Authors: Jake Adelstein
At the TMPD, we had a good talk. One of the detectives present shook my hand as I was leaving and added, “Goto’s a real prick. The guy’s been linked to more than seventeen murders and that attempted murder in Seijo. That’s the one where his thugs couldn’t find the guy Goto wanted dead, so they stabbed his wife. You’re making his life hard. You’re doing what we should be doing. Good luck.”
It felt good to hear that.
I had some paperwork to fill out and had to go back to the National Police Agency and turn it in. On my way out, an NPA officer who knew me from my days in Saitama asked me to come downstairs to the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee.
Over a fairly decent cappuccino, we caught up on old times. The head of forensics, after serving as the head of the Saitama Police Department, had gone on to become the chairman of the local traffic safety association and was enjoying the job. A couple other cops who had been on the dog breeder serial killer case had retired as well.
He had some good information for me and some bad news as well: “You’re probably thinking you should go home. Don’t do it. If you go home and he knows where you live, you put your family in the cross fire. He’d probably hire some gangbanger to do it, and if your family is around, they’re collateral damage. He’ll probably go after your friends if he can’t get to you.”
That was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to go home. He had more to say.
“The year Goto went to UCLA, the NPA tracked close to a million dollars moving through his casino accounts. He had one in Tokyo with the Japanese branch of a major casino. You wrote about the Kajiyama case, so you know how that one works. Your information is good.”
“Do you have any suggestions?”
“I’m not really supposed to be saying this, but here’s the deal: you
represent a threat to his reputation and his standing. If he wipes you out, maybe he can keep it quiet. Once you get it printed, there’s less incentive to kill you. You’re a writer, right? Time to write.”
On March 7, I pissed off the NPA by going to Goto’s trial at the Tokyo District Court. According to cops working the case, the main witness had been intimidated so much that he’d refused to testify. I managed to get into the trial for a few minutes. I sat directly behind the man.
I could have reached out my hand and strangled him if I’d been so inclined, or jabbed a pencil into his larynx. I didn’t do that. But I couldn’t resist sort of bumping him with my hand, if just for a second, to make sure he was real. He didn’t appear to notice.
I had to leave halfway through the proceedings. I wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. I waited in the hall outside.
After the not-guilty verdict was announced to the press waiting in the hall, one of the detectives working the case said to me, “You know, everyone who testified against Goto in this trial is going to vanish. And then, one by one, they’ll be dead.” He shook his head.
Something unexpected happened right after that. Goto walked out of the courtroom to the elevators with his bodyguard. Not out the back exit and not with any fanfare. And not a single reporter tried to talk to him. They looked, of course. But no one would follow him; as soon as his lawyer showed up in the hall, they ran toward him and away from Goto as fast as they could. And for a brief moment, in front of the elevators, there were only me, Goto, and his bodyguard. It was the only time I’d ever meet the man face-to-face.
For the first time, I could understand why he was so powerful. He wasn’t big or muscular or imposing, but when he looked you in the eye, it felt as if he had his hand around your throat. We recognized each other. He mouthed something to me in Japanese. He wouldn’t leave behind an audible threat. It seemed like a threat to me, but then again I’m not good at lip-reading in any language. I responded nonverbally as well—a simple one-fingered gesture. That was all we had to say to each other.
After Goto’s bodyguard gently pushed his angry boss into the elevator, I followed the throng of reporters to where his lawyer, Yoshiyuki Maki, a former prosecutor, was holding court.
He was stroking his gray-speckled chin, rattling on about the injustice of Goto’s arrest and prosecution. He was also making sure to imply
that every newspaper that had written about Goto as if he were presumed guilty could be sued if the client was so inclined. It was Goto putting a muzzle on the already compliant press via Maki.
“Due to his unlawful arrest and this long trial, Goto-san has been through a personal hell. I’d like the media to reflect a little on the suffering my client has endured.”
I couldn’t really stomach that bullshit, and I raised my hand to ask a question. It turned into more of a tirade than a question, which wasn’t a very professional thing to do. You’re not supposed to bring issues of right and wrong into the courtroom. We’re not supposed to accuse the lawyers for the yakuza of being sellouts and criminals themselves. They’re just doing their jobs. However, I had a little trouble divorcing myself from the proceedings. And honestly, what he was saying was an insult to the dead. If there was anyone in the yakuza who deserved to suffer, it was this man.
