Tokyo Vice

by Jake Adelstein

  “So what were the results?”

  “According to Takada, the poor bastard cried like a baby but insisted he’d never touched Endo. For three hours they put the screws to him, and he didn’t admit a damn thing. Finally, Takada grabbed him by the throat and said, ‘Maybe you whacked Endo, maybe you didn’t. Either way, he’s no longer in this world. I can feel it. The least you owe the man is a prayer for his soul.’ Takada dragged Sekine in front of the small Buddhist shrine in the office. Sekine’s hands shook so bad he broke three sticks of incense before he could get the lighter to light it and stick it into the ash. Takada laughed, said it was quite a show.”

  “If he won’t spill his guts to Takada, he’s not going to confess to the police,” I blurted out.

  “About that,” said Sekiguchi, “you are wrong. But first, tell me how the hell you found out Takada snatched him?”

  “A little bird told me.”

  “A little bird?” Sekiguchi looked very serious for a second. Then he cleared his throat. “Look, Jake, we haven’t known each other for too long. I know that as a reporter you don’t give up your sources. I respect that. But now I need to know how you knew—not as reporter to cop but as man to man. It’s important. I won’t tell anyone, you have to trust me, but I need to know.”

  I hesitated. Was this a test to see if I would protect my sources no matter what, or did he really mean what he said?

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “I need to make sure that what I tell you isn’t flowing back to Takada. I don’t think that would happen, but maybe you don’t know who’s talking to who. So tell me.”

  “All right. I heard it from Kimiko.”

  “Kimiko? From the bar where Yumi works?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what the hell were you doing with Kimiko on a Friday night?”

  “A kind of date?”

  Sekiguchi’s mouth dropped open. “You’re doing Kimiko? Jake, you really are an information whore.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “No, no, no. You’re single, it’s okay. But don’t forget she’s a yakuza woman. And she’s got a shabu habit.”

  “Shabu?”

  “Speed. Methamphetamine. She’s a junkie. So you’d better be using a skin. You could get hep C or worse.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, be careful.”

  “Should I not see her?”

  “No, keep seeing her. Keep pumping her for information. Hell, pump her for anything you want. Just tell me what you find out.” He shook his head and offered me a cigarette, which I was happy to take.

  I was learning a lot from Sekiguchi, most important that it’s the time you take when it seems unimportant that is the most important time of all. Sekiguchi, whenever he put a yakuza in jail, would always pay a visit to the guy’s family. He’d check up on them periodically, sometimes even buy them groceries or help the wife with house repairs. He would contact the yakuza in the “pig house” (a euphemism for jail, not a typographical error) and let him know how things were going at home. He never made the crime and the criminal a personal thing. He was doing his job, and they were doing theirs.

  The payoff for this extra effort was that when the yakuza returned to their lives outside prison, they were predisposed to leak information to Sekiguchi. Whether or not they picked up again with organized crime, they’d always have ties to yakuza and would pass things on to Sekiguchi. Thus he had built himself up a little yakuza information network. I decided I would emulate him to the best of my ability.

  In July, Sekiguchi invited me to that wonderful tradition known as a family barbecue. This being Japan, it wasn’t hot dogs and it wasn’t beef, it was fish—small, sweet, fresh river fish known as ayu, skewered, rubbed with salt, grilled over charcoal, and dipped in an amazing green sauce. Delicious! As we sat on his porch drinking Cokes and eating whole fish on a stick, he offered me some more advice: “You have to plant the seeds when the ground is still half frozen to reap the spring harvest. Plant the seeds in spring.”

  It was a little unusual for him to speak in metaphors, so I asked him to explain.

  “Well, the dog breeder case is hot now, yeah, I know. But you shouldn’t be spending all your time on it. You should be hanging out with some other cops now too. Why? Because they don’t have any good cases. And because they have nothing to work with, they have plenty of time, and they probably wouldn’t mind your company. If you brought them something to work with, they’d love you.

  “Visit your sources or your informants when nothing is going on. Then they’ll see you as a friend or a buddy and not a hungry opportunist. Familiarity breeds trust. You came pretty early on this case, before my name got out, so I let you in the door.”

