dvbermingham

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 14: Tako

He shrieked when he saw me. I get it. I’ve been shrieked at before. A unexpected pulpy man lying on the couch, totally understandable. The shriek was loud and dramatic and he feigned like he was going to run, almost like he was acting, like he was on camera.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I guess Vicky didn’t call you.”

“No Vicky didn’t call me. Vicky never calls me.”

“I’m Lou.”

“Oh well Hi Lou. A friend of Vicky’s, I presume? Not just some derelict she found on the street? It wouldn’t be the first time, you know.”

“We just met, so I don’t know why. She said she liked how I danced.”

He scanned me up and down. “This happened to you dancing?”

“No, afterwards. Backroom scuffle. I’m a bodyguard. It’s not usually so hazardous. Mostly you just stand around looking big, bluffing. Sometimes people call that bluff.”

“You might want to go to the hospital.”

“That’s what I hear.”

Hadrian shrugged and went about his business, treating me like a piece of furniture or a sleeping dog, something that should be left alone unless it bothers you first. That was fine by me. My body ached, my mind ached, but the pain had worn off just enough from the pills that there was now room for that sweet, sweet shame. Sham for having lost my Matzu, shame for having failed, shame for losing the tuna and the limo, but mostly the tuna, the dread of having to call Stella and file a missing body report. Stella would have to reach out to Alfonso and maybe if I was lucky Matzu was alive and would take me back. Otherwise it was back to the temp agency, waiting for someone to ignore my references and just hire me out of desperation. I supposed there was a case to be made that we had been ambushed and overpowered by a gang so large that no bodyguard in the world could have prevailed. I mean, no one knew how many drinks I’d had, or the depths of the dance trance that consumed me just moments previous to being held up at gunpoint.

Then I got to reflecting. Always something I try to avoid in the moment. It’s what got me into so much trouble in my former careers. But lying out with nothing but a puke bucket by my side doesn’t leave a lot else to do. For me reflecting came in the form of wondering whether Takuto’s death and Matzu’s disappearance were connected. And whether there was a fight for New York sushi territory happening behind the scenes. Whether this was the beginning or the end or somewhere in the middle. And whether somebody caught in the middle could be held responsible, could be given another chance.

Maybe I could call it quits right then and there, I thought. No, I certainly couldn’t. Even though I had only known Matzu for one night, his disappearance would always be an unanswered question, a terrifying void in my life. I could never move on unless I figured out what had happened to him.

Hadrian popped his head in from the other room. “I’m ordering lunch, you want anything?”

“Just get me whatever you’re having.”

“You’re buying.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Cheaper than a hospital bed, pal.”

Twenty minutes later we were eating shawarma from the Lebanese place across the street. Fantastic stuff, greasy and spicy, just what my bludgeoned and hungover body needed. At my age, you don’t really think you’ll ever experience a new style of meat-sweats in your lifetime, so when they come, you savor them. Hadrian had an accent I couldn’t place but didn’t want to ask about. Possibly Rhode Island. He wore very tight clothes that looked coordinated, like he studied fashion magazines or had a thing for mannequin displays. He was a confessor, I could tell right away. Like he hadn’t talked to anyone in a few days and seeing as I was just laying on the couch I should do just fine as a fresh set of ears. Fine by me —  it helped me feel useful. Useful, exactly! Hadrian said he knew exactly what I was talking about. Cleaning is the best way to feel useful. He said he always felt he had all this potential built up and if he didn’t use it somehow, even if it wasn’t ideal, you might never get around to using it and you’ll die wondering if you completely missed your calling. He didn’t want to clean houses and apartments for a living, he wanted to be a chef. Not a restaurant chef but a TV chef, like Emeril Lagasse, his hero. To him, Emeril was a hero, a legend. He found his calling, the most important thing in life, and on top of that, he found managed to figure out a way to broadcast it every day to the entire world. There was nothing better, he said, than showing the world over and over again how great your life is, how your biggest concern is maybe not adding enough garlic to your damn tomatoes. It’s almost a better feeling than your life actually being great.

Alas, he said, the television and culinary worlds required some schooling and he didn’t have the money to go back. He had a degree in media and broadcasting, but no clue about the kitchen world.  Cleaning was the easiest job he could get that paid the best and still left him feeling energized at the end of the day. All in all, that wasn’t a bad setup. He’d leave apartments tidy and smelling fancy, go out for an early happy hour when the bars were almost empty and he’d sit at the bar and listen to the regulars and the bartender talk, and watch intently s the bartender pretend to have a task in front of her at any given time, sometimes real tasks and other times just moving things from one place to another and back again trying to appear busy but always engaged with the regulars who never had anything new to say because they spent all their free time in the bar seeking fresh ears and if none were available then old ears would do just fine. Hadrian liked to watch for the bartender’s micro-reactions, little smirks, eye-rolls, anything subconscious that showed her true feelings. Bartenders are dishonest people, he said. It’s a job and part of the job of bartender is to listen to what your customers have to say, make them feel welcome, cheer them up and keep their minds from wandering, or help their minds safely wander out of their daily rut, whatever they’re in the mood for, and always keeping a keen sense of balance and vibe, similar to the balance and vibe you create when cleaning apartments, a balance that makes people feel like someone is taking care of things around them so they won’t have to worry. But underneath the bartender’s facade are the tiny little minuscule reactions they can’t hide, or are too tired to hide, and that’s what Hadrian looks for, those bartenders who keep that balance in the bar but on the inside they’re wavering. I was done with my pita by that point, was mopping up my cracked, misshapen lips while Hadrian had barely taken a bite, was just holding his shawarma while he talked, the bread filling with sauce and grease from the lamb and starting to drip and crack apart, which is a pet-peeve of mine, two people not eating at the same pace.

He could tell I was losing interest and/or consciousness on account of his story or possibly the aforementioned meat-sweats and of course the swelling so he changed the subject and started talking about Vicky and watched me perk right up. Must have been obvious I guess. Like the television host he dreamed of becoming, he felt my energy and launched into some gossip. About Gwen the little genius who is most certainly destined to be a singer or voice actor. About her life as a model for sculptors in Gowanus. About how she lost her husband the year before, he thinks from a motorcycle related crash but wasn’t sure. They were about the same age, had been together since forever. “She didn’t tell me at first,” he said, “I thought they just got divorced. There were remnants of him all over the apartment that she didn’t take down. I started asking whether she wanted me to take down the pictures and whatnot but she said no, that she wanted to keep them up for Gwen. She seemed fine, keeping everything together. She kept bartending, kept going to school, kept herself and Gwen in a routine that would get them through the tough times. Creatures of habit, right?  Why do people hate on routine so much, you know?”

Then he said, “So what do you do again? Wrestler?”

“Bodyguard.”

“Of course, right. Who do you guard?”

“I work for a chef. Maybe he can get you a TV show.”

“What’s his name?”

“Thing is…he might be dead. I’m not sure.”

“Well, where does he work? If there’s a vacancy maybe they need an apprentice.”

“It’s a sushi place on the east side. I’ll find the name for you.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to eat sushi anymore.”

“Why?”

“It’s poisonous I think. The fish have turned poisonous from over-fishing. Like, in rebellion, maybe? Does nature rebel like that? I think plagues are sort of like that. Or maybe it was that the fish was always poisonous and we didn’t realize it. We just thought it was too fancy not to eat it, and we all ignored that it was poisoning us all along. I think that was it. Or something like that. I heard it somewhere.”

“First I’ve heard of it.”

“Oh, I think I remember. There was an article, I can’t remember where. It said rogue sushi chefs were poisoning their own fish to try to make it less popular. As like a backlash against popularizing sushi. A cultural thing. Stopping foreigners from eating their sushi.”

“Foreigners? Like, Americans?”

“Yeah.”

“In New York?”

“Yeah.”

I considered the number of times I felt sick after eating at FishySmell, and wondered if it had anything to do with the rumor. A wave of blood filled with nervous little blood cells rushed to my skull all screaming at once a word I couldn’t understand.

“How Brooklyn, right? Try to keep it out of the mainstream as long as possible. Ha, get it. Mainstream. Like, the opposite of underground. No wait…underwater! HA!”

Hadrian asked if I was okay, must have sensed something was wrong, but I couldn’t get the words out, my legs and hands were cramping, my meat-sweats were transitioning to anxiety sweats. The shawarma was turning on me. It felt like all my energy was being sucked out of my body.

“Maybe you should lie down.”

“I think I need to go actually.”

He laughed. “Go where? You can barely open your eyes.”

Tears filled my eyes. I felt my chin wiggle, trying to hold back the flood. “I lost him. Two in a week! I’m a bodyguard and I lost my body, twice. Do you have any idea what that means for a guy like me? For him? A young guy, an up-and-coming chef, probably dead. And on top of it I lost a very expensive tuna loin which was meant to be distributed to the chefs of New York. Now there’s going to be a tuna shortage and its all my fault!”

“Tuna loin, eh?”

I tried to talk through my sniffles. “It was entrusted to us by the head of nationwide sushi-syndicate who might also be criminals, I don’t know. It was worth a lot of money.”

“High quality tuna loin? Like, as in, something a chef would be very happy to receive?”

“Yea, sitting in a hot car all night.”

“Was it wrapped up?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. Come on, let’s go get it.”

“Really?”

"I don’t have anything going on.”

“I don’t think you don’t want to get involved. This is a dangerous situation. Look what they did to my face!”

“How do I know you didn’t look a lot like that before you got beat up?”

I cried some more.

“Well regardless of how ugly you were, you can’t go outside with a face looking like a crushed up turtle. All lumpy and gooey and stuff.”

“Don’t say turtle, please.”

“Listen, I’m going to be honest with you because I don’t have a lot of patience and I just like to say things I believe are true even if they’re not: If your friend is dead, he’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do. So what’s the rush? I’d be more concerned about that rotting tuna in the back seat of your car. If we can get that to some chefs, maybe get on their good side, a little introduction, we could get your job back. And an apprenticeship for me…”

“You think he’s dead?” I asked.

The phone rang. It was Vicky. She said she was running late and had to go straight to work instead of stopping home first. “She says she’s sorry. But to just hang tight, she’ll be home before we know it.”

We decided we would go see if the tuna was still there, if the car was still there, swing by my apartment to get a few things, and come straight back. He made us coffee and we waited until Gwen came home. He helped her get her homework started and then told her to be a good girl while the two adults went for a little ride.  

Before we stepped out the door, I stopped and said, “We can’t leave her alone. Her mom won’t be back for hours.”

“It’s fine, she knows the neighbors.”

“Are you sure?”

“I do it all the time.”

“I’d really feel more comfortable if she came with us. I mean, what if something happens to her.”

“She’s in a kid proof apartment, in a building filled with adults. It’s more dangerous bringing her with us. I mean, need I remind you of the hideousness of your face and how that all happened?” “Listen, I’m not going to be fighting anyone or saving anyone or sticking up to anyone in the next few hours. I just need some first-aid, a fresh change of clothes, and some bearings. If anyone comes for me, I’ll surrender. They won’t hurt a hipster and a little girl sitting in whatever car you own. Can’t be anything special. They’re sushi people. They’re classier than that. We take a little drive into the city, check out some tuna, head to my apartment, pack a bag, and come right back here. Sound good?”

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 13: Tamago

I coughed myself awake from a dream where bugs had crawled down my throat. In front of me in the night darkness was a small kid holding a blanket whose face I couldn’t quite make out. A familiar city hum, commercial trucks catching every light, the occasional Atlantic Ave L.I.R.R. The apartment itself was silent. In the dream I was sitting on the side of a lake, tops of my feet burning. Someone was fishing in the shallows nearby, laughing and telling me to get in and see. See what? I don’t know, but I liked the beach. I put my hand down and felt the sand between my fingers. When I picked it up again my fingers were crawling with dusty sand bugs, prickling around and flapping their wings, then. crawling on my legs, then all over my head. They were swarming me and on purpose and I feared angering them so I stayed perfectly still, even holding my breath, like it was the only thing keeping me alive. They crawled over my tight-shut mouth and nose. I held and held, I thought they were going to sting me, felt the stingers or fangs or mandibles or whatever they had going for them unsheathed and positioned over my face. With the first stab my head finally broke open, my mouth gasping for air, I breathed in deeply and in they went, back of the throat, choking me awake.

“Jeez kid, where’s your mom,” I tried to say, but nothing came out.

The kid ran away.

I laid back down. I breathed deep through my nose, trying to grab some air. Who the fuck was that guy fishing? Then the pain. I felt like my face was wearing a migraine like a mask. It throbbed in every orifice. The kid came back with water. I drank it down in three gulps and said thanks. Migraines out my eyes. Then the kid took the glass and refilled it and came right back.

“Thanks again kid,” I said after chugging the second glass, my voice back again. “Is your mom home?”

“She’s asleep.”

“Oh. What time is it?”

The kid didn’t respond.

“What day is it?”

Again the kid didn’t respond.

“What’s your name?”

“Gwen.”

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

Gwen shrugged.

“Alright, well listen kid, I’ve got a splitting headache. Any chance you might no where the bathroom is? I could use a freshen-up.”

Gwen pointed.

I checked out my face in the mirror. Like a dirty cleat. Studs where there were no studs before. Bits of turf stuck in newly formed crevices. Postcard from Thugsville. I was impressed with myself, truly. Despite my total failure as a bodyguard,  the fact that I could withstand such a beating without ever really feeling much pain was a silver lining I was sure would keep me in the business at least a couple more years.

I opened the medicine cabinet as much to get the mirror out of my face as to snoop around for some pain meds. There were a lot of labels. The labels didn’t have the name Vicky Felix on them, someone else’s. My eyes couldn’t focus. I gave up, splashed some water on my face and hit the lights.

When I came out of the bathroom she was standing there, leaning against the wall in the dark, wearing what I could only guess was a silk nightgown. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah, just freshening up. Look pretty good don’t I?”

“Help you find anything?”

“Just some aspirin.”

She went to the medicine cabinet and took out a bottle, then another, then came back with a handful of pills. “Here ya go. You’ll need to wait a little longer for the good stuff,” she said. I scarfed them back without thinking about it.

“Want some breakfast to wash those down?”

“It’s early huh?”

“Four. But you’ve been asleep for about two days.”

“What?”

“I mean, you got up and walked around, but it wasn’t going well. You almost knocked over my fig tree. I gave you something to knock you out a bit longer. Thought you needed it.”

