Second Skin (49 page)

He now had the interesting sensation of munching thoughtfully on these sweets in the almost deserted Shitamachi Museum while contemplating a painstakingly precise replica of an ancient shop that specialized in
dagashi.

He thought about Jō Hitomoto and whether he was, in fact, the right man to take the reins of power. Better him than Mitsui, with his dangerously fascistic reminders of the war and the worst aspects of the Japanese worldview.

He thought about Nicholas Linnear and his long struggle to understand his father, his fate, and his own complex personality. But mostly, he thought about his old friend Denis Linnear. The Colonel had meant everything to him – friend, confidant, mentor, enemy. It was curious and not a little disturbing to realize that all these disparate facets could reside in one human being. But then the Colonel was a rather exceptional specimen. He had seen the future of Japan, had recognized its vast potential not only to itself but to the West. To this end, he had used Okami, manipulating elements of the Yakuza into service, eliminating those who stood in his way. He had, in the end, used the whole structure of Japan – bureaucracy, industry, and political parties – to attain his goal.

Though terribly moral, the Colonel could be a ruthless man when circumstance dictated. Envious others thought his morality mutable – that he manipulated it in the same clever manner he manipulated everyone around him. True or false? As with all things human, Okami reflected, it depended on your own point of view. Okami’s point of view slid back and forth in the sands of time, but of course that was for very personal reasons that he preferred not to examine. When it came to family, there was a line no one ought to cross. Colonel Linnear had done so, and even today, sitting here in this timeless place, Okami could not find it in his heart to forgive him.

‘A museum is a fitting place for you, old man.’

Another person had slipped onto the cool stone bench at its far end.

‘Look at you,’ Mick Leonforte said, ‘the mighty Kaisho sitting here like an old homeless man eating sweets while contemplating the world as it once was.’ He put one hand briefly over his heart. ‘How touching.’ He pointed at the paper bag of sweets. ‘That’s how I was able to find you, you know. I followed you here all the way from Asakusa. That monstrous sweet tooth of yours. You might have been better off with cirrhosis of the liver.’

‘I know you.’

‘Yes, you do.’ Mick put a forefinger up and tapped his lips. ‘Now let me see, what were you thinking of, being here, surrounded by the past?’ He leaned toward Okami suddenly. ‘It was
him,
wasn’t it?’

‘Him?’

‘Colonel Linnear. Your pal.’ Mick could see Okami’s eyes take on a flat, dead look. ‘You were thinking about what he did to you.’ Now Okami’s body went rigid, as if he had stared into Medusa’s eyes and been turned to stone. ‘Yes,’ Mick said in a conversational tone, ‘I know.’ He slid closer on the bench. ‘What I want to know is how you could have allowed it to happen. Oh, it’s true, you may not have known in the beginning. But afterward...’ He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘What excuse could you have had, I wonder, not to take action?’

‘What do you want?’ Okami asked in a tone as flat and dead as his eyes. He still had not turned his head away from the model of the sweetshop.

Mick sidled farther along the bench until his thigh was almost touching Okami’s. Then he leaned in and putting his lips close to Okami’s ear, whispered, ‘The truth.’

Okami seemed to come alive. ‘The truth!’ he scoffed. ‘It seems to me you already know the truth – or the version of it that best suits your needs. It seems to me that you make your own truth. You chop the past up into such tiny, discrete fragments that they no longer make sense. But that loss of integrity is your very intent because you then very carefully reassemble them in your own image. What is it you call yourself?’

‘A deconstructionist.’

‘Fascistic nihilism is more like it. Destruction is your stock-in-trade; the eradication of existing political and social institutions in order to install your own.’

Mick grinned. ‘It takes one to know one.’

‘What?’

‘Isn’t that what Colonel Linnear set out to do in 1947 with you as his trusty sidekick? Sure it is.’

‘What is a sidekick?’

Mick blew air between his teeth. ‘An aide-de-camp, a flunky, a
pal,
depending on your point of view.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Mick snorted. ‘Passive resistance isn’t going to get you anywhere with me,
Kaisho.
Colonel Linnear set out to rebuild Japan almost single-handedly
in his image.
Can you deny that?’

Okami stared mutely at the replica of the sweetshop, but the taste of
dagashi
had turned bitter in his mouth.

