The Rolling Bootlegs

2002     Summer          Manhattan Island, New York

Why did things turn out like this?

“Face to the wall!!”

I remembered what
face
and
wall
meant, but what did
to
mean, again…?

They didn’t seem to give a rip that I couldn’t speak English. I mean, they’d had my head shoved up against the stone wall before even giving me this warning (if that was what this was).

It all started with a lottery held by my local shopping district.

“Coooongratulatiooooons! It’s the grand prize: a five-day, three-night trip to Neeeew Yooooork!”

Accompanied by an aneurism-inducing scream, a bell clanged away.

Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang…

I’d landed in America with that sound still echoing in my ears.

Even though I’d really only wanted the second-prize game console…

I headed through a forest of skyscrapers, making for the Manhattan Bridge. I’d decided to get Chinese in Chinatown. When you’re not sure what to eat, get noodles: That’s common sense the world over.

This might have been the “grand prize,” but it had come with a minimal travel allowance, so I couldn’t do anything too extravagant. It was so bad that, although the prize had originally been a trip for two, I’d hocked one of the tickets at a secondhand ticket shop and managed to squeeze out some pocket money.

There was a Japanese beef bowl chain in New York, and I was (financially) really attracted to it, but something about seeing the name written in Latin letters bugged me. I hadn’t even been in the city for a day yet, and already I felt starved for the sight of kanji characters.

As I walked along, thinking about stuff like that, I began hearing raucous voices.

Five or six boys were yelling in a narrow alley that led off the broad avenue. They seemed to be crowded around something, jumping and hollering, so I went a bit closer, just to see. Then a kid who looked like the youngest of the bunch grabbed my hand and smiled at me. “Look, look!” he said.

What was it?

I was curious, so I went farther into the alley and looked into the center of the circle.

—What’s the deal? There’s nothing there.

The second I opened my mouth to say that, I did a double take. The kids—still laughing and hollering—all jumped me at once.

The rest happened like I said at the beginning.

I’d always thought that if I got dragged into this sort of trouble, I’d be able to make the right decisions and deal with it on my own… But just look at the reality: They didn’t even give me time to react.

I don’t know what they did to me after that, or how. Before I knew it, I was lying on the sun-warmed asphalt, and by the time I managed to pick myself up, the kids were beating a hasty retreat around the corner.

My first thought was
I’m lucky I didn’t get killed
, and then I
realized they’d taken all my stuff. …Yeah, I wouldn’t call that luck. I probably should have been grateful for my continued existence, but “Once the danger’s past,” et cetera. I even thought,
You know, I wish I’d hit ’em back
. It’s a seriously self-serving way of thinking, but if you don’t think like that, you’ll go under.

I was just getting started as a wildlife photographer, and I’d brought an expensive camera along on the trip. Result: I lost the whole thing.

Dammit, how many hundreds of thousands of yen do they think that camera cost?!
I couldn’t help but be bitter.

There was nothing to vent my anger on, so I stomped it down, and all I did was contact the police through the hotel. In a way, the fact that I was turning into the stereotypical Japanese victim who shows up in movies and on TV bothered me even more than getting mugged.

The police response was about what I’d expected.

All they gave me was the absolute minimum of the paperwork I’d need to file an insurance claim. A hotel employee who understood a little Japanese had come along with me, and according to him, the police wouldn’t seriously exert themselves over an incident like this. If I’d been obviously injured, or if somebody had threatened me with a gun, things would’ve been different, but…

That said, that camera had been
expensive
. I’d practically traded my life to get it, and I couldn’t bring myself to just let it go. And anyway, I hadn’t even had the money to get it insured.

If nothing changed, the second I got back to Japan I was probably going to go find the president of the district who’d offered me this trip and kick him in the back of the head out of sheer misdirected resentment.

While imagining hitting the guy with a Shining Wizard once he was on his knees, I desperately stood my ground. The officer was sympathetic, but the mood around here said that they really did have to prioritize murders and other dangerous crimes.

…Then the graying officer glanced over the report again, considered the address where the mugging had gone down, and muttered something.

My interpreter made with the interpreting, and apparently this was what he’d said:

“…You know, you just might get that camera back. Mind you, it’s not really something I can recommend, but…”

“Well, well… You’ve had a rather trying day, haven’t you?”

The guy who showed up at the arranged meeting spot was a youngish, mild-looking man.

