Man with No Name: A Nanashi Novella (6 page)

The entire motel went up in flames. People, yakuza and innocent guests alike, shrieked and died as smoke boiled and the black sky was painted hellish hues of orange and red. The Terrible Two fled for the car, laughing and hooting in hyena joy, and all might’ve gone perfectly if Jiki, who drove because Mizo was still lugging the flamethrower, hadn’t decided to cruise past the scene of the inferno to gloat over their victory. A Dragon enforcer staggered from the conflagration clad only in shorts--hair smoldering, face slagged from the intense heat--and unloaded his dual automatic pistols. Jiki panicked and floored the accelerator and the yakuza stood in the middle of the road with action hero aplomb, popping off a few final rounds at their disappearing taillights before he collapsed in a smoldering heap and died. Meanwhile, a bullet punched through the car’s rear window and ricocheted from the tank on Mizo’s back. He screamed in surprise and Jiki swerved all over, tires screeching, rubber burning, and somehow during the confusion the flamethrower got set off again and turned the car into a fireball Jiki promptly steered off the street and into a canal.

Satan apparently watches over his own because both men survived with minor burns, a few broken bones, and singed scalps. Hailed as heroes of the clan, only a handful of insiders ever knew the reality: The Terrible Two were a pair of craven, fucking morons. Famous fucking morons, now.

The Dragon Syndicate were not amused.

By the grace of iron-strong custom and venerable gangster tradition regarding truces were Jiki and Mizo kept from being summarily abducted and tortured and fed to the fishes. Sadly enough.

Nanishi said, “So much for the honor of ninkyō dantai,” and laughed.

 “What now?” Haru said in a thick voice. Amida moaned.

“We can’t return to the office without the corpse.” Koma had taken the cell phone from his pocket, but obviously lacked the courage to ring Uncle Yutaka with the current news. Things were likely tense around the gang clubhouse. “Okay, piss on it. Move over, I’m driving.”

Koma and Nanashi traded places, although Koma didn’t get moving right away. The four of them hunched for a while in the shadows, sporadically illuminated by the hazards and the flare of passing headlights. Nanashi shut his eyes and the black motes aligned like a Venus flytrap’s teeth snapping together.

The ghost of Muzaki whispered,
There are those who claim that Time is a ring. I have found it to be a maze, and my own role that of the Minotaur. Rabbit, O rabbit. Welcome to the maze.

*   *   *

One often falls in dreams. In this case, Nanashi had the sense of traveling at great speed, like a bullet shot through the heart of a void. His eyes opened and blackness resolved into light and sound. Music scratched from a vinyl record -- Black Betty by the venerable Ram Jams. Karaoke was quite popular with the yakuza and he’d learned all of the classics--Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Clash, and dozens between. How many slobbering drunk renditions of “Green, Green Grass of Home” or “Folsom Prison Blues” had he delivered at yakuza bar haunts over the years? Lots and lots, was the answer.

The woman gave a short, stifled cry when she saw him in the middle of the hallway between the bathroom and bedroom. He would’ve said something to reassure her except for the inconvenient fact that his insides were on the verge of erupting. The vertigo felt similar to falling from an apartment window toward the upward rushing concrete.

This was the internationally renowned Susan Stucky in person, or in a dream that felt too close to reality for comfort. Lacking her customary pancake makeup and award-winning cinematography it had taken him a moment to place her. Shorter and thinner than he remembered, her blonde hair much darker and flung loose over her shoulder in a way she’d never worn it on celluloid; naked except for a pearl chain around her hips. Her flesh gleamed alabaster, pallid from shock or the soft low light that illuminated the passage.

Behind her lay a spacious living room decorated with wood and leather and stone. Moonlight dripped from the scalloped ceiling. A deep, steady growl emanated from the shadows, and a giant white and gray Akita swaggered into view, stiff-legged, hackles bunched. Heart-shaped tags jingled from its spiked collar as it slouched forward.

Nanashi smiled weakly at the brute and said, “Good doggie. Good boy.” He said it in English. He liked dogs. He gripped the butt of his revolver anyway.

But neither the dog nor the woman were reacting to his presence. Muzaki stood in the doorway of the bathroom. The wrestler loomed larger than life, clothing shredded, blood coursing from a dozen vicious cuts and gashes. Part of his face was crushed into butcher meat. His left arm was gone, hacked away near the elbow to match the stump of his left leg. He smiled through a mouthful of pulverized teeth. Gore slopped from his lips. He winked his one good eye and toppled backward and the door flew shut.

