Second Skin (45 page)

Floor-to-ceiling windows, thin as columns in a medieval church, looked out over Roppongi, an area of contemporary Japan where no one would think to look for a traditional-minded man such as Akinaga. Also, he was high enough to have an almost perfect view of the Nogi Jinja, a shrine to a modern general who had nevertheless been a true samurai, who committed seppuku – ritual suicide – in 1912 with his wife following the death of Emperor Meiji. This juxtaposition – the samurai spirit alive and abiding in foreign-dominated Roppongi – was just the kind of irony that appealed to Akinaga, whose cynical outlook on life was nothing if not ironic.

He rested his head against the rough gray Berber carpet. It did not seem odd to him to be staring down at the Nogi Jinja, lit up as if it were on fire in the night, while he knelt on the carpet with his butt in the air and his genitals dangling between his gangly legs. He could smell himself, which was not altogether unpleasant, and then he could smell Londa as she placed the spike heel of her shoe in his crack and bent over him.

Strangely, there was no indignity in this for him, only an intense relief. Indignity was being publicly arrested in his father’s
o-furo
by Tanaka Gin. Indignity was being stripped by professional penal people who knew his power, perhaps had even lost money in one of his gambling parlors or had spent an idle hour with one of his girls. Once, they had feared him, but now he appeared before them with his clothes scrunched in a ball in front of his genitals, just another old man, a criminal without either power or influence enough to stay out of prison.

He had wilted. Well, it was no wonder, with the humiliation coursing through his veins like a drug. How he wished to step out of his skin and become a whole new person! Londa would see to that, as only she could. But, tonight, he wanted to go further, to blot out what had been done to him. Tonight, he wanted to
be
someone else instead of pretending for a couple of hours. He wanted, in short, what no one could give him, and he clenched his fists, beating them against the Berber in rage and frustration.

‘Are you ready?’ Londa reached down between his legs, fondling him. Then, at almost the same instant, came a sharp, painful crack across his butt that made the blood rush to his head in dizzying fashion. ‘Not yet,’ she crooned, ‘but we’ll get you there, won’t we?’

Of course she would. That was her specialty, why he had become addicted – yes, that was the right word:
addicted
– to her. He had met her at that club everyone had been talking about, had seen her act once, and that was it. He’d had to have her, and have her he did, though not as often as he would have liked. She was so popular with so many influential people that even he, Tetsuo Akinaga, had had to wait his turn.

But then something had happened a month or so before his arrest. She had become more available to him – he could have her almost any day he pleased, though at specific times she designated. What
did
she do at those other times when he could not have her? Better not to know, he had decided. Why destroy an illusion that was working so well for him?

Pain enough to make him moan, and his member uncoiled like a snake, all the bad and humiliating thoughts driven from his mind. The pain continued, a specific kind of pain that, more and more, edged into pleasure, until the line between them was blurred completely and it became both, pleasure
and
pain coexisting in a ball that expanded from his loins outward.

He was moaning as Londa worked him over as only she could. He felt her sweat plopping onto his naked back like droplets of hot wax, each one excruciating, intensifying his pleasure-pain. Then, crouched over him like a giant crab, she did something to him that made his eyes bulge out of their sockets. A great groan emerged from deep inside him and he was sure that he would collapse. But, as always, he did not; he would be punished for that with a cessation of her ministrations, and that he could not abide. Instead, he swayed on thighs and elbows, his trembling thighs threatening to shake his teeth loose. Just one moment more and he would...

He heard something foreign, something outside the sphere of pleasure-pain that Londa had created for him. It was sharp, metallic like the latch of a lock being turned.

‘What is it?’ he mumbled vaguely.

‘Nothing,’ Londa said, digging in again with her high heel until that taste came to his mouth that he associated with the end.

But he heard it again, and dimly he wondered whether he had heard her lock the door behind her when she had come in. Of course, she had. She always did. But this time – had he heard her do it, or...?

His watering eyes focused on a pair of shoes – black, highly polished, expensive. Not Londa’s; these were men’s shoes.

‘What? Who...?’ He tried to change position, to look up past the cuffs of the trousers, but Londa had hold of him and he was immobile, locked in her exotic embrace.

