Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 18:53:28 -0000
From: Ben Erikson <benerikson17@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Japanese Garden Episode 2

The Bergman Files No.2: The Japanese Garden

A story by Ben Erikson

Episode 2

I shifted uneasily on the large double bed and lay a second, shrouded in
the fading dust of some god-awful dream; an antique sword slicing atoms out
of the air, chopped heads rolling into a suitcase stuffed with $50 notes
and Toru creeping into my bed and bursting into tears.  I held my breath
and tried to sense the movement in the far corner of the room. For an
instant, just one instant, I didn't know whether I felt gratitude or envy,
lust or disappointment or just plain irritation at the disturbance. Already
I could not recall my dream, would never know its end. I followed, eyes
closed, breathing held, the silent steps I sensed were coming close. Awake
three seconds now, I had begun to string some things together. I had, if
truth be told, forgotten just how delicate in movement James could be and
still, even as he voiced my name, still expected, wished and dreaded Toru
in his stead.

"Mike" he whispered. "Sorry, man. I had to come. You know."

I knew.

We'd been lovers for a year and managed to stay friends when things fell
through.  I'd met him back in New York, back when he was still plain old
James Michelot. I was working Vice and teaching self-defense and, when I
could, was training with Suzuki, one of only a dozen or so he ever
taught. His Paris-born father worked diplomatic cover at the UN and I'd got
to know him through an FBI contact, got to pump him for information on a
couple of Iranian students fresh from the Sorbonne who the NYPD had tripped
over on a routine drugs bust. Turned out they were whizz-kid scientists;
were shopping for biological shit on behalf of the Ayatollah. There was
some heroin connection in there somewhere too. Heavy shit. Normally I
didn't care for spies, the political side of things but Oliver Michelot was
open, friendly, cultured and not at all concerned with pretending that his
UN post was anything but a convenient fiction.

I got to meet his family, the Japanese-American wife his strict, rich
Catholic parents had denounced him for; their son, an 8-year old with dark
eyes, pretty face, by name of James, his mother's choice. We'd kept in
touch. At 14, James, already a judo black belt, his school and area
under-16 champion, was a regular pain-in-the-ass know-it-all. Already
calling himself James Osawa to piss off his dad although it didn't become a
legal thing till a few years later, after Oliver had died; dropped dead at
Charles De Gaulle International, a brain haemorrhage, apparantly.  Anyway,
he had sent James to my class and for the next 7 years I taught him on and
off, strictly on a ready-to-know basis, same as Suzuki used with me. If he
was ready for some new move, new way of storing breathe, whatever, I'd show
him. If not, there was no trick, no plea, no favour that could get me to
divulge. This drove him crazy. It made him reckless, brought us close and
later, closer still. Then busted us apart. At 17 he was my boyfriend. I was
39. Maybe I was the crazy one.

"How's Toru?" I said, keeping my voice down.

"Fine, Mike. Just fine. He's asleep, tired out. Nice kid. Sweet."

I didn't want to think about that, what it might have meant. So I didn't.

When I'd got the call from Tedai's man, that Saturday night, it was James I
thought of. Who else would I ask? I'd spent till 3.00am talking on the
phone to him. Listening, mostly. Getting the background on Tedai, on the
criminal gangs in Little Tokyo, on what such a man might want with me. I'd
made some provisional arrangements back then, that night; told James he
should expect a call that afternoon, that I might need to set up a
meet. Might even need my back watching for a while. I think I said
that. Yeah. I guess I had some vague idea, even then, even before the limo,
before George, before the house (it was unbelievable, did I say that?);
before Tedai, before the paranoia and the fear. And definitely before
Toru. Even then, just jawing on the phone at 3.00am, the way you do, my
former lover, student, my friend; even then I had a familiar feeling down
my neck that told me this would need some careful moves, would need someone
like James, maybe, to watch my back. I'd texed to him the details of our
meet amidst the debris of the burgers, fries and Coke.

**********************************

James had slid in beside me under the duvet. He turned on his side and
watched my face, concentrating hard. Most of all I wanted to sleep but it
was a year since I'd seen him naked, had felt his body by my side; a year
since we had got back together on a whim and fucked each other stupid one
sticky August night. So now I was responding, getting hard myself in synch
to the mental sex he beamed my way. That and his hand caressing my stomach,
moving slowly down and round.

