An unidentified man sits in a Tokyo hotel room thinking about his former friend, Raphael, who now seeks to avenge the betrayal that resulted in his arrest. As the danger escalates Raphael’s past is fully revealed. Can the man that betrayed him survive the wrath of the dangerous predator he helped to create?
...
Hitman, Retrograde.
Part One.
The first look I get at him is outside Shibuya Station. Raphael.
The Tokyo commuter rush hour swells as I look out of the hotel window. Throngs of suited salary men. Fashionable youngsters self consciously strutting along in carefully chosen ensembles. A woman in a kimono and wooden geta sandals with a miniscule cell phone held delicately against her ear. A sumo wrestler, his black hair pulled back in a chonmage, bulky physique skilfully balanced on a bicycle as he winds through the crowds.
Raphael isn’t his real name of course. It’s the name he gave himself. His naked declaration of entitlement to things he never was or ever could be. This man spent the last free years of his life carving up bodies in the grey dawn glow of Queens and it appealed to him to make the only thing he could do into an art form. Unbelievable. But that’s people for you.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on Raphael. A lot of people who end up doing this used to be normal once. Raphael was never normal. He is undoubtedly disturbed and psychopathic. Combine that with his subzero IQ and what chance did he ever really have? Me? I’m completely normal. I know that for a fact. Not psychopathic. Not innately prone to violence. There’s a theory out there that psychopaths occupy all the top positions of power; CEOs, doctors, politicians, military leaders. On that basis if you hold to Darwinism there’s a trickle down effect. If the main criteria for success in the modern world are detachment, narcissism and shallow emotions what could be more natural than for the population as a whole to aspire to the models that generate success.
I wouldn’t know. The one word summary on my final school report card read “unexceptional”. In these days it might be a less politically correct thing to say but it was accurate. It still is.
Raphael stands by the bronze statue of Hachiko; the faithful dog. Hachiko belonged to a Japanese professor and every day the dog accompanied his master to the station and awaited his return at night. One day the professor died while he was at work and for the next ten years the dog continued to wait at the station. Hachiko is long gone but the bronze statue of him is an epicentre of activity outside Shibuya Station; locals and tourists hum around it. Meeting, parting and having their picture taken.
I got word of Raphael waiting here every day and took a hotel room opposite the statue. In his mind there’s probably some symbolic reason for choosing a place like this rather than seeking me out in Kabukicho. He stands alone in the crowd, shoulder to shoulder with German students and American couples. Laughing school children and tired workers crane their necks for the first welcome sight of an anticipated friend. This ever shifting human kaleidoscope by its very nature never notices the only fixed points in its midst. Points, plural, because whether he knows it or not Raphael isn’t alone.
About ten feet away from him is a tall blonde woman. She’s kitted out like a tourist, wearing a denim khaki suit and carrying a backpack and camera. She keeps pointing the camera at the bronze statue of the faithful Hachiko. No one in the ever shifting crowd around her observes that she isn’t looking at the statue her camera is pointed at. No, her gaze is fixed on Raphael.
I doubt this blonde woman knows my friend by the name of Raphael. More likely it’s the less exotic one he was convicted under, Michael Miller. The press gave him a few lurid names of their own, “bathtub butcher” was the one that seemed to stick.
In a world without corruption, without egos and careers Raphael would still be in an American penitentiary but his conviction was very quietly overturned a few months ago. Raphael might be responsible for over fifty deaths but as far as the powers that be are concerned he’s a small fish. Raphael is the tool that was used, directed by another hand. In law enforcement they say you need to cut off the head to kill the beast. In normal circumstances that’s impossible to do. In this case all they had to do was set Raphael free and follow him as he closed in like a cadaver dog with a nose full of decay.
I can feel his gaze through the crowd and hot pacific air. I’m not a particularly sensitive person but pure, undiluted hatred has a unique intensity. I know what those eyes look like up close. Two black tunnels boring back into the nightmare that is his depraved mind. I’ve sometimes wondered what it must be like, for someone’s last earthly vision to be those eyes. I may well find out one of these days. I can hear someone in the room next to mine talking to themselves, it can’t be a conversation; there’s only one voice, few pauses.
So then it’s here in the humid haze, neon and crush of a Tokyo night that Raphael, the bathtub butcher of Queens, hopes to get his revenge. It’s here that this young federal agent hopes to use the bait to bring out the big game. And me? I am an unexceptional man. A void waiting to be filled with whatever falls into place.
Part Two.