‘Akinaga-san,’ a male voice said, ‘so good to meet you after all this time.’

Still locked in his erotic haze, Akinaga struggled to make his mind focus, but Londa had hold of him and his blood was pounding in his veins; the testosterone was raging and it was like listening to far-off voices through the crack and spark of a forest fire.

‘Who...?’

‘My name is Michael Leonforte. Are you familiar with it?’

Akinaga tried to shake his head, settled for a feeble ‘No’ instead.

‘No matter. I have heard a great deal about you.’ The shoes shifted a bit. ‘I think we can do business. I think we can help each other.’

‘I don’t need... any help.’

Mick laughed. ‘You should see yourself, Akinaga-san. It’s a scream, the position I find you in. Are you certain you don’t need help?’

‘I’ll kill... both of you.’

‘With her heel buried in the crack of your ass? I don’t think so.’

‘If you know anything about me...’

‘Yes, yes. I know all about the Yakuza. But you’re not the force you once were. The Kaisho’s inner council of which you were a part is gone – blown away like so many autumn leaves. And what is left? Your power’s broken, never to return. You have Nicholas Linnear and your own Kaisho – Mikio Okami – to thank for that. You should never have ousted Okami. And when you put a contract out on him, you really pissed him off. You forced him to call in a debt Okami was owed by his former partner, Col. Denis Linnear. Okami recruited the Colonel’s son, Nicholas. Bad move, Akinaga-san. Very bad move. Linnear has almost destroyed you totally. You’re hanging on by the skin of your teeth.’

‘My... what?’

‘It’s American slang, Akinaga-san, for terminal trouble.’

‘I still have my power. And my contacts. They got the prosecutor’s case thrown out on technicalities, and now I’m out of jail. Could
you
have done the same under those circumstances?’

‘I would never have allowed myself to be in that position.’

‘Talk is nothing,’ Akinaga spit out, ‘but the drool of incompetent and foolish men!’

Then, so abruptly that his teeth clashed together, Akinaga’s head was jerked up by his hair and he found himself staring into Mick Leonforte’s face.

‘I’ll tell you what’s foolish,’ Mick said in a harsh and grating whisper, ‘you here with your ass in the air, being taken advantage of by a woman you hardly know.’

‘What... what do you mean?’

‘Londa works for me. She’s a most valuable asset, don’t you agree? I sent her to ensnare you when you showed such unbridled lust for her at the club.’ Mick shook his head. ‘How can anyone measure the value of things according to pleasure and pain? That kind of thinking is superficial. I, who am conscious of the formative powers of the human brain, who am aware of its awesome
potential,
can only feel scorn at the way you have managed to squander your power.’ He pulled Akinaga’s face to him. ‘Don’t you see? Here, in this room of
your
apartment I am shogun.
You
bow down to
me.’

Akinaga said nothing. This man, so feral and demanding – burning almost at the point of madness – had begun to intrigue him.

‘Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that in man there is united both
creature
and
creator.
Do you understand this, Akinaga-san? The
creature
in man is the raw material: the clay, fragments of other times and other lives, filth, nonsense, and chaos, the excess of pleasure and pain. But then there is the
creator:
the image maker that turns that clay, that chaos, into
something more;
the flinty hardness that forges a personality in the painful crucible of experience. The spectator-divinity that flies in the face of the common, the rote training, the done thing; that forms, breaks apart, hammers anew, burns, brings to white heat, and then purifies the
creature,
making of it through these rounds of suffering something more, something
better.’

Mick let go of Akinaga’s hair, and at the same time, Londa released him from her hold, so that he collapsed with a groan, rolled over on his back, breathing hard. He stared up into Mick Leonforte’s face.

‘You don’t speak like an
iteki.
And you don’t think or act like one.’ Akinaga paused a moment. ‘I could have you killed – right here, right now, and it would mean nothing to me – nothing.’

Mick crouched down beside him. ‘Talk is nothing but the drool of incompetent and foolish men.’

Akinaga threw his head back and laughed. His cries of mirth echoed through the apartment like peals of thunder. ‘I want sake,’ he shouted.

