Chapter 4

Chapter 4

In my workshop, I sat at the table, doing my research on what the hooker had told me. A simple internet search brought up a plethora of information. According to news articles, the Black Mist Biker Gang had been committing various crimes in Adachi-ku for the past six months.

It was the same old story. The guys were a collection of misanthropes and malcontents. They'd spent six months terrorizing neighborhoods located around Kitasenju station. They had busted up grocery stores, harassed locals, and made liberal use of intimidation tactics to just take anything they wanted. A number of random shootings and hit and runs had been attributed to them, but no witnesses to the crimes had spoken up.

The most noteworthy thing about the Black Mist was how they seemed to be specifically targeting Yoshida clan businesses.

“Peace Out The Window!” The headline of one article read. “Is it better to live under the thumb of a relatively peaceful criminal enterprise, or to have things shaken up to possibly result in change? That is the question some of the residents of Adachi-ku are now facing. For decades, it's been a well-known, but unproven fact that to have a small business in the area, you would have to pay for protection from the Yoshida Clan of yakuza. Despite the inconvenience of the extra expense, many local owners have reported over the years that it did at times result in positive experiences, feeling safe for knowing they would receive real aid if needed.

All of that has changed with the introduction of the Black Mist Biker Gang. The youthful felons have made it their mission to take over the ventures owned and operated by the long-established Yoshida Clan. Sources have informed this reporter that the Black Mist is attempting to wage a true war against the yakuza. It is unknown at this time how much progress they have made, but it is known that they have successfully taken over the local protection racket.”

That article continued for a bit, but I moved on. Reading through another five, I saw that the Black Mist was being overly aggressive in their methods. They'd launched an attack on a believed Yoshida cash house, only for two of them to end up getting killed while trying.

That trend tended to repeat itself, with the Black Mist being more than a little reckless, often suffering some kind of loss for everything they gained. At least ten of them had already been thrown in the clink. One of the articles featured a proposed psychological profile of the leader of the gang. All the shrink's psycho-babble boiled down to its essence said that the leader was likely a real hothead who felt he had something to prove.

“I could have told you that.” I thought.

Sarcasm aside, that felt like a good development for me. If talked to just the right away, and if I dangled the right kind of carrot in his face, I was sure I could enlist the aid of him and his goons.

Feeling I still needed some more info, I pulled up all of the social media sites and logged in with my dummy accounts. They were attached to international IPs, run through three dozen satellites, and never posted anything or interacted with anyone, making them sufficiently backstopped.

I used a search algorithm to data mine the sites, bringing up all posts from the Adachi-ku area for the previous two weeks. The attached keywords of “biker,” “gang,” and “Black Mist,” brought up everything I wanted.

I spent an hour trolling through all the posts, and I found something interesting. Someone going by the username “ShopGuy22” had been posting a lot about them in the window of time I'd searched. One of his posts included a helpful picture of what he claimed was the Black Mist leader on his motorcycle. Most of it was all angry vitriol, but going back through his posts from earlier than two weeks, his comments had previously shown more fear but progressed.

ShopGuy22: The Black Mist stole half of old man Hino's store. Where are the cops? We need them!

ShopGuy22: I heard the bikers blew up a row of cars just for the fun of it

ShopGuy22: When is something gonna be done about these bikers?! I thought we had “protection!”

ShopGuy22: That's it! This is the final straw! The Black Mist just broke my daughter's arm and laughed about it! I'M NOT TAKING THIS ANYMORE!!!

Reading his posts, it was clear to me that whoever the guy was, he'd whipped himself into a frenzy. Anger like that, you had to do something about it, with no choice in the matter. I didn't get the feeling from the comments that he was the type to take care of it himself, which meant the cops, which could be a problem. If all the Black Mist got arrested before I could use them, I'd have been up the river. That last, most angry post was only a few hours old, so I'd guessed I still had some time.

After taking my eyes off the screen, I rubbed the pain in them away. I got up to stretch my legs and walked over to the window so I could get some fresh air. Leaning out the broken window a little to get the wind on my face felt good, but I had to duck back in and dive beneath the sill after just a second. A silver speck had been flying across the distant shoreline. It was a police drone, surveilling for me.

“They've got the drones out. I'll have to keep my new helmet on at all times while outside. They catch my face, every cop in the city will be on me in minutes.”

“Ah!”

I gasped and pinched the bridge of my nose. A stabbing headache like a needle being jabbed into me rocked my brain. The throbbing in my head felt like the pounding of an old-timey blacksmith hammering on a piece of metal. It only needed a minute. I'd been having harsh pains on and off all day. They wouldn't stop until after the whole job was over, one way or the other. There was nothing to do but press on.

