Tokyo Vice

by Jake Adelstein

  “I’m willing to do it. Fuck it, he’s going to kill me anyway. He’s just waiting for things to settle down. If this is a chance to ruin the man for good and maybe get him kicked out of the Yamaguchi-gumi, I want to do it.”

  “Then I’ll watch your back.”

  “I appreciate that, but what’s in it for you?”

  “A new life. I like working for you.”

  “I pay you a terrible salary.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I thought you wanted to go back to being a crime boss once things settle down at your old organization.”

  “Nope. I’ve changed my mind. These last couple of months, getting to spend time with my son and the wife, it’s been good. I like the work you give me to do as well. I can walk down the street on a rainy day and not have to watch my back.”

  “I only have enough cash to pay you until the end of the year.”

  “Well, then I’ll look for a new job.”

  “Thank you. Any suggestions?”

  “Take out the word betrayed. Betrayal is a loaded word. If you say Goto ‘betrayed’ the Yamaguchi-gumi, you’re throwing gasoline on the flames. Find a better word.”

  I followed his suggestion.

  He made one small request as publication neared.

  We were sitting downstairs, smoking cigarettes in the living room and listening to an obscure Japanese rock band that he loved, when he asked me for a favor.

  “Jake, I want you to know that if anything happens to you, I’d find out who did it. And I’d kill them. You probably know that, right?”

  “No, I wouldn’t expect it, and you shouldn’t do it.”

  “Isshukuippaku no ongi. It’s Japanese you should know. In the yakuza world it refers to the debt owed to the man who puts you up for a night and feeds you. You’ve taken me in and looked after me, and my family and I owe you. I always pay my debts. That’s what a real yakuza does.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but—”

  “Then respect what I say. That’s what I’ll do. If I didn’t do that, what kind of man would I be? I wouldn’t be a man at all.”

  “What’s your request?”

  “If anything happens to me, don’t try to avenge me. Leave it alone. You’re not a yakuza, but you’re a good man in the end. Promise that you will take care of my son—make sure he gets a good education, grows up right. That’s what I need you to do. That’s what I would ask you to do.”

  “Of course I’ll do that. If that happened, I’d adopt him as my own. And what would you want me to tell him about you?”

  “Tell him that his father was a yakuza, one of the last real yakuza and damn proud of it.”

  “I will. If that happens. And your wife?”

  “Her? Oh, just make sure she doesn’t remarry an asshole. Or a journalist. Those guys are nothing but trouble.”

  I wasn’t sure he was kidding.

  The anthology was published on August 9, under the title Heisei Nihon Taboo Daizen 2008 (The Taboo News of Japan 2008). My guy in the the board had a copy of the chapter long before it was available on the newsstands.

  I included something that had never been published: the names of the other three yakuza who had gotten liver transplants. After Goto, there was Yoshiro Ogino, a gang boss in the Matsuba-kai, another Tokyo yakuza group.2* He and Goto were blood brothers. Ogino also allegedly donated $100,000 to UCLA after his surgery. He was probably followed by Hisatoshi Mio, the name Shibata had given me. Then there was Saburo Takeshita. He’s the Keyser Söze of the Goto-gumi, a financial wizard. He runs twenty front companies and a lot of the Goto-gumi finances. In 1992 he was arrested for threats and assault by the Shizuoka Police Department along with an accomplice. He had gone to collect money from a local company owner, and when the fifty-one-year-old man couldn’t pay, Takeshita had ordered him to “bring out your daughter so I can slice open her face.” When the man wouldn’t comply, Takeshita and his buddy kicked the man so hard in the chest and legs that he had to be hospitalized for several weeks.

  Yes, all of them were hardworking Japanese men worthy of receiving livers before any lazy, worthless Americans should.