Twilight falls and Raphael disappears. I don’t see him go but it doesn’t worry me. The agent doesn’t take his Houdini act so well. She spins around in the crowd and mutters a few words to herself as she searches the happy faces around her. No prizes for guessing what those words might be. She looks up at the window she’s watched Raphael watch all evening. Something about that look. Something fearless. Lack of fear is a trait she shares with my psychopathic friend Raphael. In a sudden decisive surge she starts pushing through the people, heading for my hotel. She’s working on the idea, reasonably enough, that wherever Raphael is going now, ultimately he’s going to close in on me. After all that’s what got him this far; that mental energy propelled him thousands of miles, by the look of him, on little other than scraps of food and short, sporadic periods of rest.
I move into the bathroom, cramped even by Tokyo standards. I don’t need space. All I have with me is one suitcase with a change of clothes and some other things I think I’m going to need. Leaning on the sink I scan my face in the mirror, strike through the pale irises to the elapine threads of thought twisting below the blank surface.
If the life of Michael Miller had worked out a little differently he’d be called a serial killer and not a hitman. It’s not up to me to debate whether it’s better or worse the way it went. Raphael was set loose on bad debtors, people about to talk who would have better remained silent or whose actions went against people more powerful than them. Would it have been more acceptable to this agent if he’d simply prowled around the perimeters of his home town picking off as many random people as he could until his inevitable arrest? If Michael Miller hadn’t become a hitman the prison psychiatrist would have written “disorganized offender” next to “serial killer”. That lack of control, the ferociousness he can turn on like a light switch is incredibly useful to someone who can apply it to real problems.
You don’t get much more of a Darwinian advantage than being willing to wipe someone off the face of the earth if it advances your interests. That’s why an organization’s leader is drawn to think about people like Raphael. Someone who doesn’t just have the stomach to kill, someone who loves to kill. Out of the tiny fraction of the population with the ability to do what Raphael does the majority would choose not to. On the underworld side of business that ability is tantamount to a Harvard Doctorate. All the head of the organization has to do is make the threats and when necessary set the monsters loose. That works fine as long as you can control the monsters and there came a time when Raphael could no longer be controlled.
Is Raphael a monster? I don’t think even the young man himself would deny that one.
There’s a loud hammering at the door and a breathless announcement of “FBI, open up”. I hoist the mirror down from the wall and prop it up on the sink side, reflective surface facing the tiles. It forms a small triangle of space between the mirror and the wall.
The rules are clear. Never kill a civilian or law enforcement agent. It causes too much chaos for the organization. I’ve been told already that this is no exception. The guy talking to himself next door, I can tell now that it’s a guy, is really working himself up.
Part Three.
I open the door and let the agent in. She kicks the door shut after her and disarms me. She’s very clear about what she thinks is happening next. Her partner is tailing Raphael, (so that’s where he went), when her retrograde hitman comes here to kill me they’ll be taking us both into custody. So far it’s as I expected but the adrenaline is still starting to rise up in me as the pieces fall into place. In the end it’s all going to come down to a very small moment. I leave it twenty minutes before I speak.
“Raphael won’t come here if he’s being tailed by your partner. He’ll get rid of him first. When he does come there’s a good chance he’ll kill us both.”
“I’ve already calculated that risk and taken steps to contain it. We’ll be transporting you back to the States once-”
“Once Raphael arrives and gives himself up and the situation is contained.”
The agent falters slightly. The focus and certainty in the brown eyes flinches, “that’s correct.”
“And then you hope he’ll lead you up the ladder, right to the head of the beast. You can realise now, or leave it until he gets here, that Raphael never met anyone further up the chain than me.”
“But you have.”
I smile slightly and look out of the window. Black sky peppered with multicoloured artificial lights. Not long now. “All you and your partner will take back with you is Raphael’s dead body and if his aim didn’t go moldy in an American jail cell possibly mine too.”
“Why sit up here and wait for him then?”
“It needs to end somewhere, this is as good as anywhere else. Whatever the case you won’t be going back to the U.S with a net full of the nation’s most wanted. But I’m curious.”
“What about?”
“Did you ever think about how many people that boy could have killed on the way here? Setting him loose doesn’t seem very compatible with justice, honor and protecting the vulnerable but perhaps I don’t know much about that.”
“We were watching him.”
“Like you did at the statue?”
Her pale face flushes red, “that was Eric’s fault.”
“You’re very quick to pass the blame to your partner. I’ve heard the phrase “no honor amongst thieves”, seems like it’s not much different with law makers.”
“Eric is a colleague, not a friend. I don’t use my work as a way to make friends.”
“Well, you’ve got me there.”
My stomach clenches tight and a cold shadow slips over my skin, “he’s here.”
“How do you know?”
“You’ve seen the pictures of what he did, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you can’t feel anything when he’s coming?”
The agent changes her position to cover both me and the door, an almost imperceptible tremor in her hands. The man in the next room is practically screaming, making the agent’s voice when she speaks seem far away, “there was something about those pictures.”
“What?” I’m surprised at the level of my own voice. The agent looks unnerved by my outburst but that’s the least of her problems right now.
