“Could I?” Vasili said, almost to himself. “Sometimes I’m not so sure. I’m in too deep now, too many people depending on me.”
“So give someone else the responsibility. You could retire, get away from it all.”
“I’ve thought about it. But I don’t know if I could just give this up. Mafia, yakuza, bratva. Whatever it’s called, it’s a lifelong occupation.”
Vasili drained his drink, then poured himself another. He was still a long way from feeling at ease.
“But I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you to ever be in a position where you don’t have options. You don’t want to be stuck here when this city sinks.”
“Dammit, Dad, Tokyo is still my home! You talk like you don’t even want me here once I graduate!”
“It’s not that I’m trying to keep you away, Shoichi. I just don’t want you trapped here when the unthinkable happens. If the unthinkable happens, I mean.”
“What? Do you know something the rest of us don’t? Is your organization planning something?”
“No, guess I’m just not feeling too optimistic about this city right now.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Not enough.”
Shoichi shook his head and eyed his own glass. Then he downed the rest of the sake swirling around and refilled it from the chilled bottle by his chair.
“You know, ever since I was a kid, I’ve always had the feeling like you’re trying to get rid of me.”
“It’s not like that—”
Shoichi shook his head, as if annoyed. “It’s like you …”
Were afraid someone might hurt you to hurt me, Vasili thought as his son groped for the right words. After all, it’s been known to happen. Hell, I’ve done it myself.
“It’s like you just never had any patience for me, for Mom.”
“I always cared deeply for you and your mother. Despite our differences.”
“You sure had a funny way of showing it. I think I saw you one or two weekends a month, at most, growing up. Then you ship me off to private school in Kyoto, then insist I go to university there too. Now you’re saying I shouldn’t come back to Tokyo. I’m starting to pick up the pattern you’re laying down here, Dad.”
“It’s not that I want you away, it’s just …” I wouldn't be able to live with myself if anything happened to you because of me. “Like I said, I want you to have the options I never had.”
“Yeah? It’s not because you were ashamed of me?”
The question struck Vasili like a bolt from the blue and left him without a ready answer. Was he ashamed of his son? The thought hadn’t occurred to him, but he felt embarrassment as he wondered if maybe there wasn’t some truth to it. He didn't think it was shame he felt for his son, just distance. Distance that Vasili had always enforced, but which kept them apart, aloof. It was a gap that neither of them could bridge now. One too far for mutual understanding to make it across. Of course, by the time he issued a denial, the damage had been done, judging from the look on Shoichi’s face.
“Sure, sure,” Shoichi muttered, looking down.
Vasili was pained but didn’t know what to say to smooth it over. He drained the rest of his drink. They sat there for a few more minutes, Shoichi stewing while Vasili desperately tried to bridge the gulf between them. As his mind went in circles, he realized that he was quite drunk.
“Well, I was thinking about staying for a few days,” Shoichi said after a pause. “Maybe spend some time here tying up loose ends.”
Vasili’s heart began racing as the meaning behind his son’s words hit home. The way he put it could only mean one thing.
“Shoichi, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying, then the answer is no. I don’t want you trying to handle this yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’ve got people looking for whoever did this. I don’t want you trying to be a hero by getting involved. Let me handle this.”
His son stared at him in shock. “What, did you think I was going to go vigilante on this guy or something?”
“I just thought … what did you have in mind by ‘tying up loose ends’?”
“Tidying up Mom’s grave, seeing friends, that sort of thing. Holy shit, did you really think I meant I was going to go after this guy? What made you think that?”
Vasili shook his head, then ran his hand over his face. “Nothing. Just a momentary lapse, I guess.”
“Don’t you go trying to be a hero either. Just let the police handle it.”
“Yeah, good advice. That’s the sensible thing to do.”
Vasili regarded his son from behind his glass of vodka. He was simultaneously relieved and disappointed.
“Good advice. You’re a smart boy.”
It was all he could think to say. He wanted Shoichi to stay longer, but he feared for the boy’s safety. Whoever was doing this might see his son as an opportunity to further hurt Vasili. He couldn’t let that happen to the boy. Even if it meant pushing him further away.
Shoichi grunted. “Well, it’s getting late. And I should get up early to catch the bullet train back tomorrow. Since I’m not going to be staying around here.”
“I’ll give you a ride tomorrow. Just tell me when.”
Vasili slept fitfully that night. The next morning, they rode to the train station mostly in silence. Vasili was hungover, but trying not to let it show. It made it harder than usual to keep up a conversation. Not that Shoichi was helping. His son was content to just sullenly stare out the window and not talk. After a ride of halting start-and-stop driving through Tokyo’s morning traffic that mirrored the halting start-and-stop conversation in the car, they pulled up to the station.
“Well, here we are, I guess,” Vasili said.
“I know, you just can’t wait to get rid of me,” Shoichi said, practically vaulting out of the backseat. “Ashamed to be seen with your son. I’m going.”
“Shoichi, you know it’s not that—” Vasili began to protest as he got out behind him.
“Yeah, yeah.”
His son said it with a backwards wave of the hand as he disappeared into the station crowd.