‘A more fascistic vision I cannot imagine.’ Mick took the half-empty bag of sweets from Okami’s hand, popped one into his mouth. ‘So, let’s not be throwing stones too hastily.’

‘This is your special gift, is it not? To twist the truth until day becomes night, good becomes evil, and morality slips into a faceless limbo where it can no longer be recognized or depended upon.’

‘Okay. Let’s talk morality. Let me animate like ghosts from their graves the names Seizo and Mitsuba Yamauchi, Yakuza who stood in the way of your schemes. Do you deny planning their deaths? And what of Katsuodo Kozo, the
oyabun
of the Yamauchi clan, who, in the summer of 1947, was found floating facedown in the Sumida River. Did you also not arrange his demise? Shall I go on? There are plenty of others.’

‘I will not play the game of morality with loaded dice.’

‘You also have not answered my questions. But that’s okay, gramps. I didn’t really think you would. I know you’re guilty as charged, and since the dead cannot bear witness to the crimes you have committed, I am prosecutor, jury, and judge in this court of law.’

‘Law. What law?’

‘The law of kiss my ass,’ Mick said as he placed the muzzle of a square ceramic gun to the side of Okami’s head.

‘I know your type.’ Okami was breathing in through his mouth, out through his nostrils, as if sitting so close to this noxious being was fouling the very air he breathed. ‘What you call morality is self-glorification. Whatever threatens you is a threat to the world at large.’

‘Yes. I create honor, just as I create morality. It is the common people, roaming the streets like dogs, who are the liars. Not me.’

‘Of course not. You are among the chosen. Like the nobles who ruled Greece, the truth resides inside you. Isn’t that how you see it?’

Mick ground the ceramic muzzle into the flesh of Okami’s temple. ‘So many people would give their right leg to be in the position I am in right now. All I have to do is pull the trigger, and
Boom!
you’re just another part of history.
My
history.’

‘And this feeling of fulgence, of power endlessly flowing, the bliss of high tension, is what you live for. It is, in effect, your life’s work, all that you are or can ever be.’

Mick’s cheeks expanded like the sides of a poisonous blowfish. ‘Do you think quoting Nietzsche at me will save you, Kaisho? Think again.’

‘Being so familiar with Nietzsche, you must know the essence of the Viking saga of their chief god, Wotan, because you live by it: “Whoever has not a hard heart when young will never get it at all.’”

‘How hard
your
heart must have been, old man, to have killed when you were so young.’

‘I killed to avenge treachery, to destroy the enemies of my father who conspired to have him murdered,’ Okami said in a voice without inflection, ‘nothing more or less. What I did I did out of filial duty.’

‘I was right,’ Mick exulted. ‘A hard man, indeed.’

‘Have you no place for compassion inside you?’ Okami whispered.

‘Compassion, Kaisho?’ Mick sneered. ‘You have not been reading your Nietzsche carefully enough. Those whose hearts have been hardened by Wotan are not made for compassion. Compassion is weakness, compassion is for the lower man, the liar, the violated ones with a slave morality who run like cowering dogs amid the garbage of the back alleys; who equate power with danger, who see good versus evil when neither exists. Compassion is for the good-natured beast, the easily deceived, the little bit stupid, those overflowing with human kindness, always ready with a helping hand – in short, those whose lot in life is to do the bidding of people like me.’

‘How smug you are. How sure you are that you understand the equation of universal principles.’

‘Why not?’ Mick’s face was arranged in a lopsided grin. ‘The equation’s simple enough.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. It’s far more complex than you can ever know.’

Mick leered at him. ‘But
you
know, old man, don’t you?’

‘I?’ Okami seemed astonished. ‘I know as little of the equation as anyone.’

Mick made a face. ‘Confucian humility is really a pathetic sight to behold. But beneath your good Confucian mask I know what’s in your heart.’

‘Of course you do. You know everything.’

Mick squeezed the trigger of the ceramic gun. There was a sound, no louder than a discreet fart. Mick caught Okami before he could roll off the bench.

‘Everything,’
Mick said as if he could stop the sands of time and make the moment last forever.

