by Unknown
‘My, my, my, what do we have here.’
‘Imported Stella Artois. Nectar of the gods.’
‘Time for a quick can?’
‘Why not? And guess what? Kakizaki is AB rhesus negative.’
‘My, my. I hope you bled him dry. AB neg is liquid ruby for the right billionaire.’
‘Drier than dry, poor fucker. I see it as an act of mercy. You heard about the neck trusses on the lip of the pits? Fuck, this machine won’t take five-thousands. Got anything smaller?’
I am going to sneeze right now.
Coins are fed in. ‘Neck trusses? I thought Morino said to use gaffer tape.’
‘We did, but Nabe wriggled too much. Morino ordered no sedatives. So there was nothing for it but neck trusses and nine-inch nails. Kakizaki’s the lucky one. His meat’s whiter than turkey; he’ll hardly feel a thing.’
My sneeze vanishes. Beers clunk through the machine’s guts. The men open their beers and walk away, still discussing carpentry. I sneeze and wallop my head on the side of the machine.
I find room 333 by accident while I am still looking for a hiding place. I press my ear against it. Apart from my pulse pounding my eardrums I hear nothing. I think. I test the handle. It is tightly sprung, but feels unlocked. Holding my breath, I open the door a sliver and peer in. I can see the metal bin with the document wallet. The window is slightly open, and a breeze combs the blinds. Remembering the adjoining room, I creep in. Nobody here. Relief washes through me, then triumph hoses me down. This insane risk has paid off. I open the document wallet and groan. A single photograph falls to the floor and lands blank side up. A message is ball-penned. There is an Arabic proverb: “Take whatever you want,” says God, “and pay for it.” Pluto pachinko, Xanadu, now. I turn the picture over. Two certainties. One: the woman is Akiko Kato. Two: from the angle of his jaw to the slope of his eyebrows, the man in the driving seat is my father. Without a doubt.
Pluto pachinko is so thick with sweat, smoke and sheer din you could swim up to the mirror-balls on the disco ceiling. I would swap a lung for a cigarette right now instead of waiting fifty years – but I am afraid if I delay for one moment I will miss Morino and Plan F, the best so far, will drive off with him. Never mind, just by breathing in here I can absorb enough nicotine to calm a rhino. Customers cram the aisles, waiting for a free seat. My eldest uncle – owner of the only pachinko parlour on Yakushima – told me that new places rig several of the machines to pay out more generously, so they can muscle in on the marketplace. The clatter and glitter of cascading silver balls hypnotize the ranks of drones and she-drones. I wonder how many babies are slowly cooking to death in the bowels of Xanadu’s carpark. I start a second lap, searching for a staff-only door. Time is ticking. I find a girl in a Pluto uniform. ‘Hey! Where’s Dad’s office!’
She is cowed. ‘Whose office, sir?’
I scowl. ‘The manager!’
‘Oh – Mr Ozaki?’
I roll my eyeballs. ‘Who else?’
She takes me behind the helpdesk, punches in a code on a combination door, and holds it open. ‘Up these stairs, sir. I’d show you up myself, but I’m not supposed to leave the shopfloor.’
‘I should hope not.’ I close the door. A complex lock springs closed. Steep stairs leading to one door. Underwater quiet. I climb the stairs, and then nearly lose my footing when I notice Leatherjacket calmly watching me from the top step. ‘Uh, hello,’ I say. Leatherjacket looks at me and chews gum. He is cradling a gun. The first real gun I have ever seen. I point at the door. ‘Can I go in?’ Leatherjacket chews, and tilts his head a fraction. I knock twice and open the door.
I open the door and a man flies through the air, and through a mirror on the far side of the room. The mirror breaks into applause – the man drops out of view, to the drone-packed parlour below. The scene lurches. I gape – did I do that? Unabated pachinko din floods the office. Morino watches me from behind the desk with a finger on his lip and one ear cupped. I just have time to register the three horn players – they did the hurling – and Mama-san knitting before the chain reaction from below breaks out. Chaos, screaming, shouting. Morino rests his elbows on the desk. Contentment suffuses his face. A jag of mirror falls from the frame. From outside Leatherjacket closes the door behind me. The cyclone subsides as the stampede rushes out. Lizard and Frankenstein peer throught the frame to inspect the damage. Morino sort of smiles with his eyelids. ‘Fine timing, Miyake. You witnessed my declaration of war. Sit down.’
I am trembling. ‘The man . . .’
‘What man?’
‘The man they threw out through the window.’
Morino inspects a wooden box. ‘Ozaki? What about him?’
‘Won’t he need’ – I swallow – ‘an ambulance?’
