Non-Stop Till Tokyo (29 page)

All the blood vanished from his face as he stared at a floppy hand that he couldn’t seem to make function, and then looked at me.

I hurt him
, I thought, and then,
Noriko
, and I swiped the baton at his head. He lurched out of the way, face contorting with rage, dancing sideways towards the gun and turning to grab it with the arm that still worked. I swung the baton at his groin and he leapt back, a reflex defense that took him right into Chanko’s reach.

Chanko punched him in the back of the neck, and his head snapped forward, and I hit him across the temple with my baton, and his head jerked back, and I hit him again, and there was a nasty feeling of something hard giving way, and he went down. Simple as that.

I stared at him. I wanted to hit him again, or to run like hell, or to throw up.

There was a flurry of action, a crunch and a grunt, and the other man dropped his gun with a rattle onto a pile of foil noodle trays. Chanko had him jammed up against the breezeblock by the face and groin. He held him there, and he turned to me.

I put my hand to my mouth.

There was blood all over his face. It was pouring down from an open gash on his brow, oozing from an ugly gouge on his cheek, trickling from his nose and set mouth where one lip was torn. A mark on the other cheekbone was red and already beginning to swell, and the look in his shark-black eyes was all the reason you’d ever need to be scared of the dark.

“Butterfly,” he said. “You ever do what you’re told?”

The voice was almost right, but not quite. His jaw was rigid, and a cold thread of rage tightened his vocal cords, clipping the words, and for a second I saw only the brutal, bloody giant, and I swallowed hard.

“This guy—” I managed.

Chanko looked down at the man on the ground. Then he punched Barcode in the stomach and left him staggering as he stalked over to the other guy and kicked him in the head. He swung back to the older goon, taking a vicious grip on his sparse hair, the other hand drawing back to strike—

“Wait,” gasped Barcode through a mouthful of blood. The voice identified him as Harada. “Joe-san, stop. That girl—hand her over. It’s not too late. I’ll talk to them. I can wipe the slate clean.”

“No,” said Chanko.

Not the “it’s different” or “excuse me, but…” of normal speech—just the bare, shocking, unacceptable “no” sounding more brutal than a blow.

“We’ll kill you otherwise,” Harada said. “You know that.”

“You’ll kill her.”

“She’s dead anyway. Give her to me now, and you’re off the hook for everything. All debts paid. You have my word, Joe-san.” He sounded desperate, sincere. “I can make this work. You could walk away. You could come back—”

“Sure I could,” Chanko said, and punched Harada in the face, aiming not just beyond the target but right through the wall.

The yakuza slid to the ground, boneless, leaving a glistening trail from his scalp on the breezeblock. Chanko picked him up with one bloody hand, dragged him to the nearest skip. He opened the lid and heaved the dead weight up, tumbling it inside. He kicked the other guy again and, when he didn’t move, did the same to him. Then he shut the lid and threw the bolt.

I could have asked if there was enough air in there for two men, or if anyone would check before the contents went straight into a garbage grinder. I didn’t.

Chanko was breathing hard, controlled, not looking at me. “Let’s go.”

“Wait. You’ve got blood on your face.” My voice didn’t sound terribly normal, either.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does. You look—” I couldn’t think of a way to say it. “Frightening. Come here. No, down here.”

He hesitated, then dropped into a half-crouch in front of me, looking through rather than at me. I sloshed some water onto a tissue and reached tentatively for his face, wiping off the blood and saliva and sweat, dabbing at the cuts, feeling the anger and adrenaline and humiliation pulsing through him with every breath, feeling my own pulse pounding through my fingertips as they skimmed his skin. It was very dark around us suddenly, and very cold and very close.

I crumpled up the fourth saturated tissue, stuffing the filthy thing in my bag, and reached for another.

“Hurry it up. Need to go.” A bit more blood trickled down from his lip as he spoke, and without meaning to, I reached out and stopped it with the tip of my finger. His breath caught, and his eyes snapped on to mine, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe either.

I could feel warmth, and bristles, and the tension that thickened and tightened the tendons and muscles under the skin, but the only thing I could see was the savage hunger that leapt in his dark eyes, blotting out everything else. And now I was so far out of my depth that I might never come back, but I moved my fingertip anyway, sliding it along his lip, and felt his mouth open slightly for it, and if he’d reached for me then…

My hand shook.

He jolted like I’d slapped him, and he gave a grunt of something like fury and shoved himself to his feet, so hard I jerked backwards.

“Chanko?”

“C’mon.”

He grabbed the briefcase and strode off, up the alley. I skipped to keep up, favouring my bad foot, as he walked straight across the wide pavement, not breaking stride through the thick, flowing crowd, which parted like the Red Sea around him while I fought my way through as it closed up behind.

By the time I’d caught up, a cab had already stopped, mostly because he was pretty much standing in front of it. The driver wasn’t looking happy.

“Roppongi,” Chanko told him.

“Do we want to—” I began.

“Get in.”

The traffic was almost as thick as it had been earlier, and we were a lot more memorable now. I wondered if he knew what he was doing. His body was rigid with suppressed tension, and he was staring straight ahead as if I wasn’t there, hardly moving, except that his right hand was clenching and flexing, the fingers curling into a fist and spreading wide again.

Blood was trickling down over his eyelid. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Your eyebrow’s still bleeding. Hold this to it.”

I held out a tissue. He didn’t notice that either. I hesitated, then twisted in my seat and put it to his brow.

“Don’t,” he said harshly, and grabbed it from my hand.

He stopped the cab well before Roppongi, on Kottō-dori, and we stood waiting while it accelerated away. There were several stations in the area, and the closest, Omotesandō, was at the intersection of several lines. The driver would inevitably remember us
if asked, but he wouldn’t be able to guess where we’d gone.

