Cajun Justice(42)

Cain crawled out as quickly as he could, gulping for fresh air. His heartbeat pulsated through his chest like a drum. Streams of sweat fell to the floor and puddled. He sighed. It was only a nightmare. Combat-breathe, he told himself. It was only a nightmare, he kept repeating. “I gotta get outta here,” he mumbled under his breath.

Cain left his backpack in the capsule and traded his slippers for his boots. He tried to peek in Tanaka’s capsule, but the privacy curtain was drawn across the tiny window. How in the hell did Tanaka sleep through that?

Cain dashed down the stairs to the ground-floor lobby. It was brightly lit. Everywhere he looked, fluorescent lights illuminated the hallways. It felt like a sterile hospital. The nightmare, coupled with the blinding lights, triggered another one of his stress-induced migraines. He rubbed his temples as he searched for the exit.

The automatic doors slid open as he approached. This place just keeps getting weirder and weirder. He crossed the narrow street and walked along the sidewalk. Mere hours earlier, the place had buzzed with pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, and cars—all in an orderly fashion, though. But now, at a little past three o’clock in the morning, the city resembled a ghost town whose people had evacuated and forgotten to turn off the lights. Neon lights flashed in every direction. Who is paying the electric bill for an abandoned city? Cain looked in every direction. He didn’t see a single person walking. It was eerily quiet until the sound of a car rolling over loose gravel echoed between the buildings. The black Toyota sedan taxi cruised by slowly. The driver, clad in a white dress shirt and white gloves, gripped the steering wheel in a perfect three and nine position. He looked like a ghost passing in the night. He never even turned to look at Cain.

The railroad tracks lay to the left in the distance, but the trains were stopped and completely powered down. A cool breeze materialized from nowhere and blew lightly. It felt good against Cain’s sweaty forehead. The early-morning wind jostled the red paper lanterns hanging outside various restaurants along the corridor of closed shops and boutiques.

Cain continued exploring this strange land. He approached the only business that appeared open. A wooden sign was propped up on the sidewalk, in front of the door. Cain couldn’t read any of the Japanese, but a little of the writing was in English. The sign said SOAPLAND and had a picture of a geisha bathing a man who was sitting in a large wooden tub. Below it, in all capital letters: NO FOREIGNERS!

Cain peeked into the window of the glass door. A thin Asian woman was standing inside. She was dressed in a kimono and had her hair pulled up in a bun. She was escorting a Japanese man to one of the closed rooms in the back. “This ain’t the place for me,” Cain muttered under his breath, and continued walking.

I’ve traveled all over the world, yet this place feels the most alien—with its flashing lights, advertisements, strange food, difficult language, and a culture still gripping its origins. Despite Bonnie, Cain felt alone in Japan. The irony, he thought. To be one person in a sea of many millions, but to still feel like an outsider.





Chapter 37



He walked back to the capsule hotel. Tanaka’s curtain was still drawn. Cain knocked on his door, which looked like the door of an American washing machine. Cain pounded louder with the bottom of his fist until Tanaka finally answered.

“Is everything okay, Mr. Cain-san?” Tanaka asked, wiping the drool from his mouth.

“I’m fine. I’m just ready to start work.”

Tanaka used his fingertips to wipe the crud out of his eyes and then studied his watch. “It’s only four o’clock, sir. We can sleep for another two hours.”

“Plenty of time to sleep when we’re dead.” Cain realized the irony as soon as he said that. “I was hired because we have a lot of work ahead of us. Lives are in danger. Let’s get an early start today.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tanaka and Cain used the shower facilities at the hotel and then caught a series of connecting trains that eventually stopped near the automotive company’s headquarters, which were in an industrial area of Yokohama—near the seaport. This location had been chosen for strategic purposes, and the company had been able to buy much more land for a cheaper price than what they could have purchased it for in Tokyo.

An overweight security guard in his fifties sprang to life when he realized that his new American boss had arrived. Cain extended his hand. “Good morning. My name is Cain Lemaire. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

The security guard’s face turned red. “Sorry. No English.” He ceremonially bowed to Cain.

Cain turned to Tanaka. “Please tell him I said it’s a pleasure to meet him, and I look forward to working with him. I’ll have lots of questions for him, but later. I like to just observe things on the first day.”

“Okay,” Tanaka said, and spoke in Japanese for what seemed like a much longer time than necessary given what Tanaka was translating. Tanaka and the security guard continued a back-and-forth conversation. Cain looked on with slight suspicion—he was always a little skeptical during his world travels that his words and tone were being translated appropriately. Cain knew that Tanaka was the security guard’s supervisor but was impressed by how much reverence the much younger Tanaka still showed his elder.

“Where do you keep your employee records?” Cain asked Tanaka as they left.