Chapter 9 - Yakuza slaughter

THE COVERED arcade across the street from Asakusa Station was crowded with shoppers enjoying a warm Saturday afternoon.  Helen stopped to watch street peddlers ply their trade on blankets pitched in front of high-rent shops.
    All the peddlers were young, dark haired and Israeli.  They sold stuffed pandas, mass-produced watercolors and cheap jewelry throughout the city.  Business was brisk and blind astrologers watched enviously behind tables adorned with smoky candles burning in red glass jars.
    Only rarely did the shopkeepers complain about the peddlers blocking access to their stores.  The Israelis, often backpackers taking a break from the Asian hippie drug trail, worked as franchise employees protected by the city’s yakuza gangs.
    Pandas were invariably the hottest sellers and were produced in a dizzying array of models.  The herbivore was highly esteemed and had displaced the truculent koala as the nation’s only living god.  Schoolgirls adept at calculus and elementary physics gushed monosyllabic and swooned in the presence of even the most tattered cloth version.
    Helen snuck through the crowd to get a better look.  Some of the battery-powered pandas were actually quite clever.  But she backed away disappointed—a singing panda that did giant swings on a high was old hat.
    Asakusa Station was underground and she found Hiroshi waiting at street level in front of Matsuya department store.  He’d called a couple of hours before, saying he was onto something hot.
    He pointed at a van parked in the crosswalk.  “I hitched a ride with the TV team.  We’d better get going, nobody is sure when this is going to start.  It shouldn’t take too long and then we can get a cup of coffee.”
    Broadcast vans from Asahi, Fuji and NHK were already parked in front of the Aomori Heights building.  Cameramen, sound technicians and TV reporters stood in groups talking with writers and photographers from all the main dailies and weekly magazines.
    “What’s this all about?” Helen asked.  “I haven’t seen this kind of a turnout in a long time.”
    “I’m not sure.  We were tipped that something big was going to happen but the caller wouldn’t be specific.”
    “Well, it had better be good.  It’s not like I have nothing better to do.”
    “Like what?”
    She smiled.  “Plenty of things.  I was on my third load of laundry before I left and I was working my way up to a championship-level sulk.”
    “What have you got to sulk about?”
    She ticked off her reasons.  “My job sucks, the job market is lousy....  We’re in the middle of a recession.  I’m not sure I want to stay in Japan.  I’m not sure I want to go anywhere else.”
    A photographer shouted and bedlam erupted as two men walked around the corner and were engulfed by pushing cameramen and reporters.  Strobes flashed, motor drives chittered and a columnist was knocked to the pavement.  She looked up into the blazing lights of half a dozen minicams and kicked a soundman in the crotch.
    Helen tried to stay on the fringe of the mob.  News gathering in Tokyo was competitive, extremely invasive and dangerous.  Journalists traveled in packs snapping at the heels of prey.  The possibility of being trampled was real.
    The yakuza basked in the attention.  Both were young, in their early twenties, and overweight.  One wore a Daffy Duck sweatshirt from Mickey House, a nationwide apparel distributor licensed to sell images of Disney’s favorite characters.  In addition to receiving high marks from street punks, Mickey House was quite popular with yakuza wives who swaddled their mob tots in Goofy jogging outfits and Minnie Mouse jumpers.
    His companion wore a lime-green running suit with a portrait of Mozart on the front.  He carried an open can of Sapporo beer in one hand and a short sword sheathed in white pine in the other.  Each had a punch perm and the twitchy eyes of a habitual methedrine abuser.  Helen could smell the alcohol seeping from their skin from five yards away.
    Mozart took a swig of beer and Daffy shoved the nearest photographer in the chest.  Both began to shout at the mob.  Helen’s Japanese was fluent in normal circumstances but the guttural yakuza dialect was difficult in the best of times and nearly unintelligible when mixed with drugs and alcohol.
    She understood enough to know that someone named Takeno was in serious trouble.  They called him a swindler and said he’d reneged on a land deal.  The specifics eluded her but she wasn’t surprised—crooked land speculators were as common as sushi.
    Mozart and Daffy continued to shout as they shoved their way through the journalists to the elevator.  The crowd surged and Helen was trapped, crushed into the yakuza.  The doors opened and she was pushed inside.  A camera lens stabbed her in the kidney and someone stamped on her feet.
    An air of violence and danger was rising; she could feel its heat on her face and in her chest.  It nearly took her breath away.  She’d been caught in Tokyo crowds before and had tried not to panic.  Zen was a daily survival skill, not a mystic religion.  Her teachers had been clawing and kicking housewives.  They’d taught her to bend like grass in the wind.
