Fic: Den of Thieves, Arashi RPF, Part 2.
Title: Den of Thieves
Fandom: Arashi RPF
More details in Part one.
Go to: Part one || Part Two || Part Three
Den of Thieves: Part Two
Sho calls Jun the next afternoon to inform him that he'd gotten a visit from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police department, asking him what he'd been doing at Bar Kuro after closing.
"What did you tell them?" Jun asks, closing the door of his office behind him.
"The truth," Sho says, sounding amused. "That I'm writing a story about Ministry of Justice corruption and Police cover ups, that I'd gotten a tip involving the Hisagawas, and that I was there talking to you about a rumored meeting supposed to take place at Kuro later in the week between the Yakuza and a top government official."
"Great," Jun says. "I've always wanted the Tokyo Police to think I'm a criminal."
"Jun," Sho says, "You are a criminal."
"I steal from rich people. There's a difference."
There's a sigh, and Sho's quiet for a while. "Spin it any way you want, Jun. Whatever helps you sleep at night."
Jun breathes out through his nose and closes his eyes, reminding himself that he's not involved with Sho anymore. That means he doesn't have to have this argument unless he wants to. "When did they leave?" he asks instead.
"I called you as soon as I got confirmation they'd left the building. Better start watching what we say on the phone," Sho says.
Jun sighs. "Better close the bloody bar," he says and hangs up.
+++
Getting the police involved is a calculated risk they have to take. Ohno had offered to be the one raked over hot coals, but to Jun, who's already being watched closer than he'd like, that had seemed impractical. Better to use the fact that he's under scrutiny already, try to give them something to chew on in the hope that they'll leave him alone after, than put Ohno into the firing line when he wasn't anywhere close to it in the first place.
So Jun isn't surprised when he gets a ping from the corner store on his burn phone after hanging up on Sho. 'Good to know that this is the time it takes to get a warrant made,' he thinks to himself, and flips the light switch, watching as half the patrons leave in a mostly-orderly fashion. Atsuko is just putting the last of their glasses into the dishwasher as the detectives enter, and she manages to hit the start button discreetly enough that Jun mentally cheers for her. He knew there was a reason he keeps upping her salary to keep her on.
"Good afternoon," he says, watching as more policemen keep coming in through the doors. Goodness, he didn't realize he warranted what must be half the department.
The one in the lead is short and a little reedy, clearly used to being in charge. Jun has seen him before, but it's been a while since they had sufficient cause to come in here.
"We have a warrant to search the premises," he says authoritatively. "Please stop what you're doing and follow my colleague outside."
"Atsuko," Jun says, "I think this means you have the afternoon off. Unless you have any questions for her?"
The detective looks thoughtful, but finally shakes his head. "No, Matsumoto-san, but we would appreciate it if you were to answer a few questions."
"Of course," Jun replies politely. "May I see the warrant?"
The taller lead detective hands it over, and Jun inspects it. As he expected, it covers the bar and his apartment upstairs. "Very well," he says, mildly, and follows a police officer outside, where he's offered to wait in the back of a police car. The officer looks surprised when he accepts.
+++
There's nothing illegal to be found, either in the bar or the apartment, of course. Kuro is run on a handy profit margin, entirely legally, with the exception of some gray-area customer services provided, of course. And Jun isn't stupid, and doesn't spend to excess, even with his alternative income.
So he's not surprised that when the detectives turn up to interrogate him, three hours later, they look tired and frustrated.
"You seem awfully calm for the circumstances, Mr. Matsumoto," the smaller one says. Jun has figured out that he's the bad cop. They're in a conference room - not an interrogation room - in the local police station. Jun takes this to mean that they still hope to get him to talk if they're nice to him.
"An innocent man has nothing to fear," Jun replies. "Though if it would not be too much trouble, could you direct me to where I can request reimbursement for lost revenue on account of police investigation?"
The man blinks. "You seem awfully sure we didn't find anything," he says.
"Detective," Jun says, "this is not the first time the police have asked me questions in relation to some perceived risk of me breaking the law; I am a bar owner, after all. I am well aware of what you could have found and what you can't have, and therefore, intimidating me will not work. Additionally, I can't see that I have anything to gain from making your lives difficult, though I must confess to the hope that eventually you will realize that the reverse is also true." He shrugs.
There's a long silence while the detective stares at him, from where he's leaning against the wall opposite the door. The other one, the taller one, is sitting opposite Jun at the table in the middle of the room. Finally, the shorter one blows out a breath and shakes his head. He gestures with an arm at the man sitting opposite Jun - who has yet to say anything, but has been watching him steadily ever since they got here - and nods. "Aiba."
The taller detective - Aiba - nods back and smiles disarmingly at Jun. He must be the good cop, then.
"Mr. Matsumoto," he starts, "you have quite the clientele."
"I am aware of that, but they are all paying customers, and I have made sure they all know that anything illegal that I or my staff witness will be reported to the proper authorities."
Aiba smiles at him again. Jun has been interrogated before, but this is the weirdest technique he's ever experienced. "So we've heard. That's a respectable thing to do."
Jun doesn't reply. He's got nothing to say to that.
"Are you aware that some of your customers are members of the yakuza?" Aiba finally goes on, still smiling.
Jun sighs and braces himself for a long session.
+++
They finally tell him they have no further questions for him at seven-thirty. This is after Jun has reluctantly admitted that he's hosting a private gathering on Saturday for Shinya Hisagawa, though he professes not to know who else is coming, and flat out refuses to spy for the police, when the idea gets put to him.
In the end Aiba thanks him - still smiling - for his cooperation and assistance, kindly hands him a form from the restitution bureau, which closed at four, and tells him they'll be in touch. The grumpy one, who never even bothered to introduce himself, snorts at that.
The first thing Jun does is call Atsuko from his cell phone. "Mattsun!" she says, sounding relieved when she hears who it is. "I half thought they were going to arrest you for something!"
"I haven't done anything wrong," he protests.
"Well, it's not like the police have ever cared about that," she huffs, and Jun resolves to give her a raise this month. He hopes that whoever is assuredly monitoring this call got that one down, good and proper.
