Chapter 5 – Sleaze

POLICE LT. Nakazono watched the teenager buy an ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins, cross Asakusadori and stop under Kaminari Gate.  It was 10 p.m. and pedestrian traffic in the plaza was light.  The girl licked at her cone and Nakazono smiled.  She began to stroll north toward Sensoji temple and the cop followed.
    He felt himself quicken as she turned up Nakamisedori.  The alley was lined with souvenir shops.  Forbidden to vehicles, it was the main access to the temple and visitors were forced to fight through a gauntlet of folding fans and fortune tellers to reach their goal.  Nearly impassible in the daytime it was now deserted and shuttered.  Spotlights over the shops lit the cobblestones brightly and left the alley tidy and sterile.
    Nakazono touched the revolver holstered at his waist, fingered the stocking mask in his pocket.  He felt immune.  Head down, concentrating on her strawberry-cheesecake, the girl kept walking.
    The temple and the five-story pagoda waited one hundred yards ahead.  It was quiet in the temple precincts and very dark.  There were bushes and trees and streams clogged with candy wrappers and condoms and short humpbacked bridges.
    Nakazono closed the gap.  A few more steps and she would be out of the light and he could do whatever he wanted.  His eyes rolled down her back and over her ass.  She licked the cone; he licked his lips.  He imagined her surprise and fear.  She would fight.  But not for long, they never did.  They just cried, covering up, as he walked away, zipping and grinning.
    A siren wailed on Kokusaidori and the girl stopped.  She checked her watch and turned to retrace her steps.  Her eyes widened when she saw Nakazono so close, bearing down on her.  She hesitated and clutched her purse tighter.  They passed a meter apart, the cop entering the darkness, the girl hurrying back to Kaminari Gate and safety.
    Nakazono cursed the temple and the girl, blaming both for his ill luck.  He considered rousting a few bums or lovers, anything to keep from returning to the station.  Inside, there would be paperwork and subordinates with demands on his time.  Outside, at least one of Hara’s men would be waiting to escort him to an appointment with the leader of the Sumiyoshi-kai.  He’d already missed three meetings and knew he couldn’t avoid Hara much longer.  Nakazono sat down on a bench to rest.  He was so tired, he didn’t seem to have any strength at all.  If only he could get some sleep, maybe then he could think clearly.  Elena had been his last hope.  Everything would have been all right if she hadn’t died.
    No one could blame him, she’d brought it on herself.  He remembered quite distinctly the way she’d tormented him, as if she’d wanted to die.  She’d known he was a man of action, had known how he’d react.  It had been a suicide or at worst an accident, preordained and unavoidable.
    Each morning, he woke hours before dawn with a pain in his stomach and a weight on his chest.  His apartment was on the ninth floor.  He wondered how long it would take to hit the ground and what he would look like after he landed.  He’d loved her so, how could she have put him in such a position?
    Nakazono walked on, unable to feel the macadam under his feet or remember where he was.  He tried to accept the escape of the girl from Baskin Robbins philosophically, tried to concentrate on previous successes.  It didn’t work, it just made him angry.  A few minutes in the bushes wouldn’t have done her any harm and it would have made him less nervous.  A cop with gambling debts smaller than his had been found mutilated in Ikebukuro the day before.
    Thirty minutes later he stood in front of a small theater near the Sumidagawa river.  A skinny tout in a cheap tuxedo shouted at a passing salaryman.  A Marine from the U.S. Naval base in Yokosuka stood under photographs of naked women and drunkenly counted his money.  He wore jeans and a T-shirt that graphically promoted nuclear destruction as a means of conflict resolution.
    Nakazono shoved past the tout, ignored a fat lady selling tickets in a glass booth and walked through the lobby.  The smell of popcorn, dried squid and urine made him feel safe.  He bought a beer from a vending machine near the toilet.
    The theater had been built right after the war to showcase the talents of two-man comedy teams.  Now it provided employment for strippers as old and worn out as the theater itself.  Nakazono wedged himself into a seat in the back and opened his beer.  It was a good place to hide and collect his thoughts.
    An old wino was mopping up liquid on stage.  He worked slowly, swinging his mop in a reddish gloom.  The audience waited silently.  A record player was just visible on a table in the wings.  The bum finished mopping and changed the record, replacing one scratchy enka album with another.  Accompanied by bells, gongs and twangy stringed instruments, a woman whined about betrayal and suicide.
    The original stage had been expanded to accommodate the changing tastes of the customers.  A narrow runway thrust deep into the audience and extended almost to the back wall.  Men with beard stubble and blackened teeth flanked college kids.  A pair of wizened creatures with Shanghai-eyes and long chin hairs passed a bottle of sake to clerks in identical tan raincoats.  Two dozen in all, the customers propped their elbows on the runway, drank and smoked.