    The elevator opened at the sixth floor and Helen was pushed along to an apartment halfway down an outside balcony.  Those left behind on the ground floor came racing up the stairwell and closed in.  Daffy and Mozart screamed and the mob grudgingly backed off.  They formed a half-circle around the yakuza as hard and impervious as cement.
    Helen couldn’t move, she was going to get a front-row seat whether she liked it or not.  She spotted Hiroshi off to her right in a crush of bodies four rows deep.  A reporter from a major TV network shoved a mike in Daffy’s face and asked rapid-fire questions.  The rest of the reporters deferred to his seniority and shut up.
    This was no mafia movie, no cool professional job.  Daffy and Mozart were going berserk.  They jerked like maddened puppets and tugged at their restraints.  The reporters waited patiently.  Mozart pounded on the door like a drummer.  Daffy’s weak little heart beat faster and faster.  He pushed at Mozart, and Mozart pushed back.  They swapped their cowardice like a bottle.  The reporters did nothing to discourage the self-induced hysteria.
    Helen had seen it before.  Violence in Japan was rare.  When it came it was explosive, insane and very messy.  She could feel the rage building, edging out of control.  The man Takeno was going to get a beating, not just a warning.  Mozart roared.  Daffy whirled on the reporters and lashed out.  The crowd fell back but made sure the cameras were rolling.  No one thought of calling the police.
    “Who is it?” a thin frightened voice asked from inside the apartment.
    Daffy shouted for Takeno to open up and smashed his fist into the steel door.  He rattled the doorknob and Takeno cried out like a terrified child.  He was going to call the police, he warned.
    Mozart laughed at the threat and flipped his half-empty beer over the heads of the reporters.  It landed with a slap in the parking lot below.  Daffy slammed into the door with his shoulder and Mozart tried to rip the burglar bars from the apartment’s front window.  The bars were thin aluminum and installed merely as a deterrent.  He called for Daffy’s help and the bars began to bend.
    The pebbled window glass was reinforced with wire mesh and translucent.  Helen watched a silhouette move inside the apartment, listened to Takeno beg for help.  Daffy and Mozart pulled at the bars and grunted.  The reporters yelled questions as screws embedded in concrete failed and the bars came away from the window.
    A lazy afternoon breeze rustled notebooks as the sun slipped lower and left the balcony in warm shadow.  Children’s voices lifted out of a grammar school playground and sailed up to the sixth floor.  Mozart paused to catch his breath and Daffy grinned at a weak keening coming from inside the apartment.
    Helen tried to push herself back out of the crowd as Mozart kicked the window again and again.  She gave up, there was no way out.  A long crack appeared in the glass.  Mozart wiped at his face and kicked again.  The window buckled and sagged inward, held in place by the reinforcing mesh.
    Daffy was bigger.  He put his foot straight through the wire.  Takeno screamed and Mozart reached in to unlock the window.
    Helen heard footsteps in the apartment and a door slam.  Mozart and Daffy struggled, both trying to get in the window at the same time.  Mozart snarled at his partner and climbed inside.
    The window was wide open and the crowd pushed Helen forward.  Her thighs were shoved tight into the apartment wall.  The pressure at her back bent her at the waist, forcing her to lean through the window.  With her arms trapped at her sides she could do nothing about the minicam resting on her shoulder or the microphone shoved past her ear.
    Mozart went around to the door and let Daffy in the apartment.  A cameraman tried to follow and they pushed him back.  He tried again and Mozart pulled his sword from its sheath and pointed the tip of the blade at the man’s belly.
    No lights were on inside.  No sound.  No radio and no TV.  No food smells.  No perfume or even dust smells.  Only something very recent, a smell as sharp as acid.
    A few papers lay on a desk to Helen’s left.  A cheap sofa and coffee table sat in the middle of the living room.  A sports newspaper was scattered on the gray carpet.  The furniture looked rented and sterile; the walls were blank except for a calendar above the desk.  Beneath a photograph of Kyoto’s golden temple, Kinkakuji, a few dates had been circled with a fluorescent yellow marking pen.
    A soundman held the front door open with his hip and his partner pushed the snout of a minicam inside.  Daffy and Mozart seemed confused for a moment, as if disturbed by the silence and the deep shadows created by the camera lights.  They glared back at the pale faces of the reporters and then disappeared down a hall to the right.
    Helen heard the two yakuza confer and the crash of splintering wood.  Of Takeno she heard nothing.  The sounds of a struggle filtered through the walls.  The audio technician leaned heavily on her back and pushed his mike further through the window.
