My Yakuza A.J. Llewellyn (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

hands and returned to the kitchen, where the two men were heartily tucking into their food. Nobuo’s cell phone rang. It sounded like a woman screaming. It was chilling. He took the call and spoke rapid-fire Japanese into the phone. He pushed himself away from the table and she heard him in the hallway.

She knew her mother tongue well. She heard the words, “Yes, we made contact…no. I didn’t speak to him. I let the old lady talk. He said he would carry out his mission.” She heard something garbled. Then the chilling words, “Yes, I will kill her.” She worked hard to make sure her fear and revulsion didn’t show as she offered the other man some tea. She hoped he had no clue she’d heard the conversation.

He gave her a sympathetic glance.

“This will all be over soon. Get some rest,” he said, as Nobuo-san returned and took his seat, finishing his meal.

“Sleep on the sofa,” Nobuo ordered. “We’ll all sit in the living room together. One big, happy family. Tomorrow, we do the dishes.”

She nodded. She left the kitchen, hurrying to the living room. She had no weapons in here. This better work, she thought, trembling as she covered her thin frame with a crocheted blanket and pretended to sleep.

* * * *

Shiro was offended when he was ordered to take a polygraph. He was so stressed out when loud knocking woke him at seven o’clock in the morning, followed by three men bursting into his room, that he felt sick and disoriented. He hadn’t been able to sleep all night and now some guy called Jerrell was here acting as if he didn’t trust Shiro.

“Where’s Kono?” he asked but nobody would answer him.

One guy was going through Shiro’s things. Shiro allowed them to administer the lie detector test saying he had nothing to hide.

As the investigator who was going to conduct the investigation put round tabs on various parts of his body and plastic clips on his fingertips, he felt Jerrell’s gaze on his face.

“Let me see your injuries.” Jerrell peeled back the sticky medical tape and saw the needle wounds. Only then did the guy relax.

“Did you call my grandma?”

“She’s fine,” Jerrell said.

Shiro was certain the man was lying. It was all anyone did. Tears splashed down his face. “My grandma is all I have.”

Jerrell acted a little more human then.

“Son, your grandma is fine.”

He was very kind when Shiro acted freaked out by all the electrical cords and waited outside as the guy did the lie detector test. He knew he’d passed it even before the man gave him the results. He kept thinking about Kono. This was a tough day for him, too.

“What if the Yaks send somebody else out to kill him?” he asked Jerrell.

The Lieutenant returned to the room and looked at the printout.

“The only thing you lied about was loving your mom,” Jerrell said, ignoring his question. “Don’t you love your mother?”

“I love her because she’s my mom…but not as a person. I didn’t mean to lie. It was a sort of…half-truth. I didn’t know how else to answer it.”

Jerrell seemed to consider this. “That makes sense. She got you into a world of hurt.”

“Yeah.” That’s the story of my life.

“I did a bit of homework on you, Shiro. I gather your mom is a real fuck-up…no, don’t look at me like that. She is. You’re hard working. You’re in college. I called your professor at the University of Hawaii. He says you’re a dedicated student. He’s a bit worried because he hasn’t heard from you. I said I was a guy you’re working for in New York. Lotsa kids have your…disadvantages in life but become total idiots. I’m impressed with you. I hope we can help get your life back on track.”

“Thanks. Me, too.”

Jerrell smiled then. It was disarming to say the least.

“I don’t think the Yaks will send somebody else after Kono since you haven’t told them your plans.” His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t tell anyone your plans, right?”

“No. Only my grandma. And all I said was what Kono told me to say. That I had a mission to complete. She didn’t ask questions—”

Jerrell cut him off. “They won’t send anyone out unless you fail and you won’t fail. We’ll make sure there’s plenty of news coverage. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He wondered why they put a Kevlar bulletproof vest on him and a sweater over it.

“Just a precaution,” Jerrell said. “It’s not a police-issue vest. If any of my men ask you about it, say you bought it at a swap meet.”

Somebody else shoved the gun he was to use in his pocket.

“Safety’s on,” the guy said.

They bundled him into a car. The guy who drove spent the whole time talking on his Bluetooth. Jerrell sat in back with him. Shiro was terrified now.

He said my mom’s a fuck-up. What if the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the fuck-up tree?

They arrived at the far end of a park.

Jerrell ran over the instructions again, telling him which way to walk, what to do.

“Kono will be trying to coax the guy down from the roof of the building. It’s a small building, not much room on the roof for him, but he will be getting ready to climb a ladder on the side of the building. You take your moment. You say, ‘This is for my mother.’ You shoot him in the back. There will be a lot of commotion. We’ll take you down. I’m sorry to say my men won’t be gentle. You’re killing a police officer. They will all think it’s real.

“I’ll have you taken to a holding cell and as soon as Kono is in the ambulance on his way to the hospital, we change his stats to DOA and we come get you. You’ll be able to join him. You’ll be safer with him than in jail. Unfortunately, you’re likely to meet with an unfortunate accident should I let you languish in a cell.”

“Where will you tell