’t want to know, why?”
“You heard about the body behind the bento place in UD?”
“Yeah, he died of natural causes,” Snyder said, making a grimace. “Twenty-three-year-old in perfect health dropped dead of a congenital heart defect. And somehow lost most of his body weight at the same time. Like I said, I don’t want to know details. You ask too many questions about that stuff either your career is finished or you end up having a congenital heart condition.”
“I think it was a message. To the owners of Saury and in general to Japanese businesses in Seattle. I don’t see Naoki-sama as the type to buck the yakuza so I’d say it was a general message. They picked a low-level, unimportant guy to off in a very nasty way to send the message. The only reason to send a general message is if there’s been some general change. So has there?”
“Nice deduction,” the lieutenant said, sliding his chair over to a file cabinet and rummaging for a second. After a bit he pulled out a file, slid back over and tossed it on the desk. “That does not leave this room and I never showed it to you.”
Enter Arata Inoue, newly promoted Isao to Seattle of the Agama-kai Yakuza clan. The Agama-kai, according to the background brief in the folder, had the Northwestern US sewed up. They had an agreement with the Nakamura-ka clan that split the west coast around Klamath Falls. Not that they penetrated much outside of major cities with large Asian populations. They focused their efforts primarily on strong-arming Japanese small to medium sized businesses, prostitution and gambling, again focused on the Japanese. They had some gaijin clients and prostitutes but other Asians, especially Chinese, were managed by the Tongs, see reference. They had an agreement with the Mongols for areas outside the cities. They sometimes used the biker gangs for strong-arm work.
Arata Inoue had a long rap sheet in Japan. He’d started off as a street peddler of drugs, moved into strong-arm work when he got a little older, pimp, suspected of murdering several rivals, the usual sort of thing. He’d moved up the ranks of the yakuza fairly fast. It was a meritocratic group and he had, in their eyes, great merit. He was a bit less suave and cultured than the usual upper ranks of the yakuza but he was starting to show signs of fitting in. He’d recently started to paint for example. There was a copy of one of his paintings of a lotus blossom. I was doing a better job in the second grade.
Lots of tattoos. Lots and lots of tattoos.
In the last few years he’d been repeatedly seen in the company of a girlfriend who was suspected of being one of his paid assassins. There was a picture of the girlfriend wearing a business suit. Cute girl.
If she was a girl. I had my doubts.
The number two man in Seattle was Michael Oshiro. As might be gleaned from his first name, Michael, while being pure ethnic Japanese, was born in the United States. The yakuza grand masters did not trust States-born Japanese to run major operations. They just were a bit too gaijin. Michael would otherwise have been the replacement for the previous Isao. Michael, while never having been convicted of a crime, had been investigated for everything from human trafficking to money laundering and had a de
gree in economics from Princeton, my mommy’s alma mater.
He had to be a bit put out by being supplanted by some thuggish, illiterate, street pimp from Yokahama. And knowing the yakuza as soon as the boss had his feet firmly on the ground and his finger on every pulse, Michael was likely to end up sucked as dry as a mummy.
Last comment was that the new Isao had been putting the fear of god into Japanese businesses in the Seattle and Portland area. Something had them kicking out dough like there was no tomorrow. But even the best confidential informants had clammed up on what was up.
“I need copies of the pictures. Just those. Especially the girlfriend.”
“Do I even want to know?” Snyder said.
“Not in a million years.”
* * *
I was back in my usual spot in Saury, munching on a tuna roll, when she walked in the door.
She was the perfect picture of a beautiful Japanese girl. Small feet, small nose, wide eyes, narrow hips that showed she was a virgin. She was wearing a mini-skirt and blouse that weren’t quite a school-girl outfit but very close.
She’d apparently put in a take-out order because as soon as she got to the register Naoki-sama himself handed over a bag that was presumably filled with bento boxes. She smiled and said something to him. He gave her the best smile he could summon up under the circumstances.