"Not bad shape for an old man" he said.

This was an old joke between us. He'd called me an old man when he was 14,
before we'd even gotten much involved. I'd had one of my 12-year-old
students take him over a few times in the gym, as gently as he could, as a
first step to knocking some of the cockiness out of him. He pumped me some
more but quickly let go, moving his hand to my face and rubbing little
circles round my temple with a tenderness that brought back a sudden memory
from that August night last year. He was a sweet kid himself and I was
grateful for his friendship. For his help as well. He'd driven us away from
the campus last night - he'd been an anthopology major at UCLA for two
years now - and not stopped till we reached Venice, just off Washington
Boulevard, in fact, the Osawa family home. His mother was visiting
relatives in Hiroshima, of all places; would not be back till the New Year.

"I could suck your dick till dawn. You know that, Mike?"

I sighed deeply and resigned myself to the sweet inevitable. James reached
down again and tugged at my pubic hair, using his thumb to bring me up
again. Slowly, he buried himself under the duvet and reached his mouth
towards my erection.

"You weren't there."

A small, indignant voice, still sleepy, still half involved in some fading,
dusty dream.

"I woke up and you weren't there."

Toru.

He moved towards the bed, naked from the waist down, with only a thin LA
Raiders T-shirt I'd picked out for him for warmth. His complaint was
addressed to James - he seemed quite oblivious to my presence - and I
wondered just how cosy they had got in so short time; what one had to do to
put an 8-year-old at ease and why it was I couldn't do it. He stood at the
side of the bed, James' side, and played unthinkingly with the end of his
own stubby little penis. James had raised himself up from underneath the
duvet and I heard him groan quietly in frustration. Eventually, he lifted
up the duvet, invitingly. Toru hesitated and when he finally moved, he
didn't get right in or snuggle up or anything but backed onto the bed and
placed his round little backside onto the cool sheets, the crook of James'
elbow and just sat there.

"What are you doing?" he asked sweetly.

"Go on, you get in the middle. Make a sandwich." James inclined his head
towards me and Toru glanced over, expressionless. He didn't say anything
but scooted across James' body and turned towards him, blanking me out of
the picture.

"Your thingy's very big." he said to no-one in particular and was snoring
loud within seconds.

James and I lay as still as we could. Let Toru turn and settle, turn and
settle. Snore. He was well away again.

"Want to watch?" I said. "You used to love that."

I lifted the duvet carefully over my cock and watched James watching me as
I gently pumped and brought myself to a small climax, the semen shooting
once towards my navel. Toru had twisted round towards me, seeming deep in
sleep.

There was a long silence.

"That's a neat trick". Toru's voice was matter-of-fact as if it were a card
trick he'd just seen. He was looking at me eye-to-eye, was suddenly awake
and then, just as suddenly, asleep again.

James and I lay there not moving, silently daring each other to but not
daring. Eventually, I relaxed and snuggled a bit towards Toru, his snores.

"Oops." James this time. I caught his eye; the light, the humour. He smiled
that smile.

"I just did a neat trick all over Toru's rear end."

*******************************

I'd risen at 6.00am and left the two of them snoring happily at each
other. I spent the next hour stretching and working on some basic
exercises, Chi Kung stuff, Sil Lum Tao, that kind of thing. I tried
emptying my mind but the image of the Tedai house kept coming
back. Unbelievable. I let my subconscious work slowly on what was really
troubling me - exactly what it was that happened in three days time, two
days now and what to do with Toru in the meantime.

Last night he had asked me:

"Whe're we going tomorrow?"

As if yesterday's paranoid criss-crossing of LA was some kind of
sightseeing trip. I suppose for him it was. I'd wanted to keep it light,
make a game of it; maybe I'd succeeded more than I realised. Probably it
hadn't been necessary but from what I'd learned about Tedai and his friends
I wasn't about to take any chances. My strong preference was to stay put,
lie low here till we made our move. I really couldn't see any reason why
not. It was only two days after all.

