Gaijin Cowgirl (8): The twelve o'clock news

“I’m really sorry you’re not cooperating, Colonel. Because I hate to see this pretty girl cut up.”

(Previous chapter, or start at the beginning.)

Val was already crying. “Please don’t hurt me,” she blubbered, but she couldn’t find her voice, and all that came out was a sob. “Please, just let me go, I won’t tell anyone, I swear, I don’t know anything, please—”

Butcher helped himself to some sashimi, and some soup. “Great food, Colonel,” he said.

“C’mon, Colonel, this site. Where is it. Laos? You get it to the Philippines? Or did you already move the stash back to Japan?”

Takahashi raised his head. “It’s…it’s…”

Val bolted. Something made her run. She didn’t get far. Suddenly the wind was knocked out of her and her cheek slammed into the floor and she felt a Buffalo Bills linebacker sitting on her.

“Where, Colonel?” asked Candle, moving his ear down to the dying Painter’s mouth.

“It’s…up…your ass…” Takahashi collapsed again.

Candle sighed. “I’m really sorry you’re not cooperating, Colonel. Because I hate to see this pretty girl cut up.”

“No!” Val shrieked.

“Butcher, let’s start with the face. Take off her cheek.”

This couldn’t be happening – this couldn’t be happening! Val screamed and struggled, but she couldn’t get redheaded Butcher off. Through her tears she saw the Bowie knife, felt fingers thick as sausages grabbing her hair, trying to steady her head. He shifted on top of her and tried again, and now he had her hair wrapped in a ball around his fist, and she could see Candle propping up the Colonel’s head so he could watch, and saw the knife, and felt it poised along her cheekbone. She felt the cold metal touch her skin, and now it was hot, very very hot, hot hot, oh God he’s cutting me—

The knife dropped out of Butcher’s hands. She felt him sway on top of her.

“Butcher!” snapped Candle.

“Chief…”

Then the linebacker rolled off, his fist still clutching her hair, and he started hacking and convulsing.

“Butch?”

Butcher was unable to respond. He released Val’s hair as he curled up in agony.

“Jesus, Butcher, what’s wrong!” Candle dropped Takahashi’s head and hurried over. “You, get back!” he screamed at Val, shoving her in the gut. “Get back!”

She scrambled away, seeing drops of blood from her cheek dapple the stone floor. One glance over her shoulder revealed the old man kneeling over his comrade. Butcher had become a quivering whale.

Suki stood in the doorway, eyes wild, platinum hair plastered against her head and neck, bare feet splattered with mud. Suki raised a three iron in her shaking hands.

Candle sensed something, and saw Val looking past him, looked up. “What the—” Suki smashed the business end of the golf club against the side of his head. Candle flopped over while Butcher retched.

Suki dropped the club as she and Val embraced.

“God, Suki, I’m so glad…”

“Me too…”

“They were going to kill me…”

“Let’s run!” Then Suki looked down at the writhing redhead. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know – he seemed fine. He was cutting open these paintings and then he ate some food and then he was on top of me.”

“He ate the food…” Suki’s eyes trailed to the table. “Poison.”

“What?”

“The blowfish. The poison hadn’t been removed. It killed one of the cats.”

Val looked from the table to the dying Painter. She stood over him. “So that note about Mount Fuji wasn’t a suicide letter – it was my death sentence.”

The Painter gasped for air, but he didn’t deny it.

“Paint me, then kill me. Hostesses come and go, right?”

“Val, we have to hurry. There’s more of them.”

Val instead knelt over Candle, who was out cold, and plucked the envelope of three million yen from his jacket pocket. Then, as she began to follow Suki toward the house, she stopped.

“What!?” demanded Suki.

Val picked up the wax paper and held it above Takahashi. “Do you kill all of them, or was I special – to hurt Charlie?”

“Val, we have to go!”

Val knelt beside the Painter.

“And now you’re the one who’s going to die, sensei.” She held up the map. “So why don’t you tell me where this is?”

He grinned. Blood seeped between his teeth.

Butcher was vomiting something black, but he was also rising onto his knees and elbows. He might fare better than the cat. The women ran, Val blindly following Suki, who led her through the hall of many screen doors – all of them open, unhinged, torn – and into Takahashi’s office. Through the open window, landing on wet earth. The rain had picked up again and they sprinted toward the brightly lit clearing, toes squishing in the mud. They had to jump Moriaga’s fat corpse. Klaxons sounded from the darkness below the plateau. Something hot and sharp slashed the sole of Val’s foot, and she bit her tongue to keep from crying out. The doors of the Bug slammed shut. Suki started the engine, a false start, turned the key again, the engine whinnied and a black gaijin appeared at the doorway. He raised his pistol as Suki threw the car into a crazy reverse, but no bullets came.

* * *

Val had seen many sunrises over Hiroō through bleary eyes. This dawn, however, was the first that she loved. Sunshine blazed gold across miniature streets and quaint rows of tiny houses. The beautiful, cold winter air muffled the cough of a car engine down by Azabu Crossing. The sky had cleared. It was a beautiful day to be alive.

