“Too much competition in Japan. In terms of manpower, the Mafia is like the Mickey Mouse Club compared to the yakuza. They've got over a dozen major families. Sixty thousand made members, forty-something-thousand associates. Their biggest family is bigger than all the American Mafia families combined. And Japan has only half the population we have. To survive, these guys have to spread out.”
Tozzi was great with facts and figures when he wanted something. It wasn't going to work this time, though. “Ivers isn't going to buy this. He'll say the chicken factory is an isolated case. Yakuza, slaveryâit's too farfetched for him.” Gibbons tried tilting his head back a little to relieve the pain. That seemed to help.
“Yeah, but when you think about it, Gib, slavery is a natural for this area. The yakuza have been into slavery for a long time. It's not that uncommon in the East. But America is a virgin market for that product. It only makes sense that they'd try to bring it here. Even Ivers can follow that logic.”
“Don't count on it. Even if I did think this was a yakuza-Mafia operation, my word doesn't count for a whole lot with him.” He rolled his eyes toward his partner. “And yours is worth shit. Just tell him and let them raid the chicken factory. Maybe some of those guys can help us find the other slaves.”
“No, they don't know anything.” Tozzi looked disgusted with him. “We can't tell Ivers yet.”
“Then when? Tell me. When?” he shouted. Goddamn, that hurt. Maybe he could just take half a pill.
“When we know more about the slave business, that's when. How big it is, who this guy Nagai is, who's buying the slavesâ”
“And how the hell are we gonna investigate all that without Ivers wondering what the hell we're doing?”
“I'll do all the legwork. You just run interference for me with Ivers.”
Gibbons grit his teeth. Jesus Christ Almighty. Tozzi was pounding those nails in a little farther. He tried not to wince, though. He didn't want Tozzi to see how much pain he really was in. “This is how you got into trouble the last time, asshole. You thought you knew better than the whole Bureau, so you went renegade. And this is the same reasoning you used to get me to help you last time. You remember?”
Tozzi pulled that defensive guinea look of his. “I don't need the history lesson, Gib. All I'm asking is that we sit on the information for a little while until we can come up with some concrete evidence that Ivers can't ignore. Something that'll prove to him that this is a very big operation that can't be shut down with a one-shot raid.”
Gibbons squeezed his eyes shut and rotated his head ever so slightly. It hurt like a bastard. “All right, all right. We'll sit on this for a little while, but unless you come up with something by the middle of next week, we go to Ivers. Okay?” He didn't feel like arguing right now.
“You all right? You don't look good.”
Fuck you. “I'm fine. I'm okay.” He lowered himself back down into the lounge chair beside the bed and rested his head against the high back. That seemed to hold the pain down to a dull ache. Tozzi was looking at him with that same wet-eyed long face of concern that Lorraine had been wearing lately. He wished to hell they'd both shape up. He wasn't a cripple, for chrissake.
“Did I tell you about the letter?” Tozzi said.
“What letter?”
“A tipster sent a letter to the field office, unsigned of course. He knew all about the two kids in the VW. According to the letter, the guy who did it is a Japanese named Gozo Mashiro. There was a complete description of him, the kind of car he drives, and a couple
of places where he hangs out. Ivers sent McFadden and Brenner out to locate him. This Mashiro was the one the slave told me about that night at the chicken factory, the one they're all so afraid of. According to that slave, he's also the one who beat you up.”
“Gogo” Mashiro. Sounds like a guinea legbreaker, almost. The goddamn son of a bitch. “Anybody run a check on him?”
“Yeah. There was nothing in our files on him, so Ivers put in a request to the Japanese National Police Agency for information on him. He told me not to expect much because the Japanese usually aren't very generous about sharing information, but this time the telex was like a slot machine that hit the jackpot. It turns out that Mashiro has been on their most wanted list over there for about eight years now.”
“Yeah? For what?” Gibbons was beginning to taste revenge. No one had ever kicked his ass this badly.
“The report said Mashiro was a middle-management executive for Toyota, a bachelor, good worker but nothing outstanding about him. In October of eighty-one, he was passed over for a promotion. The next day he shows up for work with a samurai sword and goes berserk. Killed his boss and the personnel director, then wounded eight others. Hacked off one lady's arm just above the elbow. He was last seen running off into the woods behind the Toyota offices in Nagoya. When the police started investigating, they found out that he had spent several years at theâ” Tozzi went into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small green notepadâ“the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu. You got that?”
Gibbons shrugged and regretted it as soon as he did it. The fucking nails again. Jap bastard.
“This is a school just outside Tokyo that still teaches the old samurai fighting arts, including classical sword technique. The school has been in operation since the fifteenth century.”
“Is this where they train their killers over there?”
“No, it's all very spiritual now, sort of like going into the priesthood. But apparently no one ever explained that to Mashiro.”
“How about that? I was beat up by a trained samurai. Better than being taken out by some ordinary little punk, I suppose.” Gibbons imagined sticking Excalibur down the bastard's throat and seeing what the fuck he'd do then.
“That's not all, though. Mashiro has also studied several of the
martial arts, including Shuri-te, which I found out is the hardest of the hard-ass schools of karate. When he went off his rocker, he was a fifth-degree black belt.”
“Oh, I feel better already.”
Bastard!
“The interesting thing is that when Mashiro disappeared, he had no yakuza connections. The National Police think he might've hooked up with a gang while he was on the run, and they've been helping him hide out all this time.”
“Sounds like a convenient excuse for not catching him.” I'll catch him.
“Well, they claim that any yakuza boss would love to have a guy like Mashiro in his gang. Sort of like a Mafia capo here recruiting Andre the Giant into his crew.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
Gibbons almost shrugged again, but he caught himself this time.