James, overhearing, had bounced in with:

"Where would you like to go, tiger?"

which wasn't exactly helpful. Toru had turned sulky and I'd given Jimmy O a
not-so-playful kick in the shin when he passed me on the way to the
bathroom. James, it seemed, wanted to set up some sort of blissful domestic
menage-a-trois, with little Toru as the...well, as the what exactly I
hadn't yet worked out, but knowing James...in any case, this was something
I wanted to play down from now on. I pictured those antique swords again,
the damage they could do.

They were chasing each other now. Round the breakfast table, James trying
to get Toru to take a shower, Toru, still half-naked, fleeing him
happily. Eventually he let himself be caught. James swept him up in his
arms and carried him like a baby.

"Somewhere in this house" he said "is the old bamboo cane my grandfather
used to beat me with." He was hamming it up a bit but could have been
serious, to an 8-year-old.

"Now where is it? Or maybe I'll just spank your rear end...what you think,
Mike?"

"Put him down" I said.

"Yes, put me down. You touch me and I'll get my father to chop you into
pieces and throw you in the river. To the crocodiles."

James stopped short.

"Crocodiles? In the LA river? I don't think so, kid."

"Yes there are. I've seen them!"

For a moment James really gave it some thought, after all there were always
those stories of creatures escaping into the sewers, that kind of thing.

"Hey, Mike. Are there crocodiles in the LA river?"

He was already half-way up the stairs, hadn't put Toru down at all, was
cuddling him quite tight. The kid seemed happy enough. When they reached
the top he placed the boy down carefully, gave his bare bottom a
not-really-serious slap and steered him towards the bathroom and the
shower. I left them to it.

**************************

Early afternoon, I'd sent James out for groceries; to get some air, calm
down. I wanted to talk to Toru, get it straight with him that we weren't
going anywhere, not for a day or so. I hoped somehow to get a bit closer to
him, find out what he was thinking. Shouldn't be that hard; after all, I
was supposed to be the detective. He was sitting cross-legged, watching
cartoons on TV; half watching, half alert to James' return, what fun they
might have next.

"Listen, Toru."

He didn't move, or only slightly, to lean forward in concentration. Not to
me; to the screen. The cat and mouse stuff playing hard for laughs.

"We might have to stay here a couple of days, you know that?"

He didn't answer, then did, with the briefest of nods.

"You remember what your grandfather said?"

No answer this time, a closer scutiny of the antics on TV.

"About doing whatever I told you to?"

Eventually he nodded. Could have been yes, could have been no.

"Well...so long as you realise that..." I hadn't really thought this out
that well and felt myself losing it mid-sentence. My eyes flicked over the
screen; Jerry slicing Tom with neat, bloodless efficiency, an antique sword
between his little paws. I wondered vaguely if I'd seen this one
before. Must have somewhere along the line. Way back when I was Toru's
age. A long lifetime ago.

Then James came back, sooner than I'd anticipated and the moment, whatever
kind of moment it was, it could have been, was lost. Toru was already on
his feet.

"What'you get?" he called, heading for the door.

James appeared empty handed except for the folded newspaper.

"I ...er...forgot my wallet. I only had change."

He handed me the paper, that day's second edition and gestured meaningfully
with his eyes.

"You dumb asshole!" Toru being the spoilt brat.

"Right you!" said James, grabbing the boy and pulling him through the door.

"I really will teach you a lesson now!"

They were back at their game from this morning, all the way
upstairs. Again, I left them to it.

The front page headline, the breaking news, said it all:

"Slaughter in Little Tokyo."

There was a sub-heading about the likelihood of gangland involvement and
three more paragraphs with pictures on page 5, some LAPD speculation and
that was that. I bagan thinking hard, knowing now just how completely Tedai
had fooled us all. He'd told me yesterday that what he planned would happen
in three days time. According to the paper it went down about the time that
James came to my bed last night. Was probably just finishing as Toru slept
between us.

Twelve; that was the shocking thing. After the first annoyance at being
suckered like that; suckered by the old man's sudden vehemence:

"Not your concern!" he'd said. Well, it damn well was my concern now.

Twelve. Twelve corpses, all mashed-up with machine-gun fire. Lots of it.

Ketchup. Lots of that.

I hid the paper so that Toru couldn't get his little paws on it. It was
James I needed to talk to now. We were suddenly in the middle of what could
become an escalating, tit-for-tat, gang war and Toru might not be so far
down the list of targets. It was understood. I was beginning to understand
one or two things myself. I wondered briefly if Toru's dad was one of the
twelve.

