Elections, Part 3
With yours truly in charge of the prostitution ring, the Family saw more carnage in the days leading up to the September 11th elections than it had in the years it was first establishing its presence in South Side Kyoto. Some policies changed, love hotels were seized, whores were beaten or killed, but never let go, customers with complaints were stabbed, pachinko parlors expanded, and the crippled arm of the prefectural law was beginning to trip us up--too many "implied agreements" with local enforcement, and not enough crooked cops. ("Love hotels" are cheap motel-like establishments, rentable by the hour.) ("Pachinko" is a game much like pinball, but played vertically, where the player pays for each ball and, depending on what obstacles the balls hit and where they settle, can win some money in return.) It was in the middle of all of this that I received the following letter from Boss Takeda on stationary from his personal stock:
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.
Elections
Elections came and went on the 11th, and my colleagues and I had mounted a campaign in less than two months that went on to oust Democrat, Masahiro Mizuta from his three-year post as mayor of Fushimi Ward (Kyoto, District III, South Side). As Tomo-kun "Tomo-kun", cousin, slid the magnetic mini-rose across the election results board, his face beaming with pride, I sat there looking down on a bundle of microphones and dozens of applauding supporters at the main table which was covered by a spotless, white cloth and elevated by a platform. (The mini-rose is placed over the name of winning candidates in an election once confirmation of victory arrives.) Tomo-kun halted the rose at a box over my name--the constipating smell of stale percolated coffee in everyone's nose. Electing not to take part in any number of self-effacing activities (e.g. scratching my head in disbelief, fixing my hair), I stared straight into the small South Side Community Center congregation while Kou-kun "Bridge", nephew, Kurachi-san "Big Brother", older brother, and Yasu-kun "Metal Mouth", second cousin, all dressed sharply, obnoxiously shook hands with and hugged other colleagues behind me. "Banzai!! Banzai!!" everyone screamed as if it were the reoccupation of Shanghai--my gaze was impenetrable, and the culmination of events that led to that moment flashed back at me in a smear of testosterone and sweat, and I'm recalling that it all began with a scooter wreck.
I am clutching the waist of a bitch who's driving me home on a moped
from a night out at a Korean barbecue place off of 9th. Her handlebar
clips an on-coming biker, Shoji Tabuchi of the Takeda crime family.
The collision sends him, helmeted, toward an electricity pole, and us,
without helmets, into a wall. The bitch's scooter tips over before I
can see what has happened to Tabuchi, but it appears the electricity
pole knocked him off of his motorcycle which ended up on its side
skidding a few meters away. I'm VERY dissatisfied with my driver who
is now lying, drunk and expressionless with her leg trapped under the
footboard--still unaware of what she has done. The rear wheel
continues to spin. I turn toward Tabuchi and leave her under the bike
to respond to a muffled, but furious, "'Ey!!", the tone of which
resounds with a hint of mob. "What the fuck is it to YOU?!"--the words
dribble out of my mouth and motivate him to remove his helmet and
approach me with a slight limp. We initiate a nearly 20-minute shoving
match over who will pay for the damage to his bike. No punches are
thrown, and at one point, the bitch frees herself from the bike to try
to separate us. When she falls to her hands and knees, head bowed, and
repeats, "it was me...it was my fault," noticeably attempting some
pathetic Japanese-styled apology, we break for a second to look down at
her and remind her to "shut the fuck UP." The scuffles resume, and I
take a moment to recognize that I am dancing with a man likely to be a
bona fide member of the local mob, and therefore, decide not attempt to
imitate his tone or accent--still, I do not realize it's Tabuchi, and
clock him in the jaw with my right fist.
The action stops. I'm
just as shocked as he is, but not as good at hiding it as I freeze,
left hand cupped over the knuckles that struck him, seriously wondering
what it was that drove me to commit such an act of personal doom. At
this point, we're both thinking the same thing: "you son of a
bitch"--murder is in the eyes staring back at me.