Number9Dream

by Unknown

  ‘My bowling days are behind me.’ The knitting needles click.

  ‘Father,’ says Leatherjacket, ‘I have grasped the fundamentals of this game.’

  Morino nods. ‘You are one of us. Please.’

  ‘I’ll tidy up Gunzo. I always disliked Gunzo.’

  A steady roll, a clamped quaver of fear from Nabe, and a blat. Applause.

  ‘Oh dear, Nabe,’ bellows Frankenstein, ‘I distinctly heard a squeak.’

  ‘No!’ comes the broken, bruised, buggered voice.

  Morino gets to his feet. ‘Try to see the funny side! Humour is the soul of the soul.’ I should not be here. Morino takes his time. ‘Yuk. This ball has been used already. Bits of Gunzo’s scalp. Or Kakizaki.’ Nabe is sobbing, softly, as if he lost a teddy bear and nobody cares. Morino paces – one, two – rumble, the bowl flies. One short saw-toothed howl. A chopstick snapping. Two heavy things thump into the pit.

  Three Cadillacs glide down the fast lane. A nowhere land, not city, not country. Access roads, service stations, warehouses. Afternoon drains away the day into a hole of evening. I am branded with what I saw in the bowling alley. The burn will not hurt until the shock wears off and my nerves come back to life. I think about the places I could be if I never re-entered Valhalla. I could be chatting with Ai Imajo in a coffee shop. I could be feeding Cat and smoking with Buntaro. I could be bombing around the coastal road of Yakushima on Uncle Tarmac’s motorbike. The moon rises over forest slopes. Where is this? The something peninsula. Frankenstein is driving, Leatherjacket is in the passenger seat. Morino and I sit in the middle seat. He blows wreaths of cigar smoke, and makes several phone calls about ‘operations’. He makes a chain of telephone calls mostly no longer than ‘Where the fuck is Miriam?’ Popsicle is giving Lizard a blowjob in the back seat. We enter a tunnel. The roof lights barcode-scan across the windscreen. Mighty ventilators hang from the tunnel roof. I should not be in this nightmare. ‘I wish you would stop saying that,’ says Morino, apparently to me. ‘It’s getting on my nerves. We all get exactly the nightmare we deserve.’ I am still trying to fathom this out when Frankenstein speaks. ‘My nightmares always wind up in tunnels. I’m having this ordinary dream, nothing spooky or nothing, then I see the mouth of a tunnel and I think, “Oh yeah, here comes the nightmare.” I drive into the tunnel and it starts. People hanged from the ceiling. Some guy I offed ten years ago come back and my shooter jams. The tunnel presses in closer and tighter till you can’t breathe no more.’ Popsicle slurps. Lizard groans slightly and speaks. ‘Nightmares are yer law-of-the-jungle stuff. All yer modern gizmos stripped away. Yer just left there, alone, dinner for something bigger and badder and eviller. Watch yer teeth!’ He slaps Popsicle, who whimpers. Morino taps ash into the tray. ‘Interesting stuff, boys. My view is, a nightmare is comedy without a release valve. They tickle, but you can’t laugh. And the pressure builds up and up. Like gas in lager. Got anything to add to our fascinating discourse, Miyake?’ I look at this torturer, wondering if this is just another day for him. ‘No.’ Morino seems no longer to even need his lips to speak. ‘Cheer up, Miyake. People die all the time. Those three killed themselves the moment they double-crossed me. You just helped deliver the sentence. You’ll have forgotten all about them in a week. They say “Time is the greatest healer”. Bollocks, that is. The greatest healer is forgetfulness.’ Lizard comes with a contented smack of the lips. Popsicle sits up, wiping her mouth. ‘Candy!’ Lizard mutters and unzips something. ‘Yer arm’s a fucking pin-cushion. Show us yer thigh. I’ll shoot you up there. Don’t drool more than yer have to.’ Leatherjacket speaks. ‘In my homeland, it is said nightmares are our wilder ancestors returning to reclaim land. Land tamed and grazed, by our softer, fatter, modern, waking selves.’ Frankenstein produces a steel comb and pulls it across his hair, keeping his other hand on the wheel. ‘Sent by who?’ Leatherjacket folds in a new stick of gum. ‘Nightmares are sent by who, or what, we really are, underneath. “Don’t forget where you come from,” the nightmare tells. “Don’t forget your true self.”’