Chanko didn’t speak then, as we walked up to Omotesandō or as we stood on the train. But when I staggered, jolted by the speed and force of its movement, he grasped my shoulder and pulled me to hi
m, fingers digging in hard, holding me against his body and keeping me there long after I had my balance.

I didn’t know what I was going to do when the train ride ended. I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to go back, to face the truth. I already knew it.

Give her to me and you’re off the hook.

We got off at Nagatachō to change lines. The platform emptied quickly, late commuters hurrying home. I started walking too, but Chanko stopped me as the train pulled away, running a hand over his face, looking at the line map without seeing it.

“Chanko, are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

I glanced up at him, then around. An elderly man was taking his time getting to the exit. Apart from him, we were the last people on the platform.

“What are we doing?”

“Route.”

“Straight up the Yūrakuchō line to Kotake-mukaihara,”
I said impatiently, as the old man shuffled out of sight. “We can walk back to—”

Chanko spun round, grasped my arm and physically hauled me sideways, lifting me half off my feet as he dragged me across the empty platform. I gave a gasp of protest, too shocked to be scared, and then I had my back against a pillar, breath knocked out of me by the impact, and he was leaning over, trapping me, with an expression of concentrated fury on his battered face.

“What the fuck,” he said, “what the fucking
fuck
was that?”

“What?” I squeaked.

“That—
stunt
.”

“Oh. That.”

Chanko slammed a hand against the pillar, over my head, the frustration eloquent in his body language at least.

“Yes. That. Yakuza. Guns. Jesus.”

“I had to do something—”

“Yeah, walk away. Every goddamned thing I think about is how to keep them off you, and I turn my back for five fucking minutes—”

“They had guns on you!”

“I don’t care!” he shouted, and the echoes rang on the tiles of the tunnel and the empty platform. “You got any idea what they’d do to you if they got you?”

“Yes!” I shrieked, too furious to care about the noise. “Of course I know, they’ve already done it.”

Chanko leant over, face taut with fury, inches from mine, voice suddenly very low and measured, through set teeth. “So why the hell did you walk right back into their hands?”

“Why didn’t you give me up?”

His breathing stopped. I couldn’t hear a sound except my own rapid pulse in my ears.

“You could have,” I said into the silence. “You could have left me there. Got off the hook. Walked away.”

“No. I couldn’t.”

“Nor could I.”

He was totally still then, mouth rigid, eyes very dark on mine. I stood and stared up at him, watching the blood ooze. A warm wind began to blow along the platform.

“Train coming.”

“Yeah.” He took a breath and straightened up. “Come on. Where’s Taka?”

“He went home.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Chanko said, and that was the last he spoke for the rest of the journey back.

Chapter Twelve

I don’t think Taka and Yoshi even heard us come in. They were standing in the LDK, both of them scarlet, yelling in each other’s faces and as angry as I’d ever seen them.

“Stupid superstitious moron!” Taka shouted. “Idiot! What the fuck did you think you were doing?”

That sounded familiar. I glanced up at Chanko, who shrugged.

“I had to, alright?” bellowed Yoshi. “And stop telling me what to do. I’m not a child!”

“You’re a cretin!” Taka yelled, and swung round towards us, not even noticing Chanko’s appearance. “Have you got any idea what this asshole did?”

“No, and I don’t care.” Chanko slung the case onto the worktop. “We got the case, and we got a problem.”

Yoshi turned angrily and stopped as his eyes widened. “Oh, my—Chanko-san, what happened? Kechan, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said as Chanko shrugged. “What did you do?”

“He only went and stuck his head into a snakepit. Retarded, superstitious—hundred-yen shop junk—dressing up—dumbass stupid
cretin
!” Taka explained.

I gaped at him. “Oh my God. Yoshi, you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” demanded Chanko.

“I went to the hospital.” Yoshi’s jaw jutted mutinously. “You left Nori-chan’s luck on the worktop. So I called a guy I know who works in the staffing department, I got a white coat and a clipboard and I wore my old glasses and I walked in with him—”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Chanko said in English, Japanese apparently failing him.

“You always say people don’t look beyond the clothes, Kechan, and you were right. It was really easy. It was fine, Ando was there as security, so he knew me. She was asleep, but I put it in her hand and told Ando to tell the nurse to take care of it, and I left. I mean, I was really careful going home, I got two buses, and…”

His voice faltered. So would mine, faced with an expression like the one Chanko’s bloody, battered face was wearing.

“I don’t figure I’m hearing this right,” he said. “You went to the hospital, which is surrounded by police and yakuza, to give Noriko-san that piece-of-crap lucky charm? Is that what you said?”

“Yes.”

There was quite a long pause.

Yoshi shifted slightly. “I don’t expect you to understand—”

“
Understand
?” shouted Taka. “You’re an idiot, I understand that.”

“She gave it to Kechan and look what happened. I had to give it back.”

“Let’s stop yelling.” Chanko’s voice was entirely calm. “Yoshi-san?” He started walking towards him.

“What?” said Yoshi, and then was forced to take a step back as Chanko didn’t stop, and another, and found his back against the wall. “Hey!”

Chanko looked down at him in complete silence for a long and unpleasant moment. Then he spoke in the same calm monotone.

“Say I want you to tell me something, Yoshi-san. Say I want it badly enough, I’m going to hurt you. How long do you figure you’re going to hold out before I make you talk?”

Yoshi swallowed, staring up defiantly. He didn’t answer.

“Let’s be realistic. I start breaking your fingers, it’s not going to be long. Ten minutes? Fifteen?”