Through the haze and pain, Kyle heard Miki’s howls and whimpers. He felt her fingers brushing his face as he struggled from some black underwater space to the surface of light and air. Nausea swept through him. He turned to the side and threw up. He coughed and choked, throat burning from the stomach acid. The pain made him shiver and start to black out.
“Miki?” Kyle’s voice echoed inside his own head.
“Kyle, Kyle, honey, you’re awake, you’re OK, people are coming, I called them.”
“Fucking Christ.” His hand shook as he touched his head. His hair was sticky and wet.
Miki wiped his head with the moist cloth. “They’re coming now. Baby, what happened?”
Kyle felt Miki’s hands on his head and arm. He could hear her, but could only pry open one eye a sliver.
Miki kneeled on the tatami beside him with a cloth and a bowl. He couldn’t inhale through his nose and swallowed a wad of snot and blood down the back of his throat.
Miki howled. “Just hang on, baby, the police are coming, the ambulance is coming. Don’t move.”
Kyle shivered, his body alternating waves of numbness and spikes of pain, like his body was no longer his. Miki was cooing in a high-pitched voice from very far away.
Kyle could see the blood in the bowl, his blood.
Miki wiped up the vomit and took the bowl and cloth back to the kitchen. It hurt to breathe. He heard the water running. She was back with a new bowl and fresh cloth.
“What happened, Kyle, baby?”
Miki was beside him with her hand on his. His wrist ached. Kyle tried to clear his throat. “What time is it?”
“It’s morning. Have you been here all night?”
The cool water on his face and head made him shiver, even with a blanket over him. His jaw ached and there was a loud ringing in his left ear. Snot and blood flowed from his nose down the back of his throat. “Someone came in. Two guys.”
“Two guys?”
“Three guys.” He clutched her hand. “Where are Patrick and the girls?”
“They’re not here,” Miki said. “Their stuff is gone.”
Kyle thought back. The first gut punch doubled him over. They hit him outside the door, took his key, shoved him inside, hitting him until he dropped on the tatami in the same room where Patrick and his daughters slept. After that, it was a question and a slap, another question and a fist to his stomach. They slammed his head into the tatami again and again. It hurt at first, but then he didn’t feel anything.
Miki didn’t come until morning, he realized, or they’d have gotten her too. Good that he told her he was out drinking so she stayed in her own apartment.
“Who did this?” Miki started to cry. “Oh, where’s the ambulance?”
Kyle tried to sit up, but the pain and nausea knocked him back.
Miki put cushions behind him and adjusted the blanket. “They’ll be here in a minute.”
He looked at Miki and her tears started to fall heavier. She wiped her face, kneeling beside him in her work outfit, which was splattered with his blood.
Kyle touched his face. Each breath hurt. “Where’s my cellphone?”
“What?”
“Find my cellphone.” He heard himself twice, once inside his head and once from far away.
Miki got up to search for his cellphone. Kyle could see her through one eye, mumbling to herself and stooping to look under the furniture.
“Here it is!” she shouted. It had slid under the kitchen counter. She hurried back to Kyle and handed him the phone.
His hand was shaking too badly to press the screen, so he handed the phone over and told her the password.
“Find the call from yesterday without any name on it. He called from a new phone. Afternoon. I missed the call, but it must have been him.”
Miki found it and held the phone to his ear. He waited for Patrick to answer. “Booster? It’s me. We gotta talk.”
Patrick had been sleeping. “Horndog. Sorry we just left, but I…hey, you don’t sound so good. Hangover?”
“That and then some.” Kyle coughed. “Someone jumped me.”
“Where? When?”
“Last night, at the door to my apartment. I didn’t even get a punch in.”
“Are you OK?”
“Not really.”
“Who were they?”
“Three guys. Dressed in black suits. They wanted you.”
“I’ll come.”
“Don’t do that. Miki’s here. The ambulance and police are coming.”
“Jesus, man, quit talking and go to the hospital.”
“Tell me what trouble you’re in.”
“How did they find you?”
“I didn’t have time to ask them while they were smashing my face into the tatami. Is this because of Nine Dragons?” Kyle coughed and moaned.
Patrick didn’t answer.
“If they found me, they’ll find Miyuki. You better tell her. And you better keep moving. Get out of Japan. Get Jenna and Kiri out. And Miyuki.”
“I’m working on it.”
Miki took the phone from Kyle. “Patrick? Do you know who did this?”
“Take Kyle to the hospital and call me back when he’s stable. I’m so sorry.”
They heard a loud knock on the front door and Patrick hung up.
