“Don’t let that thing off in here,” he said. “The bullet will ricochet and could hit anyone.” He was a cautious man. She only had to start feeling a bit high from the vodka and she could get very trigger-happy, he thought. Even Shinobu, who had no desire to die, could just idly pull the trigger the way she might flip the ‘on’ switch on the karaoke mike. If the bullet hit the driver in the back of the head, the car would crash and in seconds the three of them would be caviar-smeared corpses. She was the last person who should be holding the gun.
Kita felt the same way, and the stress of it kept him awake and alert till dawn. He could feel a pleasant tingling sensation in his thighs. He wouldn’t mind if he dropped dead the next minute right there on the highway, he thought, and with this the tingle grew. The car could burst apart, his guts could be ripped open and his bones pulverized, but it seemed to him he wouldn’t register any pain. The only sensation that would remain would be this tingle in his thighs.
“Go faster!” he ordered, though the speedometer was already registering eighty miles an hour.
“You suddenly remembered an urgent appointment, or something?”
“Do people feel a tingling when they’re about to die?”
“I’ve no idea.” The doctor was concentrating on driving, now ten miles an hour faster. Actually, Kita thought, your whole body feels kind of tingly when you’re driving at high speeds like this. It was the same when you jumped from someplace high. Speed and falling… both were natural associates of death.
Kita had a sudden urge to experiment. He asked Shinobu to press the mouth of the pistol against his temple. The tingle in his thighs responded slightly to the touch of the barrel, warm from Shinobu’s hands.
“Put your finger on the trigger.”
“This is dangerous.”
“Go on, just do it.”
Shinobu’s pale finger slipped through the ring that circled the trigger. The tingling sensation spread from his thighs up his back, then spread slowly to between his legs. This must be the pleasant feeling that accompanies death, he thought. Eureka!
“Dr Killer, you ought to write a paper on this. Do some research on the link between death and tingling.”
“You really feel it that much, huh?”
“You bet I do.”
“You’re bringing me out in a cold sweat,” said Shinobu, slipping the Makarov back into the carrier bag.
Only twenty-four hours remained until the decreed time of Kita’s death.
As they passed the “Tokyo Thirty Miles” sign, Kita recalled the face of Yashiro, the first to have leapt out of the Pandora’s box. Suddenly he was filled with hatred for this man who’d dogged his footsteps this past week, meddled continually, and tried to buy his life. The nausea in his belly wasn’t all due to the caviar and vodka, he thought. Yashiro was also to blame. OK, he decided, he’d follow the yakuza rule. It was payback time.
“Dr Killer, it was Yashiro who sent you after me, wasn’t it? How much did he give you for the job?”
“Five hundred thousand.”
“That’s pretty cheap. If I pay you the same, would you undertake to kill him?”
“OK.”
“And could you make it straightforward, please? No bringing him back to life after you’ve killed him.”
There was a short pause before the doctor spoke. “One must commit sin to atone for sin.”
At this, Shinobu swallowed a yawn and remarked, “Seems to me this guy goes about things in a pretty funny way. He’s a doctor but he kills people. There’s a contradiction here.”
“No, it’s Yashiro who’s full of contradictions. Kita would’ve died just the same if I’d left him alone. But that would make my duty as killer meaningless, see? That’s why I killed you. I fulfilled my duty, then my duty as doctor took over, and I saved you. There’s no contradiction in that. I’ve atoned for my sin.”
“OK. If that’s how you do things, that’s fine by me. But there’s no contradiction in what I’m asking you to do, is there? All I’m asking is that you kill Yashiro.”
“If that is what you wish…”
Kita’s idea was that if Yashiro was dead, he could at least get back to the way he felt last Friday. Right, he decided, for this one day I’m going to live free.
“I might get you to do something for me too,” Shinobu mused. With a wink to Kita, she asked the killer for his cell phone number. Business was suddenly booming for him, it seemed.
Chapter 7
THURSDAY
Yashiro woke from a truly horrible dream, in which he’d been blindfolded, bound to a chair, had his mouth forced open, and been made to swallow salted and fermented squid. The slimy taste still lingered on his tongue. He needed water. But when he tried to sit up from where he lay on the sofa, he tumbled to the floor. His arms and legs had been bound with rope, he realized. For a moment he thought he was still in the dream, but the pain in his back and this raging thirst were most definitely real.
“Good morning.” The doctor’s face gazed down at him.
“What’re you doing here? Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Sure. I’ve been sent by Kita to kill you.”
“Stop messing around. Did you kill him? Shinobu’s safe, isn’t she?”
“You’d do better to worry about yourself.” The doctor rummaged around in his Boston bag and brought out a tennis ball and a phial of medicine.
“What did you eat last night?”
“You’re not serious about this, are you?”
“I never lie to my patients.”
“I never said I wanted to die. Are you planning on killing a patient who doesn’t want to die?”
“My duty as doctor is to save patients who want to die. And my job as killer is to kill people whose death will benefit the world.”
“What have you got against me? Tell me!”
“Nothing. I’m just helping the world become a better place.”
“Whaddya mean, ‘a better place’? You’re sick!”
“You’re sick, and so’s Kita. He’s going to die without any help from me. I’ll put an end to myself sooner or later too. But not you. You don’t want to die, so it has to be execution.”
“What the hell are you on about? You’re saying you’ve got a license to kill?”
The doctor wiped an area of the tennis ball with a fluid, and put it to Yashiro’s mouth. “Open your mouth,” he instructed. Yashiro locked his jaws together and glared up at the killer. Yashiro could see the plan. The crushed ball would be pushed into his mouth, where it would swell until it couldn’t be removed. The emetic on it would soon begin to work, and he’d vomit up last night’s food. The ball would block the vomit and send it down his windpipe, and he’d choke to death. Yashiro clamped his mouth shut – but this prevented him from begging for his life. The killer pressed the lethal gag down harder. Yashiro drew his lips into his mouth, and twisted his face away.
“You’re scared of dying?” The doctor waited patiently for an answer. But Yashiro just lay there rigid as stone, suffering the extremity of his situation. The doctor tried again. “You’re scared of dying?” Yashiro, his mouth still clenched tight, gave a little cough in response. The doctor persisted. “Is that a yes or a no?” This time, Yashiro coughed twice.
The nightmare was all too real, in fact. He’d woken too late. Who’d have thought that not locking the office door before he lay down for a snooze would cost him so dear? But no, his luck had run out when he had trusted this guy in the first place.
The doctor was rummaging in his bag again. Had he given up on the idea of choking him to death, and decided on some other way to kill him? He had to free himself from this rope as quickly as possible, and run out the door for help. Or better still, shout for help… But it wouldn’t do to startle the killer, he’d be sure to choose the quickest means to kill him off if he did. OK then, talk him out of it. Brute intimidation wouldn’t work. But what about money?