White Tiger (10 page)

Jerome Manning would soon have two hundred thousand dollars to play with.

But it would be years until he forgot the hostess. If ever.

###

“
Moshi-moshi.
” Ryoko’s voice was smoky and subdued, even though Manning knew she hadn’t gotten out of bed until at least three o’clock that afternoon. She hadn’t even been awake for ten hours.

“Ryoko-chan. Are you alone?”

“
Hai.
I didn’t go out tonight. Where are you?”

“Downstairs.”

“A few moments, please.”

The line went dead. Manning flipped his phone closed and plugged it into the charger in the Friendee’s console. He sat in the idling van and listened to Kaori Natori’s KaoRhythmixx program on 76.1 FM. Overhead, the night skies grew cloudy; rain was in forecast, and the clouds consumed the stars before Manning’s eyes. It was fitting, a perfect mirror of his mood. Both the night and his frame of mind were one: dark, brooding, relentless, and seething.

A car trundled past, rap music blaring
—
Japanese rap music, which almost always made Manning crack up. Tonight it did nothing for him, couldn’t even begin to chip away at the mantle of depression and self-loathing that encased his soul. For the thousandth time, he wondered how he had wound up so far off course, his morality compass spinning like a runaway gyro. He feared for his humanity; at times like this, the reasons he did what he did seemed distant and cold and small, like the love of the dispassionate God he had once prayed to. If there was a road to salvation, he was certain he would be forbidden to travel it. It did not sadden him, but knowing this was what was allotted for him occasionally made him angry. And as time wore on, he found he merely existed on two emotions: anger and depression. No, that wasn’t entirely right; most of the time he was just as hollow as an empty bottle of beer forgotten on a shelf, doing nothing more than gathering dust.

The dome lights snapped on as the passenger door opened, and Manning stirred from his dark reverie, watching as Ryoko Mitake climbed into the Friendee, her face composed, her lovely features accentuated by only the slightest touches of makeup. She was dressed in a black skirt, broad white belt, and a black sweater over a thin white T-shirt that exposed her taut midriff. She took Manning’s hand as she claimed the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. She smiled at him wanly, and it was a beautiful sight. The dome lights dimmed out, leaving them in darkness save for the glow of the dashboard lights and the actinic glare of the nearby streetlight.

“You look stressed,” she said in her near-perfect English. “You were working tonight, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“The karaoke club? It’s on the news.”

Manning hesitated. “Yes.”

Ryoko nodded after a moment and looked out the windshield. Her profile was visible in the soft green light coming from the Friendee’s dash.

“I’ll make you whole again,” she said.

###

Their relationship was both simple and complex. Simple in that Ryoko was a girl Manning had met in Shibuya almost two years ago while shopping for a new laptop. She had been working in the store in which he was shopping, and her excellent English trumped his then-faltering Japanese, and a sale was made. While no stranger to Japan even then, Manning had very few personal contacts; he had managed to capture her interest, even though she was a
kogaryu
, or kogal, that particular subculture in Japan consisting of young women who are predisposed to incessant consumerism. Manning nevertheless found her to be fetching enough to ask her to join him for a cup of coffee. So they met the next day at the famed Hachiko statue in Shibuya, and had a coffee at the Starbucks near the Shibuya train station. They discussed the various facets of American and Japanese lifestyles while watching the
sukuranburu kMsaten
, or “pedestrian scramble” play out across the intersection below, long regarded as the world’s busiest. Counter to kogal stereotype, Manning found that Ryoko was well-educated and quite intelligent, and had no problems working for her money. But she sensed the loneliness in Manning; while she wasn’t averse to working, nor was she averse to accepting handouts. Manning obliged, and he found he had inadvertently stepped into a grown-up version of
enjo kMsai
, the only exception being that Ryoko was already 22 years old. He made it plain to her that he would consider the arrangement on a trial basis, and provided her with a little over $1,000 in spending money.

It was, after all, one way to get laid in Japan. And in a nation where a small cup of coffee cost ten dollars, no method for generating revenue was unthinkable.

But as there was more to his story, there was more to hers as well, which made it all very complex. Not long before meeting Manning, she had been “scouted” by a “movie producer” who was interested in Ryoko’s natural good looks...and trim, breasty body, of which she was rightfully proud. The “movie producer” was of course a pornographer who promised her fame and riches. At the time, Ryoko was intensely interested in both, especially since most of her friends were content to spend their time shopping while sponging off their parents. Ryoko’s family had raised her with an understanding of personal accountability, and while they would most certainly have disagreed with her potential career choice, they would have no problems with her making her own money.

Ryoko took the job, and was reborn in Japan’s adult video industry as Sugimoto Ai. She had finished her first production the day before meeting Manning, and while aspects of it disgusted her, there was a part of the process which interested her deeply
—
namely, the production and distribution of filmed entertainment. And the ¥550,000 she made for seven hours work was something she deemed worthwhile, as well.

She kept this secret from Manning for two weeks, though as a healthy
gaijin
with a stronger-than-average sex drive and a genuine curiosity about all things Japanese, it would be only a matter of time until he found out. Thinking he was truly the consultant he claimed to be, Ryoko agonized over how to break the news to him. When she finally did tell him, he laughed after a moment.

