Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan (34 page)

You are drunk,
Takeda had said to him, trying to keep judgment out of his voice.

I am.
Suyama giggled. He sounded, Takeda thought, like a girl.

And how drunk are you?

I am … very drunk, I believe.

Takeda watched him for a minute. Suyama wore an empty smile, his lips pulled over his slightly crooked teeth as though he was not too drunk to be self-conscious about them.
Not all that drunk,
Takeda said. He leaned forward over the table that was damp with spilled beer and rank with filled ashtrays. The stench from it made Takeda take shallow breaths.
Are you too drunk to learn something?

Suyama looked at him, his eyes blinking, then snorted a laugh, as though the concept of learning something in his condition was so absurd as to be funny. Takeda sat back and sighed in disgust, looking at the ceiling.

No, no!
Suyama said.
I can … I can learn, really. I am sorry, I’m just so drunk …

Takeda looked at Suyama without moving his head, then said something so quietly that Suyama frowned and leaned forward.

What? What did you say?

Takeda repeated himself.
I said get out now.

Get out? Of here?

Takeda looked around the bar, then back at Suyama, and made a broad, all-encompassing gesture.
Of here,
he said, heavily stressing the last word.

I don’t … understand. I am so drunk …

I mean get out of here. Get out of all of it. Don’t do this. Don’t make my mistake. You still have time.

Suyama’s expression changed in a way that told Takeda that he was sober enough to understand.
Why?
The young man said.

Takeda shook his head slowly. There was no way he could explain. He wasn’t sure if he understood himself. He could say that this life was empty, but it wasn’t, not always. He could say that it would drain away Suyama’s spirit, but Takeda’s was still strong, strong enough to rebel. There was only one word that fit, and he finally spoke it:

Duhkha.

Takeda could tell that Suyama knew the term, as anyone who had even rudimentarily studied Buddhism would. The word was Sanskrit, meaning suffering—or, more specifically, a wheel out of balance.

Duhkha,
Suyama repeated, and Takeda nodded. Suyama made the same wide gesture that Takeda had made only a moment earlier, then smiled and shrugged.
Duhkha,
he said again, telling Takeda as eloquently as a drunken man could that he already knew, young as he was, that this was the way of things.

Takeda had stood up then, and bowed, respecting Suyama’s perception, but knowing also that the young man was a fool, perhaps the greatest fool, since he already understood what had taken Takeda too long to learn, and chose to do nothing.

The next day, Suyama had come to Takeda’s cubicle and apologized, saying that he had been very drunk, and that he hoped he had said nothing that Takeda had found offensive.
Not at all,
Takeda had replied, and added that, on the contrary, he recalled only a delightful and stimulating conversation. Suyama had smiled uneasily, bowed, thanked Takeda, and left. Takeda never spoke to him again. Ten days later, Takeda had vanished from Kobe, from his work and from his family.

Now, fifteen years later, there was Suyama, standing and holding a coffee table book on baseball, looking at Takeda with an awkward mixture of emotions that encompassed embarrassment, expectation, and suspicion. He recognized Takeda despite the fact that he no longer wore the thin moustache he had had at the time he met Suyama, and his hair was styled differently as well. Takeda had even had some plastic surgery in order to change his appearance after completing his first job. It had changed the shape of his jawline and had straightened his once slightly crooked nose, but Suyama had seen past the illusions of the blade and the passage of years.

No?
Suyama asked.

I’m sorry,
said Takeda,
but I don’t know what you mean.

I must apologize. You look like someone I knew a long time ago. A man named Takeda.

I don’t know anyone by that name.

The resemblance is very close, but now I see my mistake. I beg your pardon.

That’s quite all right,
Takeda said, and turned back to the books through which he had been browsing, although the titles were not registering on his whirling mind. He wanted nothing more than to leave immediately. He could feel the man’s gaze still upon him, and was nearly as offended by Suyama’s rudeness as he was alarmed by his recognition of him. Had the man no sense of protocol or manners?

