done,” said No Neck. “Take a look at the wreckage if you don’t believe me…Phosphorous and plastique. A really nasty mixture.”
Only most of the wreckage was gone and a truck was hauling away the last of the rubble, leaving charred timbers and a Dumpster full of earth when Kit and No Neck reached the site where Pirate Mary’s had been. The only bit of actual building still standing was a far corner, at the bottom of the slope. Most of this was fire-blackened concrete but a single jagged post stuck defiantly into the air.
A sign on the alley wall announced Pirate Mary’s—Tokyo’s Best Irish Bar and pointed to a building that wasn’t there.
Vomit soured Kit’s throat.
It wasn’t the sight of the blackened ruins nor the fact Yoshi had died here. A fact made infinitely more real by being there. It was the smell. The stink of charcoal and death. Yoshi’s body was gone, but other things had died here, rats or birds, mice and other rodents. He could smell the corruption, that unmistakable, utterly cloying signature of dead flesh.
“Fuck,” said Kit, swallowing sourness.
“You okay?” No Neck shook his head. “Shit, sorry…Of course you’re not okay.”
“It’s the smell,” said Kit, spitting.
No Neck looked at him. “What smell?” he asked.
A thick-set man in a hard hat tried to wave Kit away as he approached two Brazilians busy loading chunks of concrete into a fresh Dumpster. “Please stay back,” he said. “We’re working.”
“Yeah?” said No Neck. “Well we’re…”
Kit stepped between them. “This was my bar,” he said. “My wife died here.”
Whatever the foreman saw in Kit’s eyes was enough for him to order the Brazilians to stop working. “We’re going to take a break,” he said. “We’ll be back in ten minutes…” Left unspoken was the fact this was all the time Kit would get.
“I thought you owned this place,” said No Neck, as he watched the crew head uphill towards Roppongi’s main drag.
“Yeah,” said Kit.
“So you’ve just sold it, right?”
Kit shook his head. “I know nothing about this,” he said. He looked around at the scattered rubble, the half-filled Dumpster and a silent pneumatic drill. “No one’s mentioned this at all.”
C HAPTER 17 — Monday, 18 June
At 5.30 am a man in the next capsule coughed himself awake, flicked down the video screen in his roof, and began to drum his nails as he waited for the news.
Japan’s biggest fraud trial collapses, CEO Osamu Nakamura too ill to give evidence. File closes on Kitagawa family suicide. Washington, London, Moscow ramp up their war on narco-terrorism.
And then Kit heard Yoshi’s name.
At Christie’s in New York an example of work by Ms. Yoshi Tanaka sells for an unprecedented sum…
Ten minutes later the same man began to shave with a loud and erratic razor. About half an hour after this, a woman on the female-only floor farted loudly and spent the next five minutes chuckling to herself.
By 7.30 am, the sole guest at Executive Start Capsule Hotel was Kit, and he’d been awake all night, trying to work out why Yuko wouldn’t take his calls. So he rolled up the blind covering his glass door and scrambled out, maneuvering himself over the lip; the capsules stacked two deep along a corridor and he’d chosen an upper one.
Of course, Kit could have taken a room at the Tokyo Hilton, on the far side of Shinjuku station, about half a mile west of where he was. He still had Mr. Oniji’s money, mostly untouched. But in his own way Kit was saying goodbye to a city that had been saying goodbye to itself for as long as he could remember. A trial separation from Tokyo felt as lonely as leaving a lover.
It was only as he sweated out last night’s beer in a communal sauna that Kit realised he’d obviously taken Mr. Oniji’s advice to heart. Until then, he’d have said he had no intention of going anywhere. Kit was still wondering about that as he showered. And then, when he’d put
Only most of the wreckage was gone and a truck was hauling away the last of the rubble, leaving charred timbers and a Dumpster full of earth when Kit and No Neck reached the site where Pirate Mary’s had been. The only bit of actual building still standing was a far corner, at the bottom of the slope. Most of this was fire-blackened concrete but a single jagged post stuck defiantly into the air.
A sign on the alley wall announced Pirate Mary’s—Tokyo’s Best Irish Bar and pointed to a building that wasn’t there.
Vomit soured Kit’s throat.
It wasn’t the sight of the blackened ruins nor the fact Yoshi had died here. A fact made infinitely more real by being there. It was the smell. The stink of charcoal and death. Yoshi’s body was gone, but other things had died here, rats or birds, mice and other rodents. He could smell the corruption, that unmistakable, utterly cloying signature of dead flesh.
“Fuck,” said Kit, swallowing sourness.
“You okay?” No Neck shook his head. “Shit, sorry…Of course you’re not okay.”
“It’s the smell,” said Kit, spitting.
No Neck looked at him. “What smell?” he asked.
A thick-set man in a hard hat tried to wave Kit away as he approached two Brazilians busy loading chunks of concrete into a fresh Dumpster. “Please stay back,” he said. “We’re working.”
“Yeah?” said No Neck. “Well we’re…”
Kit stepped between them. “This was my bar,” he said. “My wife died here.”
Whatever the foreman saw in Kit’s eyes was enough for him to order the Brazilians to stop working. “We’re going to take a break,” he said. “We’ll be back in ten minutes…” Left unspoken was the fact this was all the time Kit would get.
“I thought you owned this place,” said No Neck, as he watched the crew head uphill towards Roppongi’s main drag.
“Yeah,” said Kit.
“So you’ve just sold it, right?”
Kit shook his head. “I know nothing about this,” he said. He looked around at the scattered rubble, the half-filled Dumpster and a silent pneumatic drill. “No one’s mentioned this at all.”
C HAPTER 17 — Monday, 18 June
At 5.30 am a man in the next capsule coughed himself awake, flicked down the video screen in his roof, and began to drum his nails as he waited for the news.
Japan’s biggest fraud trial collapses, CEO Osamu Nakamura too ill to give evidence. File closes on Kitagawa family suicide. Washington, London, Moscow ramp up their war on narco-terrorism.
And then Kit heard Yoshi’s name.
At Christie’s in New York an example of work by Ms. Yoshi Tanaka sells for an unprecedented sum…
Ten minutes later the same man began to shave with a loud and erratic razor. About half an hour after this, a woman on the female-only floor farted loudly and spent the next five minutes chuckling to herself.
By 7.30 am, the sole guest at Executive Start Capsule Hotel was Kit, and he’d been awake all night, trying to work out why Yuko wouldn’t take his calls. So he rolled up the blind covering his glass door and scrambled out, maneuvering himself over the lip; the capsules stacked two deep along a corridor and he’d chosen an upper one.
Of course, Kit could have taken a room at the Tokyo Hilton, on the far side of Shinjuku station, about half a mile west of where he was. He still had Mr. Oniji’s money, mostly untouched. But in his own way Kit was saying goodbye to a city that had been saying goodbye to itself for as long as he could remember. A trial separation from Tokyo felt as lonely as leaving a lover.
It was only as he sweated out last night’s beer in a communal sauna that Kit realised he’d obviously taken Mr. Oniji’s advice to heart. Until then, he’d have said he had no intention of going anywhere. Kit was still wondering about that as he showered. And then, when he’d put
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