Morino unclips the box. Cigars. ‘I expect so.’
‘Aren’t you going to call one?’
‘Excellent! A Monte Cristo. Call an ambulance? If Ozaki wanted an ambulance called, he should have thought through the consequences of pissing on the shoes of Ryutaro Morino.’
‘The police will be here.’
Morino slides the cigar under his nose.
‘Policemen?’ Frankenstein watches the chaos flood out of Pluto pachinko. ‘Policemen live in your world. We police our world ourselves.’ He nods at Lizard and they leave. I am still sick to my core with the presence of violence. Mama-san’s knitting needles click. The horn players are on pause.
Finally Morino unwraps the cigar. ‘What do you know about cigars? Nothing. So listen. Learn. The Monte Cristo is to cigars what Tiffany’s showroom is to diamond tiaras. Famous perfection. Pure Cuban – filler, wrapper, binder. For a rat’s penis like Ozaki to even look at a Monte Cristo is blasphemy. I told you to sit down.’ I obey, numb. ‘You are here because you want information. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know. This information cost me good money. How do you intend to pay?’
I try my best to ignore the fact that this man just had someone thrown through a window, and pull myself into focus. ‘I would be grateful if . . .’ My sentence dies.
Morino dabs the cigar with his tongue-tip. ‘I am sure your gratitude is five-star gratitude. But I have metropolitan overheads. Your gratitude is worth fleashit to me. Try again.’
‘How much?’
Morino takes a tool from the desk and circumcises the cigar. ‘Why is it always money, money, money with kids nowadays? Little wonder Japan is becoming this moral and spiritual graveyard. No, Miyake. I do not want your money. Besides, we both know that most pigeons have more disposable income than you. No. I propose this. I propose you pay with your loyalty.’
‘My loyalty?’
‘Is there a fucking echo in here?’
‘What would giving you my loyalty mean?’
‘So like your old man. Living in small print. Your loyalty? Let me see. I thought we could spend the rest of the day together. Go bowling. An outing to a dog show. A bite to eat, and afterwards a get-together with some old friends. Midnight comes around, we give you a lift home.’
‘And in return—’
‘You receive—’ He clicks his fingers and a horn player hands him another document wallet. Morino leafs through it. ‘Your father. Name, address, occupation, résumé, personal history, pix – colour, black-and-white – itemized telephone bills, bank accounts, preferred shaving gel.’ Morino closes it and smiles. ‘You give me and my family a few hours of your time, and your historic search ends in crowning success. What do you say?’ From the deserted pachinko floor below I hear glass crunching and electric shutters lowering. It occurs to me that saying ‘No’ may have consequences far worse than being denied a document wallet, bearing in mind what I witnessed.
‘Yes.’
A wet dab, and a needle plunges into my left arm, just above the elbow. I yelp. Another horn player grips me tight. He shoves his face up to mine, and opens his mouth wide, as if he wants to bite off my nose. Pond-water breath. I have a close-up view of
his mouth before I can turn away, then I turn back. His tongue is a clipped stump. A formless giggle. The horn players are all mutes. The syringe fills with my blood. I stare at Morino as a syringe in his arm fills up with blood. He seems surprised that I may be surprised. ‘We need ink.’
‘Ink?’
‘For the contract. I believe in the written word.’ The syringes are removed and my arm is released. Morino squirts both into a teacup, and mixes our blood with a teaspoon. My puncture is dabbed with disinfectant again. A horn player spreads a sheet of calligraphy paper in front of Morino, and hands him a writing brush. Morino dips the brush, breathes deeply, and in graceful strokes draws the characters for Loyalty, Duty and Obedience. Mori. No. He rotates the paper on the desk. ‘Quickly,’ he orders, and his mouth seems to be in his eyes, ‘before the blood clots.’ I pick up the brush, dip it and write Mi and Yake. Red already stiffening to dung. Morino watches with a critical eye. ‘Penmanship. A dying art.’
‘At my high school we practised with ink.’
Morino blows the paper dry, and rolls it into a scroll-case. Everything seems to have been prepared. Mama-san puts down her knitting needles and puts the scroll-case into her handbag. ‘Perhaps now, Father,’ she says, ‘we can get down to the serious business?’
Morino puts down the cup of blood and wipes his mouth. ‘Bowling.’
