Tuvalu (39 page)

‘You were? Well, Tuttle, that's a hell of lot more than I was ever planning to give you.'

‘I know. But you need someone to cart it, right? You don't want to do it yourself, not if you're staying in Japan.'

‘And you're not?'

‘No.'

‘Where do you think you'll go?'

‘Home—uni.'

Phillip laughed. ‘Drug money spent on an education.'

‘I'm going straight.'

Phillip's caginess was all show. For days he had been watching, wondering how to get me to courier. Dropping his half-smoked cigarette into the open drain he pretended to be in two minds.

‘Shit, Tuttle, I don't know,' he said. ‘I'd have to ask Harry.'

‘Tell him I want to make myself useful.'

‘Why?'

‘Just tell him that and he'll understand.'

‘Is there something I don't know?'

‘No.'

‘There is. I can smell it.'

‘Smell whatever you want.'

‘Why should I trust you?' Phillip asked, surprising me.

‘Because we're in this together.'

‘The fuck we are. I grew it, Tuttle. People think it's easy but it's not.'

‘True. But from a legal rather than a horticultural perspective,' I said patiently, ‘it'll appear I helped. We were living together the whole time. I can hardly claim I didn't notice it.'

‘Good point. Okay. Consider it a goodbye present.'

‘Thank you. When will I move it?'

‘This coming Monday, in the arvo. Don't fuck up.'

I took leave of him, pretending I wanted to shop, and rang STA Travel from a payphone, feeling a rush of excitement when the operator listed the various flights to my destination.

Next I drafted a letter and carefully copied the Japanese characters from the power bill onto the front of the envelope, praying it would somehow reach Mami in Hakodate. I wrote that her apology had been appreciated, that I had come into some money and was planning to depart for an undisclosed location, where I intended to relax for a few months before looking for work—something part time. I concluded all this with a heartfelt apology for being vague and assured her that I was perfectly serious, encouraging her in one last crazy act to disregard her bail and flee the country. This was a calculated proposal. Unless my offer was absolutely irrational I had little faith Mami would give it more than a moment's thought.

As a P.S. I added the most important detail of all—a meeting point. For this I chose a Japanese-style hotel near the airport, one I had found on the internet that did not look too cheap or too expensive. I booked a single room for Monday and Tuesday, paying with an old credit card which still had a few hundred Australian dollars attached to it. The payment went through without difficulty.

Monday, as it happened, was the day before my birthday. Around midmorning Phillip removed the plastic containers from the freezer and packed them into a specially purchased backpack.

‘Time to go,' he said.

‘Time to go.'

I picked up the backpack and let myself out. It was heavier than I had anticipated and I thought about turning back, reneging on my plan—I no longer had the nerve for it. But the thought of Mami kept me moving. On the bus down to Tokyo I stowed the pack in the underneath compartment and enjoyed knowing I could walk away from it if discovered, deny any knowledge. Once we arrived at Tokyo Station, however, I had to claim it and heft it up again.

The commuter train to Shinjuku was half empty. I sat opposite a mother in a cheap suit and a girl of four or five in a pink dress. Aside from the dress everything the girl wore was a bright white: the hair bands wrapped around her near vertical pigtails, her collar, cuffs, stockings and shoes. She stared up at me unselfconsciously with two large brown eyes. Her chubby face and downcast but not unhappy mouth made me want to smile, but I instead clutched at my backpack and averted my gaze.

It suddenly began to rain. The millions of drops seemed to move almost horizontally. We were above a road and I peered through the water-streaked window down into a crowded street, where I caught the eye of a man smoking before he was gone again, before it was all gone again, replaced by city windows. Down the carriage an attractive, svelte woman with long, reddish hair typed a short message into her mobile phone and smiled at the reply, and a young businessman of perhaps twenty dropped his head and tried to nap. The backpack, even resting between my legs, sat heavily. No one paid me much notice. Certainly not the girl asleep beside me—one cheek scrunched against the rail at the end of the bench seat, yellow cashmere scarf threatening to suffocate her. She twice changed position and dozed on my shoulder as if she had known me all her life. I stared up at the colourful ads for magazines hanging from the carriage ceiling. Unable to read even a word my eyes jumped from one portrait photograph to the next while I thought about jail.

Intent to Sell

S
hinjuku Station is the perfect place for an amateur drug deal. Millions of people travel through it and exchange packages every day, and I was not surprised Harry chose it. I was surprised, however, to be giving the drugs to a perfect stranger. Harry had described the man to Phillip who, in turn, had described him to me. The man would wear dark pants, a light-blue shirt and a leather jacket. He would have short, spiky hair and be carrying an English newspaper. He would be shopping for a tie at one of the tables set up outside the men's toilets, and would enter to urinate upon seeing me. I was to follow him in and stand at the urinal immediately to his right.

As I neared the drop my nerves got the better of me and I had to pause, my back against a wall, to catch some air. It was the wrong country to run drugs in, a country where some judges took pride in years of service without ever handing down an ‘innocent' verdict, and where prisons attracted the wrath of Amnesty International. I was an idiot. And yet there was my desire, bubbling below, willing me on and reminding me it would all be over in a matter of days. Without money I had nothing to offer, not even a crazy plan, and without anything to offer I had no right to expect Mami to follow me. Before starting on again I thought of Phillip, but decided I owed him nothing. Then my father came to mind. What would he make of a drug conviction? I hoped he would never know.

