Elections, Part 2
A few weeks after the accident and a month and change before
elections, I'm sitting at a desk in an office overlooking the
construction on the Kyoto South ramp of the Meishin Expressway. I made
good on the money the bitch owed Tabuchi-san for the motorcycle repairs
by running a few errands for him in town, as well as collecting a
long-standing debt from a regular customer of the Takeda Family's very
own prostitution ring, which I am now in charge of, temporarily. This
particular regular had skipped town via shink (short for "shinkansen"
meaning "bullet train") with a baker's dozen of unpaid suckjobs. I
used the bitch from the scooter wreck to bait him, severed his left
nut, and brought it back to the office with his overdue payments. I
told the bitch I forgave her, but urged her to stay in touch. The
Family loves a woman who's good in the pocket.
As for Tabuchi-san,
he and I were having drinks not but ten minutes after I slugged him.
The conversation was minimal, but yielded choruses of "you know, you're
not a bastard after all". He even picked up the drinks, which I took
as a gesture of pity he felt necessary after noting how I smelled and
dressed. The pity was irritating until he mentioned there might be a
job in it for me. Tabuchi-san didn't sound particularly educated, but
seemed to know exactly what I wanted to hear and would emphasize those
points with subtlety that went quite well with our booze.
Looking back, I realize the conversation we had at the bar that night ended up being my job interview. And instead of a resume, I submitted my cell phone which went on to provide the names and contact info of hundreds of bitches that could be used in the "'tute recruit".
Now, without so much as introducing me to Boss Takeda, he's got me sitting at a desk in a stuffy office, manning the phones in between games of hachi-hachi and betting ponies. (Hachi-hachi is played with a deck of small, colorfully-decorated rectangular plates called "hanafuda".) Since I've taken over, nothing exciting has taken place--no "pump-'n'-run's" or drivers losing limbs, but I think it has little to do with my presence since changes in management go unbeknownst to customers. I know it's only a matter of time before that call comes in, though--a customer will get aggressive, and we will have to load up a car with Kou-kun and them.