While Londa went to fetch some, he sat up. ‘You are a fascinating man. Where, I wonder, would someone like you come from?’

‘The cauldron of experience.’

Akinaga gave a brief nod. ‘An altogether appropriate answer.’

Londa brought the rice wine, along with a silk robe, which Akinaga slipped on. When they had drunk three cups each, Akinaga said, ‘You mentioned something about us being able to help one another.’

‘I want something, you want something. A simple barter old as time.’

Akinaga, eyeing Mick carefully, said, ‘I think with you nothing is ever simple.’ He nodded. ‘But go on. You have my undivided attention.’

Staring into Akinaga’s dark, hooded eyes, Mick said, ‘But it is simple. I want access into Sato International.’

For a brief moment there was absolute silence in the apartment. Then, abruptly, shockingly, Akinaga began to laugh. He laughed so hard tears came to his eyes and he was obliged to hold his sides and gasp for air. ‘Is that all?’ he said at last. He wiped his eyes, then gestured at Londa, lounging in the shadows. ‘I am very much afraid you’ve set your elaborate scheme in the wrong part of the forest. I’d like access to Sato myself, but I don’t have it.’

Mick, pouring himself more sake, seemed not to have heard the
oyabun.
‘Allow me to tell you a story. This goes back, oh, a decade or so. A then very ambitious under-
oyabun
anxious to take control of a clan he believed – quite rightly – to be drifting without proper leadership, to be under siege from the Yamauchi clan, made a deal. It was the kind of deal that, quite frankly, is made every day of the week. Among Japanese. However, this particular deal the under-
oyabun
made was with an
iteki.
Not just any foreigner, mind you, but a very powerful industrialist who, in exchange for getting his businesses set up in Japan without having to be held up by the endless protectionist regulations, punitive tariffs, and bureaucratic red tape, agreed to make this certain under-
oyabun
rich on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.’

Silence lay heavy in the apartment. Akinaga, staring out at the shrine to General Nogi, said, ‘This is an edifying story, but what does it have to do with me?’

‘Wait, it gets better.’ Mick had taken on the predatory aspect of a wolf. ‘In order to thoroughly cover up the illegal transaction, this ambitious under-
oyabun
took all the required precautions – setting up a legitimate account at a legitimate brokerage house, engaging a legitimate broker and funneling all trades through him, putting up a small sum of his own money that was easily traceable, putting the account on margin – and then he took another: he arranged for the proceeds of the spectacular investment windfall to come to his twin sons.’ At the mention of those two last words Akinaga gave a small but noticeable twitch.

Mick cocked his head at an angle. ‘Now do you see how this concerns you, Akinaga-san?’ When the
oyabun
said nothing, Mick continued, ‘You see, I am a most diligent student of human behavior. I know what it is you want more than anything.’

‘And what would that be?’ A sullen note had crept into Akinaga’s voice and Mick noted it.

‘The continuation of your line. When you are gone, you want your sons to rule the Shikei clan, and their sons after them, on and on, until a dynasty is born to rival the two-hundred-year rule of the Tokugawa shogunate.’

‘I think you have grossly misunderstood me,’ Akinaga said quietly.

Mick shrugged. ‘Then it is my loss of face, eh, Akinaga-san? But, just for the hell of it, let me play out the hand. It happens that I have obtained certain records concerning the brokerage transactions. Now, they won’t have any effect on the industrialist. His name is Rodney Kurtz and he met with a rather violent end earlier this week. I got close with his wife. Kurtz seriously underestimated her. While I was cuckolding him, she gave up all his secrets – happily, willingly, ecstatically.’ Mick waved a hand. ‘But that’s another story. Back to you. You, well, your myriad contacts within the Japanese justice machine will eventually wriggle you out with a minimum of penalty – a stiff fine, which I have no doubt you won’t even miss when you pay it. But as for your twin sons, I do believe they won’t be as fortunate. Your protection may be able to extend to them – in the end – but in the interim their reputations will have been irrevocably tarnished. They’ll never be made
oyabun
of the Shikei clan – or any other, for that matter.’