“So, how's the missus?” Officer Fujioka Juro asked from the passenger seat of the car.

His partner grunted a laugh. “Which one?”

Both men laughed out uproariously at the infidelity Officer Tsutsui Raijin showed to both of his wives. He never even attempted to hide it from his partner. The two men had grown up together, gone to school together, and attended the academy together. They were more honest with each other than anyone else.

“Well, Suguha's pregnant again. Meanwhile, it seems like we're gonna have to get Kaoru's entire left radius replaced, and the insurance isn't gonna cover all of that.”

“The crap never ends, does it?”

“Sure doesn't”

Officer Tsutsui put on his blinker to overtake a slow-moving car ahead. He made the maneuver a little slower than he usually would have, thanks to the setting sun getting in his eyes.

The pinging notification sound of an incoming dispatch call filled the cop's ears.

“3-King-8. Dispatch calling 3-King-8.”

Officer Fujioka reached out and tapped the icon on the screen to turn on the radio's speaker.

“This is 3-King-8. Go ahead dispatch.”

“3-King-8, be advised, we've gotten reports of a possible ten-fifteen in your area. Uploading address to your unit now.”

“10-4 dispatch. We've received the address and are en route. Over and out.”

“10-4 3-King-8. Over and out.”

Officer Fujioka leaned forward, changing the screen in the central console to GPS navigation.

“Looks like we're pretty close. Map says to take the next exit.”

“Got it.”

Raijin indicated to get back over into the left-hand lane and took the exit ramp. Ten minutes was all it took to follow the GPS to their destination. The neighborhood they arrived in was slightly lower to middle class. Most of the buildings were a combination of independently owned businesses and homes where the owners lived.

There was a nearly even ratio between buildings intact, and the ones that were piles of rubble.

It was the type of block where parents wouldn't be so worried about crime that they wouldn't stop their kids from playing outside, but wouldn't let them do it unsupervised either.

The address took them to the last building on the row. The sign over the store's door had worn away some, leaving it to proclaim itself the “Ta- Tofu Shop.”

Officer Tsutsui parked the cruiser just before the store. They both got out and approached the front.

“Uh, Juro, do you see anything wrong here?”

“Not a thing.”

The store in front of them seemed to be unmolested. The door was firmly shut, the windows were intact, and there didn't appear to be anyone inside. The street was half empty of parked cars. Except for a couple of people looking to be unlocking their doors to head inside, the street was abandoned. Officer Fujioka tapped the left epaulet of his uniform, activating his radio.

“Police Officer Fujioka to Dispatch.”

“Dispatch here. Go ahead, Fujioka.”

“Dispatch, are you sure we're at the right address? Everything seems quiet here.”

“It's confirmed. You're right where the call said it was happening.”

“Got it. Thanks, dispatch. Over and out.”

He tapped his epaulet again, ending the radio call.

“So, what do you think, Raijin?”

“Either a false alarm or a crank call. I don't care either way. We might as well check out the area's CCTV while we're here. Gotta be able to say we did everything.”

Officer Tsutsui lifted the flap of his right side shirt pocket. He extracted a police issue, miniature tablet, inside of a protective hard case. He activated the computer and used the location function to enter the city sector into the app for the city's CCTV cameras.

“Damn! Yeah, really should have seen this coming.”

“What's up?” Fujioka asked.

“Two-thirds of the cameras for this square block aren't working. There's no coverage of this building at all.”

“Oh, for Buddha's sake! I can't believe what those lazy idiots downtown get away with!”

“For all the good it'll do, I'm putting in a note to get the tech crews out here, and now we can go.”

The two of them turned to get back into their car. Unlike when he'd gotten out, Officer Tsutsui went around the front of the vehicle to get back in. Walking the outside, he caught a glimpse of something in his periphery vision and stopped.

“Hey, Juro. Come over here.”

Officer Fujioka did as his friend told him, and moved around to his position. At that vantage, they were able to see a prone pair of feet. The angle the feet were at had prevented the policemen from seeing them before.

“Sir, are you alright?” Officer Tsutsui asked.

The feet did not budge a centimeter. The two cops began to shuffle closer to the unknown subject. Their hands instinctively drew closer to their holsters with the uncertainty of what they were nearing.

Rounding the corner, only a few steps away from the unconscious person, Officer Fujioka heard an electronic click sound beneath him. He didn't have the time to look down before a torrent of electricity rocketed through his body. He wailed as the pain and shock assaulted his nervous system.

“Juro!”

“Don't move!”

Officer Tsutsui froze where he was. He didn't see his friend pass out. The person they'd been going to check on was sitting up straight in front of him. The person's face was hidden beneath a motorcycle helmet, but the iron in his hands was easy to see.