    Now Takeno could be heard.  His voice seemed to be coming closer.  Helen winced as he begged.  Much of what he said was senseless, just fear-driven blabber.  Until he pleaded for understanding.
    Daffy and Mozart backed into the living room dragging Takeno by the arms.  He was a big man, much larger than either of the yakuza.  His glasses were bent and twisted, his blue polo shirt was pulled loose from a pair of khaki slacks.  He wore no shoes or socks.
    Takeno was paralyzed by Daffy’s and Mozart’s lunatic violence.  They were well prepared and eager to go too far.  They shouted and shouted.  He couldn’t catch up or even hear his own voice.  Despite his size, he did nothing to defend himself.
    Mozart kicked him in the back and he rolled across the carpet.  Daffy kicked him in the face.  Deep cuts opened as his glasses were driven into his head.  Blood poured from a broken nose and bubbled on his lips.
    Takeno lifted his head and turned toward the reporters for the first time.  Pathetic surprise—strobes erupted as bright as flares.  Still photographers aimed and fired Nikons at his bloody face.  Blinded, Takeno crawled toward the lights.  “Help me, please help me,” he pleaded.
    Cameramen reloaded, reporters memorized the scene and Daffy and Mozart resumed kicking.  Teeth snapped off Takeno’s jawbone and landed on the carpet.  Blood, thick and crimson, splattered the white walls.  He rolled into a ball.
    Tiring, the yakuza slowed their attack and began to work more methodically.  Each stepped back with their hands on their hips and lashed out.  Soft Addidas and Reebok sneakers landed on bone and flesh with a muffled repetitious thud.  The sound engineers boosted their recorders, straining to catch Takeno’s diminishing pleas.
    Mozart looked bored.  He picked up the end of the couch and grunted and dragged it over the carpet and tried to drop it on Takeno’s head and missed.  He grabbed a can of Coke off the coffee table and threw it in the direction of the crowd in the doorway.
    Takeno crabbed away, scuttling down the hall and out of sight.  Daffy and Mozart let him get away.  They were breathing hard and Mozart’s sweatpants had slipped halfway down his ass.
    The soundman and cameraman at Helen’s back relaxed and she felt a lessening of pressure.  Thinking it was finally over and she could get away, she turned and wedged her shoulder into a widening gap.
    Takeno shrieked from deep in the apartment.  The pitch was horribly altered by the broken bones in his face.  The crowd snapped forward as if tied to his terror with a rubber band.  All its weight fell on Helen’s shoulder and she was slammed into the window frame.  The pain was sharp, it jabbed her in the back and ran up her neck.  She cried out and fought back, trying to save herself with her elbows.
    Takeno ran into the living room, tripped over the couch and fell.  He bounced up like a yo-yo and ran straight into a wall.  The couch was covered with blood, the wall smeared with red.  The reporters began to shout as he screamed and whirled toward the camera lights.  His eyes were white, rolled up in his skull; gouts of blood leaped from his belly.
    Helen slammed her elbow into the nearest body, pulled her arm free and wiped blood off her cheek.  Takeno charged for the door begging for help.  He crashed into the camera crew and fell again.  Daffy grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back into the living room.  Mozart stabbed, again and again, trying to finish him off.
    But Mozart was no samurai.  He was a drunk, drug-hyped butcher without even rudimentary skill.  He hacked and slashed and kicked and grunted and made a mess.  He stabbed Takeno in the shoulder, eyes, thigh, groin and face.  He slipped on the blood-wet, coppery-smelling sports newspaper and fell to his knees.
    Daffy picked up the sword and squatted over Takeno’s chest.  A newspaper would later report that the dead man had been stabbed forty-six times.  Takeno stopped begging for help after number twenty-six and died before Daffy reached number thirty-seven.

    Helen walked home alone.  She didn’t see Daffy and Mozart jog down the stairs with the reporters jammed up behind.  She didn’t see Lt. Nakazono waiting at the curb to make the arrest.  But the rest of the nation did.  They saw it on the six o’clock news and then again at eleven.  They saw it the next morning on three talk shows.  They saw it again and again, watching appalled and frightened and fascinated.
    They saw Mozart and Daffy in front of the police cruiser bragging and mugging for the cameras.  They saw a pair of blood-soaked teddy bears, handcuffed and passive, proud of their sacrifice and loyalty.  And if the audience murmured, “terrible, terrible,” the network execs whispered something else.  Star quality, they called it, and watched their ratings soar.