My Yakuza

was “Iron Hand,” and Shiro guessed that since Kono was gay, that it was more than likely a gay bar. The hint was obvious—this would be a good place to terminate the target. The address of the bar said Eighteenth Street in Manhattan. The bar just might be the answer to the problem.
It was doubtful that the Yakuza would follow Shiro into a gay bar where they would stick out. Even if they did, the music would be loud and he could talk to Kono in secret. He decided that was the best course of action. In preparation for going there, Shiro needed to retrieve the handgun and keep it near him. But first, he needed sleep above all things.
* * * *
The next morning Shiro woke up around nine o’clock, got out of bed and took a quick shower. Standing in the kitchen with just a towel around his waist, he found everything necessary to make coffee and put a pot on. He was quintessentially a Westerner in that he needed coffee in the morning. As the coffee brewed, he threw two pieces of bread into the toaster and that was his breakfast.
He counted the money that he had received from Chizu along with what he’d been given in Japan and found he had a little over four hundred dollars. The Yakuza evidently thought that was more than enough for Shiro to do the job and get back on the plane to Japan.
Shiro decided to venture out on the streets and try and determine if anyone was looking for him. He went down and out of the building and walked to the corner. It took him a moment to adjust to the craziness of the city. Stores and cafes seemed to be squeezed into tight spaces next to each other. At the corner, he hailed a cab. Once inside, he gave the address of the location of the gun that was intended for his use. He reached the location, which turned out to be a pawn shop, and the ticket now made sense.
He entered the shop and looked back out the windows to see if he could spot anyone watching. When he felt it was safe, he approached a three-inch thick plate of bullet-resistant glass that had a bank teller type sill at the bottom. He rang the bell and a little old man of Japanese descent came out.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
Shiro slid the ticket into the metal sill where the shopkeeper took it and read the number. He went to the back of his shop and brought out a small gym bag and opened the locked door at the side.
“Here, this is for you. I have no idea what’s inside, you understand?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
“Good. Now go…”
With that the door closed and the man disappeared into the rear of his shop, leaving Shiro alone. He walked out of the store, kitty-corner into a vintage clothing shop. The windows were filled with garishly clad mannequins, so he couldn’t be seen from the outside. The smell of used things got to him. His mom adored second-hand clothes. He did not. Siono had a knack for finding brilliant stuff, though. God… as much as his mom sometimes infuriated him, their lives, their stories were entwined. He zipped open the bag. Inside, he found a case and in that a nine-millimetre Glock with two clips of hollow-point ammo.
He didn’t know much about guns, but his best friend back in Oahu was a gun fanatic and had even spent time in juvie for carrying a loaded weapon. Shiro knew a hollow-point bullet meant serious business. He zipped the bag back up and left the shop once again looking around when he hit the street. Everything was Greek. Every corner boasted a Greek café. Even the cleaners seemed to be a Greek establishment. A sign in the middle of the block read Astoria. He wondered if that was the name of the area. Seeing no one that even resembled an Asian male or female, he went into a local café that advertised tasty-looking frappes in icy glasses.
He took a table by a huge, open window. It felt good to feel the fresh air and the throbbing in his chest began to, once again, ease. The waitress was bossy, asking him if he’d tried the Greek coffee drink before.
“It’s strong,” she warned.
”Strong is good.”
“It’s very strong.”
“I like strong.”
He was starting to feel paranoid. Was she trying to give him a code word for something? He blinked at her, weighing his response.
“Anything else?”
Boy, she was intimidating. He scanned the menu. Normally he loved grilled calamari steaks, but he couldn’t even think of eating fish after seeing the live, skewered creature back in Tokyo.
He settled for an early lunch of chicken kabobs. He had food back at the apartment, but it depressed him there. The waitress brought him the frappe. It looked good, in a long, narrow glass with a spoon poking over the edge. Within seconds, black coffee materialised at the bottom of the glass, the rest a kind of foamy, creamy mass. He took a sip and it took a few seconds to taste the liquid. He was shocked at how strong it was. She watched him, a smug expression on her face. She seemed to soften, inexplicably and suggested he keep beating the coffee with the spoon as he drank. He did. He didn’t think he’d ever order another frappe. He longed for a Hawaiian iced tea. He longed, badly, for his whole life. How calm, how full it had been with his studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
There, the toughest thing he’d had to get through was reams and reams of material on wet tarot farming. For three weeks, he’d laboured over the mind-numbing data his college professor had given him. Only thirteen students had chosen the course Shiro had and most of them struggled too, until Shiro’s grandma mentioned one day that tarot farming was the root