The Mongolian is climbing nearer. A man-shaped hole in the dim dark. I can see his almost-smile. The impact of his cowboy boots against the concrete counts off my remaining moments. Lizard and the Cadillac headlights strobing the battleground may as well be events from another lifetime. Are Morino and Frankenstein still watching? If I take my eyes off the Mongolian, I am afraid my killer will halve the distance when I look back. I have a nightmare where that happens. If this is not a nightmare, what is? My adrenaline is fighting my fever, but I have no way to use this loaned energy. No amount of adrenaline will keep me alive when I hit the ground after that drop. No amount of adrenaline will let me disarm a real, live mercenary with a real, live gun. Fuck, no. I am dead. Who will miss me? Buntaro will find a new tenant by next Saturday. Mom will enter her cycle of guilt, blame, and vodka. Again. Who knows what my father will feel? Blame, regret, grief? I would hope so. My stepmother will probably buy a new hat to celebrate. Akiko Kato will have a little paperwork to process. Cat will find a new pad. She was only ever in it for the milk. My uncles, their wives, and my cousins back in Yakushima will be shocked and distraught by the news, of course, but they will all agree that Tokyo is trouble and Japan is not the fortress of safety it used to be. My grandmother will receive the news with a blank face and a long silence that will last half a day. Then she will say, “His sister called him, so he went.” My list ends there. And this is assuming that my body turns up. Burying me in a pit under a future runway with the others down there would surely make a whole load more sense. Buntaro will report me in a week as a missing person, and everyone will shrug, say he trod in his mother’s footsteps, assume I am working in a spare-parts factory in a disposable town, and forget me. Here comes my killer, checking his gun. What was it all for? Anju was overwhelmed by the ocean. I am just underwhelmed. I sneeze again. Sneezing, now! I want to ask my nose, Why bother? The breeze is cool off the drained sea.
I decide to kill an hour before I reenter Valhalla. First, I find a telephone. I call Mrs. Sasaki at Ueno, but the moment I hear her voice I hang up in panic, or shame. Either I must tell her an outright lie—or I tell her the outright truth. I cannot do either. So I call Buntaro, who is much easier to handle—he jumps down the telephone line. “Guess what, kid! Kodai’s eyes are actually open! Inside my wife! Open! Imagine that! And get this—he is sucking his thumb! Already! The doctor said this is unusual, so early on. Early developer, the doctor actually said that.”
“Buntaro, I—”
“I was watching a baby video earlier. Maternity is . . . beyond belief. Ever wondered if embryos get thirsty? They do! So they drink up the amniotic fluid, and then pee it out again! The same as being hooked up to a never-ending supply of Budweiser. Except amniotic fluid tastes better. Waiting to be born must be nine months of bliss, same as a bar where you never have to pay the bill. Pity is, we never remember a thing.”
“Buntaro, a friend is—”
“Have you any idea how much pregnancy rearranges a woman’s internals? By the third trimester, the uterus is touching the breastbone. Placental mammals really have it tough. That’s why—” A woman in the background at Shooting Star screams her lungs out. “Hang on, I’ll turn down the volume. Watching Rosemary’s Baby. Get a few pointers if Kodai turns out to be the son of the Prince of Darkness. A midwife at the hospital was saying—”
“Buntaro!”
“Is anything the matter?”
“Really sorry, but I’m calling from a box and my card is about to die. A friend is coming to Shooting Star by taxi. He donated some blood, but they took too much and he needs to lie down—please, when he gets there, would you show him up to my room? I’ll explain later. Please.”
“And will his trousers be needing pressing? Or how about a massage, or—”
My card dies. Perfect. I hang up.