“Oh. Well, thanks. I appreciate that.”

“Class starts at six, so I’m usually up about this time. Gotta get Wendy ready for school. You have kids?”

I thought for a moment, maybe too long, and she seemed to get nervous she had overstepped. A commercial truck ripped down Atlantic flashing high beams through the windows, lighting her face for just a moment.  “You’re both in school?” I asked.

“We never stop growing.”

“What’s the…”

“Mechanic school. Motorcycles. Honda’s mostly, at least at first. I work at a shop part time in the afternoon, taking classes in the morning. Doesn’t pay much but I life insurance makes ends meet. I want to open my own place. By women, for women. You get laughed at pretty hard as a woman when you try to get involved. It’s intimidating for new bikers, and it shouldn’t be. So I’m getting certified, gonna open up my own place by November.”

“And what about Gwen?”

“We’re still on the alphabet with her.”

“Listen,” I said, hoping to spill my feelings as soon as possible. “I want to thank you for helping me out back at the club. It was a rough night.”

“You’re a good dancer, Lou, with a good face. I didn’t want those assholes dragging you back inside. We’ll find a new club next week, how’s that sound?” were gonna come out of there any second, and you didn’t seem up for any more rounds in the back of that club.”

Miraculously my jaw and teeth and tongue all worked together just fine when it came to chewing and swallowing. Lucky me, she said. She’s seen guys that didn’t get so lucky. She fed me coffee, eggs, bacon, grapefruit, orange juice, more coffee, and more bacon, and as I ate my way back to health the sky started its new pastel beginnings. She offered me sausage but I declined out of politeness.

“What was a guy like you doing there anyway? It didn’t exactly seem like your scene.”

“Work. I’m a bodyguard. I was guarding someone who was looking for someone. I guess we found him.”

“I take it you two were supposed to leave together then, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And yet you chose to leave with me instead,” she said, possibly winking, I don’t know. As I said, my eyes were a little bleary. But she sure sounded like she was winking.

“Who were you guarding?”

“No one you know.”

I was struggling with keeping up my end of the conversation while also chewing my breakfast. My face could only handle so much after that beating, and neither of us liked how much I was drooling on the table, so she said she’d talk. We laughed about it, that’s old age for you, the kind of stuff we better get used to, uncontrollable drooling on our eggs. The gradual decline of our bodily functions, I think was how she put it. She said that when working with motorcycles you meet guys who forgo or forget their helmets, one fall and their brains stop working quite the same. They’re still alive, but everything is messed up. The worst of it, well, that stuff is just plain tragic — broken spines, blindness, the cement simply taking your skin right off your body. But then there’s the minor stuff, well, relatively minor. The kind of stuff you don’t hear much about or it becomes myths and legends but its all true — guys lose all sense of direction, will just ride in circles around a block thinking they’re on a full tilt chopper boogie straight north. Or a sense of temperature, as in, they feel extreme cold and hot in mild environments. Some have hyper-sensitivity to noise, have to wear ear plugs at all times. The noise isn’t in their head, it’s just that they’re hearing is extra-sensory, like a super-hero, only this is just a curse that makes normal life a living hell. Most of them can never ride again.

Gwen was eating her cereal and bananas. I could tell by the way she held her spoon right up to her mouth and could still maintain eye contact with her mom that she was listening to everything.

When the sun finally came up Vicky said she had to go to school, but that I was welcome to stay the day and rest. “Gwen’s friend will be there around 8 to take her to school. She’ll be fine until then.” She wrote down a number on a piece of paper. “This is the number for Hadrian. He’ll be here around nine. He comes twice a week, helps out around the house.” Then she wrote another. “And that one is mine.” She smiled, touched my face tenderly, then winced. I couldn’t feel a thing. “Sorry. I thought…it’s so spongy. Maybe you should go to a hospital.”

“No, I’ll be alright. I’ve had worse.”

I laid back on the couch, let the apartment spin around me. I imagined I was the center of a clock, two hands spanning outward from my chest, swinging in circles around me. Gwen was the big hand, twirling around, unquestionably thrilled to be alone in the house. She was singing, asking me questions and never waiting for an answer. Like whether there’s a boardwalk around every ocean and if the moon’s always in the sky even in daylight. Eventually there was  knock on the door, Gwen squealed and ran to open it, said hi to her friend and the two of them ran off, slamming the door on the way out. My face still pulsed raw, the blood vessels blocked up, no where for the rivers to run, the pressure all built up. I stood up to try to reroute the blood, to no avail. I looked through throbbing holes in my head at her book collection, then her family photos. There was a man in some of them, but most were just pictures of Gwen. I only made it about five minutes before I collapsed back on the couch and fell into that sweet semi-conscious state that I’d learned to love in my middle age.

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 12: Senju pt. 3 (Interlude)

Senju decided to go for a walk through his restaurant. It was four o’clock. The night cooks would be checking their stations, doing final prep work. The chefs would be having a closed-door drink in their office. He would make his presence known to the staff, make a show of checking for the smallest of imperfections. Then he would walk outside, hail a taxi, drive to the airport, and never return to this city again.

No. That would not be how he would make his exit. A decision like that would be seen as cowardice. There was an older way of settling things that appealed much more to men of Senju’s background.

But then, as though his legs were living on their own, there he was, suddenly outside. The summer air was acrid on his tongue, hung around his face like a miasmic cloud. Cars passed his field of vision with no end, scuttling between lanes, jostling for position like ants. Some were cabs. Some had lights on. He felt for his wallet. It’s plumpness told him not to worry. They would make it. Somehow he would make it.

He felt something behind him and turned. His bodyguard, Mr. Lodi.

“I saw you come out. Just making sure everything’s okay.”

Senju nodded and turned back to traffic. Lodi was Alonso’s man. Outsourcing security was perhaps his greatest mistake in his tenure, but what could he have done? He couldn’t trust his normal system with the way the Partition was infiltrating the Guild. At least a man like Alonso would keep a contract, would be faithful to the man with the deepest pockets. When he hired him, he hadn’t expected the Partition to ever grow into a full organization, with an effective leader who would someday acquire pockets to rival his own. He had missed his chance to create his own loyal security team, a mistake that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Senju coughed. The morsel in his throat, that tiny piece of rice, still lodged. He checked the sky — perhaps an afternoon shower, but nothing more. Alonso was dry, thank goodness for that. He went back inside. Lodi opened the door for him, checked over his shoulder, and followed.

Inside, seated at his desk he held the padded envelope in his hands. Inside was a tape. He had listened to it three times. He identified one of the voices, his New York Boss, Takuto, a man he trusted, a man he watched from his earliest days as a sushi apprentice, a man he believed to be a continuation of a culture he himself was a part of, and feared would soon die out in this new world.

He let the tape call out of the envelope and into his hand. He held it up to the light, saw the spools inside. Then he picked up the phone and dialed Alonso. He told him to proceed. Alonso made no comment, just a confirmation, and hung up.

Senju took the tape over to the wall, to a vacuum shoot installed in the wall where he would deposit new creatures into the aquarium that ran throughout the building. He didn’t like polluting the aquarium, but the filter was built to take care of small harmless debris. Hopefully a turtle wouldn’t eat it, he thought. He wished he had installed a fireplace instead.

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 11: Senju pt. 2 (Interlude)

Early that afternoon, before he called in the hit, Senju called his reader and asked her to give him the name and number of the masseuse she recommended. She arrived within thirty minutes, a middle aged woman, barely five feet tall with big bear hands. She came to his office in the basement of his restaurant, set up her table, and within minutes her hands worked over his aching muscles. There was instant relief — he desperately needed to feel the hands of an anonymous person on his body, to be touched, to be sure he was still present and not some apparition that only people like Alonso could see and speak with.

To ease his mind he focused on her hands, how they felt on his bare skin, how they kneaded his flesh. He recalled the days when he worked with his hands, which was how he got his name. It happened when he was just a young man, a boy really, during a long apprenticeship at a popular ton-katsu restaurant where he gained the reputation of someone who could quickly master any kitchen task, and complete a multitude of them concurrently. His boss was reminded of an older worker at the factory in which he worked as a child who was called Senju — a thousand hands — and he thought it would be good name to pass down to a deserving boy. Though he never introduced himself as such, though he never wanted it or even liked it, the name Senju stuck. Soon everyone at the ton-katsu restaurant was calling him Senju. Even visiting cooks and chefs from other restaurants had heard of him, had developed an image of him in their minds based on his name and reputation alone. Customers too pointed and identified him from their stools at the counter. He eventually had to admit, reluctantly, that the name had taken over, that his identity was now something beyond his control. He stopped introducing himself by his birth-name that same year.

In the eyes of a customer, it makes sense that the chef of the kitchen should be the one who possesses the greatest palate: not just the ability to identify discreet flavors and to know how those flavors create interplay, but also to judge, aesthetically, abstractly, how by adjusting those ingredients and flavors a chef might improve the overall taste and succulency of the dish. And yet this isn’t necessarily the forte of the chef, because the chef wouldn’t necessarily never have the natural, inherently exceptional palate of even many of their customers. Success as a chef is as much, perhaps more, about technique, speed, diligence, and leadership, as it is about a heightened sense of taste. An apprentice will be promoted to cook and then beyond, to stations demanding higher levels of skill and technique, and further beyond, into leadership roles, without ever having to prove the exceptional qualities of their tastebuds.

And therein lies the source of every chef’s self-doubt, their imposter syndrome. The chef lives in a subtle state of fear and anxiety at being found out as a fraud. It doesn’t help that the underlying premise of taste is that it is subjective, that everyone’s palates are different, that they are often out of our control, are dulled and withered by time and self-destruction (two phenomena that often accompany a chef’s rise through the ranks, ironically), and that even if the chef prepares his dish identically each and every time, it might taste completely different to two different people based solely on what the patron ate only a few hours ago, or what they ordered as their drink, not thinking of how it might pair, upending the balance of flavors to a point that the entire dish might be seen, however unfairly, as mediocre.

Senju was no stranger to the anger and frustration of being discovered as an imposter during his time as a chef. It was the constant strain on his life’s work. But it was also the source of his tireless work ethic, his obsession with training his tongue to be more and more sensitive, his autocratic methods for maintaining his restaurant. Fear drove him like nothing else could, fear of being discovered, by others and by himself. It was the same fear of his parents at leaving behind that essential tradition in a burning nation, that same fear of not knowing his new identity, foisted upon him by strangers, Senju, a thousand hands. What would he be if they suddenly realized he was nothing, if his thousand suddenly turned to two?

The masseuse moved to his thighs, thick knotted muscles that cramped throughout the night. She pulled them apart with ease, and he realized he was nothing special, a human like any other, with muscles she had seen thousands of times before.

Decades later and he was never discovered as an imposter. In fact, he was lauded as a revolutionary in the kitchen. After receiving several national honors for his sushi restaurant, he was soon tapped by the Imperial Sushi Council as their newest member, an high honor for any chef operating at the time in Japan. They were a secretive group — no one knew who belonged to the Council or from where they operated — but their reach was extensive, their reputation legendary. What little information he himself knew, was parroted by his colleagues at rival restaurants — that the Council was comprised mainly of politicians and sociologists, that they maintained an interest in fostering the talents of chefs all over Japan, and guided many, with an invisible hand, into the art of sushi.

Senju and his other chefs acknowledged that they had all been invited to apprentice at sushi restaurants by men who appeared to be executives, and whom they never saw again. No coincidence, to be sure.

What Senju did not know was that the Council trained these chefs with the goal of creating a global network of highly-insecure, knife-wielding megalomaniacal chefs beholden to the Council that gave them their livelihood and the dictates of said Council no matter how far-fetched or illegal. Such was its modus operandi since its inception, hundreds of years earlier. It worked well, tried and true, part of a structure developed and honed by the most brutal shogunates of feudal Japan, who ruled the country through networks of daiymo overlords. In those days, just like the shogunates, the Council was granted its own network of chefs overseeing territories and receiving tribute. And though still subject to the shogun’s rule, the Council was given independent control over the culinary and agricultural aspects Japanese culture, with the understanding that to properly rule over a nation, there must be a well-defined and proud culinary tradition, which should be thoughtfully developed by the greatest minds of the nation. While money flowed from the towns and regions up to the shogun, the real tribute was always in the form of personnel selected from an elite cadre of chefs who doubled as expert assassins. Meanwhile, they were able to cultivate a cuisine that would become one of most essential aspects of Japanese culture, a boundless realm of taste, ritual, and artistry that would keep Japan in a state of solidarity for all time.

Even after the shogunates fell, and even after the emperor turned out to be just a man, the Council retained its power over the culinary traditions of Japan. As for the knife-wielding megalomaniacal chefs, their traditions were retained as well, and became one of the chief exports to burgeoning restaurant scenes in Paris, London, Rome, and New York.  

As one of the most sensational chefs of his generation, Senju was an obvious choice to join the Imperial Council. His day-to-day life didn’t change much at first. He was allowed to keep his restaurant, and was given greater resources to help him with staffing and purchasing. He sometimes received letters or telegrams discussing the opinions and decisions reached by the Council — a change in length of the standard maki, a new official weight of a piece of sashimi — that were to be enforced at the local level by chefs such as himself.

Then one day he received a different letter in the mail. On the back of the envelope was wax stamp of an image of a turtle, the first time he had seen such an insignia. He opened the letter, looked it over. Then he read it again, this time with more attention to each individual sentence. Then he read it a third time. And a fourth. Finally he put it down and fixed himself a drink before reading it a fifth and final time.

The first paragraph of the letter praised him by stating how the Council had been watching his career closely and was suitably impressed.

The second paragraph indicated that he was being selected to forge an expansion of territory into the United States. Work visas were already in order. He would be relocated to Los Angeles in two months.  

The third paragraph invited him to a special ryoken in the mountains. He flew to Tokyo, the next day. At the airport he was met by a driver and was taken into the mountains to a ryoken with no name, arrived at via unmarked streets. There he asked to take full advantage of the hot springs and other private luxuries. After an appropriate amount of relaxation time had elapsed, a representative of the council, a lawyer-type, though he never identified himself as such, met him in his room, and together they read over various papers concerning his new position in America. The representative addressed all of his concerns, which Senju kept to a minimum.  