Light brown hair, round glasses. He was dressed like your typical bank clerk. His Japanese was so fluent that at first I thought he
was
Japanese, but a good look at his face told me he wasn’t, not by a long shot.

The middle-aged policeman had made a call, then just pointed this place out to me. “You’ll meet a man here; ask him for help. You won’t need an interpreter,” he’d said, and that was all. I remembered that he’d had a really complicated expression on his face.

“You were lucky. The sergeant who took your complaint was Paul Noah; he’s an acquaintance of mine. If he hadn’t been the one to help you, you probably would have had to throw in the towel.”

From the way he was using phrases like “throw in the towel,” it was obvious that the man’s Japanese was pretty advanced. His pronunciation sounded completely natural, too. …As a matter of fact, compared to your average modern person, there was something a bit old-fashioned about it.

“I heard what happened. The ones who stole your bag were probably Bobby’s gang. They’re mischievous scamps who’ve been fooling around in this area recently.”

…Did something like that qualify as “mischief”?

There was something really shady about this guy. He was probably some kind of detective, but he had this atmosphere about him that seemed to say he wasn’t on the level.

Even so, it was reassuring just to be able to talk to somebody who spoke my language.

…That thought didn’t last long.

“How about it? For…say, a tenth of the value of your stolen belongings, I’ll ‘negotiate’ with them and have your bag returned to you, just as it was.”

…Oh, I see. Looks like this guy’s the ringleader of this gang of thieves. In exchange for only getting 10 percent of the profit, he can keep the fuss to a minimum, and he won’t have to bother exchanging the goods for cash.

Still, I thought, 10 percent was a lot better than it could’ve been. I agreed, although I was careful not to trust the guy while doing so.

“Okay. It’s a deal.”

With that, the man began leading me off somewhere.

He wasn’t going to cut out my organs and sell them, was he? The concern did cross my mind, and I decided to yell for help and make a run for it if he tried taking me anywhere that seemed even a little dicey.

By the way: If you get killed and they sell off your organs, does it technically count as human trafficking?

While I was thinking about pointless stuff like that, he led me to a bar on the corner of a wide avenue.

The sign had a picture of a beehive on it. There was a string of letters inside the picture, but I couldn’t read them, so for the sake of convenience I’ll call it the Beehive Place.

Inside, the air bore the sweet smell of honey. Compared to the outside, the interior looked pretty roomy. It might have been more accurate to call it a classy restaurant, rather than a bar.

He’d better not be planning to rip me off.
Thinking this and looking around, I did see some guys who didn’t seem quite legit, but since I also saw old people, couples, and families with kids, I relaxed a bit.

My guide went to the back, exchanging a few words with another guy. The new man nodded silently, then stood and left the place without taking his stuff with him. He didn’t even pay his check.

“I filled him in on the situation. He’s gone to reclaim it. The locals know those kids’ faces, you see. I doubt it will take long to find them.”

Nice act. I know you’re in on it, too.
…I didn’t say this out loud, of course.

“Well, why don’t we talk a bit while we’re waiting?”

It was a genuine invitation, but I had no idea what to talk about. For starters, then, I asked him why his Japanese was so good.

“Ah, that. One of the men at the top of my organization is Japanese… His name is Yaguruma
-san
; he taught me quite a lot. That said, I picked up modern speech patterns from movies and Japanese comics.”

Organization. Did that mean he really was Mafia or something? Now that I’d come this far, I was feeling numb and reckless, and I didn’t care if he
was
Mafia—or anything else, for that matter—so I flat-out asked him.

“No, not Mafia. We’re generally viewed as the same thing, but… We’re called the Camorra. Do you know it?”

I’d never heard the word before.

“The Mafia is from Sicily, in Italy. Their organization began as armed groups of guards in rural districts… Vigilante corps, as it were. The Camorra is also from Italy, but it started in Naples. They say the syndicate was formed inside a jail, but even I’m not clear on the details.”

Started in prison. Hearing that alone made me think this Camorra group sounded nastier than the Mafia, but I kept that to myself.

“I act as the
contaiuolo
, the treasurer, for my organization. It’s rather like being a bookkeeper… In the Mafia, an accountant does the job.”

They sounded pretty much the same to me.

“Ha-ha… Well, that’s because everything’s lumped together as ‘the mafia’ these days. The drug mafia, the Chinese mafia, the Russian mafia, the smuggling mafia… But in Naples, it’s the Camorra that’s mainstream. That said, ours is a rogue group: Not only were we created in America, we have no direct ties to Naples.”