‘And the area we’re in right now? Which mafia group holds this area?’
‘The Funabashi gang, though we’ll be crossing into Shiroi territory soon. Let’s see…’ Tatsu checked her navigation data. ‘This is Futawahigashi Six Chome territory. That’s the Yankees gang holding the area. They distribute drugs for the Funabashi gang, extort money from a few shopkeepers, and generally try to keep the Shiroi-owned gangs from invading their territory.’
‘Not many people about,’ Suzuki commented. ‘Place looks deserted.’
‘We’re in an air-conditioned van,’ Tatsu pointed out. ‘Out there it’s an oven. Would you want to be on the streets in this weather?’
‘That’s a point. Makes for lousy video though.’
‘Shame. Turn left here, Watanabe.’
Before their driver could respond, Suzuki perked up. ‘There’s some action. Are they gang members?’
Tatsu had a feed from Suzuki’s camera in her sensorium, which she now checked. ‘Could you zoom in?’ As he did so, her facial recognition system began picking out faces. ‘Yeah, that’s the local Yankees. That’s Alex Willard, their leader. What are they up to?’
Now Yamauchi perked up. ‘Can we get an interview with Willard?’
‘I don’t know, can you?’
‘I can get an interview with anyone, Sergeant.’
‘Your funeral. Pull over, Watanabe, but give them some distance. They might decide your van is a threat if you get too close. How’s your English, Yamauchi?’
‘Excellent.’
‘Good, because they’ll probably avoid Japanese.’
‘We’ll subtitle it,’ Watanabe said, slewing the van over to the side of the street.
They were surrounded by apartment blocks, occupied ones in good repair. Or as good as it got in Chiba. Still, the sun was beating down on the street and the heat flooded in as Yamauchi opened the van’s side door. She frowned at Tatsu when the cop followed her out. ‘They aren’t going to talk to us with a police officer standing beside me.’
‘You’d be amazed,’ Tatsu replied.
‘Sergeant Yamada,’ Willard said, in English, as the trio approached. ‘Who are the tourists?’ Willard was your typical thuggish gang leader: violently cropped hair of an indeterminate, dark colour, a flat nose, and plenty of muscles. His eyes were blue and showed distinct signs of intelligence, however.
‘Miss Yamauchi is a reporter. She wants to interview you fine, upstanding gentlemen.’
Willard frowned. ‘Don’t recognise her. Small channel?’
Tatsu shook her head. ‘TNM.’
‘Oh, that’s why I don’t recognise her.’
‘You don’t watch TNM?’ Yamauchi asked. ‘Mister Willard, right?’
‘Yeah, and no, I don’t watch TNM. Have you seen your programming? Lame-ass game shows, crappy sitcoms, filler anime, and biased reporting.’
‘Can’t disagree about the game shows,’ Suzuki said.
Yamauchi gave him a look. ‘I don’t do biased reports. I report what I see and hear. If my bosses don’t like it, they get to put up with it. I just want to ask a few questions about the conditions here in Chiba.’
‘Get lost,’ Willard said. ‘Whatever I say, you’ll twist it into something that paints refugees in a bad light.’
‘But–’
‘I said no.’
‘You can get an interview with anyone?’ Tatsu asked as they walked back to the van.
‘Maybe don’t mention which channel I work for next time,’ Yamauchi said.
‘Ah, so you get interviews by lying to your interviewees. Got it. I can probably get you an interview with Vasilev, even if he knows who you are.’
‘Grigory Vasilev? The current leader of the Funabashi gang?’
‘That’s him. Willard may look like a thug, but he’s pretty smart. He holds a border territory, so he knows to pick his battles. He likes to win, and an interview with you is, as he suggested, a no-win situation. Vasilev will think he’ll look good on a vid stream, and he’s lost the advisors who’d tell him he shouldn’t do it.’
‘If you could arrange that, that would be great.’
Tatsu put one foot into the van, taking one more look at the Yankees before she stepped inside. They had been armed, ready for at least a skirmish. What had they heard? Or was it simply that all the gangs were getting ready for things to spark?