Once again, Senju found himself in a position for which he felt wholly unqualified and doomed to fail. Regardless, it was his stance that he would attempt to succeed, no matter how shameful the outcome. As it turned out, the Council was right to select Senju. Within a few years he had established the American Sushi Guild, an organization built from nothing, modeled after the great bureaucracies of Japan’s high period, with the Council as its benefactor. He achieved total hegemony by controlling all facets of the industry — importers of rice and mayonnaise, harvesters of fish and seaweed, synthesizers of imitation crab. And of course, the human resources department, his personal favorite, the one in which he blossomed. The chefs were his eyes and ears, were the mechanisms that kept the all-important river of tributes flowing from even the smallest sushi restaurants to local bosses, then on to regional bosses, all the way to headquarters. Controlling commodities was straightforward bribery for the most part. It involved knowing the right people and rewarding them for their service to the Imperial Council. It involved replacing those people should they ever waver in said service. It involved watching markets, buying up inventory, creating demand where there was no demand before. It involved minor extortion, larceny, and statement kidnappings. It involved appeals to ancestor worship and promises of a return to former glory. It involved the curation of traditions, new and old.

Obviously one doesn’t achieve that level of power and wealth without making a few enemies. Hence the masseuse’s hands, now working his feet. Nerves of such importance the masseuse has been at them for thirty minutes each. Such enemies had been piling up for many years, but up until recently they hadn’t caused him too much of a headache. Small rebellions would appear like a rash, an unsightly nuisance more embarrassing than harmful. But after a while the acts of rebellion changed. They took on a different style. While at first they involved the errant chef refusing to pay his dues, or the righteous fishmonger trying to unionize his fellow mongers, now it came in the form video tapes depicting masked men wielding chef’s knives taped to wooden broom handles. They came in as faxed manifestos whose national distribution was all but assured in the cover-letter. Demands for tributes to end, for a severing of ties from the Council. Guild members started complaining that their customers were getting sick, that the health departments were threatening to shut them down. Reports of poisoned sashimi, a culinary disgrace. It was terrorism, plain and simple, directed at his base of operations.

Directed at him.

That was when he started noticing the fleck in his throat, the sign of an irritant not even prescription-strength antacid could control. He hired investigators to snuff out the rebellion, but the leads went dead. His ordinary security network were not suited to the task of quashing a rebellion, which seemed to strengthen every day.  Sensing a loss of control, Senju hired an outside agency to help with security and investigations. That’s when he met Alonso.

While Alonso did his job well, the rebellion had already metastasized too deep into the heart of the American sushi world. Nevertheless, together they formed a plan that would monitor as much of the guild’s regions as was feasible, and report back any leads they might have on the rebellion, which like a young Senju, had found itself with a new name, a new legacy —  the Partition.

Senju was a different man by then. The Partition had positioned itself as the antagonist to the Guild, to him. It forced him to reflect on himself in a way he had been avoiding since he was a young boy, when his parents taught him the art of self-delusion after the emperor’s great admittance. He suddenly felt disarmed, unsure, without purpose. And so he went to the Council and begged for assistance.

It was a mistake, but a mistake that had to be made. Acts of rebellion are simply not tolerated, replied the Council. But how can a rebellion be quashed if we don’t know from where it originates? asked Senju. How did the shogunates of old handle such things?

Their response: You work it out. That is what we pay you for.

They were right of course. Though I’m the President of the Guild, he told himself, I’m still just a bureaucrat in the end, expected to execute a job for which I am paid. It is that simple. Mine is the face of the Guild, not theirs. Mine is the face in photos with the Washington elite, the California elite, the New York elite. Mine is the signature on the dictates of the Guild sent to all regional bosses, disseminated through their ranks to all subordinates, no matter how low on the corporate ladder.  Mine is the face concealing the brain that swells with anger and fear, anger for being trapped in a role from which it was impossible to remove myself, fear for failing at it; the brain whose mechanism for survival was to feed fear to the anger so it might grow in strength and eclipse its origins and leave them forever in darkness; whose energy is sourced from the pleasure of knowing an enemy has been destroyed, that the bond between anger and fear has produced results, tangible results, an enemy that now lives in the same darkness at my hand eclipsed; which lives in a cycle that exists on death and can only stop at death, never before.

He wondered what it took for a man to become what he had become. Was he a man of circumstance? Was he conditioned from a young age to value certain traits that a criminal organization would find useful? Did his parents foster such traits in him, knowing subconsciously that they would be of value to him, specifically him, throughout his life? Was he an average boy in an average time, plucked from obscurity?

Perhaps he realized it the first time he held a knife in a kitchen. The most important instrument in the cook’s arsenal — violence at the core of the culinary arts, the hierarchy of a kitchen much like an army. Forget the searing flesh of a piece of beef, or a fillet of fish. The violence of the kitchen is found in the subtleties of dicing an onion, bisecting it, following the ridges created, as if ordained, by nature, showing him the way. When he learned the techniques for dicing an onion, he couldn’t help point out how it reminded him of seppuku. His teacher corrected him: seppuko was a stabbing motion, the point of the blade, the point of the knife is rarely used in the kitchen. No, Senju said. I mean knowing the structure of the vegetable, making as few cuts as necessary, and the whole onion falls to pieces. The teacher looked at him with a concerned look, wondering what the little Senju would say when he moved on to gutting and scaling fish.

The masseuse left the room, told him to take as much time as he needed. Two hours of his day, gone. He wished he had gone for a run, instead of laying there letting his mind wander so. He didn’t feel the least bit relaxed. Why he took the suggestion, he didn’t know. No one could give him the relaxation he needed, only himself. What did it take for him to become the man he became? Simple: he only trusted himself. He had grown into his identity because he could be relied on to do anything, and now he could no longer rely on anyone else. Such was his predicament.

Senju checked the mirror. He tried to smile, but his facial muscles seemed to have failed him. It appeared that a scowl had adhered itself permanently to his face.

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 10: Senju pt. 1 (Interlude)

“My mother used to tell me this story whenever I’d ask, which was every night until I was ten years old or so. It takes place long ago, before Greece and Egypt and Mesopotamia, far away from those places too, way up north, on huge islands off in the Arctic now known as Svalbard. Early man had traveled to these distant islands, as you and I both do to this very day, in search of more. More of what? Who knows. Now when man crossed the frozen Arctic to this magical land of Svalbard he discovered, if you can believe it, a race of giants.” Alonso paused, pining. “My favorite thing to imagine as a child. The giants were welcoming and allowed the men to live with them. Coexistence with giants was not easy in those days. Giants ate vast quantities of food. You can imagine  —  the size of their mouths and hands, how they would grab entire troughs of berries like a cup of soup and just inhale the contents, an entire afternoon’s worth of berry-picking gone, swallowed, without warning. giants and humans coexisted which means they had a thing going, you know, a relationship, a set-up. Much like today, where people like you and I have setups. Mankind has always needed a set-up, which is a theme of the story I’m tying into the present world, so listen closely. You following?”

Senju nodded once.

“So, here we are, in the arctic forests of the old world when men were not surprised by giants, living on the outskirts because forests are filled with frightening noises and the inevitable onset of specters. Mankind had strengths and weaknesses —  man far surpassed the giants in terms of stealth, wit, stamina, accuracy, and agility, but lacked the strength to bring large animals, and were prone to bouts of madness. Giants could defend themselves against the enormous predators who prowled the region, and were capable of gathering vast quantities of fruits and wild grains, but they lacked the speed and agility to hunt for themselves. They were reduced to scavenging, which humans found unpleasant. But together the two species managed to coexist in a symbiotic relationship.”Alonzo paused, considering whether to define the word for Senju, then, after a a quick analysis of his expression, decided to proceed.

“The relationship lasted thousands of years, but soon enough, as we all know, the giants, for some reason, disappeared. They were the dispensable ones, and humans continued to occupy the island even to this day. How did this happen?

“This is where my mother did a wonderful job, as all mothers do, of creating fantastic stories around the reason for the giant’s demise. Usually she would tie the story in to something she wanted me to do. For instance, she might say, the giants didn’t complete their homework, which was essential for them to become smarter giants. Or she might say, the giants didn’t finish their dinner, which the humans spent most of the day preparing for them. This was one of the reasons I loved hearing this story — it gave my mother an outlet to tell me, without scolding, what she wished me to be, how she wanted me to change. I was receptive to her in these moments of enchantment. My personal favorite, the real ending, the one she always had to finish with before I would stop bothering her, went like this:

“One day the humans came home with an enormous bull moose, its throat slit, its body drained of blood. That morning it stood twenty feet tall, its antlers fifteen feet across, tip to tip, and adding another 10 feet onto its height. The beast weighed five thousand pounds. The giants watched as this band of men carried this beast down into the river valley in which they lived. Of course they were not carrying it on their shoulders; they had developed, without the giant’s knowledge, the means to transport the moose from far away, using a system of wheels and pulleys, clever inventions that bewildered the giants.

“The giants knew the humans had the ability as a group to kill large animals, especially an arrogant one like a moose, who tended to flaunt himself wherever he pleased. But they did not think the humans would teach themselves how to move them.

“Soon the giants became nervous that their use to the humans would wane. Being of use is everything, a fact of life even the ancient men and giants knew. To fall out of use is to be discarded. The fear of being discarded, of losing their human companions on whom they became reliant and even had some affection towards, drove the giants mad. They fell into bouts of anger and jealousy. Their position had been taken away from them. The humans explained to the giants that they would find a new use for the giants. But of course we know that didn’t last long. After all, there are no more giants in the world, are there?”

“That’s a very interesting story,” said Senju.

“I like the part where we can imagine the two kinds of men living in symbiosis. Working together. Right?”

Senju didn’t usually drink alcohol this early in the afternoon, but he decided that today was a special day, so he allowed himself a small dram of Glenkinchie, a good quality light scotch perfect for earlier in the day, after lunch. Neat of course.

Alonso, meanwhile, drank tea.

“Did you tell me this story for any particular reason?” asked Senju.

“For one,” said Alonso, “to humble us. It’s important to remind ourselves that the world is much older than just you and I. Second, that instinct for more. That drive that brought humans to Svalbard, what made them invent the pulleys, the wheels, so they wouldn’t have to rely on the giants any longer.  That instinct cannot be stopped. The giants of the world must watch out for it.”

“That’s not the reason you told me the story.”

“So you tell me, Senju, what’s the reason I’m telling you this story?”

“To convince me to change my mind,” said Senju.

“Not at all.”

Senju scowled. It was the scowl of ten centuries of culturally honed disappointment. Alonso was not affected. As an outside contractor, not part of Senju’s elaborate and extensive bureaucracy, Alonso didn’t have to feel much of anything in the presence of Senju, and he made sure Senju knew it.

Senju of course took on that burden. He felt his stomach churn with bile and an inflammation in his throat caused by the caustic gasses billowing up from his stomach and swirling in his esophagus. The result was this niggling fleck, like a semi-swallowed morsel of food, a grain of rice, to be specific, lodged in the back of this throat like a reminder. Involuntarily and always discreetly he gulped and cleared his throat over and over again in fruitless attempts to dislodge the thing that wasn’t dislodgeable.  

A reminder of course that men of Alonso’s calibre, in positions which Senju could not completely manage, caused unforeseeable frustrations. It was part of running an empire, he told himself, but like most men who came of age in the chaos and uncertainty of post-war (post-apocalyptic) Japan, Senju had an idea of what an empire should be. An empire should run perfectly. It should rely on an orderly, highly bureaucratic structure with no convolution and total accountability. It was a part of the old ways, a tradition taken from generations past. He was too young to remember the days before the war, when the emperor was still a god, but he recalled his family’s struggle with what they would traditions they would be permitted to retain, what they would have would be left behind, in this new era. Like a family fleeing their burning home, there was only so much time to decide, forces outside your power pushing you onward, grab what you can, leave what you don’t truly cherish, and decide quickly, intuitively. He remembered a fear on part of his parents that by leaving one thing behind there was a risk in jeopardizing the entire system, perhaps not to be realized for generations to come. After all, how was one to know what was important when everything was so interconnected?

Somehow, a system did survive. It wasn’t the same as before (nothing ever is), but it worked. Certain features of old Japan survived, others were replaced, borrowed, amended. Survival was a zero-sum game. Win or lose, eat or be eaten. It was the source of Senju’s enormous pride in himself and the empire he built, an empire that no felt on the verge of collapse.

Alonso decided he would no longer wait for Senju to remove the scowl from his face, thinking he might have accidentally caused it to remain there permanently. If anyone were to leave a meeting and discover they lacked the power to remove the scowl from their face, it would be Senju.

“I know it’s not my position to give you advice on any of your own private business concerns. But Senju, old friend — the Council will find out about this. You know, as well as I do, they have ears all over this city. And remember, we often can’t control the series of events we set into motion.”

“The council knows what it needs to know.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Well then you heard wrong.”

“I’m just saying, I know what I heard is what other people have heard.”

“What they have heard is not the truth,” said Senju, angrily.

“People hear what they are told, which has nothing to do with the truth.”

Senju threw up his hands. “I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you, Alonso. No matter which way the winds blow, there you are, dressed for all weather. Tell me, did you bring your umbrella today? Did you check the forecast? I bet you didn’t have to. Well, look, there’s an umbrella right there. You can have it when you leave.”

Alonso looked down at himself, confused, wondering if he did indeed bring an umbrella to the meeting. “I…I can’t tell what you mean…”

“You know exactly what I mean. You’re treating me like you’re in some kind of bubble that no one can touch, giving me advice, while I’m here every day making decisions that can break this entire organization.”

“Which is why I’m trying to help you!” cried Alonso.

“Let’s be clear,” said Senju. “I pay you to deal with your own men, not mine!”

“Our men are one — they must work together!”

“Your bodyguards, as you like to call them? They’re useless buffoons. You’re lucky you weren’t replaced years ago.”

Alonso let the air between them cool for a moment. Then he said, “I provide a service, Boss Senju, and you give me the money you owe for that service. It is a mutual agreement. If you are unhappy with that arrangement, we should talk about that.”

“The arrangement doesn’t involve you butting in to my business affairs.”

Alonso stood. “I was just trying to help.” He buttoned his suit jacket, picked up his briefcase, and went to the door. “You’ll call?”

Senju nodded.

Alonso looked up. There on the hat rack was an umbrella. He looked at it, looked back at Senju’s familiar scowl, and took the umbrella off the rack. “I’ll bring it back next week,” he said.

The second the door closed, Senju drank back the remains of his scotch and threw the glass across the room with a crash.

