Gaijin Cowgirl (7): Butcher, baker, candlestick maker

“There were only three maps, and now they’re turning to ash.”

(Previous chapter, or start at the beginning.)

Motifs gilded the Chinese screen. Exotic birds watching over fornicating mammals. Exquisitely rendered deer mounting one another. Cats in heat. A baboon orgy in the treetops.

She folded her sweater and placed it on a side table. After all the dancing and flirting and kissing of strange men, she didn’t know why she felt frightened. Maybe it was the cold. Sure, she’d never gone this far before. But he was just a quirky old man. She heard him shuffling around his easel, but then the noises stopped and she clutched her T-shirt to her breast, half-expecting to see spindly fingers push the screen panels aside.

His soft clinks resumed. She exhaled.

Three million yen in that envelope so stop shaking, girl.

She stepped out. Takahashi was mixing paints on his board. He looked up and she saw the heat in his face. Despite his excitement, he was patient, forcing his eyes to linger over her every nook.

“Incredible,” he finally said.

“Thank you.”

“Now take off the rest. And take that pin out of your hair. Then come sit on the couch.”

She removed the pin first and gold cascaded over her shoulders. His eyes widened behind his glasses.

She moved her hands behind her back to unclasp her bra. “They say,” she began, her voice warbling, “you did a lot of things during World War Two.”

“I was an officer in two armies,” he replied, watching her slowly reveal her breasts. He sucked in his breath in a very Japanese hiss. “First in China, then in Southeast Asia.”

The bra draped over the Chinese screen. “And you organized brothels with comfort women.”

“Oh yes,” he said, motioning her to the sofa. “Among other things.”

“You enslaved these women to be prostitutes?”

“Your American troops in our homeland rape our young women all the time. If they had the power, they’d be even more brazen. But today we live in peace, not war.”

She stood, hands on hips, chin and breasts accusing him. “Really.”

He nodded. “Panties.”

She sat down instead, crossed her legs, emboldened by a surging disgust. “Tell me about these brothels.”

The Painter didn’t answer. He held up a long paintbrush tipped with fine sable hairs. The brush caressed her breast. She fidgeted but had nowhere to go.

“Tell me.”

He smiled, wielding the brush expertly. Her traitorous nipples hardened. “It’s so cold in here,” she said.

“You’re shaking,” the Painter said, “but not from the cold.”

“Please…no touching.”

The brush tickled her more. “You haven’t taken off all your clothes.”

She stood up, hands cinching the edges of her panties. “Tell me about the comfort women.”

He smiled. “The Filipinas were feisty. Our troops liked them very much. The Koreans, they were the most beautiful.”

“The things you did to those women. It’s disgusting.”

He lowered the brush. “The past, no matter how tragic or glorious, is past.”

“You don’t think what you did was monstrous?”

“I believe you are starting to understand the meanings of my art.” His brush directed her to recline on the sofa. He sat on his stool and hitched himself closer to her spreading legs. “I just need…a closer look,” he whispered.

“Wait till my boyfriend hears about this,” she said, unable to stop shaking. As if invoking his name might protect her. “Charlie Kwok, the lawyer. He likes to go after war criminals. Ring a bell?”

His glasses swiveled up at her, the lights’ glare obscuring his eyes. “Of course, doll. Why do you think you’re here?”

* * *

Moriaga sat a tray down in front of Suki at the living room table. Soup, sashimi, a bowl of rice, pickles, and sake. His two pudgy hands lingered there so he could check out her cleavage. “Made it myself,” the smiling fat man said with breath like stale coffee. She couldn’t bear to look at him, so she looked at the tray of food instead and noticed half his right pinkie was missing.

“Enjoy.”

Odama knelt across from her, mute beneath his mask, like a vulture waiting for its dinner to die. Yoshino stood by the front door and gazed out the latticed window.

She tried to focus on the food, screwing off the soup’s top to sniff its aroma. The two young cats picked up the scent and sidled up to her, mewing.

“Colonel Takahashi asked I cook something really special,” Moriaga beamed. “It’s fugu chiri with hirezaki.”