“Excuse me, what exactly do you mean by
his
suffering? This is a man whose organization kills people, sells drugs, distributes child pornography, and sexually exploits foreign women. The amount of suffering the Goto-gumi and therefore Goto have inflicted on innocent people is immense. Why should anyone give a damn about his suffering? As a former prosecutor, how can you even say those things?”
Maki was taken aback, either by the question or by my rage. He flinched visibly. The other reporters all moved away from me as if I were a rabid dog. Maki cleared his throat and said, “It’s my job to defend my client, and there is no question that Goto-san has not committed any illegal act, that this …”
As he droned on, I turned my back and walked away. A few seconds later, I heard a titter from the assembled reporters. I suppose that Maki had made a joke about me, and I guess I felt a little like a joke myself. But I’d seen him flinch, and that felt good.
The day after Goto’s trial, I went back to work. I gathered all my notes and I gave them to reporters I knew and trusted. Some I knew and didn’t trust. I didn’t want the scoop; and I wanted the story out there; I didn’t care who got credit for it.
While I was doing this, I ran into a serious problem.
Some people from the NPA came over to the house for drinks. I’d known one of them, Akira-kun, since his days in the Gunma police. Sometimes I’d show up at the place where he trained at
kenjutsu
(sword fighting) and join the practice. I had no aptitude for that martial
art either, but it was always a good way to hang out with the cops and forget that reporter–police officer division for a few sweaty hours. In a stroke of luck, Alien Cop had been transferred to the NPA for a year, and he was now in the Organized Crime Control Bureau. He brought with him a giant bottle of Otokoyama (Man Mountain) sake. A good friend from college and part-time research assistant, Asako, was also there, pouring drinks, flirting with the cops, and cracking jokes. We sat in the tatami room, cross-legged around an antique fold-up table, a
chabu-dai
.
We were talking about the Goto trial and its unhappy ending and how we thought Goto’s lawyer, Maki, was a sellout shyster, and I slightly defended Maki, pointing out that he’d started out with good intentions once upon a time. He’d written an excellent book about the Japanese legal system a decade or so before.
In the midst of the festivities, Alien Cop put down his sake glass and nodded at the other three guys next to him, as if to say, “Hey, let’s do this.” He cleared his throat.
“Jake, there’s a guy in the police force who’s in Goto’s pocket, Lieutenant K. He’s been asking about you. We know he’s corrupt but he brings in good intel about non-Goto-related stuff, so he’s kind of allowed to do his thing.”
I put down my glass and filled it again.
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that Goto knows everything about you. Where you live, where your family lives, everything we have about you on file. And it’s possible, actually pretty likely, that he also has your phone records. Because you have your cell phone number printed on your business cards, it probably was pretty easy for him.”
Nodding, Akira-kun added, “The word is he’s hired the G Detective Agency to do a full due diligence on you. Goto owns at least two private detective agencies. Blackmail and extortion are his speciality. If you’ve got skeletons in the closet, they’re going to be out pretty soon.”
Apparently the Kokusui-kai wasn’t the only yakuza group with its own private eyes.
Alien Cop asked me to show him my cell phone. I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it over. He looked at the directory for a second and handed it back.
“You need to figure out who you have been talking to the most in the last two months. Because if Goto feels he can’t get at you or wants
to know where you are, those are the people he’ll go after. Lieutenant K. is Goto’s proxy. If K. has a phone number, he can find the address; he just has to make a few calls. Even if he can’t, G Detective Agency has the resources. You should warn the people you’re close to to be very careful.”
Alien Cop poured me another glass of sake. “Drink up. I doubt the old man will do anything at all, but we thought you should know this much—not all policemen are your friends.”
“Well,” I said, “here’s to good friends—kanpai!”
“And by the way,” Alien Cop said while pouring rounds for everyone, including Asako, “apparently K. is looking for a good picture of you. There aren’t many. He knows that I know you and asked me if I had any. I said no. He may try to meet you. Don’t take that meeting.”
