Number 9 dream Page 0,68

hands, watching me in the mirror. ‘Are you going to answer my question or am I going to get the silent treatment until our prison guard comes along to take me away?’

‘You have a nerve.’

He shakes his hands under the dryer but nothing happens, so he dries them on his T-shirt. Its picture shows a cartoon schoolgirl lowering a smoking gun; her speech bubble reads So that’s what it feels like to kill . . . I like it. ‘I get it. You’re still sulking about the love hotel.’

‘You are going to make one great lawyer.’

‘Thanks for the non-compliment.’ He turns round. ‘Are we going to keep up this period of mourning or are you going to tell me why you are here?’

‘My father brought me.’

‘And your father is whom?’

‘I dunno yet.’

‘That seems rather careless of you.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘To have the shit kicked out of me. You may get to watch.’

‘Why? Did you maroon them in a love hotel?’

‘Pretty funny, Miyake. It’s a long story.’

I look at the door.

‘Okay.’ Daimon perches on the washbasin. ‘Sit on any chair you like.’

There are no chairs. ‘I’ll stand.’

The toilet cistern stops filling and the silence sighs loudly.

‘This is an old-fashioned war of succession tale. Once upon a time there was an ancient despot called Konosuke Tsuru. His empire had its roots way back in the Occupation days, in outdoor markets and siphoned-off cigarettes. You don’t happen to . . . ?’ I shake my head. ‘Half a century later Konosuke Tsuru had progressed to breakfast meetings with cabinet members. His interests span the Tokyo underworld and the Tokyo overlords, from drugs to construction – a handy portfolio in a country whose leaders’ sole remedy for economic slumps is to pour concrete down mountainsides and build suspension bridges to uninhabited islands. But I digress. Konosuke’s right-hand man was Jun Nagasaki. His left hand man was Ryutaro Morino. Emperor Tsuru, Admiral Nagasaki and General Morino. Are you with me so far?’

I give the patronizing slimer a slight nod.

‘On his ninety-somethingth birthday Tsuru receives a massive heart attack and an ambulance ride to Shiba-koen hospital. This is February of this year. A delicate time – Morino and Nagasaki were played off against one another by Tsuru as a check on his underlings. Tradition would demand that Tsuru name a successor, but he is a tough old dog and vows to pull through. Nagasaki decides to usher in his manifest destiny seven days later by staging his Pearl Harbor – not against Morino’s forces, which are on red alert, but on Tsuru’s, which believed themselves to be sacrosanct. Over a hundred key Tsuru men are wiped out in a single night, all within ten minutes. No negotiation, no quarter, no mercy.’ Daimon shoots me with his fingers. ‘Tsuru himself managed to get himself lugged out of hospital – one rumour says he was battered to death with his own golf clubs, another rumour says he got as far as Singapore, where a relapse caught up with him. He’s history. By dawn the throne was Nagasaki’s. Any questions from the floor at this point?’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Easy. My father is a bent cop in the pay of Nagasaki. Next.’

A blunt answer from a slippery liar. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Let me go on. If this was a Yakuza movie, the Tsuru faction survivors would team up with Morino and stage a war of honour. Nagasaki broke the code and must be punished, right? Reality is less exciting. Morino dithers, losing valuable time. The Tsuru survivors work out which way the wind is blowing and surrender to Nagasaki’s offer of amnesty. They are promptly killed, but never mind. By May Nagasaki not only has Tsuru’s Tokyo operations under his thumb, but the Korean and Triad gangs too. By June he is helping to choose the godfather of the Tokyo governor’s grandchild. When Morino sends an ambassador to Nagasaki proposing they divide the kingdom, Nagaski sends the ambassador back minus his arms and legs. By July Nagasaki has the lot, and Morino has sunk to scaring brothel owners for insurance money. Nagasaki is content to watch Morino go extinct, rather than dirty the sole of his boot by stamping on him.’

‘Why does none of this make the newspapers?’

‘You straight citizens of Japan are living in a movie set, Miyake. You are unpaid extras. The politicos are the actors. But the true directors, the Nagasakis and the Tsurus, you never see. A show is run from the wings,