“I wish there was some way I could telex the NPA in Japan without Ivers finding out and ask them about the Fugukai and this guy Nagai.” Tozzi scratched his neck under his chin which immediately gave Gibbons an itch in the same place. Goddamn him.
He started to shake his head, but that hurt, too. “Forget about that. International requests have to go through headquarters. You're out of luck. Unless you're ready to tell Ivers about crawling through D'Urso's flower beds and breaking into that trailer.”
“Hmmm. That's what I figured. Damn.” He kept scratching his neck, the bastard.
Tozzi got quiet then. He was trying to figure out how to circumvent the system and telex Japan without anyone in the Bureau knowing about it. Stubborn son of a bitch. Gibbons kept thinking about Mashiro, reconstructing the scene in the chicken factory. He replayed the whole thing in his head, trying to figure out what he'd do differently. He'd
kill
the son of a bitch, that's what he'd do differently. Put a fucking bullet in his head. Splatter his brains all over the goddamnâ
Gibbons caught himself then. Vendetta, revenge, getting even. He was thinking like Tozzi now, for chrissake. He sighed and looked down at his suitcase on the floor. Where the hell was that goddamn doctor? He wanted to get out of here.
“Mr. Gibbons. How are you feeling?”
Gibbons knew that chesty contralto all to well. He rolled his eyes toward the doorway. There she was. The two-ton buttercup.
“I feel like a bag of shit, Fay. How're you?”
Fay had long blond Alice-in-Wonderland hair and tits like bowling balls. She was the first person he saw when he woke up from the coma, and his first thought was what the hell kind of material is that nurse's uniform made of that it can take that much stress without splitting. She steamed into the room, stopped dead, bounced her fists onto her hips, and glared at Tozzi sitting on the bed.
“Are you a patient, sir?”
“No.”
“Then please get off the bed.”
“It's already messed up,” Tozzi said.
“Hospital policy, sir. Only admitted patients belong in the beds. Our insurance doesn't cover visitors falling out of hospital beds. Please take a chair.” After Tozzi got up, she turned back to him and switched her lipstick smile back on again. Fifty nurses work this floor, a few of them real knockouts. Gibbons couldn't figure out why the brutal-looking ones always liked him.
“Did you take your pills after lunch, Mr. Gibbons?”
“Yes.” It took three flushes to get the damn things to go down the toilet.
“Good. Here's your prescription.” She handed him a little brown plastic bottle. The dopey painkillers.
“Where's the doctor? I thought he was supposed to see me off.”
“Dr. Lipscomb was called away, but don't worry. He's already signed your discharge papers.” That big red smile hovered over him like a pterodactyl.
He smiled back, with his teeth.
“Now you can take the painkillers whenever you're in discomfort, but don't take more than four a day and at least four hours apart. Okay?”
“Right.”
“And also, you shouldn't drive while you're taking these. Or operate any heavy machinery.”
“Right.” Excalibur only weighs about two pounds.
“Now let's see here.” She flipped through papers on her clipboard. “Billing has all your Blue Cross/Blue Shield information. Good. So all you have to do is sign here . . . and here, and you'll be all set.”
Gibbons took the ballpoint from her chubby, ruby-nailed fingers, scribbled his name next to the two x's, and gave back the clipboard.
“Good. Now I want you to rest. Lie down as much as you can, take it easy, and keep that brace on whenever you're standing or sitting up. The best thing to do would be to just stay in bed and prop yourself up nicely with pillows. Always give your poor neck as much support as possible. We don't want to see you back in here now, do we?” She oozed like a melting hot fudge sundae. “An orderly will be right in to see you out. Bye-bye now.” She twiddled her fingers like Oliver Hardy and steamed back out the door.
“An orderly? For what?”
“To take you downstairs in a wheelchair,” Tozzi said. “It's an insurance thing. So you don't fall down and break your neck while you're still in the building.”
“Fuck that. Come on, let's go.” Gibbons started to haul himself out of the chair.
“So, ah . . . where we going?” Tozzi wasn't making any moves to go.
“Home. Where the hell else am I going to go?”
“Oh . . .” Tozzi started nodding at nothing. “Okay. I just thoughtâ”
“You thought what?”
“Well, I was talking to Lorraine last night and she was kind of hoping you'd go down to her place for a couple of days at least. You know, to recuperate. I could drive you down right now. I've got the time.”
“Recuperate, huh? Is that what she said? Retire is what she means.”
“No, that's notâ”
“You know, you burn me up, the two of you. A concussion and a few bruised vertebrae and all of a sudden I'm scrap metal. Every time she's come in here, she's had that face, that oh-you-poor-old-dog face. And she's always hinting around that maybe I should go back into retirement. Now she's got you working for her cause. Well, if you think I'm through, Tozzi, fuck you, too.”
“Hey, I'm not telling you to retire. But I think you should take Lorraine into consideration for a change. She loves you, you stupid asshole. She's worried about you. Just spend the weekend down there. Make her happy.”
“She's turning into an old lady with all this worrying shit. But if she thinks she's gonna make an old man out of me, she better think again.”
“Okay, granted, she's been kind of a pain in the ass about this, but she's also been worried sick about you. She knows what a pig head you are. She knows you're not gonna take care of yourself. She just wants you to get better, that's all.”
“I am better, right now, and I'm going back to work. Tomorrow.”
“Don't be stupid. Take it easy for a few days.”
“The discussion is over. I don't want to talk about it anymore. Case closed.” Gibbons bent down to get his suitcase and felt those nails again.