  He used his skewer to poke out the eyeball of a fish and offered it to me. I popped it into my mouth. Not bad. The two girls were watching and gave me a standing ovation, clapping wildly. Mrs. Sekiguchi offered me the eyeball from her fish; I politely declined. I’d had my quota for the day.

  “Where do you think this case is going?” he asked.

  I had no idea.

  “The fraud case will fall apart. There are two people who probably know how Sekine killed Endo and Kawasaki, the waste management company president. That’s Ryoji Arai, his so-called business associate, and Shima, Arai’s driver. It’s very simple. We find something to arrest those two for—God knows they’ve done some shady shit in their lives. We bounce them off each other until they cough up the information we want, and then we take down Sekine. If I was in charge, that’s what I’d do. Unfortunately, I’m not in charge.”

  “Who is Arai, anyway? What’s his connection to Sekine?”

  “You’re going to have to work on that one for yourself, Jake. I could spell it all out for you, but it’d be too easy. Ask around. You’ll find out.”

  While I was screwing around with Kimiko and talking with Sekiguchi, the other Yomiuri reporters were doing a stellar job tracking down Sekine’s less-than-stellar history. It seemed as though he’d always been in the orbit of the yakuza; even as a youngster he’d hung around the local gang’s office and ran errands, though he’d never managed to become a full-fledged member.

  His life was unremarkable until 1972, when he began dealing in exotic pets. Business boomed. Ups and downs followed; he married another “animal lover” in 1983 and settled down in Kumagaya, in the northern part of Saitama Prefecture. He cut down on expenses by making his own pet food, slaughtering the pigs and cattle himself and grinding up the offal for dog food. The blood that oozed into the streets from the shop upset the neighbors, as did the animal carcasses that were thrown out with the other trash. But Sekine cleaned up his act, and the neighbors learned to live with it.

  Back at the office, I compared notes with my colleagues. I found out that Ryoji Arai and Sekine went back ten years or so. Until recently, he’d been the PR guy for the African Kennel, then he and Sekine had had a falling-out—but not before Arai’s wife went missing. Probably Arai killed her, and Sekine helped him get rid of the body.

  From a police contact, I learned that Arai was a wanted man, a very wanted man. He had somehow managed to alienate members of the two biggest crime groups in Japan—the Inagawa-kai and the Sumiyoshi-kai—by hurting the dog of a member of the former and by making off with a large amount of money from the latter.

  I found out from another source that there was a zetsuenjo out in Arai’s name. When someone leaves the fold of an organized crime group, yakuza send out one of two kinds of letters to associated group members. A hamonjo (meaning “broken gate”) says that the individual is no longer associated with the organization and advises the recipient of the letter not to give him shelter or do business with him. A zetsuenjo, like the one out on Arai, says that the individual has betrayed the organization, is no longer entitled to membership, and is being hunted down; sometimes it also asks for information on the whereabouts of said individual. It can be a “Wanted: Dead or Alive” poste
r that’s circulated among the organized crime groups. This source allowed me to make a copy.

  Armed with my copy of this unique document, I headed back to Sekiguchi’s house. It was six on a hot, humid evening. I was wearing my summer suit, a silk tie, and dress shoes, looking very snazzy. My socks even matched.

  As I walked up to the door, it opened on its own. Out came the four members of the Sekiguchi family, all in gray sweatsuits.

  “Jake, you’re just in time. Come jog with us.”

  “I’m in a suit.”

  “So what, you can still run. Come on.”

  The kids pulled at my arm. “Come on, Jake. If you want to talk to our father, you have to run. Try and catch us!”

  And with that they took off ahead of their parents. I didn’t really have a choice; I started jogging pathetically in my suit, trying to keep pace with Sekiguchi. Within ten minutes, the trail had taken us to the mountains. My only pair of dress shoes was about to become a casualty of duty.

  “So,” said Sekiguchi, “find out anything about Arai?”

  “Yes,” I panted. “I have his zetsuenjo right here.”

