Fishing for Stars (29 page)

What was becoming clearer was that she’d gone looking for heroin and, using the letter of introduction she’d brought with her, entered the house of bondage (whatever its name), arranged for a source of heroin and, furthermore, been accepted as a
fellow
kinbaku
bondage mistress by the proprietors. Then having earned their trust, she’d consequently asked about Konoe Akira. Anna was smart enough to realise I would probably insist, as we’d previously agreed, on attending any meeting, and even if she refused to allow me, I would nevertheless follow her to be at hand should things go wrong. So she had deliberately concealed the true name of the establishment. Of course, this was pure conjecture on my part, but it seemed more probable than the phantasmagoria and nonsense that had previously run through my stupid head.

However, there was one factor I couldn’t disregard, the simplest and only real fact in all these speculations – Anna hadn’t returned to the hotel. I had known her intimately for twenty years and while I realise one can never completely know the mind of another, I felt certain she would, despite our acrimonious parting, have called to say she was safe but delayed and told me when she would be back.

Anna never neglected even the tiniest details, let alone something as important as this. She had no possible reason to disappear and had much to lose by doing so, for example, the impending McVitty payback that would establish the basis for her fortune. If she had wanted to change her life, this was not the place or the time to do it. Anna, I decided, was undoubtedly in trouble.

I called the
yakuza
oyabun
Fuchida-san
just after nine on the number he’d given me, only to be told by Miss Sparkle, his
mama-san
, that he was unavailable and that he’d call me back. Just before eleven he called and I explained that I had a problem. I was about to expand on it, saying, ‘
Fuchida-san
, I think there has been an abduction —’

‘No more!’ the
oyabun
yelled. ‘Hotel telephones are not reliable. There are too many ears listening to foreign guests. I will send someone to fetch you in half an hour and we will have lunch at my apartment.’

I realised after I’d replaced the phone that I should have volunteered to take a taxi, that another hotel invasion by the
yakuza
in half an hour would further confirm my fearsome reputation among the staff. However, it also occurred to me that if, as
Fuchida-san
suggested, phone tapping was commonplace, then his first visit to the hotel would certainly have been reported to the authorities and, as a consequence, the telephone in our suite would have received more than a little attention from the First Intelligence Division, Japan’s equivalent of the FBI.

To my enormous relief, only a single black Toyota with a driver and two black-suited foot soldiers in dark glasses turned up. But it seemed to make little difference: the doorman turned to cement, the staff at the reception desk froze and the bellboys appeared to be afflicted by rigor mortis.

Once in the
oyabun
’s apartment, with the
mama-san
Miss Sparkle serving us green tea, I explained what I suspected had happened to Anna, or at least enough for him to understand the relationship between her and Konoe Akira. His first question, of course, was to ask the name of the bondage house, and when I shrugged and said I didn’t know, he rose and went to the phone in his office and returned a few minutes later. ‘They are all under
yakuza
control. We will know soon enough. There are not so many houses of bondage – it is a rich man’s diversion.’ He laughed. ‘The poor can’t afford a rope that isn’t attached to something they are required to pull.’

‘Do you think your own people may have been hired to abduct Anna?’ I asked.

‘It is possible; the one answer will supply the other,’ he said. ‘If so, our problem is solved. But it is unlikely.
Yakuza
are not happy to abduct a foreigner. It is bad for Japan and the government, and the First Intelligence Division will not tolerate it. If it
must
be done then I must know about it, so I can make sure the forces of law will not intervene.’ It was yet another example of the interconnectedness of the
yakuza
and the formal law-enforcement authorities.

‘But what if she’s harmed, even . . .’ I couldn’t complete the sentence.

‘Killed?
No
, that will not happen. She is a foreigner,’ he said with emphasis.

Lunch was a simple affair. Traditionally, towards the end of April, Japan swaps from warm
udon
noodle soups to cold
soba
noodles topped with sesame seeds, grated ginger, dried seaweed, chopped green onions and wasabi served with dipping sauces. Miss Sparkle had been given the task of calling his five
oyabun,
the senior
yakuza
who ran Tokyo under his overall control, and throughout lunch my host was constantly being called to the phone. At 1.25 p.m. a call came in to say his men had located the house of bondage that Anna had visited. I couldn’t give her marks for originality; she’d simply switched semi-precious stones. It was called Jade House.

‘Have you news of Anna?’ I inquired anxiously.

‘This Konoe Akira must be very powerful or very rich, or both. The Jade Mistress will not talk and denies seeing
Anna-san
.’

‘Oh? Then how do we know we have the right place?’

Fuchida-san
grinned. ‘In all
yakuza
interests there is always someone planted – they are known as “caretaker’s eyes and ears”. It is how we know what’s going on and are not cheated of our share of the profits. Our informer says Anna was present last night and that she demonstrated some
kinbaku
techniques they didn’t know. She says Anna is very skilled and earned true admiration from the other professionals, but later when
Anna-san
was abducted, she personally was with a patron and so didn’t see who abducted her.’

‘How then will we find out?’

