Tokyo Vice

by Jake Adelstein

  A firefighter told me, “Endo’s a great guy. He wasn’t always a yakuza. Used to drive a truck. I actually voted for him in the 1984 mayoral elections. Politicians are all corrupt anyway. You might as well have one you know is corrupt from the start. Maybe he’ll surprise you and do something honest.”

  I was taking notes as fast as I could. What kind of crazy town was this where the local yakuza runs for mayor? Apparently, not as crazy as I first thought. Endo had received only 120 votes, losing by a landslide. At the town hall, I got a copy of the photo Endo had submitted as a candidate when he ran for office. He looked tough. He had the dead calm eyes of a potentially explosive yakuza and the punch perm hairstyle that rural yakuza seemed fond of. It looked as if his nose had been broken several times. You’d have to be pretty powerful to kill this guy.

  I took a taxi to where Endo had lived. The neighborhood was quiet, and the house was a beautiful semitraditional spread. The gate was open, so I stepped in to look more closely at the mail overflowing his mailbox. I was just getting a peek when someone came up behind me.

  It was a little old man, completely bald and so thin his skin seemed translucent. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, even though it was still quite cold. In bright green lettering, in English, the T-shirt said obscene things.

  “What are you doing?” he asked nonchalantly.

  “I’m looking for Yasunobu Endo. This is his house, isn’t it?”

  “It’s his house, but he’s not ever coming home.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he’s dead,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Kennel chopped him up, ground him into mincemeat, and fed him to the dogs. Everybody in town knows that.”

  “Is that so? You wouldn’t happen to have witnessed that happening, would you?”

  “Nope. Didn’t see a thing, but I know a thing or two. I know this town, and I know Endo, and I know Kennel.”

  “You mean Gen Sekine?”

  “I forget Kennel’s real name. Can I ask a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why are you looking for Endo?”

  I stepped back onto the street to continue our conversation. “I’m a newspaper reporter. When people, even yakuza, go missing, it’s news. I want to find out why he went missing.”

  “He’s not missing, he’s mincemeat, he’s dog shit now.”

  “You keep saying that. If everyone knows Kennel killed him, why haven’t the police arrested him?”

  “Because they need evidence, you fool. Knowing something and proving it are two different things. If you are a reporter as you say, you should know that.”

  “I’m a young reporter,” I said. “I’m still learning.” I handed him my meishi; he glanced at it and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  I kept up my tough line of questioning. “Why would Kennel kill Endo? What was the motive?”

  “Oh, that,” the man said as he pulled a pack of Golden Bats from out of his sock and lit up. He took a drag so deep that half the cigarette burned into ash in seconds, held the smoke in, and then exhaled.

  “Endo’s a yakuza. Yakuza like scary things, and they like to scare people. So Kennel, he’d sell scary animals to the yakuza. Tigers, lions, things to scare the hell out of normal people. Kennel got his start dealing pets to the yakuza.”

  “And why would he kill Endo?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe Kennel was born vicious, like a rabid dog. So that’s what he does. He kills people. Endo must have got in his way.”

  “And how could he kill a big guy like Endo?”

  “Maybe he took a syringe of poison and just jabbed it in Endo’s neck. Thwock! I saw him kill a dog that way once. It was a big dog. Long time ago I used to work for Kennel. Not anymore. He’s a bad man. Does bad things. Endo was a yakuza, but for a yakuza not so bad.”

  It was two in the afternoon. There wasn’t another person on the street; not a soul except for me and this old geezer. Endo’s house was quiet and dark. Nobody was home. In fact, the place looked abandoned.

  The geezer lived three houses down from Endo, and he seemed eager to talk but not in what you’d call a forthcoming way.

  “Can you remember the last time you saw Endo alive?”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  “Have any idea when he vanished?”

  “That I do.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “So what can you tell me?”

  “I remember the last time I didn’t see him alive.”

  “You saw him dead?”

  “You’re not listening to me, reporter boy. I said I remember the last time I didn’t see him alive.”