“I’ve never had that style of blowfish before,” she said, wishing that Odama would quit watching her. How come he wasn’t eating too?

“It’s very expensive, a real delicacy,” Moriaga said, his voice taking on a pitying tone. “But now you can have the real thing.”

“Mn,” she said with a nod, a Japanese non-committal assent.

The fat yakuza shrugged. “Suit yourself. Want to watch TV?”

She nodded. Anything to distract her.

One of the orange kittens meowed, beseeching her, its little nose twitching. The other rubbed its back against her folded legs in a feline kowtow.

She wished Val had insisted on Suki’s being there for the painting – not just to keep Val company, but to get Suki away from these men. The room was heavy with menace, as the two thugs maintained a dour silence while Moriaga bumbled around. The fat man was now returning to recline at the table beside her.

“Not going to eat?” he said. “Please, Yamauchi-san, have a little.”

She listlessly picked at the sashimi.

“It’s very good,” she said, and Moriaga beamed with pleasure.

“Good, have some more,” he urged her. “Try the soup.”

A movement caught her eye: Odama, fidgeting in his jacket for cigarettes.

“Smoke outside,” Yoshino told him, wiping his square glasses with his tie.

Odama nodded and, with a little bow to Yoshino, opened the front door and stepped onto the porch.

“I’d like to smoke too,” Suki said.

Yoshino just looked at her.

“Go ahead,” Moriaga said, ambling to the television. She heard a loud game show come on behind her as she joined Odama outside. It was cold, and a fog thick enough to be seen in the dark seeped through the trees. She didn’t dare look at Odama, those shark’s eyes above that so very white surgical mask. But at least he couldn’t foul the fresh air, and besides, she really needed this smoke.

“Hey! Shoo!” Moriaga chased one of the cats away from the table, where it had managed to snatch a tiny piece of fish. The other cat complained at Suki’s feet, and she picked him up with her free hand.

“Hey there, mouse cat,” she said softly.

“That’s Mickey,” Moriaga said, poking his head outside. “He’s the good one. It’s his little sister that’s always getting her nose where it doesn’t belong. Well, I guess you don’t want soup that some cat’s been licking – I’ll go get you a fresh bowl from the kitchen.”

“Fat idiot,” Odama muttered after Moriaga left. He stamped out his cigarette. “You’re a worthless little whore,” he added. He picked up the busted stub. “This is you, after I rape you.”

She fled inside.

“Put that out,” Yoshino snapped at her. She instantly dropped her cigarette, causing Yoshino to rush to stamp it out. “Moriaga!” he called. “Bring a wet towel!”

“Yes Mr. Yoshino!”

Yoshino pointed at the table. “Sit and don’t move.”

Suki, still clutching Mickey, obeyed. As she crossed the great room, she heard an earnest beeping. Behind her, a decorative screen partially covered a desk with a computer screen with black-and-white video images.

Yoshino rushed to the desk and hissed through his teeth. Odama stuck his head inside. “What’s that?”

“Unexpected company,” Yoshino said. “Moriaga!”

Moriaga appeared clutching wet paper towels. “What needs cleaning, Mr. Yoshino?”

“Put that down – go out there – a car’s approaching, fast.”

Yoshino drew back his jacket, and Suki saw a shoulder holster. She paled and her heartbeat drowned out the men’s words, the inane TV game show. Yoshino pulled out his .38.

Odama started down the porch stairs, Moriaga behind him, while Yoshino headed opposite, to warn the Painter. Suki was left alone in the room, and now another sound penetrated the pulse of her heart. It was Minnie, hacking up a hairball.

Suki reached for her backpack. For a moment she hesitated, looking for Yoshino – well, to hell with him. She was scared, her hands couldn’t stop shaking, so maybe it was no use, but she pulled out her Nikon and removed the lens cap.

Outside, darkness became daylight. Powerful klieg lamps around the clearing burst to life, setting the pearly mist ablaze. A dark blue Mitsubishi sedan, headlights off, was careening toward the house.

