Urashima Book 2 Tokyo Beat

CHAPTER 1

WHERE TO?

The Officers Club. I need a drink.

For Captain James 'Jimmy' Miller it had not been a day to remember. Heavy gray clouds had shrouded the metropolitan area in a dreary mist even before he'd got out of bed. As the day had struggled on, so the clouds had just got lower. Now, with sleet spitting out of a leaden sky and dusk already starting to fall, Miller was ready to call it quits.

Captain Jack Fujimoto dragged a rag across the inside of the windshield and once again cursed the Studebaker for its lousy ventilation.

So a waste of time, you reckon?

The trip? Miller pulled out his pack of Luckies and sucked one into his mouth. I wouldn't say that excactly.

True, the drive out to the Senju Freight Yard had not been a resounding success but neither had it been a cataclysmic failure. He'd had a chance to see at first hand the methodology of the criminal group that had been terrorizing GHQ; the same group that sent red roses to national newspapers as atonement for its acclaimed struggle on behalf of the working man. 

He'd witnessed the scars on the Tokyo-Utsunomiya railroad where national rail chief Sadanori Yamada had been manacled in his final few terrifying moments on this earth. He'd also seen enough to know that the members of this group, whoever they were, were extremely professional in all that they did. The murder site had apparently been wiped clean of all clues and there'd been no witnesses. Which is why an ID card belonging to a labor union man- found not on the day of the murder but the following day- seemed so out of kilter. 

It smelt all wrong to Miller. Maybe MacArthur's Number Two, General Courtney Whitney had been right in his briefing summation the previous week: that the red roses sent to the Asahi newspaper were all part of a script written in Hollywood, a script designed to discredit GHQ's recent legitimizing of the labor unions and the local community party, both of which had been banned under the wartime military government of Hideki Tojo. And if that were true, it followed that the real perpetrators of this red rose mayhem were not leftists, but rightists: relics of the Pacific War who could not accept the way things had worked out.

This dossier of Colonel Cullen's, Miller said as Jack drove on past the cardboard hovels and rusting oil drums of Tokyo's northern suburbs. There are three faces in there: the actor Ko Iwasaki, the union leader Yashiro Suzuki and the Communist rabble-rouser Kyuichi Tokuda. How do they all fit together, you reckon?

Iwasaki's a big player. He's a studio owner and a founder member of the Motion Picture Guild. Add in his popularity as an actor, the fact that Tojo locked him up and you got yourself a guy with a shitload of influence.

A deal maker.

Or breaker, Jack added cryptically. What do you know about the labor movement here?

They're split into two federations. Left and right.

Correct. Now the left already supports Tokuda's Communists. But that's not enough to secure him an election win next summer. He needs the moderates.

Enter Suzuki. He's leader of the moderate labor federation-.

Right again. Problem is his faction detests Tokuda's with a vengeance. Won't have nothin' to do with it. There's also the matter of how Suzuki got the top job. There are those who think the commies were behind it- Tokuda's people or the Soviets- and that Suzuki has been bought and paid for.

Miller arched an eyebrow. And what does Mr Suzuki have to say about this slur on his character?

Not a lot, Jack grinned. He's keepin' a low profile; hopes the ruckus will die down. It hasn't yet.

So though he's got the top job, he still doesn't command enough loyalty? To give Tokuda what he wants?

That's about the measure of it. But our boy Ko Iwasaki's a different story. The rank and file thinks the sun shines out of his ass. They'd jump off Mount Fuji for him.

He could deliver the vote to Suzuki who'd deliver it to an eternally grateful Tokuda. Miller nodded slowly as the pieces came together. I heard GHQ is sponsoring Ko. For his movies.

Yeah, he's our golden boy, all right. The acceptable face of Japanese socialism. At least General Whitney thinks so.

But not Roth or Cullen. Miller recalled the divisive line that ran through MacArthur's top brass like the San Andreas Fault. So you reckon Iwasaki will go for it, then? Line up behind the commies?

Jack shrugged. It would depend on the guy's politics, wouldn't it? He's certainly left wing but how far left? No one knows and he aint sayin'.

He'll tell me?

Cullen seems to think so. You're an American newsman. You know L.A. Hollywood. Iwasaki's desperate for international recognition. You could even play it that way. Jack unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit and levered it into his mouth with his lips. There's somethin' else you should know, too. The actor's not beholden to either of those other guys. He's so popular he could run on his own ticket. There's been talk.

Miller gave a low whistle. That would be bad news for Tokuda!

Fuckin' disastrous! Jack said.

§

It took twice as long to get home as the trip the other way. Jack dropped his passenger a couple of blocks from the Press Club. Miller showered, changed and had dinner. 

There was no sign of Frankie Huber or any of the other journalists but he did bump into Frankie's favorite guy in the bar, the plump Englishman Roger Davenport. Davenport suggested a drink but Miller excused himself. He had other plans.