  A neon poodle prances across its sign for all eternity. It wears a little doggie bow tie. Our Cadillac joins that of the horn players. Mama-san has taken the third away on business of her own. The men prime their guns and Frankenstein opens my door. ‘Would you prefer to stay in the nice safe car with a scoobied-up sex nymphet tart?’ Before I work out what to say Lizard swipes at my baseball cap. ‘Pity. Yer can’t.’ We get out and walk towards the door of the poodle warehouse. An insect-o-cutor bristles every few seconds. From inside the warehouse I can hear a roaring, swelling and sinking. Two bouncers appear from the shadows of the entrance and approach the horn players. ‘Evening, gentlemen. First, I gotta ask for any weapons. House rules – I lock ’em up safe. Second, we don’t have your motors on the list. Who are you with?’

  The horn players part and Morino walks through. ‘Me.’

  The bouncers blench.

  Morino stares. ‘I heard a rumour about a dog show tonight.’

  The more colossal bouncer pulls himself together first. ‘Mr Morino—’

  ‘The old Mr Morino ended the day Mr Tsuru did. My name is Father now.’

  ‘Yes, uh, Father.’ The bouncer flips open his mobile phone. ‘Just you give me a moment and I’ll make sure the best, uh, ringside seat is cleared for you and your party—’ Morino nods at Frankenstein, who knifes him about where his heart is. Right down to the hilt. A horn player jerks his head back and probably breaks his neck. It all happens too fast to register, and too fast for the victim to make a sound. The other two horn players fell the second bouncer. Lizard volleys the gun out of his hand and kisses the tumbled man. No he doesn’t. He bites the bouncer’s nose – and spits out specks of dark. At this point I look away. Thuds, grunts, blacken and bruise. ‘Dump the fuckrats behind those crates,’ orders Morino. The kicked-away mobile phone rings. Frankenstein crunches its shell with a single stomp. ‘Taiwanese fucking tat. Nothing is made in Japan any more.’ Lizard opens the warehouse door. Inside is mulchy and meaty. Row after dim row of pallets stacked with tins of dogfood. This place is enormous. Cheers and yells slosh from the distance. The horn players lead the way. I falter, and get a whack from Frankenstein in my coccyx. ‘No stalling, Miyake. You’re one of us until the clock strikes midnight.’ I obey. I have to. All I can do to calm my survival instinct is to lower my baseball cap. Nobody in the shouting, hundred-plus crowd notices our approach. The horn players plough through the outer walls – Yakuza shirts and tattoos to a man. People whirl around angrily, catch sight of Morino, gape, and fall away. We reach the edge of a spotlit pit. A grey mastiff and a black Doberman are straining at their leashes, globs of saliva flying off their fangs. On the far side of the pit a man stands on a crate. He scribbles down the bets the crowd shout at him. Hairy fat diamonds bulge through his string vest. I am sandwiched between Frankenstein behind and Morino in front – as safe as it gets – so I have a decent view as Morino pulls a gun from his jacket and shoots the mastiff through the head.

  Silence.

  A stain eats up the pit floor around the dead dog’s head. The Doberman whimpers behind its trainer. The horn players already have their weapons trained on the crowd. They fall back. I should not be here. The mastiff trainer regains his power of speech. ‘You shot Mr Nagasaki’s best dog!’

  Morino acts confused. ‘Whose best dog?’

  ‘Jun Nagasaki, you, you, you—’

  ‘Oh, him.’

  The trainer is apoplectic. ‘Jun Nagasaki! Jun Nagasaki!’

  ‘I heard that name too much today. Don’t mention it again.’

  ‘Jun Nagasaki’ll peel your skin off, you, you, you—’

  Morino points his gunBang! The trainer buckles over and lands on his mastiff. Their blood pools. Morino turns to Frankenstein. ‘I warned him. Uncle? I warned him, yeah?’ Frankenstein nods. ‘Nobody can say you never gave a fair warning, Father.’ The crowd is still anchored to the concrete floor. Morino hoicks, aims, and spits on th
e trainer. ‘Guns, and fairy godmothers. They make your wildest wish come true. Every last pigfucking one of you will leave. Except Yamada here.’ He levels the gun at the bookie on the crate. ‘I want a word in your ear, Yamada. The rest of you – scram!