"Listen," he says, "I just got out of there, and who knows what state the place is in. I can't get out of the private party on Saturday, but I won't need you for that. I'm thinking about opening again on Monday."
Atsuko doesn't protest much, particularly after he promises to pay her full wage, despite the unexpected downtime.
The next thing he does is buy ingredients for dinner at the convenience store, go home, and then proceed to spill tomato sauce all over himself and his messenger bag. He should be given an acting award, he thinks, smirking, as he puts his clothes in the washing machine and empties the bag of his papers so he can soak it in the bathtub, muttering grumpily to himself the entire time. If they bugged his personal effects, the water will take care of that. He's pretty sure his flat is bugged, possibly wired for video, and manfully resists the temptation to search for the bugs.
He goes to bed at eleven, hoping he won't snore.
+++
The next morning, he goes downstairs to investigate the damage to his bar. They were as tidy downstairs as they were upstairs, he finds, though the place has obviously been very thoroughly searched. To his amusement, there is fingerprint dust on the glasses that they must have retrieved from the dishwasher, but he can tell they can't have found anything. He loads the tray again and starts the cycle, before moving on to the sitting area. The tables of each booth have been thoroughly fingerprinted and clearly inexpertly cleaned, as has the bar itself. The only place where there is the slightest trace of havoc is his office, where his papers are all askew and all over the place. He shakes his head and goes to find the main breaker for the house, flipping it, and casting the interior into darkness.
He's got work to do.
Thirty minutes later, after a thorough sweep with a gadget he's not supposed to have, he's located seven bugs and four video surveillance devices, all wireless. He picks the audio transmitter that he thinks was in the second most obvious location - under a decorative bottle on the glass rack above the bar, what do they take him for - and kindly relocates it to the back of a nice painting of a sail boat that Jun doesn't have the slightest idea where came from, which is hanging on the wall next to his office, directly above the back booth. He takes the most obvious bug - in a vase of plastic decorative flowers on one of the tables, really? - and crushes it under the sole of his shoe, while cursing the police.
He goes to the Lost and Found basket on his way to flip the power back on, and rummages a little before he finds an ancient - and anonymous - Sony Ericsson phone, slipping it into a pocket, before leaving the place.
He goes to the nearby Shinto shrine and calls Ohno to let him know they're on schedule as expected. After that, he goes to meet Shinya Hisagawa.
Hisagawa is understandably concerned that the police took Jun in for questioning, though not so much that he's willing to scrap the meeting, which had been Jun's main concern. Jun had been betting on the meeting being important enough that they'd risk it, and it's nice to get confirmation that he's right. He tells Hisagawa that he'd found one bug, and that he'll need an exterminator, and an untraceable phone.
Not that he's planning to use the phone, much, for this job, but in about a year, when everybody else has forgotten about it, it could come in handy.
The exterminator comes in on Friday, unfolds a bevy of gadgets and finds two more bugs Jun didn't find during his previous search. One of them is under the Glenfiddich, which to Jun is sacrilege.
However, he doesn't find the one behind the picture of the sailboat, on account of Jun's wireless router being on a shelf on the other side of the wall.
+++
If Jun didn't think things were strange before, he sure as hell thinks that they're hinky now.
There's been a car with plainclothes police in the parking lot of the Mini-Stop or the Laundromat opposite Bar Kuro for weeks now. Except there isn't one there today; on the one day he's all but shouted it out that something is going to go down. He hopes that it's actually a police plan, and not a matter of police corruption.
Mr. Hisagawa arrives first, and Jun settles him in the back booth, hoping like hell the cops are actually aware of the back entrance, which is a new thought for him. Ohno arrives later, with Mr. Takezaki in tow, and Jun really hopes this won't end with weapons drawn.
Ohno gives him a nervous glance when Jun serves them drinks, and Jun can tell he's thinking the same thing Jun is: 'this is really the stupidest plan we have ever come up with, isn't it?'
There's nothing to be done for it now, though. Jun's bar is full of criminals, the cops are listening in on a conversation that looks likely to be mostly about police corruption, and in the pocket of Ohno's coat, which he's draped over the back of the booth, is a phone with an open line to Sho.
Jun goes back behind the bar and starts to take orders from everyone who isn't Mr. Hisagawa or Mr. Takezaki.
For the next ninety minutes, Jun doesn't really know what's going on. He serves Mr. Hisagawa four cognacs, and tops up his coffee twice. Mr. Takezaki is drinking highballs, though he's not going through them very fast - Jun ends up freshening them up while the glass is still half full, several times.
He uses the opportunity to try to gauge Ohno's tension, and he isn't very happy when it climbs higher and higher with each pass he makes past the table. After about an hour, he realizes he's seeing something he's never seen before; Ohno is truly furious, but trying to mask it. He hasn't said much, but Jun can recognize a lot of the things Takezaki's advisers are saying as Ohno-inspired, so he probably doesn't have to.
On his fourth pass past the table, he hears snatches of conversation that make his blood run cold, and he can only imagine how poor Sho must be feeling, listening to this, since his unfortunate demise is being plotted at Jun's back table.
On his sixth pass past the table, he realizes why Ohno's tension is so high.
They're talking about women. To be more precise, they're talking about controlling and storing and getting rid of women; places the police won't look, services the police can expect in return. "We have a few boys, too," is the last thing he can hear Mr. Hisagawa say, as he walks numbly away with their empty glasses. "If any of the officers are..."
Fuck Mr. Silao and getting paid for this job. This one, Jun would have done for free.
+++
He's not exactly surprised when the police burst through both the front and the back doors at the same time. "Hands in the air!" someone shouts. "No sudden movements!"
It's the short detective - the bad cop. Sho had looked him up and discovered that he's some sort of a section leader in the organized crime division. His pal, Aiba, had transferred down from Chiba a couple of years ago, and taken a slightly lower position than he'd had up there, where he'd been a taskforce leader in vice. Also, policing is apparently the Aiba family trade, meaning that he's got connections up and down the hierarchy, according to Sho, who'd said something about Jun's fortune - he couldn't have had a better team listening in if he'd ordered them off a menu.