When she bolted the door shut, she heard Charlie call her name from the bedroom. She removed the sandals she had borrowed from Suki and shuffled inside. He was knotting his tie. Knots: how to get herself out of this one?

“Val, you’re late—Jesus, what happened to you? Your cheek! Are you all right?”

She nodded. “I’m okay, really…”

He moved to her, gently touched the horrible white gauze taped to her face. “Did someone do this to you? Was there trouble at the club?”

“Just…shh…” It felt good to let him hold her in the comfort of the bed. She couldn’t help but tremble. She cursed her hot tears.

“Val, hey, baby,” he cooed. “Tell me what happened.”

“I just need you to hold me.”

After a long moment, he relaxed his hug. “I’ve already made coffee,” he said. “I’ll get you a cup.”

“Smells good.”

She sat on the bed in a daze, suddenly cold without his embrace, feeling raw. She buried her face in her hands. A minute later he returned with a steaming mug. She took a sip but then could do nothing but sit there with her tired eyes closed.

“I have to go to work,” he said. Even with her eyes shut she could see his crisp double-cuffed shirt, smart tie and suspenders. He exuded cleanliness. If only she could feel that way too. She had spent the wee hours washing and patching herself up at Suki’s as they wondered what to do, but somehow it hadn’t done much good.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Okay.” He sat at the bed’s edge and adjusted his owlish glasses.

“Last night I was at the home of Colonel Takahashi.”

A nervous grin of disbelief flitted across his lips. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s my big tipper at Cowboy. He offered to pay me three million yen to paint me in the nude, and I accepted because I wanted the money so I could leave here. Takahashi knew about us. He was going to murder me, to get back at you. But then these other men appeared, Americans, criminals, violent men. They wanted maps, some kind of treasure maps that Takahashi kept hidden, somewhere in Thailand I think, and they shot him, and…” She buried her face in her hands.

“You…”

“Lied. Betrayed you. I’m sorry. That wasn’t the plan. He was just a customer.”

He stood up. She couldn’t read his face.

“Charlie…”

He turned his back. “Get out of my sight.”

* * *

She was in the back of a taxi wondering just how she had managed to ruin everything, really ruin it, commit irreparable damage, when Suki called her cell.

“Val, have you seen the news?” Suki’s voice was thin and hysterical.

“No.”

“Where are you?”

“In a taxi. I can’t stay with Charlie anymore. Are you at home?”

“Yes. Forget about going to the police.”

“Look, I’m just about to get out at this ryokan I’m going to be staying at. Can you hang on for a little bit?”

“I think you’d better get over here now.”

“Gimme an hour.”

Val checked into the little inn, glaring at the old lady who moved in slow motion as she photocopied her passport and counted her cash. The room was a four-tatami square with a rolled-up futon and a miniature table. Val dumped her stuff and ran outside to find the nearest metro station.

It felt strange to be at Suki’s again in the space of less than half a day, but already that first visit felt more like a hazy, distant memory. Suki lived in a quiet residential suburb of low-rise houses and apartments, a short walk from the Japan Railway station. Val had nearly fallen asleep on the train and now dragged herself past the nook selling groceries and the AM-PM on the corner, where she stopped to pick up some sweet, cold tea and the soya milk that Suki liked. Then she walked around the sake shop to the three-story walk-up.

Suki opened the door and they immediately embraced. Suki couldn’t stop shaking. “Val, they’re going to find us, I don’t know what to do – they’ll kill us, Val!”

“Shh, calm down…shh…”

Val guided her wrecked friend to her couch. Suki lived in a one-room apartment, furnished haphazardly and sporting Laura Ashley flower-pattern curtains and sofa cushions.

“Hey, Suki, take it easy. Here, I brought you some tea.” But Suki looked wired enough. “Or maybe you just want some soya milk.”

She dumped the drinks near the sink and poured Suki a glass.

“How’s your cheek?” Suki asked after she had calmed down a little. She looked haggard and her hair was strung out. She looked like Val felt. How she pined for a mirror and a few lines of René’s Peruvian snowflakes.

“Don’t suppose you have any coke,” she murmured as Suki placed a hand on her face.

“I wish. Did the bandage come off?”

“Yes. I washed it again at home and didn’t have a replacement. It hurts.” Val didn’t add how much she hated having that big white swatch taped to her face.

“I’ll do it again. This time just let it alone.” Suki tended again to Val’s cut.

“Do I really need this thing on me?”

“It could get infected.”

Val surrendered; she was too tired to argue. “So. The police. We were going to find them today.”

Suki glanced at a clock. “The news will be on now,” she said, raising the volume on the TV. It was still at a commercial.

“What’s going on?”

“You’ll see.”

Takahashi was the top story. The image showed the house this morning with the banged-up Mercedes out front, but it was taken from a distance, from behind a line of yellow police tape. Although the house was damaged, it looked simply neglected, not the scene of a frantic shoot-out.