  Go!’ The horn players fire off a round each. The crowd drain away down the aisles and rows, ushered by the pistol-toting horn players – vampires before dawn don’t melt away so fast. The bookie keeps his hands raised. Lizard jumps into the pit and tips the trainer’s head over with his foot. Between his eyes is a bloodied joke-shop scab. ‘Nice shot, Father.’ From outside I hear cars screech away.

  The bookie swallows hard. ‘If you’re going to kill me, Morino—’

  ‘Poor Yamada-kun. You backed the wrong dog again. I am going to kill you, but not today. I need you to take a message to your new master. Tell Nagasaki I wish to discuss war reparations he owes me. Tell him I’ll be waiting at midnight sharp. The terminal bridge for the new airport. Out beyond Xanadu on the reclaimed land. You think you can remember all that?’

  The Mongolian halts ten paces away. His gun is cradled in his hand. The shots and lights from the reclaimed land seem far, far away. My heart shotguns inside my ribcage. My overalls are scratchy and stinking. My final memories of life are the stupidest things. An unclaimed Haruki Murakami novel I salvaged from lost property, half finished, in my locker at Ueno – what happened to the man stuck down his dry well with no rope? My mother laughing in Uncle Pachinko’s yard garden, trying to play badminton, drunk but happy at least. Regret that I never did my Liverpool pilgrimage. Waking one morning to find a pencil-line of snow over me and Anju’s futon, where it had blown in through a crack during an early fall. Is this junk the stuff of life? I hear my name, but I know it was only my imagination. I fight to keep control of my breathing, and sneeze. I never looked at Leatherjacket before, not properly. Yours is the last face I will ever see. Not how you imagine the face of death to look. Quite plain, mildly curious, taut with an immunity to emotion from the acts its master has made it witness. Do it. It would be too tacky to beg for my life. So what are my last words? ‘I wish you wouldn’t do this.’ How profound. ‘I suggest,’ says Leatherjacket, ‘that you crouch.’

  ‘Crouch?’ A crouch-style execution. Why?

  ‘On the ground. A – how do you say? – foetus position.’

  Why bother? Dead is dead.

  ‘You should crouch for your own safety,’ my killer insists.

  I mangle a stillborn huff which Leatherjacket interprets as a no.

  Leatherjacket primes his gun. ‘Well, I warned you.’

  So many stars. What are they for?

  Tuna, abalone, yellowtail, salmon roe, bonito, egg tofu, human earlobe. The sushi is piled high. The wasabi is mixed in with the soy to kill any impurities in the raw fish. It clots the soy, sticky blood. I must stop thinking about the bowling alley. I must. We have driven across the night since the dogs, it seems, but the clock here says only 22:14. Little over a hundred minutes to go, I tell myself, but I find it hard to believe in anything good. I am in the grip of a cold that will get much worse before it will get any better. I get some water down my throat; it bloats my stomach. Even breathing is hard. We have the restaurant to ourselves. A family was here, but they shuffled out the moment they saw us. The old waitress stays cool, but the chef stays out back, lying low. I would if I could. Frankenstein lobs a sausage at me. ‘Why the starchfart face, cub scout? Anyone would think you lost your parents.’ Lizard smears wasabi in the soy. ‘Maybe he realized the mastiff I shot back at Goichi’s was his long-lost papa.’ Morino flicks his cigar-tip at me. ‘Grin and bear it! Remember your heritage! You’re a Japanese law-abiding straight! You grin and bear it until your Zimmer frame buckles and your drinking water is mercury oxide, and our whole country is one coast-to-coast parking lot. I’m not knocking Japan. I love it. In most places the muscle is at the beck and call of the masters. In Japan, we, the muscle, are the masters. Japan is our gig. So grin. Bear it.’ I may have to bear it, but no way am I grinning about being dragged into a turf war between wolves with rabies. The only thing I can grin about is that until we leave this restaurant nothing can get worse. Lizard points to a corner of the room. ‘Father!’ Saliva-shiny sushi-cud. ‘See what I spy with my little eye – they got a karaoke machine!’