25th August.
‘So, the port area belongs to the Funabashi gang and the Mihama Yankees,’ Tatsu said, ‘but it’s a sort of spur territory out here. We’re right on the border with the region claimed by the Huádōng tong and the Kurosuna Boys. That would be a Chinese street gang as opposed to an American street gang. The Chinese gangs operate much like the Yankees; they work for the tongs when they can and fend for themselves when they can’t.’
‘Drug distribution, protection…’ Yamauchi said.
‘That kind of thing. They’ll also mug tourists for valuables, though the prevalence of that decreases as you head east because the prevalence of Japanese visitors goes down as you head that way.’
‘And they fight other gangs? I mean, isn’t that what people are worried about at the moment?’
Tatsu considered her answer. ‘They fight, but it’s infrequent. The instability in the Funabashi gang recently has made things worse, but we’re mostly getting targeted hits between the two mafia factions. And none of that is really what people are worried about.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘No, they’re worried that the fighting is going to shift over the border into Tokyo and affect them. It’s also a vocal minority doing the worrying. Tourist traffic into Chiba has gone down by all of one percent, so the kind of Tokyo residents who come out to Chiba for stress relief at the weekend aren’t really worried about getting caught up in a gang battle. Watanabe, stop the van.’
The van’s motors went into regenerative-braking mode and it came to a sudden stop. ‘What? Why?’ Watanabe asked. Then she said, ‘Oh, right.’
Up ahead, on either side of the road, two groups of people were staring at each other. On the south side, they were Americans and there were a few women in the mix. On the north side, the group looked Oriental and were all men. As Suzuki zoomed his camera in, details began to appear. Many of those details were tyre irons, lengths of wood, and a few baseball bats. The situation had that feeling of impending thunder about it; there was a big charge of potential violence building and all it would take was one random event for it to discharge into blood and noise.
What eventually triggered it was anyone’s guess. Maybe someone sneezed or the two gangs simply got tired of waiting. Suddenly, the two groups were rushing at each other, weapons swinging, and Tatsu got to her feet, heading for the door. ‘Stay in the van,’ she ordered. ‘If they start pulling guns, there could be collateral damage.’ Then she was out and pulling her pistol and marching toward the fight with a determined stride.
She checked the load was baton rounds and then fired six of them into the throng. Bodies were tossed about like rag dolls, frequently impacting other bodies as they flew. Tatsu changed magazines and fired off six more rounds as she closed the distance. Then she swapped in a third magazine, aimed off to the side on the north of the fight and fired at the ground. The explosion was not large, but it was loud, and it was followed by Tatsu’s raised voice. ‘Everyone, put down your weapons and back off. Now!’
In the van, Yamauchi was about as excited as she had been all day. ‘Tell me you’re getting all this, Shisen.’
‘I’m getting it,’ Suzuki replied. ‘I’m getting it. Woman is badass.’
Another rocket shell exploded on the nearside of the fight, peppering the combatants in chunks of tarmac, and someone, a Yankee with a death wish, pulled a pistol from under his windbreaker, turning to aim it at Tatsu. She fired first. The bullet hit the man’s chest and was probably instantly fatal given the calibre and velocity, but then it exploded, and blood was sprayed over the nearby fighters as the corpse was rippe
d open. Silence fell.
‘Anyone who can still walk leaves,’ Tatsu shouted. ‘Now! Before I change my mind. Anyone else draws, they die. Move!’
In a little under five seconds, there was no one left on the street except for the ones lying prone, which counted for about nine, plus one dismembered body. In the van, Yamauchi, Suzuki, and Watanabe watched as Tatsu began walking round checking her victims.
‘Come on,’ Yamauchi said, starting for the door.
‘She said to stay in the van,’ Watanabe pointed out.
‘That was when they were fighting. They’re not fighting. Come on, Shisen.’
‘I told you to wait in the van,’ Tatsu said without looking around at the approaching reporter and cameraman.
‘That was for safety and you broke up the fight.’
