A Dog in Water (12 page)

“That’s it.”

Yano pulled over. The building sunk in the dark Izumi had indicated looked like a factory. It stood in a corner of an industrial zone fanning out around a gas pipeline that spanned the Tama River. A variety of factories lined the streets, from major producers to low-end outsourcing destinations.

“The place used to be an ironworks run by Kanemitsu’s dad. He’s been living here alone for four or five years.”

The detective nodded at Izumi’s words, opened the car door and got out.

“Hey, wait,” Izumi held the door open when the detective tried to close it. “I dunno what Kanemitsu or Yoichi are up to, but it’s got nothin’ to do with me. Can I go home now?” The bleeding had stopped, but his mouth was purple and swollen.

“If you haven’t lied to me, you’ll get home in one piece.” The detective closed the car door and walked towards the ironworks.

“Hey, the hell is his problem? Is he crazy or somethin’?” Izumi threw out as he stretched out along the back seat.

“Shut the fuck up,” Yano said.

Izumi closed his mouth and eyes.

The nighttime industrial district was devoid of cars, deserted and silent. The only sound was the echo of the detective’s footsteps. A rusted metal plate hung on the wall next to the entrance to the ironworks. It was just possible to make out the letters: Kanemitsu Works. The entrance was open.

The detective surveyed the area as he stepped inside the premises. Not a single light was on, and over half the building melted away into the darkness. There were no parked cars and the ground was riddled with weeds. The front of the building held several bays, apparently for oversized vehicles, but all the shutters were drawn. The detective walked around to the side of the building.

The tall wall blocked out the light from the streetlamps, forcing him to go by moonlight alone. After walking for a bit he found a door that seemed to serve as an entrance. He pressed the button on the intercom. Somewhere inside he could hear a buzzer ringing faintly. So it wasn’t broken.

He pulled out an envelope jutting out from the mailbox. It was an advertising mailer, recently addressed to Yasuharu Kanemitsu. The detective tried the buzzer again. No response.

He tried to turn the doorknob but it was locked. He pulled out a flashlight about the size of two AA batteries end-to-end and shone it on the doorknob. It was a standard cylinder lock of domestic make.

The detective retrieved his case of picks from his coat pocket. He applied torque with a double tension wrench with his left hand and inserted a pick into the keyhole with his right. He knew the fundamentals of lockpicking but didn’t have much practical experience. After about two minutes of working the pick to and fro the lock released with a click. He grasped the knob. It turned and the door swung open.

The detective quietly entered the building, closed the door behind him and locked it. Illuminating his surroundings with his faint light source, he weaved his way between the rows of silent machinery.

Dust motes danced up through the beam of his flashlight with
every step he took. The air smelled moldy. There was no doubt this factory had been long abandoned. He noticed a door that looked like it belonged to an office and drew closer.

He pressed his ear to the door, trying to suss out the interior. It was utterly silent. He opened the door noiselessly and stepped in. The characteristic scent of a young male’s living quarters replaced the smell of moldy air. The room was roughly three hundred square feet in size, and several steel desks were lined up in the center. A sofa set sat in the back and steel lockers lined the wall. The room was furnished like a textbook example of a factory office. Plates were stacked high in the sink of the kitchenette.

A piece of discarded clothing strewn on a chair caught the detective’s eye. He picked up a shirt with a check pattern. He pulled out the photo Miyuki Yoshino had given him and compared the two. It was the same shirt worn by Yoichi Yoshino in the picture, where he was smiling with Miyuki.

Yoichi had definitely been here. The problem was why, after working an upstanding job for a period after his release, he ended up—not even with his former drug-running organization—but with the addict Kanemitsu.

The detective kept searching the room. On one steel desk sat a length of rope, duct tape and a resin hockey mask. He opened the drawer of the desk to find a cardboard box announcing Federal 9mm handgun ammunition. He lifted out the fifty-round pack, rather surprised by its heft.

He opened the box and pulled out the styrofoam tray. It was lined tight with 9mm Luger rounds.

He heard a faint noise.

Switching off the flashlight, he crouched in the desk’s shadow. He took out his revolver and listened for a presence.

He could hear a feeble whine. He turned the flashlight towards the sound.

The ring of light revealed a cowering child.