"Mr. Takezaki," Aiba says, and he's not smiling, now. "Mr. Hisagawa. You are under arrest."
"I..." says Mr. Takezaki, "I want my lawyer." His face looks purple with rage.
"I was under the impression your lawyer is the man sitting right next to you," Aiba says. "He's also under arrest. In fact, everyone in here is under arrest, until we can figure out who's who."
They spend the next two days in interrogation.
+++
They let him go on a Monday afternoon, probably after it becomes clear to them that they don't have anything on Jun. Jun's been kept in holding with his half of the accused, the Hisagawas, watching as the police try to sort out who is who, and who is guilty of what. He's spent his time mostly worrying about Ohno, even if he knows the other man's alias is impeccable, even if Ohno being taken in and singing like a bird after 'realizing' what he'd gotten himself involved in had all been a part of the plan. The only way to pull this off is to make it look like a legitimate police bust, though the way both Aiba and his grumpy colleague frown at Jun probably means that they've realized that this is not an entirely clean operation.
The first thing he does after they let him go is to take the train a few stops east, and use the station phones to call Mr. Silao, who confirms that Ohno has also been let go, just hours before Jun, though they'll be keeping their distance for the time being.
The second thing he does is go home and take a bath. He fills the tub with almost scalding water, and takes one of the most thorough showers of his life, feeling like he's not merely washing the two days in holding off, but the last two months, and all the associations he's had with the Yakuza lately.
He leaves the bathroom afterwards, skin steaming hot in the chill of his apartment, and if the Tokyo police are watching, they'll just have to learn how to cope. He eats parma ham straight from the pack, with slices of melon in between, and washes it down with a glass of white, before even putting on his clothes.
When he finally makes it downstairs, he's a little surprised to find that the place had opened for business on time, while he's been in the shower, and even more surprised when Atsuko hugs him fiercely as soon as she catches sight of him. He's got the usual smattering of customers for the time of day; a couple of ne'er-do-wells at the bar, the students here to take advantage of the happy hour and the free wireless, Mr. Baba at the back, ostensibly working on his research, though it's more likely that he's there to gather information for the Yakuza, and unusually, Sho, who has taken over the back booth, ironically enough.
"You know, the last people who sat there got arrested," Jun says, sitting down opposite him with a club soda for himself, and a refill of Sho's beer - the nice stuff, this time.
Sho snorts. "Don't bother me, I'm on a five PM deadline for edits," he says, but picks up two newspapers from the pile of materials he's got around him, scooting them across the table towards Jun.
Jun unfolds them and realizes immediately what he's looking at. The headline is enormous, the picture of Mr. Takezaki singularly unflattering, and he settles in and starts reading.
When he next looks up, he sees Sho looking at him, a contemplative look on his face, and for some reason, he feels slightly uneasy with it.
"What do you think?" Sho asks.
"I think you're very good at your job. I'm pretty sure I didn't know all of that," Jun answers honestly. Sho's done more with the limited information he and Ohno were working off than he'd have thought possible.
Sho shrugs. "I couldn't have done it without you," he says. Jun shoots a glance at the painting of a sailboat over his head, wondering if there's still a bug behind it, but hell, anything to get the cops off his back.
"I didn't realize this would..." Jun glances down at the paper to confirm that he remembers the words right, "'put a dent in the naive faith of all those who still believe in the fabric of society,'" he says, quoting Sho's own words back at him.
Sho smirks. "Massive, upper echelon police cover-ups of human trafficking will do that," he says. "I know it's not what we were expecting to find, though."
"Maaa," Jun sighs, "I was expecting a campaign fund scandal at worst. Maybe some bribes."
"It was the Yakuza, though," Sho says, simply. "Jun..."
"What?" Jun asks. He's regretting his decision to not put any whisky in his club soda for the time being.
"After all this, will you be okay?"
Jun sighs. "As long as I stand up in the next ten minutes or so, and make our goodbye appropriately formal."
Sho looks surprised. "What?"
"Nobody leaked anything, or tipped the police off. They got this through a legitimate, ongoing investigation - it's not what they were expecting to find, much as this wasn't what you were expecting to find when we started this, but it was on the up - so the only person I could have conceivably tipped off is you. So what I'm going to do now, is stand up, shake your hand, and thank you loudly for keeping the name of the bar out of the papers, and you're going to say what you usually say, which is that it isn't publication policy to disclose such things, and it's going to be very impersonal and all. And then when Mr. Baba in the second booth - don't look, Sho, have I taught you nothing - gets a phone call from a friend tonight, he can say that I seem as shaken up by this as everyone else." Sho nods slowly, and Jun shoots him a last friendly smile, before standing up and doing a small piece of theatre, in which Sho participates with bad grace.
Still, what's a little grift between friends?
+++
Jun sends Atsuko home at exactly eleven-thirty, which is when they formally close, though Kuro has never been in the habit of throwing out paying customers. Tonight, it's just a friend of Ohno's, a Miss Nishio, who throws back the last of her whisky a couple of minutes after closing, winks at him, and leaves, the bell on the door tingling. Jun turns down the lights, and starts counting out the register.
There's a low tinkle as someone opens the door, and Jun tenses, because despite everything, things could still go wrong.
"We're closed," he says. "I'm sorry, but we're only open later than eleven-thirty on Fridays and Saturdays."
"I know," says a very familiar voice, and Jun looks up to see Detective Aiba's colleague - bad cop - standing in the scant light coming in from the street.
He blinks, then breathes out, slowly. "You should probably lock that door behind you," he says, simply. "Just let me finish counting out the register, and I'll be right with you." The other man makes a non-committal noise, and Jun groans internally. He'd known that this was something personal; someone somewhere in the police department was on him like a particularly stubborn dog with a bone. Looks like he's found out who.
When he gets back from putting the day's take into the safe in the back office, the detective is sitting - in the bloody back booth - with a tumbler of whisky. Jun can't help himself; he grins at the audacity. Two can play that game, though.
