Miakahashi handed Hirayama a piece of string and the square-shaped nomi and turo plate the Shinjuku skyline. His face was an inscrutable mask of resolve. The move caught Hirayama, who was h nearby, pletely by surprise. The whole episode was just a blur. He held the string limply in his left hand and stared into space, seeing nothing. He had just told the oyabun the bad news. His men had failed to prevent the Diane Joplin girl from being spirited away frht underh their noses. And in Hong Kong, Hideo Sato and Miyagi had failed to capture Cad Caldwell arieve the sole on two attempts. The whole thing was turning into a fiasd somebody had to take responsibility. Why did it have to be him?
They were in one of Takahashi』s many business offices dotted around Tokyo. A huge wall-to-wall window revealed a breathtaking vista of Shinjuku stretg out to the snow-covered outskirts of the city. The view outside was a dense sprawl of gray crete and neon. Hirayama studied the carpet, watg the memory fibers resurrect themselves, erasing the impri by their shoes. In the background was the low but indistinguishable hum of erd enterprise, wind shear against the windows and the subliminal sounds of a metropolis tig over.
The puter trolled shoji had been slid apart joining Takahashi』s office proper and his visitor area to form an expansive space characterized by elegant simplicity. Zen. A plasma s pulsated silently in one er flipping through lists of unintelligible Nikkei indices. In the seating area, minimalist square designer chairs covered iinct buffalo hide and framed with e. Takahashi』s desk was a smooth plane of black with a high-gloss urushi finish. The area around the desk was uncarpeted, exposiured gray granite and als of crushed white stone.
Even as he bowed deeply, Hirayama』s mind was rag through the sequences. If he had had any hope of replag Kenzo Yamamoto as sed-in-and in the voluted hierarchy of the Yamaguchi-gumi, that ce had long disappeared. Hirayama had always hoped that he would never have to the subject himself to the humiliation of yubizume, the ritual severing of a se of the little finger as repentanistakes. He half suspected that the Minister knew of his ambitions and by requesting him to perform the gruesome act was deftly nipping his aspirations in the bud.
Hirayama couldn』t help, at this moment, refleg on the unfairness of life and thinking of his dead mother. When he had joihe Yakuza almost twenty years ago, his mother had asked him o return to the family home. Hirayama had agreed implicitly by moving out and urning back. It art of the Yakuza code and on joining he had sworn to place the is of the Yamaguchi-gumi above all else, including himself and family. That』s why Hirayama had never married, preferring the fleeting fort of paid iitial sex to the ity and responsibility of marriage. He had kept a woman for a while, an AV starlet whose career was on the dive, but after she started being too demanding and asking unanswerable questions, Hirayama had quickly cut her loose. The last he』d heard was that she was addicted to some coe-based drug and plying the trade to stru workers somewhere in the suburbs of Tokyo. That was the way of the water business.
Hirayama ed the string tightly around the little finger of his right hand and pulled it tight. He watched the blood drain from his finger as it started to go numb. He walked over to the sitting area in Takahashi』s offid placed his finger on the glass coffe