    The Marine pushed his way through the heavy curtains and stood uncertainly against the back wall.  There was more light than he’d expected and he felt exposed.  A few heads turned and he could see their faces clearly.  The distance from his ship seemed to lengthen.  He was beyond the reach of welcoming ceremonies and pier side bands.  A heavy man in the back row gave him a hard look and then turned away as a woman walked on stage.
    She wore a transparent nighty and high heels.  Her thin legs were bruised and her ass flecked with pimples.  A dragon tattoo crawled over her shoulder and down her back, spitting blue fire at a red-eyed demon.  Her hair was yellow-orange and black at the roots.  It fell over her eyes as she wobbled across the stage.
    The music changed, the tempo livened and she shuffled her feet.  She was graceless and indifferent.  After a few half-hearted kicks and squats, she dragged a greasy futon down the runway.  In her other hand was a tin box.  She let the futon slide to the stage and took a penlight from the box.
    Customers in the back left their seats and crowded to the front as she sat on the cold wood and lifted her nighty past her waist.  They leaned forward as she opened her legs and arched her back.  Each man got a chance to inspect her vagina using the penlight.  She stared at a point high on the wall and held her lips apart with one hand.
    Nakazono closed his eyes, thinking he might stay in the theater forever.  Elena’s face haunted him, it crawled under his eyelids and laughed.  He knew she would enjoy it when the Sumiyoshi-kai dropped him in the river or buried him in the woods.  He wished she’d suffered more, as much as he was suffering now.  A sliver of a tear slid down his fat cheek.
    A photo session began on stage.  The woman cackled and joked and held out a Polaroid camera with a flash attachment.  The college kids in the audience demurred but the clerks weren’t shy.  They gladly parted with a thousand yen each for the chance to take an extreme close-up of her genitalia.
    She placed a rough sheet over the futon and gestured to the audience.  Three men in front of Nakazono and two on the other side leaped to their feet.  The women didn’t choose, she let the aspirants sort it out themselves.  Finally, a consensus was reached and one of the students was selected.  He climbed on stage, slipped off his trousers and lay on the futon.  The stripper knelt beside him as he closed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest like a corpse.   
    She eased down his underwear and took a small towel from her metal box.  It was wrapped in hygienic plastic and distributed by the same company that serviced many local restaurants.  She cleaned him off with a few quick swipes and placed a condom on his penis.  He tensed and the clerks leaned forward on the edge of their seats.  His face was rigid with concentration as she used her hands and then her mouth.
    The stripper climbed on top and bounced.  He blinked and opened his eyes.  She snapped the used condom across the stage and beckoned to the next man.
    A laborer in blue work clothes jostled the Marine and he almost dropped his beer.  Instead of apologizing, the man grunted.  As a salaryman listlessly fucked the stripper and Nakazono continued to feel sorry for himself, the laborer began to jabber.
    The Marine didn’t know what the guy was saying but thought maybe he wanted to buy him a drink.  The Japs did that a lot and it was a cool way to stretch a pay check.  Not one of the fucks understood a word of English.  More than once he’d called them assholes right to their faces and had demanded they buy the next round.  Too dumb to say no, they’d ended up buying all the rounds.  He’d laughed and cursed them all the way back to his ship.
    When the guy grabbed his arm, it occurred to the Marine that free drinks might not be on the agenda.  He stepped back and two words wrapped in spit—Vietnam and Hiroshima—struck him in the chest.  They landed just to the right of the mushroom-cloud design on his T-shirt.
    Nakazono was driven from his hiding place by the commotion.  Two men, a gaijin and a Japanese, were rolling across the carpet.  He kicked them both as hard as he could and left the theater.
    He didn’t get very far.  Two of Hara’s men stepped out of the shadows and blocked his path.  They positioned themselves on either side and began to escort him down the street.
    “Why don’t we just shoot him and get it over with?” one asked.

Five years before, the solicitor for the Sumiyoshi-kai had begged Michio Hara to take a lower profile.  Hara had reluctantly taken his lawyer’s advice.  He’d parked his white Lincoln Continental in favor of a dark Mercedes and had begun to wear J. Press suits.  It had been a sad moment in his life.  How could the people of Asakusa recognize him if he looked like a common banker or, worse yet, a politician?
    When the solicitor had further suggested that he give up his punch perm and stop wearing pearly white ties, Hara had returned home in a funk.  Hours later his wife had found him sitting in the garage behind the wheel of the beloved Lincoln with tears in his eyes.
    Hara smiled graciously as Nakazono was pushed into a seat on the opposite couch.  He nodded at a trio of teenage porno actresses and the girls scurried off to play mahjongg in a corner of Hara’s private club.
    Nakazono looked frightened and Hara’s mood improved.  He grunted and a kid with pimples rushed over to pour the cop a drink.  Hara made small talk, stopping intermittently to look up at a TV behind the bar.  An announcer was analyzing a game played earlier that evening between the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers at Koshien Stadium in Osaka.