“I examined all the cases, all the pictures of his crime scenes. There’s a lot of murders he wasn’t charged with when he was caught, we didn’t have enough for a jury, but we, I, can see the same MO in each one and the signatures too. Signatures are things that aren’t necessary to commit the crime, things the killer does perhaps even without knowing it and they show who he is, why he needs to do the things he does. Things like posing a body or using props.”
I put one hand up against the side of my head, “Jesus, I wish that guy next door would shut up.”
“What guy?”
“You mean you can’t hear it?”
She presses on, impatient, “the signatures were the same in each murder of Miller’s. We had no reason to suspect there were two killers involved in the murders, there was nothing Miller couldn’t have done alone, but then I noticed-”
My mind clears completely and time slows down, allowing me to focus on each moment. It’s as though I’m watching this happen to someone else. I’m relaxed and calm. In a way I’m looking forward to it. In a way I’m looking forward to him.
“-with there being so many cases to compare it became more distinct every time, to me it’s as clear as if I’m seeing two people rather than one.”
A barrage of kicks on the fragile material of the hotel room door breaks it open. Raphael stands in the halo of the battered frame; emaciated, hollow eye sockets wreathed in dark shadows. If you like emotion, if you value it, then poor, furious Raphael is brimming over with it. He once stabbed a man sixty-four times, that they could count anyway. Yes, Raphael is a real emotional kind of guy.
Part Four.
The agent tries to move in on Raphael but he’s faster than her. I always thought of him being a kid with a Beretta instead of a bike. He backs us into the bathroom covering both of us with the one gun. The agent looks at him with wide, fascinated eyes. The three of us stand there with a deathly silence hanging over and around us like heavy clouds. I wait for him to speak first, he’s probably been planning this ever since the stitch up that got him arrested.
“It’s been a few years,” he says finally.
“Six,” I reply quietly.
“Feel bad about it? Do you feel bad about throwing me to these pigs?” He points the gun at the agent standing on the other side of the small bathroom. It’s so cramped we’re all close enough to touch.
I take a moment to think about it, I owe him an honest answer if nothing else, “not really.”
The last block of loathing falls into place in his eyes. Avenging betrayal brought Raphael here. Being betrayed enraged him. The fact that he was simply disposable had never occurred to him. Disposable to the organization, disposable to me. Somewhere inside him the last tiny vestige of a line between right and wrong is totally destroyed. He levels the gun at the agent’s head.
“If she dies it makes trouble for the organization, trouble that they’ll see as your fault. If I kill her here, in your hotel room I know you’ll have to run for the very short time that you have left to live. I think I’d rather do that than kill you myself although I may give you some interesting modifications to up the entertainment value before you go. I want you to be killed by the people closest to you, wiped out and forgotten by them.”
A little glimmer of something like comfort seeps into his face, “that’s all I want.”
The sound of the suppressed gunshot reverberates around the bathroom. The agent makes a strange sound as she looks down over her blood spattered clothes. Then she looks up at Raphael, horror struck, I don’t know if she’s ever seen a gun shot wound somewhere other than in one of her pictures before. It takes him a few more moments than her to understand what just happened.
Raphael tries to speak and a fresh surge of blood pours from the wound in his neck. He turns from the agent to me and sees the gun in my hand, fished from behind the mirror I’d leaned against the wall. He swerves towards me and I put another shot in his shoulder. He drops his gun and it’s not difficult now for me to get hold of him, drag him over to the bathtub and push him down into it. He’s rasping and gurgling, trying to get his last words out. His eyes desperately seek mine, looking for what, I have no idea. I take a towel from the rack and wrap it around his head. Using one hand to grip the towel I press the gun against it with the other. Then the noise is back, the screaming is back, but it’s not from the room next door this time. I turn my head, the screaming is coming from the woman in the blood soaked khaki suit.
Part Five.
Federal Agent Eric Harrison is running back towards Shibuya Station in the first hints of morning light when he sees his partner. She’s walking towards him slowly, looking around at the people passing her. When he reaches her he sees that her expression is blank. He considers the possibility that she’s been drugged but he sees no recognizable signs of that nor any injury. He puts her listless condition down to shock. She’s not wearing the khaki suit she had on when he left her the previous night. Instead she’s wearing a suit, a man’s suit judging by how sloppily it fits her slim body.
If Eric Harrison had turned towards the street at that moment he would have seen a man stare at them intently from the window of a taxi cab heading north to Shinjuku. But Eric Harrison never turns around. The cab slides by and the man inside closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the sticky fake leather seat covering. He puts one hand up against the cool window and feels rather than sees the vast metropolis of Tokyo hum into life as the day begins. Already the crash of Kabukicho’s colors and crowds, bars, brothels and police sirens sends a small thrill through his outstretched palm.