“Why not?”
“Lieutenant K. is a sketch artist with a photographic memory. Sketches are actually better for identifying people than photos sometimes. You meet the guy once, and there’s going to be a nice portrait of you hanging up in Goto-gumi headquarters. And maybe a wallet-size copy with the guys that are sent to take you out.”
“Great. What should I do now?”
“Write the fucking article and stop pissing around. Remove the incentive to shut you up. Pretty simple. And then you can take me out to that strip bar with all the white chicks with
ushipai
[cow breasts]. You owe me, Adelstein.”
Asako laughed at that. “Jake, I didn’t know you frequented such places.”
Alien Cop chuckled. “You don’t know him very well at all then.”
Alien and I sneaked outside for a smoke once during the evening, and he asked me how I was doing.
“Pretty good.” It was all I could say.
“I checked around on that friend of yours.”
“And?”
“Nothing. The place she was working got raided, maybe in February 2006. They reopened without gaijin babes. I tried to locate her. I called in a favor with Immigration. There’s no record of anyone named Helena leaving the country. Maybe she had a different name? Dual citizenship?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Were you sleeping with her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she was a good friend. I mean, she is a good friend.”
“You had issues with what she did?”
“That’s not it.”
“Are you screwing anyone else?”
“I’m a gentleman. On principle alone I won’t answer that question.”
“I was right, wasn’t I?”
“About?”
“You know.”
“Oh, yeah. Expediency rules. You were wrong about one thing, though.”
“Which was?”
“It’s not a slippery slope, it’s a friggin’ waterslide.”
“Well, Jake, sometimes, you know, you have to fight poison—”
“—with poison. I’m familiar with the proverb.”
“Well, you do what you have to do to get the job done. That’s what matters at the end of the day. You get that.”
“I do,” I assured him. He wasn’t anything like Sekiguchi, but he was wise in his own way. Maybe not a good cop but a good person and a good friend. He was putting his career on the line for me, breaking the blue wall of silence. I wasn’t sure I deserved his benevolence, but I was glad to have it.
We kept drinking until 11:30, when everyone split to catch the last trains home. After they had gone, I poured myself a drink and lit a cigarette, turned on some Miles Davis, and turned down the lights, thinking.
When you drink alone, you know you have problems. The whole world seemed dead, and the only sounds were the crackle of cigarettes, the wind lightly shaking the rain shutters, and the CD gently spinning in the Bose stereo, radiating the sounds of “Final Take 2.”
I don’t think I’ve ever felt that lonely in my entire life.
It hit me like a punch in the gut: the realization that I’d endangered every person I cared about, liked, loved, or simply knew. And it didn’t really matter how they felt about me—anyone I’d called on that damn phone was now potential leverage for a man who had no qualms about using people like cannon fodder.
I really needed someone to talk to. I was a little drunk and not thinking very clearly, and I called Sekiguchi’s cell phone. It was still in my
address book; I’d never taken it out. It rang a few times before I realized that he could never answer it. I had no one to guide me now. No one to ask for good advice. No mentor. I was on my own.
What would Sekiguchi do?
That was my mantra to myself. Okay, first he’d assess the situation. I did. It didn’t look good.
Most yakuza leave civilians out of a conflict. At least that’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s not considered honorable to attack the wife, the lover, the best friend of a guy who’s wronged you. Any real yakuza isn’t going to beat up the brother of a deadbeat; he’s going to beat up the deadbeat himself.
Tadamasa Goto was a different breed. He had a reputation for scorching and burning. And this fucking cop had practically handed him a can of gasoline. Now I had to figure out who he was the most likely to burn, maybe literally.
I needed to do some damage control, and I decided it couldn’t wait. I went upstairs, grabbed my box of business cards, and came back down. I dumped all the cards on the floor, fanning them out. I opened my laptop and typed the names of everyone on my cell phone, not being bright enough to transfer them to my computer digitally. I ranked my friends by potential risk. I didn’t have my own phone records, so I went through two months of e-mails and tried to reconstruct from them where I had been and whom I had been with.