Vasili stood there staring after him until he dissolved into the sea of people and was lost.
I’m not ashamed of you, son, he had wanted to say. I’m ashamed of having you see what I have to do next.
“Hi, Mei, you doing anything today?” her father’s voice said over the phone.
Mei leaned back from the status report she was writing and rubbed her eyes. Thick files stuffed with papers were stacked all around her.
“Me? No, I took a spa day. Figured there wasn’t anything at work keeping me busy.”
“Very funny. Let me rephrase that. I’m in Shibuya at the moment, wondered if maybe you had some free time to grab lunch.”
Her stomach rumbled at that last word. Mei looked at her watch to see it was nearly 2:30. She had forgotten to eat again.
“Sure, Dad, meet outside the station’s New South Exit in ten minutes?”
“I’ll be there.”
Mei grabbed her things and headed upstairs and out the building. She pulled her respirator into place as she went. It was shaping up to be a breezeless, humid day, but the gray fog and clouds covering the sky made her feel cold for some reason. She pulled her Demron overcoat around her tighter and hurried on.
Her father was easy to identify, even from behind, due to his characteristic slouched posture. But when she turned around, she was surprised to see he wasn’t wearing his respirator.
“Dad, you alright? Did you lose your respirator?”
“No, I’ve got it. Just didn’t feel like wearing it.”
“Advisory said it’s a heavy fog day. And the wind’s too unpredictable to get an accurate reading on the radiation.”
He smiled. “I’ll take my chances. Know a good place around here?”
“There’s a Chinese place in the station that’s pretty good.”
“Sold.”
Soon they were seated in the restaurant in front of a large window with a spectacular view of the fog.
“So what brings you out here?” Mei asked, sipping her green tea.
“Oh, doctor’s appointment.”
“Anything serious?”
“I doubt it. Just feeling sluggish lately. He did some tests, but I don’t think anything will come of it. But how are you? How’s the case going?”
“The case is … not going well,” Mei admitted. “These guys don’t slip up. We’ve had almost nothing to go on, so we’re doing interviews with people close to the victims.”
“So it’s ‘guys’ now, is it?”
“Yeah. Eyewitness to one of the killings told us there were several men there.” Well, they told Kameko that, and I have to trust her.
“See, now that’s progress at least. That’s how you make the case, piece by piece. How about the team, how are they working out?”
“That’s … also not going well.”
“Oh?”
“Kentaro and this guy Watanabe are solid. But these two younger guys they saddled me with …”
Mei proceeded to tell her father about the incident with Ozu. He listened with a wary look that soon turned to disgust.
“Jesus, those guys.”
“Yeah. I covered for them, but I’m not sure that was the right decision.”
Her father leaned back. “That’s certainly a tough one. You can’t be seen as willing to throw your people under the bus. At the same time, that sort of behavior is hard to stomach.”
“I know. What would you have done in my position?”
“Personally? I think I would have tried to get rid of them. I’d be willing to take the hit to my reputation, rather than the damage guys like that can do. That kind of scumbaggery is just another form of corruption.”
“I know it was wrong, and it was wrong of me to let it go on as long as I did. But knowing that this Ozu guy used to be in an extortion ring and do the same thing to other people, it almost felt right. Like delayed justice for the shit he used to pull, in a way.”
Her father shook his head in disgust. “Beating up a man who’s already in chains isn’t justice, it’s barbarism.”
“But he used to do the same thing! There was a case with one family, where he—”
“Enough,” her father said. The defeat in his voice made Mei fall silent. “I thought we raised you better than that.”
“Yeah, well, with all due respect, you’ve been out of the game for a long time. You don’t know what it’s like out there. This new breed of criminal—”
“Oh, spare me. Every generation of cop is always going on about this ‘new breed’ of crime and criminality. It’s bunk. Just an excuse for crooked cops to justify themselves when they sink down to their level.”
“Great advice from a cop who walked off the force more than twenty years ago.”
“Sure, use that as a cudgel to beat me if you like. It doesn’t make what I’m saying any less true.”
They paused for a while as their waitress placed their food in front of them. Both picked at their plates, not really hungry anymore.
“So … anything else new?” her father tried.
“Well, I have a date tomorrow with two of my detectives to go underground to visit one of the death cults amassing below the surface. That should be fun.”
Her father nodded. “Well, be sure to dress appropriately.”
“Will do, Dad.”
Chapter Eight
Same ghost every night, Satoshi thought to himself as he walked the streets of Tokyo.
He haunted the streets the way Masa’s ghost haunted him. He hadn’t seen him since the night he’d chased (been chased by?) him on the train tracks, but Satoshi could feel him out there. Just around every corner, up the next flight of stairs, behind the next door. Just out of reach. And no matter how many corners Satoshi turned, or stairs he trudged up, or doors he strolled through or kicked down, Masa stayed just out of reach.
Every time he pushed open the door to a bar they used to go to, he would see Masa grinning back at him from the end of the bar. Only by the time he had gotten across the room, it was a different face, looking up at him in confusion. He tracked him down back alleys, past bars and cheap restaurants they had frequented together a million years ago on a different planet. And every time he caught sight of Masa leaning against a graffitied wall down some rain-slicked back alley, his quarry would dissolve into a puff of steam from a grate somewhere and melt into nothingness before he could lay hands on him.
