Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge - eARC (15 page)

Last, there were groups that fell outside the major factions. Werewolves were one of them. The supernatural etymology of werewolves were unclear. Large regions, even continents, would have one “Alpha” werewolf which generally formed the pack-culture of that region. When the Alpha was aggressive, werewolves would be aggressive. When its personal philosophy was get along with man, werewolves would do so, by and large. I thought about the Skykomish Werewolf. We’d finally found out he’d been a software engineer who’d been bitten. He’d tried to avoid hunting humans and simply failed. Pretty obviously whoever the “Alpha” was for the Northwest was “pro-human” or whatever.

This group also included the broad “Yeti” category. “Yeti” included all similar groups including Sasquatch, swamp-apes or Letiche, Ebu Gogo and others. These were generally grouped into the “mammal cryptids.” Some of them were believed to be extinct.

Interested in the Sasquatch, given where I worked, I dove into that subject. They were elusive so there was very little factual information on them. However, there was a partial dictionary of the Yeti language, which was probably related. It was mostly from secondary references that I was able to find a few details about the Sasquatch and one paper that had a few terms believed to be Sasquatch such as “Hello,” “Friend,” “water.” There was no single word for “food” in Yeti. Like Yupik, Yeti and Sasquatch were affixially polysynthetic languages. Short explanation of that is if you had some basic cognates you could make up any word you wanted by stringing cognates together and the listener has to guess what you mean. That’s sort of the explanation.

Bottom line, if I ever encountered a Sasquatch, I might be able to at least get them to try to talk to me.

The other thing I ran across, due to a conversation with Doctor Rigby over scotch, was gnolls. They are scavengers and garbage collectors. Horribly smelly things, their main defense is their stench, they are generally nonthreatening and harmless. They live to collect garbage and anything that’s decaying. They generally live in sewers in big cities for this reason and frequently can be found hiding near landfills and so on.

The Van Helsing organization had sometimes tried to use gnolls as Confidential Informants. Because despite their own stench, they had a very keen sense of smell and taste. They lived in more or less perpetual darkness and both found collections of wonderful decay and avoided potential predators by seeing the world through smell. Since everything eventually ends up tainting the sewers of big cities, they always knew where the monsters were at, if for no other reason than to avoid them.

The problem was that very few humans had ever been able to successfully communicate with them, but I was really good with languages. There was a complete dictionary of local gnoll dialects at Oxford. It might not work for gnolls in the US but I was determined to try to make contact with them even if I had to use a gas mask.

I could have spent the rest of my life in those archives. There really was the soul of an academic hiding in this broken body. But I picked up a lot of really good tips for dealing with monsters I figured I’d never encounter.

Wanda went back to the states after two weeks, her maximum vacation, totally satisfied. I’d been immersed in the archives most of the time but she had a great time and that was what mattered. She left my physical therapy in the hands of a new terrorist, Gregory. Obviously, I had nothing for Gregory. The reverse was not true. Gregory found me terribly handsome.

Obsessive heterosexuality can be a pain sometimes.

Once I was past therapy and back to physical training I bid a reluctant farewell to Oxford and the Van Helsing Institute, caught a plane back to the States and got my game face back on. I’d had enough of studying monsters, time to get back to killing them.

Shortly after I got back to Seattle, my job turned personal.

CHAPTER 11

There was a bento place I really liked right around the corner from my apartment: Saury. Saury is a type of fish mostly found around Japan, related to flying fish. They didn’t actually serve saury but in general their sushi was to die for, their udon was so authentic you’d think you were eating it in Shibuya and I liked the atmosphere. It was the kind of place where if you didn’t speak Japanese you felt out of place. In general, gaijin need not apply. On the other hand, I knew most of the servers and the owner by name. They called me Assei.

Police had found one of the servers, Kiyoshi, dead behind the restaurant. The body had been spotted by a bum who was dumpster diving instead of the workers there or we might never have been called. The reason we were called was obvious when we arrived. His body was nothing but skin and bones.

