Tokyo Vice (34 page)

I had promised Cyclops and his father that I wouldn’t stop until the story was published, and as far as Cyclops was concerned, I kept my promise. I didn’t know much about the Yamaguchi-gumi at the time; its presence in the eastern part of Japan was neglible, so I didn’t feel a need to know more. However, since Koreans tended to talk with one another laterally, regardless of which organized crime group they might be in, Cyclops was always good for a cross section of the gokudo
world. He would talk freely of the gossip about the Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai; I’d never asked him about his own organization. I figured that this would be the time.

It was hard to get Cyclops to come up to Tokyo; Saitama was his turf, and he felt safe there. But as arranged, there he was waiting for me, sitting on a velvet couch in a typical Kabukicho hostess club. There were a bar, a karaoke machine, a tacky chandelier, and sofas lined against the wall with marble tables spaced in front of them. On each table were a bottle of whiskey, ice in a crystal bucket, water in a crystal pitcher, and a couple of crystal glasses. In crystal bowls there were peanuts, slices of dried squid, and assorted other nibbles. One of the girls was dutifully preparing him a whiskey and water.

Cyclops motioned for me to pull up a chair across from him. He had the girl mix me a drink (which I accepted with good manners), and we raised our glasses and said “Cheers” in Korean. That was all the Korean I knew, besides asking where the toilet was.

“Jake-san, what would you like to know?”

“You know the TMPD raided the Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters today.”

“Everyone knew about it two weeks ago.”

“I knew only one week ago. What I want to know is, where the hell is all the money Kajiyama made?”

“Hmm … Why do you want to know?”

“Because there’s a good story in it.”

“And if you write the story, what changes?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“It’s my job. I find information that nobody else has, and I serve the public’s right to know.”

“They have a right to know where Kajiyama stashed his money?”

“The victims do.”

“Victims. Interesting choice of words. Did anyone put a gun to their head and tell them to go borrow money at interest rates they couldn’t repay? Or borrow money for things they couldn’t afford? Did anyone do that?”

“No, but these are people who didn’t know what they were getting into and who were lied to when they signed the contract. Wouldn’t that make them victims?”

“Your Japanese sucks. The word isn’t
victim
—it’s
sucker.”

“And the people who invested in Saitama Shogin were suckers too? They were greedy? They wanted too high a return? They should have invested in the stock market? Victims? Or suckers?”

Cyclops didn’t say anything for a second. He was thinking it over. He wasn’t happy with the conclusion. He frowned. He bit his lip, and then he relaxed, patting himself down for his cigarettes.

“You want the story. I’ll give you the story. It was in Las Vegas.”

“Las Vegas?”

“Kajiyama blew a couple million dollars at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. He lost it gambling, but maybe you can call that money laundering. He’s spent a lot of time in the United States. He puts the cash in a safe deposit box here and pulls it out when he goes over there. He has some overseas bank accounts too.”

He lit up a Lark with a gold-plated Dunhill lighter, inhaled, exhaled. Those lighters were obviously an essential yakuza fashion accessory.

“Do the cops know this?” I asked him.

“Oh, I think so. They’ve probably seized the money by now or they’re going to do it pretty soon. Kajiyama’s a VIP at the Grand. A high roller at Caesars Palace too.”

“How does a guy like Kajiyama end up as a VIP at the MGM Grand or Caesars Palace?”

“Goto. Goto introduced him. Goto loves those places. He used to go to them a lot.”

“Used to go?”

“Ever since his liver transplant, Goto can’t get into the States. The word I heard was that he used a casino account to pay his hospital bill.”

“Goto had a liver transplant in the United States? How the hell did that happen?”

“I thought you were interested in Kajiyama?”

“Yeah, but Goto, the Godfather of Japanese crime, getting a liver transplant in the United States. That’s wild. Where?”

“Los Angeles. A university hospital. UCLA. Dumont.”

“Dumont. UCLA—I got it.”

“Yeah, well. Anyway, follow the Vegas angle. It should be good. Maybe you can get a free trip to Vegas out of it.”

“Kajiyama is definitely in the organization, right?”

“Do you see a letter of excommunication floating around? If you’re not kicked out of the organization, you’re still in the organization.
That’s how it works. So he’s an albatross right now. Bringing down a lot of heat on the organization. Everyone knew this would happen. That’s why, two years ago, they started taking his name off the rosters. Nobody wants a paper trail.”

