Number9Dream (22 page)

I give the patronizing slimer a slight nod.

‘On his ninety-somethingth birthday Tsuru receives a massive heart attack and an ambulance ride to Shiba-koen hospital. This is February of this year. A delicate time – Morino and Nagasaki were played off against one another by Tsuru as a check on his underlings. Tradition would demand that Tsuru name a successor, but he is a tough old dog and vows to pull through. Nagasaki decides to usher in his manifest destiny seven days later by staging his Pearl Harbor – not against Morino’s forces, which are on red alert, but on Tsuru’s, which believed themselves to be sacrosanct. Over a hundred key Tsuru men are wiped out in a single night, all within ten minutes. No negotiation, no quarter, no mercy.’ Daimon shoots me with his fingers. ‘Tsuru himself managed to get himself lugged out of hospital – one rumour says he was battered to death with his own golf clubs, another rumour says he got as far as Singapore, where a relapse caught up with him. He’s history. By dawn the throne was Nagasaki’s. Any questions from the floor at this point?’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Easy. My father is a bent cop in the pay of Nagasaki. Next.’

A blunt answer from a slippery liar. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Let me go on. If this was a Yakuza movie, the Tsuru faction survivors would team up with Morino and stage a war of honour. Nagasaki broke the code and must be punished, right? Reality is less exciting. Morino dithers, losing valuable time. The Tsuru survivors work out which way the wind is blowing and surrender to Nagasaki’s offer of amnesty. They are promptly killed, but never mind. By May Nagasaki not only has Tsuru’s Tokyo operations under his thumb, but the Korean and Triad gangs too. By June he is helping to choose the godfather of the Tokyo governor’s grandchild. When Morino sends an ambassador to Nagasaki proposing they divide the kingdom, Nagaski sends the ambassador back minus his arms and legs. By July Nagasaki has the lot, and Morino has sunk to scaring brothel owners for insurance money. Nagasaki is content to watch Morino go extinct, rather than dirty the sole of his boot by stamping on him.’

‘Why does none of this make the newspapers?’

‘You straight citizens of Japan are living in a movie set, Miyake. You are unpaid extras. The politicos are the actors. But the true directors, the Nagasakis and the Tsurus, you never see. A show is run from the wings, not centre-stage.’

‘Are you going to tell me why you ended up here?’

‘I fell in love with the girl Morino fell in love with.’

‘Miriam.’

Daimon’s mask slips and for the first time ever I see his real face. The door bangs open and Lizard appears. ‘Arewe comfortable, ladies?’ He flicks open his knife, spins it, catches it and points it at Daimon. ‘You first.’ Daimon slides off the washbasin counter, still looking at me, puzzled. Lizard smacks his lips. ‘The time has come to kiss yer oh-so-charming face goodbye, Daimon.’ Daimon smiles in return. ‘Is your dress sense a charity fund-raiser or do you actually believe you look cool?’ Lizard smiles back. ‘Cute.’ As Daimon passes, Lizard whacks Daimon in the windpipe, grabs the back of his head and slams it into the metal door. ‘I get such a hard-on from casual violence,’ says Lizard. ‘Say something cute again.’ Daimon picks himself up, bloody-nosed, and stumbles into the corridor. The door is relocked.

Either I am losing my mind or the bathroom walls are bending inwards. Time bends too. My watch is dead so I have no idea how long I have been in here. Cockroach navigates the floor. I cup my hands and drink some water. I play a game I often play to console myself: searching for Anju in my reflection. I often catch sight of her around my eyes. I try this game: concentrate on my mother’s face; subtract that face from my own; the remainder should be my father. Could my father be Ryutaro Morino or Jun Nagasaki? Daimon implied Morino brought us here. But he also implied Morino is washed up. Too washed up to own a fleet of Cadillacs. I suck a champagne bomb. My throat is sore. Mrs Sasaki will have decided Aoyama was right about me – I am an unreliable dropout. Cockroach reappears. I suck my last champagne bomb. Lizard watches me from the mirror – I jump. ‘Here comes the moment you have been waiting for, Miyake. Father will see you now.’

Valhalla is one enormous leisure hotel. When it is completed it will be the plushest in Tokyo. Sugar chandeliers, milky carpets, cream walls, silver fittings. Air-cons are not installed, so the passageways are at the mercy of the sun, and under all this glass I am squeaking with sweat in thirty seconds. Thick smells of carpet underlay and fresh paint. On the far side of the building-site perimeter fence I see the vast dome of Xanadu, courtyards and even a fake river and fake caverns. The windows rob the world outside of all colour. Everything is in wartime newsreel tones. The air is as dry as a desert. Lizard knocks on room 333. ‘Father, I got Miyake with me.’