  “Okay, when was that?”

  “It was the morning of July 22, last year.”

  “You remember the day—why?”

  “Because that was the day Endo promised to drive me to the hospital for my heart medicine and the guy never showed up. Endo or that driver of his, Wakui, nice kid, sometimes used to give me a lift to the hospital. I wrote it down on my calendar. When he didn’t show up, I was pissed off. I need my medicine. I was going to give him a piece of my mind the next time I saw him. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, I say. If a man makes a promise, a man’s gotta keep that promise.”

  “So you never saw him after that?”

  “Nope, but another guy in the Takada-gumi told me that Endo and Kennel were fighting about something. And that’s when I knew that Endo had to be dead. Probably the kid too. A damn shame. I told the police Kennel must’ve whacked them.”

  This was good stuff, I was thinking. With this we could narrow down the period when Endo had vanished. I was scribbling notes when the old guy suddenly dropped his cigarette and stepped on it, reopened Endo’s gate, walked to the overflowing mailbox, pulled out everything with his bony hands, and came back to where I stood.

  “You wanted this, right?” he asked.

  Of course I wanted it. “I can’t take this,” I said. “It’s stolen.”

  “Well, you didn’t steal it. Because this mail doesn’t belong to anybody. Dead guys don’t read their mail, and the post office doesn’t reroute the stuff to Hell. So take it. Maybe you’ll find something.” He shoved it into my hands.

  “Well,” I said, stuffing the mail into my backpack, “I’ve got to get running. Thanks for everything.”

  The old guy stood in the middle of the road and lit another cigarette. I started to get back into the waiting taxi but stopped and asked him, “You know anybody else who might know anything about Endo or when he disappeared?”

  “Ask his girlfriend. I can’t remember whether or not she’s still going to high school. If she is, you could catch her there. Name’s Yumi-chan.”

  “Yumi-chan?”

  “She’s a hottie,” he said.

  “Do you need to go to the hospital today?” I asked him.

  “Yep.”

  “Okay.” I gave him a lift. It seemed like the thing to do.

  The homicide division was moving at a glacial pace, the white-collar crimes unit wasn’t happy about getting stuck arresting Sekine for fraud, and it wasn’t until late May that I got bit by the dog case again.

  It was at a drunken yomawari with a contact in the Organized Crime Division. The cop was grumbling about some injustice. “Those shitheads took the best fucking cop we have in the division and put him on that dog breeder case. Do they bother to ask me first? ’Course not, not when we really could use him ourselves …”

  My antennae went up. “Who’s the cop? A lieutenant or something?”

  “No, he’s barely a detective. A real outsider kind of guy. Doesn’t like to take the tests. But he can break a suspect better than anyone on the force. Hah, maybe it’s because he looks just like a yakuza—and not a chinpira [yakuza punk] either; looks likes a boss! He lives out in Konan. Hah, probably even went to school with Takada!”

  “He’d be a great guy to know.”

  “Why don’t you go visit him? He won’t bite.
Just be polite. Don’t tell him I sent you, though.”

  “What should I tell him?”

  “Tell him someone in homicide leaked his name to your boss. He hates working with those homicide guys anyway, so you won’t have to give up any names because you can blame your boss. Tell him that the homicide guys gave his name to your boss.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Sekiguchi.”

  Yamamoto was extremely pleased to hear I’d found a new source. We were still on the police shit list, so every little bit helped.

  “You did good, Adelstein. But if you’re going to get this cop to talk, you need a strategy. Does he have kids?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. I think somebody said something about daughters.”

  “Good. Take ice cream.”

  “Weather’s warming up. Ice cream will get all messy.”

  “Buy some dry ice, idiot.”

  “Why ice cream? Just because kids are supposed to like it?”

  “No, no, no. It’s a Trojan horse, Adelstein. It gets you in the door. If the cop’s not home, you can say to the wife, ‘Oh, I brought this ice cream for him. Could you please put it in the freezer so it doesn’t melt?’ If he’s home, he may take the ice cream and invite you in. If the kids see the ice cream, they’re going to want some. They may decide they like you. If they do, you’ve nailed the wife.”

