Michael Pronko

Tokyo Traffic

by

Michael Pronko

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

—Charles Dickens Great Expectations

Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams. Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.

—Murasaki Shikibu The Tale of Genji

Chapter One

Crouching behind the plywood wall of the film set, Sukanya waited until silence echoed through the cavernous warehouse. Her skin was clammy and covered in goosebumps. Sweat sprang from every pore in her body. She hugged herself, shivering, listening, her heart pumping hard from the last injection of whatever it was.

When the silence and the cold became too much, she peered around the edge of the film set, shading her eyes from the white blaze of an upended light, and stepped out to survey the scene. Cold air floated down from the high, dark ceiling. Shadows loomed over the muted chaos below.

Chairs, tables, and cameras were strewn across the concrete floor. The legs of tripods, toppled in the struggle, poked up like spikes. The wall of the set was bashed and splintered.

Umbrella lights and soft boxes, open-faced halogens and LEDs threw light in crossed directions. One of the knocked-over key lights sizzled and popped, darkening a swath of the set. Another light winked off without a sound, deepening the dim expanse of the warehouse.

From the top of the sets to the high ceiling, the air barely moved. There was no longer anything to hide from.

Sukanya walked forward, careful of the broken glass strewn in front of the mock living room. The lingering smell was the usual—airless, sweaty, and coarse—though mixed with something different. From small, dark pools across the smooth concrete floor rose a metallic scent she remembered from the back of street stalls in Bangkok’s markets.

She tried to catch herself, but doubled over and vomited. She hadn’t eaten much the past three days in the warehouse, but she gagged and heaved, again and again, until she was all out. She spit and spit, tongued her teeth, spit again and started to breathe.

She forced herself to look at the bodies. Her insides jumped, but her legs stayed rooted in place. She stood there wishing she could take off and soar away, wishing she could scream.

She slipped her bare feet into a pair of plastic sandals at the edge of the set floor. They were a men’s size, but she clenched her toes and shuffled them against the concrete, testing the traction. She could run in them.

From a gym bag on a bench beside the set wall, she dug out a towel. It smelled clean, so she wiped herself dry. She dug inside the bag and found a pair of running shorts, sizes too big, but she pulled them on and yanked the string tight around her thin waist. Her shoulders filled out a large blue soccer jersey that hung down to her thighs. She packed her long hair into a tight ponytail with a wristband.

Where was the other girl, Celeste? She was younger and called herself “Celeste,” insisting that was what she would go by. She’d been more cranked by the shots. She sweated, twitched, and didn’t eat after the assistant first injected them.

And where did that assistant go when things went berserk?

The third girl, Ratana, left hours before it started, with one of the men who’d driven them from the boat dock. Ratana had kept the three of them going on the boats, in the hotel, on the sets. She knew how to win concessions and dispute details, to resist and acquiesce, for better food and clothes, more sleep and showers.

Ratana might be back at any moment with one of the men, or Ratana might not be back at all.

To stop shivering, Sukanya pulled a leather jacket from the director’s chair and slid inside it. Rolling up the sleeves, she surveyed the back braces and cheap plywood walls. The front door where they had come in a few days before had to be somewhere outside the maze of sets.

Peering down the path between the sets, she saw Celeste. Kneeling beside her, Sukanya checked for breathing and a pulse, but nothing moved under Celeste’s smooth skin. Beside her, one of the tripods, folded tight, dripped gore.

Sukanya brushed the hair off Celeste’s face. She went back for the towel and knelt down to wipe the blood off her face, neck, breasts, and arms. Sukanya had envied her dark eyelids, curved nose, and thick lips when they’d shared a bed on the boat and in the hotel, chatting and giggling until Ratana shushed them. After that, they were driven to the warehouse where they worked constantly, too tired to talk, too drugged to sleep.

Sukanya took a blanket from a mock bedroom. The cartoon-themed blanket had bright animals laughing big-mouthed and silly. She spread it over Celeste and pulled it over her thin, pretty face. She closed her eyes, placed her hands together and recited a prayer she’d learned from her brother long ago.

She blinked her eyes, dry from the drugs, and turned to an older man’s body, careful not to step in the blood. She’d wondered at him taking photos the whole time, his fleshy face red from drinking. She leaned down to rifle his fancy, roomy suit. He had a lot of bills, but she didn’t know what Japanese money was worth. She tucked them into the inner pocket of the leather jacket.

The director was bent in half, his glasses smashed to shards from the blows. She looked away as she rummaged through his pockets for his wallet and scooped out his cash. Beside him on the floor was the laptop where all the footage was saved. It was still recording from a toppled camera.

As she looked at the blank sideways screen, the big metal door on the first floor of the warehouse creaked. Footsteps on the metal stairs sent a hot whip of panic through her. She bent down, clicked off the laptop and shoved it into a shoulder bag. Under the fat man’s round belly, an iPad poked out. She snatched it and popped it in beside the laptop and slung the bag over her shoulder.