I understand my stupendous mistake. ‘Father’ does not mean ‘my father’: ‘father’ means ‘Yakuza father’. I would laugh if the afternoon were not now so dangerous. A voice rasps out a moment later. ‘Enter!’ The door is unlocked from inside. Eight people sit around a conference table in a spotless meeting room. At the head sits a man in his fifties. ‘Sit the infant down.’ His voice is as thirsty as sandpaper. Cavernous eye sockets, plump lips, mottled and flaky skin – the sort used on young actors playing old roles – and a wart in the corner of his eye bigger than a strayed nipple. My way-toolate fear was quite correct. If this troll is my father, I am Miffy the Bunny. I take the defendant’s chair. I am being prosecuted by a group of dangerous strangers, and I don’t even know what the charge is. ‘So,’ the man says. ‘This is Eiji Miyake.’

‘Yes. Who are you?’

Death gives me a choice. A point-blank bullet through the brain or a thirty-metre fall. Frankenstein and the stage manager of this black farce are placing bets as to which I will choose right now. Beyond hope is beyond panic. Here comes the Mongolian, strolling up the unfinished bridge. My right eye is so swollen the night swims. Yes, of course I am afraid, and frustrated that my stupid life is ending so soon. But mostly I feel the weight of the nightmare, stopping me waking. I am cattle in a cage, waiting for the bolt through my skull. Why gibber? Why beg? Why try to run when the only escape is a drop through blackness? If my head survived the fall, the rest of my body would not. The Mongolian spits, and folds a fresh strip of gum into his mouth. He pulls out his gun. After Anju I dreamed of drowning several times a week, right up until I got my guitar. In those dreams I handled fear by ceasing to struggle, and I do the same now. I have less than forty seconds. I unfold the photo of my father one last time. Dad is still uncreased. Yes, we do look alike. My daydream was right in that respect, at least. He is fatter than I thought, but hey. I touch his cheekbone and hope, somewhere, he knows. Down below on the reclaimed land Lizard whoops – ‘A twitcher!’
Bang
! Picking off the wounded is more interesting to him than how I die. ‘Yer got the wobblies too, huh?’
Bang
! ‘Guns! The ultimate fucking video game!’
Bang
! One of the Cadillacs wheel-screeches into life. My father sits in the driving seat of the car in the photograph, smiling at whatever Akiko Kato is telling him as she gets in. A black-and-white day gone by. This is the closest we get. Stars.

‘Who am I?’ The Yakuza head repeats my question. His lips barely move and his voice is tone dead. ‘My accountant calls me Mr Morino. My men call me Father. My subscribers call me God. My wife calls me Money. My lovers call me Incredible.’ A ripple of humour. ‘My enemies call me the stuff of nightmares. You call me Sir.’ He retrieves a cigar from an ashtray and relights it. ‘Sit down. Your trial is already behind schedule.’ I do as I am told and look around at my jury. Frankenstein, chomping a Big Mac. A weathered, leathered man, who appears to be meditating, rocking very slightly to and fro, to and fro. A woman is using a laptop computer, pianist fast. She reminds me of Queen of Spades’ Mama-san until I realize she
is
Queen of Spades’ Mama-san. She ignores me. To the left are three identikit men from the catalogue of Yakuza henchmen. A horn section on pause. Through an opening, visible out of the corner of my eye, a girl dressed in a loose yukata sucks a popsicle. When I try to meet her eye she retreats out of sight. Lizard takes the chair next to me. Ryutaro Morino watches me, over the pile of junk-food Styrofoam boxes. The sound of breathing, the creaking of Leatherjacket’s chair, the tappety-tap-tap of the computer keyboard. What are we waiting for? Morino clears his throat. ‘Eiji Miyake, how do you plead?’

‘What is the charge?’

Lizard’s knife scores a deep cut along the table edge. It stops an inch from my thumb. ‘What is the charge,
sir
?’

I swallow. ‘What is the charge,
sir
?’

‘If you are guilty you know the charge.’

‘So I must be innocent,
sir
.’

I hear the ice-lolly girl in the next room titter.

‘Not guilty.’ Morino nods his head gravely. ‘Then explain why you were at Queen of Spades on Saturday the ninth of September.’

‘Is Yuzu Daimon here?’

Morino gives one nod, my face whacks the table-top, my arm is yanked above my head one degree away from snapping off. Lizard grunts in my ear. ‘What d’yer suppose yer just did wrong?’

‘Didn’t – answer – the – question.’ My arm is released.

