Tokyo Noir: The Complete First Season

by J. Scott Matthews

  The foreman shifted on his feet. He seemed annoyed and inpatient. He glanced back at the trailer again.

  “I mean, I’m not stupid,” he finally said. “No one ever spelled it out for me, but … you can’t work here and not know. The signs are everywhere.”

  “Like what?”

  “Guys on the payroll I’ve never seen working around here. Materials will show up sometimes without order invoices. That kind of thing. But honestly, I been in the construction industry out in Chiba my whole working life. And I ain’t never seen a site that doesn’t work this way. Yakuza are everywhere in the construction industry. Just the cost of doing business.”

  “You think maybe Tetsuo’s disappearance was just part of the ‘cost of doing business’?” Kentaro asked.

  The foreman looked at the ground. “I don’t know nothing about that. Take it up with my manager. He’s tight with the owner.”

  “We’d love to. That way?” Mei asked, pointing at the trailer the man kept glancing at.

  The man cursed under his breath, then waved them after him as he began stalking towards the trailer.

  “Hey, boss?” the man said, tapping on the trailer door.

  When he got no answer, he opened it and walked inside. Mei and Kentaro followed without being asked. The interior was cramped, with two desks wedged into the tiny space. One featured pictures of the foreman they were talking to and his family. The other was piled high with papers, in the center of which Mei saw a cluster of pill bottles. She picked up a few. Cyclosporine. Azathioprine. Prednisone. She was about to ask Kentaro when their guide started talking.

  “Well, he’s not here, so why don’t you …”

  The man trailed off when he heard the toilet flush.

  “Goddammit! Been shitting my brains out all day!”

  Mei looked up to see a large man heaving his bulk through the confined space.

  “Who the fuck are you two? Put those down!”

  “Sorry.” Mei put the bottles back. “We’re with the Shibuya Police Department. Wanted to ask you a few questions about Tetsuo Kobayashi.”

  “I don’t have time for this! I’m just coming back from medical leave and I’m busting my ass just to get caught up!”

  “It won’t take—”

  The superintendent interrupted her by yelling at his foreman. “And just what the fuck are you doing by bringing them here? You know I’m swamped! Get rid of them!”

  “Sorry, boss,” the man said.

  He ushered them back outside.

  “He’s under a lot of pressure,” he said. “Like he said, he’s been off for a while with health issues.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “I wouldn’t know. Look, if there’s nothing else …”

  “Does it bother you?” Mei asked suddenly. “To know that the guys you work for are yakuza?”

  “You’re, what? With the Tokyo Metro police, right?”

  Mei nodded.

  “And does it bother you that half the city government, and most of your bosses too, are crooked as hell and on the take?”

  “Of course it does,” Mei said.

  “And what about you as a police officer? Don’t you have to deal with the yakuza in some capacity?”

  Mei didn’t say anything.

  “And even if you’re not in their pocket, I’ll bet half the people you work with are. That doesn’t bother you?”

  “It does.”

  “Right. But you do it anyway. Because out in the real world, the world I live in, it’s impossible to keep your hands clean. But we do it anyway. Why?”

  “Because we’ve got a job to do.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” the foreman said, turning to go. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Well, that was less than helpful,” Mei said once they were back in the car.

  “Yeah. Let’s head to the Barrier construction site and see what we can find there.”

  “Have you ever seen it in person?”

  “The Barrier? No, seeing it on TV is enough for me.”

  “You said before that you thought it was a stupid idea. Why is that?”

  “I just don’t see it keeping Tokyo safe when the seas rise. Maybe if you completely block the bay and put a lock system in place it might work. As it is, we’re just slightly delaying the inevitable.”

  “Were you here for 5/13 though? It would at least prevent another tsunami like that from making it to Tokyo.”

  Kentaro turned in his seat to look at her.

  “Well … I guess if there was an earthquake with its epicenter out beyond the bay, then it would stop the tsunami from that,” Mei said.

  “Right. Besides, you ever seen footage of a tsunami?”

  “Some. Mostly of the one on 5/13.”

  “The Barrier isn’t big enough to stop something like that. And as the seas rise, it’s only going to get smaller. It’s a quick fix that’s not quick and won’t fix anything.”

  “I don’t think you can say that,” Mei said. “There hasn’t been another major flood since they’ve been building it. And they say that the water table is lower now. They might even be able to reclaim some of the train lines.”

  “So you think it’s a good thing?” Kentaro said.

  Mei thought for a bit, then nodded. “I do. It’s an amazing engineering feat. And if it works as expected, it could extend Tokyo’s lifespan beyond that of other major coastal cities around the world. And just purely as a symbol of what the Japanese people can do, I think it’s impressive.”

  “Symbols won’t save you when the water comes,” Kentaro said, looking out the window. “It’s just another band-aid solution that makes people think the problem’s been solved. Then they get complacent, then when the water rises …”

  “So you think it just makes things worse?”

  “Oh, absolutely. It’s just the illusion of safety. To really be safe, we’d have to desert Tokyo and move the whole city to higher ground. But that’s not going to happen. For Japan to abandon Tokyo would be like an admission of defeat.”