A basement shopping mall will connect Xanadu with Valhalla and Nirvana. It is still a gloomy underpass, lit by roadworker’s lamps, and strewn with tarpaulins, tiles, wood planking, sheet glass and a prematurely delivered army of boutique dummies huddled naked in misty polythene. Morino is ahead, a megaphone in one hand. Mama-san walks behind me, and the horn players bring up the rear. Somewhere above my head in the sunlit real world, Ai Imajo is playing Mozart. Words from Morino could be the darkness speaking. ‘Our ancestors built temples for their gods. We build department stores. In my youth I went to Italy with my father, on business. I still dream about the buildings. What we lack in Japan is megalomania.’ Down here it is chilly and damp. I sneeze. My throat feels tight. Finally we climb to the surface on a dead escalator. Welcome to Valhalla, says Thor, a thunderbolt in one hand and a bowling ball in the other. Through a temporary door in a plywood wall we enter a vast darkness, sealed against the day. At first I cannot see a thing, not even the floor. I can only feel the emptiness. I follow the vapour trail and ember-light of Morino’s cigar. A hangar? A glow clusters in the distance. This is a bowling alley. We walk past lane upon lane. I lose count. Minutes seem to pass, but this is impossible. ‘Ever go bowling much on Yakushima, Miyake?’ Sometimes his voice seems far away sometimes near. ‘No,’ I answer. ‘Bowling keeps youngsters out of trouble. Safer than falling out of trees or drowning in undertows. Once, I went bowling with your father. A powerful bowler, your dad. An even better golf player, though.’ I don’t believe him, but I probe anyway. ‘What golf course did you play at?’ Morino waves his cigar at me – its tip is a firefly. ‘Not a crumb until midnight. That is the deal. Then you stuff yourself with all the details you can stomach.’ Suddenly we are here. Leatherjacket, Frankenstein, Lizard, Popsicle. Mama-san sits down and gets out her knitting. Morino smacks his lips. ‘Our guests are accommodated?’ Frankenstein jerks a thumb down the lit alley. Instead of tenpins are three wax human heads. The centre head moves. The left head tics. I should not be here. This is a nightmarish mistake. No. This is a sort of interrogation. Morino is not sick enough to hurl bowling balls at real people. He is at root a businessman. ‘Father,’ says Mama-san. ‘I have to say. This is an unspeakable act.’
‘War is war.’
‘But what about their retinas?’
‘I understand your concern, I really do. But my conscience rules out depriving a dead man a clear view of his destiny.’
‘Morino!’ shouts Centrehead, hoarsely. ‘I know you’re there!’
Morino raises his megaphone to his lips. His amplified voice is a dust-storm. ‘Congratulations on a fine opening day, Mr Nabe.’ Echoes slap away and back. ‘There seemed to be a minor ruckus in the pachinko parlour, but I’m sure everything is ironed out now.’
‘Release us! This instant! Jun Nagasaki owns this city!’
‘Wrong, Nabe. Jun Nagasaki thinks he owns it. But I know I own it.’
‘You are stark fucking insane!’
‘And yer,’ Lizard shouts back, ‘are stark fucking dead!’
The megaphone crackles. ‘You, Nabe, were always a walking lobotomy. Your death suits you perfectly. But you, Gunzo – I thought you had the sense to grab your pay-off and run for the tropics.’
Lefthead speaks. ‘We’re more useful to you alive, Morino.’
‘But you are more pleasing dead.’
‘I can show you how to strangle Nagasaki’s supply lines.’
Morino hands the megaphone to Leatherjacket, who deposits his chewing gum in a tissue. ‘Good afternoon, Gunzo.’
‘You?’
‘I favour customers who pay on time.’ He has a dusky foreign accent.
‘I don’t fucking believe it!’
‘Your inability to believe is the cause of your present dilemma.’
Centrehead shouts. ‘Then you’re dead too, you slimy Mongolian shit!’
The slimy Mongolian shit hands the megaphone back to Morino, smiles, and puts in a new stick of gum.
Lefthead cries, ‘I can be your messenger to Nagasaki, Morino!’
‘Yer ain’t our messenger,’ shouts back Lizard, ‘yer our fucking message!’
‘Most succinct, Son,’ comments Morino approvingly. ‘Most concise. You can throw first.’ Lizard bows graciously and selects the heaviest bowling ball. I tell myself this is just a bluff. I should not be here. Lizard steps on to the concourse, and lines up a shot. ‘Shoot us, Morino!’ shouts Centrehead. ‘Let us die honourably!’ Frankenstein shouts back. ‘What do you know about honour, Nabe? You sold your hole to Nagasaki faster than he could say “Bend over”!’ Lizard steps one, two and – wham! A fast uncurving line, my gut knots, I try to wake myself up, look away for my own good, but when Centrehead screams I look, idiot that I am. Righthead – Kakizaki, I guess – is no longer recognizable. I want to vomit but nothing comes. I am glued. Kakizaki is a staved-in cavity of bone and blood. The horn players burst into wild applause. Lefthead is shut down with shock. Centrehead gasps, drowning, spattered with red specks. Lizard bows again and comes back to the console seat. ‘Superb technique,’ praises Frankenstein. ‘Watch it on the replay, shall we?’ I turn around and keel, putting my head between my knees. I jump up when the megaphone combusts ‘Miyaaaaaakeeeeeeeee!’ down in my ear. Lizard gestures at the bowling alley. ‘Yer on.’
