Bad Blood (24 page)

Takayuki was already nodding. “Yes, Mashiro did that, too. Is your friend still alive?”

Tozzi was put off by the presumptive question. Why did he automatically assume that Gibbons was dead? Was Mashiro that bad? “Yeah, he's alive. He's in the hospital, but he'll be all right.”

“That's good. I am relieved. I apologize for not doing more to help your friend, but interfering with Mashiro often means death. He was going to break your friend's neck, but I threw a chicken at him. I hoped it would break his concentration.”

“His concentration?”

“Karate. It's one of Mashiro's deadly arts. He was attempting to break your friend's neck with his bare hand.”

Tozzi closed his eyes. His head was beginning to pound. He wanted to hit something, break something. This fat-ass Mashiro in his stupid check jacket was settling into the crosshairs of his anger. “Explain something to me,” he said, forcing himself to breathe evenly so he could calm down enough to talk. “How did this happen to you? Were you all kidnapped? How did you get here?”

“In the trunk of a Toyota Corolla. Very tight.”

“You mean they smuggled you people into the country in the trunks of new cars?”

Takayuki nodded. “On cargo ships from Japan. They put us in trunks the night before the ship was loaded. We remained hidden until we were far out at sea. As we approached America, we had to go back into the trunks again. Sometimes many days lying in one position, in the dark, breathing through an air hose. Very—what's the word in English?—claustrophobia. When I came over, unloading took longer than anticipated. I had consumed all my food and drink. I went without for, I think, two whole days.”

“How the hell could they do this to you? It's . . . unbelievable.”

Takayuki shrugged. “It was bad. But not as bad as living under the oppression of Mashiro and the Fugukai.”

“How . . . how did they do it? Were you all kidnapped?”

“No, we were not kidnapped. We agreed to come.”

“You
agreed
to come?”

“Yes, of course. We all signed contracts with the Fugukai.”

Takayuki turned back to his companions and said something in Japanese. Several of them rustled through their belongings and pulled out folded sheets of paper to show Tozzi. Their contracts.

Tozzi just shook his head in disbelief. “The Fugukai is a yakuza gang, right?”

“Yes. The Blow Fish Gang in English.”

“Why the hell would you sign any kind of deal with the yakuza? They're criminals. Do you know that? What made you think you could trust them? What did you think you were going to get out of this deal?”

“We got it. Passage to America, the land of opportunity.”

Tozzi rolled his eyes. “I'm caught in a fucking time warp,” he muttered under his breath. “I don't understand.”

“I will explain. The Fugukai offered to get us to America in exchange for our services. We were led to believe that we would have good jobs in the fields of our interests. Obviously they lied to us about that. But you see, we wanted to come to America so we could succeed in life and regain our lost honor. In Japan we are labeled failures because we did not score high enough on our university entrance exams. If we had stayed in Japan, we would have only qualified for jobs as clerks, secretaries, assistant store managers, postal employees.”

Tozzi's Uncle Frank, Lorraine's father, had been a mailman. “So what's wrong with that?”

“Failure is disgrace. How can you face your friends and family when they know you are a person without honor?”

“Come on, there's more to life than school. Can't you get ahead on the job in Japan?”

“Very difficult. The jobs we could get pay very little money, and everything in Japan is very expensive. Japan is a prosperous country, yes, but prosperity is only for the prosperous. The salaries we could earn would only pay for the bare necessities: a small one-room apartment, two, maybe three hours commuting time from Tokyo, a very tiny car, enough food but nothing special, a small stereo and a television but none of the elaborate electronic equipment our country proudly exports to the world. Not easy for a failure to get ahead in our country.” Takayuki coughed out a humorless laugh. “We did not want to be slaves to menial jobs. The Fugukai told us that in America the system was different. Desire and diligence counted for more here. We could succeed here, regain our honor, make our parents proud of us again. That's what they told us and we believed them.”

“How did you kids get involved with the yakuza in the first place? You were students for chrissake.”

“With
shabu
.”

Tozzi shrugged. “What's
shabu?
”

Takayuki turned to his friends and had a short conference.
“Shabu
means ‘white diamonds.' That's what we call it at home. I believe you call it ‘speed' here.”

