hands raised. Lizard jumps into the pit and tips the trainer’s head over with his foot. Between his eyes is a bloodied joke-shop scab. ‘Nice shot, Father.’ From outside I hear cars screech away.
The bookie swallows hard. ‘If you’re going to kill me, Morino—’
‘Poor Yamada-kun. You backed the wrong dog again. I am going to kill you, but not today. I need you to take a message to your new master. Tell Nagasaki I wish to discuss war reparations he owes me. Tell him I’ll be waiting at midnight sharp. The terminal bridge for the new airport. Out beyond Xanadu on the reclaimed land. You think you can remember all that?’
The Mongolian halts ten paces away. His gun is cradled in his hand. The shots and lights from the reclaimed land seem far, far away. My heart shotguns inside my ribcage. My overalls are scratchy and stinking. My final memories of life are the stupidest things. An unclaimed Haruki Murakami novel I salvaged from lost property, half finished, in my locker at Ueno – what happened to the man stuck down his dry well with no rope? My mother laughing in Uncle Pachinko’s yard garden, trying to play badminton, drunk but happy at least. Regret that I never did my Liverpool pilgrimage. Waking one morning to find a pencil-line of snow over me and Anju’s futon, where it had blown in through a crack during an early fall. Is this junk the stuff of life? I hear my name, but I know it was only my imagination. I fight to keep control of my breathing, and sneeze. I never looked at Leatherjacket before, not properly. Yours is the last face I will ever see. Not how you imagine the face of death to look. Quite plain, mildly curious, taut with an immunity to emotion from the acts its master has made it witness. Do it. It would be too tacky to beg for my life. So what are my last words? ‘I wish you wouldn’t do this.’ How profound. ‘I suggest,’ says Leatherjacket, ‘that you crouch.’
‘Crouch?’ A crouch-style execution. Why?
‘On the ground. A – how do you say? – foetus position.’
Why bother? Dead is dead.
‘You should crouch for your own safety,’ my killer insists.
I mangle a stillborn huff which Leatherjacket interprets as a no.
Leatherjacket primes his gun. ‘Well, I warned you.’
So many stars. What are they for?
Tuna, abalone, yellowtail, salmon roe, bonito, egg tofu, human earlobe. The sushi is piled high. The wasabi is mixed in with the soy to kill any impurities in the raw fish. It clots the soy, sticky blood. I must stop thinking about the bowling alley. I must. We have driven across the night since the dogs, it seems, but the clock here says only 22:14. Little over a hundred minutes to go, I tell myself, but I find it hard to believe in anything good. I am in the grip of a cold that will get much worse before it will get any better. I get some water down my throat; it bloats my stomach. Even breathing is hard. We have the restaurant to ourselves. A family was here, but they shuffled out the moment they saw us. The old waitress stays cool, but the chef stays out back, lying low. I would if I could. Frankenstein lobs a sausage at me. ‘Why the starchfart face, cub scout? Anyone would think you lost your parents.’ Lizard smears wasabi in the soy. ‘Maybe he realized the mastiff I shot back at Goichi’s was his long-lost papa.’ Morino flicks his cigar-tip at me. ‘Grin and bear it! Remember your heritage! You’re a Japanese law-abiding straight! You grin and bear it until your Zimmer frame buckles and your drinking water is mercury oxide, and our whole country is one coast-to-coast parking lot. I’m not knocking Japan. I love it. In most places the muscle is at the beck and call of the masters. In Japan, we, the muscle, are the masters. Japan is our gig. So grin. Bear it.’ I may have to bear it, but no way am I grinning about being dragged into a turf war between wolves with rabies. The only thing I can grin about is that until we leave this restaurant nothing can get worse. Lizard points to a corner of the room. ‘Father!’ Saliva-shiny sushi-cud. ‘See what I spy with my little eye – they got a karaoke machine!’
‘Joy of joys.’ Morino looks at Frankenstein. ‘Let loose the wings of song.’