  “You know, I can’t help but notice that you still live in Tokyo.”

  Kentaro laughed. “I’m no different. We all know the city is sinking, but it’s not bad enough yet to make us leave. We’ll just keep trying to bail ourselves out until we’re all underwater. It’s what people do. Hell, that’s basically our jobs in a nutshell.”

  “Well, we’re here,” Mei said, pulling to a stop.

  They explained why they were there to the first person they saw. He walked them over to a spot on the shore and told them to wait for the next ferry.

  “We run men and supplies out on ferries every twenty minutes or so. Tell them you want to see Foreman Satoya when you get out there.”

  As the ferry, laden with supplies and now detectives, sluiced through the choppy water, Mei got her first view of the Barrier in person. It stretched out as far as she could see in one direction, gray concrete as far as the eye could see. Which wasn’t terribly far, given the haze. Water lapped at the concrete structure, which Mei was surprised to see was no more than about twelve feet. In her mind she had pictured it as enormous. In the other direction there was only the metal scaffolding that formed the skeleton for the Barrier.

  As cranes unloaded the construction materials, Mei and Kentaro climbed up the sloped ramp leading to the top.

  “Satoya?” she asked the first guy she saw.

  He pointed towards a man with a clipboard making notes as he walked the length of the Barrier. He looked up when he saw them approach.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Detectives Kimura and Kentaro, Shibuya Police Department. We’d like to ask you a few questions about Tetsuo Kobayashi.”

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I was wondering when this would come up. Can you make it quick? I got a lot to do here.”

  “Why were you waiting for this to come up?”

  “Because he was a great guy—don’t get me wrong—but
everyone knew he had ties to the Kaisha.”

  “What were you referring to?”

  “He was the cousin to one of the bosses there. Guy named Manabu Yoshii.”

  Mei and Kentaro exchanged a glance.

  “I can see you’ve heard of him.”

  “The name’s come up. How did he get along with his cousin?”

  “Fuck if I know. I just work here.”

  They went back and forth for a while. But in the end Mei didn’t learn anything else that she didn’t already know. She thanked him for his time and was about to go, when one last question came to her.

  “You think this would stop a wave?” Mei asked the foreman. “When it’s complete, I mean.”

  He smiled, then slowly began chuckling.

  “Will it stop a wave? They told us to make it from concrete, but the government’s disbursal office only wanted to pay for papier-mâché. The concrete we’re using is so watered down that parts of this thing are already crumbling. And it ain’t even finished yet. Hell no, it won’t stop a wave.”

  “So if a big earthquake or tsunami hits …?”

  He shrugged. “Learn to swim.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What a collection of assholes.”

  Vasili had to agree with Nobunaga as he looked around the room at the assembled bosses. He liked what he saw less and less with each gathering.

  “Look at this. We used to be band of brothers. Now is family reunion that nobody wants to be at.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Nobunaga said. “Most families aren’t this incestuous.”

  “Incestuous? Eh, I don’t know if I’d say that. Is just internal dealing.”

  “No, I mean pretty much everyone here has fucked one another at some point. I mean, Matsuo’s fucking you right now, Hashimoto fucked Takeuchi on that business by the docks, Fujita fucked Cheon on that deal last year—though knowing Cheon, he probably just asked Fujita to choke him harder while he was doing it. And I don’t know what Cheon and Lee have against each other, but I’m guessing one of them fucked the other hard at some point. I mean, they’re the only Koreans here and they hate each other more than anything.”

  Vasili nodded. “Point taken. Is not a happy family.”

  They were at the syndicate’s quarterly board meeting. Traditionally, these had been used as a forum for the bosses to gather and discuss their problems, both external and internal. But with the recent spate of increased police attention, the meetings had come to be held less frequently.

  They were standing in the basement of Eriko’s house, in an enormous common area that served as the anteroom to the venue for every high-level meeting of the syndicate’s inner circle. It was set up like a reception area with a bar and several standing tables set up around the room. The entire space could accommodate about a hundred people, but now Vasili saw no more than twenty-five or so gathered in small clusters, chatting and waiting for the meeting to start.

  Vasili wasn’t even sure if he should be here. He kept mulling his last conversation with Eriko over in his mind and not liking the answers he came back with. Was she trying to tell him that he was the one suspected of betrayal? It was possible, seeing as how he had tried to have her son killed (though not without good reason). And if that was the case, maybe she had been trying to warn him on account of their longstanding friendship. Had he been too thick to take the hint and disappear?

  Of course, Eriko was famed for her cunning first and foremost, with her gift for violence a close second. She was known for setting traps for her enemies, as well as her allies. She would put the fear in them and let them incriminate themselves. So maybe her comments during the poker game had been her way of sussing him out. Then, if he fled, she would know for certain that he had acted against her. In that case, attempting to flee would get him killed. So he didn’t know whether to stay or whether to go, because without knowing what she knew, either move was liable to be fatal.

  These thoughts were running through his mind as Nobunaga continued his harangue against their colleagues. He noticed Takabe approach their standing table and nodded to him.

  “Alright, who are we talking about now?” Takabe said. “Because if you’re not on Chobei yet, I nominate him next.”