As she left I stood up and followed her out.
Either I or one of the other members of the team had been sitting in Saury for the last week. And most of the rest of the team was outside in the van waiting. As I exited the noodle shop they started to unload. The Jorogumo, if that was what she was, had turned in the opposite direction. That was okay. Jesse and Phil were sitting in Jesse’s car up that way. They got out and started walking towards her as I came up from behind. They were ostentatiously looking at a picture in Jesse’s hand.
The Jorogumo spotted them, they were being obvious, and turned into the alleyway next to Saury. I sped up and trotted around the corner, hand going under my windbreaker. As I turned the corner I drew my 1911 and started screwing the silencer on it. The Jorogumo was running now. I didn’t even bother to tell her to stop. I just shot her through the spine.
If she was actually a human, that was going to cause issues.
She dropped the bag and started limping, a pretty sure sign that I was dealing with a supernatural creature. The shot had gone squarely through her lumbar vertebrae. She shouldn’t have been able to walk at all. The bag spilled cash all over the alleyway and the stuff splurting from the wound wasn’t blood. It was a thick, green, ichor.
I trotted after her, firing several more rounds, until the Jorogumo was on the ground.
I reloaded as I approached, the rest of the team closing in on my position. The Jorogumo rolled over on her back and looked up at me with wide, helpless, pretty anime eyes.
“Please, help me,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Change,” I said, pointing the silenced pistol at her head.
Some people were gathering at the end of the alleyway, wondering what all the men with guns were doing. Someone screamed when they saw the wounded girl on the ground and started shouting for the police.
“I don’t know what you mean,” the Jorogumo said.
“A human female with seven rounds of .45 in her would be dead. Change.”
The thing hissed at me then rippled. It wasn’t the change of a werewolf, there was no writhing or bones cracking, it was just dropping the illusion. Suddenly I was looking at a five foot tall green spider.
“You sent a message,” I said in Japanese, focusing carefully on its neural center at the top of the abdomen. “Now we’re sending one back.”
I pumped it full of rounds until it stopped twitching.
“That’s for Kiyo,” I said, reloading. “He was my friend.”
* * *
“You had to do it right here in front of God and everybody?” the MCB agent asked. It was the same agent who had dismissed the idea of the killer being a Jorogumo.
“Jorogumo,” I said, pointing at the body. “One each.”
Jorogumo are naturally spider things and whatever they look like before they’re kill they revert to spider things on death. There was no need for a blood analysis. Jorogumo.
“Kiyoshi was a message from the new yakuza Isao,” I said.
“The what?” the MCB agent said.
“Try to work with me here. Yakuza, Japanese org crime…”
“I know what yakuza are,” the agent snapped.
“Isao, Laudable Man, big boss for a territory. There’s a new one in town the last few months. Arata Inoue. Inoue like the Senator. No relation. I hope. He’s been proving who’s boss. And he was using a Jorogumo to do it.”
“That’s a pretty serious accusation,” his partner put in.
“Are you guys seriously going to start trotting out rights of the accused at this point?” I asked, pointing to the body and the bag of currency. “You really think the Jorogumo picked up a bag of cash from Naoki-sama ’cause he liked her outfit?”
“She could have been shaking him down herself,” Agent One said.
“In which case she would have been afoul of the yakuza. Try to work with this thing called logic for a second. Last but not least,” I continued, pulling out the pictures.
“Don’t ask where these came from and I won’t have to lie. This is a picture of Inoue,” I said, flipping through the pictures I’d gotten from Snyder. “This is a picture of Inoue with his girlfriend. That’s the picture of the girlfriend we used to spot this Jorogumo. She kept the same guise so they’d know who to hand the bento box to. Cogito ergo sum, Inoue has been hanging out for the last few years with a Jorogumo. The Japanese businesses lately have been terrified of something going on with the yakuza. Japanese are in general terrified of the supernatural. They know damned well it exists. The reason they’re terrified is this Jorogumo at our feet.
