The Rolling Bootlegs

by Ryohgo Narita

  EPILOGUE…1

  2002 Summer Manhattan Island, New York

  Why did things turn out like this?

  “Face to the wall!!”

  I remembered what face and wall meant, but what did to mean, again…?

  They didn’t seem to give a rip that I couldn’t speak English. I mean, they’d had my head shoved up against the stone wall before even giving me this warning (if that was what this was).

  It all started with a lottery held by my local shopping district.

  “Coooongratulatiooooons! It’s the grand prize: a five-day, three-night trip to Neeeew Yooooork!”

  Accompanied by an aneurism-inducing scream, a bell clanged away.

  Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang…

  I’d landed in America with that sound still echoing in my ears.

  Even though I’d really only wanted the second-prize game console…

  I headed through a forest of skyscrapers, making for the Manhattan Bridge. I’d decided to get Chinese in Chinatown. When you’re not sure what to eat, get noodles: That’s common sense the world over.

  This might have been the “grand prize,” but it had come with a minimal travel allowance, so I couldn’t do anything too extravagant. It was so bad that, although the prize had originally been a trip for two, I’d hocked one of the tickets at a secondhand ticket shop and managed to squeeze out some pocket money.

  There was a Japanese beef bowl chain in New York, and I was (financially) really attracted to it, but something about seeing the name written in Latin letters bugged me. I hadn’t even been in the city for a day yet, and already I felt starved for the sight of kanji characters.

  As I walked along, thinking about stuff like that, I began hearing raucous voices.

  Five or six boys were yelling in a narrow alley that led off the broad avenue. They seemed to be crowded around something, jumping and hollering, so I went a bit closer, just to see. Then a kid who looked like the youngest of the bunch grabbed my hand and smiled at me. “Look, look!” he said.

  What was it?

  I was curious, so I went farther into the alley and looked into the center of the circle.

  —What’s the deal? There’s nothing there.

  The second I opened my mouth to say that, I did a double take. The kids—still laughing and hollering—all jumped me at once.

  The rest happened like I said at the beginning.

  I’d always thought that if I got dragged into this sort of trouble, I’d be able to make the right decisions and deal with it on my own… But just look at the reality: They didn’t even give me time to react.

  I don’t know what they did to me after that, or how. Before I knew it, I was lying on the sun-warmed asphalt, and by the time I managed to pick myself up, the kids were beating a hasty retreat around the corner.

  My first thought was I’m lucky I didn’t get killed, and then I realized they’d taken all my stuff. …Yeah, I wouldn’t call that luck. I probably should have been grateful for my continued existence, but “Once the danger’s past,” et cetera. I even thought, You know, I wish I’d hit ’em back. It’s a seriously self-serving way of thinking, but if you don’t think like that, you’ll go under.

  I was just getting started as a wildlife photographer, and I’d brought an expensive camera along on the trip. Result: I lost the whole thing.

  Dammit, how many hundreds of thousands of yen do they think that camera cost?! I couldn’t help but be bitter.

  There was nothing to vent my anger on, so I stomped it down, and all I did was contact the police through the hotel. In a way, the fact that I was turning into the stereotypical Japanese victim who shows up in movies and on TV bothered me even more than getting mugged.

  The police response was about what I’d expected.

  All they gave me was the absolute minimum of the paperwork I’d need to file an insurance claim. A hotel employee who understood a little Japanese had come along with me, and according to him, the police wouldn’t seriously exert themselves over an incident like this. If I’d been obviously injured, or if somebody had threatened me with a gun, things would’ve been different, but…

  That said, that camera had been expensive. I’d practically traded my life to get it, and I couldn’t bring myself to just let it go. And anyway, I hadn’t even had the money to get it insured.

  If nothing changed, the second I got back to Japan I was probably going to go find the president of the district who’d offered me this trip and kick him in the back of the head out of sheer misdirected resentment.

  While imagining hitting the guy with a Shining Wizard once he was on his knees, I desperately stood my ground. The officer was sympathetic, but the mood around here said that they really did have to prioritize murders and other dangerous crimes.

  …Then the graying officer glanced over the report again, considered the address where the mugging had gone down, and muttered something.

  My interpreter made with the interpreting, and apparently this was what he’d said:

  “…You know, you just might get that camera back. Mind you, it’s not really something I can recommend, but…”

  “Well, well… You’ve had a rather trying day, haven’t you?”

  The guy who showed up at the arranged meeting spot was a youngish, mild-looking man.

  Light brown hair, round glasses. He was dressed like your typical bank clerk. His Japanese was so fluent that at first I thought he was Japanese, but a good look at his face told me he wasn’t, not by a long shot.

  The middle-aged policeman had made a call, then just pointed this place out to me. “You’ll meet a man here; ask him for help. You won’t need an interpreter,” he’d said, and that was all. I remembered that he’d had a really complicated expression on his face.

  “You were lucky. The sergeant who took your complaint was Paul Noah; he’s an acquaintance of mine. If he hadn’t been the one to help you, you probably would have had to throw in the towel.”

