The Kaisho (53 page)

While Leonforte was refilling his glass, he took a look around. Every available horizontal space was covered with stacks of books, mostly medical texts, but also, he saw in other piles, tomes on international law and economics, as well as the dynamics of philosophy from Nietzsche to Kant to Socrates. He wondered if Faith Sawhill did all the reading in this dyad.

Leonforte handed him his glass, sat in an oversize chair, crossing one leg over the other. “What can I do for you? I admit, I was surprised when I got your call. You guys are always asking for favors.” He winked. “I’ve looked the other way plenty of times while your goon squads fleeced the public at large. Long as I get my cut, what do I care what you do?” He put his drink down on an old chest that served as a coffee table. “What’s it this time? Gambling? Whorehouse? Or maybe you want to be enfolded within my benevolent protection so you can make a run at a rival family. These days that kind of shit happens more often than I can count.”

He laughed. “To tell the truth, I like that best. You guys, with your territories, killing each other off. More room for me.”

“I understand your pleasure,” Okami said. “It’s just like back home, isn’t that right, Mr. Leonforte.”

Leonforte hardly missed a beat. If Okami hadn’t been watching for it, he would never have seen the left eye twitch. “Why did you call me that?”

“Did you think I would have come here without doing my homework?”

“There’s homework and then there’s homework.” For the first time Leonforte glanced at Vincent Alba, who stood rather like a forbidding grandfather clock near a print of a Roman battle scene. “I figure people who take the time to do some digging on me I got to watch out for—they could be dangerous.” He picked up his glass again and Okami was aware without having to look at him directly that Alba had subtly changed his stance. “I respond quickly and instinctively to danger, know what I mean, Okami? I don’t fuck around. That way I don’t have to worry about digging a bullet out of my gut.”

“You’ve made yourself all too clear.” Okami deliberately finished off his sambuca. “This really is quite good.”

“Glad you appreciate things Italian,” Leonforte said shortly. “Now tell me what the fuck you want.”

“All right.” Okami put down his glass. “I propose we do a deal. I have a good idea of the commodities you’re trading in”—he held up his hand—“please don’t bother to deny it. I have in my men a distribution network par excellence. My people know every back alley in Tokyo. I know where your commodities will fetch the highest prices—and where it won’t be worth your time going. In short, we could make an excellent team.”

Leonforte produced a hard laugh. “You hear that, Vinnie? He wants I should give a piece of the action to a snot-nosed gook.” He jumped up with such a force that the glasses on the trunk shook. “Who the fuck do you think you are, slant eyes, to come in here, drink my sambuca, and then demand a piece of my action? If I were back home, I’d horsewhip you, but since I’m in a foreign country, I gotta show some restraint, ain’t that so, Vinnie? Oh, yeah.” He pointed to the door. “So get the hell out of here and count yourself a lucky buck.”

“The other man—Vincent Alba—is his bodyguard,” Okami said, “no doubt about it.”

“The two of them sound like quite a pair,” the Colonel said. He dipped his pipe into a leather pouch, stuffed it with tobacco. His fingers curled lovingly around the rough-sided bowl; the pipe was a kind of talisman. It had even saved his life and the lives of his unit in Singapore in early 1945. Because he was looking for it, he had held his men from advancing into an open area where, a moment later, an enemy bombardment began. “With those epithets he’s using I have no doubt he’s in need of one.”

The two men sat in the cramped back room of a late-night bar off the Ginza. It was a perfectly legitimate place and therefore safe for them to meet. They did so, however, only at night and entered and exited the place through the service entrance off a grimy, deserted alley. The owner himself served them; the Colonel had saved this establishment after a notorious black marketeer was caught here and the MPs threatened to close it down. The Colonel, always the futurist, saw in this place just what it had become—a safe house for him, where he could operate securely.

“I need to do something about the inroads he’s making by recruiting from the Yakuza ranks,” Okami said. “The fact that he almost threw me bodily out of the apartment when I offered him a deal makes me suspicious.”

“Indeed,” the Colonel said. “He’s certainly not stupid. I would say on the face of it he’s already got a deal.”

