My nose streams uncontrollably, and my neck feels clamped in some sort of truss. Maybe some code of honour binds the two factions to non-violence. Or, please no, maybe this is a suicide mission. I tell myself if Morino was the kamikaze type he wouldn’t have made it to his age, or even his body weight, but I no longer know what to think. Nobody says much. Morino calls Mama-san, at Queen of Spades, I guess. ‘Is Miriam at work yet? I called her place. Tell her to call my mobile the moment she gets in.’ Lizard and Frankenstein smoke their Camels, Morino his cigar. I am too ill to want to smoke. Popsicle whimpers in her narcotic sleep. The sea is calm enough to walk on and the sky is stars, acre after acre. The full moon is a thirty watt bulb no more than several inches away. Morino makes another call, but nobody answers. ‘Suicides tend to check themselves out when the moon is full, a nurse once told me. Suicides, and, for some reason, horses.’ Finally we slow to a halt, parked at a strategic angle to the horn players’ Cadillac, I guess. I get out. My cramped muscles hurt. Yet another building site. Tokyo suburbs are demolition dumps or building sites. The giant terminus building is still a giant foundation. Flat as a pool table, the reclaimed land extends all the way to the mountains. A bridge, with the central section missing, rises on either side of where we stand. I can hear the lazy sea a short distance over the embankment. ‘Say, Miyake.’ His lighter flame dances. ‘You can monkey up that bridge.’ I wonder what the catch is. ‘Nagasaki is the opposition, and you don’t fit the image. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m recruiting from kindergarten.’ Lizard snickers.
‘Will you give me the document wallet?’
‘You are boring me! Not until after fucking midnight! Go!’
I walk several paces, when Leatherjacket, standing on a mound of boulders, whistles. I thought it was to me but it wasn’t. ‘Our friends are coming. Nine vehicles.’
‘Nine.’ Frankenstein shrugs. ‘I had hoped for more, but nine is not bad.’
I begin running up the slope. The bridge is the nearest thing to a safe haven. On the other hand, it is a perfect cell to keep me in. I get within a few metres of the top. I guess I am thirty metres up – high enough for vertigo to clamp my lungs and make my balls retract. I peer over the parapet and watch Nagasaki’s cars draw up. They park semicircling Morino’s two Cadillacs and flick their beams on full. They kill their engines. Four men in each vehicle file out, each with combat jackets, helmets and an automatic rifle, and take up firing positions. Not for the first time today, I feel I have strayed into an action movie. Morino and his men put on sunglasses. No guns, no night vision. Morino holds his megaphone in one hand and keeps the other in his pocket. Thirty-six heavily armed men to seven. A man in a white suit climbs out at leisure, flanked by two bodyguards. I wait for the order to fire. No document wallet. It was all for nothing. Morino’s voice reverbs over the reclaimed land as if his megaphone is a pinhole for the night to talk through. ‘Jun Nagasaki. Do you have any final requests?’
‘I stand here frankly amazed, Morino. Have you really sunk so low so quickly? Rumours of your demise appear to be under-exaggerated. Five tired goons, one ex-arms dealer – I shall kill you myself, Suhbataar, so painfully that even you will be impressed – and an unarmed catamite hiding up a bridge.’ So much for my safe haven. ‘This is your comeback squad? Do you have an aircraft carrier waiting offshore? Are you hoping to kill me by sheer anticlimax?’
‘I summoned you here to deliver my verdict.’
‘Are you a tertiary syphilitic? Are you Ultraman?’
‘I’ll allow you to apologize with honour. You may kill yourself.’
‘This is beyond stupid, Morino, this is rude. Let me get this right. You seriously fuck up my opening day at Xanadu. Persuading the press that Ozaki fell by accident has been a logistical hernia. You hurl bowls at my three managers until their skulls are eggshell – original, I grant you, but annoying in the extreme – then you kill two innocent bouncers the old-fashioned way and shoot my finest dog. My dog, Morino, is what really hurts.