Once he’d caught sight of Masa entering a doorway in a run-down tenement that Ryu had told him he might be staying at. He kicked the door open, with his gun drawn, only to see that the room was empty. Not just of Masa, but of everything. And as he sheepishly backed out of the vacant apartment and then the building, he realized why. The entire place had clearly been condemned long ago. As he walked back out the hallway, he wondered how he had missed the mold covering the hallway walls, or the trash swirling around the lobby, blown by the breeze coming in through the broken windows.
But of course he hadn’t seen these things. He was only looking for Masa.
At the end of another pointless night of searching, he sat down in a bar that they used to go to together after work. It was in the backstreets of Iidabashi, where they lived for a time back when they worked for Taichi. Satoshi thought back on those days as the calm before the storm. Because soon after, Taichi had gone to jail, then they’d gravitated into the orbit of Osammy the Whale. And everything had gone downhill from there.
Satoshi ordered a double whiskey to stop his hands from shaking. He hadn’t taken Dextro in several days and was starting to get a slight case of withdrawal. Nothing a little alcohol couldn’t take the edge off. He wasn’t even surprised when he glanced over into the corner of the bar to see a younger version of himself talking to Masa.
These visions were older than the ones he had seen in their old Yotsuya neighborhood. Maybe early twenties. The one of Masa had a black eye and puffy, swollen face, but he was grinning. His younger self looked concerned. Satoshi just sat there drinking his whiskey, watching an argument he and Masa had had years ago unfold once again.
“You’re going to get yourself killed going to those,” his former self had said.
Masa shook his head. “If you think I look bad, you should see the other guy. They had to drag him out of the circle. Heard he’s still in the hospital.”
“You won this fight. You might not win the next one. Who did you say is the organizer of your little fight club here?”
“The Japan Patriot’s Society.”
“So, ultranationalists, in other words.”
Masa nodded.
“And you are?” Satoshi asked.
“The baddest motherfucker there!”
“No,” Satoshi said, pulling the collar of Masa’s shirt down to reveal his tattoos. “And you are?”
“Gokudo,” Masa said, cottoning on.
“That’s right. You walk the Path. And those far-right fuckers hate guys like us. I think the only reason they let you fight is because they’re hoping one of them will beat your ass someday.”
Masa smirked. “Ain’t gonna happen. I had the best teacher around!” Masa patted Satoshi on the arm. Satoshi just looked concerned.
“What do you get out of it? Do you really like beating people up that much?”
Masa looked hurt all of a sudden. “No, it’s not that. It’s just … it’s a rush. Hearing the crowd going crazy, knowing all these people are cheering for you—”
“Probably cheering against you.”
Masa shook his head. “At first it was like that. But now that they’ve seen what I can do, a lot of them are cheering for me. Everyone likes a winner.”
Satoshi sipped his drink and shrugged. Masa pressed his case.
“Yeah, okay, some of the older hardliners will never be on my side. They’re hoping I fail. But there’s a lot of them cheer
ing for me. It’s not like …”
“What?”
“It’s not like with Taichi and the rest of the crew. These guys actually respect me.”
“The crew respects you. I respect you.”
“You do. Those other guys we work with … not so much.”
“They do,” Satoshi had lied. “So, what? You need to go beat guys up in vacant buildings and empty parking lots to get your fix?”
“It’s something.”
“If I asked you to stop, would you?”
“Why would you ask that? You know how much this means to me.”
“I know. But at the same time, I worry about you. I worry that someday you’re going to lose, and you’re never going to walk out of that ring again.”
Masa looked touched. “Thanks. But you don’t have to worry about me.” He smiled. “Worry for the guy I’m fighting next!”
“Another one?” the bartender asked, breaking his reverie.
Satoshi looked down at an empty glass. “Yeah. A double.”
When he looked back at the corner, the visions were gone.
Was that it? Was that the moment he’d lost Masa? Should he have put his foot down harder and tried to get Masa away from those fights? At the time he remembered being concerned and relieved that Masa was fighting in them. Concerned because he was afraid Masa would get jumped or get his head caved in by those guys. Relieved because fighting seemed to take the edge off Masa, sated some of his lust for violence.
He drained his drink and walked outside. Down Kagurazaka Street, past the trendy shops and restaurants lining the avenue. It was a light fog night, but still most of the people wore their respirators. Not that he blamed them. Even when the air was clear, you still couldn’t tell what was hiding in it.
As he walked down the street, he saw a vision of Masa from the past stalking up it. His face was bruised and still bloody. He was walking with purpose, but also a heavy limp. One arm didn’t swing, but dangled loosely by his side. Satoshi watched as his younger self rounded the corner from a back alley onto the main street and almost collided with Masa.
“Fuck’s sake, Masa. What happened to you?”
Masa’s lip quivered. But even now Satoshi couldn’t tell if it was in rage, or if he was trying not to cry.
Tokyo Noir: The Complete First Season Page 38