The
yakuza
boss laughed. ‘I will personally ask the Jade Mistress. Her denial tells me that the abduction is not simply a criminal gang looking to kidnap a
gaijin
for the ransom money she might bring, but involves either herself or one of her patrons, otherwise she would have immediately reported the incident to our people, to whom she pays protection. We also know she was instrumental in arranging the meeting last night at the Jade House between your partner and Konoe Akira, presumably a valued client and certainly a very powerful and influential person. She would be foolish to risk his retaliation by attempting to gain personally from the abduction. By not informing us in the first place she no doubt hoped to hide the information so that if the police made inquiries she could deny ever knowing your partner or Konoe Akira, which is standard practice in a place such as that. Now that she knows that the
yakuza
are asking questions she also knows that she has been exposed and cannot deny being aware of Anna. To do so would put everything at risk. So now she will plead loss of face by being asked to inform a mere
wakagashira
of the incident. This will be her excuse for not contacting us earlier. She will claim that she
must
be seen to have demanded someone of equal stature to her client in order to inform us correctly, otherwise, if the incident becomes known among her other patrons, the reputation of her establishment and herself will be diminished in their eyes.’

These intricacies of Japanese social protocol were way beyond me. ‘So she will tell us who was involved?’ I asked.

Fuchida-san
jerked his head back, momentarily hurt by my lack of faith. ‘Of course! She requires someone with the status of an
oyabun
, but I will bring her extra honour by attending myself.’

‘May I come?’ I said, anxious not to be left behind to wait.

The
yakuza
boss hesitated. ‘
Nick-san
, in Japan there are eyes everywhere. Are you sure you want to be seen to be involved?’

‘What? With you . . . the
yakuza
?’

He nodded. ‘Sometimes it can be difficult, the authorities . . . you are
gaijin,
a foreigner,’ he explained.

‘It is already too late. Since your visit to the Imperial Hotel the staff turn to stone every time I appear. I imagine the “eyes” you talk about are already well aware of our friendship and have alerted the “ears”.’

‘That is true. Come with me then. Have you ever been into a house of bondage,
Nick-san
?’

I shook my head. Anna had never allowed me to enter the Madam Butterfly premises. ‘No, I have never felt sufficiently guilty to want to pay to be punished,’ I joked.

‘Then you are definitely not Japanese,’ he grinned. ‘In Japan, guilt and shame are just as much a part of our national and individual personality as love and joy. Their ultimate expression is
seppuku
, ritual suicide.’

This time the flying
yakuza
circus contained six black Toyotas with four men to each car and
Fuchida-san
and myself in the big Mercedes. ‘We will block the street outside the premises so that the people in the immediate area will come to watch,’ he explained. ‘In this way the Jade Mistress will gain a great deal of face and prestige from my visit, her honour will have been satisfied and her rich patrons suitably mollified.’ He chuckled.

I was slowly beginning to grasp the extent of the subtleties and intricacies of Japanese society, although I realised I would never be able to understand them all. When manners, mannerisms and meanings have such delicate nuances that one word placed or emphasised in a certain way in a perfectly proper statement can corrupt it and give it quite the opposite meaning, then only one who is born and raised in a particular class or section of the society can interpret it.

We turned into a narrow cul-de-sac, the six Toyotas making an appropriate amount of noise with squealing tyres and blasting horns. ‘Noise is essential to create fear and anticipation in the public,’ the
yakuza
boss shouted above the din. ‘A proper entrance is everything.’

We came to a halt in what seemed like a synchronised squeal of all twenty-eight tyres with the smoke of burning rubber rising from the surface of the road. ‘Excellent!’
Fuchida-san
exclaimed with a satisfied smile. The three leading Toyotas had halted one behind the other at the end of the narrow cul-de-sac and directly in front of what appeared to be a small three-storeyed apartment building occupying its entire width. The only distinctive feature to separate it from the surrounding buildings was its jade-green door, at which two older black-suited
yakuza
stood guard.

‘I guess we’ve arrived!’ I exclaimed.

‘We will wait,
Nick-san
. First let the people come. An entrance without an audience is pointless.’
Fuchida-san
laughed. ‘Unless it is an assassination.’

We waited as the foot soldiers piled out of the black vehicles to surround the Mercedes. The noise of our arrival subsided and I could hear the sound of running feet as the street rapidly filled with onlookers who began to line up on either pavement, each selecting a position and then standing silently at polite attention. In almost no time, more than a hundred people appeared to have gathered from nowhere. The
yakuza
boss, watching them arrive, suddenly made up his mind. ‘There are now enough people; the Jade Mistress will gain face. We can go in.’

We stepped out of the large black car surrounded by
yakuza
to a buzz of excitement from the crowd. There was an almost palpable feeling of fear in the crowd mixed with a sense of delicious excitement, as if they were being permitted to take part in an exciting public event.
Fuchida-san
, stern-faced, bowed in a perfunctory way to acknowledge them, whereupon the onlookers on both sides of the street immediately inclined their bodies in a deep formal bow. It reminded me of primary-school classes when we all greeted the teacher with a resounding chorus of ‘Good morning, Miss’
as she entered the class. This crowd, as excited as schoolchildren, were unabashedly saluting the crime chief of Tokyo. They maintained the bow until we reached the jade-green door and entered to the equally deep bows of the two
yakuza
guards.

The
wakagashira
and foot soldiers, arms folded, remained outside, lined up across the width of the building, facing the crowd in a menacing display intended to heighten their sense of occasion.

Fuchida-san
turned to me. ‘If you will permit me to talk,
Nick-san
?’

‘Of course.’

‘There is a manner to be observed,’ he added gratuitously.

The Jade Mistress, dressed in a formal kimono, met us in a small reception lounge. She was kneeling, geisha style, with her weight on her heels. The
yakuza
boss bowed politely, saying only a single word, ‘
Mama-san
’. I wasn’t sure whether this was an insult or the correct way to address the mistress of a house of bondage.