relax.’ The doors open on to a gleaming white reception area decked with lilies. Perfumed antiseptic. Pin-striped sofas, slab-of-glass tables, a tapestry of swans on a lost river. The walls curve into the ceiling – whorled and delicate, bones inside an ear. Celtic harp music accompanies the aircon hush. Ms Sarashina jabs the intercom on her desk – ‘Dr Tsukiyama? Congratulations, it’s a boy!’ She shows me her perfect teeth. ‘Shall I send him in?’ I hear his voice crackle. Mari Sarashina laughs. ‘Fine, Doctor. Coming up.’ She sits down in front of her computer and gestures towards the steel door. ‘Go on, Eiji. Your father is waiting.’ I move, but real time is on ‘Pause’. ‘Thanks,’ I tell her. She makes a ‘don’t mention it’ face. One door away now – go! I turn the handle – the room beyond is airtight. The steel door opens with a kissing sound.
My arms are swung behind my back, my body is rammed against the wall, my feet are kicked away, and the cold floor slams into my ribs. One set of hands frisk me while another set holds my arms way past the angle they were designed to bend – the pain is record-breaking. Yakuza again. If I did have a concealed knife I would stick it into myself for being so stupid. Again. I consider volunteering to give up the Kozue Yamaya disk until a foot in the small of my back knocks the thought from my head. I am flipped over, and hauled to my feet. At first, I think I am standing on the set of a medical drama. A trolley of surgical equipment, a drugs cabinet, an operating table. The edges are shadowy, with ten or eleven men whose faces I cannot make out. I smell sausages. A man is filming me with a handycam, and on a large overhead screen I see myself. Two men with the bodies of Olympic shotputters are holding an arm each. The handycam zooms in, and captures my face from various angles. ‘Light!’ comes an old man’s voice, and whiteness fills my eyeballs. I am dragged forward a few paces, and sat down. When I can see again I find myself at a card table. Here is Mama-san and three men. Near enough to touch is a smoked glass screen taking up most of the wall. An intercom clicks on, and the voice of god fills the room. ‘This lamentable specimen is him?’
Mama-san looks at the smoked glass. ‘This is him.’
‘I had no idea,’ says God, ‘Morino had fallen on such hard times.’
Now I really know I am in trouble. ‘The man on the telephone?’ I ask her.
‘An actor. To save us the trouble of sending someone to get you.’
I try to rub life back into my arms, and glance at the three man also sat at the card table. From their postures and faces, I can tell that they are also here against their will. A sweat-shiny fat-as-a-donut asthmatic, a man who keeps twitching as if his face is under attack, and an older guy who was once handsome but who has had scars gouged upwards from the corner of his mouth which fix his face in a mockery of a smile. Mr Donut, Twitcher and Smiley all fix their eyes on the table.
‘We are gathered here today,’ says God, ‘for you to pay your debts to me.’
I cannot address a disembodied voice so I address Mama-san. ‘What debts?’
God replies first. ‘Major damage to Pluto Pachinko. Compensation for loss of trading time on the opening day. Two cadillacs. Lost insurance premiums, cleaning bills and general indemnities. Fifty-four million yen.’
‘But Morino caused that damage.’
‘And you,’ says Mama-san, ‘are the last living disciple of his faction.’
I want to be sick. ‘You know I was no disciple.’
God rattles his speakers. ‘We have your contract! Signed in your mixed blood! What more binding an ink is there?’
I look at the smoked glass. ‘How about her?’ I point at Mamasan. ‘She was Morino’s accountant.’
Mama-san is nearly smiling. ‘Child, I was a spy. Now shut up and listen or one of these bad, evil men will take a scalpel and slice your tongue in two.’
I shut up and listen.
‘Mr Tsuru has selected you, his most hopeless debtors, to play a card game. A simple card game, with three winners and one loser. The winners will leave this chamber free men, owing not a penny. The loser will donate organs to needy patients. A lung,’ she stares