***

I had my gun trained firmly on the cop in front of me. The whole setup had been pretty easy to arrange. All I'd needed to do was hide my motorcycle out of sight, call in a robbery at the address, set the electro-mine where I could be reasonably sure it would be stepped on, and splay myself out to wait. For good measure, I'd also shot out the CCTV camera covering the building before making the call.

The conscious cop's face was still twisted in shock. His hand was still moving towards his gun on reflex.

“Don't! Don't try it. I don't want to hurt you, so don't force my hand.”

My voice was coming out in a deep whisper, to deflect any future vocal tracing. I began to rise to my feet.

“Take the heater out of the holster very slowly. Thumb and forefinger only.”

Still on the stunned side, the cop reluctantly started to do as I told him. The fear ran its course in him, and his eyes were then trying to hurl daggers at me. He undid the safety latch on the holster and gripped the gun near the hammer just as I'd told him.

“Slowly,” I said.

The cop drew his pistol out, holding it limply between his fingers, away from his body.

“Disconnect the barrel, take out the resonance chamber, and throw the pieces away. Try being a hero, and I won't hesitate to drill you.”

He followed instructions, his gun came apart before my eyes, and he chucked the three pieces away to various points.

“Good. Now, walk back to your car. Nice and slow.”

A gesture with my gun back to the cruiser accompanied. I let the cop take a few steps before I followed after him. The moronic mistake of being close enough for him to try something was not one I was going to make. Just in front of the car's passenger door, the cop stopped.

“Open it.”

He scowled at me and began to extend his hand towards the blood-reader beside the handle.

“Stop!” I ordered. “The right hand. Using the left sets off the silent alarm. We wouldn't want that, would we?”

The cop grunted at me in anger but placed his right hand on the metal beneath the handle. The panel around his hand glowed as thousands of microscopic syringes imperceptibly took a sample of his blood to confirm his identity. It returned to normal after a few seconds, and the door popped open. The cop turned his head to glare at me again.

“That's good. Now, unlock the police database at the terminal in there.”

The widening of his eyes gave away the copper's surprise. He tried to hide it by starting up a bravado.

“What?! Uh uh! There's no way I'm gonna endanger whoe-”

His tough guy act was cut short by adjusting my aim, and my sonic needle from my gun giving him a partial shave.

“I'm not asking,” I told him in my calmest, coldest voice.

All of the guy's machismo out the window, a trembling started up in his hands. He opened the passenger door and moved to sit in the seat.

“Don't! Just lean in and do it.”

He kept one hand on the frame of the door as he inclined toward the center. I watched him insert a code into the computer screen in the middle console, and place his thumb on a second blood-reader. The police department logo blooming onto the screen told me that the database was open.

“It's done.” The cop said while leaning out.

He never straightened up. I got behind him in an instant, kicked his weight-bearing foot out from under, and brought him down into a chokehold. On the ground together, the cop thrashed with everything he had. His training told him that he then had the opportunity to maybe take control back, and he strained vigorously. He tried to reach back and gouge my eyes, but my head was too far back to reach. He would have tried to pull on my foot to cause pressure in my muscles and force me to release, but I'd accounted for that. After hitting the ground, I'd crossed both my feet around his right hand, immobilizing it.

I could have had the cop out faster if I'd gone for a blood choke, but I hadn't wanted to use that. The problem there was that if you didn't kill the guy, he would start to come around as soon as the blood got back to his brain. I'd gone for a windpipe choke cause I'd wanted him out for a good little while.

The nine seconds it took for the guy to conk out felt slower than gridlock traffic. When he finally went slack in my arms, I held him like that for another five seconds just to be sure. Rolling him off me, I got to my feet.

Sitting down in the cruiser's seat, I waved my hand over the console screen, bringing out a holographic keyboard. What I put into the keyboard showed itself on the windshield in front of me.

Into the search box, I typed the words, “Black Mist Biker Gang,” and hit the enter key. The hits I got back were a mix of police reports, transcripts of emergency calls, and witness statements. I scrolled through them until I found the one I was looking for; a case number. After tapping the windshield to open it, a new window then popped up with an advisory to inform me that the file was restricted to Inspector rank officers or higher and that repeated attempts to access it would be flagged.

“Just like I'd expected.”

Removing my glove, I extended my right hand and connected my tubules to the screen. Thanks to the cop unlocking the database, I hadn't needed to go through the process of breaking in. It was a simple task to scan through metadata until I found the markers for a Superintendent's car and then switch them out. I tapped the case file on the windshield again, and it opened with no problem.