Takeda was tempted to look up and stare right back at the man, but further direct contact might only add to Suyama’s suspicions. One can change a chin or a nose, but the eyes remain the same, and Suyama might remember the piercing look that Takeda had given him years before. Had he made such an impression on the man, Takeda wondered, that he still recalled Takeda so accurately after only one true conversation so long before?

Takeda crouched and drew a volume from the bottom shelf, hiding himself from his observer. His weight on his ankles, Takeda felt his stomach cramping, and he shifted to reduce the pressure in his bowels, causing a bit of gas to escape involuntarily. Though the emission was silent, Takeda was still embarrassed and angry at himself. He was acting like a caught child, wetting himself at the fear of unknown consequences.

He pushed back his anger and alarm, replaced the book he held, chose one that he thought he would actually want to read, and stood up. While watching Suyama only peripherally, Takeda crossed the room to the cashier and paid for his book. Then he walked to the escalator and went down several levels to the street.

There were many ways of looking behind oneself without obviously doing so, but Takeda did not look back, even surreptitiously, until he had traversed several blocks. He did not do so because he did not want to see Suyama following him, because he did not know what he would do if he did. At last, however, in the middle of a crowded street, Takeda stopped and turned around. He looked behind him, and across the street. There were hundreds of people in view, but Suyama was not one of them.

Relieved, he slowed from the steady pace he had held, not fast enough to look as though he wished to outdistance anyone, nor slow enough to invite a pursuer to catch up. It had been a guiltless, easy stride that he had intentionally chosen, and he felt foolish that he had had to choose at all concerning what should be such a spontaneous activity.

Slowly the sick feeling started to leave Takeda, and the sweat dried on his forehead. The memory of the sweat and the sickness, however, remained with him, and he wondered about the very core of himself. It was not the first time that he had been in danger of being discovered, but it was the first time, at least to his knowledge, that he had encountered anyone from his past who had recognized him.

There had been several times in the last fifteen years when, moving through the cities of Japan, Takeda had seen people he recognized from his previous life. When such a thing occurred, he turned the other way so that they would not see him. Once, in Hiroshima, he had seen a grocer of whom he and his wife had been customers in Kobe, and another time in Tokyo he had seen a woman who had been a secretary in his office. Neither of them had noticed him. A few years before, another former coworker had looked directly at Takeda without recognition in the Yokohama Joypolis.

Takeda would never accept a job in Kobe, and had not been there since he had left. There were too many people there who might recognize him as the man who had walked out on his job, his wife, his children, and never returned. Besides, there was no need to go to Kobe. People wanted killing everywhere.

All right, he thought, so someone did recognize him, but he had bluffed it out, and in all likelihood Suyama thought he had been mistaken. Even if he had not, even if he was convinced that the man he had seen was Takeda, he would certainly do nothing about it. As far as he knew, Takeda had vanished to begin a new life. He had not tried to make his disappearance look like a suicide; he had simply walked away, so what business was it of Suyama’s? It was not worth another thought.

Despite his conclusions, Takeda thought about Suyama for the rest of the day, seeing the man’s knowing expression every few minutes. The thoughts dulled his enjoyment of the film he viewed, the book he read, the music he listened to, and when he lay down to go to sleep, the harder he tried not to think of Suyama, the more he saw his face. Takeda awoke several times in the night from troubled dreams. He could not recall specifically what they were about, but there remained a sense of having been discovered, and he suspected that they had been about Suyama.

He recalled only one dream. It seemed to him that in the middle of the night he got up to go to the bathroom, doing so in the dark. But when he realized that he was in his house back in Kobe, Takeda knew that it must be a dream. When he came out of the bathroom, his wife was standing in her nightdress in the hall, and he had to walk around her to get back to the bedroom. No sooner had he made his way past her than she was there again, standing in front of the bedroom door, so that he had to edge past her once more. When he entered their bedroom, she was standing precisely at the foot of the bed, where he needed to go in order to get to his side. Once more he pressed past her, only to see her again, now standing by the bedside, leaving him no room to go past. He stood there looking at her looking at him, unable to move any farther, until he awoke.