“You mean ‘speed' as in drugs? As in amphetamines?”

Takayuki nodded. “Yes, drugs.” He didn't seem at all ashamed to admit to it.

“Are you telling me you guys are all speed freaks? Drug addicts?”

Takayuki furrowed his brow and shook his head. “No. All serious students in Japan take
shabu
so that we can stay awake to study at night, especially during exam hell.”

“What's ‘exam hell'?”

“This is what we call the time in February and March when they give the important exams, the ones that determine whether you advance to the next level or not. Always a very crucial time for us.”

Tozzi rubbed the back of his neck. Jesus, what a mess. “How many of you are there? Here in America, I mean.”

Takayuki shrugged. “Hard to tell. There are sixty-two of us here at the chicken factory. There were at least three-hundred students on the ship I came over on, and there have been several other such shipments that we know of.”

Jesus Christ. That asshole Ivers was going to demand to know what the hell he was doing here tonight, how he got in and all that. But that was all inconsequential bullshit right now. This went beyond legal procedure and Bureau rules. These guys were being held against their will as slaves for chrissake.

“Okay,” he announced to all of them, “the nightmare is over. I'm going to unlock the other two trailers and, Takayuki, I want you to explain everything to them. You stay put right here until I can put something together. I'll go call for help and we'll have buses here in a few hours to—”

A desperate hand suddenly gripped Tozzi's forearm. “We cannot go with you,” Takayuki whispered frantically. “Mashiro will hunt us down. He will kill us the way he killed the others. His sword will find us. You cannot do this to us!”

“Take it easy now.” Tozzi held his shoulder. “We can protect you. I promise. You won't have to worry about him anymore.”

“Your protection is useless against Mashiro. He is a samurai, a
real
samurai. He has dedicated his life to killing. His yakuzas will find us, then they will call him. That's how they keep us under their domination. If we go with you, Mashiro will find us. He will kill us, all of us. I know this. Please go now and lock us in again. Please, you have stayed too long already.”

“But—”

“Please! Go!”

Tozzi looked into his eyes and saw the liquid terror. Then that hot, cloying smell came up again. It was suddenly overpowering. It took him a moment to realize that this was the smell of fear. He could feel it creeping up around him like rising flood waters, cold and murky. He took in a deep breath and felt for the gun under his jacket for reassurance.

He searched their pale faces for some sign of encouragement, for just one of them who'd be willing to save himself. But there was no one. The faces just hung there in the dark like helpless fruit on a doomed tree. He considered alternatives. He could contact Immigration and Naturalization, let them spring a raid on the chicken plant. But what about all the other slaves D'Urso imported? Who knew how many others there were? Hundreds, thousands? D'Urso sure as hell wouldn't tell them where they were. And would one raid really affect this slave trade? Sure, they could put D'Urso away, but then someone else in the Antonelli family would be assigned the job. The slaves would just keep on coming.

All of a sudden he could hear Ivers's warning about the Bureau frowning down on individual efforts. He should report this, but knowing Ivers, it would do a lot more harm than good. Ivers would notify the Newark office and together they'd call out the heavy artillery, bust D'Urso, and hang him up on a hook like a dead shark for the cameras. Ivers wouldn't want to hear anything about other slaves. If something's wrong, just take care of it. That's the way he thought. He never wanted to know anything about the big picture.

Tozzi glanced around the trailer at all those pleading, terrified faces staring back at him, and that's when he made up his mind. Fear like this has to be respected. He turned to Takayuki. “Okay. Have it your way.”

He hopped down out of the trailer and slowly closed the door. He heard the annoying squeak of the rusty hasp, but it didn't affect him now. Hooking the lock into the hasp, he held it in his hand for a long moment before he finally pushed it closed. Slowly he started to walk backward into the flood-lit lot, staring at the three trailers, still stunned by what he'd just seen and heard, wondering what the hell kind of monster could inspire this kind of terror in these poor people. He glanced up at the black power lines over the trailers, then noticed the red warning lights slowly flashing on a row of giant oil tanks in the distance by the river. He pictured Godzilla tearing Tokyo apart.