Skimming through the file, it had everything I'd been looking for. The individual calling himself “ShopGuy22” went officially by “Amaya Yoshihiro.” I got his address, the specifics on his protective detail, and read through the particulars of the case. The Inspector in charge painted an eloquent picture in his notes.

The entire case was riding on the arrests of the rest of the Black Mist. It explained how even though they had CCTV footage of several of the crimes the gang had committed, they'd never gotten shots of their faces or the offending motorcycles outside of the crime scenes. It told me that they had the warrant ready, but had not yet sent it to be approved by a judge.

The most recent entry explained that Amaya-san had yet to provide them with the testimony they needed to get the warrant approved. Apparently, he'd only called the police a few hours before. He'd refused to go in and do it that night because he and his wife had just brought their daughter home from the hospital.

After memorizing where the cops were planning the raid, I was all done. I redrew my tubules, affixed the glove back in place, and climbed out of the cruiser. A sidestep around the cop I'd choked, and I left them both where they'd fallen.

Miyake Genkei sat at the head of the room in his old, battered, armchair. Looking out at his friends, he loved feeling like a king on his throne. It wasn't just the elation he got from the dingy old thing, but the reminder it gave him as well. That old chair constantly reminded him of how far he planned to go to show up all those rich pricks born with everything.

Genkei took a glance around his miniature kingdom. Everything was business as usual. His best and oldest friend, Jin Souta, was working on his laptop, picking out their next target. As soon as he found a good Yoshida spot to hit, Souta and he would work out the assault plan together.

On the other side of the room, he could see his old friends Natsuo, and Chiharu playing cards against each other. Everyone else was out in the front of the bar, either drinking or playing pool. When they'd decided they were gonna try to steal turf away from the Yoshida, the old bar had been the first prize they claimed. They didn't legally own it, yet, but no one but them came in anymore, so the owner had to make do.

Raised voices and the sound like a chair smashing broke Genkei's serenity.

“What the hell was that?!” He screamed.

The sounds of fighting grew until it sounded like something out of a movie.

“Chiharu, Natsuo! Go check that out!” Souta gave the order.

Just as the two guys were getting up from their game, the skirmish outside quieted. One of their newest recruits, a guy named Ren, came through the door to the back. A little blood was trickling out of his right ear.

“Boss, guy came in saying he wants to see you. Wouldn't take no for an answer. He tried to shove his way through, and we had to knock him down a little. Boys got him out there now.” Ren explained.

It came as no new development for Souta to see his old friend's face flare instantly into seething rage.

“Bring that bastard in here!” Genkei roared.

Ren nodded and backed up to the door. He pushed it open and gave a jerk of his head to the outlying others. Ren stepped aside, and two more of the boys, looking equally disheveled came in. A big guy in front of them was held at gunpoint. He was taller than anyone else in the room, but his clothes mismatched the importance his height implied. He was dressed in plain, cheap-looking, and entirely indistinct clothes. The boys brought him to a stop a distance away, in front of Genkei.

Genkei climbed off of his make-believe throne and closed the distance by half. The proximity made Genkei's considerably short stature stand out more than usual.

“Take your helmet off.”

The intruder did as instructed without hesitation. Souta noted in his mind how the guy did it smoothly as if he weren't the least bit concerned about his present circumstances.

The face under the bike helmet wasn't what any of them had been expecting. The guy had to have mixed blood in him. His facial features looked mostly like that of a hereditary Japanese, but his skin was too Mediterranean for him to pass. His hair gave him away too. It was cut short, but there was a distinctively non-Japanese curl to it that was just starting to regrow.

“Who are you?” Genkei growled out his question.

“I'm the guy who's gonna put you right where you've always wanted to be.”

“Excuse me?!”

“You heard me. I'm the one who's gonna take this two-bit operation and kick it up to the empire you want it to be.”

The impertinence of the stranger triggered Genkei's inner fury all the more. For some tall punk to bust into his den, insult him, his boys, and all their ambitions could not go unpunished. Genkei lashed out with an inverted punch to the guy's stomach. He'd been expecting to have to do more damage before a real impact was made, but the intruder doubled over instantly. Genkei followed up his first strike with a left hook, and then a vicious headbutt. The guy collapsed to his knees, holding himself up with one hand on the floor, while the other was covering his mouth. He looked like he was going to be sick.

“Souta, kill this sack of shit!”

Souta nodded, and crossed over to the crumpled intruder, pulling out his pistol. While Genkei moved to watch it from a better angle, Souta aimed his gun at the guy's head, compressing the trigger. He'd fully expected it to happen that way.

“Cops.” The guy grunted out in a wheeze.

Souta released his pressure on the trigger.

“What are you talking about?”

Collected and rising to his full height, the intruder set free more than a few imposing vibrations.