Because of the incident with Jōchi, Nicholas was forty minutes late for his rendezvous with Okami. When he got to the Shitamachi Museum, it had already closed and there was no sign of Okami. Nicholas punched in Okami’s address on the CyberNet but got no response. He left a message for Okami to contact him as soon as possible. Then he called the Finance Ministry, but was told that Jō Hitomoto, Okami’s candidate for prime minister, was out of the office and was not expected back today. For the moment, that was as much as Nicholas could do, and he reluctantly got back on his Kawasaki and took off.

According to Tento, the owner of the S&M club A Bas, the dominatrix Londa lived in Meguro, one of the low-lying western districts lost in Tokyo’s eternal haze. It was not far from the fairy-tale castle facade of Meguro Club Sekitei, the city’s most famous and easily identified love hotel.

It took some time for Nicholas to get there for he was obliged to stop several times as the Kshira he had summoned raged through him, distorting his sense of sight and touch even as it increased his perception in other, more subtle ways. He saw, for instance, the entire grid of Tokyo laid out beneath him, small as a postage stamp, intricate as a wasp’s wing. Within each district he could sense the pulse of the city, the energy that pulled people from starting point to destination, not the electrical power of the city but the febrile network of psychic energy of so many people pressed together like ants in a warren. He pulsed with the energy, filled with a dark illumination, burning with Kshira’s power.

At one of those stops, his Kami buzzed, and checking it, he saw he had a communication from Kanda Tōrin. He ignored it, in no mood for the young executive.

At last, with the Kshira burned from his system like adrenaline, he turned down the rate of his metabolism. He arrived at his destination and dismounted. Meguro was not an upscale district, and the narrow street on which Londa lived was not among the best of the area. Unlovely buildings from the postwar era, when housing was being thrown up at lightning speed, crammed the streets and dank back alleys, huddled and forlorn, covered in a mantle of industrial soot. A group of Nihonin, bikers in black leather and shiny chrome studs, stared at him as he pulled up in front of the building, a crumbling, ramshackle structure that looked all but condemned.

He found the super in his basement apartment. It appeared as if he had been asleep and he was thoroughly irritated at being disturbed. He claimed to know nothing of a woman named Londa who worked odd hours, mostly nights. The more Nicholas tried to query him the more hostile he became, peering at Nicholas in the low light.

‘Half-breed,’ he finally shouted, ‘I have nothing to say to you!’ And slammed the door in Nicholas’s face.

Back out in the street, he found a couple of the Nihonin standing around his Kawasaki, admiring it.

‘Bitchin’ bike,’ said one of the youths, a small but muscular Japanese with a nose ring, spiky hair the color of snow, and jaded eyes. His practiced slouch approximated the shape of a question mark. His leather jacket had the rising-sun flag stitched across its back. He glanced sideways at Nicholas. ‘Looks like you did some work here.’

‘Two months of it, off and on.’

The Nihonin nodded sagely, pointing out the many tweaks Nicholas had made to the bike. Finally, he squinted up at Nicholas. ‘Name’s Kawa. You find who you’re lookin’ for?’

‘No.’ There was no use denying why he was here. He stood out like an American at a sumo tournament. He looked at Kawa, whose name meant skin. ‘You hang here all the time?’

‘Now and then,’ Kawa said noncommittally. That got a chuckle from some of his companions.

‘You know a woman named Londa? She might have worked nights.’

‘Worked nights, hah!’ Kawa sneered. ‘That pussy. Yeah, she used to live here. Couple months ago, at least, she split. For
high-class
digs, for sure.’

‘You know that?’

‘Sure do.’

‘Know where she’s living now?’

‘Might.’ Kawa turned to his companions, who shrugged or grinned evilly, waffling their hands from side to side. He turned back to Nicholas. ‘You got one mean bike, brother.’ He sucked his lower lip into his mouth, then stuck out his tongue. It, too, was pierced by a ring. ‘Let’s see if it’s just a toy or it’s part of you. If you can ride with us, we’ll take you there, fair enough?’

Their gang name was WarPaint, which was important to them because, as in all Nihonin, it drew them together into a surrogate family. These were the scions of the bureaucrats and businessmen who had forged Japan Inc. in the preceding decades. Their progeny, bored, restless, rich, and so Westernized they’d rather eat a Bigu Maku than sushi, lived their lives at the Hyperspeed of the interactive video games to which they were addicted.