  From the way he was using phrases like “throw in the towel,” it was obvious that the man’s Japanese was pretty advanced. His pronunciation sounded completely natural, too. …As a matter of fact, compared to your average modern person, there was something a bit old-fashioned about it.

  “I heard what happened. The ones who stole your bag were probably Bobby’s gang. They’re mischievous scamps who’ve been fooling around in this area recently.”

  …Did something like that qualify as “mischief”?

  There was something really shady about this guy. He was probably some kind of detective, but he had this atmosphere about him that seemed to say he wasn’t on the level.

  Even so, it was reassuring just to be able to talk to somebody who spoke my language.

  …That thought didn’t last long.

  “How about it? For…say, a tenth of the value of your stolen belongings, I’ll ‘negotiate’ with them and have your bag returned to you, just as it was.”

  …Oh, I see. Looks like this guy’s the ringleader of this gang of thieves. In exchange for only getting 10 percent of the profit, he can keep the fuss to a minimum, and he won’t have to bother exchanging the goods for cash.

  Still, I thought, 10 percent was a lot better than it could’ve been. I agreed, although I was careful not to trust the guy while doing so.

  “Okay. It’s a deal.”

  With that, the man began leading me off somewhere.

  He wasn’t going to cut out my organs and sell them, was he? The concern did cross my mind, and I decided to yell for help and make a run for it if he tried taking me anywhere that seemed even a little dicey.

  By the way: If you get killed and they sell off your organs, does it technically count as human trafficking?

&nbs
p; While I was thinking about pointless stuff like that, he led me to a bar on the corner of a wide avenue.

  The sign had a picture of a beehive on it. There was a string of letters inside the picture, but I couldn’t read them, so for the sake of convenience I’ll call it the Beehive Place.

  Inside, the air bore the sweet smell of honey. Compared to the outside, the interior looked pretty roomy. It might have been more accurate to call it a classy restaurant, rather than a bar.

  He’d better not be planning to rip me off. Thinking this and looking around, I did see some guys who didn’t seem quite legit, but since I also saw old people, couples, and families with kids, I relaxed a bit.

  My guide went to the back, exchanging a few words with another guy. The new man nodded silently, then stood and left the place without taking his stuff with him. He didn’t even pay his check.

  “I filled him in on the situation. He’s gone to reclaim it. The locals know those kids’ faces, you see. I doubt it will take long to find them.”

  Nice act. I know you’re in on it, too. …I didn’t say this out loud, of course.

  “Well, why don’t we talk a bit while we’re waiting?”

  It was a genuine invitation, but I had no idea what to talk about. For starters, then, I asked him why his Japanese was so good.

  “Ah, that. One of the men at the top of my organization is Japanese… His name is Yaguruma-san; he taught me quite a lot. That said, I picked up modern speech patterns from movies and Japanese comics.”

  Organization. Did that mean he really was Mafia or something? Now that I’d come this far, I was feeling numb and reckless, and I didn’t care if he was Mafia—or anything else, for that matter—so I flat-out asked him.

  “No, not Mafia. We’re generally viewed as the same thing, but… We’re called the Camorra. Do you know it?”

  I’d never heard the word before.

  “The Mafia is from Sicily, in Italy. Their organization began as armed groups of guards in rural districts… Vigilante corps, as it were. The Camorra is also from Italy, but it started in Naples. They say the syndicate was formed inside a jail, but even I’m not clear on the details.”

  Started in prison. Hearing that alone made me think this Camorra group sounded nastier than the Mafia, but I kept that to myself.

  “I act as the contaiuolo, the treasurer, for my organization. It’s rather like being a bookkeeper… In the Mafia, an accountant does the job.”

  They sounded pretty much the same to me.

  “Ha-ha… Well, that’s because everything’s lumped together as ‘the mafia’ these days. The drug mafia, the Chinese mafia, the Russian mafia, the smuggling mafia… But in Naples, it’s the Camorra that’s mainstream. That said, ours is a rogue group: Not only were we created in America, we have no direct ties to Naples.”

  He rolled out all sorts of other information, but none of it really clicked for me. I’d never even run into a gang in Japan before. The fact that there was a camorrista or a mafioso—either way, a guy who lived on the dark side of society—right here in front of me just didn’t feel real.

  “That’s only natural. Even among the people of New York, I’d say less than 1 percent have ever encountered the Mafia. The same holds true for people who’ve been directly harmed by them, of course. I’m a rather forward person, and I sometimes introduce myself to people like you. That said, I’m sure the number of people I’ve spoken to is only a small fraction of that 1 percent.”

  …Seriously. It was enough to make me feel like crying over my own luck.

  At the time, though, I’d already been drawn in by the guy’s conversational skills. I’m not sure how to put it. I’d started feeling as if I was talking to somebody I’d known for years. …This even though, at that point, neither of us knew the other’s name.

  “Well… There are probably more, actually, but those who’ve felt the presence of the Mafia almost never speak of it, you see.”

  I’d heard of that in movies and things. It was something like omertà, “the code of silence,” where people pretended they hadn’t seen crimes for fear of retaliation.

  But in that case… What was this guy doing talking about his organization to someone he’d just met?

