Tennoji, South Osaka City.
The building was surrounded by police cars when Detective A.Kurokawa arrived. His assistant, Ryuha, stood waiting; outside the Karaoke bar, “You’re late.”
“Sorry. Traffic. So, what do we have here?”
“Two Yakuza, dead.”
She led him up the narrow stairs to the main reception. There policemen were talking to the bar’s owner. The establishment was dark and dingy. Its walls, when not plastered with pop-culture memorabilia, was a dull grey. Kurokawa went and introduced himself to the owner. Takeshi Fukasaku was a round-faced man who’s eyes had dwindled in the bar’s perpetual twilight, “I just heard two bangs. Close together. Then a car screech off into the distance.”
At the crime scene Ryuha filled him in, “The car was apprehended fifteen minutes ago. The driver was one of the dead men’s girlfriends called Hikaru. She is a South gang girl.”
“Hmmm… get away driver?”
The room itself was guarded by five policemen and a cardboard cut out of former Sumo wrestler Wakanohana. The room was small with a green carpet, red sofas and a black and white table. One man lay on his back on the table. The other was slumped against the far wall under an open window. Both wore black gloves, “Who are they?”
“The man on the table is Koji Murakawa, 38, of the South gang. The blue haired guy under the window is Kinji Tsurata, 37, of the North gang.”
“So, Koji was on home turf with his gal waiting out back. What went wrong?”
“Yes. Both have execution style gunshot wounds to the head.”
“Sounds like Russian…”
“Yeah. Apparently Russian guards used to force their prisoners to play it. Also, did you know all the numbers on an roulette wheel add up to 666? The number of the beast?”
“I didn’t. What guns do we have?”
“A Nagant revolver and two Mateba Autorevolvers. All had been fired.”
“Who uses two Matebas?”
“Togusa? Here’s the trick though; both were killed by Nagant bullets.”
“Murder and suicide.”
“Funny thing is that they usually decided disputes by extreme urban Frisbee.”
“No, wait, the two shots could not have been fired in succession. And the getaway driver would’ve waited longer.”
“Domestic? Ultimatum?”
“Maybe. But, Fukasaku isn’t telling the whole truth. There must have been a pause. It is human nature to pause before taking your own life.”
“Do you want me to beat Takeshi?”
“No, who else is in here?”
“Some salarymen, two Frenchmen called Jerome Collier and Blaise Pascal, plus two Americans, a Johnny Ace and his girl Erin R. Dregh.”
Kurokawa took a last look at the room. All three guns lay discarded between the two coprses. His mind drifted back to a case in 1993 and to Malcolm X. Men like him played Russian roulette as a game. Many had died. Some ended with Darwin awards. But, none had been faked. One last question occurred to him, “What happened to the Mateba bullets?”
“None found, sir.”
He had it!