“Believe me, you could be doing a lot worse,” he had told her. Ryoko was happy to discover how open-minded he was. And was even more thrilled when he continued the financial end of their arrangement; apparently, he was happy with her as well.

But she had known there was more to him than he was admitting to her. Patience was one of her better virtues, so she merely waited. And continued to work. And continued to see him.

He finally confessed his other life to her when he returned from a week at his home in San Francisco. But it actually hadn’t been San Francisco at all; it had been first Taiwan, and then Xiamen, across the strait in China. He had been given a contract by his employers, and that meant four men died. They were criminals one and all, foul, dirty men who robbed and cheated and lied and had done killing of their own. It was then that he told her he was a repairman, someone who “fixed” problems for which there was no legal recourse. And his method of fixing required that blood be spilled.

This revelation had, of course, terrified her. She fled, and did not speak to him again for six months.

Over the course of this time, however, two things became very apparent to her. As a girl with no real job skills and currently employed in an industry where she was the merchandise, there was very little chance of her altering the current status quo. As long as she kept her looks and her body and showed up for work, she would be paid well
—
the DVDs she starred in and the picture books she posed for were becoming famous in Japan and even abroad, and she had something of a growing fan base. She toured various nightclubs in Japan and other parts of Asia, and had even been to the UK and Los Angeles and Rome once for a photo shoot. But her attempts to get into more legitimate productions and artistic endeavors continued to fail; she was known as an AV actress, and was considered dirty in Japanese society. The fact of the matter was, she was a lousy performer when it came to acting with her clothes on. That coupled with the expected stigmas rampant in Japanese society meant that more doors would forever remain closed to her than those that would be open, and those open doors merely led to more opportunities to “merchandise” herself.

The worst part was, of course, when her family found out. She was shamed when her father, of all people, brought a contingent of overseas foreign executives working for Matsushita to one of the clubs where she was performing. While he said nothing to her about that night, she could only imagine the blackness that settled around his heart when he watched his daughter perform and expose herself for men. It had hurt her terribly, as she knew it had hurt him. When she was a child, her father had doted on her, but at the same time had done everything he could to raise her up to be a respectable woman, a woman of means. His expectations for her were dated and unexciting, but they were the things most fathers wished for their daughters, and on that night, he knew that they would never be hers.

The despondence he felt only exacerbated the problems between him and Ryoko’s mother, problems they had taken great pains to hide from her. They were beginning the formal process of divorce, and in the end, it proved to be too much for Ryoko’s father. Apparently unable to bear the weight of these things, he committed suicide by walking out in front of a bus. He was killed instantly, his body dragged for dozens of yards before the horrified bus driver could stop.

For Ryoko, those were the blackest of days. She discovered she had endless tolerance for abuse, and could absorb the ravages of alcohol, of drugs, of rough-handed men who only wanted to use her, from low-level Yakuza henchmen to the captains of Japanese industry for whom she prostituted herself at the rate of ¥1,000,000 per night. She descended into a spiritual darkness she had never before known, never taking pleasure from the couplings, never able to maintain any kind of relationship, not able to buy enough things with all her money to fulfill her. But her fate was firmly established; no matter how bleak things got, no matter how utterly decimated she was on the inside, she was unable to summon the courage her father had. Where he had the steel in him to know what to do when life’s punishments far exceeded its rewards, she lacked that strength. So while she was sexing and drinking and drugging, she was also slowly going insane. Trapped in a life where there was no way out.

Until the day she called Manning. She was intending to hire him
—
after all, he was a killer, right?—her only sole desire at that point was to beg him to make the pain stop. To end her miserable existence, and take from her the shame that always threatened to drown her, but never quite did.

“I need to talk with you,” she had said when she called him. Hot tears burned down her lovely face, leaving trails of fire, her misery a black hole that threatened to consume every last bit of sanity, leaving behind only a mindless animal cowering in a beautiful package.

“Please let me come see you,” she had begged.

And of course, he did.

At first, she found him to be cruel, refusing to honor her pleas, even though she had promised him every penny of her $250,000 net worth. He instead gave her $1,000, then took her north, to the island of Hokkaido, where he rented a house in the colorful, rustic wilderness outside of Sapporo. He denied her drugs, denied her alcohol, but provided her with companionship, understanding, and kinship. He never touched her sexually, never abused her, but forced her to confront her shame, as he had done so many years ago. She found strength in discovering his own pain, the pain borne from lost love and betrayals and fallen comrades on distant battlefields when he still considered himself a man of honor.

She was not alone, and that gave her the boost she needed. While she didn’t hold any allusions that she and Manning were kindred spirits, as she groped her way back to reality she could understand they were more alike than not. He could never heal her, nor did he promise to do so; but he did make life bearable for her again, made her strong enough that she could awaken and face each new day without feeling the need to start it off with a scream...or a shot of whiskey or the pinch of the hypodermic.

There were only two spots of trouble. One was when her employers found out where she was and sent a legal representative to order Ryoko to return to work, as she was still under contract. Manning rebuffed him, and the next day two
yakuza
showed up. Manning almost killed one but left the other functioning well enough to take his wounded compatriot to a doctor who would treat their kind without asking too many questions...or notifying the police. After that, other men with faces as hard as the
yakuza
’s would come, but they spoke mostly Chinese and referred to him in only the most respectful of ways. Ryoko came to know that the Chinese addressed him with a special name:
Bái Hu,
the White Tiger.