  “Show it to me.”

  I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up to Sekiguchi, who kept running while he read it.

  “Excellent work, Jake. Good to see you doing something on your own. I won’t be around to spoon-feed you forever.”

  “I wasn’t counting … on … it.” I was having trouble keeping up with the guy. How could he be smoking two packs a day and still be kicking my ass?

  The kids weren’t cutting me any slack either. “Come on, Jake. Don’t be so slow.”

  “Okay, let’s pick up the pace,” I said, trying to salvage some pride, and I ran ahead. Sekiguchi caught up with me in three easy strides.

  “Out of shape, Jake? I may outlive you, boy.”

  “I think you will.”

  “So you wanna head back?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Okay, meet you back at the house.”

  “No way. I’m not giving up if you aren’t.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure,” I said, full of gasping bravado.

  “Okay, then, I’ll show mercy,” Sekiguchi said. Calling the troops to him, he announced, “We’re turning around, going back home. And for Jake-kun, we walk: one, two, three, four.”

  Briskly, Sekiguchi filled me in as I stuck next to him:

  Arai and Sekine were business partners. But Arai was a greedy bastard. He’d sold an expensive dog to the head of one of the Sumiyoshi-kai groups and was supposed to care for it while the boss was traveling. Instead, he’d abandoned the dog and left town with money borrowed from the group to set up a business importing animals for pets. He also allegedly ran off with a couple million yen he’d borrowed from Takada.

  When the Sumiyoshi boss returned and found his dog half dead, he was furious. He swore he’d hunt down Arai like a dog himself. Arai got spooked, took off into the boonies, changed his name, found religion, and started painting Buddhist art. A little while before, Arai had reemerged on the scene and seemed to be back working for Sekine. Maybe after years of living like a monk, he was overpowered by the smell of Sekine’s success. Then suddenly Arai was gone, nowhere to be found. He had to know something about the missing people around Sekine.

  “So here’s the deal.” Sekiguchi turned to me, starting to get serious. “Nobody hears a word of this, understood? This is just between you and me. Because I kind of fucked this one up.”

  “Understood.”

  “All right. Arai owed Takada a couple million yen when he split. Everybody thought Arai got offed when he disappeared, but we knew better. When Arai comes on the scene again and then disappears, I go to Takada and I ask him if he knows anything about Arai.

  “Takada answers, ‘Bastard better be dead.’

  “I tell him, ‘Wrong. It looks like he’s alive and well.’ I was just planting a seed because I had no idea where the fuck Arai was, and I knew that if Takada thought Arai was still alive, he’d find him. The joke is, we find Arai first. He is completely broke; no way he can pay back Takada what he owes. When Takada finds him, he’s dead meat.

  “I need Arai for other reasons, so I have to run down to see Takada and get him to pull back, tell him not to lay one finger on the loser.

  “This then gets back to the Sumiyoshi-kai group that Arai pissed off, and they decide they’re going to whack that dog-abusing deadbeat son of a bitch before Takada does. So, next thing, I’m trying to calm these guys down. In, like, a week I had to save this piece of shit’s life twice.

  “Man, trying to keep these animals under control ain’t funny. I’m getting sick of it. If this investigation into Sekine doesn’t work out, I don’t think there’s much I can do. Can’t keep watch on the yakuza forever, trying to be reasonable with them.”

  I was a little puzzled. “Don’t you think that it might be easier for everyone to take a long summer vacation and let Takada and the Sumiyoshi-kai know about it? Wouldn’t that be a solution?”

  “Hell, yes, I think about it all the time. Maybe justice would be served. The problem is, we owe this to the families of Sekine’s victims. They would never get closure if we let Arai and Sekine die like that. They need to know the truth.”

  • • •

  On September 2, I was in a love hotel in Omiya with Kimiko, she was massaging my back, and I was complaining about the lack of momentum in the dog breeder case.

  “Well,” she said, pushing her elbow into my shoulders, “why don’t they get the tapes from Arai?”

  “What tapes?”

