me down. This insane risk has paid off. I open the document wallet and groan. A single photograph falls to the floor and lands blank side up. A message is ball-penned. There is an Arabic proverb: “Take whatever you want,” says God, “and pay for it.” Pluto pachinko, Xanadu, now. I turn the picture over. Two certainties. One: the woman is Akiko Kato. Two: from the angle of his jaw to the slope of his eyebrows, the man in the driving seat is my father. Without a doubt.
Pluto pachinko is so thick with sweat, smoke and sheer din you could swim up to the mirror-balls on the disco ceiling. I would swap a lung for a cigarette right now instead of waiting fifty years – but I am afraid if I delay for one moment I will miss Morino and Plan F, the best so far, will drive off with him. Never mind, just by breathing in here I can absorb enough nicotine to calm a rhino. Customers cram the aisles, waiting for a free seat. My eldest uncle – owner of the only pachinko parlour on Yakushima – told me that new places rig several of the machines to pay out more generously, so they can muscle in on the marketplace. The clatter and glitter of cascading silver balls hypnotize the ranks of drones and she-drones. I wonder how many babies are slowly cooking to death in the bowels of Xanadu’s carpark. I start a second lap, searching for a staff-only door. Time is ticking. I find a girl in a Pluto uniform. ‘Hey! Where’s Dad’s office!’
She is cowed. ‘Whose office, sir?’
I scowl. ‘The manager!’
‘Oh – Mr Ozaki?’
I roll my eyeballs. ‘Who else?’
She takes me behind the helpdesk, punches in a code on a combination door, and holds it open. ‘Up these stairs, sir. I’d show you up myself, but I’m not supposed to leave the shopfloor.’
‘I should hope not.’ I close the door. A complex lock springs closed. Steep stairs leading to one door. Underwater quiet. I climb the stairs, and then nearly lose my footing when I notice Leatherjacket calmly watching me from the top step. ‘Uh, hello,’ I say. Leatherjacket looks at me and chews gum. He is cradling a gun. The first real gun I have ever seen. I point at the door. ‘Can I go in?’ Leatherjacket chews, and tilts his head a fraction. I knock twice and open the door.
I open the door and a man flies through the air, and through a mirror on the far side of the room. The mirror breaks into applause – the man drops out of view, to the drone-packed parlour below. The scene lurches. I gape – did I do that? Unabated pachinko din floods the office. Morino watches me from behind the desk with a finger on his lip and one ear cupped. I just have time to register the three horn players – they did the hurling – and Mama-san knitting before the chain reaction from below breaks out. Chaos, screaming, shouting. Morino rests his elbows on the desk. Contentment suffuses his face. A jag of mirror falls from the frame. From outside Leatherjacket closes the door behind me. The cyclone subsides as the stampede rushes out. Lizard and Frankenstein peer throught the frame to inspect the damage. Morino sort of smiles with his eyelids. ‘Fine timing, Miyake. You witnessed my declaration of war. Sit down.’
I am trembling. ‘The man . . .’
‘What man?’
‘The man they threw out through the window.’
Morino inspects a wooden box. ‘Ozaki? What about him?’
‘Won’t he need’ – I swallow – ‘an ambulance?’
Morino unclips the box. Cigars. ‘I expect so.’
‘Aren’t you going to call one?’
‘Excellent! A Monte Cristo. Call an ambulance? If Ozaki wanted an ambulance called, he should have thought through the consequences of pissing on the shoes of Ryutaro Morino.’
‘The police will be here.’
Morino slides the cigar under his nose.
‘Policemen?’ Frankenstein watches the chaos flood out of Pluto pachinko. ‘Policemen live in your world. We police our world ourselves.’ He nods at Lizard and they leave. I am still sick to my core with the presence of violence. Mama-san’s knitting needles click. The horn players are on pause.
Finally Morino unwraps the cigar. ‘What do you know about cigars? Nothing. So listen. Learn. The Monte Cristo is to cigars what Tiffany’s showroom is to diamond tiaras. Famous perfection. Pure Cuban – filler, wrapper, binder. For a rat’s penis like Ozaki to even look at a Monte Cristo is blasphemy.