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 9: Jazu

It was about three in the morning when we got to Tonic. I knew it was on the west side, over by 10th ave, so we drove around for a while until we spotted a few greasy looking inebriates who were walking with a little extra swing in their step, not looking for any trouble, no girls around to impress, too tired from dancing wildly through the night. This was the mid-nineties, mind you, so this kind of thing was just about to get very irritating to a lot of people.

They showed us the way — an old warehouse with no line, no bouncer, no velvet rope, just a light bulb glowing green above a door. Inside, there was a small man inside a small wooden encasement, old and chestnut brown. He looked like a fortune teller at a carnival, and took our money and told us to have fun.

Inside, smoke clouds plumed and collided like volcanic eruptions, formed a haze that swam between and through the purple and green lights. It was a wild atmosphere. The music was spastic, incredible. The kind of music Takuto listened to whenever he had the chance. The drummer led the band, calling out expletives each time one of his bandmates made his ears orgasm. It was a thrill to watch. I was glad to not have to talk anymore.

We walked up to the bar, the man there wearing a leather apron and a bow-tie, knives and strainers and jiggers attached to his apron like weapons and ammo. Matsusaka introduced himself and ordered two scotches neat. The bartender twiddled his mustache to greet us and introduced himself. Whit Bissell is what I heard, and that’s what I chose to believe. He served up the scotches and put out a plate of raw cabbage with a dipping sauce. The scotch burned its way down and we ordered another. Matsuzaka did the talking, while I watched the room. Pure human writhing, sweaty and beautiful. There were people of all ethnicities, all ages, even young boys and girls, dressed up in oversized suits and wing-tip shoes, drinking from rocks glasses and throwing them down, skidding off and slicking the dance floor to give the whole human carousel a slippery twist. No one seemed to care about anything. I finished my scotch and asked for another. For the first time that night I was feeling good.

Then I suddenly felt even better. Across the room I met the eyes of a beautiful creature, a mature woman with hips bursting from her tan high-waisted pants, a ruffled green shirt that looked softer than five-star hotel sheets. Her hair was as red as hot brick, cascading over itself like lava, the kind of hair her parents were baffled at having created, the kind of hair never seen before in the family, like the genes were biding their time, waiting to bestow it when the right person came along. Our gaze was quickly broken. She was dancing with everyone and no one all at once and for forever, her body airborne, her feet never once touching the ground. I wanted to breathe her in, smell every inch of her, let her aroma bewilder my brain. Then there was a tap on my shoulder. “Lou! What the fuck are you looking at?” Matzu handed me my third scotch. “Pay attention, alright? This place is dangerous.”

Dangerous it was indeed. Dangerous for the heart, dangerous for the soul, dangerous for what a woman like that could do to the only body I had. But Matzu was right. I forced my head in different directions, scanning the room for threats. There were quite a few people I would classify as goons or thugs or just generic intimidating security types. Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, a fair number of Japanese men and women though, the security definitely sushi. What did a place like this have to worry about? What did it hold? Who did it attract?

The hot jazz explosion on stage came to denouement with the drummer executing a long solo that in my sloshy mind turned him into a cartoon octopus. The crowd roared, the band screamed, the cymbals clattered and the kick drums shook and the musicians started backing up as though their leader was about to self-immolate. Two people in the middle of the dance floor fainted, several more threw their drinks in the air, liquid courage showering the room. It felt like New Years Eve.

The drummer fell off his chair in a show of exhaustion, then bounced back up as soon as the clapping turned to a chant, all smiles. He straightened everything, held up his hand to quiet the audience, a call of a new mood. The frenzy came to a hush — soon all you could hear was heavy breathing, giggles, suggestive whispers. The trumpeter started up something slow and blue. The dance floor paired off, the bass showing them the way, slowly. Then the shhhhh of a brush on the ride, more slowly now, dragging the band a half-step back. I scanned the dance floor with hopes to see her again — she was pulling her hair back in an effort to cool off, revealing a thick neck I wanted to explore with the tip of my nose.

She watched as I walked toward her, the sea of dancers separating, my tribe cheering me on. My momentum carried me too far, and I found myself unable to stop my body from crashing into hers. Luckily, a woman of such magnitude had no problem side-stepping my oafish clumsiness, catching me by the arm, spinning me around, and leading the way. We danced for what felt like an eternity. Neither of us spoke, our bodies turning and turning over on each other, the bar and the other dancers having long faded away, leaving only the rhythms and us.

Of course that moment passed, gone forever, a moment I will never get back but am grateful to have had at all. The music kicked into another gear, and I realized I had been away from my post, had left my mark. I severed, but before I could, she pulled me back by my forearm and asked me my name. I said Lou, Lou Mastiff, and she said hers was Vicky Felix. I told her I had to go, that I was working, and I saw no concern on her face, no sense of loss, no pining. I, however, pined. I pined immediately for the dance that just ended. But there she went, away to dance alone again, never losing an inch of that smile, as though knowing something she was sure I would soon know as well.

Matsuzaka watched me the whole way back to the bar. “Sorry I just had to get that out of my system,” I said.

He shook his head. “No worries Lou. It was fun watching. You’re a good dancer.”

“I am?”

“I wish I could dance like that.”

“I could teach you.”

“Unfortunately I’m a little focused on not getting shanked in the alley, so maybe we can push off the dance lessons a few weeks, hm?”

“Right I’m s—���

“While you were over there over there with Miss Hipswivels I’ve been here talking to my new friend Mr. Bissell. He tells me there was quite a scene here a couple weeks ago involving our friend Takuto. Turns out Takuto had a bit of a drug problem. Got him into some trouble with the local dealers I guess.”

“Drugs?”

"The devil’s sushi rice. Colombian short-grain. Brought out his aggressive side. I guess that was enough for Senju to give the okay for him to get taken out. No sense in jeopardizing the whole city of New York for one junkie, right?”

“I never realized,” I said.

“That’s what my new friend Whit here seems to think. And if that’s the case, then we, my friend, are in the clear. Raise a glass. You too Mr. Bissell. A toast to our dearly departed friend Boss Takuto. And to new beginnings. And to New York!”

“To sushi!”

“Here here.”

We drank. Matzu ordered another round and we turned our attention back to the band, which was putting forth glorious noise feasted on by the pack of insatiable hyenas on the dance floor. I tried to pick out Vicky Felix, but she was no where to be found. I told them I’d be right back and went to go look. As I moved through the frenzy I got the feeling again, the same one that I got in the alley outside Takuto’s apartment, that same feeling that came too late, after he had already been cut up and left for dead. I glanced to the perimeter of the room and the guards had shifted, and multiplied. Some were in among the dancers, others were moving in groups of two and three. I turned to the bar. Neither Whit nor Matzu were there, just a couple of jazz freaks trying to get a round of drinks. That’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder, a pistol in my side. Turn around sir, I heard him say. And don’t make a scene.

I was sandwiched between two Japanese men with long hair and black suits. They moved me through the crowd with ease. The trumpeter and I made eye contact and he blew a little harder. I tried to swivel my head one last time to see if Ms. Felix was anywhere near by and got a nice clock in the spine for it. Keep moving, buddy, he said, jamming the pistol deeper into my kidney.

I was relieved to find no aquatic themes in the back room of the club. There were no decorations at all, just exposed pipes, uneven floors, ceiling rot, peeled paint. The metal chair bolted to the floor had little metal jags on the corners which tore my clothes as my body absorbed the alternating slaps and punches and the occasional stomp. The slaps actually hurt more than the punches. With this mass my body can absorb any number of direct blows, but something about the tautness of my skin, maybe due to being overworked trying to retain all the blubbery bits inside of me, it’s a little more sensitive than most other parts of my body. This guy, the slapper, seemed a well-practiced skin-stinger. Still, years of taking beatings gave me the ability to dissociate from the pain and the torture of it all so I just kind of coast through and deal with the physical trauma later. As for the psychological trauma, well, I just hope I die before I ever have to deal with that.  

“I’ll tell you whatever you want,” I said, trying to gauge what level of back-rooming we were dealing with here. But they hadn’t asked me anything, didn’t seem to care. Like a classically trained boxer I sat there absorbing everything those henchmen could give me. Then I hit them with some basic trivia, current events or pop culture from decades ago, general knowledge type stuff. This was a tactic I learned years ago from one of my early mentors Don “Loopie” Loper, back in my days as a caddie. When I was starting out, the best way to get into the hired goon industry was through your local caddy program. Loopie told me that when he was getting worked over by a couple of tough guys you wanted to tire out without getting yourself too messed up, just quiz them a little. Nothing too hard. Give them questions they feel like they probably know or used to know once upon a time. It distracts them, makes them feel inadequate, but it won’t enrage them. It’s a subtle defanging that creates self-doubt. Punches will land a little softer after that.

As the one part of my mind took care of the beating-end of business, the other part, the one hiding deep in the brain-bunker, began trying to remember those last few moments between when I walked away from Matzu and when I turned to find him gone. Had I seen anything suspicious? What did Whit Bissell’s face say to me when I slugged back that fourth scotch? Did he smile? Did he glance to the corners of the room?

A while went by — who knows how long. At some point I glanced at my new friends through what I assumed were my swollen eyelids and saw them panting, a little sweaty on the brow, a little hunched over, and I decided it was about time. I stood up, grabbed them both by their wrists and squeezed. Right there I heard two separate snaps. I held on, squeezed some more. That was another trick Loopie taught me. The old adage “break the wrist, walk away” was for amateurs. Professionals snap the wrist and hold on, they squeeze, grind up those little bird bones into dust. Make the pain so intense and long lasting that your enemies collapse that their whole bodies quake and they wet themselves. Then let go.

Out front the band was packing up. A few people still lingered, flirting with the musicians, sucking back the remaining ice in their highball glasses.  Security had vanished. I let my nose guide me to the smell of fresh city air.

Night was over. The sun was making its way over the horizon, giving the sky a nice peachy preview of the day to come. It was going to be a warm one. High humidity, hazy sky. I tried to catch my breath enough to get walking, seeing as I didn’t want to hang around the club much longer.  That’s when I heard a voice. A woman’s voice. A voice that made my buttocks tingle. I looked over to what appeared to be a small cluster of bikers wearing cut off shirts, long hair, standing around their motorcycles.

“The big bad Mastiff got away,” she said. Now I knew my eyes were swollen, as I saw her figure walk towards me, I was unable to make out a single feature. Instead I smelled a glorious sweet aroma, hers and only hers. “Looks like they did a number on you.”

“I’d say you should see the other guys, but honestly, it’s just two grown man who’ve pissed their pants.”

“You got a ride?”

“I’ll just hail a cab.”

“Nonsense. I’ll take you home.”

We rode without helmets down the empty New York streets, too early for traffic, maybe it was a Sunday.  I felt the air whisk away the dried blood crusts off the corners of my mouth. Vicky took local streets, coasting through red lights, swerving across four lanes and back again, taking her time. I saw the sun cast double in the river as we crossed the bridge headed to Brooklyn. The air smelled different above the streets, closing in on a new borough. I became overwhelmed with emotion, thinking of how I lost Matzu, how I left the tuna, how I might be 0-8, or is it 0-7, I couldn’t remember. The sight of Brooklyn made me wonder how much of the world was really out there for me to explore, and what exactly was holding me back.

We pulled up to a big building on Atlantic ave, across the street from some Lebanese grocers. It was an old concrete thing with the words Ex-Lax carved into stone above the entryway. She said it was the old factory, or one of them, she didn’t know. When we got inside she told me to flop down on the couch while she runs a bath. There was nothing I wanted more than a nice flop, and she knew it. She could tell that’s what I needed, knowing me only a couple hours. I knew I had found someone special.

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 8: Saba

For a fast-food joint, AhoySushi had a relatively pleasant odor. A hint of bamboo, a wisp of miso steam, maybe some disinfectant. Not much else. Overall this caused no hunger inside of me, no yearning whatsoever. Disconcerting for sure. Perhaps my work was having  negative effects on my appetite, my one true friend in this world.  But I suppose like all friends, appetites change as well, especially when you become used to the cozy, under-tended, and often unwelcoming atmosphere of fishysmells.

The place was clean and organized in a very corporate kind of way.  All the red and yellow made it seem like a McDonald’s spin-off. I’d heard of them popping up in the midwest, but this was the first I had seen it in New York. They were notoriously despised by the conservative sushi elite, who believed believing this was just one step closer to sushi becoming available in the frozen dinner aisle.

And yet a new generation seemed to enjoy it enough that they kept popping up all over the country at drive-throughs, strip-malls, regular malls, truck-stops, ball-parks, stadium-kiosks, penny-arcades, bath-houses, gyms, truck-baths, stadium-arcades, you name it, AhoySushi was there. Somehow New York held out. Until now.

“Lane and I went to the same culinary school. You’ll like her. Just don’t say anything about the pirate costume. She finds it a bit demeaning. If we’re lucky she’ll give us a little information.”

We stood in the doorway, the only people in the restaurant other than the chef, a young woman wearing a the last remains of her pirate costume uniform — an orange bandana, a leather vest over her chef coat — reading a book, with what looked like a travel-sized checkers board set up in front of her.

“We’re closing in five minutes,” she said without looking up.

“What, you’re not going to serve an old friend?”

“Matzu!

“Lanie, how are you?”

“Well I’ll let you take a guess. There’s a digital menu above my head, I’m wearing a pirate costume, or what some corporate HR guy told me was a pirate costume, there’s a bunch of pre-cut sushi sitting in cardboard hamburger boxes, we haven’t had any customers since two pm and those guys just ordered sodas, exchanged folded up newspapers and left. But you know what the worst part is?”

“What?”

“I’m in charge!”

“Well shit.”

“Not to mention the fact that this pirate theme is the absolute worst. I mean, no way did pirates have the patience nor the dexterity to roll sushi. It requires practice, dedication, a sedentary lifestyle for Pete’s sake. It’s not a cuisine for aquatic nomads.”

“I didn’t want to bring it up, but it definitely feels a little contrived.”

“Hook em while they’re young, that’s the idea. Kids will come in for the fun of it.

“Did you know that in Japan when families go out for sushi they order the kids Ikura and Tobiko? They like how the roe pop in their mouths. Funny what you can teach impressionable people.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m doing wrong. Whenever a kid comes in I just yell in a pirate voice, tell the disappointed kids that we don’t have fish-sticks, and give them the finger as they leave.”