  Kimiko explained: Arai had bragged about the tapes to a yakuza buddy who was a regular at her bar and who’d shown up one night in a talkative mood. Arai had said he was safe, they couldn’t touch him, he wasn’t going to wind up like Endo because he had the goods on Sekine, who had basically confessed to the murders on tape. Supposedly Shima, Sekine’s driver, had helped get rid of Endo’s body.

  I didn’t know what evidentiary value tapes like these would have, but it sounded pretty important. “I have to tell Sekiguchi about this,” I said, getting up from the bed.

  “Right now? You have to tell him right now?”

  “Yes, this is important stuff.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Sekiguchi answered the phone, and I started to relate the tale of the tapes when Kimiko, because she was miffed and because she had a bizarre sense of humor, yanked my pants down and began fellating me. This made carrying on a conversation a little hard to concentrate on, and I started talking as fast as I could: “… murders … body … Kimiko … me … you.”

  “If that’s true, we have to pull in Arai right away. Good work, Jake. Anything else?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Are you all right? You’re talking real fast.”

  “I’m fine. A little tired.”

  “Okay, take care of yourself,” he said, then he hung up.

  I couldn’t, however, because Kimiko’s ministrations had been keeping me on the edge. Three seconds later I was over that edge. I collapsed on the bed with the phone still in my hand, wanting now to go to sleep, but Kimiko was having none of it.

  Honorable me, I knew I owed her. So I turned my beeper off for the first time in months.

  • • •

  At first Sekiguchi didn’t know what to do with the sudden knowledge of the tapes’ existence. If he told Takada, Takada would track down Arai, beat the tapes out of him, and then kill both Arai and Sekine. It was one thing to suspect that Sekine had killed Endo, another to have his admission that he’d done it.

  Sekiguchi decided to take the information to Takada’s second in command, whom I’ll just call the Consigliere, who listened to what Sekiguchi had to say and promised to take care of it quietly.

  Things at this point started to move quickly.

  In no time at all, the Consigliere found Arai, who for some reason became willing to talk. The
Consigliere had made no mention of the tapes—didn’t need to—to his boss Takada.

  Arai’s revelations changed the entire focus of the investigation: Arai had had no part in the disappearance of the last four victims, but Shima, his driver, had. From Shima, Arai had learned that Sekine had killed Endo and his driver, Wakui, with poison and that Shima had helped bury them. So what Shima knew was enough to bury Sekine.

  The police got tired of waiting and arrested Arai on a fraud charge. They didn’t think he’d be of much use, since even if he did confess to killing his wife, proving a ten-year-old murder would be difficult with no body. What they were interested in was what Arai could tell them about Shima. If they could break Shima, Sekine would be easy pickings.

  What no one had counted on, especially Sekiguchi, was the Consigliere telling his boss Takada about the existence of the tapes on the day of Arai’s arrest. This prompted Takada to call Shima immediately and tell him simply that either Shima disclose the location of Endo’s body or Shima’s body would be needing burial itself.

  Shima was duly shaken, but he was in a real bind. He wanted to tell Takada where Endo’s body was, but there was no body—nothing left to call a body anyway. How could Shima tell a yakuza boss that he’d help cut up and burn the body of his number two man?

  Takada, for his part, was speeding justice along, or threatening to, because the wheels were turning so damn slowly. He wanted honor, even in death, for Endo, and he wanted Sekiguchi to have an airtight case to nail the killer.

  Takada, speaking to Sekiguchi, promised not to kill Shima. He had bigger fish to fry, as long as Sekine was free and alive. But if he could have time with Shima alone, he’d learn where the body was. Cops were staking out Shima’s place; couldn’t Sekiguchi make them go away?

  Sekiguchi couldn’t do that, of course. “We have someone staked out guarding his place most of the time these days. Most of the time,” he repeated.

  Takada took the hint. When the cop left his watch, Takada and a couple of goons showed up. Shima, looking out the window and seeing what was coming down, bolted out the back and fled to the police station. In tears, he got down on his hands and knees and begged, “If you’re going to watch my house, for God’s sake please do it twenty-four hours a day.”