Okami contemplated the Colonel for a long time. The sounds of glasses clinking, low voices, and once, a bright spray of drunken laughter drifted in to them. The owner entered and, without a word, replaced their empty beer mugs with full ones.

At last, Okami said, “If that is the case, we both have a serious problem on our hands. For you, it means that Leonforte is just about untouchable. For me, it means that my world has suddenly gone out of control. Leonforte has a deal with another
oyabun
and I should have known about it by now. That I don’t means there is a Yakuza boss making secret deals with foreigners.”

“Like you.”

The Colonel’s response was not a rebuke, merely a reminder that one’s power was never absolute, even though as it grew, it conveyed the illusion that it was.

The Colonel turned his head slightly, the ghost of a smile appearing and disappearing in the lamplight. “Something has happened, Okami-san. We’ve touched a nerve somewhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was called into Willoughby’s office today,” the Colonel said. Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby was, along with the Colonel himself, one of Mac Arthur’s most influential aides. He was also head of G-2, the intelligence section of the Occupation, and a constant thorn in the Colonel’s side. “I got what amounted to a dressing down.”

Okami kept a keen eye on the Colonel. He seemed relaxed, almost contemplative; Okami took that as an excellent sign.

“Apparently Willoughby’s people have gotten wind of the ad hoc investigation I’ve been doing. Thank God he’s still got no idea of your involvement.”

“I’ve been exceedingly careful.”

For the past three months Okami and the Colonel had been looking into why certain key officers in the former Imperial Army and Navy of Japan had not appeared on the rolls of the war crimes tribunals. Okami himself had identified these officers to the Colonel as people whose excessive zeal and power had led them to commit acts of calculated brutality that now required the most extreme punishment.

The Colonel had submitted the names of these officers to the adjutant general’s office, along with documentation Okami had amassed on them, but to date he had received no satisfactory answer to his numerous queries. Clearly, someone was stonewalling.

“Willoughby wondered aloud why with all I had on my plate I was taking time to go off on what he characterized as a wild-goose chase. Do you know what that is?—a useless search. ‘If you’re bored with your job,’ he told me, ‘I’ll be more than happy to write you a letter of recommendation for any other that would fit your requirements.’” The Colonel’s blue eyes were frosty. “I marked how careful he was being. At no time did he mention the subject of my investigation or any interest he himself may have had in it.”

The Colonel tapped the cold dottle out of his pipe, began to fill it up again. “I began to wonder how I’d managed to step on Willoughby’s toes while looking for your war criminals.” He struck a match. “Of course, it would take someone of extraordinary muscle to pull the jackets on these officers and hustle them away from the adjutant general’s office.” He stuck the pipe in his mouth, began to draw the aromatic tobacco through it. When he had it going to his satisfaction, he said, “After the meeting, I had copies of the documentary evidence you had provided sent to him by messenger. I ordered the messenger to make certain that Willoughby himself signed for the sealed package. I now have his signature.”

“Willoughby will do nothing with the information,” Okami said.

“Then I will have my answer. I’ll know he’s taken these men into custody for some security reason of his own. There needn’t be anything sinister to it. Perhaps they are privy to sensitive intelligence MacArthur doesn’t want transcribed during an open tribunal.”

“Justice must be done.” Okami’s expression was set in stone. “I
will
have my vengeance, Linnear-san, that was an essential part of our alliance.”

“I understand completely.”

But later that night, on his way across war-torn Tokyo, Okami had his doubts. It could be that the Colonel and Willoughby were cut from the same cloth. They were both Western, after all, and who could trust Westerners? Okami shook his head. That was a dangerous path; he knew part of him was still thinking as the other
oyabun
did.

Sometimes, as now, Okami felt positively schizophrenic. He knew in his heart what had to be done. This was a new world—the war in the Pacific had seen to that. If the war had taught him anything, it was that Japan could no longer depend solely on itself in the coming decades. It had come down on the wrong foot in the war—had destroyed itself and ravaged its people—because of its history of isolationism.
It was our lack of understanding of Westerners
—
especially the Americans
—
that defeated us,
he thought.
We underestimated their strength, discounted their resilience, and misunderstood their resolve. We cannot afford to do that again.

