I focused on my breathing, slowing it down, cuing my heart rate to do the same. I tried to think. Was there anything I needed to do? Any evidence I was leaving behind, anything I could manipulate to fool the police and the mob?
Nothing came to me. It was all too unfamiliar, too confusing. I couldn’t transition from combat to crime scene. All I could think to do was get the fuck out before reinforcements showed up.
I wanted to keep the gun, but I realized I couldn’t. It might be useful, but no way was I going to carry around the murder weapon. I tossed it onto Muscle Two’s corpse.
But wait, Muscle One had one, too. At least, it looked like he’d been going for one.
I knelt and opened Muscle One’s jacket. There it was, another Hi Power, in his waistband. I searched through his pants. No spare magazine. Guess he wasn’t expecting a drawn-out gun battle. I checked the load. The magazine was full — thirteen rounds. Wait, would Muscle Two have a spare? I thought probably not. Besides, he was lying in an enormous pool of blood and I didn’t want it creating shoe prints through the house. But shit, I could have taken the magazine from Muscle Two’s gun — it would still have five rounds in it. Instead, I’d tossed it onto his corpse, which was now surrounded by a moat of blood. Drag a couch over, lean down, and retrieve it? No, not worth the time. One gun would have to do.
I glanced around the room one more time. Had I missed anything? Wait, the knife, the knife. I’d paid cash but still, better not to leave it. I’d dropped it after taking the gun from Muscle One…where? I looked around frantically. There. I picked it up, wiped it on his pants leg, and slid it into the sheath. Wait, goddamn it, the hammer, too. Maybe better not to leave it. What would be the theory behind someone attacking four armed yakuza with a hammer? I couldn’t articulate why at that moment, but I thought the hammer should go back where it belonged. I picked it up. Shit, it had a good amount of blood on it. I hurried to the kitchen, grabbed a few paper towels, and cleaned it off. What about you? I glanced down at the windbreaker. Yeah, there was some blood on it, but most of it wiped off easily, and the dark color took care of the rest. I pocketed the towels and headed back into the garage. I replaced the hammer on the shelf. Okay, good to go.
I took two deep breaths, and was about to hit the garage door opener when the door engaged and started to rise of its own accord. For a split instant, all I could think was, What the fuck? And then I realized, Someone’s here. I dashed around to the front of the Mercedes and squeezed down below the bumper, my back against the wall, the Browning in my hand.
The door kept going up. I snuck a peek under the car. I saw the wheels of another car, paused in the short driveway while the door ascended. As soon as it was fully open, the car eased forward into the open space. I scrunched down lower. The car stopped, the motor died, and the driver-side door opened. I saw a pair of sensible pumps and two thick ankles in stockings. The wife? Probably. Kill her, or let her go? Safer to kill her. But I hesitated. The door closed. The ankles appeared on the far side of the garage, crossed behind the Mercedes, and moved to the interior garage door. Now or never. But I hesitated again. I heard the sound of a key sliding into a lock, the key turning, a pause, a little under-the-breath hmmph, the key turning again, the interior door opening. The exterior door started to close — she must have pressed a button. I heard the interior door close. The second it did, I sprang out, dashed forward between the cars, and rolled under the door just in time. I got to my feet, peeled off and pocketed the gloves, and walked as quickly as reasonably possible toward the station. If I was lucky, she would pause in the kitchen, go upstairs, do some chores or whatever before finding what I’d left behind. If I was unlucky, she would head straight to that drawing room and immediately call the police, or more yakuza, or both. I might have only a few minutes.
I made it back to Thanatos, retrieved and secured the license plate, and roared off. I crossed the Tama River and followed it south for a few kilometers, tossing the knife in along the way and leaving the gloves, windbreaker, and other disguise items buried in various trash bins. Then I went back to Daikanyama, hoping I might find the girl’s Porsche still there so I could replace the garage door opener. But, unsurprisingly, she was gone. I cruised around the streets for about a half hour, hoping she might have just driven the car to another boutique — it was hot enough that she might have done so to avoid the walk — but I saw no sign of the car. A bit of a shame. It would have been good for the police to have no idea how someone had gained access to the house. With no signs of forced entry, they might have formed a working theory of “someone the victims knew,” something like that. As it was, I was reasonably optimistic they would reflexively classify the whole thing as a yakuza hit, and that the yakuza would do the same. If a bunch of mobsters wanted to start killing each other in retaliation, that was fine with me. I preferred them trying to kill each other rather than coming after me.
And then I realized…would the girl say anything to the police when she discovered the garage door opener was missing? “Hi, I was his mistress, I couldn’t help notice the garage door opener he gave me went missing from my car on the day of the murders.” I seriously doubted she would come forward. And even if she did, so what? Maybe she was being tailed by the yakuza team that had carried out the hit. Maybe they had intel about her relationship, and the plan all along was to get the garage door opener and use it to gain entry to the residence. It didn’t matter how it all played out, as long as none of it could lead back to me. And I didn’t see how it could.
I stopped in a park to think a little more. You okay? I asked myself.
What? Never better.
In the movies, they always make sure the hero kills only in self-defense, typically in the instant before the bad guy gets the drop on him. Even in that film Miyamoto had mentioned, Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood blows away a guy who had kidnapped, tortured, and killed a teenage girl only when the guy goes for a gun.
To me, that’s all bullshit. More than anything else, killing is about survival. About doing everything you can to deceive, and cheat, and stack the odds in your own favor. You don’t wait for the other guy to go for his gun; you shoot him before he has a chance. If he has his back to you, that’s even better. If you can call in an air strike, that’s better still. You don’t just do everything you possibly can to prevent a fight from being fair — preventing the fight from being fair is the entire point. Do you want the enemy to have as good a chance of killing you as you have of killing him? Or do you want to make sure he gets no chance at all? As far as I’m concerned, the people who think a fair fight is desirable can go ahead and die in one. I wanted to live, and that meant hitting the yakuza hard, and unexpectedly, and never, ever giving up even the smallest advantage.
Still, you just killed four more people. Five in three days.
Is that supposed to bother me?
Shouldn’t it?
I didn’t have an answer for that. Other than:
It doesn’t.
Because sometimes there’s just what you can do, and what you can’t.