A platoon of boyfriends and girlfriends—not to mention the battalion of bothered young families five years will transform the couples into— swills me down a shopping mall to a podium. Musicians perform something twiddly and ribboned. Mozart, maybe. By accident I find myself in the front row. A fat cellist, two thin violinists, a dumpy viola player, and a girl playing a Yamaha grand piano. She has one of those perfect necks— curves, smoothness, toughness, hollows, bumps, all just so. She is in a cream silk dress—sweat dapples mark her spine—and she plays bare-foot. Her hair hangs down over her face. The music finishes and everyone claps. The string section basks in the applause—the pianist just turns around and gives a modest bow. Ai Imajo. It really is Ai Imajo. I look for a hiding place but I am walled in by handbags, strollers, and melting ice creams. Ai Imajo looks right my way and a blush grenade goes off in my face. Then I realize she is looking but not seeing. She is still dazzled by the brightness of the music. Of course, just because I recognize her does not mean that she recognizes me. Then Ai Imajo smiles at me—I check behind me to make sure Beethoven has not appeared—and then she mimes a headbutt. I manage a feeble nod before getting pushed back by penguins carrying bushes of flowers. Wish I had some. A hippopotamus woman looped in beads makes the microphone scream with feedback. I wander off to find a quiet and shady corner of Xanadu, if there is such a thing, and just sit in peace. I do not even think about embarrassing Ai in front of her music-student friends.
Valhalla blots out the sun. When my hour is up, I slip through a gap in the perimeter fence and into its unfinished shadow. I can see three security guards smoking in the mouth of the main entrance, but sneaking up between rows of blocks, piping, coils of cable, and drainage channels is easy. If I am being watched from Valhalla itself I am in trouble: I hope seeing Ai Imajo has used up today’s coincidence quota. I nearly trip over a coil of cable. It sidewinds into life and enters Valhalla through a ventilation duct. No place for a snake, Snake. Avoiding the guards’ field of vision I get to the foot of the pyramid, and begin looking for a way in. The building is vast—it takes about five minutes per side to skirt. I pass the hotel lobby entrance, and curse myself for not leaving it wedged open with something—I could probably have forced the inner shutter somehow. Twenty minutes later I am back to the main entrance and its three guards. I consider trying to pass myself off as a boilermaker or something—I am still in my work overalls—but when I creep close enough to overhear them discussing the best way to cripple a man (go for the kneecaps or go for the tendons) I change my mind. I backtrack to the basement ramp that Frankenstein drove down earlier in the afternoon. I spy on the guard lodge from behind a backhoe. Its window faces acrossways, not up the ramp. I think if I stay against the wall I can reach it without being seen. Then, maybe, I can crawl past. The main danger is from any vehicles ascending the ramp as I am making my way down. Still, there were only three Cadillacs in the entire car park. I think.
It works. I reach the lodge without being caught. On the guard’s TV I hear “And it’s a clash of the Giants and the Dragons in front of sixty thousand on this sweltering afternoon in the Dome as homeboy Enoki limbers up, and I can well imagine what must be going through the mind of that young battler!” I smell pork katsu and hear a microwave ping. I get down on my knees and scramble past—my foot slips in fine gravel, surely he must have heard? I carry on anyway, past his door, under the barrier arm and away, bracing myself for a shout and alarms. I dash behind a column, my heart percussion-capping. Nothing. He must be stone deaf. I am now an unauthorized intruder. Calm down. I am walking into a building to pick up a piece of unwanted trash. The three Cadillacs are still parked in a row, which is not a good sign, but as long as my father is safe in the metal trash can I can find a hiding place somewhere in the hotel and retrieve it when the yakuza have gone. Staying in the darkest wedges of shadow I make my way to the portal door and slip through. I sort of remember the way. Snake is wandering this maze of swinging doors too. Grown to canoe length. I pass the toilet where Daimon and I were put on ice—abrupt laughter rings out. My nerves snap, I dart ahead and clear the next corner just as the laughter spills into the corridor. It follows me
for the next three turnings. Then it dies down. Then it changes direction and heads toward me—does it? I double back in panic—I thought I doubled back—and end up down a dead end with a drinks machine in the alcove. I listen. The voices of two men are getting nearer. Maybe I can squeeze down the side of the machine—I can, but as I try to twist around behind it my foot gets caught in a loop of cable. At that moment the voices appear in front of the machine. I freeze. If I move they will hear me. If they look down the side of the machine they will see my leg. I feel a sneeze getting nearer. No. Dread snuffs it. A transformer juts into the small of my back. It hornet-hums and is hot as an iron.
“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 fuck. 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 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. Whiter than cod, he is, he’ll hardly feel a thing.”
Beers clunk through the machine’s guts. The men open their beers and walk away, still discussing carpentry. I sneeze and hit my head on the side of the machine. The voices do not return.
