To paste into TVR later
Kei Hayasaka, again wearing her favorite striped V-neck, shrugs her shoulders behind the table. "I don’t know why you needed me to look into this one; those asses are everywhere," she says.
"Well, it's more that I'd like you to pull on a specific thread. I've got a name for you to run. Uh, that is, if you have the means to do that kinda thing." Rikiya realizes that he does not fully know the extent of Kei's awareness.
"I'll give you the low-down on it anyway, though, seeing as you've only been conscious for the last couple days." She looks off in a random direction from the outdoor dining table, and spots a man in a blue uniform across the street, with similar shorts and mesh tactical vest. It isn't Sugiyama this time; he seems to be on patrol around the shopping arcade. "That guy over there? He's local security. Argus Security Solutions, specifically. I guess they only started to become a thing around here, about five years ago?"
"Which is why I hadn't heard of them…"
"Something happened here in Okinawa in…oh, god, what, eight years ago? Nine? There was a big jailbreak, my sources were trying to tell me. Somebody was saying that there was a big ol' scandal and a big-time exec in the police department killed himself over it, but none of that really adds up, to me." Kei takes a sip from her can of Strong Zero. "I mean, I can keep asking around about that part, but you wanted to know about Argus."
"Yeah, I did." Rikiya steals a piece of shrimp off of Kei's plate.
"So it was a couple years later. Nobody can really say why, but the Okinawa job market is suddenly flooded with people looking for work. Lot of people claiming they've got backgrounds in law enforcement, but nobody that can actually back it up. Okinawa's police force deny any involvement, saying that none of these people have ever worked for them. You could almost wonder if they used to be Family men, but most of the Families have been gone for longer than that, and this mess happened a lot more suddenly."
"Yeah, I was…kinda there for one of those. The Tamashiro Family in particular, wasn't it?"
"That's right. You were there? Wait, do you mean…"
"Mm-hmm." Rikiya points at the hole in his shirt, having still not found an adequate replacement for it. "Tamashiro's the one who shot me. Was kind of a blur afterwards, but thinking about it, I'm pretty sure he got shot right back. Doesn’t surprise me his family died out right afterwards." Sure doesn't stop the asshole from showing up in my dreams, though…
Kei sips from her can again. "Well, point is, the big flood of newly unemployed guys? Near as I can find, none of them were Tamashiro's. They came from somewhere else, and I feel like it has something to do with that scandal. I'll have to put some feelers out about that again, I think. But more importantly, all of those people had to get jobs somewhere, specifically somewhere that didn't give much of a shit about where they came from. And that's where Argus came in."
"Argus Security Solutions…"
"Yup. Now, the locals aren't real fond of the Argus men. They became Okinawa's top security contractor within the last five years or so, which is unheard of for a new business in a place where there's not a ton of need for their services. But get this: they started replacing cops on the street. Normal police patrols in downtown Ryukyu are hard to find anymore, because you're way more likely to find an Argus man. People are paying 'em, obviously, but I'm hard pressed to find anyone who'd admit to it. Maybe this is the conspiracy nut part of me, but I think there's a reason behind that, and given how some of their guys act, I think it's because they're run by ex-yakuza."
"Which reminds me about that name. I figured out who the guy in the shades was, that was harassing the doctors yesterday. His name's Sugiyama, or at least, that was the name on his uniform. He's an Argus man, too, and I just ran into him again an hour ago." Rikiya begins connecting the dots. "Given how he was acting, I'll bet Argus is just an old-school protection racket, just with uniforms and equipment to make them look the part."
"You didn't get into another fight with him, did you?" The look on her face reminds Rikiya of a high school teacher he once had. "After all I told you about not doing anything too strenuous?"
"I thought you were off-duty," Rikiya laughs. "But nah, no fights this time. Guy looked almost embarrassed to be seen in that get-up. Wandered off before anybody could raise a fist at him."
"It's possible Sugiyama's a fake name," Kei warns. "But I can have my contacts ask around about him. In the meantime…he's seen you, he knows you know he works for Argus, and it's entirely possible he'll have warned his buddies about you. Especially if he's got any kind of authority with them."
"I appreciate it. Really, thanks a ton, this helps me catch up on stuff around here."
"You know it, good buddy," she grins. "Anything else I can get you info on?"
"The abandoned building in the alley behind the shopping arcade…" Rikiya decides he might as well ask about the family office, too. "Is it still owned by Shigeru Nakahara?"