  In UCLA’s defense, it has never been proven that UCLA or Dr. Busuttil knew at the time of the transplants that any of the patients had ties to the Japanese mafia. Both have said in statements that they do not make moral judgments about patients and treat them in accordance with their medical needs. However, they have not explicitly denied knowing that some of these patients had yakuza ties; they have simply refused to address the issue of what they knew about the four and when they knew it. It should also be noted that the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in conjunction with UCLA conducted an investigation into whether the UCLA medical center or its staff acted improperly when it performed liver transplants on the four Japanese patients. According to the Los Angeles Times, the investigation found no evidence of improper conduct. However, many have questioned the morality of giving organs to foreigners with criminal records at the expense of Americans.

  What happened at UCLA may not just be morally questionable, but federal law enforcement sources suggest that UCLA may unwittingly have gotten involved in money laundering. Several special agents explained to me on background that money laundering, on an international level, simply means the transfer of criminal proceeds from overseas to the United States, as in the Emperor of Loan Sharks case. Since yakuza generally obtain most of their money from criminal activity, there is at least a good possibility that some of the money paid to UCLA by at least one of the four treated men with yakuza ties stemmed from illegal activity in Japan. To my knowledge, none of the men treated have been investigated for money laundering and any investigation would require the assistance of the Japanese authorities. And, of course, the question remains whether UCLA even knew that the men they treated were yakuza (to my knowledge, they have never denied knowing the men had yakuza ties but emphasized that they do not pass moral judgment on their patients) and whether they knew that any of the payments (or donations, for that matter) could have stemmed from illegal activities. I would love to know the answers.

  The reaction to the anthology was fierce. Suzuki got all the phone calls and the threats. I guess I was lucky in that I didn’t have to deal with it. The book was noticed and written up a little here and there. One yakuza fan magazine, Shukan Jitsuwa, did an article on the book and myself, accusing me of being (a) a CIA agent, (b) a pawn of the CIA and possibily the International Jewish Conspiracy, or (c) a publicity hound and an idiot American with no understanding of how great the yakuza really are and how much they contributed to Japanese society.

  I didn’t know it, but around the time the anthology was published, Mochizuki’s blood brother, who was still an organization man, parked four cars in my neighborhood twenty-four hours a day. It was a warning to the Goto-gumi that I was essentially under the protection of another crime group. I hadn’t asked for that to happen, but I’m glad it did. He didn’t ask me if it was okay because I would have said no. I never wanted to find myself in debt to any Japanese mafia group. But that’s how it worked out. I owed the man, and I had to respect him for sticking his neck out for me.

  There was one more negative repercussion. Kodansha International pulled the book. It had outsourced a risk assesment of publishing it. The conclusion hadn’t been good.

  However, around October 14, Goto was officially expelled from the Yamaguchi-gumi. Who says anthologies lack punch? In essence, the party line was that the wealthiest and most influential yakuza in the country had been kicked out for partying and playing hooky. However, the police assured me that in fact the publication of Heisei Nihon Taboo Daizen 2008 had been the tipping point. I was warned to lie low for a while.

  A number of Goto’s associates were also suspended, expelled, or banished for life from the organization. The Goto-gumi was split into two crime families, and Goto was no longer a crime boss—he was an ex–crime boss. It was a great day for me. I got congratulatory c
alls from cops, friends, other reporters, and sources.

  On the fifteenth, I answered the phone and heard a voice that blew me away. I’d heard it before on a DVD of a Yamaguchi-gumi ceremony, but I’d never expected to get a call from someone that high up in the organization. He identified himself, and then he was short and to the point.

  “Thank you for bringing matters to our attention. We’ve resolved them satisfactorily, I believe. We appreciate your hard work.”

  Then he hung up.

  I have no idea how he got my number.

  1* Goto had allegedly been introduced to UCLA and his doctor by Nobu Naiya, the father of one of Japan’s most famous soccer players, Kazuyoshi Miura, also known as “Kazu.” (For numerous reasons, Kazu avoids using his father’s last name.)