"I see you served yourself," he says drily, reaching up to the bar shelf to pick up two fresh glasses, and hell, he thinks, he just got out of a holding cell. He picks up the 20 year old Yoichi.
"I was under the impression you were closed for business," the detective says. Jun is supposed to know his name, Sho had told him, but he can't recall it.
"We are," Jun says. "I hope you are here to pick up the things you left behind."
The detective tries to look nonplussed, but Jun is a semi-professional grifter, and anything less is not going to fool him. He sets the bottle and glasses down on the table, then lifts up a corner of the painting of a sailboat, fingers finding the wireless audio transmitter easily. He plucks it off the frame, holds it up to the light for a second - and then drops it in the other man's whisky glass.
"Hey," he says, indignantly, as the bug drowns with a small fizz of static, "I was drinking that."
"I know," Jun says, sadly. "There's no accounting for taste."
The other man looks up, surprised, as Jun slides into the booth opposite him, sliding a tumbler across the table, and pouring two fingers of the Yoichi for him, before doing the same for himself.
"Eeeh," the cop says after a bit. "I guess I do have something to celebrate."
"I believe we all do," Jun says, firmly, lifting his glass, until the detective finally lifts his own and clinks their glasses together.
The cop looks taken aback, then thoughtful, as he takes a sip of Jun's nicest whisky. Jun chalks up a mental point to himself.
"Not that members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department aren't always welcome, be it after hours," Jun goes on, "but I was under the impression that you didn't particularly care for me, Detective..." he trails off, somewhat pointedly, and the other man has the grace to look slightly shamefaced.
"It's Ninomiya," he says. "Detective Ninomiya Kazunari."
"Very well, then, Detective Ninomiya," Jun says. "Did you have something in particular to say?"
"Look, Matsumoto..." Ninomiya says, but then he trails off. He's staring at the drowned bug in his glass of cheap whisky, and then he looks up at the painting of the boat, then back at the bug.
Jun smirks and chalks up another point to himself.
"Now..." Detective Ninomiya starts slowly, "I don't understand the technical team half the time. But I could've sworn..."
Jun leans back and grins openly. "You should hire a countermeasures-specialist to throw them for a loop," he says. "You guys ought to have known that if I was truly getting the Yakuza in here, there'd be an exterminator."
"Yes, and we noticed that you found one bug yourself, but your exterminator missed this one," Ninomiya says.
Jun smirks. "Because the wireless router is right on the other side of this wall," he says. "It masked the wireless signal from this particular bug."
"And I could have sworn..." the detective goes on, still staring at the bug, and then up at the painting, "... that we didn't place a bug there."
Jun smiles, and drinks his whisky.
"The technician kept saying that the sound was very clear," Ninomiya says, after a while.
"Good to know," Jun says. "Tell your technicians that if they want their equipment back, they better retrieve it before Wednesday, or it'll be getting a trip down the toilet, when I really start looking for it."
"The only equipment we had left was that one," Ninomiya says, pointing at the dead bug in the whisky glass. Jun lifts an eyebrow and waits.
"You're talking about your apartment," the detective finally sighs. "Fine, I'll sign off on removal, just... stay out of the place, say, tomorrow afternoon."
"Be my pleasure," Jun says.
"One good turn deserves another," Ninomiya says. "But if I think you're up to something..."
"I'm just a barkeeper. What could I possibly be plotting?" Jun interrupts him.
"I don't know, Matsumoto, you tell me. There's an awful lot of traffic through this bar - I don't see that you have any violent offenders, but there's a lot of shady personalities hanging around, and I get the impression you're less caught in a web of intrigue than you are the spider at its centre." Ninomiya looks serious, and Jun makes an abrupt and probably stupid decision.
"Detective Ninomiya, to be honest, I do not think you're interested in me or my affairs. I think you were interested in me because I was someone you thought you could catch and turn. You work organized crime. I do not know if you will believe me, merely because I say it, but I am not a member of a criminal organization. I am a facilitator, occasionally, true, but I rarely do anything in here that breaks the law. I have criminal organizations come through here, I admit that, and perhaps doing nothing about that makes me a horrible person." Jun glances up at the painting, then down at Ninomiya's whisky glass, somewhat pointedly. "But I do not sit in here like a king on my throne masterminding nefarious plots."
There's a long silence, while Ninomiya looks at him evenly. Then he finally speaks. "Aiba maintains that you're not under our jurisdiction," he says. "I noticed that you did not declare yourself an innocent man, and facilitation can mean many things. You, in fact, facilitated the arrest of two major players in the Tokyo underworld last weekend, and assisted in uncovering a massive scheme of corruption within the Tokyo police. And I suspect you were the source of Mr. Sakurai's insider information on the subject, which probably means that you were his source for the Ishihara scandal as well."
"I will neither confirm nor deny that," Jun says immediately.
They sit in silence for a while, and then Ninomiya sighs, bringing a hand to his forehead and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Aiba truly believes that you are not malicious," he says. "I've learned to trust his instincts, but that does not mean you are a law-abiding citizen. If I catch you breaking the law, I will have to arrest you. In the meantime, Aiba suggested that I might encourage you to continue to facilitate weekends like the last one - though I'd thank you if they were few and far in between, since the paperwork for this kind of thing is massive."
Jun laughs. "I will take that under advisement, though I would thank you for removing the surveillance from Kuro, if you'd be so kind."
"That's already done," Ninomiya says.
"Then, Detective Ninomiya, I believe it is time for us to call it a night," Jun says softly, lifting his glass, and the detective clinks his own against it, both of them finishing their drinks.
The detective stands up, pulling on his coat and finding his hat and bag, the former of which Jun thinks is probably affectation - though he can always appreciate a good hat.
"Goodnight, Detective Ninomiya," Jun says, pouring himself another shot of the whisky - he's not going anywhere, after all.
"Good night, Mr. Matsumoto," Ninomiya replies. "And my friends call me Nino, you know."
Jun lifts an eyebrow. "I will be in touch, Detective Ninomiya," he says, excessively formally. The detective makes a face, but unlocks the front door and is gone in a moment.