Just as it started to get dark, he wandered over to Tokyo Station and took a cab down to Yurakucho Bridge, the last place his predecessor Major Todd Hayman had been seen alive. Colonel Cullen's recent behavior had convinced Miller the man couldn't be trusted for the facts, so if he wanted to know what really happened to Hayman, he had no choice but to go to the horse's mouth. The street people.

Though the upscale Ginza district was just a half-mile further on, Yurakucho itself was working class and the sidewalks bubbled and hummed accordingly. The iron bridge that spanned the road carried the elevated Yamanote and Keihin Lines, the main rail arteries of the city. It was some seventy yards long and forty yards wide and in its tunnel like enclosure, Miller could make out all manner of shadows from ragged tramps to food vendors.

He sauntered through it, the smell of humanity rancid in his nostrils. At the far end, there were several carts. One of them, backed up against a red brick pier, sold noodles and an old man was sitting in front of it, warming his hands against a charcoal brazier. Across from him, on the other side of the road, were half a dozen whores. A shapely girl in a red dress immediately caught Miller's attention. She ogled him when he walked by and made a comment to her friends, upon which they all burst out laughing. Miller would have enjoyed sharing the joke with her but he had more pressing business. With the noodle man.

You servin' or sleepin'? he said to the old man in his best gutter Japanese.

Servin', if it please Your Lordship!

In that case I'll have a cold beer, Miller helped himself to a stool, and a piece of that nice warm brazier you got there.

The beer came in a bottle. The glass accompanying it had a smeared rim and there was a crack down the side of it. Miller grasped the bottle by the neck, wiped it once on his sleeve and took a long pull.

When he was through, the old man was still hovering in front of him, a dirty cloth slung over one shoulder.

You want food?

What have you got?

Fish stew, noodles, egg pancakes-.

Miller peered into the bowels of the cart and sniffed at the steaming urns. It all looked decidedly unappetizing. He'd do his eating at the club.

I'll pass, if it's all the same, he said but the old man didn't seem the least put out. He just lingered in front of Miller, the shortest of cigarette butts wedged between his blackened teeth.

Ee, but your Japanese is good, Lord! he fawned. Then the shriveled plum that was his face puckered into a suspicious squint. How come you speak so well?

My mother was Japanese.

"Ah so desu ka? Is that so? The vendor's face lightened for a moment but then the squint was back, sharper than before. You don't look Japanese!"

And you don't look honest! Miller fired back. But I'm in a good mood so I'll give you a break. What's your name, old man?

Ogawa, if it please Your Worship.

Ogawa? Miller sucked back another mouthful of beer as he took in the panorama of street life that fell under the old man's gaze. "I guess you know a lot of what goes on around here, eh Ogawa-san?"

Information's as good as money, Lord. If you know what I mean!

I believe I do. 

The old man was eying Miller suspiciously now. Something told him it wouldn't be easy to get the old buzzard to talk. He'd have to come round a few times, earn his confidence. He'd need a reason for being there, too. Then he looked at the whores gathering across the street and knew he had one. He took out his billfold and peeled off five one dollar bills- enough on the black-market to pay an office worker for two weeks. 

There was one more thing I wanted to know-.

I'm listenin'. Ogawa's nostrils were twitching now he had sight of the cash.

That whore in the red over there. Who is she?

Her? Her name's Eri, Lord.

She's here every day?

Most days. She's popular, is that one.

I bet she is. Tell her I'll be seeing her.

'You comin' again, then?

You can count on it!

Miller wadded up the dollar bills and dropped them into the old man's hungry palm. Then he skipped off in search of a cab ride home.

CHARACTERS

MAP

GLOSSARIES

WEB

CHAPTER 2

IMPERIAL ARMY VETERAN Kazuyoshi Ueda stretched out on the tatami mat and wriggled his toes. Outside, the cries of the last tofu sellers drifted up from the street below. Another bleak evening was about to set in.

Two weeks had passed since his initiation into Jun Obuchi's Sumidakai. They'd found him a room just around the corner from the bathhouse; it wasn't much but it was better than the shit-hole he'd been living in by the fish market. And with Obuchi's place close by, he had all he needed, all except sex. But that, too, would come soon, now that Father had put him in charge of collecting tribute from the whores who worked out of Yurakucho Bridge. They'll learn respect soon enough, Ueda thought. Especially that one in the red dress he'd seen near the gambling pens.

He'd thought about her many times since then, mostly at night in his futon when he'd been cold and alone. He'd imagine his tongue inching its way around her delectable breasts and it always ended up with him hardening and matters taking their inevitable course. What did they say her name was? Emiko? Emi? No, Eri. That was it. Eri.

But it wasn't just the whore who'd monopolized his thoughts. There was also the brawl with the Koreans two weeks earlier when his knife had ripped out the lungs of that dung-infested bastard they called The Snake. The memory of it made him glow and the anger he'd endured over his older brother's death down on that Yokohama wharf had subsided but not disappeared. There was still the matter of the silver-haired American, the one who'd shot him down. Ueda had always thought Longnoses looked the same but not this one. Those streaks of Old Man's Hair would give him away. Sooner or later, Ueda figured he'd run into