Compromised (28 page)

Harry was subdued and his gun seized as EMTs rushed forward. Shiroo was writhing on the ground. Blood was gurgling in his throat. “No!” he screamed, reiterating with his last ounce of rage, “You the yakuza scum.”

Gus refused to go to the hospital.
He instead insisted on being with me, side by side, to face Harry and get the truth.

Harry had been handcuffed and placed in an interrogation room at the precinct. It took more than an hour for me to get my head around the situation and calm myself enough to confront him. All I could see was the hatred and indignation in Daichi Shiroo’s eyes when he was face-to-face with Harry. All I could hear was the resentment in his voice in those last few moments before he died.

Harry’s hands were on the table. His back was straight, and his head was held high. He looked so proud that I had trouble believing the words that had come out of Shiroo’s mouth. Had Harry killed Shiroo’s brother? Was he himself a yakuza assassin?

Gus and I entered the interrogation room and shut the door. Gus told him that the interview was being recorded and Harry acknowledged the fact with a nod.

“I need you to acknowledge verbally,” Gus said.

“I understand,” he replied.

I pulled out a chair and sat down, my expression hard, my tone demanding. “You’re going to give me the truth, Harry, and you’re going to give it to me now.”

He nodded once again and then after a very long moment finally began to speak.

April 2011

Mirai Shiroo was not a suit-and-tie type of mobster.
A black tee, jeans, and engineer boots were his everyday uniform. His full-sleeve tattoos, yakuza badges of honor, were proudly on display as he entered the office of Kyoto’s Marine Transportation Committee. He stood out like graffiti on the walls of a holy shrine in contrast to the traditionally dressed government workers going about their daily routine. A smoldering cigarette hung from his lips as he approached the reception desk.

He didn’t have an appointment nor did he ask to be seen.
He simply stared at the receptionist with his cold eyes and said, “Mr. Nomura—where?”

Like her colleagues who were passively monitoring the gangster’s presence in their office, the receptionist was intimidated by Shiroo and needed a moment to compose herself.

He repeated more firmly, “Mr. Nomura—where?”

She stammered as she asked, “Y-your name?” Shiroo was short on patience. He stalked past her, ignoring the receptionist’s warning. “So sorry, sir, you can’t go in there.” All of the interior offices had glass walls and nameplates, and Shiroo quickly found who he was looking for.

Nomura had been the committee chairman for more than twenty years and was highly respected for the firm hand with which he managed the shipping port. He was on the phone when Shiroo barged into his office, grabbed him by the shirt, and pulled him out of the room, with Nomura yelling, “Get your filthy hands off me, Shiroo.” The slender gray-haired chairman struggled but was no match for his muscular assailant. “Call the police,” he yelled as he was dragged out the door under the watchful eyes of his staff. One brave soul positioned himself between the two men and the elevator. He trembled as Shiroo approached only to be shoved aside. Fellow office workers rushed to his aid after Shiroo and Nomura had vanished into the elevator.

A black van was parked in the lot. Shiroo opened the back doors and pushed Nomura inside.

His driver, Haruki, started the engine and took off immediately.

“Let’s have a meeting,” Shiroo said, towering over Nomura, who was sprawled on the floor.

“You are crazy, Shiroo. What do you think this will accomplish?”

“You know what I want, Nomura, and I’m tired of waiting for it.”

“This same old song?” Nomura asked bravely. “How many times have I told you that I cannot give preference to your people? Key jobs at the port are awarded based on seniority and performance alone. I cannot give your people special treatment.”

“I believe you can. With all of your tenure . . . Who is senior enough to challenge you?”

“This is foolishness, Shiroo. Your words mean nothing to me.”

He glared at the old man. “Maybe they’ll mean more to your successor.”