“You idiots didn't think with everything you've been doing that someone wouldn't eventually try to get even?”

“What?!”

Genkei charged forward again, pulling back his fist to start round two. Before he made it, the intruder whipped up his jacket and pulled a heater of his own. He pointed it at Genkei one-handed. The Black Mist's leader froze in place, and it was a long beat before any of the surrounding guys drew a bead on the intruder.

“I'd like not to get hit again. Do that, and listen to me for a few minutes, I think we can do each other a world of good.”

“What the hell's this about?!” Genkei roared.

“It's simple really. I've found out that you guys are going to be hit by the cops any time within the next few days.” The guy said.

Every gun present lost some tension upon hearing the news.

The guy went on. “Yeah, that's right. They've got a witness who's seen you guys commit multiple crimes, and unlike the rest, he's mad, not scared. The cops just need him to put a few things on the record, and then they can come in here, guns blazing. They'll kill at least half of you before you even get your guns up.”

“They even know where we hang out?” Dread surprise leaked from Souta's mouth.

“You didn't exactly keep it a state secret.”

“So, what do you want, anyway? What are you here for?!” Fumed Genkei.

“A straight-up exchange. I make it so the cops can't bust you, you help me on a job I need to pull for myself, which will also happen to help you even more.”

With the mention of gain, the hard shell of Genkei's perpetual hostility cracked.

“How?” He asked.

“You guys have been hitting Yoshida's stuff. You're the only ones in decades. You want to make yourselves players, carve out your own turf, right?”

“We want ALL turf! We want to take everything the Yoshida have!” Was Souta's declaration.

“Help me with my job, and you'll give them a blow that'll cripple their top brass and destabilize their whole organization overnight.”

“And first you'll make sure the cops can't arrest any of us?” Souta asked.

The guy nodded his head.

“Just how are you going to do that all by yourself?” Genkei asked, his voice thick with incredulity.

“It's already done.”

The dusk was on its home stretch to full night, giving me plenty of darkness to hide. I'd left my motorcycle parked ten blocks away, and hiked the rest of the way. At that moment, I had myself crouched low to the ground, beside the edge of a private house. I peered around the corner, being sure to keep myself as hidden as possible.

The home of Amaya Yoshihiro's family was the third down the row, and second from the end. It was on a street meant mostly for pedestrians, just barely wide enough for a single car. I'd come in from the east and taken a long way around so I could have the cover I'd need to scope things out.

My precautions paid off. At the end of the street, where it melded onto the main road, there was a car. I couldn't make out much of it. It was parked at an askew angle, and only the rear end had a view into the row of houses. In my estimation, it was parked badly and a little too well. I couldn't tell the make or model, but it looked to be a battered old SUV of some kind.

The rear window I had my eyes on buzzed down a few centimeters, and I saw a hand coming out. My head snapped back, out of sight. That confirmed my suspicion that it was an unmarked cop car to protect the Amayas. The hand was one of them likely releasing their fly drone after a recharge. A good tool for eliminating the need to have a direct view of the place. Meant I'd have to take care of the guys in the car before moving to the house.

Took me half an hour to work my way back to where I'd first entered the block, and then circle behind the cops. Between the fact that the particular area of Adachi-ku I was in was already quieter than most of Neo Tokyo, and the influence of the Black Mist, despite the early hour, the streets were practically abandoned. I didn't pass four people.

The street behind the cops was void of any warm bodies except mine. Laying down on the pavement, I belly crawled the final distance it took to reach the stakeout vehicle, and wriggled right underneath it.

There was any number of ways I could have rendered the cops inside good for nothing. Maybe I'd have hacked into the car's inner system and overridden the auto-pilot so that the accelerator would floor it and send them crashing into the first obstacle to present itself. I could have cut the fuel line, let the petrol leak out, and blown it up like an old-school action movie. Or for the simple route, I might have just shot them through the floor and left them there. I decided to go for a low-tech solution.

I reached down and felt around in my satchel to find what I wanted. It was packed to the brim with supplies to cover a myriad of possible situations. What I pulled was a pair of wire cutters, six magnets, and a spool of titanium wire.

Eyeballing the distance between doors underneath the SUV, I measured how much wire I would need. After unfurling the correct amount of wire and snipping it free, I set them aside for the moment. Taking two of the magnets, I attached one to each of the front doors. Looping the titanium wire around the hooks several times, I then tied off each end. When I was done, the wire was stretched so tightly across the undercarriage that it wouldn't give a millimeter. I repeated the process for the back doors and rear hatch as well.

Since the cops were always going to be the biggest threat to me when I started my criminal ventures, I'd always made sure to know everything possible about their methods, supplies, capabilities, everything. I knew that even an unmarked SUV like that, a purposefully old one to look inconspicuous, would have sonic vibration-proof glass as standard. The locks I'd just improvised would make escape impossible without outside help.