And I mean that literally: Skin, hair and bones were all that was left. There were a couple of big, nasty, entrance wounds on his stomach with the area around them discolored. Other than that, and an expression of sheer terror noticeable even with all his face muscles melted away, there were no evident wounds.

I was the first one to respond, since I’d been home at the time of the call, and I was shaking my head wondering what got him when Brad showed up.

“This is a new one on me,” I said, straightening up. The coroners and homicide dicks were being held back by one of King County’s finest and MCB.

“Spider,” Brad said, immediately.

“Except right here?” I asked, looking around the alleyway. “That doesn’t make sense. Don’t they usually drag them off to a lair? Not to mention no silk.”

“That is unusual,” he said.

I went through a list of all the spider-like creatures I could think of. Unfortunately, every single mythology has spider monsters. Many of them, though, were so similar they were probably the same species in different areas with different names.

“Anansi kama,” I said, thoughtfully. “African. Sort of a spider-were. Turns into a spider during certain days related to the stars. It attacks its victims in the open.” I stopped and looked at the dead server again and it clicked. “Jorogumo,” I said.

“Speaking Japanese again?” Brad asked.

“Jorogumo, or sometimes they call them Tsuchigumo, is a Japanese creature,” I said. “Shapeshifter. She can assume the form of a beautiful woman. But even then the victim is supposed to be bound in silk.”

“Have you gotten anything from the management?” Brad asked the King County investigator.

“He went out to take out the trash and didn’t come back,” the deputy said. “It was slow, they didn’t really miss him. Then we got the call. We found out about it before they did. No enemies that they know of. They weren’t real forthcoming but you know those Oriental types.”

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “Damn slopes with their secrets and inscrutable faces.”

“They’re all over the place these days,” the deputy said, disgustedly.

“You can bag him,” I said to the jackass. “We’re not going to get anything else from this.”

By that time Doctor Nelson, Lucius, had shown up. I waved him off as he was entering the crime scene.

“Jorogumo,” I said, walking over to the tape.

One of MCB’s finest was standing by and shook his head.

“No way,” the guy said, looking dyspeptic. “There hasn’t been a documented Jorogumo in the United States in years. It’s just a giant spider. Probably a nest around here somewhere.”

“Jorogumo,” I repeated. “Giant spiders stun their prey then take them to a nest to drink.”

“And Jorogumo lure men into a bedchamber for the same purpose,” Doctor Nelson said.

“Which is why this wasn’t just a random attack. He was left there on purpose.”

“What purpose?” the MCB guy asked.

“That I haven’t figured out,” I said. “But when I do, you’ll be the last to know.”

“You better watch your ass, wise-guy,” the Fed said. “You go off half-cocked and we’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks.”

“Are you entirely incapable of speaking without using metaphor?”

* * *

“What are you thinking?” Doctor Nelson asked, taking a bite out of a tuna roll.

Saury hadn’t even closed for the murder. Give the Japanese work ethic if nothing else. The servers were, to most gaijin, totally bland and unaffected. I could tell they were all on pins and needles.

“Mostly questions,” I said. “Why him? Why there? That was a message. The problem with messages is, you have to have a context. Right now, I don’t have any context. But they’re scared. Very scared.”

There was a back window in Saury. At one point when I was examining the corpse I’d seen a brief flash of someone looking out. So now my favorite noodle joint knew I was somehow involved in that business. They might just think I was an undercover cop. Given what I’d picked up about Japanese monster hunting, though, they probably knew I was Monsuta Hanta. Depending on where they sat on the subject, I might get a free meal or fugu in my wasabi. Could go either way.

“I think it was a hit,” I said.

“Like a mob hit?” Doctor Nelson said. “Believe it or not, there’s not never as much organized crime activity as it appears. A lot of what is blamed on the mob in certain places is covers for monster activity. Las Vegas and New York especially.”

“But this was a hit.”