  “Ha-ha. It simply means that, other organizations aside, ours isn’t that strict. We aren’t involved in anything that outrageous, either. …In any case, members of the Sicilian Mafia won’t even speak of the fact that they belong to the Mafia, but the Camorra—and the American Mafia, actually, years back—tend to introduce themselves as such. The bosses sometimes respond to interviews for magazines and things personally.”

  Meaning you’re show-offs? When I asked, there was a moment’s silence, and then he burst out laughing.

  After he’d laughed for a while, the man gazed at me as if I really interested him, and he began speaking again.

  “…You’ve got guts. To think you’d say something like that directly to a camorrista… Aren’t you afraid?”

  No.

  “Is it possible you think I’m not really a gangster?”

  No. Even if you were lying, I don’t see why you’d need to go out of your way to pretend to be Camorra.

  “You’re an odd one. When I heard about you from Paul, I assumed you were a stereotypical Japanese pigeon.”

  Mind your own business. And besides, if you’re that fluent in Japanese, you should talk about people who are older than you properly; use -san. “Paul-san,” like that. Even if America doesn’t have much of a seniority system, they do address their elders with at least bare-bones courtesy. …Or that’s what the guidebook said, anyway.

  At that moment, I had no idea that casual comment would be the switch that sent the gears of my life off course.

  After a silence longer than the one before it, the man chuckled and murmured something.

  “Coincidences are truly…fascinating. Aren’t they?”

  What was he talking about? As I sat there, bewildered, the man gave a smile that seemed almost boyish. It was a smile that gave him the appearance of having found a new toy, or maybe as if he was about to pull some kind of prank, and he had it turned on me.

  Then, after looking as though he wasn’t sure whether or not to say anything, he lowered his voice and informed me:

  “Paul is younger than I am.”

  Oh. ……Huh? Wait a second, what did you just say? No matter how you looked at that police officer, I’m pretty sure he was past middle age. …Did his face just come across as old or something?

  “Well, about that… Returning to what we were speaking of earlier: It’s probably been about a hundred people over the past sixty years or so. People I’ve introduced myself to as Camorra, I mean. That doesn’t include people who knew already or police officers, but… In any event, unless things like this happen, I have no opportunities to get acquainted with upstanding tourists. Ha-ha.”

  I thought I’d heard wrong. Sixty years. The young guy in front of me was… I’m bad at telling white people’s ages based on their appearances, but he didn’t look as if he was even halfway to sixty.

  As I watched him steadily, puzzled, the man adjusted his glasses and said, sounding a bit embarrassed:

  “The thing is, you see, I suppose you’d call me immortal. I don’t die.”

  Ah-ha. So this is one of those American jokes.

  “Oh, you don’t believe me. No, it’s true: You can cut me or burn me, but I won’t die.”

  I hear American jokes are notorious for going on for a while.

  I gave him some sort of perfunctory response, and, still smiling, the guy—

  —drew a knife from an inner pocket and stabbed his own hand.

  For a second, I didn’t know what had happened. Red blood began dribbling from the hand with the knife stuck in it. I was dumbfounded, but the man just laughed.

  “It’s fine. …Look.”

  Slowly, he extracted the knife. I expected blood to come spurting out, but the bleeding had stopped completely.

>   Not only that, but I saw something unbelievable.

  The blood that had dripped onto the table…started to squirm, as if having a life of its own…and seeped back into the man’s open wound, as though returning to its host. When all the blood had vanished, the wound itself disappeared. There wasn’t a single stain left on the table.

  If I’d been watching this on some kind of screen, I’d have been able to call it a cheesy special effect and laugh it off. However, unfortunately, it had happened right in front of me.

  Both the way the liquid moved, defying gravity, and the way the wound closed in the blink of an eye had been so corny I thought CGI might actually look better. That only made it creepier.

  I thought I might have been the only one in the place—no, in the world—who’d witnessed this abnormality. Here, in this restaurant with its slightly upscale atmosphere, a guy had just scrambled the laws of physics.

  …And yet not one of the customers or employees was even looking our way.

  After giving it a little thought, I spoke to…whatever it was…in front of me.

  Are you going to kill me? I asked.

  At that, the man looked a bit surprised. Then he smiled again.

  “That’s a reaction I haven’t seen before. Up until now, when I showed this to people, some of them brandished crucifixes at me, and some whipped out guns and started firing… The police hauled away the latter, of course. Poor devils; I’m afraid that was mean of me. Come to think of it, there were some who ran the second they saw the knife.”

  Well, duh.

  “Why did you think I’d kill you?”

  Because I thought you were a monster, I answered honestly. Then I apologized for treating him like a monster, and at the same time, I told him that, whether it was real or a trick, he should stop scaring people like that.

  “…You really are a rare breed. No one’s ever stayed this calm before.”

  Unfeeling would probably have been a more accurate assessment than calm. I hear this from people all the time, but apparently the shock of almost getting eaten by a brown bear once in Hokkaido had numbed my sense of fear. I’ve been told I should become a war photographer, but I don’t have the know-how to get across a battlefield, so I’d die for sure. I didn’t want to die, so I’d stayed a wildlife photographer.