‘Could still be someone with a death wish watching us.’
‘I’ll take that risk. Uh, are any of them going to survive for trial?’
‘Three were hit with flying bodies. They’ll be fine aside from the bruises. The rest will need hospital treatment, except for the one with the broken neck. Some of them will make it. Some… won’t.’
‘That was amazing, but you don’t seem happy with it.’
Tatsu turned and looked up at the reporter from where she was crouched beside a body. ‘Ever killed someone, Yamauchi?’
‘Well, no, obviously.’
‘Then you don’t know how you’ll react. Some people can’t handle it. Some come to terms. Some make up excuses for why they had to do it. Some like it. I don’t like killing people. I don’t make excuses either. I do what needs doing, when it needs doing, and I hope I never do get to like it. This wasn’t “amazing.” People are dead. People, not immigrants or ketō. No one should think that’s amazing.’
‘I think one can appreciate the skill of a trained police officer while decrying the need for their services,’ Yamauchi replied a little stiffly.
‘That wasn’t police training,’ Tatsu replied, straightening up. The sound of sirens could be heard in the distance; backup was on its way. ‘I used to be a soldier. Now I’m a one-woman riot squad.’
26th August.
‘We must not fight among ourselves. Fighting between our own people is counterproductive. Foolish.’ Yong Pan was speaking – in Mandarin – and people were listening. Probably not the right people, but his voice was being heard. ‘When I speak of “our people,” I refer to all refugees in this country which has given us the honour of taking us in in our time of need. I call for calm. I call for peace. Do not let the demons of violence spread like a cancer through our peaceful community.’
‘Who is he again?’ Yamauchi asked. For once, she was separated from Suzuki who was up at the front of the crowd, filming Pan. The little news conference had been set up in the lobby of one of the still-functional hotels in this region, in Chuo Ward as was. There were a number of cameras other than Suzuki’s, but the majority of attendees were from radio stations of one form or another.
‘Yong Pan,’ Tatsu replied. ‘He’s… He’s a sort of community figurehead in this area. He was in his sixties when he came to Japan. Had enough money to live in Tokyo or Yokohama, but he chose to live here, among the Chinese in Chiba.’
‘No criminal ties?’
‘Unless you count having something of an influence over the tong leaders, no. He runs hostels down near the old port, a rehab centre, and a number of campaigns to improve conditions in Chiba.’
‘So, an all-round nice guy.’
‘I won’t say he doesn’t enjoy the attention, but yes, he’s a responsible voice with limited influence in the National Diet. He’s managed to get some things done and he generally keeps the tongs from getting too excessive.’
‘And when he fails, you destroy the tong.’ Yamauchi was smirking.
‘And then he complains about me using excessive violence, even though he knew it was necessary. He’s a local politician in an area where no one has representation.’
‘Well, let’s see what he’s like one-on-one.’
~~~
‘Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Mister Pan,’ Yamauchi began.
‘Thank you for speaking with me, Miss Yamauchi,’ Pan replied. He was speaking Japanese now; the audience had changed.
‘You’ve called for calm here in Chiba. That implies that there is not calm at the moment. I witnessed a fight break out between two gangs on the streets south of here yesterday. Is gang violence more of a problem at the moment?’
Pan smiled. He looked around sixty or seventy, but a spry sixty or seventy. Medical technology had kept him going beyond what he might have expected. His heart and liver were both cybernetic and several of his joints had been replaced. PIN kept back much of the ravages of time. He was wrinkled, with thinning grey hair, but he was healthy, and his eyes were bright. His mind still operated well too. ‘Your question betrays the bias of your channel, Miss Yamauchi. Gang violence is not common in this area, but it is rising with the confusion caused by the recent murders of Russian mafia leaders. Chaos breeds chaos.’
‘I report what I see, Mister Pan,’ Yamauchi countered.
‘I shall await your report on our community with interest. Sadly, your fellow reporters report what their agenda requires them to. Your channel refers to refugees as immigrants, economic migrants here to better their lives. I was a successful businessman in Beijing when the Cyberwar broke out. Do you believe that I would abandon that to move to a country which begrudgingly accepted me and denies me basic human rights due to my circumstances?’