*******************************


"Shut up, the pair of you. James, just drive. Toru, I don't want to hear
another word. Just one more and I'll put you across my knee right here and,
believe me, I don't care who sees."

"Asshole!"

I shot him a glance which silenced him for about two and a half seconds but
decided to let it go.

"You're in big trouble, man. I'm telling my grandfather on you - both of
you. You're in big, big trouble now."

Poor kid, he didn't know the half of it. As it turned out, I didn't know
the half of it either.

I'd gone upstairs to let them know what I'd decided and to lay down the law
a bit about their increasingly out-of-control games.  I found them in the
main bedroom. James sat on the bed with Toru sprawled across his lap, his
new trousers and underwear round his knees. He was telling James to let him
go, non-too-politely - I noticed that he managed to get in the word
"motherfucker" about a dozen times in thirty seconds. James raised his hand
again and brought it down quite hard on the boy's bare, up-turned backside,
gave him four or five more in quick succession. Perhaps he caught my eye,
my mood, but he rolled Toru off onto the bed and left him to fiddle with
his clothes, get decent again. Wipe the tears which had started down his
reddened face.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Mike, this kid has been asking for it all morning. I'm not having him
throw things at me - not these things." He gestured to the floor where a
number of small china ornaments, family things, were strewn around. None of
them were broken but I guess that wasn't the point.

"A word"

I gestured to James to come into the small bedroom next door. I glanced
back towards Toru, on the bed, hugging his knees, his face all screwed
up. Screwed up. Yeah.

"I hate you!" he called behind us.

"You stay there" I said, unnecesarily.

"I'm sorry, Mike but I just lost it. You heard him, he's a spoilt little
bas..."

"OK. I know. Leave it. Everythings changed, you realise that?"

"Are you going?"

"I've just talked to Tedai."

"You've what?"

Before I'd left the Tedai mansion on Sunday, he'd given me a mobile phone
number, told me to call him, that I'd know when. He was right. I knew. Knew
now, anyway. I found myself working on the breathing again just punching in
the numbers. Tedai had been calm and attentive. To his credit his first
concern was for Toru, his welfare. His instructions were clear and when I
argued he didn't raise his voice or anything, just explained his logic to
me in patient, reasonable terms. He expected the police at any moment,
already had his team of lawyers with him. He gave me a number to call them
on, their own downtown office which, as it turned out, was a spit away from
my own. Discreet though; I'd never heard of them and, believe me, I'd heard
of most of them.

I'd bundled our things together, Toru's clothes, my flight-bag, a lifeline
in case things turned really nasty. I'd fished out my own car keys from in
there. Tedai wanted us back at Beverly Hills. I'd argued that we were safer
here, unknown, keeping out of sight but he'd given that mirthless laugh of
his and assured me that there'd be no problem. I'd wanted to ask about
Toru's dad but it wasn't, strictly speaking, my business and something told
me I'd be better off not knowing. I told him there were a couple of things
I had to do first and that we wouldn't be there till the evening, maybe
later.

***********************

Toru was still angry after his spanking and James was sulking almost as
much. I seemed to have this effect on people. They both of them only perked
up a little when I started giving out directions for the airport but it
wasn't what they were thinking. I had decided that both of them could just
do as they were told from now on. It flashed across my mind that I'd had to
spank James a couple of times just like that when he was not much older
than Toru, that he had, in effect been copying me, trying to replicate with
Toru the relationship we'd enjoyed those years ago. Peas in a pod, I
thought, that's the trouble with these two; both of them spoilt little
brats. Both in need of some discipline...

I let my mind drift a little as James drove on and I glanced at Toru beside
me in the back. I reached over, almost without thinking and stroked his
head lightly.

"You OK?"

He said nothing, just shrugged me away and pouted the same way James would
have done. God help me but I actually laughed out loud. You learn in this
business to get what laughs you can along the way and this was the last one
I was going to enjoy for a while. Of course, I didn't know that then,
sitting in the back of a beat up old Ford with little Toru. Had no idea. So
I just laughed, enjoyed it while I could, gave myself up to the moment out
of time, between two breaths. Whilst we all still had breath to breathe.

To be continued...