“Why some random waiter?” Doctor Nelson said. “Or was he masquerading as a random waiter?”

“Kiyoshi? He was from Miyagi prefecture. He was a foreign student at the University studying math. We used to chat about second order variables so just say he really knew his math. That and violin. I even had him over to the apartment to do some duets and jamming. His mother’s name was Kocho, his father’s was Kazumi. He was an only child. His parents are going to be devastated. And they weren’t the target. His dad is a salaryman and his mom is a homemaker. No target there.”

There was an argument going on in the back. I could see it through the pass-through. Most gaijin wouldn’t even recognize it as an argument but it was. The owner, Naoki, was in a heated discussion with his manager, Hyousuke. They looked as if they were having a polite conversation. I couldn’t lip read Japanese that well but I caught the name “Isao.” It might be a name and it might be a title. It translated as “Laudable Man” and was one of the titles used by the yakuza, equivalent to “Don” or maybe “Capo” in the mafia.

Yakuza were Japanese organized crime. Mafia in other words. They didn’t like to be referred to that way since yakuza roots went back further than Mafia. They’d been doing organized crime when Europe was still in the Dark Ages.

“Do yakuza in Japan ever use the supernatural for leverage?” I asked Doctor Nelson.

“Oh, gods, no,” Doctor Nelson said. “I attended a seminar in Japan two years ago about Japanese monster hunting techniques and that subject came up. The Japanese yakuza are dead set against anything supernatural. They have contracts with Japanese monster hunters to handle it for them.”

“Refresh my memory from training. What is the penalty for using the supernatural in commission of a crime. In this case, murder.”

“Conspiracy to use the supernatural in a murder is the same as necromancy,” Doctor Nelson said. “Automatic death penalty. No rights, no appeal. But you’d better be able to prove it if you’re going to file for the PUFF. I assume you’re talking about a human. What are you thinking?”

“I think…I need to see a man about a horse…”

* * *

Lieutenant Paulding’s office was buried in the basement of the King County Sheriff’s office. And he didn’t seem real happy to see me for some reason.

“How’s the arm?” he asked.

“I’m slowly being turned into a T-800,” I replied.

“You don’t have the height to be Schwarzenegger,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I need some information on organized crime. You know about the guy behind the bento place?”

“MCB is saying giant spiders,” Paulding said. “We quietly put out the warning to sewer maintenance. They’re usually the first people who go missing with those.”

“Too many stray cats and dogs in the University district for there to be giant spiders,” I said, ticking off on my fingers. “They always stun their prey and take them back to a lair. No silk at all in the area. They tend to drip the stuff from time to time, if nothing else. Not giant spiders.”

“I heard you’re saying Jorogumo,” Paulding said, leaning back. “Which makes even less sense. Those things are rare as shit. Maybe extinct.”

“In the US. I think it’s a recent immigrant.”

“So you’re thinking org crime is using a Jorogumo as a hit…thing?” he said, rubbing his chin. “That would be bad.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Kiyoshi was left there as a message. I’d say that the message was: Pay up or else. So…what do you know about Seattle’s org crime?”

“Not much,” Paulding admitted. “My beat’s complicated enough. Guy you want to talk to is Lieutenant Snyder with Seattle PD. He’s the head of their OrgCrime unit.”

“I doubt he’d talk to me without a reference.”

“I’ll give him a call.”

* * *

“Whatever this is, I do not want to know…”

Lieutenant Kenneth Snyder, Seattle Police Department, was a heavy-set, balding older guy wearing a cheap brown suit who looked as if he’d been serious beef-cake when he was younger. Now if you didn’t pay attention he looked like a worn-out beat cop. If you didn’t pay attention. ’Cause the guy had really sharp eyes.

He also had a much nicer office than Lieutenant Paulding.

“I just need to know if there’s been any major changes lately in the yakuza ranks,” I said. “Notably, the Laudable Man if there is one. The Japanese term is Isao.”