Suki translated. “The woman says there was an attempted murder of a prominent businessman at his house last night.”

A photograph of Takahashi followed, featuring a somewhat younger Painter in a business suit.

“Takahashi Shigeru, president and founder of Shoryo Trading Corporation and retired army colonel. He was found shot and nearly dead in his home late last night after neighbors heard many shots and phoned police.”

“Nearly dead?” Val said.

Suki’s hand clasped hers as she continued to translate. “Listen: Police believe the shooting was related to an unidentified foreign woman who was visiting Takahashi’s house.”

Now there was a shot of uniformed policemen entering the farmhouse.

Suki continued: “They’re saying that Takahashi was also an artist. That he painted many famous portraits for private collections.”

“Yeah, right.”

There was now an interview back outside with a paunchy policeman in civilian clothes and a fisherman’s bucket hat. He spoke woodenly into a phalanx of microphones as flashbulbs popped.

“This is Inspector Tohno Masaharu,” Suki said. “He says his forensics team has uncovered a lot of evidence. He thinks a foreign woman came here to have her picture painted. She tried to rob him. There was a struggle and she shot Takahashi.”

Val wanted to protest but kept quiet so Suki could continue.

The scene turned to a reporter outside a hospital, speaking to the camera.

Suki said: “This reporter says the case is very sensational and that police are on a big hunt. Takahashi is at this hospital in Odawara where he is in critical condition and unconscious. Doctors do not know if he will live, but police are hopeful he will recover so they can question him. And now here is an interview from this morning by another policeman.”

Suki’s grip on Val’s hand hardened as the picture changed.

It felt like someone had punched her in the guts: the same reporter at the hospital but in a scene from earlier today, holding a microphone up to Yoshino in his blue trench coat, Yoshino’s hard, unsmiling eyes framed by those big, square glasses, just eating up the camera.

“Oh my God,” Val gasped.

Suki was prepared; she had seen this already today. “Police detective Yoshino Ryutaro is guarding Takahashi around the clock at this hospital.”

There was a brief exchange between the reporter and Yoshino, and then the thug made a short remark to the camera.

Suki translated: “Police officers are combing Tokyo and the surrounding areas in search of the mystery foreign woman.” Images showed two blond women being taken into a police station, victims of the dragnet coming down across Tokyo. “Anyone with information should please contact the police. Takahashi will be questioned as soon as he is capable. The police consider this crime their number one priority.”

Val and Suki sat for a long minute, trying to digest the report. Suki hit the mute button, leaving them in an uncomfortable silence.

Val eventually said, “The whole thing’s fixed. No mention of those American guys. Nothing about a shoot-out. The place was a war zone, there was a dead man out front; how could they not mention it?”

“Yoshino is a policeman,” Suki said with a shudder. “The reporters believed everything he said.”

“It’s all a cover-up to frame me.”

“I think so.”

“No mention that he’s been indicted by the World Court two weeks ago for war crimes. I guess they can’t – they don’t want to connect me to Charlie, otherwise people might figure out why the Painter had invited me there.”

“I can’t believe he’s still alive.”

“No mention of any stolen maps,” Val observed. “I think this is being hushed up because these guys don’t want anyone to know about what Takahashi was really doing during the war. Enslaving women for brothels or stealing gold from somebody.”

“But Yoshino knows it was us there,” Suki said. “Why not just say it was us?”

Val pondered that for a moment. “Because they want to find us on their own, without any other policemen or reporters around. They want to take care of us privately. Then we’re either found dead or declared to have fled the country; either way, no one’s going to care.”

“Val…” Her voice was a whisper. “Moriaga was yakuza. I think Odama knows them too. That means we have more than just the police looking for us. What are we going to do?”

“They knew where me and Charlie lived. They’ll know where you live too, Suki. We’re going to get out of here. We’re going to get our money and the map, and we’re leaving Japan.”

“But what about me?”

“You’ve got to come with me, Suki.”

“What if we give them what they want?”

“You think if we hand over the map they’ll let us go?” She shook her head. “No way. That map’s our insurance. That’s the only thing that’ll keep us alive. But we’ve got to get it out of Japan. I don’t think it’s safe for long in your bank. They’ll figure it out soon enough.”

Suki was getting hysterical again. “But I can’t leave! I have nowhere to go.”

“We’ve got three million yen, plus my savings. We could live a year off that in another country.”

“But—”

“Suki! We are in danger, right now. We can’t stay here. Your apartment is not safe, do you understand? They’re going to find us here.”

“So…so what do we do?”

“We buy plane tickets.”

“If the police are looking for us, can we get through immigration?”

Val thought for a moment. “I’ve got an idea, but it means we may have to wait one more day. Come on, I’ll help you pack.”

Suki stared at the TV.

“Hon, we’ve got to get out of here.”

With a sudden calmness, Suki said, “I want to see Simon.”

(Next chapter.)