  Vasili sighed. “Why? What did he do this time?” He glanced around but didn’t see the boy prince in the room yet.

  “Word is he had a problem with one of his guys stealing from him. So to teach him a lesson, he beat the fuck out of the guy. Did it himself too. Well, with just two other guys holding him down. Only problem is, he beat the wrong guy by accident. So to save face, he made up some bullshit story about why he beat that guy, even though he hadn't actually done anything wrong. Then his hand was so swollen from his little ‘lesson’ that he had to make up some story about why he was taking the high road and letting the guilty party off with a warning!” Takabe cackled darkly.

  “Sounds about right,” Nobunaga said.

  “Then this actress he’s seeing gives him shit for it, so he knocks her around.”

  “What a fucking tough guy.”

  “Wait, it gets better. Because then he calls in Vasili here to smooth it over with her.”

  Vasili just shook his head. “Not my finest hour.”

  “Fuck’s sake,” Nobunaga said. “How did that boy go so wrong with Eriko as his mother?”

  “You think she’ll try to promote him when she … you know?” Takabe asked.

  “I hope not,” Nobunaga said. “But word is she’s been grooming him lately.”

  “Kid wouldn’t last five minutes as head of the syndicate. At least not without help.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Vasili said.

  He kept glancing at another group on the other side of the room, which contained Yoshii, Matsuo, and several of the other members of their faction. Yoshii caught his look and nodded. Vasili nodded back.

  “Well, we could talk about your good friend Yoshii,” Takabe said, catching the glance. “And all the dark shit he’s into.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Nobunaga said.

  “Just that not everything is as perfect as it seems over in the skeezy, sex-for-hire wonderland of Kabukicho. I hear he’s been violating one of Eriko’s cardinal rules by trafficking women for his clubs.”

  “Is this certain?” Vasili asked.

  He wouldn’t put it past Yoshii. But at the same time, crossing Eriko certainly carried its own risks. And there were few rules that she was as adamant about as the ban against human trafficking. It was a moral line he didn’t want to see crossed himself.

  “I can’t prove anything. And if he’s smart, he’s covered his tracks and isn’t doing it directly. But I hear stories that not all of the hostesses and sex workers at his clubs are there voluntarily. Especially not the foreign ones.”

  “If he’s into that, I’d wager Miyagi’s in on it with him,” Nobunaga said, nodding towards the woman standing next to Yoshii.

  “Sure, why not?” Takabe said. “More grist for her porno mill.”

  “What, you got something against porn?” Nobunaga asked, pretending to take offense.

  “I don’t care about porn per se. But the shit some of her production companies put out is pretty vile, violent stuff.”

  “I’ll bet you that’s the only sort of shit that can get Akiyama there hard. He might look like some mild-mannered guy in middle management, but I’ve heard some shit about him too.”

  “How is that zombie still alive?” Takabe mused aloud. “He looked terrible at the last couple of meetings, all waxy and pale. I was sure he was on the way out.”

  “Yeah, but the fucker just keeps living to spite us.”

  Vasili looked at the elderly vampire currently laughing next to Yoshii. Come to think of it, Vasili remembered thinking the man was on death’s door at the last meeting. But now he looked healthier than Vasili had seen him in years.

  “What was he dying of again?” Takabe asked. “Asshole-itis?”

>   “Probably,” Nobunaga said. “I think I heard someone say it was kidney failure or something.”

  “Well, whatever it was, seems like he’s beaten it,” Vasili said. “Which is a shame, because that’s another staunch loyalist in Yoshii’s camp.”

  “I’m worried about that Matsuo fucker,” Takabe said. “I mean, he’s adorable with that fat squirrel look he’s got going on. But that greedy, grasping fuck is getting a little too powerful if you ask me.”

  Nobunaga sighed. “Yeah, soon he’s going to be richer than the rest of us put together with all the construction going on.”

  “And still he won’t let us slide on anything,” Vasili said.

  “You think any of the other factions are strong enough to field a viable replacement for Eriko?” Takabe asked.

  Vasili and Nobunaga both wordlessly swiveled so that their gaze was fixed on another small group on the other side of the room. The sokaiya faction.

  Sokaiya were corporate raiders and racketeers that specialized in extorting money from corporations. The most common way to do this was to buy enough shares to merit an invitation to a shareholder’s meeting and wreak havoc until they were paid to go away. Other methods included oppositional research on executives and company practices, releasing damaging and humiliating information, or straight up threatening company officials and employees. Most Japanese companies eagerly paid off such extortion rather than risk the loss of face (and potential loss of business) that could result from a sustained sokaiya campaign. There had even been a string of scandals that had resulted in several CEOs and other higher-ups being jailed when sokaiya had dug up illegal dealings of theirs.

  They had traditionally been distinct from yakuza, with little overlap between the two worlds. But, sensing potential, Eriko had brought a faction into the Kaisha’s fold when she realized that there was money to be made by cooperating with them. That didn't stop some of the other bosses from looking down on the sokaiya.

  “Really? You think Fujita and the other boardroom warriors could lead this organization?” Takabe said.

  “You tell us,” Nobunaga said. “You’re practically roommates with them.”