A monster called Mashiro, he thought. That's what kind of monster.

He stared at the blinking lights, wondering what in the hell he was going to do now.

NAGAI TURNED AWAY from the noise and the action up on stage when the fish arrived at their table, the waitress bowing as she set the ugly thing in front of Hamabuchi. The fat fish lay tilted on its belly like a tugboat run aground, one dead eye staring in Nagai's direction. Nagai stared back at the fish and sighed to himself. He never really cared for
fugu
and this whole ceremony was a bore. Sure, the first couple of times it was dangerous and exciting, the ultimate test of a man's loyalty, the essence of the Fugukai. But ever since his exile to America, Nagai had abandoned the ritual himself, though he never told Hamabuchi. It wasn't that he'd forgotten how to cut the fish or that his men were too cowardly to eat the potentially fatal flesh served up by their boss. It was just that the only blowfish you can get in America isn't poisonous. The whole thing about making your men watch as you carefully remove the deadly liver and ovaries to test their trust and loyalty to you just doesn't make any sense with American
fugu
. They don't have the juice. What good is the ceremony if there's no risk of dropping dead at the table? But with Hamabuchi it was different. The old boss always managed to have the real thing imported for his ceremonies, no matter where he was. Lucky him.

Nagai glanced back at the stage where two young women wearing only the traditional sumo-wrestler's loin knot were ramming into each other as the small crowd of respectable businessmen from his
country raucously cheered them on. He wondered what their respectable American business associates would think if they knew about this place. A little bit of the Ginza tucked away in the middle of Manhattan. Everybody needs a little fun and relaxation now and then, even respectable bastards. Nagai turned his attention back to the two combatants smashing into each other, each trying to push the other out of the white circle painted on the stage. These couldn't be Japanese girls, he thought. Not with those tits. He glanced back at the waitress for comparison, but her tits, if she had any, were hidden under the folds of her kimono. No, Japanese tits are nothing like those things up on stage. They don't bobble and jiggle like that. Nagai smiled as the girls collided once more and shook flesh. Tits like
fugu
.

“Are you certain you don't want us to prepare the fish for you?” the waitress asked Hamabuchi sweetly in Japanese. “One of our chefs is licensed.”

Hamabuchi waved her offer away with the heavy-duty black rubber gloves. “In Japan, a chef may need a license from the government to cut
fugu
, but I need no such license.” He gave her that funny little smile of his, the one that could be taken as either fatherly benevolence or utter contempt. He started to put the gloves on then, leaving her with nothing to do but leave. Nagai could tell from her stiff smile that she thought he was an asshole.

Nagai considered telling him now but then decided he better wait until Hamabuchi was finished. The old man was getting up there, and he didn't want to upset him before he cut out the poison parts. Just a tiny nick to the liver could taint the whole fish, and it was he, not Hamabuchi, who had to take the first bite. He sneaked a look back at the sumo girls. The one with the short hair and the big lips was very aggressive, but the other one was prettier. The old man was steadying the fish now, probing with the knife for the right place on the back of its head to start cutting. Nagai watched him make the first two deep cuts into the
fugu's
neck, severing the backbone. He dug his fingers into the incision, felt around, then pulled out the backbone all in one piece which turned the fish inside out. He flipped the whole thing over and yanked on the prickly skin until it hung loose around the tail like a man with his pants down around his ankles. The old man looked over at him then to make sure he was watching. This was the delicate part;
Nagai knew he was supposed to look. Hamabuchi took off the gloves and went searching through the messy entrails for the liver and the ovaries, which he proceeded to cut out much too quickly for Nagai's comfort. But of course he always did it this way. It was part of the test. Hamabuchi picked out the poison organs on the tip of his knife and laid them out in a small saucer. He cleaned the knife in a bowl of hot salt water, then went to work cutting the white flesh into thin, translucent slices, arranging them on two wooden trays. Hamabuchi set down the knife and washed his fingers in a second bowl, then presented one of the trays to Nagai with a bow of his head. He had that smile again.