Jun shakes his head, and gets up to lock the door.
+++
Part Three
Fandom: Arashi RPF
More details in Part one.
Go to: Part one || Part Two || Part Three
Den of Thieves: Part Two
Sho calls Jun the next afternoon to inform him that he'd gotten a visit from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police department, asking him what he'd been doing at Bar Kuro after closing.
"What did you tell them?" Jun asks, closing the door of his office behind him.
"The truth," Sho says, sounding amused. "That I'm writing a story about Ministry of Justice corruption and Police cover ups, that I'd gotten a tip involving the Hisagawas, and that I was there talking to you about a rumored meeting supposed to take place at Kuro later in the week between the Yakuza and a top government official."
"Great," Jun says. "I've always wanted the Tokyo Police to think I'm a criminal."
"Jun," Sho says, "You are a criminal."
"I steal from rich people. There's a difference."
There's a sigh, and Sho's quiet for a while. "Spin it any way you want, Jun. Whatever helps you sleep at night."
Jun breathes out through his nose and closes his eyes, reminding himself that he's not involved with Sho anymore. That means he doesn't have to have this argument unless he wants to. "When did they leave?" he asks instead.
"I called you as soon as I got confirmation they'd left the building. Better start watching what we say on the phone," Sho says.
Jun sighs. "Better close the bloody bar," he says and hangs up.
+++
Getting the police involved is a calculated risk they have to take. Ohno had offered to be the one raked over hot coals, but to Jun, who's already being watched closer than he'd like, that had seemed impractical. Better to use the fact that he's under scrutiny already, try to give them something to chew on in the hope that they'll leave him alone after, than put Ohno into the firing line when he wasn't anywhere close to it in the first place.
So Jun isn't surprised when he gets a ping from the corner store on his burn phone after hanging up on Sho. 'Good to know that this is the time it takes to get a warrant made,' he thinks to himself, and flips the light switch, watching as half the patrons leave in a mostly-orderly fashion. Atsuko is just putting the last of their glasses into the dishwasher as the detectives enter, and she manages to hit the start button discreetly enough that Jun mentally cheers for her. He knew there was a reason he keeps upping her salary to keep her on.
"Good afternoon," he says, watching as more policemen keep coming in through the doors. Goodness, he didn't realize he warranted what must be half the department.
The one in the lead is short and a little reedy, clearly used to being in charge. Jun has seen him before, but it's been a while since they had sufficient cause to come in here.
"We have a warrant to search the premises," he says authoritatively. "Please stop what you're doing and follow my colleague outside."
"Atsuko," Jun says, "I think this means you have the afternoon off. Unless you have any questions for her?"
The detective looks thoughtful, but finally shakes his head. "No, Matsumoto-san, but we would appreciate it if you were to answer a few questions."
"Of course," Jun replies politely. "May I see the warrant?"
The taller lead detective hands it over, and Jun inspects it. As he expected, it covers the bar and his apartment upstairs. "Very well," he says, mildly, and follows a police officer outside, where he's offered to wait in the back of a police car. The officer looks surprised when he accepts.
+++
There's nothing illegal to be found, either in the bar or the apartment, of course. Kuro is run on a handy profit margin, entirely legally, with the exception of some gray-area customer services provided, of course. And Jun isn't stupid, and doesn't spend to excess, even with his alternative income.
So he's not surprised that when the detectives turn up to interrogate him, three hours later, they look tired and frustrated.
"You seem awfully calm for the circumstances, Mr. Matsumoto," the smaller one says. Jun has figured out that he's the bad cop. They're in a conference room - not an interrogation room - in the local police station. Jun takes this to mean that they still hope to get him to talk if they're nice to him.
"An innocent man has nothing to fear," Jun replies. "Though if it would not be too much trouble, could you direct me to where I can request reimbursement for lost revenue on account of police investigation?"
The man blinks. "You seem awfully sure we didn't find anything," he says.
"Detective," Jun says, "this is not the first time the police have asked me questions in relation to some perceived risk of me breaking the law; I am a bar owner, after all. I am well aware of what you could have found and what you can't have, and therefore, intimidating me will not work. Additionally, I can't see that I have anything to gain from making your lives difficult, though I must confess to the hope that eventually you will realize that the reverse is also true." He shrugs.
There's a long silence while the detective stares at him, from where he's leaning against the wall opposite the door. The other one, the taller one, is sitting opposite Jun at the table in the middle of the room. Finally, the shorter one blows out a breath and shakes his head. He gestures with an arm at the man sitting opposite Jun - who has yet to say anything, but has been watching him steadily ever since they got here - and nods. "Aiba."
The taller detective - Aiba - nods back and smiles disarmingly at Jun. He must be the good cop, then.
"Mr. Matsumoto," he starts, "you have quite the clientele."
"I am aware of that, but they are all paying customers, and I have made sure they all know that anything illegal that I or my staff witness will be reported to the proper authorities."
Aiba smiles at him again. Jun has been interrogated before, but this is the weirdest technique he's ever experienced. "So we've heard. That's a respectable thing to do."
Jun doesn't reply. He's got nothing to say to that.
"Are you aware that some of your customers are members of the yakuza?" Aiba finally goes on, still smiling.
Jun sighs and braces himself for a long session.
+++
They finally tell him they have no further questions for him at seven-thirty. This is after Jun has reluctantly admitted that he's hosting a private gathering on Saturday for Shinya Hisagawa, though he professes not to know who else is coming, and flat out refuses to spy for the police, when the idea gets put to him.
In the end Aiba thanks him - still smiling - for his cooperation and assistance, kindly hands him a form from the restitution bureau, which closed at four, and tells him they'll be in touch. The grumpy one, who never even bothered to introduce himself, snorts at that.
The first thing Jun does is call Atsuko from his cell phone. "Mattsun!" she says, sounding relieved when she hears who it is. "I half thought they were going to arrest you for something!"
"I haven't done anything wrong," he protests.
"Well, it's not like the police have ever cared about that," she huffs, and Jun resolves to give her a raise this month. He hopes that whoever is assuredly monitoring this call got that one down, good and proper.
