As Kita lay there grinning to himself, the doctor suddenly sat up. “Sorry, but there’s something I forgot,” he said. “As I understand it, Shinobu’s in love with you.”
What was the use of hearing this now? Kita had lost his love four hours before he flew to Sapporo. “I’m grateful to her. She’s managed to make my suicide into a kind of art.”
The doctor drew a deep breath through his nose. “An art, eh?” he said softly. “I finally get it, Kita. You, my father, even me – we’re all death artists.”
Kita lay there breathing in the fragrance of the damp stone in the night air. He took a swig from his last bottle of vodka, then got to his feet. “Well then,” he said to the doctor. “Shall we be off?”
“Where to?” asked the doctor, but Kita didn’t reply. He simply walked off through the park, as if carried on the wind. This park felt too comfortable. He wasn’t inclined to fall for the temptation of settling in to live here on the streets. Why not leave his backpack here for someone else to use? He only had a few more hours of life left, after all. He needed to get on with finding his execution ground and setting things up.
He tried vaguely to picture the place he was after. Somewhere completely undistinguished, he decided. Somewhere wild and natural. There’d be birds flying about in the clouds overhead, and no sign of anyone about; his scream would vanish in the wind, his corpse would be hidden in the deep grass. He’d set off in search of just such a place, and when he got there, he’d find a flat rock just the right size to lay himself down on. It would serve very nicely as an operating table.
The doctor followed him wordlessly, but his left shoe rubbed, and the limp slowed his pace. The fifteen-pound bag dragging on his shoulder felt more like thirty pounds. He wished he could have a good long soak in a bath and settle his exhausted body between some freshly starched sheets. Why oh why should it be so tiring to save someone’s life, while the guy he was saving could follow his every whim? It was one thing to save someone lying meekly on the operating table, but there wasn’t much he could do with this particular patient when he kept moving restlessly about, stubbornly intent on dying. He was only a surgeon, not a professional counsellor who could talk Kita out of suicide; the only thing left for him to do under the circumstances was to watch him kill himself, perform a swift operation to remove his organs, and deliver them to the organ market. Good grief, he thought, let me have a quick rest before we get on with it.
What kind of organ thief was he right now, anyhow? He had no desire to get himself caught, but exhaustion compounded his fear, and made him desperate. He was also a murderer, and there’s nothing scarier than a desperate killer. Yet Kita was using him as his manager, for Heaven’s sake.
Kita was headed for Sapporo station. As he walked, he eyed the cars parked along the road. Having scrutinized the makes, number plates, and interiors of each car he passed, he came to a halt in front of a BMW with a Tokyo license plate, and put his hand on the door. Needless to say, it wouldn’t open. He walked another ten yards, and tried a Nissan Skyline with a local Sapporo plate. No luck.
“You’re trying to steal a car?” the doctor asked irritably.
“They’re all locked,” muttered Kita. Well of course. Yet he doggedly went on trying one after another. He was sick of walking.
The doctor got ahead of him and paused at a Chevy Camaro with an Osaka plate. He beckoned Kita. “This one has ‘Please make free use of this vehicle’ written all over it. Let’s take it.” He took from his bag what looked like a metal ruler, inserted it between the doorframe and the window, and began to pump it gently up and down. Immediately there was the shriek of an alarm piercing enough to tear the flesh from one’s temples. The doctor frowned, but didn’t pause in his work. The lock broken, he slid into the car, opened the hood, briefly fiddled with the electronics, and the alarm stopped. He started the engine.
Kita had been standing there with his hands to his ears. The doctor motioned him into the driver’s seat, settled down beside him, put on his seat belt, and tutted in vexation.
“Come on, what’re you hanging around for? Get this car moving.”
Kita took a short breath. Then he wheeled the white Camaro around and set off in search of his execution ground.
The doctor didn’t ask where they were going. He settled back and closed his eyes, letting things take their course. He woke from his nap with the nasty feeling that Kita was clumsily up to something again.
The roads decided where the white Camaro went. It raced straight along whatever road it happened to be on until it had to turn, and then alternated right and left at each new junction. There’d be no going back from this journey.
Kita was pretty impressed with the doctor’s car thieving skills. It wasn’t just organs that the guy could steal, it seemed. In this man’s hands, his corpse would be quickly dispatched. Kita looked at the sleeping doctor with renewed awe and fear.
It was a fabulous car for speeding. It seemed almost made to be crashed. “Thanks for such a great gift,” whispered Kita, but the doctor pretended he hadn’t heard.
Now and then the road was momentarily illuminated by the stark light of a gas station or convenience store or drinks machine. It seemed so insubstantial it might disappear at the merest puff of breath. And sliding along it the white Camaro seemed it might melt into thin air if he closed his eyes for a moment, Kita thought. The steering wheel and accelerator were amazingly light to the touch, and his own body too could have been made of styrene foam it felt so weightless. Bearing down on this feather-light accelerator, he felt a thrill run right from his temples down his back. He pushed the speed up a bit further, past seventy-five miles per hour, and the thrill ran down over his knees. If he really put his foot down, the thrill would reach his heart and penetrate his pores and blood vessels, and he’d crash to instant death, laughing till he drooled. The white Camaro would be his coffin. And if a spark ignited the gas in the tank, that would deal with the cremation at the same time.
The speedometer now registered over ninety, and the street lights sped by like fighter planes. There were only a few inches separating him from death. Within his narrow field of vision, a stark white high-rise sprang up like a gravestone. Narrowing his eyes, he made out the word “Hospital.” He slammed on the brakes, and in the same instant his pulse started throbbing violently and the weight returned to his body.
Held firmly by his seat belt, the doctor gave a low groan. The tires squealed around a gentle curve in the road. The thrill that had been rushing through Kita’s body now subsided, replaced now by a stirring and hardening between his legs.
“You were going to take me with you there, weren’t you?” the doctor muttered hoarsely.
“I wouldn’t have minded just crashing the car back there, but then I saw that hospital.” Kita glanced sideways at the doctor, who was wiping the sweat from his hands, hollow-eyed.
“Goddamn hospitals everywhere you go,” the doctor spat.
“You don’t like hospitals?”
“They make my heart ache.”
Kita gave a laugh like a cough. Fancy that, this man who could dispose of people and bring them back to life as casually as he’d move chess pieces around a board actually had a heart. “You look done in,” he said sympathetically. “Don’t worry, you can rest easy. I don’t plan on killing you too.”
The doctor raised his hands, spread his fingers and yawned, trying to get his circulation going again. It was all very well to be told he could rest, but how could he possibly doze in this hearse with someone bent on dying at the wheel? Besides, the law stipulated there should be only one corpse per hearse.