His own resolve to see his businesses flourish in the decades to come was what had prompted him to form his alliance with the Colonel. And the fact was, he liked the man. And this attraction was strange to him, for he, like a vast majority of his fellow Japanese in those days, felt a profound disconnection from the other societies of the world outside Asia.

Strange to him, the Japanese, to find in the Colonel an understanding of Shintoism, Zen, Confucianism, and the legion of martial metaphysics that together made up the ethos of Japan. Extraordinary, he thought now as he stared out into the sodium glare of nighttime Tokyo.

No, he decided, he trusted the Colonel implicitly. But he was disturbed that the Colonel was willing to give Willoughby the benefit of the doubt. But, to be fair, in his position, it was easier for Okami to smell a conspiracy than it was for the Colonel. Okami had already learned from bitter experience that one was the last to become aware of disorder in one’s own house.

Okami had come of age during that time seven years ago when his father had been betrayed by his own brother, who had sold out to another family that coveted the lucrative Okami territory in the heart of Tokyo’s business districts. Okami’s father had been slain by members of this rival family as he lay alone in his bed, Okami’s mother having left that day to visit her ailing mother outside Hiroshima. Acting on detailed information provided by Okami’s uncle, these men had slipped into the house, bypassing guards, to plunge their swords into Okami’s father’s abdomen.

At the funeral, Okami had stood between his mother and his uncle, knowing nothing but sorrow. Two weeks later, while drinking in a late-night bar with his girlfriend, he had overheard a drunken conversation among a large group of young Yakuza
kobun.
Two happened to be the ones who had slain his father, and they were recounting to the delight of their compatriots how they were able to slip into and out of the house unseen.

The next morning, Okami took his father’s
katana,
secreted it beneath a long raincoat he wore. He went to his uncle’s place of business and asked to see him. After fifteen minutes or so he was ushered in. His uncle, imagining himself by his perfidy amassing money and prestige by the minute, smiled broadly as he introduced his nephew to those Yakuza toughs around him. His uncle, always flamboyant, enjoyed having an entourage. His mind was mired in his country’s feudal past, when elite warriors ruled the land and commanded lesser mortals.

As was the custom, Okami bowed to these men, who stood while Okami’s uncle sat behind his massive wood desk, extending his right hand, palm up. When he straightened up, his uncle asked him why he had come.

Okami promptly took a step forward. As he did so, his unbuttoned raincoat parted, and as he leapt upon his uncle’s desk, he drew his father’s sword. Before any of the startled bodyguards could react, he raised the
katana
above his head and, with all his might, slashed it obliquely downward, neatly severing his uncle’s head from his neck.

A fountain of blood exploded upward, catching two of the bodyguards as they began to react. Okami’s uncle’s headless body jerked galvanically. The head lay upside down on the bloody desk, its eyes open wide in disbelief, its quizzical expression frozen as if on a well-crafted mask.

Okami slammed the butt of his
katana
into the nose of one bodyguard, then whirled, his blade carving into the shoulder of another. A gun fell to the floor as the man howled in pain and, collapsing, tried vainly to stanch the flow of blood.

There were two others. Swords were out. There was no question now of using a gun; the man who did so would lose so much face by dispatching Okami without honor that he would no longer be considered Yakuza. Cast summarily out of this curious tightly knit band of outsiders, he would have nowhere to go; he would have lost the only world that would accept him.

Okami feinted right, went left, leaping off the desk. He drew his legs up beneath him, slashed right as he hurtled past the third bodyguard. His sword blade tracked across the man’s chest, curling open fabric, skin, and muscle. The man dropped his
katana
from nerveless hands.

Okami felt a quick numbness as he landed, and turning back toward the fourth man, the searing pain came and he knew he had been wounded. He clamped down on the pain, blocked a second blow from the man, and kicking out into his knee, used the break to get inside the man’s defenses. He smashed the butt of his sword into the man’s right ear, then lunged forward, felt the tip of the blade slide in and out of flesh. The fourth bodyguard crumpled headfirst to the floor.