“Hey, when can I go home?” Izumi asked, still sprawled across the back seat.

“Leave if you want,” Yano replied without bothering to turn around.

“Huh?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“R-Really? Can I really go? You’re not planning anythin’ funny, are ya?”

“Christ, you’re annoying. Either lie there and shut up, or shut up and leave. Pick one.”

“…”

Izumi opened the door slowly, trying not to make any noise, and timidly stepped out of the BMW. He checked to make sure Yano wasn’t about to give chase, then ran out into the darkness.

Yano gazed vacantly at the ironworks. It was a quiet night.

What the hell am I doing here?

His order from Sasagawa was simply to observe how the detective chose to spend his final hours. It was unexpected. The old man was supposed to be more detached. He wasn’t the type to care what his victims did before he killed them off.

He was neither a sadist who relished the sight of a man trembling before death nor the type to show folksy mercy in the face of grit. He
always followed through once he made a decision, never feeling the tiniest sliver of regret at the result.

Sasagawa had noted Yano’s dissatisfaction and explained, “This isn’t about our group. It’s a personal matter. That’s why I’m asking you.”

There was no way Yano could refuse, yet at the time he couldn’t begin to see why the man merited round-the-clock surveillance.

He heard a car approaching. A sedan drove past and entered the ironworks lot. Yano instinctively opened his door and was about to step out when he stopped himself. He slumped deeper into his seat and lit a cigarette instead.

Blindfolded and gagged, limbs bound, the boy lay on the floor. The detective approached him quietly and lifted up the blindfold.

“Are you okay?”

The boy flinched away from the flashlight as if it were too bright.

The detective shone the light on his own face. “I’m on your side, okay? You don’t need to worry anymore.”

The boy looked at him with fearful eyes. As the detective moved behind the boy to remove the gag he heard the sound of a car. Halting, he strained his ears. He heard the car rushing in and braking. It had parked very close to the building. Two doors opened and people stepped out of the vehicle.

He turned towards the boy and said, “I will save you, no matter what. You can hold out for just a little longer, right?”

The boy gave a small nod. Replacing his blindfold, the detective left the office and hid himself behind one of the machines nearby. He heard a key scrape in the lock. He switched off the flashlight and peered between the gaps in the machine towards the entrance. The door opened to reveal the silhouettes of two men. An incandescent lamp lit up by the entrance.

The taller of the two was clearly the youth in the photo, Yoichi Yoshino. He carried a plastic bag from a convenience store and wore a moss green coat that looked like military surplus. The other, skinnier
man had to be Kanemitsu. He wore a leather jacket with a fur-lined collar.

The men entered the office and closed the door. The window brightened up. The detective moved noiselessly to right under it and focused on the voices inside.

Yoichi Yoshino squatted next to the boy and removed his gag.

“Need to pee?”

The boy shook his head.

Yoichi took out a knife from his pocket, unfolded the blade and cut off the vinyl ties restraining the boy’s wrists. He produced stuffed bread and a pack of juice from the plastic bag and placed them in the boy’s freed hands. Fumbling blindly, the boy tore open the bread wrapping and started chomping.

Yoichi sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette. Kanemitsu stood by the window that opened to the outside, surveying the area. He’d removed his 9mm Glock from under his belt.

“No one’s watchin’ the place,” Yoichi said.

“Shush, I heard something earlier,” replied Kanemitsu.

Here we go again
. Yoichi looked annoyed as he blew out a lungful of smoke. Kanemitsu was a long-time junkie.

Under Marco, his drug of choice had been a speedball, which combined an upper, cocaine, with a downer, heroin. Now he was hooked on meth.

Marco never dealt in meth because it was a golden goose for the yakuza. He handled anything else, including coke, heroin, crack, ex, LSD, mescaline and PCP. His customer base was limited to foreigners, too, which got the yakuza off his back.

After getting ejected from Marco’s organization, it was hard for Kanemitsu to get his hands on coke or heroin, and even when he could find some the price was exorbitant. Cocaine was expensive and the high only lasted for thirty minutes. Kanemitsu had no choice but to switch to meth, which was easier to procure and kept him high longer.

But even though meth was a stimulant, it couldn’t hold a candle to coke. Or so Kanemitsu always complained. Yoichi couldn’t care less.