“I know about Isao,” Snyder said. “Having said I don’t want to know, why?”

“You heard about the body behind the bento place in UD?”

“Yeah, he died of natural causes,” Snyder said, making a grimace. “Twenty-three-year-old in perfect health dropped dead of a congenital heart defect. And somehow lost most of his body weight at the same time. Like I said, I don’t want to know details. You ask too many questions about that stuff either your career is finished or you end up having a congenital heart condition.”

“I think it was a message. To the owners of Saury and in general to Japanese businesses in Seattle. I don’t see Naoki-sama as the type to buck the yakuza so I’d say it was a general message. They picked a low-level, unimportant guy to off in a very nasty way to send the message. The only reason to send a general message is if there’s been some general change. So has there?”

“Nice deduction,” the lieutenant said, sliding his chair over to a file cabinet and rummaging for a second. After a bit he pulled out a file, slid back over and tossed it on the desk. “That does not leave this room and I never showed it to you.”

Enter Arata Inoue, newly promoted Isao to Seattle of the Agama-kai Yakuza clan. The Agama-kai, according to the background brief in the folder, had the Northwestern US sewed up. They had an agreement with the Nakamura-ka clan that split the west coast around Klamath Falls. Not that they penetrated much outside of major cities with large Asian populations. They focused their efforts primarily on strong-arming Japanese small to medium sized businesses, prostitution and gambling, again focused on the Japanese. They had some gaijin clients and prostitutes but other Asians, especially Chinese, were managed by the Tongs, see reference. They had an agreement with the Mongols for areas outside the cities. They sometimes used the biker gangs for strong-arm work.

Arata Inoue had a long rap sheet in Japan. He’d started off as a street peddler of drugs, moved into strong-arm work when he got a little older, pimp, suspected of murdering several rivals, the usual sort of thing. He’d moved up the ranks of the yakuza fairly fast. It was a meritocratic group and he had, in their eyes, great merit. He was a bit less suave and cultured than the usual upper ranks of the yakuza but he was starting to show signs of fitting in. He’d recently started to paint for example. There was a copy of one of his paintings of a lotus blossom. I was doing a better job in the second grade.

Lots of tattoos. Lots and lots of tattoos.

In the last few years he’d been repeatedly seen in the company of a girlfriend who was suspected of being one of his paid assassins. There was a picture of the girlfriend wearing a business suit. Cute girl.

If she was a girl. I had my doubts.

The number two man in Seattle was Michael Oshiro. As might be gleaned from his first name, Michael, while being pure ethnic Japanese, was born in the United States. The yakuza grand masters did not trust States-born Japanese to run major operations. They just were a bit too gaijin. Michael would otherwise have been the replacement for the previous Isao. Michael, while never having been convicted of a crime, had been investigated for everything from human trafficking to money laundering and had a degree in economics from Princeton, my mommy’s alma mater.

He had to be a bit put out by being supplanted by some thuggish, illiterate, street pimp from Yokahama. And knowing the yakuza as soon as the boss had his feet firmly on the ground and his finger on every pulse, Michael was likely to end up sucked as dry as a mummy.

Last comment was that the new Isao had been putting the fear of god into Japanese businesses in the Seattle and Portland area. Something had them kicking out dough like there was no tomorrow. But even the best confidential informants had clammed up on what was up.

“I need copies of the pictures. Just those. Especially the girlfriend.”

“Do I even want to know?” Snyder said.

“Not in a million years.”

* * *

I was back in my usual spot in Saury, munching on a tuna roll, when she walked in the door.

She was the perfect picture of a beautiful Japanese girl. Small feet, small nose, wide eyes, narrow hips that showed she was a virgin. She was wearing a mini-skirt and blouse that weren’t quite a school-girl outfit but very close.

She’d apparently put in a take-out order because as soon as she got to the register Naoki-sama himself handed over a bag that was presumably filled with bento boxes. She smiled and said something to him. He gave her the best smile he could summon up under the circumstances.