  ‘Joy of joys.’ Morino looks at Frankenstein. ‘Let loose the wings of song.’ Frankenstein sings a song in English with a chorus that goes ‘I can’t liiiiiiiiive, if living is without yoo-ooo-ooo, I can’t giiiiiiiiive, I can’t take any moooooore’. The horn players bay along with the vowels. The noise is so bad I watch for the sushi to sprout maggots. Leatherjacket sips a glass of milk in the corner. He doesn’t seem to belong here either. Morino calls over the elderly waitress who has been nervously serving us. ‘Sing.’ Without arguing she performs an enka number called ‘Cherry Blossoms of the Inland Sea’, about a mah-jong gambler who dies to honour a gambling debt, but only after ninety-nine verses. Lizard sings a song called ‘Electrode Incest’ by a band of the same name. It contains no verses, choruses or chord changes. The horn players clap wildly as Lizard does a turkey dance on the table and wanks the microphone. Finally the song is over and Morino gestures me up.

  ‘No,’ I say flatly. ‘I don’t sing.’

  A hail of sushi slaps my face. The horn players boo.

  ‘I don’t like music.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ says Morino. ‘My pet investigator said you have twenty CDs, loads by that Beatle who got snuffed, a file of sheet music and a guitar.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Nightmares do their homework.’

  I swab rice off my face. ‘You had my room broken into?’

  Morino holds his glass for the waitress to fill. ‘If I thought you had touched my baby girl, you virtual-orphan brat, I would have had you broken into. So be grateful.’

  ‘I hate karaoke and I’m not going to sing.’

  Lizard does a squitty imitation. ‘I hate karaoke and I’m not going to sing.’ Then his fist fills my eye and the table becomes the ceiling.

  I pick myself up. My eye sort of sings, throbbing up.

  ‘I wanted to do that all day.’ Lizard examines his knuckles. ‘Father told you to sing.’

  I should be afraid, but I shake my head. There is no blood.

  Frankenstein places a chopstick over his index and ring fingers, belches, and snaps the chopstick with his middle finger. ‘I say Miyake is in danger of a breach of contract, Father.’

  Morino wags his finger. ‘You have to make allowances. He was never the same after his sister drowned. They had their own little country. Fuck, they had their own language. What a pity he buggered off to Kagoshima the day she died, selfish fuck that he is. Hey!’ He clicks his fingers at the waitress. ‘More edamame beans!’ Drugged with cold germs as I am, I can’t guess whether Morino has a gift for inspired guesses or a skeleton key to the basements of minds. Either way, I want to spike his eye with my chopstick. I imagine myself doing it. Squirt. His wart throbs. I swear, the thing is watching me.

  According to the Cadillac clock we enter the reclaimed land perimeter road at 23:04. Thirty minutes later we are still driving. Military band music pumps through the car and a fever pumps through me, or maybe the fever is in the car and the military music in me. Millimetres away from being a killer, I was. I am. Can a chance difference in spin and angle really make me not guilty? I threw. I had to. But I threw. One more hour and the document wallet will be mine. Plus a magnificent black eye. I was expecting the pretender to the Yakuza throne of Tokyo to be joined by fleets of armoured personnel, but no. Just these two Cadillacs. My nose streams uncontrollably, and my neck feels clamped in some sort of truss. Maybe some code of honour binds the two factions to non-violence. Or, please no, maybe this is a suicide mission. I tell myself if Morino was the kamikaze type he wouldn’t have made it to his age, or even his body weight, but I no longer know what to think. Nobody says much. Morino calls Mama-san, at Queen of S
pades, I guess. ‘Is Miriam at work yet? I called her place. Tell her to call my mobile the moment she gets in.’ Lizard and Frankenstein smoke their Camels, Morino his cigar. I am too ill to want to smoke. Popsicle whimpers in her narcotic sleep. The sea is calm enough to walk on and the sky is stars, acre after acre. The full moon is a thirty watt bulb no more than several inches away. Morino makes another call, but nobody answers. ‘Suicides tend to check themselves out when the moon is full, a nurse once told me. Suicides, and, for some reason, horses.’ Finally we slow to a halt, parked at a strategic angle to the horn players’ Cadillac, I guess. I get out. My cramped muscles hurt. Yet another building site. Tokyo suburbs are demolition dumps or building sites. The giant terminus building is still a giant foundation. Flat as a pool table, the reclaimed land extends all the way to the mountains. A bridge, with the central section missing, rises on either side of where we stand. I can hear the lazy sea a short distance over the embankment. ‘Say, Miyake.’ His lighter flame dances. ‘You can monkey up that bridge.’ I wonder what the catch is. ‘Nagasaki is the opposition, and you don’t fit the image. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m recruiting from kindergarten.’ Lizard snickers.