“Stop them,” she heard Odama shout.

She raised the camera to the window. Moriaga was running to intercept the car, pointing a heavy pistol.

Was this really happening?

An explosion, a bang – another, a series – bang, bang. The Mitsubishi’s windshield spiderwebbed. Moriaga, standing in the middle of the clearing, raised his giant handgun, then crack! fired off a shot, and one of the front tires disintegrated, sending the car into a spin. The skidding car now became a missile. Moriaga’s dive was late and the blow spun the fat man into a crazy cartwheel.

Mud jumped and glass shattered as the panicky Odama squeezed out the last of his bullets. Yoshino ran back from the hallway toward the front, pistols in both hands, too busy to notice Suki’s camera.

The Mitsubishi, all screeches, hurtled past her yellow Bug and smashed into Yoshino’s Mercedes with a loud metallic crunch that blew out a cloud of tinkling glass. Yoshino opened up with both pistols as Odama reloaded.

The passenger door swung open. Suki gasped: it was a gaijin with a full head of white hair. He wore a brown checked blazer and carried a sawed-off shotgun in one hand. His other arm was wounded, for his jacket was torn and she could see a dark stain.

The Westerner’s shotgun let out a tremendous boom, scattering shot across the porch.

Suki flinched. Those bullets were real.

The driver’s door popped open as the old white man let off another shot of covering fire. Now came an African gaijin, a young bald man wearing a trim dark suit. His face was covered with blood from flying glass, but it didn’t slow him. The black man dashed towards the house, a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, shooting as he ran, pinning the Japanese down.

Moriaga crawled toward his fallen weapon, his legs trailing uselessly. He secured his gun and aimed at the white-haired man, but the gaijin’s shotgun bellowed first. There wasn’t much of Moriaga’s head to tumble into the mud.

Suki covered her mouth. It was past time to get out of here, but she stopped her retreat when she saw a third foreigner materialize on the other side of the clearing. He must have snuck there on foot before the car stormed in. Suki only saw him as a blur: big, milk white skin, fiery red hair, wielding a machine gun. Then she had to duck as a gush of bullets raked the house, sending Odama scurrying inside. It rained splinters.

Suki stuffed the camera in her backpack and crawled toward the hallway. The shooting was loud and continuous and reverberated near and far, like a parade. Minnie lay in her path, her eyes glazed in death, a bit of fish still in her mouth. Suki hurried past the corpse.

A sudden quiet. She heard a voice in English say, “That’s it, nice and easy, buddy,” and then grunting noises from the living room.

She wanted to run straight down the hall of sliding paper doors, run screaming for Val. But she didn’t dare; she crept with barefoot silence, afraid only her pounding heart would betray her, until she heard heavy footsteps approach from behind. She slid open the nearest screen door, slipped inside and whispered it shut. In the gloom she made out a low table, seats sunk into the floor, and a wall lined with military decorations – plaques, banners, a giant photo of a youthful emperor, the imperial rising sun of old. A set of golf clubs leaned against the wall beside the window.

The man in the hall outside began hurling aside doors, tearing through their paper, filthy boots clomping against the immaculate wooden floorboards.

* * *

Val threw her arms before her breasts when Yoshino barged into the studio, his face red with alarm and holding a pistol. The henchman made a perfunctory bow and practically screamed an apology.

The Painter demanded something in Japanese as Val stepped around him toward the Chinese screen. Yes, that had really been shooting. She wouldn’t have believed it – guns? In Japan? – had she not seen the weapon in Yoshino’s hand.

Yoshino replied, pausing to elaborate a foreign word. Mack-si-well. Definitely not Japanese.

Not that she cared. Whatever was happening, she and Suki were getting the hell out. She threw her clothes in a frenzy.

The two men exchanged urgent words, then Yoshino shouted “Hai!”, bowed, and skidded his cigarette lighter across the floor to the Painter’s feet before bolting back the way he had come.

“What the hell is going on?” Val demanded, one foot through her jeans. The Painter ignored her, opening a door she hadn’t noticed that was built into the curving glass walls. “Where’s Suki? Hey, wait!” The shooting was loud, close and intense.