“Don’t open it.” Kyle tried to get up but couldn’t.
The knock came again. “This is the police. Open up.”
Miki checked the camera screen feed from the hall. “It’s the police.”
They knocked again and held up their badges. “Police. Open up.”
Miki opened the door.
Two uniformed police rushed in. One of them went to Kyle and checked his vitals, pulled another blanket over him to keep shock from setting in. The other called for backup and checked on the ambulance.
Miki wiped her eyes. Her work suit was soaked in tears and blood.
Hiroshi and Takamatsu came in without knocking. Hiroshi kicked off his shoes and hurried to Kyle. After Hiroshi got the call, Ishii had put the siren on to halve the fifteen-minute drive. They almost got there faster than the local police.
Hiroshi turned away when he saw Kyle’s battered face. He turned to Miki. “I’m Hiroshi Shimizu and this is Detective Takamatsu and Detective Ishii. And who are you?”
“I’m Miki Shitani. Kyle’s girlfriend.”
“You found him like this?”
“I sometimes spend the night here, but I stopped by this morning on my way to work. About an hour ago.”
“Any idea who did this?”
Miki started to cry.
Ishii led her away from the room to the kitchen, comforting and questioning her at the same time.
Hiroshi kneeled down on the tatami beside Kyle. He closed his eyes for a minute and then focused on what he had to do. Kyle’s face was bruised, swollen, and bloody. There were no open wounds and no bones sticking out. He could talk.
From the kitchen, Miki spoke to Hiroshi in Japanese. “He doesn’t speak much Japanese. But I can interpret.”
“I speak English.” Hiroshi leaned over Kyle. “Tell me what happened. This is related to your friend Patrick, isn’t it? He was here, wasn’t he?”
Kyle rasped as he took a big breath. “He came here yesterday. I hadn’t heard from him for months.”
“And he just showed up?”
Kyle nodded.
“And he had his daughters with him?”
Kyle nodded.
“And where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Late morning. I went to work around noon and he was still here.”
“You didn’t hear from him after that?”
“I was working.”
“And when did you come home?”
“I was drinking in Roppongi with clients.”
“And you left them when?”
“Around two. I took a taxi home. They jumped me at the door.”
“What did they ask you exactly?”
“They asked about Patrick.”
“What about him?”
“Where he was. Where he was going. The same thing over and over. They hit or kicked me after every question. Or smashed my head into the tatami.”
“How did they find you?”
Kyle shook his head
“What did they look like?”
“They hit me too quickly. And too often. I couldn’t see well, but they all wore black. Like a uniform or some shit.”
“How many were there?”
“Three. And they called someone in the middle of it.”
“What did you hear of that call?”
“My Japanese is not so good and I was out of it. That’s the last I remember.”
“You’re lucky.”
Kyle smirked. “Yeah, I feel really lucky.”
“So, where is Patrick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Give us your best guess.”
“He’s still in Tokyo. But he didn’t say where.”
“Come on. You know him better than anyone. He had other friends?”
“Just his wife.” Kyle shook his head. “He has money. I gave him some.”
Miki came back into the room, knelt beside Kyle, and tried to shield him from more questions. “Please.”
Hiroshi ignored her. “Why did he take the girls?”
Kyle winced and Miki put her hand on his shoulder.
“He was your best friend in Japan, right? And you don’t know anything?”
Kyle squeezed his face and shook his head. “I wish I did.”
“We need to find him before they do.”
Kyle coughed and it took a couple of breaths to recover. “If I knew where he was, I’d tell you, to keep the girls safe. And Miyuki. His wife. Can you check on her?”
“We already did.” Hiroshi stood up to get out of the way of the ambulance crew who just arrived. Ishii led them in.
“After you’re fixed up, we’ll talk more. At the hospital.” Hiroshi stood back to let the paramedics check for bleeding, breaks, and injuries, and make sure he was stable. They were surprised he wasn’t in shock.
They got him onto the gurney with Hiroshi and Ishii’s help. Miki kept hold of his hand.
“Take him to the police hospital in Nakano,” Hiroshi told the ambulance crew. “Someone will meet you there to watch him.”
Takamatsu called Sakaguchi to arrange for one of the younger detectives to guard him.
When he was gone, Takamatsu started surveying the room. “They left him alive for a reason. Not sure what the message is. We’re coming for you, I guess.”
The apartment was a mess. They’d tossed the place. “We better have the crew go over all this and we’ll go talk with Kyle’s boss at Pacific Investments.”
Takamatsu took out his lighter and started flipping it open and shut.