  2* To the best of my knowledge, Ogino—who is now the leader of the Matsubakai—and the other yakuza did not make deals with the FBI and managed to sneak in under false names and/or false pretenses. Goto allegedly played a role in getting them into UCLA but it’s unclear how the other three were placed on the UCLA liver transplant waiting list.

  Epilogue

  There was one more thing I had to do.

  I arranged a meeting in Hong Kong with the person who’d first turned me on to the Goto story, Cyclops. He’d fallen out of favor with the organization and was very hard to track down. His father had put us in touch. He partially blamed me for the trouble he’d gotten himself into, and I’m still not sure why. But he’d agreed to meet, maybe out of some residual sense of duty and obligation. We met in Hong Kong International Airport; I wanted safe territory. I didn’t trust him. I had my reasons. We sat in the waiting lounge and had a short conversation. I wanted to know one thing: had he deliberately given me that information, had I been set up? I’d been wondering about it for a while.

  Cyclops had a fast answer to that.

  “Of course we set you up. If you had done what you were supposed to have done, Goto would have been over in 2005. You didn’t do it. I told everyone you’d write it, but you just walked away. And I was fucked. I helped you out with the Kajiyama story and you fucked me over. You ruined my life. Got me kicked out.”

  I didn’t really have a reply to that. Not a good one.

  “How was I supposed to have known what I was supposed to do? You never told me. Are you sure you didn’t get kicked out because you’re a meth head?”

  It was true. He had serious problems with speed. He’d been an addict so long that even when he wasn’t taking it, he was an angry, emotional, paranoid SOB. Ponchu is the slang for a guy like him: it sounds a little like punch-drunk, and the meaning is probably pretty close. It probably wasn’t a good thing to point out.

  “Everybody takes that shit. No big deal. That isn’t what got me booted out. It was your fault.”

  “You gave me a piece of the puzzle. I didn’t have enough to write the story. If you had told me about the FBI, it would have made a difference.”

  “I didn’t say the FBI. I told you that he made a deal with the cops, that should have been enough.”

  “No, you did not. You didn’t say anything about cops.”

  “Bullshit. You weren’t paying attention.”

  Maybe he was right. We’d been drunk, or at least I’d been drunk, the first time he’d dropped that little morsel about Goto’s Big Adventure in L.A., but I’m sure I would have remembered an important detail like that. Ninety-nine percent sure.

  “Well, it’s done now. He’s gone. I did what I should have. And for the record, I don’t like being someone else’s pawn.”

  “Zannen da ne [too bad].”

  There was a small table between us. He had his bag on the floor. There were cups of coffee in front of both of us. His was black. I loaded mine with cream and sugar.

  I sipped a little more coffee. I figured that our conversation was over, and I got up to leave. He had one more thing to say as I was leaving.

  “Say, whatever happened to your mistress?”

  “What mistress?” The question made me very uneasy.

  “You know the cunt I’m talking about.”

  “No.”

  “Some gaijin bitch. Helena was her name, right?”

  I think that’s when I got a very queasy feeling in my gut. I didn’t have a snappy comeback. I sat back down. I took another drink of coffee.

  “I know a woman named Helena. I’ve been trying to get ahold of her for a while. A long time.”

  “You won’t ever hear from her. You killed her, you know?”

  And the sonofabitch smiled, a big, fat, happy smile. The kind kids give you when you’re telling a joke and they interrupt you with the punch line. He rolled the words off his lips like marbles: “You had her checking into the International Entertainment Association, right? She got caught snooping around. They dragged her to one of their offices, out in Ebisu. She had your business card on her. She wouldn’t talk, you know. She wanted to protect your scrawny ass.”

  He explained what they’d done to her, at length and in detail. “It took them a couple hours. They tortured her for a while. Beat her. Raped her as well, with things lying around. She bled a lot. She probably choked to death on the cock stuffed in her mouth. Maybe her own puke. They might not have meant to kill her, but you know, she wouldn’t talk.”