Nanashi heard
Goodbye, goodbye, love,
as a rustle of dry leaves in his brain.

Now woman and dog finally registered Nanashi’s presence. She patted the dog’s head. Her expression lost its animating dismay and smoothed to ice. She inclined her chin toward the front of the house. “Company coming.”

He almost asked who, and held his tongue. He knew exactly who. Word had traveled along the wire to Yokohama. Killers from the Heron would be en route. Possibly for murder, possibly for kidnapping. Either way it would be a routine clearing of accounts after the debacle with Muzaki, and lovely Susan Stucky wasn’t long for the world. Her future consisted of ropes, knives, and a shallow grave. He found his cigarettes, lighted two. He crossed the floor and gave her one of the cigarettes, which she accepted wordlessly. She stared at him and her eyes were cold enough to burn. He studied the ceiling.

“You are remarkably composed,” he said.

“So are you.”

“Believe me. I’m shitting a brick.”

“You must be a heavy.”

“Oh yeah.” He cracked his knuckles and loosened his tie.

She blew smoke. “Are you with me or against me?” No lipstick, no inflection except impersonal curiosity. Her scent was coconut lotion and sex.

“That’s a tough decision.”

“What’s the difficulty? I’ve got money if that’s the hangup.”

“I don’t want your money. May not need it, either, depending on how this goes.”

“It’s going to go shittily if past is prologue. You’re not stupid, not with that suit. What’s the real problem?”

“I’m a lunatic or this is a dream.”

“Oh? Transcendental meditation? A bad trip on some funky ‘shrooms?”

He considered, shrugged. “Well, this scene doesn’t seem possible. Maybe I’m a ghost. Maybe I’m an astral projection.”

She casually reached up and slapped him. She’d had practice. “Nope, no silver cord. You’re here for reals, as the kids say. Get your game face on, bitch.”

He rubbed his mouth and smiled.

“Wes always said this moment would come. You’re a Heron. I expected one of ours at least.” Her gaze lingered on his open collar, the needlework. That she could read its fragment impressed him. “So, are you man or mouse? Friend or foe?”

The dizziness receded and Nanashi’s legs steadied. His instinct took over now: balls retracted, adrenaline flowed, higher brain functions reduced to static. Fear made an ecstatic of him. “I’m a rabbit, apparently.” His voice cracked. His gun was in his hand like magic. He moved past her into the living room, toward the main entrance, and gods it was a gorgeous home, opulent and cozy. He noted the decorative stones of a fountain, small busts of copper and bronze and jade, scarlet hangings and reed screens inlaid with onyx and gold calligraphy, bearskin rugs cast about haphazardly, and crossed polearms with tassels and pieces of samurai armor on stands and racks. So many wonderful things to kill with.

Muzaki had owned several such homes in Japan and others in the United States and Canada, and mistresses accompanied each. Truly a blessed man. Truly a cursed man.

Artificial fire flickered in the hearth. Rainbows of exotic fish shifted within tiered aquariums. These rainbows undulated across the woman and the dog as they silently watched him rush to drop the metallic drapes on the windows. The rainbow pattern splayed over the blinds, sealing off his glimpse of the front yard and the outer darkness that pressed just past the porch lights.

“Where are we?” he said.

“Near Yamagata,” she said.

Yamagata lay many kilometers north of where he’d left his companions minutes ago. Before the blinds dropped he’d gotten an impression of big rocks and trees and assumed the property lay beyond the city limits. Several feet away the oak finish of a wet bar shone like true love and abutting it a cherry-panel turntable emitted its classic rock music. He opened a drawer and fixed himself a tall glass of Okuhida, tossed it back and poured another for himself and a fresh glass for the lady. She accepted the drink without comment. Confidence restored, he stared at her and downed his liquor. Neither of them blinked.

The dog whined uneasily. Its teeth were daggers.

Sweat trickled into the seams of Nanashi’s forehead and seeped along his cheeks. He felt stirrings of power, the surging vitality of a gorilla, a shark, a tiger. Fire kindled in the center of him, his flesh tingled and tightened and his asshole contracted to a marble. The sweet-bitter tastes of adrenaline cut with vodka prickled his tongue. A ferocious recklessness built within him not unlike the approaching climax of a sex act. He yawned, not quite ready, not quite there, but close.

