confused. ‘Whose best dog?’
‘Jun Nagasaki, you, you, you—’
‘Oh, him.’
The trainer is apoplectic. ‘Jun Nagasaki! Jun Nagasaki!’
‘I heard that name too much today. Don’t mention it again.’
‘Jun Nagasaki’ll peel your skin off, you, you, you—’
Morino points his gunBang! The trainer buckles over and lands on his mastiff. Their blood pools. Morino turns to Frankenstein. ‘I warned him. Uncle? I warned him, yeah?’ Frankenstein nods. ‘Nobody can say you never gave a fair warning, Father.’ The crowd is still anchored to the concrete floor. Morino hoicks, aims, and spits on the trainer. ‘Guns, and fairy godmothers. They make your wildest wish come true. Every last pigfucking one of you will leave. Except Yamada here.’ He levels the gun at the bookie on the crate. ‘I want a word in your ear, Yamada. The rest of you – scram!
Go!’ The horn players fire off a round each. The crowd drain away down the aisles and rows, ushered by the pistol-toting horn players – vampires before dawn don’t melt away so fast. The bookie keeps his 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