About a month ago, Kanemitsu had turned up unexpectedly at Yoichi’s workplace and lured him with the promise of a big payday. An extorter named Takeda who had sniffed out malpractice at a major insurance corporation and shaken them down apparently kept the hundreds of millions from the job in his own home. Such rumors weren’t exactly rare. Pull off a big one and someone spilled the beans. Criminals, never happy when one of them landed a huge piece of the pie, often went on to plot to snatch away the earnings. The best part of such ploys was that the perp-cum-victim couldn’t report it to the police. In most cases, however, such rumors were total bullshit.

But this time was different, at least for Yoichi. In prison, he had bonded with his cellmate and had heard about Takeda from the guy.

Takeda used to be an underling with the Kuniyoshi Group. After the boss was excommunicated and the group dissolved, most of the members flocked to other syndicates, but Takeda washed his hands of gang life and started working as what they called a bagger. He would buy gemstones, precious metals, luxury watches and such from yakuza who’d claimed them to settle debts and sell the goods to wealthy clients—a jewel broker of sorts. If you had the talent, the margins were huge. He also assiduously put his experience and know-how to use to make extortion and out-of-court settlement plays on the side. As long as he didn’t step on any yakuza toes he could earn more working alone.

Yoichi’s cellmate had worked with Takeda once and was dissatisfied with his share of the payout.
Going after his stash wouldn’t be hard. Wanna go with me once we’re outta here?
he’d asked Yoichi. That man was still in prison.

Reluctant as Yoichi was to team up with Kanemitsu, he needed money. His mother was in hospital with a grave illness. Given his record, his wages would never buy her the treatments she needed. His father had died when he was young, and he hated not being able to do anything for his mother who had raised him and his sister all by
herself. Even so, he had no intention of going back to Marco, with whom he’d severed ties upon getting arrested. He’d been a dispensable tail to that particular lizard. In the end Yoichi took up Kanemitsu’s offer, but now he was starting to have regrets—not over stealing from Takeda but about teaming up with Kanemitsu.

Perhaps finally giving up on finding an enemy, Yoichi’s partner walked away from the window and approached the sofa. He tucked away his Glock, looked down at the boy and stopped. The boy was trying to pierce his juice pack with the straw, but with the blindfold over his eyes he fumbled and dropped the straw. He groped along the floor in search of it.

“You brat!” Kanemitsu suddenly launched a kick at the boy. The little body slammed into the steel lockers with a terrific bang.

“The hell are you doing?! Don’t get rough with him!” Yoichi yelled.

Kanemitsu pointed at the floor. “Look at this.”

Yoichi stood up from the sofa and looked towards the area where the boy had been sitting. The name “Kanemitsu” had been scratched into the floor with something like a nail. Kanemitsu glared at Yoichi.

“Did you get sloppy and call me by my name, idiot?”

“Never.”

“Then how the fuck does the kid know it?”

“You’re the one who blindfolded him. Maybe he saw that through a gap,” Yoichi said, pointing towards a plate on the wall emblazoned “Kanemitsu Works, LLC.”

“Shit. Shoulda put out the fucker’s eyes.”

The boy, slumped where he fell against the lockers, froze stiff at those words.

Kanemitsu stared into Yoichi’s eyes. “So that means he might’ve seen our faces?” Yoichi remained silent. Kanemitsu glared at the boy. “Now we’ll have to kill the brat …”

“No. You promised, no killing the hostage,” Yoichi said. He had made Kanemitsu agree that they would return the boy unharmed whether or not they got the money.

“You want me to get caught?”

“Takeda can’t be aboveboard about that stash. He won’t snitch as long as his kid gets back safe.”

“But what if he does? Huh?”

“…”

“You got any guarantee that he won’t report a theft of two hundred million?” Kanemitsu’s face loomed so close to Yoichi’s that their noses nearly touched.

Yoichi reached back to grasp the Glock at his hip. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talkin’ to?” He pressed the barrel of the gun roughly into Kanemitsu’s cheek. He couldn’t stand it anymore. “You’re the one who had the bright idea of jacking up our demand to two hundred mil! If we’d stuck with the plan we coulda sent the kid back and gotten our money last night!”