She sprinted toward the front wall and crouched behind a cart stacked with chairs from where she could see the door. The same man who had stopped by the day before poked his head through the door and walked across the open expanse of warehouse. His white suit glowed in the gray emptiness. He walked slowly toward the off-kilter lights and pulled up short not far from the bodies.

He leaned forward, leaned back, rolled his head around, and fumbled for his cellphone. He put it to his ear and wrapped his hands, and his body, around it, as if trying to disappear inside.

When he appeared lost in the call, Sukanya padded softly to the door and slipped out to the stairs. She tiptoed down to the front door and nudged it open a crack. The murky light outside revealed a gravel parking area. Near the street was a car, but it was hard to see inside. She ducked back and waited before easing the door open again for a better look. To the right, a gap between the warehouse and the next building looked just wide enough to slip through.

The door on the second floor above the stairs crashed open.

Sukanya put her head down and let the drugs propel her. She slipped out and started running. The gravel slid and shifted under her plastic sandals. At the end of the building, she squeezed through the gap and sped up. Her shin hit something and she flew forward, clawing the air until she landed on her knees.

It was a metal bucket, full of gravel. She twisted to see if anyone was following. Her wrists and knees were scraped, but she stood up, reset her feet in the sandals, and limped to the end of the buildings.

The long, narrow gap opened onto a wide sidewalk and a four-lane road. She rubbed her knees and elbows, and turned right. She wanted to keep running but managed to slow herself to a steady walk, turning at times to see if anyone was coming.

They weren’t yet, but they would be soon. With her wrong-sized clothes and Thai features, her awkward foreignness, and not knowing where to go, they would find her even in the vast unknown of Tokyo.

Chapter Two

Kenta roared past the Lexus parked at the exit and slipped his dark orange Nissan GT-R into the extra-wide spot he’d set up for himself near the door. He was tired of cleaning up after everyone, especially in the middle of the night. Particularly when he had a rare night to spend with Mina. He let her sleep when he eased out of her apartment to drive halfway across the city.

Shibaura was right where he said he’d be, at the door to his warehouse studio. In the dim pre-dawn light, Shibaura looked like a specter, his shoulder-length gray hair and white suit framed against the dark gray of the huge roll-back door of Jack and Jill Studios.

Shibaura wouldn’t be standing there at all if Kenta hadn’t stepped in and saved his ass. For years, Shibaura had been running the studio into the ground. Kenta resuscitated the studio by renegotiating loans and bringing in new business, wondering all the while if Shibaura had actually been trying to go bankrupt.

He let his car rumble for a minute, just to badger Haruka, sitting behind the wheel of the Lexus. Shibaura’s secretary, chauffeur, and partner, Haruka detested most men, but put up with them. Kenta never let himself react to the snooty way she tried—and failed—to keep him out of the business. But when either one of them needed something, they called Kenta.

On cue, Haruka slammed the door shut and started toward them. Kenta watched her in the rearview mirror as he set his alarm, immobilizer, and tracking device. She was busty and big-hipped, teetering on heels so high she could hardly walk over the gravel.

Kenta looked from Shibaura to Haruka and braced himself for another of their tiffs. Witnessing an older couple arguing was distasteful. Mina never argued with him. Why would she? He got out and beeped the locks.

One of Haruka’s heels slipped into the gravel, tripping her, and she thrust out her hands for balance, her long white fingernails flashing in the dark. She righted herself and squared off with Shibaura.

Shibaura pulled his white suit over his shoulders and squinted at her. He looked shaken.

“Who was that girl?” Haruka asked him.

Kenta held up a preemptive hand. “Who was who?” he demanded, glaring at Shibaura. She was dressed for dinner in one of those sky-high restaurants with a view of Tokyo, not for a gravel lot between warehouses. Her perfume wafted on the night air.

Shibaura threw up his hands. “What girl?”

Haruka bounced on her hip. “The girl who ran out the door.”

“What girl?” Shibaura glared at Haruka.

Kenta peered into the darkness of the gap.

“I’ve told you about young girls.” Haruka advanced on him. “It’s always trouble.”

Kenta stepped between them, holding up his hands. “Look, what did you call me about?”

Haruka ignored Kenta and leaned toward Shibaura. “Right after you went in, a young girl ran out the front door and down there.” She pointed at the gap between the buildings.

Shibaura lowered his voice. “Haruka, get back in the car, can you?”

Haruka stared at him, her shiny pantsuit shimmering even in the dark.

Kenta said, “Can we go inside so I can see whatever it is you have to show me?” Kenta rolled back the front door of the studio and started up the metal grate stairs to the second-floor maze of film sets.

Shibaura followed him in to the dark entryway and stopped at the bottom of the steps. “I don’t want to see it again.”