Kei's face indicates she's attempting to memorize the name. "I'll see if anybody at City Hall can help me with that one, see if the title deed comes up." She makes to get up from her chair, before bending over the table and giving Rikiya a solid stare in the eyes. "But first, there's the matter of compensation." Her face suddenly looks more intense and serious than it did, even at the hospital.
"Uh…yeah, that. Still owe you some favors, don't I?"
"Well, a little bird told me you just came into some cash…"
Rikiya reaches for his new wallet, the gift from the Tall Dwarf, but his hand stops before it reaches his pocket. "No way, that's my living expenses right now. I can't just keep slumming it."
Kei stands up straight and folds her arms. "You're gonna have to pay me some actual money eventually, bud. I'll add it to your tab for now, but keep an ear out, I might need you sooner than later." She grabs the food tray off the table, covered in wrappers and used napkins. "And don't think I didn't notice you stealing my fried shrimp. That's the best part."
I can't believe I'm actually doing this again. Rikiya ducks under the caution tape, still valiantly clinging to the front door of Tamashiro's family office. The scent of blood still lingers in the air as he marches up the stairs. Today, he is filled with purpose. He once again reaches the top of the staircase, feeling less winded than last time, but still keeping a careful monitor on his heart rate - what energy he has in him today must go to a specific cause. He lets himself in to the patriarch's office, like he did before, and looks at the leather backed chair. The dust has more or less settled, as has the loose polyurethane foam from the hole in its head rest. But, to Rikiya, it's still a reasonable chair, and this move represents him taking back from that asshole that sat in it. And this time, I'm probably not going to get shot at for it.
He reaches for the window and shoves the thing open. The dust in the room stirs in the breeze, irritating Rikiya's nose a bit. He reaches beneath the chair and lifts it up by its casters. It is lighter than expected, given the wooden parts in the legs and arm rests. He anchors the chair against the windowsill, lifts, and tips it over the edge. It almost seems to sail in the air, from the third floor window, floating like a chair normally does not. What feels like seconds later, it impacts on the concrete outside with a dull puff that echoes off the nearby buildings. The chair, amazingly, is still intact, though Rikiya notes the cloud of dust and foam particulate coming from it. This task complete, he makes his way back down to street level.
I guess everything I own's just going to have to have a bullet hole in it. Rikiya shoves the high-backed office chair into a corner in the main room of the empty Ryudo office, stepping over the detached sliding door on the ground. But at least I'll have somewhere to come back to, to sit and rest. Hardly anybody in the east side of the block paid him any mind as he wheeled the chair across town; the only thing stopping him from going back and looting the rest of Tamashiro's office was the damn staircase.
He slouches into the chair, paying no mind to the awful noise it makes, and digs out that wallet again. He flicks through all the cash inside of it, thinking about what he ought to do with all of it. The smart thing would be to put it towards something he can depend on, like a vehicle. Stock investments were supposed to not be a bad idea either, but Rikiya had never been too keen on the math side of the business; that was always Mikio's department.
Mikio… He thinks about him one more time. For so much of his time working under Nakahara, Mikio was both a subordinate and an equal; more frequently the latter, he figures. The little brother of the Ryudo family. Rikiya often handled duties of a muscular nature, but Mikio held his own, too, keeping the peace in the fish market. And the last time he saw him was in the hospital… in the same hospital he'd wind up in, himself, untold hours later.
He digs the business card back out of his pocket. Mikio Aragaki, driver. The face on the business card, to him, feels more like a cabaret club thing than a taxi service thing, but it is very much Mikio's face staring at him from the card. The hair isn't blonde anymore, and he does look as if he's lost a few pounds over the years, but there's no denying it's him. The question still burns within him. If this is where Mikio is now, what happened to old man Nakahara? He and Mikio were the only people Nakahara employed. His title as captain was ceremonial at best. Did Nakahara move out? When? If he didn't, what happened to him? Who would be able to answer? The only thread he can bear to pull at is Mikio. Something deep within him tells him that, whatever happened to the boss, he is not prepared to handle.
A half-hour later, Rikiya has finished making the rounds at the fish market. Most of the vendors setting up shop there have been in Ryukyu for long enough that they'd know who Mikio was, but most of them can't be sure where he went in the past ten years. The most Rikiya can find is that he hasn't been "on patrol" around here for a long time.