‘Do you believe the environment in Chiba contributes to the prevalence of gangs in the area? Everyone is guaranteed a basic income. Everyone has somewhere to live.’
‘Universal basic income for refugees is one hundred and sixty thousand yen per month. For Japanese citizens it is eight hundred thousand. Work is hard to come by. The Japanese economy is based around a model of services. When we came here, there were jobs in manufacturing which have vanished with the march of automation.’ Pan held up a hand. ‘I do not blame anyone for this. Technology marches on and Japanese citizens have also been inconvenienced by it to some degree. The fact that those citizens wish to be served by other Japanese people reduces our chances of finding alternate work, of course. Given our circumstances, the reduced level of income means that people must prioritise survival over comfort. When survival is at the forefront of your mind, it is common to band together for support.’
Yamauchi was silent for a second, which would likely be edited out of the final multicast. ‘Do you believe your words will reach the right ears, Mister Pan? Will there be calm on the streets of Chiba?’
‘We can but hope, Miss Yamauchi,’ Pan replied. ‘If there are more murders, who can say what may happen?’
~~~
‘Where are we going?’ Yamauchi asked as Tatsu got out of the van.
‘My place,’ Tatsu replied. ‘Briefly.’
‘Sorry? Your apartment? And you want me and Suzuki to come with you?’
‘It occurred to me that you probably have no idea what a typical apartment in Chiba looks like.’ Tatsu headed for the door of the building, reporter and cameraman in tow. ‘You’re wrong about everyone having somewhere to live, by the way, though I admit that everyone should have a roof over their heads. Maybe we’ll go see some of the squats in the zone tomorrow. Still, this is a pretty typical apartment building here in Chiba. They were put up to house the refugees, assuming that Chiba would be an industrial area requiring workers for the factories.’
The elevator was on the ground floor, so there was no waiting. It was a bit of a tight fit getting three people and a camera in, but soon they were on their way up to Tatsu’s floor. ‘Despite the fact that most Japanese citizens now live in only three large urban areas, the population density in Tokyo is now a little lower than it was at the start of this century. I’m sure both of you live in fairly palatial apartments compared to your typical urban apartment from before the war.
You must have seen the old apartment format, the one K or one DK style. You still see it in manga, anime, and period vids.’
‘Obviously,’ Yamauchi said.
‘Well, when they built Chiba, they took that to the extreme.’
The elevator doors opened and Tatsu led the way down the corridor with its grey-painted walls and metal apartment doors. ‘I’d imagine you’ll want to send Suzuki in to take the vid for this. There’s not much room to get three of us in and see the place.’
‘Uh, right.’ Tatsu opened the door by remote and Suzuki went in, scanning his camera around as he did so. Yamauchi stopped in the doorway, looking in at Tatsu’s somewhat grubby home. ‘Uh, where’s the bed?’
‘Folded into the wall on your right. Storage is a drop-down cabinet above your head. The desk there can be folded up too, though I don’t.’
‘Okay, and this must be the shower.’ Yamauchi tapped on the screen on her left which was, indeed, where the shower was located.
‘Shower and other bathroom facilities,’ Tatsu replied. ‘The toilet and sink slide into the wall when not in use. No cooking facilities. Most people use the communal kitchen down the hall if they don’t eat out. Like I said, they really took the old single-room apartment design and did their best to make it smaller.’
‘There are better apartments in Chiba though, right?’
‘Certainly, but they’re more expensive and most people can’t afford them on UBI alone.’
‘But you could.’
Tatsu smiled. ‘I’m a special case. I don’t really need much in the way of home comforts. I need somewhere to sit, somewhere to sleep, and somewhere to clean up. This does all I need and it’s cheap. And, yes, I could afford better, but most people in Chiba can’t. You wanted to see what life is like here. Well, this is what life is like here.’
Sign of the Dragon (Tatsu Yamada Book 1) Page 13