    Nakazono was a Giants fan.  He resisted the urge to turn his back on Hara to catch a glimpse of the highlights.  Instead, he poured himself another drink and lit a cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter.
    Hara looked down at his paisley tie and grimaced, ran his hands through his razor-cut hair and nearly cried.  Oh, how he longed to turn back the clock.  To his salad days when everybody was starving and the yakuza could steal from the fat gullible Americans almost at will.  Just like Robin Hood and his merry men, the yakuza had been a selfless tribe distributing crumbs fallen from the occupiers’ over-laden table.  Hara had never understood why the Americans had pumped trillions of yen into Japan but had been more than happy to pick up his share.
    He considered himself a father figure for the common people of Asakusa.  The yakuza had helped so many down through the years.  They were his children.  He tried to recall their faces and their looks of gratitude.  There must have been hundreds and hundreds.  Oddly, he drew a blank.  All he could remember was cruising around in his big Lincoln and honking the horn a lot.
    He shouted at his chief of staff.  “Hey, who’d we help last week?”
    Fukuyama was seated at the bar playing patty-cake with one of the porno queens.  He looked puzzled.  “Help?”
    “You know, did something good for somebody.  When was the last time we did anything like that?”
    Fukuyama stroked his chin.  “Gee, boss, I’m not sure.  I think it was back in October.”
    “That long ago?  How about old Nagata-san.  Didn’t we help him out last week?”
    “Well, it was kind of like helping him, I guess,” Fukuyama agreed.  “Sure, you could look at it like that if you wanted to.”
    “What’d we do?”
    “We helped him retire and move to the country.”
    Hara settled back satisfied.  “Great.  I knew I was right.  We gave him some money, huh?”
    Fukuyama sucked his teeth.  “Not exactly.  It was more like an incentive plan.”
    “What was the incentive?”
    “We burned down his house.”
    Hara had been hoping for something a little more clear-cut.  He aborted his trip down memory lane and took out his frustration on Nakazono.
    “You owe us a lot of money, you moron.”
    Nakazono bowed half a dozen times, pressed his forehead to the coffee table and begged for more time.
    “Time?” the yakuza chieftain growled.  “I’ve given you all the time you’re going to get.  You couldn’t pay if you lived to be a hundred and you’re going to be lucky to see next week.”
    “I’ll do anything,” Nakazono pleaded.  He looked over his shoulder.  Three of Hara’s men were standing behind him holding short swords.  Fukuyama sat down and shoved a 9mm Beretta into his side.
    The cop slid off the couch and fell to his knees.  “Please, please,” he begged, his tears wetting to the tops of Hara’s suede slippers.
    Hara grinned at Fukuyama.  This was more like it.  The National Police Agency was in the midst of a vendetta against the mob, threatening their lifestyle and their livelihood.  It felt good to humiliate a cop, even if it was only Nakazono.
    “Get up and act like a man,” Hara snarled, and Nakazono crawled onto the couch like a beaten dog.
    “Bring the Lieutenant a beer,” Hara ordered.
    Nakazono wiped his eyes with his sleeve and sat on his hands to stop them from shaking.  He was still alive; it seemed like a miracle.
    “Nakazono-san,” Hara said, “there’s a couple of small favors I’d like you to do for me.  I think I could take care of your financial problems if you agree.”
    The cop nodded his head as fast as he could.  “Anything, anything.”
    “Good.  It’s all quite simple, really.  First, I want you to encourage Elena Takagi’s son to sell that building to me, uhh, to my agent.  You can do that, can’t you?”
    Nakazono began to breathe again.  “No problem, just say the word.”
    “Don’t do anything for awhile. Let ’em settle in and the heat die down.”
    “Whatever you say.”
    “That brings me to my second request.  The government’s so-called crackdown on our business has left my boys restless and the people in the neighborhood confused.  A few even think we’re getting weak.  I’ve arranged for a little morale boost tomorrow.”
    “What’s that got to do with me?”
    Hara smiled.  “You’re the police aren’t you?  There will be a crime and you will be required to arrest a couple of my boys.”
    “You want your own men arrested?”
    “I just said so, didn’t I?”  Hara snapped.  He raised his hand as Nakazono started to ask another question.
    “Just shut up and do what you’re told.  Keep your patrolmen away from the Aomori Heights building between three and five tomorrow afternoon.”
    Nakazono nodded.  The Aomori Heights was a large apartment complex in Higashi-Asakusa, just a few blocks from the police station.
    “Stay in your office and wait for a call reporting a disturbance.  Get your ass over there and make the arrests personally.”
    “What kind of a disturbance?”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Hara said.  He looked over at his second-in-command.  “But you’d better bring an umbrella.  Asakusa’s gonna get wet tomorrow.  Real wet.”
    Fukuyama laughed and dragged his girl face down into his crotch.