Val ran after the Painter. The glass door opened into a corridor of glass arches held together by curling steel veins. It ended in a domed room of smooth hardwood. A bench occupied the room’s center. The only illumination came from a circle of lights embedded in the floor, each aimed up at a portion of wall where hung a painting.

One woman after another, nude, sitting on the couch in the studio, legs spread. No painting showed the woman’s face. Some didn’t even portray her body. Most focused on her yawning genitals, painted as precisely as a photograph.

You are starting to understand the meanings of my art.

The Painter slashed a canvass with a thin Exacto knife. He reached inside the cut and withdrew a piece of wax paper. Takahashi lit a corner with the cigarette lighter. Once the flame took hold, he dropped it to the floor to let it burn. Then he moved to the next painting.

She knelt beside the wax paper as it curled and blackened. More pornography? It looked like a child’s stick drawing, embellished with various icons such as plus signs, swirls, circles, hatches, Japanese flags, and a few scrawls in Japanese. The glowing fire consumed what had looked like a clock face, with the hands reading quarter to three.

“What is it?” she asked as Takahashi slashed another canvas and removed another scribbling on wax paper.

“Gold, darlin’, gold.”

An older white man had followed them into the gallery, cradling a shotgun. She yelped but Takahashi merely lit another paper on fire.

The Westerner was old but tough, a real buzzard, with hair more salt than pepper and steel gray eyes. He wore a brown checked blazer over a white shirt and chinos. He had been shot in the right arm, but he seemed unfazed.

“Colonel, put the lighter down,” the white man replied, his voice a bourbon drawl.

“You’re too late, my American friend,” the Painter replied, grinning. “There were only three maps, and now they’re turning to ash.”

“Then there’s no reason not to kill you.”

“Go ahead. I am ready.”

“Why did you order your boys to open fire like that? It didn’t have to be this way.”

“Just shoot me, you coward!”

Lightning, thunder: the Painter flopped backward. Val didn’t even hear herself scream as she tumbled back in shock.

The American pumped the shotgun again. “Whatever you say, Colonel.”

The American moved briskly to the pile of burning maps and stamped on them. He knelt to gingerly lift their charred remains. He frowned, put down the gun and reached inside his jacket.

Val began to scramble away.

“Don’t you move, sweetheart,” he growled.

The man took out a metallic glasses case. A bullet aimed at his heart had burned a hole through one end of the case. “How about that,” he said. With his one good hand he managed to open the glasses case, but all that remained of his glasses tinkled onto the floor.

The man whistled. “Butcher! Get in here!”

The Painter groaned, and Val started to crawl to him when she felt a vice grab her ankle. She looked into the hard eyes of the white man.

“I said don’t move.”

“Sorry—ah!”

He was squeezing her ankle.

“Please – please, I won’t move, I promise!” She could scarcely breathe it hurt so much.

“That’s better.”

He released her and she lay prone, her breast heaving.

“Butcher!” he roared, “Baker!”

“Let me guess,” she managed, “you’re the candlestick maker.”

“Smart girl. Shut up.”

Another white man entered. This one was young and built huge. His blue suit struggled to contain his bulging muscles. The machine gun he carried looked like a toy in his hands. His skin was incredibly pale, and behind a big, flat nose he had wide blue eyes, topped off with a mop of bright orange hair.

“I’m here, chief,” he said.

“My glasses, they’re smashed. C’mere and look at what Takahashi’s burned, see if there’s anything salvageable.”

Redhead lifted one map but in his thick fingers most of it crumbled.

“Christ, Butcher, easy,” scolded the older man.

“Sorry, Candle.” He put his face near the floor to examine the remains.

The Painter whimpered. He had been shot below the rib cage. Across his robe, red points appeared and slowly spread over his stomach and abdomen. He managed to raise his head.

“Easy Colonel,” said Candle. “Save your strength. We ain’t done with you.”

Takahashi let out a grim “Ha!”