I took a deep breath and, pushing myself up from the wall, rounded the corner and passed the man with dark pants, blue shirt and leather jacket. He was apathetically holding up two cheap, ugly ties and, though he gave no indication of having seen me, he put them down and started towards the men's. Presumably he had identified me by the backpack and tight-fitting suede jacket Phillip insisted I keep on at all times.

I entered the men's, walked past the grimy white porcelain basins—without looking at my reflection—and took my place at the urinal beside the man with the blue shirt. He had obviously been waiting a while because I could hear a steady stream of urine. Hefting the pack onto the ledge I unzipped and took aim. This bathroom, which often had a queue, was not too busy today. It smelt of shit. I glanced behind me towards the pit-toilet stalls, then along the urinals to my left. It was only as I did this that I noticed the police officer, one of four evenly spaced men, pissing with obvious pleasure. Unsure what to do, I froze. Through the window at the end of the bathroom I heard a train pull into a platform. The announcer's voice crackled.

The man with the blue shirt did not look at me. He kept pissing, steam rising from his urinal. I gulped. When I tried to urinate nothing came. The man with the blue shirt, nodding almost imperceptibly, placed his newspaper on the ledge above the urinals. But at that moment two men zipped up and walked to the basins, affording the policeman a perfectly unobstructed view of all we did. He showed no sign of finishing up and kept glancing our way.

I was now pushing so hard I fully expected to fart, but there was not even a dribble, and I was about to give up, about to zip up and flee, when the man with the blue shirt smiled, casually took up my backpack and walked out. The police officer noticed at once. He nodded towards my backpack and I dumbly averted my eyes. He shook himself dry.

I truly had been left with my dick in my hand. Everything about the situation was terribly unpleasant. In a stall behind us someone groaned and farted. For a moment I contemplated running but something held me back. I tugged desperately at my zipper while the policeman did his own fly up without difficulty and collected his hat from the shelf above the urinal. He gave me a funny look and I was certain he was going to arrest me, but he shrugged and walked to the basins where I heard him wash his hands, humming.

I waited until his heavy tread was inaudible and then started for the basins myself, having to double back for the newspaper.

‘I could walk away,' I said in a whisper, staring at my reflection in the mirror, both hands on the basin. ‘Leave it and walk away.'

But realistically I knew the time to do that had come and gone. I turned on a tap and watched water run into the plughole. New men came in, others exited. What if the police were waiting outside? That would be the best way to nab me—wait for me to exit with the paper. What if they already had the man in the blue shirt?

‘Fuck it,' I said to myself, deciding not to think about all that could go wrong. I was not parting with the money or deviating from my plan, not now the worst was behind me. There was no reason to think it was a set-up. Hell, there had been a police officer in the toilets … And assuming there was no set-up, assuming Harry had not ratted, the police would be unprepared for me. I had to move, and move fast.

I snatched up the newspaper and strolled out with a devil-may-care glare into Shinjuku Station proper. I passed a deli and a small supermarket and continued on towards the Saikyo Line. I hardly took a breath the whole way until I caught sight of something that calmed me considerably. Turning right to descend the broad stairs to Platform Four, I saw the policeman from the toilet. He was not more than five metres away, helping a girl up onto a stretcher with a second, skinnier policeman. The skinny one had a plastic cabinet with him, and from this he pulled a clear mask, expertly placing it to the girl's mouth and pulling the elastic band back behind her head.

‘Ambulance,' I said, feeling stupid.

Platform Four rumbled.

I took the stairs three at a time down to the train, slipping in seconds before the doors beeped shut. Only then, heartbeat racing, did I wonder if I had dropped the money. But there was no time to check as the train jolted and started forward. I stood with the folded paper in hand, praying I had not lost it all. It took five tense, clanking minutes to reach Ikebukuro, where I jumped out and again ran to the toilets, locking myself in a cubicle. I pulled the paper open but nothing fell out. I shook it manically and at last a small envelope slipped silently into the drop pit between my legs. Thankfully this was dry. I fished it out with a ball of toilet paper before tearing it open and removing a thin wad of 10,000 yen notes, all of which I stuffed into my wallet before dropping the envelope back in the toilet and stamping on the handle to flush all evidence.

I let myself back out and again took the Saikyo Line, this time to Akabane where I transferred onto the Keihin– Tohoku Line for Nippori. There was probably a faster way of reaching Nippori, but I knew this route well. From Nippori I took the Skyliner to Narita, hopping off well before the international airport at the city itself. With a tourist map and considerable trudging I found the Japanese-style hotel I had booked online.

It was a narrow building jammed between a dentist and a doctor's office. Built in the sixties, it was now beginning to fall apart. Pulling back a heavy, wooden sliding door I let myself in and found a small office, crammed full of paper. There was a calendar with a young Japanese girl in a bikini and a desk piled high with junk. Three filing cabinets were open, revealing yet more documentation, and there was a small orange thermos threatening to fall onto the floor. Someone had slipped a note under the office door and I was about to call for assistance when I realised it was for me. The Japanese script made no sense, but my name was written in a gap with a red permanent marker, and when I lifted the note up I found a key underneath with no tag. I turned it over in my hand. There was a large 403 stamped into it.