“Speaking of fingers,” Matzu said, shooting me a glare, “I brought you a gift.”

There was a moment of exchanged silences, after which I excused myself and promptly returned with the tuna.

“Since when do you have a manservant, Matzu?”

“He’s my bodyguard. I got promoted.”

“Promoted? You? Hah, that’s rich. You’ve never been promoted in your life. Everyone ahead of you just keeps dying and like an idiot you keep stepping up to take their place.”

There was a brief, awkward silence that I used to reposition the tuna. “So you heard about that?” said Matsuzaka.

She burst into laughter, the kind that goes on way too long. Annoyingly long. I had to reposition the tuna once again.

“Right. Anyway, so what is this? A tuna loin? And what do you expect me to do with a tuna loin?” “Serve it.”

“Great idea! I’ll serve it. Let me just let all the customers know we have the freshest tuna money can buy, and I’ll serve it up on a platter! Hey, LuLu!”

A young woman, more fully adorned with pirate gear, popped her head out from the back. “Yes chef?”

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“We have tuna. Throw out all the other shit no one is buying and we’ll serve this instead.”

LuLu flipped her the bird and disappeared into the back.

“Nobody wants your fucking backseat tuna, Matzu. And besides, this guy keeps smelling his fingers like he’s got some kind of crush on it. No thanks.”

I asked if I could put it down, it was getting heavier and my shoulders and neck were starting to ache. Lane just shrugged and said to put it anywhere.

“So who died this time?”

“Takuto.”

“Obviously. Saw that coming a mile away.”

“What do you mean?” “The guy was in his own world, never questioned anything that was going on around him. And then on top of it I hear people talking. That’s the one thing about this place. It’s quiet enough and the acoustics are this strange corporate perfection that when the occasional sketchball comes in I can hear pretty much anything. I just heard some stuff, that’s all.”

“But what do you mean exactly?”

“Listen, I don’t need any trouble right now. I’ve got studying to do.” She pointed to her book. “The regionals are next week. It’s my chance to get out of this grind. I’m gonna win big, gonna change my life, get outta the restaurant business for good.

“We’re not trying to cause any trouble. Just here for a little information.”

Lane glanced back to her board and nervously centered a few of the pieces. “I don’t anything about any information.”

“Lanie, come on. You know me. You can trust me. I’m on the chopping block here. I’ll be next if I can’t get my bearings. And Lou here will be 0-2.

It would be 0-7, actually,” I corrected without thinking.

Matzu waved the comment away like swatting a fly. “Even still. You don’t want Lou to get even further in a rut, right? We gotta get him out of this, give him a win. Come on, if not for me, do it for Lou. What did you hear about Takuto getting knocked off?”

She thought for a moment and then said, “The Partition guys are the only reason this place exists. I get handed envelopes for the guild dues every two weeks. Otherwise nothing goes in the tills, nothing of any substance at least. In exchange they use this place as a hangout. They’d come in and sit and talk, sometimes they’re a little drunk and pretend like they own the joint and mess with me and LuLu, take free sushi and then change their mind when they see it.”

“And these guys were talking about Takuto?”

“I heard his name come up about three weeks ago. I don’t know what they said, I try to stay out of it. The whole thing stresses me out to no end. That’s why I’m getting out of it. No more late nights, no more goons, no more wasted customers swatting the door chime when they find out we don’t serve ramen. See, I’m getting all worked up just talking about it. This is why I have to quit. My doctor says I have the worst blood pressure in the city. Can you believe that? He says all the general practitioners text about which patients have the worst blood pressure and I’m it, I’m the one. Literally the worst they’ve ever seen. So I’m going into the checkers game. That’s the new ticket outta here. First regionals, then nationals. Then a world tour."

“That actually sounds way more stressful.”

“Is there anything else?”

“So nothing else? No other eavesdroppings?”

“Droppings?”

Matzu looked at me as though I might have some questions of my own, but all I could think about was how badly I wanted to accompany her to the checkers tournament. It sounded like a perfect fit for me. So I mouthed the name Guttenberg and he shook his head and sneered.

“You said Takuto was in his own world. What did you mean by that?”

“Listen, I don’t like disparaging the dead.”

“Come on, just this once.”

“I don’t know…”

“Damnit Lanie! This is a war. And restaurants like AhoySushi are going to be the battleground if we don’t work together on this. I could be next, and the next guy after me might come looking for you. Then kiss your checkers career goodbye!”

That seemed to freak her out. “Alright, alright, Jeez just leave the checkers out of it.” She paused for a moment to collect herself, then bookmarked her page.

“Takuto was a jazz guy,” she said. “He didn’t just like the music, I mean, the whole thing. He legitimately pretended he was living in the 1940s New York City noir jazz scene, Charlie Parker and Duke and all that. High-culture LARPing. Someone like that, who doesn’t have their head in the present, in reality, isn’t going to last long. Not in the sushi game.”

“Do you know where he would hang out? The jazz clubs, I mean.”

“These were underground joints, man, off the grid, word of mouth only. They didn’t want just anyone coming in and spoiling the immersion, you know? But last week, when he stopped by to say hello, he did ask if I knew anywhere he could hide out for a while. I think he was getting into some hot water in that jazz scene.”

They hugged. She and I shook hands, and we wished her good luck in the tournament.

When we got back to the car, Matzu told me to take him to the swankiest jazz club Takuto ever visited. I knew just the place.

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 7: Ebi II

“We’re dead. We’re fucking dead.” Matsuzaka rode shotgun in the limousine, me driving. Not a standard part of my job description according to the union rules but I wasn’t about to argue. The driver wasn’t at the car when we left Aburiya, the keys were on the dash, and Matzu wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. His hands shook as he squeezed the tattered sushi history pamphlet we were ordered to take home and study like he was trying to strangle it. I kept my eyes on the road, glancing over now and again, nervous he would tear it.

“Try not to rip it. It might be useful.”

“What, like this!?” he said and tore the paper over and over again and threw the confetti in my face. I cracked the window and let the New York air whisk away the debris, as though it were reclaiming the pollution back to its pavement bosom. “How the fuck is that going to be useful? Most of it was made up, mixed with shit they found on the internet to make it sound legitimate. You think Guttenberg really had a hand in all this?”

“It’s possible. I mean, you’re young. You might not remember how influential he was back then.”

“Forget the history. We have bigger shit to worry about. Did you see the way he was handling that turtle? The guy’s a fucking maniac. The chef is the Amphibious. What the hell does that mean? Like we’re one of his turtles.”

“The Amphibious?”

“He had hundreds of those things floating around there.”

“Mistranslation?”

“He was telling us in his own insane way that we were just as dispensable as Takuto. And if we don’t somehow figure out what the hell Takuto did to piss them off, we’re going to end up in that alley the same as him.”

“Maybe he’s just under a lot of pressure. Pressure makes people talk nonsense.”

“Pressure?”

“You read the history. That’s a lot of legacy on his shoulders.”

“Pressure!?”

It was getting tense. I reflected on my bodyguard training and remembered how important it was not just to guard the body, but guard the mind as well.

“Maybe we should get outta town for a while. Relax on the beach, go to a spa. Something for you. Something nice.”

Matsuzaka averted his eyes and sniffed. “I don’t want to.”

“Just a suggestion.”

Matsu sighed.

“Thank you…but no, that won’t help. We need to stay in the city. If he thinks we’re running away, we’re as good as dead. The only way to survive is to keep close, pretend like we know what we’re doing.”

My kind of job. I made some right turns, then some left. I got on the East River Parkway and watched each sign for each off-ramp, the underpasses and overpasses, the bridges and walkways and the Roosevelt Island Skyway, each Its own incredible feat of engineering. I got off, pretended I was riding a rollercoaster, pretended I didn’t have a care in the world, pretended like I had never heard of the Imperial Sushi Council. I wondered whether, if I could turn back time, I would give up all those years of living the late night sushi life so I would never have gotten mixed up in all this.  

Then it hit me.

“The pamphlet said that the Partition was founded in 1982, right?”

“I don’t remember,” said Matsuzaka.

“I think it did. And it said Guttenberg endorsed the California roll in 1985?”

“That’s right. That I do remember that because that was the year I got my first chef job.”

I came to a stop sign, checked for any cars behind me. We sat at the sign, idling.

“What?” Matzu asked. “Somethign doesn’t sit right. I mean, Senju was an L.A. type back then. If Guttenberg was such a hot-shot sushi lover, why didn’t Senju try to get him on his side. You know, show him a good time, exclusive sashimi deals, ask him to publicly denounce the California roll. Senju’s a savvy man.”

“Maybe they never met. Maybe Senju didn’t know Guttenberg was that into sushi.”

“Senju would never have made a mistake like that,” I said. “The man has his hand in everything. He was using the Hollywood influence from the beginning to keep things tidy in L.A. So I ask you again: Why didn’t Senju have Guttenberg in his back pocket.”

“Why?”

“The Partition got to him. The Partition got to Guttenberg.”  

Matsuzaka groaned. “I’m so dead. So, so dead. You’re a good guy Lou, I appreciate you trying to help, but could you just stick to your job and drive.”

“Actually I think we left the driver back at the club. I’m the bodyguard.”

“I know what you are. Just drive.”

We drove. I yawned. I thought the night would be over by now, but such is the life of a bodyguard. I wondered where the driver had gone, whether he was immediately fired and thrown in a ditch somewhere when they realized he lost his car. I tried to remember what I had signed up for, exactly. I tried to remember back to the moment when Alfonso approached me at Fishy Smells, only a few weeks ago now, how he looked at me and pursed his nose, as though wondering how anyone could eat the food I was eating, wondering if I realized what a dump I was in, where that fish had been, where it would end up. Alonso saw something in me. He knew to a man of the oafish persuasion the life of a bodyguard made sense, that we were drawn to it. There are people who protect, and people who need protecting — the world is as simple as that. He had an allegory to go along with it which maybe I’ll get to if I remember it. The gist of it was that, yes, while people should always strive to improve their lives, it is just as important to recognize honestly your natural talents and proclivities and especially your deficits when choosing a lane in life.

There was a time in my life when I didn’t guard people, when I was a cop and later a private investigator, professions for which I was not well-suited due to my forgiving nature, absentmindedness, and a general lack of knowledge regarding the law. I trusted everybody. Whatever someone said, I believed. A real handicap when it comes to mastering the rules of interrogation. The problem was, even when I was sure I thought a perpetrator was lying I would convince myself that in some confusing way that there was honesty behind the lie, that the choice of which lie they told somehow corresponded to a truth. I went so far as to convince myself that the lies could be more true than the truth because anybody could misinterpret reality, but a lies comes out through the subconscious, and how could anything that comes out of the subconscious be a lie? I learned that from Freud, the stuff about the subconscious. He is a personal favorite of mine. I like how he explains behavior by reminding us that our actions are driven by forces somewhat out of our control, like we’re animals in that way. Amphibians, like Senju said.  

“What about the tuna?” I blurted out, at the thought of The Amphibious.

“Get rid of it. I don’t want to see it anymore. It’s a fucking burden. It’s going to sit there and rot, just like me when I’m dead.”

“Are you sure? I don’t know what Senju would think…”

“I don’t care. Just dump it.”

I decided to stall a little bit, lefts and rights. Diagonals when I got a chance.  We drove for a while. Now and then I reached in the back and peeled a little of the fish paper back and inspected the tuna flesh, poked it with my index finger to see its bounce-back. My finger found its way a little deeper, then still deeper, until it was submerged up to my middle knuckle.

“Where should I go?”

“Where did Takuto take you when you were guarding him?”

“We went to a few restaurants, a few bars. He seemed to like the places that played jazz. One place in particular. One night he asked me to drive him to Long Island to visit his nieces. That was about it.”

“How about the night he died?”

“That was a weird night. No one has asked me about that night, strangely enough. He didn’t call me until late. We were supposed to go out for a drink before the meeting at Aburiya, but he never called. I got in my car anyway, thinking maybe he didn’t expect to have to call, that I’d just show up, so I did, I just showed up. When he answered the door he looked nervous, like he had just had a nightmare. He was wearing just his wife-beater and some jeans. He seemed disoriented. There was crazy jazz playing in the back, and voices. I asked him if he wanted me to come in. No answer. I asked him if he was having a party and again he didn’t answer. He just kind of looked past me, as though he didn’t recognize me, or maybe he was warned not to let anybody in, even if he knew them.  Finally, after a long hesitation, he face changed, like he suddenly got his bearings, like his memory came back to him and he told me never to come back here again. I was perplexed. Stunned really. Was I being fired? I just couldn’t quite understand. I knew we had a big meeting that night and we were supposed to go together. Was I supposed to head over to Aburiya alone, without my boss? Would that be worse than not showing up at all? So I waited outside the building for a while, maybe an hour. I was smoking, watching traffic. There was a little side street, just up the block. An alley really, it could fit a small car heading in one direction and that’s about it. A couple of motorbikes parked on the sidewalk there. It was drizzling, the rain making little ripples on the puddles. Suddenly I had this feeling of panic, maybe I heard a noise, a high pitched noise like the ones only a dog could hear but because I got that bodyguard sense I can hear it too sometimes, I don’t know. Anyway, right at that moment, a couple of guys came running out of the side street, I could hear their feet clapping against the sidewalk and through the puddles and they hopped on their motorbikes and sped off. I knew something was wrong, so I went over to the side street and peeked down and there I saw you-know-who lying on the ground.”

“So he had people over, the same people that killed him, you think?”

“They weren’t protecting him, that’s for sure.”

“You said you heard jazz?”

“Hot jazz. Saxophone stuff, real crazy. Loud too, cause it was loud by the door, and I could tell it was way in the back of the apartment.”

“Did he listen to jazz any other time to were with him?”

“Not in the week we were paired up.”

Matzu thought for a minute. “Head to 2nd street and B. We’re going see my friend.”

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 6: A Timeline of Events

1615: After centuries of near incessant civil war, the Tokugawa Shogunate establishes a stable feudal system that will last over 250 years. This era is defined by, among other things, a severely isolationist foreign policy and a strengthening of national Japanese culture, including the formation of the National (later Imperial) Sushi Council to ensure “exceptional standards of raw fish and rice.”

1867: Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the 15th Tokugawa shogunate, under pressure from several internal and external reform movements, abdicates his position as the de facto ruler of Japan and transfers authority to Emperor Meiji, the beginning of what is know as the Meiji Restoration. Isolationist policies are overturned, and Japan begins rapid westernization while attempting to maintain their well-defined cultural and social structures, two parallel aims that are often at odds.