“I dunno chief,” said Butcher, shaking his head. “I don’t think there’s anything left here.”

“Shit,” Candle said, his Kentucky drawl adding syllables. He sat against a wall. For the first time, he looked old. “Well, the old nip could be lying. Go through all the paintings. We’ll tear up the goddamn house if we have to.”

“With all them shots, Candle, I don’t think we can stay here too long.”

“No kidding – that’s why you’d better move fast. Where’s Baker?”

“He’s minding those other guys out front.”

“Okay. Get to work.”

The big redhead set down the machine gun and pulled out a Bowie knife from a sheath around his ankle and began tearing up one lewd painting after another. Candle stood up and looked at them with a big grin. “Well well, Colonel, looks like your legacy to the world of art ain’t gonna last long. Too bad, I kind of liked your style.” He looked down at Val. “I take it you were to be the object of his next masterpiece.”

She looked away, resenting her countryman rub her nose in the filth she had signed up for.

“I woulda liked to have seen that,” Candle said, whistling. “C’mon, get up, stand over there.”

She obeyed as he whistled and tossed his shotgun to Butcher. Candle’s good hand made a fist in the Painter’s sweater. He motioned Val to walk ahead as he dragged the groaning Takahashi back toward the studio, leaving a long bloody smear.

“On the sofa, sweetheart,” Candle said, and she sat there while he towed the Painter around in front of her. “What a fucking mess.”

“He’s dying,” she said.

“Yeah, but slowly. He’ll last for a couple hours, maybe all night. Hurts like a sonofabitch though. Hurts, don’t it Colonel?”

The Painter gasped, “You are traitors.”

“Oh, that’s a good one, Colonel.”

“I…should have killed you…”

“Yeah, like Yasue tried to kill me, right? Well I now done killed you both.” Candle moved to the table and picked up the envelope. Leaning over, using one hand, he peeked inside and whistled again. “This for the girl, Colonel? That’s a lot of dough to get a gal naked.”

Val bit her retort.

“Blondie, you worth it? You look all right. This is my money now, but hey, you can still earn it.”

“I’ve retired,” she said. “Who are you?”

“I’m the guy come to collect what this piece of shit owes me.”

“The Buddha…belongs…to the emperor…” the Painter said.

Candle shoved the envelope in his jacket. “Sure it does. Butcher! Status!”

“Almost done,” floated back the reply. “Nothin’ here.”

Candle looked around, annoyed, and his eyes settled on the new canvas propped up before the sofa. “Of course,” he said.

“Maps…all…gone…”

“I’m sure they are, Colonel.” Candle shouted, “Hey, Butcher, get in here with that knife!”

Butcher appeared and Candle nodded to the blank canvas that had been intended for Val’s rendering. “Try that one.”

One slash. The yellowed wax map clung to the wooden frame.

“Bingo,” Candle said, approaching. “Butcher, what’s it look like?”

The big redhead lifted the map and turned it around. “Genuine, no doubt.”

“Can you figure out where it is?”

The redhead’s face looked pinched. “It doesn’t make sense. Lookit this dial, chief. If we was standing in Luzon, this would be, like, I dunno, somewhere in the middle of the ocean.”

“Not the Phils. Somewhere near the Mekong, maybe. Somewhere along the Thai border.”

“Which border?”

Candle didn’t answer. Instead he knelt beside Takahashi. “Hey, Colonel, remember that jungle you showed me? Well, I’m gonna go back.”

The dying man could only groan.

Butcher moved over to the table and sniffed the food. “All this fighting makes a man thirsty,” he said, helping himself to a cup of sake.

Candle stood over Takahashi. “Now this is the part we don’t like, Colonel,” he said. “See, you are going to die. We can’t do much about that, but we can make it nice or not so nice. And your pretty friend here, well, we can either leave her alone or we can make you watch us cut her up – not that you give a hang, but we guarantee that you don’t want to watch, because it’s only what we’re going to do to you. And believe me when I say, you’ll squeal, you’ll give us everything. So how about we just skip the unpleasant stuff and you just tell us about this map?”

(Next chapter.)