"Listen," he says, "I just got out of there, and who knows what state the place is in. I can't get out of the private party on Saturday, but I won't need you for that. I'm thinking about opening again on Monday."
Atsuko doesn't protest much, particularly after he promises to pay her full wage, despite the unexpected downtime.
The next thing he does is buy ingredients for dinner at the convenience store, go home, and then proceed to spill tomato sauce all over himself and his messenger bag. He should be given an acting award, he thinks, smirking, as he puts his clothes in the washing machine and empties the bag of his papers so he can soak it in the bathtub, muttering grumpily to himself the entire time. If they bugged his personal effects, the water will take care of that. He's pretty sure his flat is bugged, possibly wired for video, and manfully resists the temptation to search for the bugs.
He goes to bed at eleven, hoping he won't snore.
+++
The next morning, he goes downstairs to investigate the damage to his bar. They were as tidy downstairs as they were upstairs, he finds, though the place has obviously been very thoroughly searched. To his amusement, there is fingerprint dust on the glasses that they must have retrieved from the dishwasher, but he can tell they can't have found anything. He loads the tray again and starts the cycle, before moving on to the sitting area. The tables of each booth have been thoroughly fingerprinted and clearly inexpertly cleaned, as has the bar itself. The only place where there is the slightest trace of havoc is his office, where his papers are all askew and all over the place. He shakes his head and goes to find the main breaker for the house, flipping it, and casting the interior into darkness.
He's got work to do.
Thirty minutes later, after a thorough sweep with a gadget he's not supposed to have, he's located seven bugs and four video surveillance devices, all wireless. He picks the audio transmitter that he thinks was in the second most obvious location - under a decorative bottle on the glass rack above the bar, what do they take him for - and kindly relocates it to the back of a nice painting of a sail boat that Jun doesn't have the slightest idea where came from, which is hanging on the wall next to his office, directly above the back booth. He takes the most obvious bug - in a vase of plastic decorative flowers on one of the tables, really? - and crushes it under the sole of his shoe, while cursing the police.
He goes to the Lost and Found basket on his way to flip the power back on, and rummages a little before he finds an ancient - and anonymous - Sony Ericsson phone, slipping it into a pocket, before leaving the place.
He goes to the nearby Shinto shrine and calls Ohno to let him know they're on schedule as expected. After that, he goes to meet Shinya Hisagawa.
Hisagawa is understandably concerned that the police took Jun in for questioning, though not so much that he's willing to scrap the meeting, which had been Jun's main concern. Jun had been betting on the meeting being important enough that they'd risk it, and it's nice to get confirmation that he's right. He tells Hisagawa that he'd found one bug, and that he'll need an exterminator, and an untraceable phone.
Not that he's planning to use the phone, much, for this job, but in about a year, when everybody else has forgotten about it, it could come in handy.
The exterminator comes in on Friday, unfolds a bevy of gadgets and finds two more bugs Jun didn't find during his previous search. One of them is under the Glenfiddich, which to Jun is sacrilege.
However, he doesn't find the one behind the picture of the sailboat, on account of Jun's wireless router being on a shelf on the other side of the wall.
+++
If Jun didn't think things were strange before, he sure as hell thinks that they're hinky now.
There's been a car with plainclothes police in the parking lot of the Mini-Stop or the Laundromat opposite Bar Kuro for weeks now. Except there isn't one there today; on the one day he's all but shouted it out that something is going to go down. He hopes that it's actually a police plan, and not a matter of police corruption.
Mr. Hisagawa arrives first, and Jun settles him in the back booth, hoping like hell the cops are actually aware of the back entrance, which is a new thought for him. Ohno arrives later, with Mr. Takezaki in tow, and Jun really hopes this won't end with weapons drawn.
Ohno gives him a nervous glance when Jun serves them drinks, and Jun can tell he's thinking the same thing Jun is: 'this is really the stupidest plan we have ever come up with, isn't it?'
There's nothing to be done for it now, though. Jun's bar is full of criminals, the cops are listening in on a conversation that looks likely to be mostly about police corruption, and in the pocket of Ohno's coat, which he's draped over the back of the booth, is a phone with an open line to Sho.
Jun goes back behind the bar and starts to take orders from everyone who isn't Mr. Hisagawa or Mr. Takezaki.
For the next ninety minutes, Jun doesn't really know what's going on. He serves Mr. Hisagawa four cognacs, and tops up his coffee twice. Mr. Takezaki is drinking highballs, though he's not going through them very fast - Jun ends up freshening them up while the glass is still half full, several times.
He uses the opportunity to try to gauge Ohno's tension, and he isn't very happy when it climbs higher and higher with each pass he makes past the table. After about an hour, he realizes he's seeing something he's never seen before; Ohno is truly furious, but trying to mask it. He hasn't said much, but Jun can recognize a lot of the things Takezaki's advisers are saying as Ohno-inspired, so he probably doesn't have to.
On his fourth pass past the table, he hears snatches of conversation that make his blood run cold, and he can only imagine how poor Sho must be feeling, listening to this, since his unfortunate demise is being plotted at Jun's back table.
On his sixth pass past the table, he realizes why Ohno's tension is so high.
They're talking about women. To be more precise, they're talking about controlling and storing and getting rid of women; places the police won't look, services the police can expect in return. "We have a few boys, too," is the last thing he can hear Mr. Hisagawa say, as he walks numbly away with their empty glasses. "If any of the officers are..."
Fuck Mr. Silao and getting paid for this job. This one, Jun would have done for free.
+++
He's not exactly surprised when the police burst through both the front and the back doors at the same time. "Hands in the air!" someone shouts. "No sudden movements!"
It's the short detective - the bad cop. Sho had looked him up and discovered that he's some sort of a section leader in the organized crime division. His pal, Aiba, had transferred down from Chiba a couple of years ago, and taken a slightly lower position than he'd had up there, where he'd been a taskforce leader in vice. Also, policing is apparently the Aiba family trade, meaning that he's got connections up and down the hierarchy, according to Sho, who'd said something about Jun's fortune - he couldn't have had a better team listening in if he'd ordered them off a menu.