Kenta stared at Shibaura from a couple of steps up.

Shibaura pulled his jacket around him. “I need to get out of here.”

Kenta nodded at the rack of surveillance cameras next to the door.

“Those have been busted for weeks,” Shibaura said.

“And you didn’t get them fixed?”

“It was on the list.”

“And upstairs on the sets?”

“Those cameras run like you set them up, I guess.”

Kenta started back upstairs. All filming was supposed to run through his laptop and automatically back up online.

“I’ll meet you in the office,” Shibaura shouted up to him, and he started down the first-floor passageway to the back.

Kenta pulled open the upstairs door into the massive warehouse of sets. Maybe getting involved with this whole Jack and Jill Studios was not the best idea. He hadn’t bargained for Shibaura’s anxiety medications and Haruka’s complaints. And being woken in the middle of the night.

As he turned the corner to the open area in front of the set, he saw the director first. The top side of his head was red mush. What was his name? Noguchi maybe?

To the left was Takeo Suzuki, his body now as horizontal as those he liked to photograph. Kenta arranged entry to the shoots for Suzuki because a well-connected former government minister could always be of help. Now, he was going to be exactly the opposite.

Broken glass crunched underfoot as he walked toward the third body, under a bright-colored blanket between the sets. He used his handkerchief to pull back the blanket. He remembered her face, her body, her little groans. He let the blanket fall back.

He tried to remember how many people had been there when he stopped by the day before. The director, the assistant director, that plump assistant, the three girls, two or three actors, and Suzuki—he was going to have to track down all of them.

And where was his computer? Where was the iPad he lent to Suzuki? And the bag he let Suzuki use? Was the camera still running when things went south? He moved the small piles of broken equipment aside with his foot, but none of his stuff was there.

He pulled out his cellphone, but no new files had been uploaded in the past twenty-four hours. They must be on the missing computer, along with the other video files, his business contacts, accounts, and access to his online storage. He called Kirino, and then quickly hung up. Calling from there would be a bad idea.

Kenta walked between the sets to the stairs down to the back office, running an inventory of immediate tasks to keep his mind off the bodies.

Inside the office, Shibaura was setting out stacks of ten thousand yen bills on his U-shaped, leather-covered desk. Beside the Japanese bills were stacks of Thai baht, Philippine pesos, Vietnamese dong, and Chinese yuan. Kenta pushed him to use digital currency, had even set up accounts for the studio, but here was Shibaura packing stacks of cash into a plastic bag from some boutique Haruka shopped at.

“Here,” Shibaura said, tossing six passports to Kenta, three Thai and three American. “Get these out of here.”

“I don’t want these, either,” Kenta said. But maybe Kirino could use them when he arrived to clean this up. He’d wait to call him until he got onto an expressway and was calmed by the speed. He walked to the computer that channeled the studio’s surveillance camera footage, but they were blank.

Kenta pointed at the fuzzy four-way screen. “You were supposed to upgrade this. I gave you money, called the company.”

Shibaura kept packing his bag.

Kenta looked around the room. The curved sofa, top-shelf liquors, brand glassware, tube amp, and CDs were out of a period movie set.

“You’d better call this in,” Kenta said.

“Are you crazy?”

“Have Haruka do it from a payphone.”

“I’ll need a head start.”

“To where? California? Your place in Hawaii?”

Shibaura picked up the shopping bag.

“You’re better off staying here and telling the police you rented the place. That’s pretty much the truth. Kirino will take care of the rest.”

“Once he gets here,” Shibaura said. “It’s a long way from Thailand.”

“He’ll be here tomorrow,” Kenta said, unsure he would be.

“I’ll have Haruka cancel everything for today. We’ll lock the place up to get a head start.” Shibaura looked around the office, clicked off the lights, and headed down the stairs to the passageway. Kenta followed him in the dark. At the front door, Shibaura started to lock up, but Kenta took his keys from him and left the doors open.

Shibaura headed to his Lexus without another word. He got in and Haruka drove off.

After they were gone, Kenta released his car alarm, immobilizer, and tracking device. He took a pocket knife and a roll of Gorilla tape out of the efficiency desk he placed in the passenger seat when Mina wasn’t with him, and used it to pop out the cameras from the dashboard and back seat.

He walked to the middle of the lot and stood gauging angles. He walked to the wall of the warehouse building to the right and reached as high as he could, turning to eye the distance. He pulled off a couple of strips of the super-adhesive tape and positioned them on the wall.

He took one of the cameras and fixed it toward the entrance. He walked across the lot and did the same on the other side.

He walked back to his Nissan and turned on his laptop to make sure the cameras fed in. They did.

He clicked through his multiple tracking apps for computer, iPad, and bag, and waited patiently while the signal bounced around.

A green light popped up pulsing on the screen’s map. The signal was for his bag. It was faint and moving slowly through the city. That was a start.