1921: Through an extensive network of proxy cells in urban centers across all major continents, and through a penchant for eradicating competition through violence and/or coercion, the Imperial Sushi Council, establishes itself as the premier player in the global fishing market. In California, the Deep Sea Tuna Fishing Company Associates (a.k.a. Deep Sea) is by far the strongest purveyor of high-quality fish in America, with an average fish-mongering of nearly twenty-two billion pounds per year. Meanwhile, sushi remains an obscure delicacy found only in the homes of Japanese-Americans.

1931-1945: …

1946: The ISC secures funding from the US-Japanese Bureau of Cultural Consciousness, an office created to combat the widespread Nipponophobia that the US had so expertly cultivated during the second world war.

1951: Deep Sea loses their long-time president, Enomoto Hisashi in a mysterious drowning, sending the company into disarray. The board, who operate semi-autonomously from the Imperial Council, make a bid to Tokyo for assistance. Their wish is granted in the form of the wise and brutal Takeda Senju, who leads the California fish industry into a new era.

1955: Senju establishes the first sushi restaurant in America in the basement of his private social club in Los Angeles. Almost no one outside of his social circle notices.

1963: With Nipponophobia on the decline, interest in Japanese culture is rekindled in America. Senju seizes the opportunity to capitalize by funding the opening of several sushi restaurants on the west coast, all tied to Deep Sea.  Meanwhile, the ISC remains strongly opposed to any unmonitored growth of the sushi industry in America.

1964: Two new sushi restaurants open in quick succession in New York City, far outside of Senju’s purview. The Imperial Council is none-the-wiser.

1965: The Imperial Sushi Council hears rumors of over twenty Sushi restaurants now open in the New York City area. These restaurants pay no fealty to the ISC and are therefore considered rogue actors in the Japan-American sushi world. As the ISC’s main contact in America, Senju takes on the difficult task of suppressing the rogue sushi entrepreneurs or else forcing them to pay into the ISC feudal system.

1966: Senju hires Alfonso Hidetada, half-Japanese half-Spanish assassin as his liaison to creating a new syndicate, the American Sushi Guild, with representatives hailing from twelve major American metropolitan areas. The goal of the Guild is to establish consistent quality of sushi, and to suppress new restaurants who fail to offer fealty to the ASG and the ISC.

1969: The California roll is invented, infuriating the ISC council, who claims total authority on the issuance of new maki-rolls. Furthermore, the news that said California roll flaunts the traditions of the maki roll by placing rice on the outside, and seaweed on the inside, ultimately forces their hand. The ISC orders  the total annihilation of the California roll and all who serve it.

1970-1980: Hidetada builds a vast network of loyal restauranteurs by promoting ruthless, often psychopathic sushi chefs into positions of power. The California roll continues to gain in popularity, a proverbial thorn in Senju’s side.

1980: The American television mini-series “Shogun” airs, causing widespread excitement in Japanese culture and a flourishing of new Sushi restaurants across the country, an unmanageable situation for the American Sushi Guild.

1981: Boss Senju, under unbearable pressure from the ISC, resorts to medieval tactics, burning newly formed sushi restaurants in a systemic fashion, forcing chefs into retirement, consolidating his holds on the fish and rice markets.

1982: After continued threats and acts of terror on part of Boss Senju and the AGS, independent chefs and restauranteurs unite in secret to form the Underground Sushi Partition, a collection of embittered chefs who want nothing but freedom to operate under their own statutes, not those of the ISC, without fear of threat.

1985: Mr. Steven R Guttenberg, then the most famous actor in Hollywood, publicly professes his adoration for the California Roll, effectively ending the Guild’s efforts to eradicate the bastard maki.

1983-1996: The North American Sushi Wars begin in earnest, and escalate through the years, resulting in significant losses on both sides. Americans begin to lose interest in the cuisine. With the fish smelly and often poisoned, patronizing Japanese restaurants becomes increasingly unappetizing.

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 5: Toro

This time, we were led down a different set of stairs, no aquarium set in the walls. It was as though the hall and stairs had been swapped out. Though I didn’t feel submerged, I still felt a slight concern that I somehow stumbled into the Eschquarium itself.

We reached a door at the bottom of the stairwell leading to Senju’s office. It was stiflingly hot, like the inside of a microwavable pizza snack. Senju offered Matsuzaka a seat across from his desk.  On Senju’s lap rested a sea turtle, which he stroked lovingly, caressing it’s flippers, tapping its shell to inspect its integrity.

Behind Senju were two men, both seated, both calm as soup. One wrote in a little hand-held journal. I took a position at the back against the wall. Senju’s men didn’t seem to notice anything in the room had changed from before we entered.

“We haven’t had a chance to chat, Mr. Matsuzaka. I’m very happy you’ve chosen to accept the position. I like to refer to it as daiymo, an older term, perhaps, but still relevant. As you well know, the world of sushi, is ultimately a feudal one. Strict hierarchies, fealty to the lords who reign up on high. Those who exist in the restaurant industry tend to thrive in such relationships.” Senju eyed his new subordinate, stroking his turtle all the while. “A fascinating creature, is it not? Don’t worry, it won’t drown. It can live up to seven hours outside the water. Can you live both inside and outside of water, Mr. Matsuzaka?”

“No sir, unfortunately not.”

“If I were to throw you in the ocean and ask you to hold your breath, would you do it?”

“Yes sir.”

“How long would it take you to drown?”

“About one minute sir. Maybe two.”

“That’s what I thought. It takes an amphibious creature to run a sushi empire. You cannot be able to swim with the fish, then come back to land without forgetting how to breathe the air. You must live underwater and above water.”

“Yes sir.”

“For instance, if your eyes were as astute as mine, if your gills were at all part of your body, if you were an amphibian, you might go for a swim out from the shores of Battery park, swim for a mile or so along in the southeastern direction and see through the muck and the spillage and the dead things and the poo and notice about two dozen bodies suspended from the floor of the harbor, their feet tied to large stones or cement.  You would still have the stamina to inspect closely, see any scars around their necks, any stab wounds in the abdomens, all the tiny mutilations I’m so fond of. And most of all, you would not be afraid, because amphibians don’t have fear. Why don’t amphibians have fear?”

“Um, because, sir, they are animals.”

“Animals can’t fear?”

“No?”

“Are we not animals?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Matsuzaka…I do not like contradictions. Which is it?”

“Which is what?” squeaked Matsuzaka.

“Amphibians don’t have fear because they’re fucking ancient! Ancient things don’t think we way we do. They only care about two things: eating and fucking. What a life!

“Ah.”

“Look at George. Look at his face. Look how calm he is, even in this strange place”

The turtle flailed.

“Don’t you feel a kinship with him? I’m certain we are related. Far far back, in the days of the mudskipper. When we were amphibious! Can you imagine? Maybe someday people will revert back to their amphibian brains. Then we would truly get something accomplished here, eh!?” “I look forward to serving you, sir.”

“Enough bullshit. I am here to talk about Ersatz. The fat fuck de facto leader of the Partition. Have you ever spoken with him?

“No sir.”

“Have you ever met him?”

“No sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Almost, sir.”

“Ersatz is the most dangerous man in New York City. He is responsible for countless terrorist attacks on our restaurants, and quite likely even his own, of course only through his blaming the attacks on the guild  does he drum up resentment against the Guild. He is often seen dining at the restaurants the night before they’re destroyed. A hideous display of arrogance, if you ask me…nothing more than a fetish. Though he’s quite fat, he squeezes into spaces like a thin man. Rarely does the chef recognize him. That’s how he could so ostentatiously flay Takuto.”

“So…you need him killed?”

“Ha! Please,” Senju rose from his seat, taking his turtle with him, stroking atop the head. “I’ve been trying that for years. Besides, that’s a little advanced for a man so new to the position. I’m just explaining that this man is your enemy. That he is out to destroy that which you have sworn to protect. No, your job is to maintain our network of chefs and their Neo-feudal fealty to the Guild and hence the Imperial Sushi Council. Your job is to provide them with the most highly regarded tuna money and power can buy. You!” Senju had suddenly directed his eyes towards me. “Where is your tuna?”

“Right over there, sir.”

“Don’t leave it there. Pick it up!”

“Sorry sir.”

“What’s your name?”

“Lou Mastiff sir.”

“Lou Mastiff. Strong name for a strong fellow. You come from a long line of strong men?”

“I don’t recall sir.”

“Well was your father strong?”

“Yes sir.”

“Were your uncles strong?”

“Yes sir.”

“Was your grandfather strong?”

“He got polio in his twenties, but before that I think he was.”

Senju grimaced. “Polio, eh?”

“I think so sir.”

“Good. Now guard that tuna. And don’t let it drip on you. It’s making a mess.” Senju went to the corner and placed the turtle in a clear plastic box that extended out from the wall. He closed the door and pressed a button, and the turtle was vacuum-sucked into the depths of the building, back to its makeshift habitat.

“I don’t mean to redirect the conversation without your consent, Boss Senju, but if you would allow me to speak freely, I would like to express some concerns.”

The boss sighed, and returned to his desk. “You may.”

“I am a chef. I work well with others who have been in the restaurant business, who have worked in kitchens, who understand what is expected of them. I have experience with violence, as any chef, but I am unfamiliar with politics. I don’t know much about the guild, other than what Takuto had taught me, but he didn’t have much time to teach."

“What is your point?

“My point is I’m worried I’m being set up to fail.”

“Set up to fail? As in…I want you to fail? That it is my intention for you to fail?”

“I just mean, perhaps you are desperate for someone to fill the vacancy, and I am your last resort. And as such, I’m destined to fail.”

“You’re destined for something…” he murmured. Then, after taking some time to think, he spoke:

“Do you know why I hire Sushi chefs as my regional bosses?”

Matsuzaka shook his head.

“Because to be a great sushi chef, you must appreciate the details, however small, of every individual action. You must see, more precisely than anyone else, the ways in which our actions weave a tapestry of experience that extend beyond the immediate. The faintest expression of citrus, the finest brushstroke of shoyu, the complement of temperatures between rice and fish — a sushi chef aspires to create food as perfection. The wild tuna alive at sea is a being of supreme lineage, a creature out of time and space, at once consuming and consumed by the primordial ocean, found now on display for your customer, form from the formless. And let us not ignore the symbolism of the rice, the chais-lounge for the ocean divine, resting in seductive curvature before it’s final journey. Then, as surely as the cycle of birth and death, the sushi is devoured, gone, the height of experience suddenly and forever in the past. The sushi chef knows his work is never complete. What he creates is swiftly destroyed, and so on and so on. He will never reach the end because man’s hunger is never sated. The hunger returns again and again, day after day, and the chef abides. The chef is the conduit between desire and offerings, between the ocean and the land. The chef is the Amphibious.

“I fully understand, Boss Senju.”

“There is simultaneous simplicity and complexity in everything we do, depending on how you chose to perceive it, how well your eye is trained to pick up on the details. A murderous villain is every bit as complicated or as simple as a perfectly executed nigiri.”

“Clarity is could not be greater.”

“We are all asked to do things we haven’t done before, or we have no interest in doing.  We do these things because of this little thing called destiny. Your decisions up until this point in you life, like it or not, have landed you in my office at this very moment, precisely at the time when I need someone like you to set their mind to a task and execute. You do believe in destiny, don’t you Mr. Matsuzaka?”

“Once in a while.”

“Good enough.”

“Well, in that case, if perhaps I could get a small overview of what the situation is, so I can do a better job of figuring out the best way to handle it?”

“What, like an oral history of this guild and the Imperial Sushi Council and all the rest?”

“I guess that would be helpful. Sure.”

“Well, I don’t know if I have time for that. There are quite a few turtles swimming around inside the walls of this place that need my attention. They find areas that aren’t especially clean and often difficult to escape. I do however have some historians and biographers on the payroll. I’m sure they can help you out. Steve!”

One of Senju’s men jolted awake. ”Yes boss.”

“Get Mr. Matsuzaka something to read about our Guild, would you? An overview of some kind? Anything?”

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 4 - Futomaki: Six Pieces

I was so grateful to be back outside I nearly puked. I also nearly puked from about ten other things that had just happened in the meeting. For one, I don’t like unfamiliar basements. Second — and I didn’t know this until that moment — eel aquariums are terrifying. Can they see us out there, watching them from outside the tanks? God I hope not. I can’t even begin to convey how sweaty they made me through that whole meeting, and I’ll venture to say that any size aquarium, containing any kind of aquatic life, even the big ones with the big fish or an army of sea turtles, will trigger some serious underlying issues that I’ve worked my whole life to mask.

I don’t need to get into the other eight reasons. Unless you want to hear them…I can always include them in the appendix. Your call.

So we were outside milling around and smoking, the bosses all together touching one another’s lapels and counting threads, while me and the rest of the goons declaimed with tuna slung over our shoulders how relieved we were to not be standing in a circle and feeling at any moment two guys might be summoned to the center of the room to fight to the death. They were all like me — older white guys, a little out of shape but not cripplingly-so, dense and sturdy like an overstuffed salami, and looking like they’ve spent most of their adult lives honing that particular posture required for standing for hours outside nondescript warehouses.

“You know,” said one of them, suddenly and way too close to my ear, “five years ago, the mere mention of the Sushi Underground was a death sentence. Senju wouldn’t have it. Heads would’ve rolled.”

“Could you back off, buddy?” I said, elbowing myself out of his saliva-range.

He sighed. “I’m just excited. That meeting had a new feel. I’ve never seen such energy, such optimism. This might be a new era of sorts. I mean, it’s been fifteen years of standing in that basement, ignoring the elephant in the room.”

“More like two elephants in that room,” said another.

“That’s right.”

“Denial can only take you so far in life,” said a third.

“More like two elephants fucking in a room with all of us watching and not saying nothing.”

“That’s right.”

“You can’t survive when you punish those trying to explain the reality of the situation.”

“I prefer my phrasing,” said the fucking-elephants guy.

By now the goons had surrounded me, each spouting their own perspective, each talking over one another, all more or less in agreement, many shifting their tuna loins to give their shoulders a break. They were all repressed talkers. Being the new guy, I wasn’t quite sure to whom to listen. It all seemed fairly important — strategies for keeping their bosses happy in this new era they all supposed had arrived, predictions on how they were going to handle new enemies. Naturally I found myself staring at no one in particular, using my most respectable mouth-breathing technique, while doing my diligence with the occasional side-glance over at Matsuzaka.