"Mr. Takezaki," Aiba says, and he's not smiling, now. "Mr. Hisagawa. You are under arrest."
"I..." says Mr. Takezaki, "I want my lawyer." His face looks purple with rage.
"I was under the impression your lawyer is the man sitting right next to you," Aiba says. "He's also under arrest. In fact, everyone in here is under arrest, until we can figure out who's who."
They spend the next two days in interrogation.
+++
They let him go on a Monday afternoon, probably after it becomes clear to them that they don't have anything on Jun. Jun's been kept in holding with his half of the accused, the Hisagawas, watching as the police try to sort out who is who, and who is guilty of what. He's spent his time mostly worrying about Ohno, even if he knows the other man's alias is impeccable, even if Ohno being taken in and singing like a bird after 'realizing' what he'd gotten himself involved in had all been a part of the plan. The only way to pull this off is to make it look like a legitimate police bust, though the way both Aiba and his grumpy colleague frown at Jun probably means that they've realized that this is not an entirely clean operation.
The first thing he does after they let him go is to take the train a few stops east, and use the station phones to call Mr. Silao, who confirms that Ohno has also been let go, just hours before Jun, though they'll be keeping their distance for the time being.
The second thing he does is go home and take a bath. He fills the tub with almost scalding water, and takes one of the most thorough showers of his life, feeling like he's not merely washing the two days in holding off, but the last two months, and all the associations he's had with the Yakuza lately.
He leaves the bathroom afterwards, skin steaming hot in the chill of his apartment, and if the Tokyo police are watching, they'll just have to learn how to cope. He eats parma ham straight from the pack, with slices of melon in between, and washes it down with a glass of white, before even putting on his clothes.
When he finally makes it downstairs, he's a little surprised to find that the place had opened for business on time, while he's been in the shower, and even more surprised when Atsuko hugs him fiercely as soon as she catches sight of him. He's got the usual smattering of customers for the time of day; a couple of ne'er-do-wells at the bar, the students here to take advantage of the happy hour and the free wireless, Mr. Baba at the back, ostensibly working on his research, though it's more likely that he's there to gather information for the Yakuza, and unusually, Sho, who has taken over the back booth, ironically enough.
"You know, the last people who sat there got arrested," Jun says, sitting down opposite him with a club soda for himself, and a refill of Sho's beer - the nice stuff, this time.
Sho snorts. "Don't bother me, I'm on a five PM deadline for edits," he says, but picks up two newspapers from the pile of materials he's got around him, scooting them across the table towards Jun.
Jun unfolds them and realizes immediately what he's looking at. The headline is enormous, the picture of Mr. Takezaki singularly unflattering, and he settles in and starts reading.
When he next looks up, he sees Sho looking at him, a contemplative look on his face, and for some reason, he feels slightly uneasy with it.
"What do you think?" Sho asks.
"I think you're very good at your job. I'm pretty sure I didn't know all of that," Jun answers honestly. Sho's done more with the limited information he and Ohno were working off than he'd have thought possible.
Sho shrugs. "I couldn't have done it without you," he says. Jun shoots a glance at the painting of a sailboat over his head, wondering if there's still a bug behind it, but hell, anything to get the cops off his back.
"I didn't realize this would..." Jun glances down at the paper to confirm that he remembers the words right, "'put a dent in the naive faith of all those who still believe in the fabric of society,'" he says, quoting Sho's own words back at him.
Sho smirks. "Massive, upper echelon police cover-ups of human trafficking will do that," he says. "I know it's not what we were expecting to find, though."
"Maaa," Jun sighs, "I was expecting a campaign fund scandal at worst. Maybe some bribes."
"It was the Yakuza, though," Sho says, simply. "Jun..."
"What?" Jun asks. He's regretting his decision to not put any whisky in his club soda for the time being.
"After all this, will you be okay?"
Jun sighs. "As long as I stand up in the next ten minutes or so, and make our goodbye appropriately formal."
Sho looks surprised. "What?"
"Nobody leaked anything, or tipped the police off. They got this through a legitimate, ongoing investigation - it's not what they were expecting to find, much as this wasn't what you were expecting to find when we started this, but it was on the up - so the only person I could have conceivably tipped off is you. So what I'm going to do now, is stand up, shake your hand, and thank you loudly for keeping the name of the bar out of the papers, and you're going to say what you usually say, which is that it isn't publication policy to disclose such things, and it's going to be very impersonal and all. And then when Mr. Baba in the second booth - don't look, Sho, have I taught you nothing - gets a phone call from a friend tonight, he can say that I seem as shaken up by this as everyone else." Sho nods slowly, and Jun shoots him a last friendly smile, before standing up and doing a small piece of theatre, in which Sho participates with bad grace.
Still, what's a little grift between friends?
+++
Jun sends Atsuko home at exactly eleven-thirty, which is when they formally close, though Kuro has never been in the habit of throwing out paying customers. Tonight, it's just a friend of Ohno's, a Miss Nishio, who throws back the last of her whisky a couple of minutes after closing, winks at him, and leaves, the bell on the door tingling. Jun turns down the lights, and starts counting out the register.
There's a low tinkle as someone opens the door, and Jun tenses, because despite everything, things could still go wrong.
"We're closed," he says. "I'm sorry, but we're only open later than eleven-thirty on Fridays and Saturdays."
"I know," says a very familiar voice, and Jun looks up to see Detective Aiba's colleague - bad cop - standing in the scant light coming in from the street.
He blinks, then breathes out, slowly. "You should probably lock that door behind you," he says, simply. "Just let me finish counting out the register, and I'll be right with you." The other man makes a non-committal noise, and Jun groans internally. He'd known that this was something personal; someone somewhere in the police department was on him like a particularly stubborn dog with a bone. Looks like he's found out who.
When he gets back from putting the day's take into the safe in the back office, the detective is sitting - in the bloody back booth - with a tumbler of whisky. Jun can't help himself; he grins at the audacity. Two can play that game, though.