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: very, very carefully. It is tightly sprung, but feels unlocked. Holding my breath, I open the door a sliver and peer in. I can see the metal trash can with the file folder. 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 file folder—and groan. A single photograph falls to the floor and lands blank side up. A message is ballpointed on it: 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 driver’s seat is my father. I am looking at the face of my father. I know it.
Pluto Pachinko is so thick with sweat, smoke, and sheer din you could swim up to the mirrorballs on the disco ceiling. I would swap a whole 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 most promising 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 parlor 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 car park. I start a second lap, searching for a staff-only door. 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 help desk, 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 floor.”
“I should hope not.” I close the door, impressed with my performance. 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.
Inside, 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 parlor below. The scene lurches. I gape— did I do that? Pachinko din from downstairs fills the office, unfiltered. Morino watches me from behind the desk with a finger on his amused 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. His smile is deep contentment. A jag of mirror falls from the frame. From outside Leatherjacket closes the door behind me. The cyclone subsides as the stampede clears the pachinko parlor below. Lizard and Frankenstein peer through the frame to inspect the damage. Morino sort of smiles with his eyelids. “Fine timing, Miyake. You witnessed my declaration of war.”
I am trembling. “The man . . .”
“Take a seat. 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?”
Morino looks inside. “Excellent! A Montecristo. Call an ambulance? If Ozaki wanted an ambulance called, he should have thought through the consequences of pissing on my shoes.”
“But—the police—aren’t you . . .”
Morino slides the cigar under his nose.
“Police?” Frankenstein watches the chaos flood out of Pluto Pachinko. “Police work in your world. We police ours.” He nods at Lizard and he and Frankenstein leave. I feel as if my stomach has been gouged out. Mama-san’s knitting needles click. The horn players are on pause.
Morino unwraps the cigar. “What do you know about cigars? Nothing. So listen. Learn. The Montecristo is the king of cigars. Pure perfection. Pure Cuban—filler, wrapper, binder. For a rat’s penis like Ozaki to even look at a Montecristo is blasphemy. I told you to sit down.” I obey, numb. “You are here because you want information. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“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. “I am sure your gratitude is five-star gratitude. But I have metropolitan overheads. Your gratitude is worth flea shit. Try harder.”
“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. We both know you have none. No. I propose you pay with loyalty.”
“My loyalty?”
“There a fucking echo in here?”
“What would giving you my loyalty mean?”
“So like your father. 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 afterward a get-together with some old friends. Midnight comes around, we give you a ride home.”
“And in return—”
“You receive—” He clicks his fingers and a horn player hands him the file folder. Morino leafs through it. “Your father. Name, address, occupation, résumé, personal history, pix—color, black and white— itemized telephone bills, bank accounts, preferred shaving gel.” Morino fastens it shut. “You give me and my family a
few hours of your precious time, and your historic search ends in glory. 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 file folder, bearing in mind what I have 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. 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 at my shock. “We need ink.”
“Ink?”
“For the contract. I am a man of the written word.” The syringes are removed and my arm is released. Morino squirts both syringes into a teacup, and mixes our blood with a teaspoon. My puncture is dabbed with disinfectant. 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,” Morino orders, “before the blood clots.” I pick up the brush, dip it, and write Mi and Yake. Red already stiffens to dung brown. Morino watches with a critical eye. “Penmanship is a dying art.”
“At my high school we practiced with ordinary ink.”
Morino blows the paper dry, and rolls it into a scroll case. Everything seems prepared. Mama-san puts the scroll case into her handbag. “Perhaps now, Father,” she says, “we can finally attend to business?”
“Yes.” 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 lamps and strewn with tarpaulins, tiles, wood planking, sheet glass, and a prematurely delivered army of boutique dummies huddled naked in misty polyethylene. 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 real world, Ai Imajo is playing Mozart. Words from Morino could be the voice of darkness itself. “Our ancestors built temples for their gods. We build department stores and theme parks. In my youth I went to Italy with my father, on business. I still dream about the buildings I saw. What we lack in Japan is the necessary megalomania.” Down here 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 far greater darkness. At first I cannot see a thing—not even the floor. I can only feel the emptiness. I follow the vapor trail and ember light of Morino’s cigar. In the distance is a suffused glow. This is a bowling alley. We walk past lane upon lane. I lose count. Minutes seem to pass. “Ever go bowling much on Yakushima, Miyake?” Sometimes Morino’s voice seems far, 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 clever 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 in the gloom. “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 center 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.”
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