“You were Takuto’s guy, right?” said a short guy, to me directly. “Tough luck on that one. You’ll be alright though. I’ve lost about ten bodies and look at me, eh? Still on the payroll.”

“That’s a relief.”

“You know I heard,” someone interrupted, “that that table, the one in the conference room, was made from wood illegally harvested from the sacred forests of the Ainu on a forbidden island off the northern tip of Hokkaido.”

“We already know that to be true.”

“Yeah well I need to restate it for the new guy so he feels included.”

“Yeah well I heard those early Sengoku period candelabras were stolen from the Kyoto Museum of National Exquisitry and are worth more than all the tuna over our shoulders and then some.”

“More like all the tuna in Japan!”

A few of them high-fived.

“They weren’t stolen,” said a small guy. “They belonged to Senju’s family. He’s a descendent of an ancient clan from that era. I won’t get into which one. It’s not really for me to tell but, I will say this…it’s one of the big ones.”

“Shiba?”

“No.”

“Hosokawa?”

“Wrong again.”

“It’s gotta be Hatakeyama?”

“Just stop. I’m not going to tell you even if you guess. It doesn’t do anybody any good being connected to medieval warlords of the old country, alrighty? We’re trying to keep a low profile. We don’t need everyone bragging about working for so-and-so from such-and-such clan. The point is, the guy’s got beaucoup pedigree. And loot to boot.”

“Senju is one of those old-school types that doesn’t care what’s who’s and who’s what’s.”

There was general consensus that this was true.

“You got a letter from the union yet?” One guy interrupted to ask me.

“About what?”

“The murder. Usually they’re all over that kind of thing.”

“Maybe they didn’t hear about it. Is that possible?”

The guy scrunched his face and looked a little displeased that he didn’t quite know the answer himself.

I turned back to the small fellow who seemed to know Senju so well. He wore large wrap-around prescription sunglasses that he might have lifted off an old dead man. “You Senju’s guy?” I asked.

“One of em. Name’s Jerry. Jerry Lodi. Twelve year veteran of the Sushi Guild. Glad to meet ya. You’ll like it. Don’t worry about flubbing the Takuto situation. When these people want someone dead, best to step aside. We don’t get paid to take bullets for people.”

“We don’t?”

“No. I mean, of course we take bullets for them. But they gotta be the right bullets, ya get me?”

“The right bullets?”

“Or the wrong bullets I guess would be another way of putting it.”

“So which are the right bullets and which are the wrong bullets.”

Lodi waved away the question, like I was his wife asking him an ancient riddle with no answer just as he was about to ask for a divorce.

“Come here a minute.” He took me aside, slung his arm over my shoulder, which was a good head above his. “You’re gonna need to take some advice from those who’ve been around if you’re going to survive here, okay? First, you’ve got tuna juice dripping all over your jacket. It’s slung way too far forward. Scoot it back so it drains on the sidewalk. Laundry costs can be through the roof in this gig. Second, get yourself a good santoku. These chef types respect a man with a nice sharp slice-em-up.” It was only as he stepped back to mime his ninja stab-and-slice combo I realized he wasn’t holding a tuna.

“Say, you don’t get to carry any tuna home tonight?”

“Not me my friend. I’ve put in my time.”

“One of the lucky ones I guess?”

“Luck don’t have nothing to do with it. And besides it’s called fortune in this business. You can call it luck if you want. That’s not it though. I play the game, and I play it right. You gotta remember, this council has a history stretching back centuries. Very much tied to the old country. What happens here is often out of our hands. The best thing you can do is let whatever will be, to be.”

He placed his hand on my shoulder and, I assume, stared deep into my eyes through his blackened prescription lenses. “You didn’t do much wrong, you understand? That Takuto thing was bigger than you.” And here he got real quiet. “And now that he’s been replaced, things around here will be moving a lot more smoothly.”

“If you don’t mind me asking…what happened to his last bodyguard?”

Just before Lodi could answer, the door to the headquarters creaked open and the large fellow in the oversized suit popped his head out and yelled “Matsuzaka! Inside!”

Without hesitation Matsuzaka sprang from his own group of fellows towards the open door, and with Lodi’s nod, I followed.

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 3: Maguro

We ran from the car toward the single-story, slate-gray building and that familiar Kanji symbol for Fishy Smells, this time in neon red, deep-set in the portico above the door. In the car I had been going over some of the more rudimentary aspects of body guarding, one of which is to know your destination, the range of potential for threatening encounters and so on. I hoped and prayed the whole way that I would somehow recognize the  location of this meeting.

Just inside the doors, from some secluded area of the building, came the muffled thump and the vibrating bass of a nightclub, causing in me a flash of youthful insecurities rushing to my face and nether-regions. Flashbacks to my long-forgotten days as an itinerant bouncer, the familiar foyer and corridors, the scarier depths and the squeals of far-off dancing or screwing emanating from those depths. Hard to imagine forgetting an entire portion of one’s life, but, well, that’s repression for you.

The hallways dipped, the stairs bending under my weight, not a flattering feeling. The entire descent was flanked on both walls by a strange aquarium, a twisting, winding tank that ran inwards, through the walls, and snaked back again, up and down like a roller coaster, spinning with nauseating perspective out of and then back into sight.  It was Escherian, to use a term I learned from Alonso a few years earlier. An Eschquarium. Escher being a master of confusing your sense of what the fuck is going on. And in keeping with that surreal style the only organisms that appeared to live in the Eschquarium were these three-foot long freshwater eels, who wriggled in a thick knot and seemed, to my eyes at least, to thoroughly enjoy the maze-like conditions in which they found themselves captive.

At the bottom of the stairs we came to a set of heavy red-stained white oak doors. Matsuzaka knocked. The door creaked open, my boss took a noticeably quick, heavy breath, and pushed his way inside.

The ceiling rose thirty feet at least above the eleven men seated around an oblong table carved from what must have been the most beautiful species of Japanese Maple in existence. Four candelabras stood aflame in an off-set fashion down the center of the table. Matsuzaka took his place at the last empty chair, besides the one at the head of the table, and I joined the ranks of the eleven other body guards flanking the perimeter.

No one spoke. Some smoked cigarettes or cigars or drank from crystal glasses holding a thimbles-worth of liquor. Some tapped their rings against the thick wooden table. Some drew lewd cartoons of their mistresses on the backs of their prepared words or cocktail napkins. Some drew ovals and scrawled the names of everyone seated in the room. If they didn’t remember the name they wrote the name of the city they represented. Some adjusted their cuff-links and avoided eye contact and uncrossed their legs carefully so as not to scuff their recently shined shoes or make a noise that suggested discomfort. They were from Detroit and Portland (both kinds) and Austin and Miami, Fresno and Phoenix and Denver and so on. If they didn’t know where someone was from they might call their bodyguard or henchman over to consult.

Not a single person in the room seemed the slightest but mesmerized by the most striking element to this inner sanctum: the two panel aquarium, floor to ceiling, at the far end of the room, carrying in an upward stream an incessant throng of sea-turtles. It was as if this were the heart of the aquarium’s circulation, the turtles were the blood cells. Where did they end up after they reached the top? Did they recycle back to the bottom? Were they stuck in an upstream for the rest of their lives? How long was that? How long do sea turtles live? I watched the non-stop reptilian flow, trying to spot a repeat.

Then, without warning, the door between the two turtle-teeming enclosures opened and out came a man completely dwarfed by his surroundings. Whatever tiny amount of calm that held the room was abruptly sucked away by his appearance. Glasses were placed on the table, elbows removed, legs uncrossed, throats cleared. The man wore a beautifully tailored grey and black pin-stripe suit with an aubergine, floral-patterned tie. Though he seemed a small fellow at first, with every step as he approached the table he seemed to grow exponentially in stature. Having earlier stood at 5’3”, he now chaired at 6���5”. But perhaps most striking feature was his baldness, which he revealed theatrically as he took off his black rabbit-fur fedora and placed it like a crown on the table, turning it slightly so the arc of the navy blue feather that sprung from its ribbon sweatband could be seen, nay, felt by all. Immaculate and radiant, his head was a perfect orb, luminous as a woman’s breast. Its perfection was further enhanced by the three auspiciously placed moles, a touch of genetic artistry, like deliberate drops of black soy reduction on the ninth plate of a nineteen-course omikase.

As he settled into the table, it became obvious that that last bit of calm earlier sucked from the room was absorbed by Boss Senju. He held the table on the tip of his fingers. Not a single bead of sweat could be seen on his magnificent skull-skin. In fact, almost nothing about Senju’s demeanor would lead you to believe he too was just a pawn in the larger cosmic game played by the Imperial Sushi Council of Tokyo and who knows what other trans-national fish organizations — perhaps his forehead, which, according to legend, was said to contain an almost unfathomable wrinkle-density, should anyone ever illicit a furrow from such a notoriously unrufflable brow.

Enough time had passed. Senju was ready to begin the meeting. He rose, though not very high, and cleared his throat. He began his statements just so:

“Gentlemen. As I look around this room, my breath escapes me, along with my speech. If only I could speak in my native tongue, I would be able to convey in just a few words the vast range of disappointment I feel when I look upon this council. I would possess the precise verbiage for explaining the futility in working with any of you even a day longer.”

Senju tapped the table twice with his pointer finger, and out of the perimeter a burly man in an oversized suit shuffled forward and placed a rocks glass of whiskey at Senju’s right hand.  

He took a sip.

“Instead I have English. The language of confusion, vulgarity, and metaphor. The language of the nation that brought Japan to its knees. I have English because I have been cast out of my country of birth to do business in this pitiful land, with you pitiful excuses for chefs.

He took a second sip, hesitated, then finished the glass, then let out a purely Goldblumian groan.

“I would like to tell you all a story. When I was a young man, I was walking through the local gardens, taking my time, taking each step as deliberately as the next. There was an old woman up ahead, sitting on a bench, her hands folded on her lap. She did not see me approach, did not flinch as I sat down beside her. She simply gazed at the scene before her, a scene that demanded a balance of focus and aloofness. I looked in the same direction as she.  A sea of white pebbles, a few granite stones jutting out, an archipelago. An old maple cast a shadow over the entire scene, and through the leaves of the maple, whose branches hung low enough for the leaves to barely drag against the stones when the wind passed through, one could make out a stone sculpture hidden in the ivy of another section of garden. I strained my eyes to better see the form of the sculpture but I simply could not. The leaves, the shadows, the ivy, the way the light at that particular moment of the day seemed to avoid it, all kept the sculpture in a state of aloofness and focus. Back and forth it toyed with me, like a word on the tip of my tongue, or a faint memory tied to a smell from my childhood. I did not want to break the peaceful nature of the moment but after some time I could no longer bear it. So I asked the old woman sitting next to me if she knew what we were looking at, what the sculpture in the distance represented.

“The old woman did not respond, nor did she acknowledge my words or still yet even my presence. Figures, I thought to myself. A woman of such years does not come to such a place to make small talk with young fools. Somehow I knew that she heard me, which meant her silence therefore was a response in itself. So I took that silence to heart, and I remained there with her for a while longer.

“It became closer to dusk, the sun just fading behind the hills to the west. Direct light no longer shone through the garden, only the ephemeral light of the atmosphere, the totality of reflections, shades of blue. And it was in this light that the sculpture seemed to step out from behind its ivy, out of the shadows, and appeared before us both.”

There was silence for some time. I focused my attention on the bubbling, teeming turtle stream, which I not found oddly calming.

After a long pause, one of the bosses, the gentleman from Denver, afraid of silence, dared to speak. “What was the sculpture?”

Boss Senju ignored the comment, preferring instead to nurture the silence of the room, the silence he had created with his story. A gardener’s silence.

Then, a moment later, he tapped his finger three times and the same burly man in an oversized suit came over, handkerchief in hand, and gave his baldness a quick buff.

“The state of our council can only be fully seen when the light is just so. This week, the light shined at that perfect angle. As Boss Takuto perished at the hands of assassins, we got a glimpse of the state of this council. Weakness abounds. Disgraceful partnerships, poor quality rice, clientele suckupery! These are not the tenets of a successful sushi empire!” With that exclamation he slammed his fist on the table. A shiver ran through the perimeter of goons of which I found myself a member.  

“Now, we do not know the circumstances surrounding this assassination, and I will be honest, when we find out, it is in the interest of safety to all of you to keep it hidden. But I will say this: we have a virus in our midst. It causes internal bleeding. You have seen the recent film Outbreak, perhaps? Well, similar thing. A viral hemorrhagic fever, that’s what we have. Great film, if you haven’t seen it. Anyway, the bleeding must be stanched. The virus must be defeated. That virus, my friends, is the Sushi Underground.”

The bosses of the guild each began exhibiting their own nervous tic at the mention of said underground.

“Those fiends who seek to bastardize our humble, elegant contribution to this gaijin wasteland. Too long we have stood by and watched as they set the trends that are anathema to our cause. Too long have we washed our hands, scrubbed our cutting boards, and resigned ourselves to being blinded by the alluring glint of the mackerel’s scales. Too long have we busied ourselves with the whetstone’s promise of the sharpest blade. Let me say this, my fellow chefs. Our blades are sharp enough. Our fish is fresh enough. The walls of our own restaurants can no longer be the extent of our purview, because out there, out beyond our restaurant walls, the Sushi Underground is working to undercut decades of work on behalf of the Imperial Council. Today I call upon you, the city bosses, to get your city’s chefs in line. Today marks the day that we begin full eradication of the Sushi Underground.”

“Now, in order to ensure total commitment on the part of your constituents, I have a little incentive for you.” Here Senju rapped on the table four times.

The doors between the turtle aquariums opened once more, revealing a phalanx of henchmen, each carrying what looked to be a large body part. They marched towards us split into two groups of six, and surrounded the table, each henchman behind a boss. All at once, the henchmen dropped the gifts, which fell to the table with a heavy thud.

“These are prize winning maguro. You will not find a finer specimen in your lives.”

The bosses peeled back the newspapers wrapping the fish in an attempt to glimpse that sweet, sweet glistening…

“Stop it! You can trust that I know my fish. Take these to your restaurant. You can disperse them as you wish. But I suggest you be careful how you dole it out. The city that shows the most fortitude in fending off the Underground will find themselves in high regard with the I.S.C. And remember, if not for the ISC, none of you would be alive today. 