“Oh, I like you,” she said without sounding as if she really did.

“Muzaki-san said the same.” The player clunked and a new record began to spin. Hair of the Dog, by Nazareth. He threw back his head and laughed from the belly. A roar. He realized she’d been dancing in the nude to the classic rock of her homeland when he and the grotesque phantom of her husband intruded so dramatically. He’d seen her dance onscreen, an erotic Dance of the Seven Veils routine for her Mafioso husband that caused audiences and critics to salivate. The Academy tossed her an Oscar nomination as a reward.

A bell gonged, twice. The front door came off its hinges.

Nanashi knew the one in charge, a slim man with a shaved head and blond goatee by the name of Kada. Kada the Sadist, some muttered. Kada the Brave. Kada the Handsome. Kada, second son of the Chairman himself, so Kada the Favored. A playboy, even by yakuza standards. He’d tittered behind his hand when Nanashi lost a piece of his finger that fateful night long ago. Nanashi didn’t recognize the other five. Dead men but for the formalities.

Kada dressed in white. His minions wore black suits and slick sunglasses despite the hour, each standing with stick-up-the-ass rigidity. A despised lieutenant and five brothers Nanashi had never met. Both facts made everything much easier. Not that it would’ve been particularly hard on him in the first place. The Heron Clan had always treated him more as a favored dog than beloved family. His contempt and fear and the pulsing vodka flames helped. The smoldering disdain in the actress’s eyes helped even more.

Kada appraised the situation with the imperious demeanor of a visiting Daimyo, his own sunglasses held between thumb and forefinger, tapping against his thigh. He raised an eyebrow. “I am surprised to see you here, little brother.”

“How many more are outside?” Nanashi said, bowing curtly; a dip that barely satisfied protocol but allowed him to keep his eyes on the Sadist.

“There were a couple of guys in the yard. We took care of them. The Dragons are punks. Has this bitch given you any trouble?”

“No. I meant how many more men do you have?”

The blond hesitated, studying the room more closely. He slipped on his shades. “Just us. I don’t need an army to collect a woman.”

Nanashi raised the gun and shot him in the face.

Who taught you to fight? Muzaki said. He and Nanashi were on a beach in the gray light of dawn. Surf packed the sand and glazed it with pebbles and dead starfish. A frigid breeze blew from the water.  Muzaki wore an old, elegant suit. He was whole again. The shine in his eyes seemed too lustrous. The curve of his smile too wide.
Who trained you to kill?

Nobody, Nanashi said. In the distance, amid the driftwood and the swirling ebb and flow of the tide lay a dark blot.

 --Once it began, Nanashi committed to his art with the dispassion and precision of clockwork machinery. He was all gears turning and springs uncoiling as he half crouched, free hand at midsection level, poised in a claw, gun arm stabbing forward. He swung the revolver, swung his entire body with pendulum smoothness and drilled the pair flanking their fallen leader. Three bullets, three down, but he missed with the fourth, while the fifth only clipped a man’s shoulder and the survivors dove for cover. Two had pistols and the last wielded a sawed-off shotgun--

They don’t teach you to kill in the dojo. Not in modern times.

Nobody taught me.

You burst whole from Jupiter’s aching skull. A prodigy. A shark.

One day I picked up a knife. Later, I picked up a gun. I was also pretty quick to learn to peddle a bike and quite handy with a tit. They kept walking without stretching their legs and the distant blot squirmed and grew.

Muzaki said, I was lost as a young man during a shipwreck, out there. I suppose you know the story. Ring announcers have told it for decades.

--the shotgun gave Nanashi anxiety. He decided to kill that enemy next. The Akita had the same idea. It pounced on the guy, jaws locking onto his abdomen, shaggy body wrenching side to side in a frenzy that went straight back to the days of caves and saber tooth cats. The shotgun boomed and guts unspooled everywhere--dog guts, man guts, a jet of commingled guts, a sluice of seared blood and viscera. The man fired again, screaming in terror and agony, then he stopped screaming and the dog stopped growling. Shotgun guy was the one Nanashi had clipped and now he wondered if the slug had severed something important because the end came too quickly. Oh, but who was he to argue with the gods of death? A pall of smoke rolled over the room and Nazareth kept saying now somebody was messing with a sonofabitch. The house stank of burning hair, of burning blood, of scorched silk.