‘Bright boy.’ Morino blinks. ‘Explain why you were at Queen of Spades on Saturday the ninth of September.’

‘Yuzu Daimon took me there.’

‘Sir.’

‘
Sir
.’

‘Yet you told Mama-san here last Saturday that you didn’t know Daimon.’

Mama-san glances at me. ‘I warned you – I cannot tolerate whining juveniles. Can anyone tell me how to say “fifteen billion” in Russian?’ Leatherjacket replies. Mama-san carries on typing. Morino waits for my answer.

‘I didn’t know Daimon. I still don’t. I left my baseball hat in a games centre, went back, he had it, gave it me back, we started talking—’

‘—and the rest, as they say, is history. But Queen of Spades is a choosy club. Yuzu Daimon signed you in as his stepbrother. Are you saying this is a lie?’

I wonder what the consequences will be.

‘Did you hear my question, Eiji Miyake?’

‘Yes, it was a lie. Sir.’

‘I say that Jun Nagasaki sent you to spy.’

‘Not true.’

‘So you know the name Jun Nagasaki?’

‘Since an hour ago, yes. Only the name.’

‘You went to Queen of Spades with Yuzu Daimon to harass a hostess – you know her as Miriam.’

I shake my head. ‘No, sir.’

‘You went to Queen of Spades with Yuzu Daimon to persuade her to defect into Jun Nagasaki’s circle of beagle-fucking traitors.’

I shake my head. ‘No, sir.’

Violence stains Morino’s motionless face. His voice is absolute zero. ‘You are fucking Miriam. You are fucking my little girl.’

This is the crunch. I shake my head. ‘No, sir.’

Frankenstein rattles fry splinters in a cup.

Morino opens a grey document wallet. ‘So for your next trick, you will explain this photograph.’ The horn section pass it down to me. An A4 black-and-white picture of a shabby apartment building. The zoom lens focuses on the third floor, where a kid my age is handing something through a door. A dog with its head in a lampshade pisses in a flower box. I recognize Miriam’s apartment, and me. This is why I am here today. This is bad. No lie is going to get me out of here. But where will the truth get me? Morino clunks his knuckles out of their sockets. ‘My breath is bated. As they say.’ Morino clunks his knuckles into their sockets. My mouth is a sandpit. ‘Now. Why did you show your zit-pus face at the home of my little girl?’

I tell him everything from Shinobazu pond in Ueno park to the conversation with Miriam. The only bit I leave out is Suga – I claim to do the library hacking myself. Morino nicks the tip off a new cigar. I finish, and judgment hangs in the air. Lizard swivels on his chair. ‘Father?’ Morino nods. ‘It don’t sound right to me. Computer dorks just don’t lug suitcases around stations for a living.’ Mama-san shuts her laptop. ‘Father. I know Miriam matters to you very much, but we need to be in other places very urgently to keep the operation on track. This nondescript child from the beyond beyond who blundered on to private property is exactly what he appears to be. Nagasaki does not employ spies in diapers; his story fills the blanks in Daimon’s; and he hasn’t laid a paw on Miriam.’

Morino respects her. ‘How do you know?’

‘One – you had Miriam trailed by the best surveillance agent in Tokyo for the last two weeks. Two – I’m a woman.’

Morino narrows his eyes to read me. I lower my eyes. Frankenstein’s mobile phone beeps. He goes into the adjoining room to answer. An airship floats into view behind Morino’s head. Higher up, an airplane glints in high-altitude sunshine. Mama-san takes a disk from her computer and seals it shut in a case. ‘Soon,’ barks Frankenstein into his phone, ‘soon.’ He resumes his seat. Morino finishes reading me. ‘Eiji Miyake. The court finds you guilty. Guilty of being a dumbfuck who sticks his nose through wrong doors. The mandatory sentence is having your testicles cut off, dipped in soy, and placed in your mouth, which will be gaffer-taped until said member is chewed and swallowed by the detainee.’ I glance around at the jurors. Nobody is smiling. ‘However, the court will suspend this sentence on condition you observe an exclusion order. You will never go near Queen of Spades. You will never go near my little girl. Even if you see her in your dreams, I will discover your lapse, and the sentence will be executed. I make myself clear?’

I dare not taste the freedom I can smell. ‘Completely, sir.’

‘You will return to your pointless life. Without delay.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mama-san stands, but Morino doesn’t dismiss me. ‘When I was a boy half your age, Miyake, my friends and I would capture dune lizards on the Shimane coast. Dune lizards are cunning. You grab one, they detach their tails and skitter away. How do I know you are not leaving us with a tail?’