"I see you served yourself," he says drily, reaching up to the bar shelf to pick up two fresh glasses, and hell, he thinks, he just got out of a holding cell. He picks up the 20 year old Yoichi.
"I was under the impression you were closed for business," the detective says. Jun is supposed to know his name, Sho had told him, but he can't recall it.
"We are," Jun says. "I hope you are here to pick up the things you left behind."
The detective tries to look nonplussed, but Jun is a semi-professional grifter, and anything less is not going to fool him. He sets the bottle and glasses down on the table, then lifts up a corner of the painting of a sailboat, fingers finding the wireless audio transmitter easily. He plucks it off the frame, holds it up to the light for a second - and then drops it in the other man's whisky glass.
"Hey," he says, indignantly, as the bug drowns with a small fizz of static, "I was drinking that."
"I know," Jun says, sadly. "There's no accounting for taste."
The other man looks up, surprised, as Jun slides into the booth opposite him, sliding a tumbler across the table, and pouring two fingers of the Yoichi for him, before doing the same for himself.
"Eeeh," the cop says after a bit. "I guess I do have something to celebrate."
"I believe we all do," Jun says, firmly, lifting his glass, until the detective finally lifts his own and clinks their glasses together.
The cop looks taken aback, then thoughtful, as he takes a sip of Jun's nicest whisky. Jun chalks up a mental point to himself.
"Not that members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department aren't always welcome, be it after hours," Jun goes on, "but I was under the impression that you didn't particularly care for me, Detective..." he trails off, somewhat pointedly, and the other man has the grace to look slightly shamefaced.
"It's Ninomiya," he says. "Detective Ninomiya Kazunari."
"Very well, then, Detective Ninomiya," Jun says. "Did you have something in particular to say?"
"Look, Matsumoto..." Ninomiya says, but then he trails off. He's staring at the drowned bug in his glass of cheap whisky, and then he looks up at the painting of the boat, then back at the bug.
Jun smirks and chalks up another point to himself.
"Now..." Detective Ninomiya starts slowly, "I don't understand the technical team half the time. But I could've sworn..."
Jun leans back and grins openly. "You should hire a countermeasures-specialist to throw them for a loop," he says. "You guys ought to have known that if I was truly getting the Yakuza in here, there'd be an exterminator."
"Yes, and we noticed that you found one bug yourself, but your exterminator missed this one," Ninomiya says.
Jun smirks. "Because the wireless router is right on the other side of this wall," he says. "It masked the wireless signal from this particular bug."
"And I could have sworn..." the detective goes on, still staring at the bug, and then up at the painting, "... that we didn't place a bug there."
Jun smiles, and drinks his whisky.
"The technician kept saying that the sound was very clear," Ninomiya says, after a while.
"Good to know," Jun says. "Tell your technicians that if they want their equipment back, they better retrieve it before Wednesday, or it'll be getting a trip down the toilet, when I really start looking for it."
"The only equipment we had left was that one," Ninomiya says, pointing at the dead bug in the whisky glass. Jun lifts an eyebrow and waits.
"You're talking about your apartment," the detective finally sighs. "Fine, I'll sign off on removal, just... stay out of the place, say, tomorrow afternoon."
"Be my pleasure," Jun says.
"One good turn deserves another," Ninomiya says. "But if I think you're up to something..."
"I'm just a barkeeper. What could I possibly be plotting?" Jun interrupts him.
"I don't know, Matsumoto, you tell me. There's an awful lot of traffic through this bar - I don't see that you have any violent offenders, but there's a lot of shady personalities hanging around, and I get the impression you're less caught in a web of intrigue than you are the spider at its centre." Ninomiya looks serious, and Jun makes an abrupt and probably stupid decision.
"Detective Ninomiya, to be honest, I do not think you're interested in me or my affairs. I think you were interested in me because I was someone you thought you could catch and turn. You work organized crime. I do not know if you will believe me, merely because I say it, but I am not a member of a criminal organization. I am a facilitator, occasionally, true, but I rarely do anything in here that breaks the law. I have criminal organizations come through here, I admit that, and perhaps doing nothing about that makes me a horrible person." Jun glances up at the painting, then down at Ninomiya's whisky glass, somewhat pointedly. "But I do not sit in here like a king on my throne masterminding nefarious plots."
There's a long silence, while Ninomiya looks at him evenly. Then he finally speaks. "Aiba maintains that you're not under our jurisdiction," he says. "I noticed that you did not declare yourself an innocent man, and facilitation can mean many things. You, in fact, facilitated the arrest of two major players in the Tokyo underworld last weekend, and assisted in uncovering a massive scheme of corruption within the Tokyo police. And I suspect you were the source of Mr. Sakurai's insider information on the subject, which probably means that you were his source for the Ishihara scandal as well."
"I will neither confirm nor deny that," Jun says immediately.
They sit in silence for a while, and then Ninomiya sighs, bringing a hand to his forehead and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Aiba truly believes that you are not malicious," he says. "I've learned to trust his instincts, but that does not mean you are a law-abiding citizen. If I catch you breaking the law, I will have to arrest you. In the meantime, Aiba suggested that I might encourage you to continue to facilitate weekends like the last one - though I'd thank you if they were few and far in between, since the paperwork for this kind of thing is massive."
Jun laughs. "I will take that under advisement, though I would thank you for removing the surveillance from Kuro, if you'd be so kind."
"That's already done," Ninomiya says.
"Then, Detective Ninomiya, I believe it is time for us to call it a night," Jun says softly, lifting his glass, and the detective clinks his own against it, both of them finishing their drinks.
The detective stands up, pulling on his coat and finding his hat and bag, the former of which Jun thinks is probably affectation - though he can always appreciate a good hat.
"Goodnight, Detective Ninomiya," Jun says, pouring himself another shot of the whisky - he's not going anywhere, after all.
"Good night, Mr. Matsumoto," Ninomiya replies. "And my friends call me Nino, you know."
Jun lifts an eyebrow. "I will be in touch, Detective Ninomiya," he says, excessively formally. The detective makes a face, but unlocks the front door and is gone in a moment.
Jun shakes his head, and gets up to lock the door.
+++
Part Three