Even knowing what I was about to do, the thought of how those cops would be futilely pounding against those doors soon made me smirk for a second.

After climbing out from under the car, I walked towards the Amaya house as if I didn't have a care in the world. Standing in front, I stayed far enough back to not trigger the security system. Almost no one in those days who wasn't born rich enough to hit two meters tall lived in a place less than thirty years old, but they would still have semi-modern home security. It was a law, but a law that worked to my advantage.

I took out and powered up my tablet. Since I didn't need that one to be a spotless job, I only took the time I needed to prevent the digital footprints from leading back to me, instead of masking them completely.

There was no way I could get close enough to the exterior panel to use my tubules, so the answer was an infrared laser. With the direct line of sight I had over the short distance, I could connect them. The virus I delivered to their home system was blunt, brutal, and easily detectable, but it still forced the system to go into a reset.

A quick dash forward to the door, and I set to work on picking the lock. I'd always figured that I'd one day probably find myself in a hole, and need to dig myself out. The ballgame turning out to be working through a triple homicide hadn't factored in, but those were my breaks. Crying over them wouldn't do me any good.

My training regimen hadn't come from a spy program, or any other such thing like you might have read in a story. I'd just studied all the articles, blogs, online videos, factually accurate books, and movies I could get my hands on, and then practiced what I'd seen over and over until I had it. Cracking a bank safe or anything was out of my league, so I wouldn't have claimed to be an expert. But, as long as the system was down, I could work most any low to medium-cost lock on the market, and that was just what I was looking at. I got all the tumblers tripped, and the door closed with me inside of it with three seconds to spare before the system was back up.

The inside of the house looked a little better than the exterior. The carpet past the traditional alcove to remove shoes was clean and almost looked new. Moving further into the house, I got a look at their living room. They had a nice couch, a decent-sized TV, and photos depicting a happy family almost everywhere I looked. It almost made me feel bad for what I was about to do.

The sounds of speaking voices lead me to the kitchen where the family was preparing dinner together. I didn't know what they were making, but from how they were talking, I guessed they were trying to cheer up the daughter who'd gotten her arm broken.

The melodious tones of a family brought forward a memory I hadn't thought of in years. My parents and I, back in our glorified shanty in the Minato-ku dock slums. The three of us were in our kitchen. We didn't have much of anything, but my mother always tried to make dinner a fun event. It was the only point during the day when all three of us had time to talk and be together. She always said that no matter the quality of the food, she prepared it all with love.

I shook my head free of the cobwebs of memories. That life had died a long time before, and in that present, I had a job to do.

Holding my gun with both hands, I made the last turn to show myself, getting my first look at the Amayas. They all looked just how they did in their pictures from the hall. The little girl, sitting at the dining table was the first to see me. Her face morphed from the little smile she'd had to abject terror in the blink of an eye.

“Da-daddy.” She squeaked out.

Her parents turned around and saw me. To their credit, they didn't scream, or start asking any dumb questions they would never have answered. The mother dropped the plate she was holding, and it smashed on the floor, but that was it.

“Move! Get in the other room, NOW!”

My voice came out in a volcanic eruption of anger. The four of us all did a kind of dance, circling until we'd switched positions. They shambled backward as a group.

“We need to have a little talk.”

“And... what happened next?” A stupefied Souta asked me.

Only a couple of them were still holding guns on me. Telling the story of how I'd broken into the Amaya's house had evaporated away most of the hostility in the room. Even the little one who'd hit me was then looking at me with something almost, but not quite awe.

“Why don't you turn on the local news? It's probably on by now.” I told them.

They took a beat to stare at me questioningly, like I'd asked them to solve a complex algebraic equation. The guy I'd heard called “Souta” looked over to the little one, confirming who the leader was for me. The little guy gave a nod of his head.

Souta walked over to a folding card table that had a laptop resting on it. He hunched over and spent a minute using the keyboard and mousepad. When he stood erect, the wall-screen on the opposite side of the room blinked on.

The broadcast from a local, Adachi-ku news station came through in high definition. It displayed a scene of near pandemonium. Firetrucks could be seen, and small wafts of smoke billowed up, barely distinguishable against the night sky. A police barricade was holding both bystanders and the reporters back. The headline tag at the bottom of the screen read, “Local Shop Owner's Home Consumed in Fire.”

The members of the Black Mist collectively turned their heads from the television to stare at me. None of them could hide the astonishment they were feeling, not even the little guy.

“You mean you...”

“You won't be hearing from him, or the cops,” I said, cutting him off.