“Arata Inoue killed Kiyoshi Moto using the Jorogumo which means he’s in violation of Federal Unearthly Code 68.158.6 Alpha. Sentence is death, no appeal. And there’s a PUFF line item.”
“If so, we’ll take it from here,” Agent One said.
“The hell you will,” I replied. “Again, PUFF line item. You guys just do clean-up.”
“You’re not going to get into a fire-fight with the yakuza on my watch,” Agent One said. “We’ll turn this over to OrgCrime.”
“You can’t,” Doctor Nelson said as he wandered over from the crime scene. “What are you going to tell them? That a mystical Japanese spider-woman was being used as a hit-person by the yakuza?”
The agent for just a moment had the same look on his face as when I’d handed my mom the JROTC paperwork.
Stroke, stroke, stroke…!
“Special Agent,” I said, placatingly. “We’ll keep this discreet. We’ll keep this quiet. We’ll get the job done. No more problems for you.”
“Try not to do it right off a crowded street at lunchtime next time,” Agent Two said.
“Guaranteed.”
* * *
“So you want to kill a yakuza boss?” Doctor Joan said, taking off her glasses and rubbing her face.
“Whack, terminate with prejudice, however you’d like to put it,” I said. “The PUFF on a Jorogumo is fifty grand. Sixty for the human who had her in employ. The real problem is we have to not just kill him, but kill him in a certain way.”
“That doesn’t follow,” Doctor Lucius said. “What do you mean?”
“It’s cultural,” I said with a sigh. “If we just mow him down on a street corner, besides pissing off the MCB it will piss off the yakuza. We have to communicate, for them, very directly. It is, among other things, a matter of territories. From the yakuza standpoint, territory is not about land, it’s about spheres of influence. The Tong are the org crime for the Chinese. In this area, biker gangs and drug gangs handle the gaijin like us. The yakuza are the OrgCrime for the Japanese.
“But our sphere o
f influence is the supernatural. From their cultural perspective, MHI aren’t cops. We’re ronin, a mob vaguely affiliated with the government, with a specific sphere of influence. What we have to say to them, in terms they understand, is that not only did Arata Inoue break their regulations against use of the supernatural but he intruded on our sphere of influence. So we can’t just blow him up when his car starts. We’re going to have to secure him and kill him in a most Japanese fashion.”
“Kidnap him and, what, make him commit hari-kari?” Jesse asked.
“The correct term is seppuku. And, no, just cut his head off. All the way, by the way. Make it roll on the floor.”
“As opposed to part of the way?” Doctor Lucius asked.
“As opposed to part way. When an individual commits seppuku, they are wound tight in a sheet so they won’t sprawl and a second stands by with a sword. After they have disemboweled themselves with a properly prepared tanto, the second cuts their head down to the skin of the lower neck. Done properly the head simply drops into their lap, still attached to their body. To cut a head off cleanly, to make it roll, is an insulting way to die.”
“Isn’t that adding insult to injury?” Doctor Joan asked. “Killing him in an insulting way?”
“Yes,” I said. “But by intruding on our turf, their guy insulted us. We have to insult him back or we’re just punks in their eyes. It would be an insult to them if he hadn’t started it. As it is, it’s simply an insult to him.”
“You’re sure you understand the cultural implications?” Doctor Lucius asked.
“Perfectly,” I said, hoping I understood the cultural implications. The alternative was picking a fight with the yakuza. We had enough enemies. “The tough part is going to be capturing him rather than killing him.”
“He’s probably got bodyguards,” Louis said.
“Breaks of the game. From the POV of the yakuza, that’s understandable. From the POV of the local authorities, this is never going to happen ’cause it’s an MCB matter. Main thing we want to avoid, from a pure moral perspective, is innocent bystanders.”
The Doctors Nelson exchanged a glance. They were great with hunting monsters, but people were a different matter.
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