“Copy that,” Adara said. “My buds and I blew some of our liberty walking around Kabukichō during a port call in Yokosuka. I could have guessed Chen would end up in a place like that.”
“So are we going to Shinjuku or Kabukichō?” Midas asked.
“Shinjuku is the area,” Adara said. “Kabukichō is the red-light district in that area. Scads of pachinko parlors, love hotels. Everywhere you turn there’s some yakuza tout trying to drag you into hostess clubs where girls in baby-doll costumes will flirt with you and charge exorbitant prices for alcohol, among other things.”
“Chicas peligrosas,” Jack muttered.
“You’re right about that, ’mano,” Chavez said. “Anyway, the number Dom got from Lily Chen’s phone pinged at a restaurant in Shinjuku three hours ago. It’s quiet now, so he’s either dumped it or turned it off. That’s something. He doesn’t know what we look like, so we may as well go have a look. Jack, you should probably call your new girlfriend and let her know what we have.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Ryan said.
“You say so, ’mano,” Chavez said. “Let’s be ready to roll in five.”
“We’re all in the lobby,” Adara said. “Ready to go, boss.”
Chavez gave a quiet chuckle. “Copy that,” he said. “I’ll be out as soon as I can figure out the buttons on this Japanese toilet.”
Jack called the number on the card Yuki had given him. It usually irritated him when he got someone’s voice mail, but he found he was oddly happy to hear Yukiko speak. She gave her number with no name or business affiliation, which was common in this business. There wasn’t much to tell, so his message was short. They were looking for an Asian man in the busiest area of the most populated city in Asia — or the world, for that matter — because his phone said he’d been there three hours earlier.
The hotel was less than two blocks from Tokyo Station, and the team quickly fell in with the river of Japanese commuters, seemingly going in all directions at once. Ryan was no stranger to world travel but he’d thought the station was busy when they’d come in on the Narita Express at midday. Rush hour started late in Tokyo but was in full swing by six-thirty. The station itself was a sprawling shopping mall with tens of thousands of commuters passing them throughout the day. Women in brightly colored uniforms and young men in large costume hats shouted and cajoled — always in the most polite and deferential tone — inviting the captive audience to try their cake, fruit, waffle, fish, or countless other products.
Eccentric hairstyles and outlandish clothing could be seen here and there — the odd peroxide red, a blue Mohawk, and even a pierced nose or two. But Japan remained a place where you could buy a white shirt and tie at the corner convenience store. Conservative dress and demeanor were lauded, and for the most part, Tokyo Station was a sea of dark hair and dark suits — for men and women alike.
Adara and Ding both spoke a smattering of Japanese, so they led the way to platform 1, where the team jammed themselves into the 6:38 Chuo Line train for Shinjuku — which arrived precisely on the minute. The car proved to be shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-chest. Unlike China and some other countries where Jack and the others had worked, the trains in Japan seemed to have the same rules as libraries or urinals. No eye contact, no talking. And, Adara warned them, if the men were lucky enough to get a seat, under no circumstances should they offer it up to a woman under fifty who was not pregnant. Fortunately, the 6:38 Chuo was so crowded he barely had room to stand, let alone a seat to give up.
Four stops and fifteen minutes later, the train disgorged the team into a seething mass of evening commuters at Shinjuku, more crowded even than Tokyo Station. Chavez motioned everyone behind a row of coffee vending machines in order to not get run over while he checked his phone for the address Gavin had given him. With a basic idea of where they were going, he navigated them across the street toward a garish red neon sign that ran up the side of a building, reading in English: “I ‘heart’ Kabukichō.”
“We should have brought umbrellas,” Midas said, looking up at the boiling clouds in the night sky, reflecting red and orange from the neon lights. “Would have given us some weapons.”
“It starts to rain, umbrella stands will sprout up all over the place,” Chavez said.
Adara had been right about Kabukichō. Touts ruled the narrow streets, venturing into the lighted streets from the shadows of their covered awnings only when someone promising walked past. On one, the clatter and ping of pachinko machines sounded above the nasal whine of shamisen music. On the next, men in white shirts and black bow ties beckoned anyone over eighteen into curtained “information centers” to the decades-old hits of Olivia Newton-John. Crowds of tourists made the place seemed slightly less sinister than it really was. Ten-foot-tall female robots waved their massive arms, and diminutive girls — many of whom spoke Korean — stood under strobing lights in skimpy costumes, handing out flyers that were written in characters Jack couldn’t understand.
It was like Vegas in code.
“We turn right here,” Chavez said, pointing east on the grimy side street past the Robot Restaurant. “It’s supposed to be a couple blocks up that way.”
“Let me look at that,” Adara said, moving closer to Chavez. “Ah, he was in the Golden Gai. This is making more sense by the minute.”
The Golden Gai, or Golden District, was roughly one large square block in size, bisected by narrow alleys and dozens of even narrower footpaths that cut between minuscule bars and cafés — most of which accommodated no more than seven or eight, and most of those regular patrons. The maze of ramshackle shanties with dim lights burning in the second-floor flats made it the perfect place to get lost. One sign read THE DOOR TO NARNIA; another proclaimed NO ENGLISH HERE!
The team split, with Ryan and Midas approaching the target address from the west while Adara and Ding walked parallel to circle around and come in from the east. Ryan and Midas slowed their pace, doing a little gawking while they gave the other team time to get ahead. American and European tourists roamed the shadowed alleys, staring into the tiny bars like they were visiting a human zoo. Ryan was just about to say something about it when he looked to his right and did a double take. Midas noticed and slowed to get a look himself.
“Is that—”
Jack nudged him forward. “Come on,” he said. “She’s probably working.”
At the split pine counter of a cramped place called the Jazz Bar sat Yukiko Monzaki. She glanced up at Jack when he passed, then just as quickly looked away.
“You think we burned her?” Chavez asked after Ryan filled him in on who they’d seen.
“Our guy doesn’t know what we look like,” Ryan said, still walking. “Or, for that matter, that we’re even after him.”
Two Asian men wearing light-colored golf jackets stepped out of a bar ahead, looked up and down the street, then turned down a small side alley to the left.
Ryan and Midas kept walking.
The sound of a sliding door and then a soft voice came from up the street behind them.
“Jack? What are you doing here?”
Ryan turned to find Yukiko standing in a pool of light beneath a red lantern outside the Jazz Bar.
Half a breath later, the door to the café in the middle of the block slid open and an Asian couple stepped into the street. It was the same door the two men had come out of earlier, between Yuki and Jack now. The man carried a leather satchel over his shoulder and was in the middle of lighting a cigarette. The burst of flame illuminated the face of Vincent Chen.