Nomura stared at Shiroo as the threat sank into his head. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“Have I?” He pulled a small pistol that had been wedged into the top of his boot, and aimed it at Nomura. “Last chance, old man. You can put my men into management positions, or you can die a martyr. You can be my puppet, or your death can serve as a message to anyone else who is stupid enough to stand in my way. I run the shipping port now, Nomura, not you. Now will you do as I ask?”

“Shiroo, you can’t be—”

Haruki was shocked and clutched his chest as the deafening thunder of the discharged bullet reverberated within the van. The noise was ringing in his ears as he glanced back over his shoulder and saw Nomura motionless on the floor, his short-sleeve oxford shirt bloodstained and charred.

The van was traveling at about twenty-five miles per hour when Shiroo grabbed the lifeless body and tossed it out the back of the van, a clear message for the police and for anyone else that Mirai Shiroo was no one to be trifled with.

Shiroo had blood spatter on his face as he climbed into the passenger seat. He dropped the gun into the center console compartment. “Take me home,” he ordered. “I need a bath.”

“And the gun?” Haruki asked.

“
Umi e
,” he ordered. “Into the ocean.”

Mirai Shiroo was in his bath, being sponged clean by two of his concubines, when the sound of a loud altercation filled the air.
The women stood and covered their naked bodies with silk robes, but Shiroo remained seated in the tub, enjoying his Cuban cigar. He didn’t so much as turn his head when the assault team came through the door.

The assault team commander motioned for the two women to leave the room accompanied by one of his officers. He waited for them to clear the room before addressing the mob boss. “Stand up, you arrogant sack of shit.”

Shiroo took his time before rising. He stood and faced the commander, stark naked, proudly flaunting his fully tattooed body, posing with his hands on his hips. He didn’t speak, move, or show any signs of distress.

The commander sneered at Shiroo and barked an order to his men.
“Dare ka kono dōbutsu o kabā shi,-sha no naka de kare o nageru.”
Somebody cover up this animal and toss him in the car.

Mirai Shiroo endured twenty-three days of near-continuous interrogation and isolation from his attorneys without cracking under pressure or even breaking a sweat.
It was hardly his first trip to the rodeo—he’d been arrested and in and out of prisons many times. He knew the drill well. By law, the police had a maximum of twenty-three days to break their suspects. The fact that they’d gone the distance told him that the prosecutor’s case was weak and that they needed to force a confession.

He gave them no such satisfaction because he knew that
Article 38 of Japan’s Constitution categorically stated, “No person shall be convicted or punished in cases where the only proof against him is his own confession.”

He was self-assured as the first day of trial began, his normal cocky self. He had a battery of highly paid attorneys—men who knew that their lives, more so than their legal fees, were at stake. He also knew that the only witness to Nomura’s murder was his driver Haruki, a loyal minion he’d come to rely upon heavily. No one else saw him fire the gun. At the worst, someone saw a body fall out of the van, which he’d ordered to be incinerated following the execution. The gun he used to slay Nomura was somewhere at the bottom of Kyoto Bay.

Or so he thought until the prosecutor presented his case.

In evidence was Shiroo’s DNA from the van, which had been recovered before it could be burned, the murder weapon with his fingerprints on it, and a video recording of the murder, captured from a spy cam within the vehicle. The allegedly stolen van was in actuality a nondescript police vehicle.

He was sentenced to death by hanging despite vigorous arguments from his legal team. The fact that he had murdered a prominent prefecture official for the purpose of furthering the influence and reach of his crime syndicate was not of itself enough to warrant capital punishment. It was Shiroo’s own words on videotape that had sent him to the gallows: “
You can be my puppet, or your death can serve as a message to anyone else who is stupid enough to stand in my way.” He had deliberately and brutally murdered Nomura to send a message. In sentencing, the presiding judge had sent a message of his own.

And with the certainty of death now in his future, Shiroo was consumed by a single thought: taking revenge on the man who had betrayed him. Murdering Haruki.