“How much did Kajiyama have in the casino?”

“Between two casinos, about four million U.S. Probably has another million in U.S. bank accounts. He had two million dollars in cash deposited with the MGM Grand’s offices here. Not bad, huh?”

“How the hell do you collect two million dollars of American currency in Japan?”

“You just need a lot of flunkies with a lot of time. Anyway, if you’re trying to follow the money, look in your homeland, Jake-san.”

I felt a shiver up my spine. This sounded like a major scoop. And it was. It would certainly change my life.

We chatted for another hour. I asked him about his parents, and he asked me about my family. I showed him some pictures. But when I asked about the role of the Yamaguchi-gumi in Kajiyama’s operations, he didn’t give up anything more.

I got home at five in the morning. I managed to sleep for about an hour before Beni woke up and crawled over and stuck her fingers in my nose. I had the whole day to spend with the family. It was like a holiday.

On Tuesday, still keeping things to myself, I called up a friend, someone I could trust, at the FBI in Washington, D.C. He confirmed what Cyclops had said. He said the TMPD had already made visits to Las Vegas and had in fact seized $2 million in cash from the MGM Grand’s office in Tokyo. Cyclops’s figures were on the money. He wouldn’t tell me anything else, but it was enough for me to go to Chuckles and Harry with.

Chuckles was shocked. “Are you serious? Where did you get that?”

I thought it best not to mention my Yamaguchi-gumi connection. To admit that wouldn’t be good for my source or for me. So I told her it was the FBI, which was sort of true. She wanted to write up the story immediately; I suggested we talk to Harry Potter first.

Harry was stretched out on the sofa trying to open the centerfold of the
Weekly Gendai
when Chuckles and I went up to him. As he listened, he grew quite animated, realizing that this could be an impressive little scoop—especially since the cash had already been seized. Then he did something he rarely did: he took off his glasses and polished them, and he smiled. He smiled so wide that his teeth showed. It
was weird. There was a gap between his two front teeth that made him look like Alfred E. Neuman.

“Jake, you may not be as worthless as we thought you were,” he said. It was a huge compliment, and I’m sure I beamed (or blushed). He gathered his number two guy, and the four of us went out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant with a private dining room to discuss strategy. Harry wanted me to gather as much from the FBI side as I could; Harry and his number two would try to get confirmation from the TMPD top guys; Chuckles was ordered to lie low for a bit. She was our ace in the hole and would negotiate with the TMPD division chief for the scoop. In order for her to maintain positive relations with the chief, she would have to be free to blame any undue snooping around and stepping on toes on me.

“Tell him Jake heard it from the CIA,” Harry said. “Everyone thinks he’s an agent anyway. Tell him Jake’s out of control, has no understanding of the delicate relationship between the police and police reporters. Convince him that if we don’t get the scoop, Jake will write it without your supervision, and who knows what kind of material he might reveal to damage the investigation. That should get his attention.”

“Jake, sorry about this, eh?” Harry said, turning to me. “The chief will be pissed off, but he’s not someone you have to work with anyway. Maybe some top guys will blame you for making them rush—this probably would’ve been enormous publicity for the TMPD—but don’t let it bother you.”

“I won’t.”

“Besides, you’re a Jew. I’m sure you’re used to getting blamed for everything.”

In a couple days, we had everything we needed. I made a deal with a local reporter in Las Vegas who did some footwork for me in return for information. I would write the story first in Japan, and then he would get the scoop in Vegas. The time difference and the fact that only one in ten million Americans read Japanese newspapers made this arrangement possible.

Kajiyama was a “whale”—the Vegas term for a big-spending VIP. (A VIP, like a whale, is a rare species that consumes conspicuously.) He had been going to Vegas for more than ten years, and he had accounts
with the casino as well as with a bank in California and had been withdrawing money in the United States. After a tip from U.S. authorities, the TMPD had, since summer, been sending officials to look into his Vegas transactions. The Department of Homeland Security, the Nevada Gaming Commission, and the FBI were all investigating him on suspicion of his violating U.S. money-laundering laws. The MGM Grand was making a token effort at cooperating with the investigation.