Without bothering to ask their permission to move, I walked over to the wall showing the broadcast. A double finger tap to the bottom right corner of the TV shut it off.

“So, you see I've already kept my end of the bargain. Are you going to keep yours?” My challenge was issued.

The little guy crossed the space to stand in front of me again. He was like an ant walking on hind legs. It made me wonder how he'd looked like a regular-sized person in that picture I'd seen online.

The gait and pace of his walk told me something about him. I already knew that he was the hotheaded leader the articles I'd read had alluded to. From his walk, I could see he did think of himself as important. His steps were deliberate and fell hard, but he wasn't stomping. Appeared to me like he was trying to make himself seem more powerful.

Standing in front of me, he drastically arched his head back to make eye contact.

“What's in this for you? Why do all this just to get our help with something?”

“I've been setting up this job for a while now, but something's happened. I might have gotten myself in the cop's crosshairs. I don't know if they're gunning for me, but if they are, they won't stop til they get me. I'm not taking that chance. I need money to get out of the country, I need a lot of it, and I need it fast.”

“And this job you have is somehow gonna give us a one-up over the Yoshida?” He asked.

“It'll get you farther in a couple of days than you could have hoped to be in five years with no setbacks.”

Genkei, as I would later learn was his name, smiled for the first time since I'd come in. A grin filled with sadistic glee. I had a thought that I could almost see the bloodlust-filled imaginations swimming through his head.

“You're a real piece of work, aren't ya?”

With the same immediate results as flipping a light switch, his face contorted.

His lips dropped, and his frown lines deepened into a malevolent snarl. While the bottom half of his face changed, his eyes never lost their quality of wildness. It was a human junkyard dog standing before me, living in perpetual aggression, ready to snap at anything that moved.

“You screw us over, I'll rip your balls off with my bare hands.”

I slid one foot back a quarter meter and tightened my lips in a tactical decision. Genkei wanted power more than anything else. By letting him think he'd intimidated me, he'd start thinking that he was better than me like he wanted to be. His compliance was a necessity, and the bodies he brought with him, so his underrating me could only help to that end.

I made a show like I was recomposing myself before I spoke again.

“I'll be back in the morning to go over some things with you, but I won't be hanging around all day. Be ready to go for a ride when I get here. Things are gonna move fast. Like I said, I don't have a lot of time.”

I walked straight out through the biker goons. No one tried to stop me. Why should they have?

Police Sergeant Takahashi Sango was surprised by the number of people she had to knit her way through. The fire had happened two hours earlier. What could they be wanting or expecting to see? It wasn't a huge crowd, but still enough that she couldn't take a straight line to the police barrier.

Stepping around a woman with a baby carriage, Sango reached the police line. Unlike in the previous century when the barricades would have consisted of nothing but tape strung in a circle, or possibly wooden sawhorses, it was done differently then. Pillars reaching halfway up her torso were placed at equal distances apart, and extended metal rods outward and connected to create a fence.

“Please stay back, ma'am.” A uniformed officer tried stopping her.

Sango let the young woman have a look at her tin.

“Sorry about that, Sergeant.”

“Don't think anything of it.”

The officer walked to the closest pillar and used the controls to open a gap. Inside the barricade, it was no different from a thousand other response scenes she'd been witness to in her career.

“I got some of it over the wire, but what happened here?” She asked the officer.

“At seven fifty-two p.m., emergency services received a call reporting a fire at this address. Fire, medical, and police were dispatched immediately. Upon arriving at the scene, we found the house in question to be an inferno, but thankfully, it hadn't spread to the surrounding houses.”

“Is the cause of the fire known?”

“There will of course have to be a review by the Fire Inspectors, but at the moment, it's believed a probable case of arson.”

“Any casualties?”

“They're over there, Sergeant. Next to the ambulance. If I could ask, ma'am, why is a Chiyoda homicide investigator interested in this fire?”

“I happened to be looking at the inter-departmental secure site and saw the report of the one-one-nine call. Something about the report of the call itself piqued my interest. Thank you for your time, officer.”

Sango gave a short, courteous bow, which the young woman returned in kind. As she walked towards the ambulances, Sango caught a glimpse of the burnt house. She couldn't make any educated guesses as to the state of the interior, but from what she could see, it didn't look past the point of repair. In front of one of the three ambulances, she found the victims of the crime.

“Amaya-san?”

The two adults looked up to make eye contact with her. They and their young daughter had been huddled together, sitting on the lip of the open rear doors of the medical vehicle. They looked like they'd just been holding each other, and trying to keep their wits intact.

“Yes?” The wife asked.

“I'm Police Sergeant Takahashi Sango. I'm a homicide investigator from the Chiyoda-ku office.”