It is worth noting at this point there was not a single molecule of fishiness in the air.

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 2 Ebi

I was in my trousers, shirting hanging by the door with my coat. Ready to go. My eating habits were such that I often find myself gorging, hand to mouth, without a moment’s warning, so I preferred not to put on my shirt until it was absolutely necessary. I didn’t necessarily have control over it, like a nervous tic I only realized I my mouth was so full of food my jaw was starting to hurt, and I would seriously consider spitting out that semi-digested puke-ball in failure. Incidentally, found this tic abated for several days after visiting Fishy Smells.

I waited for the cell to buzz, picking the hairs around my gut.  I had lost considerable weight since my days of private investigating. Even so, I felt little pride in the particular ways my flesh hung off my body. The lighting could be better. My apartment came with flood lights, backups upon backups, like the previous tenant panicked during the recent recession and bought up all the lightbulbs he could, fearing long stints in darkness.

The cell went off, a blocked number. A soft voice speaking in a brusque accent summoned me down. I stuffed the phone in my pocket, covered my torso with what I felt was an appropriate number of layers, checked my laces, and left the apartment.  

We traveled by limousine, rain coming down in sheets. The driver had wipers on lazy. I don’t know how he saw a thing, but he moved through the city streets carefully, calmly, no particular sense of urgency. I couldn’t tell where we were headed through the rain splatter and the fog on the windows, so I asked the driver but got a cold croak and and nothing more.

After a while what seemed like deliberately circuitous tooling we pulled over and waited by the awning of a nice apartment building, brick and stone and who knows how high. A doorman in his gold and black gatekeeping uniform was standing behind the glass and wrought iron doors out of the rain. Behind him, a young man with a slick haircut, gray suit, sitting in the foyer. I noted his posture and was sure to correct my own.

The driver handed me a business card. The name on it said Chef Matsuzaka. It had a phone number and a symbol I recognized as the same letter above Fishy Smell.

I went out and introduced myself. Right away, I knew this guy was not thrilled. I tried not to take it personally. It might not have been just me though. It might have been the whole week, a lot of different stuff I had no control over piling on. We got in. He kept his distance, as much distance as you can inside a moderately commodious limousine. After a few minutes, he sighed impatiently, breaking the silence.

“You are…Mr. Mastiff, I presume?”

“That’s right. You can call me Lou or Louie. Whatever you like.”

“An appropriate name for a bodyguard. Ordinarily I would be somewhat satisfied with this pairing, but I’m afraid your reputation precedes you.”

“Reputation?”

“Well you didn’t exactly excel in your previous assignment.” He brushed his hands over his suit pants, annoyed by some kind of blemish.

“I…had some…” I felt my hand reaching for my pockets, “I felt like…that was a doomed… kind of…thing.“

“Don’t stress, Mr. Mastiff. This is a dangerous industry. Mercury poisoning, immaculately honed blades, weapons-grade wasabi: in my world these are merely the hazards of the kitchen. Much like the succulent maitake mushroom grows from a primeval fungal substrate, the humble, elegant nigiri can only manifest out of the perilous sushi underworld. Might I guess…you did not quite realize what you’ve gotten yourself into?”

“I don’t usually.”

“I suppose that might have contributed to that fateful lapse in attention that as you say doomed our old friend Takuto. But things have changed. This will not be like your old job. You are with me and I am not Takuto. I don’t have a death wish. So now that you’re in it, I will explain to you what the situation is.”

“I just guard the bodies. That’s really the whole situation as it pertains to me. At least that’s what Alonso tells me.”

He paused for a moment. “That may be. That may be.” There was a long silence. The car continued its meandering through the streets, the rain incessant, the traffic getting lighter, the turns more frequent.

“You know,” he finally said, still staring out the at the dreary city, “I said before that I am not Takuto, that I don’t have a death wish. I take it back. I am Takuto. I am his double, his replacement.  A new set of limbs, head, torso, and a complete set of testicles, all belonging to Boss Senju. That means my friend, you also belong to Boss Senju. Together we are nothing more than the corporeal stand-in for some gear as part of a relentless machine beneath the city.”

“That’s more like what I meant, yes.”

“And I take it back. I do have a death wish. Why else would I be in this business?”

“Okay.”

“How about you? Can I rely on you to also have a death wish?”

“A wish to die?”

“Yes.”

“Um. Yeah, I can get behind that.”

“Okay, great. We’re done with lesson one.”

“Sorry, can you give me a quick summary of lesson one?”

“The second lesson is this: Boss Senju, whom you’ve already met, is old. This may not come as a surprise, but trust me, when I say old, I mean old. Older than you might think. Mythologically old. But he’s fierce — he clings to life like a cornered scorpion. As life fades around him, as the walls close in, he is becoming increasingly hostile to his council. He senses the end is near. We are all within striking distance, so keep back and check the exits.”

“Got it.”

“Third.”

“Okay.”

“Third. The people who retired Takuto were as much your bosses as he was. If anyone is to retire me, you should not consider them your bosses. Got it?”

“So who is my boss?”

“Senju didn’t appreciate Takuto’s services any longer. He may have for a while, or else Takuto never would have lasted as long as he did. Nonetheless, there was a change in management, a change in authority. It remains to be seen whether he appreciates me. He doesn’t particularly like Americans, and he especially despises the east coast. Sushi is mostly a Pacific coast endeavor. That means, in Senju’s eyes, no one off the west coast will have the authority to speak on the country’s sushi affairs. I don’t really care. I’m a chef by training, not a politician. I don’t need more headaches. The west coast is overwhelming. The fish boats…don’t even get me started. Real pirate-types. Seven fingers total and can still bulls-eye a sardine with a gutting knife from thirty yards out. I’m fine with that kind of look in the kitchen but on a boat, out in the open waters, it’s a totally different story.”

“I can’t really swim, in case that’s part of the job. Alonso already knows.”

“He’ll leave us alone, if we keep out of his way, is what I’m saying. So just stay back, keep your eyes on the exits. Okay?”

“Of course.”

“I’m sorry,” said Matsuzaka, breathing a little heavier. “I’m just a little nervous.”

“You don’t have to be, Mr. Matsuzaka. I’ve learned a lot from my weeks on this job, and I have a great record from earlier in my career.”

He eyed me again, squinting a little, like he could smell the odor of the lie that had just came out of my mouth. Truth is, my career hadn’t been going quite as planned. Aside from the botched A traditional chain of promotion doesn’t usually go from cop to P.I. to bodyguard. At this rate I’ll be a parking lot security guard in six months. Also having let my previous Body get street surgery didn’t give me much of a negotiating stance.  

“Tonight’s dinner is very important. It only happens twice a year. All twelve regional bosses and Boss Senju will be present. Senju will make a speech. It remains to be seen how the bosses will react. Since I’m new to the group, I haven’t been involved in their private discussions and strategizings. I’m going to have to think on my toes. It also just so happens that, unknown to most of the world, there is a cosmological aberration taking place this evening that has already caused the sun to set fifteen minutes earlier than usual, and may cause other distressing changes to the environment. That’s not something you need to worry about. Just thought you might be interested.

I wasn’t quite sure if he posed that last thing he said as a question, so I kept to my training and stiffened my chin. Luckily, just then the car pulled over and the driver unlocked the doors.

Matsuzaka turned toward me and said, “Okay, let’s get out of there alive!”

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 1: Hamachi

Chapter 1: Alonso

I was coming off one of the worst weeks of my career. My former boss, whom I knew only as Takuto and for whom I’d worked for about six days, was stabbed in more than two places on his torso, and once in the neck region. I found him splayed out like a starfish on the sidewalk down a side street with no street sign. There was a distant sound of running through puddles, and I swear I heard a muted trumpet echoing off the brick apartment buildings somewhere down the block.

As a bodyguard, finding your boss in a pool of his own blood, is generally hailed as the end of your shift.

It was rough. I always thought of myself as a natural guarder of bodies. I get very attached to bodies, whatever type they may be, and if I’m assigned to guard one, well, that protectiveness comes out and I get very difficult to peel off.

I tried not to fault myself too much. I didn’t have much time to get to know Takuto, it being a truncated work week and he living high on the untrusting meter. I gleaned through my investigatory talents and the brief synopsis from Alonso, that Takuto was a chef at a restaurant, probably a Japanese restaurant. I heard words like chirashi and P&L on more than one eavesdrop. Apparently in this particular field of work, this kind of thing happens. People in high places, especially ones in the high-stakes food and beverage community, often get violently replaced. Something about the number of knives at hand, the ambient heat of any given kitchen, the stress of maintaining fish at the right temperature.

That kind of thing did not deter me. Violence comes with the job. Why would someone hire a body guard if their body wasn’t in some kind of perpetual state of risk. It kind of goes without saying.

In the short time I knew Takuto, I hadn’t been given much insight into who his enemies were, what kinds of valuable assets he possessed, any of that sweet detail that might make my job easier. I got the impression that Takuto didn’t know either. He seemed like a man who hadn’t quite found his footing in his new job, an apprentice turned chef turned sushi-alderman in a manner of hours. He seemed like the kind of many who needed some thorough body-guarding, but without that information, the job was nothing more than looking scarier and more aware than you really are.

You’d have to ask Alonso personally if you want to know why he hired me. God knows he wouldn’t explain it to me. He simply said, “I know talent when I see it.” I was in the middle of a také course, miso soup included. I had become a big fan of sushi. I found the formality of the dining experience balanced me out. The beauty and grace of every aspect was a welcome vacation from my normal life. Plus such fish were high fatty oils. Perhaps you’ve gathered by now, perhaps you haven’t, but I promise, if you were to pass me on the street, you’d bet your life that I’m the kind of guy that likes his fatty oils. You might even say I look like a guy who deals exclusively in fatty oils. They’ve always held a special place in my heart. Maybe that’s why I was hired.

This was 1996, in case you couldn’t tell. Sushi was still an elusive cuisine in America at this point in history. The country hadn’t rediscovered its craft culture quite yet — the nineties had us all in a climactic frenzy whose origins dated to the fifties, probably earlier, but definitely at least the fifties. The factory processed food system had triumphed over its communist cousins, whose food system was undoubtedly just as factory-based but was somehow different, I’m not sure. Either way, we won, and in celebration we pumped our money into deep fried hot dogs and bloomin’ onions and all-you-can eateries and tuna melts. Not to say I have anything against those particular items. In fact, I choose them because they more or less define me as a consumer.

Sushi was just one of those things that flew under the radar. No one really trusted raw fish, they didn’t rate rice quite as high as bread and pasta, and wasabi was feared for its potency. It just so happened that a sushi bar opened up right across the street from my apartment. Me being the type that needed extended breaks from Dexter, presently my only companion and also my cat, I had the habit of trying any restaurant or bar I could find.

I was only one of a handful of people who frequented this establishment, whose sign simple read, in dull red lettering, Fishy Smell. Nor was it the best neighborhood for such a restaurant. People of that ilk, my neighbors at the time, didn’t have my unique brand of open-mindedness. It was almost as if they were attempting to deter people from eating there.

Still the sushi was good. The chef clearly took his job very seriously and treated me with respect. I did get the overall impression that they were somewhat nervous about opening a restaurant in that location. Whether it was the crime, the degenerates, the filth on the streets and sidewalks, the noise from the fire-escapes and roofs where in the heat of summer the chronically claustrophobic congregate, and how all this would influence the delicate nature of their fish, or something else, a concern uniquely Japanese, a concern about culture and its export.  I won’t brag but I did some research after my third or so meal in Fishy Smell and it turns out for most of history the Japanese were not particularly inclined towards cultural imports or exports. Such a recent and drastic reversal, I suspected, might cause a few of their more traditional citizens some mild anxiety.

While the rest of the country remained in their comfy, all-American reveries, the elusive world of the sushi magnates began to form before my very eyes. Perhaps America was right to dabble in a California roll once a year, perhaps at a holiday party, and leave it at that.  Perhaps they sensed that the sushi underworld was still afoot, and that stepping into an authentic sushi restaurant, and I believe I’m quoting Newsweek here, was one of the most dangerous things you could do in 1996.

As I was saying, I was in the middle of my také course, I think on my mackerel (one of my favorites re: fatty oils), getting eyed in a characteristically cryptic manner by the chef, when a well-dressed fellow walked through the doors. He was a regular, always sat in the end seat at the bar, far on the other end away from the door, and who always had a different guest with him. The chef greeted him with deference, seemed to serve him with a particular air of fear, as if at the slightest moment of disappointment, he guest could put down his chopsticks, walk outside, and shutter the restaurant, closing it forever and suffocating the staff and public unfortunate enough to be trapped inside.  

So that night, as I was sitting alone at the bar, drinking a beer and reading a book on mythology, a topic to which I returned rather frequently, eyeing my mackerel, best for last. The bar was empty — it was near closing time, and it was raining outside. At about 9:30, just as I was about to pop that little nigiri in my mouth, the door opened and the regular, the fellow, enters the restaurant, then locks the door from the inside.

I sat up. My antennae told me to. I do sometimes find myself trapped in places, but never like this. The chef and waitress disappeared. The man approached me, all smiles. In New York, this is a definite sign of danger. “Hi,” he said, his voice deep and velvety. “I’m Alonso. I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time.”

I made a face that said, sure, what else am I doing. Alonso took the stool next to me and began talking. didn’t have to say much to get the idea across. He had people who needed bodily protection, which was precisely the kind of protection I offered. I didn’t really care at that time of my life who I guarded, what they did for a living, the kind of people they tended to anger to a point of needed protection. That kind of information couldn’t really be trusted coming from well-dressed sushi bar patrons anyway.

“So what do you think,” he said after his spiel.

“You’d be surprised how many people in New York have offered me per-diem jobs as their goon or thug or even a pair of legs, a pair of shoulders, an extra set of eyes, a quick change of clothes. It sounds like you’re just looking generally for an all around frightening kind of presence in any given situation.”

“You catch on quick.”

“With nine millions people running around with their own agendas, sometimes people need reminding that their own agenda’s don’t align with other more powerful agendas. Guys like me tend to fill that job role well.”

The conversation went on. Alonso liked to talk. He liked to get you to see things from his side of the story. But since this is my side of the story I’ve decided I won’t give him any more space. If I do, we’ll be here all night. Suffice it to say, I was interested in money at the time and didn’t have a lot of use for myself other than precisely what he was asking of me. I could start the next day.