  “You want me to have sex with the wife?”

  “No, get on good terms with the wife. Work on your Japanese, Jake. Trust me. If you’re going to take something with you, ice cream is good. Remember, you’re imposing on these cops. They aren’t obligated to talk to us at all. So acknowledge this. No good police reporter shows up empty-handed, not the first time and not the last time.”

  “Uhh, can I expense it?”

  “This comes out of your own pocket. Everybody pays their own sources.”

  The curse of the police beat: the Yomiuri raises your pay, but it never matches the hours you work. You have a very limited expense account, and the better you get at your job, the more you spend on wining, dining, and gifts to the cops. Even the Yomiuri Giants baseball tickets, which everyone thought we got for free, we paid for out of pocket. The more sources you had, the more expenses you had. So it went.

  But I followed Yamamoto’s advice to the letter. I went to the supermarket and bought the biggest tub of Häagen-Dazs chocolate I could find and arrived at the interrogator’s house at seven in the evening. It was at the back of an empty field, and it looked more like a shack than a house, with a little porch. The night was pitch-black. After living in the city for months, it was a shock to see the night sky and hear the sounds of leaves rustling. The smell of vegetation and damp leaves wafted through the air like raw incense.

  I had the driver wait far out of sight. As I approached the house, I felt nervous, as I always did on a first yomawari, which was worse when you’d never even met the guy you were going to cuddle up to. I likened it to a blind date with a female kickboxer.

  As I rang the doorbell, I could hear children laughing. Perfect. Mrs. Sekiguchi came to the door and turned on the porch light. Two little girls materialized on either side of her, sticking their heads out, full of curiosity at the apparition standing before them.

  “I apologize for coming so late in the evening. My name is Jake Adelstein, with the Yomiuri Shinbun,” I said in perfectly polite Japanese and handed her my card.

  She looked confused. “Umm, we already subscribe to the Yomiuri.”

  “Thank you,” I said, bowing as a good company man should. “Actually, I’m a reporter. I was hoping for the chance to speak with your husband.”

  “Oh? Let me see if he’ll talk to you.”

  She ducked indoors as the two girls stepped out onto the porch. “What are you?” asked the littler one.

  “Don’t you mean who are you?” I corrected her.

  She stood her ground. “No, I mean what are you? You’re obviously not human.”

  “He might be human,” her sister said.

  I didn’t know how to respond to this line of conversation. “Why do you think I’m not human?”

  The little sister answered immediately. “You have pointed ears and a nose so big that you can’t be human.”

  “Well, then,” I asked, “what am I?”

  Little Sister came closer and stared up at my face. “You have a big long nose and pointed ears and big round eyes too. You are pretending to speak Japanese like a human being. You must be a tengu [Japanese goblin].”

  Big Sister shook her head. “Chi-chan, he has only one pointed ear. And his skin isn’t bright red. Just pink. But definitely he has a tengu nose.”

  Chi-chan asked me to bend down so she could touch my nose. I did. Without a moment’s hesitation she stuck a finger in each of my nostrils and pulled down hard; I almost fell over. She wiped her fingers on her jeans and scratched her head. Then she clapped her hands. “I know! You’re half tengu and half human. What do you think, Yuki-chan?”

  Before Yuki-chan could offer her informed judgment on the state of my being, Mrs. Sekiguchi returned. “My husband doesn’t want to talk to any reporters. I’m sorry,” she said apologetically.

  “I understand,” I replied. “I usually cover organized crime for the newspaper, and I know a lot of police are not comfortable talking with the press. Sometimes, believe it or not, I personally can be useful to them.”

  Mrs. Sekiguchi laughed. “Well, maybe next time.”

  I handed her my bag of ice cream. “This will never survive the trip back to Urawa, so please take it. It’s already starting to melt. I’m sure Chi-chan and Yuki-chan will like it.”

