2.12 Garbage

Snap out of it and think, goddamn it!

Sitting on the sofa, gripping the sides of my head in my hands, I could think of a number of plausible reasons why my place would be raided. That was the rub, as Billy Shakes wrote, and I had to find out which one it was before day’s end.

The fact that I was still a free man was as confusing and frightening as it was encouraging. How much time did I have before the cops came up with enough evidence and returned to arrest me? My whole body shuddered thinking about it.

It was about eleven when I finally pulled myself together. With work starting at twelve, I only had an hour's time. Not nearly enough, but better than nothing.

I left my apartment and headed for the nearest Internet cafe. It wasn't far, but I took a deliberately meandering route, riding my bicycle in the opposite direction to the local video rental shop.

The cops had known my schedule, meaning it was highly likely I had been under surveillance for some time. This sent a fresh chill up my spine. Who knows? They probably still had a few men shadowing me. That's what I would do, were I on the ball-busting side of the law rather than the other way around.

Was I paranoid? You better fucking believe it I was, especially when you consider that all of the cops who raided my apartment had been plainclothesmen. They were average looking Tarôs, guys you wouldn't have noticed even if they'd come up and goosed you. Anyone out on the street could be a cop. As I pedaled in that roundabout route to the video shop, every man and nondescript white car I passed looked suspiciously un-halal: everyone and everything reeked of pork.

I picked up a DVD at the video shop, then popped into the variety store next door, leaving my yellow bike out front for anyone to see. Hurrying through the maze of racks and bookshelves to the rear of the shop, I emerged from a little used exit in the back that opened onto a quiet, narrow street.

It was deserted. Not a soul in sight.

The clock was ticking, but rather than risk drawing any more attention to myself than I already did as the only gaijin around, I continued up the street at deliberately leisurely pace until I reached the Internet café. Once there, I bought a prepaid card and found a private room where I wasted little time logging onto my e-mail account and erasing any mails that might be construed as even remotely suspicious by the police. The account had only been set up half a year earlier, so fortunately there wasn't much to delete.

There was, however, a mail from my cousin Naila saying that she had sent a package for my birthday. The content of Naila’s mail, if interpreted literally, was innocuous, so I left it as is. If one of my suspicions proved correct, the mail would come in handy. Finally, before logging out, I made slight alterations to my password, changing, for example, a hyphen to an underscore.

After taking out the garbage, so to speak, I tried to glean whatever I could about getting busted in Japan from blogs and Internet sites. It was hopeless, of course. With the Internet as overcrowded as it is with pathetic little people sitting before little screens tap-tap-tapping away at little keyboards and feeling empowered by the IT Revolution, it was getting damn near impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I popped the prepaid card out of the reader, dumped it in the garbage, and left the Internet café.

As I headed back down the narrow back street towards the variety store, I made a mental list of all the things I needed to do before Sunday morning. At the head of that list I had to contact my friend Jean to find out whether the investigation had originated with him and, if it hadn't, to warn him that he might be next. Paying him a friendly visit at his apartment, or even sticking my head into one of his shops was out of the question. The cops may have been waiting for me to do precisely that.

Next, I needed to talk to my cousin Naila. I also had to get in touch with Azami, and visit the U.S. Consulate, and meet with a lawyer, and . . . It was enough to send my head reeling.

I returned to the variety store, picking up some Dr. Pepper and candy before heading out the front door and getting back on my bicycle.

On my way home, I pedaled past Jean's flagship outlet, The Zoo. It was only a block away from my apartment and specialized in, among other things, drug paraphernalia: rolling papers and bongs, turbo lighters and glass pipes for smoking amphetamines and crack. Jean also sold beach cruisers and New York hats and original silver accessories andanime figures, but bicycles and hats, as popular as my friend claimed them to be, weren't what brought people into his shop at three o'clock in the morning.

I tried not to be too obvious glancing at the shop as I rode by. Beach cruisers were lined up smartly on the sidewalk, lava lamps glurped in the display window, and the dread-locked manager slouched at the entrance having a smoke. Seeing me, he gave me a friendly nod.

Thank God, business as usual.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No. 6 is now available on Kindle.