Chuckles made a deal with the police division chief. Our scoop about Kajiyama and Vegas would be published first. Then the TMPD would announce its having seized more than $2 million of Kajiyama’s in Tokyo, likely the illegal profits of his loan shark shops. We’d get the scoop on that. The TMPD then planned to rearrest Kajiyama for violations of Japan’s money-laundering laws, while we’d get the scoop on the FBI’s investigation into Kajiyama’s money laundering in the United States.

Harry was much amused with the idea of an article under the headline “A Whale Called Kajiyama.” In fact, as we stayed up until three in the morning working on the article, the idea started to seem funnier and funnier. Lack of sleep will do that.

By mid-November, it was showtime: “Two Million Dollars Seized from Emperor of Loan Shark’s Safe Deposit Box.” This was followed up with articles on the FBI investigation and how Kajiyama had spent his money in Vegas. We had three hits in a row, and the competition was reeling. (Petty, I know, but these are the great joys of the police beat.) The TMPD was so meticulous about keeping everyone lined up in a row, it was very hard to break rank.

I spoke with a Las Vegas reporter who said the Nevada Gaming Commission had gone on record about the case; hearing that brought me great relief. No matter how much fact-checking you do as a reporter in Japan, the risk you take for running an article without the official news release in your hands is high. The reward for a scoop doesn’t match the penalty for getting a story wrong. Then when the police arrested one of Kajiyama’s henchmen who had withdrawn more than a million dollars from Kajiyama’s account and traveled numerous times to the United States carrying attaché cases full of cash, I began to feel a little smug.

To celebrate, I ran a mile and a half in less than twelve minutes. That was a first. I also did the unusual thing of going home early. I picked up my daughter from preschool, and the three of us, Beni, Mrs. Adelstein, and myself, had dinner together. It was a rare event.

Some of our thunder was stolen a few weeks later when it was revealed that Kajiyama had stashed more than $50 million in a Swiss bank account with the help of a Japanese employee of Credit Suisse. Fifty million dollars was a lot more than several million dollars. The Swiss froze his account.

The yakuza like foreign banks; they find them useful. Credit Suisse wasn’t the first foreign financial institution that had been used for money laundering. Citibank lost its private banking license in Japan in September 2004, in part because it was allegedly being used by the yakuza to launder money. According to a law enforcement figure familiar with the investigation, one of Citi Japan’s biggest customers was Saburo Takeshita, a corporate blood brother of Tadamasa Goto himself. Another source claimed that another bigwig in the Yamaguchi-gumi had a bank account with Citi—in his own name. I can think of several foreign investment firms that are shaking hands with the yakuza even now, but I don’t have enough money to afford to name them. (By the way, Citibank didn’t learn its lesson; the Japanese government punished them again in June 2009 for similar problems.)

In any case, when the venue switched to Switzerland, Chuckles and Harry’s number two took over the story. Money laundering was too much for my little brain, and I had other stories I wanted to pursue. In particular, Goto Tadamasa and his mysterious liver transplant.

Not all of the money Kajiyama deposited with U.S. casino offices in Tokyo was seized. Around the time of Kajiyama’s arrest, one of Kajiyama’s henchmen called up the Caesars Palace representative in Tokyo and had them bring him $1 million in cash. The money was delivered to a parking lot in central Tokyo. Now, that’s service.

Kajiyama never cracked. Finally, on February 9, 2005, he was sentenced to seven years of hard labor, but initially the Tokyo courts chose not to fine him 5 billion yen ($50 million, equal to the total he stole from people). We were disappointed. Who says crime doesn’t pay? The Emperor probably still has money stashed away that no one knows about. He’ll serve his time, and he’ll come out a very wealthy man.

He didn’t cut much of a dashing figure in court, but you could see some of his charisma. He’s handsome and probably very charming. He had several mistresses who would vouch for that. They’re probably waiting for him. And his money.

•    •    •

Kajiyama’s henchmen dispersed after his conviction, and the Goryo-kai no longer exists under that name. Some of his disciples went on to run elaborate “it’s me” scams, which are sometimes complex operations where criminals impersonate the child or grandchild of a mark over the telephone, convincing the mark that because they are in trouble he should make an immediate cash transfer. These hardworking guys apparently didn’t make as much money with this new enterprise—but at least it was a dishonest living.