Kaoru Sayama exits the executive jet on to the tarmac of a wide-open, sun-lit private airstrip. The ocean breeze whips her tied-up hair around like the tail of an antsy feline. She turns towards the old man who brought her here. "This isn't Osaka," she says indignantly. "Why'd you really bring me here?"
Joji Kazama straightens his vest and necktie as he descends the last step of the boarding ramp. "In regards to wanting you along as an expert familiar with the Omi Alliance, I was not lying about that part."
"But you were, about going back to my old stomping grounds?" She starts to follow Joji as he walks towards the control tower. "I was hoping I'd get to see my old Sotenbori again, but look at this, I'm not even dressed for it." The pantsuit she used to wear as a police detective, at least, still fits her correctly, though it is a bit stiff for not having been worn in over a decade. The Okinawan sun is already beginning to heat the black jacket up more than is comfortable.
"We needed to make a move quickly, before any part of the equation got cold feet and backed out on us."
"And that includes me, too, I assume." I wonder if it's standard Agency procedure to lie like that. She follows him for another few hundred meters. It almost feels like the control tower isn't getting any closer. "And why are we walking? Surely we could have had transport arranged for us, Mr. CIA."
"They'll be here. But I have business first."
The pair climb a flight of spiral stairs leading up to the control tower, where a single person watches a blank radar screen on an antiquated computer, some NEC model from the late 80s. He wears an army jacket, patterned in flecktarn, with a matching boonie hat keeping his scraggly hair out of his face, its brim scrunched up at the sides by the headset crammed over it. The operator notices them immediately, and slides off one ear of his headset. "Yo," he waves.
Kazama flashes his CIA badge at him. Sayama, following suit, flashes her LAPD instructor's ID. It is Kazama who speaks first. "Your name is Kurita, correct?"
"Yup." He sounds like even more of a yokel than expected, despite his few words.
"I need to know if you've seen any local traffic with these tail numbers." Kazama takes a page out of his pocket notebook and hands it over; it is a short list, with only three entries. Sayama does not get a good enough look to memorize any of them.
"Ain't seen much traffic 'round here 'cept for you, lately." Kurita only barely glances at the piece of paper, before turning his eyes back to the radar screen. "Been about a week since we got folks even landin' here."
"Do you have a log of that?"
"Eh, it ain't nobody you'd be interested in. Little commercial airline, tourists more likely than not, came via Sapporo from…" He awakens a nearby laptop, an aging Powerbook with a black-and-white screen. "PDX."
"Portland International Airport," says Kazama. "Did you note down the tail number?"
"Right here." He double-clicks the relevant line of text, highlighting it; Joji whips out a pencil and precisely scratches the call numbers on a fresh page.
Sayama is now distracted by all the strange and ancient computers lying around the control tower. It's clear that this place's last modernization was 30 years ago; every machine connected to the tower's instruments is some old NEC or MSX-based machine, with haphazard coils of cables sticking out in random directions. The Powerbook is almost the only exception, and even it is only a few years newer than the rest of the tower. "Kurita, was that laptop already here when you started this job?"
"PB-chan? Nah, she's my baby. Been keepin' her up here for a while now, good for note-takin' and not a whole lot else."
"Does it connect to the network?"
"Hell, she's too old to do that. Ain't got that module or connector or whatever. Hell, she ain't even got a battery no more." Kurita holds the laptop up to show her; the battery slots are both empty, and the only thing tethered to the machine is the power cable. "Used to have a real problem with 'em exploding, back in the day. I mighta got one still on the shelf, but I ain't gonna try and use it like that."
"That's all, then. Thank you, Kurita." Sayama readies herself to leave again; Kazama is carefully punching the letters from the notebook into his ruggedized smartphone, but stops her from leaving just yet.
He shows her the screen without saying anything. It's a transcript of a departure log from PDX from the previous week, bound for Okinawa via Sapporo. Most of it looks consistent with a civilian commercial airline, but the cargo and passenger manifests are not filled out at all. He then puts the phone back into his vest pocket, like a fancy pocket watch, and stares disconcertingly at Kurita. "Regarding that flight. Did anybody board or disembark from it? Were you watching?"
"Now, it's been a few days so I can't rightly remember all of it," Kurita prefaced, "but from what I recall, they taxied up real close to the building. I don't think I saw nobody getting on or off it. I recall thinkin' it was kinda weird, but we got one of them bike-cab stands by the roadway out front, so I figured they just didn't want to walk that much. Was here a few hours, then they called for clearance to take off again."
"And that's the only aircraft that landed here all week?"
"The only one, sir."
