“How about Shinsuke, in Yushima? I haven’t had good izakaya food in a while. Do you know it?”
“No, but I’m sure I can find it.”
“I’ll meet you there at five o’clock tonight. This way, I can get home at a reasonable hour. My wife is very strict.”
I couldn’t help smiling at this, knowing it was nothing but bluster from a guy who damn well wanted to get home to his wife, and to the two young daughters his face lit up over anytime he talked about them. It just would have been unseemly for a Japanese cop to admit he would rather have been home with his family than out drinking with his nakama, his buddies.
I picked up a change of shirt, pants, and underwear, bought a rest at a random love hotel to shower, then spent an hour at a coin-operated laundry washing my clothes. When I was done, I headed over to Yushima.
I had no reason to distrust Tatsu, and in fact I trusted him as much as I trusted anyone. Still, I thought I should discontinue my practice of punctuality, and be in the habit of showing up at places early. So I got to the restaurant at four o’clock. It didn’t open until five — but that was okay. I strolled the neighborhood, a salt-of-the-earth part of Shitamachi with a relaxed, low-key atmosphere and a surfeit of old-fashioned eateries and watering holes. Along the way, I stopped at Yushima Tenmangu, a sizeable Shinto shrine famous for its plum trees and dedicated to Tenjin, the kami of learning. It was a popular place for students from nearby Tokyo University to pray before exams, and it seemed fitting that I did so now myself, given how much I was trying to learn and how little time I had to do it. And given what it would mean if I failed to pass the final.
I returned to Shinsuke at five o’clock. Tatsu was just getting there, too, his shoulders rolling, his head jutting forward the way it did when he walked, as though someone had him on a leash and he was fighting it. From the white shirt and tie, he might have been a salaryman, but there was a toughness to Tatsu, and a tenacity, that read like something else. We bowed and shook hands, and I clapped him on the shoulder. There was something so Japanese about Tatsu it made me feel American by comparison.
Shinsuke turned out to be an old-school akachōchin izakaya, a classic place, not a chain. It looked like it had been there for a while — a long wooden counter, the men behind it in traditional cotton yukata robes; nothing but locals talking, reading, laughing, creating a nice, low hubbub of conversation you didn’t have to shout over; a great selection of classic pub food. We ordered small plates of sashimi and karaage chicken and agedashi tofu; tomato and asparagus salads; a couple large bottles of beer, enough to get us started but probably insufficient to accompany the entire meal.
We each filled the other’s glass, toasted, and drank deeply. “The information we talked about,” Tatsu said. “Will you tell me why you need it?”
Small talk was never going to be Tatsu’s forte. I made a face of exaggerated hurt. “I haven’t seen you in months, and that’s it? No ‘How are you?’ No ‘How’ve you been?’”
He nodded as though accepting a rebuke he had heard many times before. “How are you?”
“Fine, thanks for asking. You?”
“Busy. What are you doing these days? Have you found work?”
For a moment, I wondered if maybe I would have been better off without the small talk. Was his question innocent? Or was he suggesting he might have suspicions about my activities that he would prefer, for the sake of our friendship, to avoid? Tatsu was more subtle than I — though I supposed that wasn’t saying much — and I sometimes had trouble reading him.
“No, nothing really. I’m dating someone, though.”
He raised his eyebrows. “It sounds serious.”
“I barely mentioned it.”
“You wouldn’t have mentioned it at all otherwise.”
I laughed. Tatsu couldn’t stop being a cop, even when it was just reflex.
“Yeah, it is kind of serious, I guess. She’s…pretty special. We’ll see. How about you? How’s your wife, your daughters…?”
He beamed. “Very fine, very fine. I’m fortunate they put up with me.”
Though it’s slackening a bit in more modern times, the custom in Japan is to say something mildly disparaging about one’s spouse or children, even in response to a compliment, lest one seem unduly proud. But the closest Tatsu could come to adhering to the niceties was to say something disparaging about himself. It was touching.
“I think they’re very lucky to have you.”
He shook his head and turned away to take a sip of his beer. I smiled. Had I managed to embarrass him?
The food arrived and we dug in. It was delicious, and I had no trouble understanding why Tatsu liked the place.
“Anyway,” he said, around a mouthful of chicken, “I was asking if you might tell me why you need the information you asked for.”
He could have given me the information before asking the question. That he hadn’t suggested there might be a quid pro quo.
I took a swallow of beer. “Are you asking as a friend, or as a cop?”
“As long as I don’t hear about anything illegal, we’re just two friends, enjoying an evening at an izakaya.”
I smiled. This was about as obvious as Tatsu ever got. He was telling me to feel free, short of any outright confessions.
“I’m in a bit of a jam. I think the girl knows who’s behind it, and why.”
“Did you…do something to hurt someone’s feelings?”
I laughed. Tatsu had seen me get up in a few faces back in the day. “It wouldn’t be the first time, right?”
“This jam…how serious is it?”
“I’ve faced worse.”
“What you’ve faced has left many better men dead. How serious?”
“Pretty serious.”
“Can I help?”
“The information on the girl is all I need.”
He nodded as though considering that, then dipped a slice of maguro in soy sauce, chewed and swallowed it, and washed it down with beer. “If you’re mixed up with the yakuza, I don’t think a little information from the motor vehicles department is going to be enough.”
I looked at him, appalled by his instincts. “Why do think it’s yakuza?”
“Surely you’ve heard? Hideki Fukumoto, the head of the Gokumatsu-gumi, was gunned down at his home in Denenchofu the other day, along with three associates. And today three Gokumatsu-gumi soldiers were killed while visiting his grave.”
That “surely you’ve heard” felt uncomfortably dry to me. “Yeah. The papers were speculating about some kind of turf war, Vietnamese gangs or something like that.”
He enjoyed some of the tomato salad and drank a bit more beer. Was he trying to make me sweat? Finally he said, “This doesn’t feel like Vietnamese to me. Those gangs are fearsome, but impulsive. And fundamentally small-time. This feels like a decapitation strike. Regardless, whoever is involved, I believe they’re no more than a cat’s paw for someone more intelligent and ambitious. I expect they’re being duped, and, when they’re no longer useful, will themselves be eliminated.”
Well, it wasn’t particularly flattering from my perspective, but he had the broad outlines right.
“Decapitation strike…you mean the son is in charge now that Fukumoto is dead?”
“That is my understanding.”
“But why would you think I was mixed up in any of that?”
He shrugged. “The woman whose license plate number you gave me. She is a known associate of Fukumoto Junior. A girlfriend.”
My throat went dry. Here I’d been thinking I was being so smooth, yet I’d handed Tatsu everything he needed to put the pieces together. I took a sip of beer, realizing as I did so that Tatsu would probably read it as nervousness. Christ, no wonder I’d been avoiding him. The life I was in and friendship with a cop was too dangerous a combination.