Mirai Shiroo’s prison cell always smelled like disinfectant, the institutional variety with a heavy concentration of ammonia.
It was the first thing he noticed when he opened his eyes in the morning and the last scent to sting his nostrils before going to sleep. His cell was hidden from sunlight—it was just one in a long row of confined spaces painted stark white. It was clean, sterile, monotonous, and maddening.

His day started when the lights were switched on and ended when they went off, and night could be either the blink of an eye or an eternity, depending on whether or not he slept. He’d been sentenced to death by hanging and had been waiting for his life to end every day and night for three years. The Japanese criminal justice system did not provide any upfront information as to when the sentence would be carried out. And so any day might be his last. One day he’d be awakened not by the unnatural prison incandescent light shining on his face but by a guard, and from that moment he would have less than two hours to live.

With each passing day, his state of mind weakened. He’d close his eyes each night and pray, “
Mō ichi-nichi
,” which meant “one more day,” knowing that his odds for survival diminished with each passing day. Death-row inmates were typically executed within two to four years of their sentencing. Although it had been rumored that one prisoner had survived the noose for eight years, by his thinking, he had less than a year to live. His days were burning down like a candle. In his mind he pictured the taper growing shorter and shorter—like his life, it would soon vanish.

The torture of not knowing when the noose would snap his neck gnawed at his sanity. In his final days he was consumed with a single thought: revenge. His mind was filled twenty-four hours a day with scenarios of torture and death for the man who’d betrayed him. In all he had devised seven execution scenarios but normally entertained only the best two or three.

The guard on duty greeted him with the same slap-in-the-face insult he offered on most mornings, “
Dono yō ni kyōdaina geraku shite iru
.” How the mighty have fallen.

Mirai Shiroo had once been the boss, the
kumichō
of
Inagawa-kai, one of the most powerful yakuza families in Japan. Now he was no more than a tattooed man in a white box, waiting to die. Once he was considered untouchable. Now he watched his remaining days dwindle away—all because he had violated the cardinal rule of his yakuza family and made family of someone his underlings considered undeserving.

Haruki’s security pass was checked before he was allowed to enter the nondescript room, which was distinguished only by the three identical conduit boxes mounted shoulder level on a beige wall, on center, sixteen inches apart.

The two guards that accompanied Haruki seemed somewhat resentful of him but remained stoic and did not allow the outsider to feel the full extent of their animosity. Each of the three men took a position in front of one of the conduit boxes, waiting for the signal to proceed. All the while, a
sound system piped in the calming tones of a Buddhist sutra.

To Haruki’s right was a floor-to-ceiling royal blue curtain. The room beyond it was paneled in bamboo and the floor covered in carpet. Blindfolded and shackled to the wall, Mirai Shiroo, the condemned man, waited. Less than ninety minutes had elapsed from the time he had been informed that his execution was going to be carried out, and in keeping with strict protocol, neither his family nor legal representatives had been notified.

The Ministry of Justice demanded split-second efficiency, and as such,
the
warden
took his position exactly on time. On his signal, Haruki and the two guards raised their hands into position just inches from the three conduit boxes, paused and ready to depress the three black plunger-type buttons.

Shiroo’s eyes were closed underneath the blindfold. He had been unshackled and led to the center of the room, where he was positioned with his knees over a red panel on the floor, and the noose was fitted around his neck. It was only now with his eyes shielded that he allowed his tears to flow. He had been on death row for more than three years, knowing that at any moment he might be ushered abruptly into the execution chamber. The tears he cried were not because he feared death. They were tears of relief, relief from the mental anguish that was finally coming to an end.

Before the
warden
gave the final signal, Kei Katsui, the guard to Haruki’s left, sneered. Haruki assumed it was because he was an outlier, a cop who had no rightful place in the Kyoto Detention House execution chamber. There were only two or three executions each year, and some of Katsui’s colleagues had waited years for their chance to press the
kuroi botan
,
the black button, and were now denied their honor because a lousy cop had been accorded a special privilege for catching a very big fish.