“Homicide? I-I don't understand.”

“I think this may have some bearing on the case I'm currently working on. First, I want to express my great sympathy towards you all. I hope it doesn't sound hollow to say that I truly do feel for you and what you've been through.”

“Th-thank you for that.” Amaya the wife's gratitude looked genuine.

Sango nodded respectfully, accepting their acknowledgment.

“Could you please tell me what happened?”

“I, I've never seen anything like that. Whoever that guy was, he's a maniac. I've just never seen anything like that.” Amaya the husband said.

“Please go on.”

“We were making dinner and were just about to eat when this man was standing in the doorway of our kitchen. He had a gun and told us all to go into the living room and sit on our sofa.”

“What did he look like?”

“He, he had on gloves and a motorcycle helmet. I couldn't say. That man was just deranged. He was unstable, kicking the wall behind him, breaking our things, one minute yelling at us, and then muttering something to himself the next. He was ablaze with fury, and then seemed to be collected.”

“Do you remember anything he specifically said? Anything which might help us to find him.”

“A lot of it was just ranting. He seemed more mad than anything else. I know he was from the Black Mist gang. He made that clear enough, complaining about all the hoops he had to jump through just to find out that I was the witness for the case.”

Sango watched the man in front of her have a soft mood swing himself, becoming angry.

“I was assured the gang wouldn't know it was me! I was promised that my family and I would be protected! You people haven't even gotten them yet, so how could they have known?!”

“I'm very sorry, sir. I can speak to the officer in charge of this investigation on your behalf if you'd like, but this is not my case, so I'm afraid I don't have any answers for you. The assailant you met could be the same as one involved in a triple homicide. That is my interest. Can you remember anything else he said?”

Amaya the husband became quiet as he pondered the question. It ended up being his wife who answered it.

“During his rants, I remember him saying something about a boat. It was something about if he'd just been able to kill them on the boat a few days ago, then he wouldn't have even have to be doing this.”

“Thank you. That is what I needed to know. I appreciate your cooperation. In the interests of justice, I'd like to know if I can persuade you to proceed with your-”

“No way!” The father broke in. “That kid was crazy! Do you know how this fire started?! Near the end of his ranting, the kid pulled a bottle of something out from his pocket, flipped the top open with one hand while keeping his gun on us, and started to squirt it around the room. Then, he took a lighter out and lit the stuff! We begged him to stop, to just blow out the lighter and leave, but he wouldn't listen! He made us sit there while our house burned, threatening he'd shoot our legs off and leave us to burn if we moved! He was like some terrible yokai, with no fear of anything. He didn't even move when the flames almost reached his own feet like it was irrelevant if he burned with us. I really thought we were all going to die when he told us to get out. I don't even know how we weren't paralyzed too badly to move, but we all got out of there. I didn't see the man come out the front, and they haven't brought out any bodies, so he must have left another way. You people can forget about me testifying! If the Black Mist has someone like that in their gang, I'd rather pay the protection money! Now, if you don't mind, we'd like to leave. We need to find a hotel for the night.”

“Of course. I'll make sure an officer will drive you wherever you want to go.” Sango said.

She left the family to themselves, hoping they'd be able to someday put this behind them. About nine meters to her right, she saw two men leaning against an old car, not looking at anyone. She decided she wanted to talk to them as well. Both reasonably fit men, one had on a cheap suit while the other was showing the undershirt beneath his open button-up.

“I take it you two are the officers present while all this was going on.” She stated it more as a fact.

They said nothing. The reddening of their faces spoke for them.

“I'm not here to judge you, and I'm not your superior. So, do you think you can find your tongues long enough to tell me how it is the perpetrator managed to lock you in your car? That is what I heard on my way here. Is that it?” She asked, gesturing to some scraps of discarded metal near the front tire.

The cop in the suit summoned up enough composure to speak. “Yeah, it is.”

“He pulled that off, and you had no idea anything was amiss until when?”

“Until we started to see the first signs of smoke. It was then we tried to get out, but couldn't. We tried for only a minute or so before calling in for backup and the firefighters. We kept trying the doors, but it wasn't until the firefighters arrived that we were able to get out. They, uh, had to use the jaws of life.” The one with the open shirt said.

Sango smiled. She wasn't laughing at them, but she couldn't help but marvel at the audacious simplicity of the trick.

“Magnets and some wire. If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have believed it.”

“So, uh, what do you think, sergeant? Does this sound like the guy you're after?” The one in the suit asked, trying to sound like the old-timer he probably was.

“He could be from something the victims say he said, but something feels off. If this is my man, then he's not acting like your standard criminal. He's wanted for multiple homicides, but from all accounts, he's not running.”