  He explained it all nonchalantly. He didn’t even bother to lower his voice.

  And when he was done, he added, “That was your fault for having her look around. If the Goto-gumi hadn’t thought you were some kind of cop in disguise, they’d have killed you then too. You’re a real pain in the ass.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Well, why would I know her name, then?”

  I couldn’t answer that one either. I know I hadn’t given him the name. I had nothing to say. I had asked some of my sources to try to find out where she was, and maybe one guy had told him about her. I couldn’t bring that up without the risk of burning my guy. I got lost in thought. He kicked the table.

  “Still here? See, you’re not cracking jokes now.”

  He pulled a manila envelope out of his leather bag and slapped it on the table.

  “Consider this a present. I owed you once, I asked around on your behalf, and now we’re even.”

  “What’s inside?”

  “Photos. Why waste a good body? They took photos to show to the other girls working at the clubs. ‘This is what happens to troublemakers.’ Take a look. Then you’ll know I’m not jerking your chain.”

  I took them out. They were horrible. I don’t feel a need to describe them in depth.

  It was a woman. I don’t know if it was Helena. The hair was the same as hers, a long chestnut brown. The eyes were glazed over; I don’t think they looked like hers, but the eyes of the living and the dead are probably very different. I looked for the mole she had over her upper lip—couldn’t find it. But then again, they’d cut off her lips. It wasn’t a subtle message.

  I didn’t have a long time to look them over either before he grabbed them out of my hand, and jammed them back into the envelope, and stuffed the envelope back into his bag.

  I had a hard time not throwing up and a harder time not showing that I was feeling very, very ill. Suddenly, it felt as though gravity had been turned up so much that it was pulling me down to the ground and pinning me to my chair.

  “In any event, good work. Goto’s effectively gone. That makes life a little easier for me.”

  “I have one question.”

  “I’m out of answers.”

  “Did Goto order her killed? If she was actually killed.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what I think. I want to know what happened.”

  “I’m sure you would. Maybe someone called him and asked what to do. Maybe they did it on their own. I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Goto yourself?”

  “You think he’d tell me?”

  “No. I think it would be funny if you asked. Even if he gave the orders, I d
oubt he’d remember.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “So you know. So you know what happens when we don’t do what we’re supposed to do.”

  “What was I supposed to have done?”

  “You were supposed to have written a story about how Tadamasa Goto made a deal with the cops to get a liver transplant in the United States—and how as part of that deal he ratted out members of the Kodo-kai. That was what you were supposed to have done. That would have ended his career then and there.”

  “And now I have. Goto and three other pricks who got liver transplants at UCLA. I exposed them all.”

  Cyclops chuckled. “Well, you weren’t supposed to write about the other three. You weren’t even supposed to know about them. You pissed off a lot of people by digging that deep. I’ll give you this much, you’re a better reporter than I thought. You’re stupid, obtuse, stubborn, and reckless, but at the end of the day, I guess that’s what makes a good journo.”

  We sat there in silence. I was thinking.

  He stuck out his chin and raised his eyebrow.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, when a man gives you a present, don’t you usually thank him for it?”

  “Thank you.” It was the only thing I could think of to say.

  “You’re welcome. I thought you’d want to know. It must be hard knowing that if you’d done the right thing, she’d still be alive. It must really suck. You know, a thing like this, it could also ruin a journalist’s career. Who’s going to trust a reporter who gets his sources killed?”

  “If what you say is true, yeah.”

  “You know it’s true, you cowardly prick. I don’t lie.”

  “No,” I said, becoming a little angry, “you do lie. You’ve lied to me before, and I have no reason to believe you’re not lying to me now.”

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  “Because you’re a vengeful jerk and you want to make me as miserable as you are.”

  He giggled. He was definitely high on something.

  “Think I’d make up something like this just to fuck with you?”