Takeda relaxed during the morning, and went out in the afternoon to buy groceries and toiletries. By the time his shopping was completed, a cold rain had begun to fall, and he headed back home.

He took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and sat and relaxed over a pot of green tea, contented to be warm and snug inside his small warren. He turned on the television and watched a game show, then the news. By seven o’clock he was hungry, and decided to go out and get an omelet at a small restaurant several blocks away. He put on his suit jacket and topcoat, and left his apartment.

He had not gone a block before he was aware that someone was following him. He continued to walk through the streets crowded with people coming home from their jobs or from shopping, but paused briefly at a store window angled enough to allow him to see behind him. Among the many pedestrians was one who slowed significantly when Takeda stopped, and although Takeda could not see the man’s face clearly in the warped reflection, for some reason the figure seemed familiar, and Takeda thought perhaps that it reminded him of a man he had himself tailed many years earlier, a man he had followed a long way before killing.

Whoever he was, if he was following Takeda, then Takeda would have to deal with him. It meant doing things correctly, and with no possibility of failure, so he thought quickly and calmly.

He was in Higashi-Jujo, walking north, and thought of the warehouse in Akabane-Minami. It would take a half hour to get there.

He walked slowly, never looking back, only ascertaining his follower’s presence through reflections or peripherally as he glanced in shop windows. The man was hanging far back, which suited Takeda fine. He didn’t want a confrontation on the street with other people around, and apparently his follower didn’t either. They would both have to be patient.

The crowd began to thin the nearer Takeda drew to the warehouse. He thought the man might confront him, but he still hung back in spite of the ever-dissipating cloud of witnesses. Apparently the man only wanted Takeda when he was all alone.

They moved away from the shopping area with its stores and cafés and into a more industrial part of the ward, with small machine shops and warehouses side by side. Here the street layout grew more chaotic, with numerous turns, dead ends, and blind alleys that made it difficult for Takeda to allow his stalker to keep up with him without losing him completely.

Indeed, he noticed that the man had increased his pace and was closing the gap between them. Takeda picked up speed again, not wanting the man to catch up with him yet. Then he saw the warehouse ahead. It was a two-story building between a larger warehouse and what looked like a small abandoned factory.

Takeda took the few steps up onto the truck dock and walked toward the door next to the roll-up loading gate. Takeda quickly unlocked the door and walked in, leaving it open behind him. The warehouse was nearly full, but there was an open aisle through the clutter, and Takeda followed it, walking more slowly now, but still not looking back. He felt tension press across his shoulders, and steeled himself, fearing the impact of a bullet in his back. He rounded a corner where he would be hidden from his pursuer, and stopped.

Takeda reached into his pants pocket and brought out a lock-back knife with a four-inch blade, which he quietly opened. The thought occurred to him that perhaps he was wrong, romanticizing again, and that the man was simply a mugger, following an older salaryman to a lonely place where he could be victimized, but the next words he heard put that theory in its grave.

I’ve been looking for you.

In spite of himself, Takeda trembled at the words.

I’ve been looking for you for a long time.

And, for a moment, the man coming down the corridor was indeed the man he had killed years before, a ghost come back from the dead to find his murderer and wreak revenge, and though Takeda knew that such things were not possible even in this land of ghosts, he felt panic grip his chest, but told himself that it was not a ghost, but a hunter, a man who had come to either kill or capture him.

When the footsteps grew so loud he knew the man was around the corner, Takeda surged out toward the man, who recoiled in surprise, but Takeda was too fast, stepping into him, right hand low, legs driving his trunk, trunk driving his arm as it rose seeking the man’s midsection, and passing into it as smoothly as in a dream, where all movement cuts through that combination of air and water, a sensation which can never be attained in the waking world. The knife tore up and across and out again, and Takeda heard the breath leave the man as his life, heard the blood patter onto the concrete floor of the warehouse, and something heavier and sodden follow a moment later. The man fell to knees incapable of holding him, and then forward onto his face and his open wound.