‘No.’
The horn players mime confusion and surprise.
Morino stage-whispers: ‘Yes. We signed a contract.’
‘You said nothing about being an accessory to murder.’
‘Your vow says you will do what the Father tells you to,’ says Frankenstein.
‘But—’
‘A moral conundrum for a responsible young man,’ considers Morino. ‘To throw or not to throw. Throw, and you risk doing that double-dealing abomination down there some degree of damage. Not throw, and you cause a fire in Shooting Star and a twelve-week premature miscarriage in your landlord’s wife. Which would weigh heavier on your conscience?’ He wants to lock me into this violence, to ensure I will never talk. I can feel the locks, clicking shut. I get up and choose the lightest ball, hoping for an unseen plot twist to get me out of here. I pick up a ball, the lightest. It weighs a lot. No. I can’t do this. I just can’t. I hear laughter behind me. I look back. Lizard lies on his back with his legs apart and a balloon stuffed inside his jacket. Nipples, a navel and a triangle of public hair are scribbled on it with a black marker. Frankenstein kneels over him, lowering a long knife. ‘No,’ Lizard cries in falsetto, ‘please don’t yer hurt me, mister, I got a baby in my growbag.’ ‘Sorry, Mrs Buntaro,’ sighs Frankenstein, ‘but this is what you get for letting rooms
to tenants who break vows with powerful men . . .’ Lizard screams at the top of his lungs, ‘Please! My baby, my baby! Mercy!’ The knife tip presses down on Mrs Buntaro’s rubbery belly, Frankenstein bunches his other fist into a sledgehammer and Bang! Popsicle lolls and rolls a tickled laugh. Mama-san knits, Morino claps. A huddle of faces hanging in blackness, glowing from the monitor and console lights. In a single motion they turn and stare at me. I cannot tell which floating face gives the final order. ‘Bowl.’ I must miss, but not obviously. I should not be here. I want to apologize to the heads, but how can I? I march on to the concourse, and try to breathe. One, I aim for the gutter, a metre down from Rightdeadhead. Two, my gut coils up and the ball flies away too early – my fingers made the holes sweaty. I crouch there, too sick to watch, too sick not to. The ball veers towards the gutter, and rolls along its edge for the middle third of the alley. But then spin swings the ball back – straight towards Centrehead. His face seems to refract, a wild howl grows from the rumble of the bowl, and the horn players behind me cheer in unison. And I close my eyes. Groans of disappointment from behind. ‘You shaved his stubble,’ consoles Morino. I’m trembling and I can’t stop. ‘Wanna watch the re-rerun?’ leers Lizard. I ignore him, wobble back and collapse on the end seat. I close my eyes. The gleaming, clotting blood.
‘Clear the decks!’ Frankenstein halloos. ‘My speciality, this – the windmill express!’ I hear much grunting, his run-up and the thunder of a rocketing bowl. Three seconds later, rapturous applause. ‘Eggshelled!’ shouts Lizard. ‘Bravo!’ cheers Morino. Centrehead shrieks over and over, but Lefthead is ominously quiet. On the insides of my eyelids I can see the end of the alley. I scrunch my eyes up even more tightly, but I still have this Technicolor view. I probably will until I die. I should not be here in this twisted psychotic afternoon. My body refuses to stop trembling. I retch once, and twice, but nothing comes up. Noxious noodle fumes. When did I last eat? Weeks ago. If I could, I would walk away. Never mind the document wallet. But I know they won’t let me. A hand slides into my crotch. ‘Got any candy?’ Popsicle. ‘What?’ Champagne bombs? ‘Got any candy?’ Her breath is rotting yoghurt. Lizard grabs her hair and pulls her off. ‘You cheap little fucking slut!’ Slap, slap, lash. Morino picks up his megaphone. The survivor is still shrieking. ‘Cut you a deal, Nabe?’ The shrieks subside into strangled sobs. ‘If you shut your racket up for the next bowl, you are a free man. Not a squeak, mind you!’ Nabe breathes in hoarse throat-rips. Morino lowers the megaphone and looks at Mama-san. ‘Will you?’