  I said good-bye to the kids, wiggling my half-tengu ear at them, and walked slowly back to where the car was parked. I was halfway across the field when I heard a deep booming voice call out, “Yomi-san [as in “Mr. Yomiuri”], wait up!”

  I turned around to see a tall, imposing figure in jeans and T-shirt standing on the porch. It was Sekiguchi. I headed back his way.

  “Thanks for the ice cream,” he said as he shook my hand firmly. “There’s too much for four people. You might as well come in and have some.”

  Sekiguchi had deep-sunken eyes with solid black irises, high cheekbones, and a pronounced nose that you could see had been broken. He had his hair cut short, a little longer on top, giving him the appearance of a fifties biker. He motioned me inside.

  The kids and Mrs. Sekiguchi were sitting on the living room floor with their feet under the blanket of a low table. Mrs. Sekiguchi had my meishi out before her, and the two girls had what looked like homework spread out over the table. Sekiguchi brought in five bowls of ice cream and set them on the table.

  I handed him the beer I’d brought as backup.

  “Oh, thanks!” he said, taking the beer into the kitchen. He sat down and then, as if he’d just remembered something, asked, “I’m sorry, did you want a beer?”

  “I’m fine, thank you. But you don’t drink beer?” I asked.

  “No, not at home. It sets a bad example for the kids.”

  He lit a cigarette and offered me one too. I gladly accepted, needing to do something with my hands.

  “I thought the typical American didn’t smoke anymore?” he said.

  “I’m not a typical American.”

  “I noticed.”

  “How did you know I’m American?”

  He took a drag. “I remember you. You were there taking photos when we busted that Sumiyoshi-kai fake political organization.”

  “Yeah, I was there. I don’t remember seeing you, though,” I said, then dared to say what came out of my mouth next. “Maybe I thought you were another yakuza.”

  Happily for me, he laughed. “Yeah, I get that a lot. In this town, I could have gone either way.”

  From then on, Sekiguchi controlled the conversation, asking questions about me and my background, my life up to entering the Yomiuri. He was a good listener. He was either really interested or really good
at feigning interest. After we finished the ice cream, he thanked me again.

  “That was delicious. Your technique is good, and your approach is decent. You figured this would get you in the door, and you were right. The question that remains is: can I trust you, and should I trust you?”

  “Yes, that is the question, isn’t it?”

  “How did you get my name?”

  I had to think about how to answer. I didn’t want to come off false, but I didn’t want to give everything away. “You know that I cover organized crime. That’s my beat within the police beat.”

  “But you’re here because I’m working the dog breeder case.”

  I nodded. “That’s right. I cover organized crime, and you’re handling the missing yakuza guy, or so I hear.”

  He nodded, then said, “But you aren’t answering my original question. How did you get my name and address?”

  “If I tell you, how can you trust me? How can you know that I won’t drop your name with the wrong person? Conversely, even if I tell you, how do I know you won’t flush out my source and get him in trouble for leaking information?”

  Sekiguchi laughed. “Good answer. You’re well trained. All right. I won’t ask for a name. But give me a hint. I promise you that I won’t hold it against you, and I won’t go looking for who told you about me. I’m just curious.”

  “So you’re asking me to trust you?”

  “It’s a mutual thing.”

  “All right. I have no loyalty to the homicide squad. They aren’t my beat. Someone on the case gave your name to my boss. He won’t tell me who it was, and I would never ask.”

  Sekiguchi curled his lip and stubbed out his cigarette, chuckling.

  “Those guys spend eighty percent of their time trying to figure out how to keep the press off the scent and from fucking up the investigation. Of course, they’re all leaking information right and left to their favorite reporters, especially to the cute female ones. So what do you want to know?”

  I wasn’t expecting this. Actually, I’d never been grilled like this by a cop before. This was new territory for me.

  “What can you tell me about Endo?” I started. “And what can you tell me about Gen Sekine?”