Масахико Симада - Death by Choice

“I didn’t have a chance to test this thing,” said Kita, shifting his aim to the Boston bag and putting his finger on the trigger.

The doctor put his hands in the air. “It doesn’t have a silencer,” he argued lamely. “There’ll be a big bang that’ll bring the police running. Don’t do it.”

OK, thought Kita, I’ll use that dense loaf of black Russian bread for silencing it. He pulled out the bread and held it to the end of the gun.

“You’re really going to kill him, Kita? Wow! You’re going to kill a killer! Don’t do it. OK, I tried to stop you. I give up.”

“Fine. Killers need to get a taste of what it’s like to be on the receiving end.”

The doctor was kneeling on the ground, his mouth half open, gazing at Kita.

“How does it feel, eh?”

The doctor didn’t answer, but simply gazed out to sea. He may have been betting on Kita not pulling the trigger, and simply waiting to see which way things went. Or he may have been recalling a previous experience like this.

“Got any final words?”

The doctor seemed to have grown tired of kneeling, for he sank to the ground and crossed his legs. Then he drew a breath in through his nose, closed his eyes, and began to chuckle.

“Come on, then, shoot. I’ve already killed you, so now it’s your turn.” He sounded utterly calm – his voice didn’t so much as quiver.

“I’m not dead yet.”

“I may be the first to die, but you were the first to get killed. Do you know a guy called George Markov? He was a Bulgarian exile who was assassinated with the tip of an umbrella used as a bacterial syringe. He died twenty-four hours after his thigh was injected by the umbrella tip at a railway station. Well, you’ve got a germ called purulent streptococcus in your bloodstream. You’re going to die of septicaemia like Markov did. You’re as good as dead, see. But there’s a way to save you. There’s still time.”

“I don’t believe this talk about germs. I bet that was just Vitamin C you injected me with. If you want to save yourself you’d better come clean.”

“You’re the one who needs to save yourself. Mind you, I can understand why you’re not inclined to trust doctors. We could be friends, you and me. We’re in the same boat.”

“What? You’re saying you want to die too?”

“I just have a vague yearning to die. Just like all the others out there, except you.”

“I have the same yearning, you know.”

“But you’re being impelled by something you can’t control, aren’t you? There’s nothing like that in my case. That’s why I go on living like this. But I’m beginning to change my mind because of you. I’d like you to hang around. Just in case you happen to decide not to die, if nothing else.”

Shinobu tugged at Kita’s sleeve. “What’s this freak going on about?” she said, glaring at the doctor with undisguised disgust.

“Oh well, I’ll just have to kidnap him too,” Kita announced. Shinobu shrieked in horror. She had still been planning on continuing her one-on-one date with Kita. The doctor seemed to concur with Kita’s plan, however, for he held out his heavy Boston bag. Kita put his pistol into it, handed Shinobu the carrier bag containing the caviar, vodka and bread, and together they set off to hail a taxi. The doctor followed a few paces behind, avoiding treading on their shadows.

“Let’s take the taxi straight to my hotel and pick up my rented car,” he said. “After that you can go wherever the fancy takes you.”

They took the doctor’s suggestion, and all three piled into the rented car. The first thing Kita did was accept an injection of the antidote, which brought to a halt the proliferation of the streptococcus in his system.

Kita couldn’t detect any recent physical change. If anything, he felt better than usual. Perhaps that “streptococcus” really had been vitamin C, he thought. They decided to head back to Tokyo. The doctor drove, while Shinobu and Kita sat in the back seat, taking it in turns to doze. They enjoyed a round of Russian-style vodka toasts celebrating the success of the abduction, with the caviar and black bread as side dish. Still, it was a little difficult to decide who was the abductor and who the victim at this point. The TV news had claimed that the kidnapper’s identity was still unknown, and there was much talk of desperate fears for the safety of the victim. What liars the media were!

“What it comes down to, Kita, is that you’ve kidnapped me and a killer.” Shinobu was toying with the pistol, shifting it from hand to hand to feel its weight, in a way that made both the killer and Kita nervous. In this situation, whoever held the pistol got to be the kidnapper. As for the assassin, he could only be seen as having blown it big-time – far from kidnapping the kidnapper, he’d actually saved the life of the man he should have murdered.

“Don’t let that thing off in here,” he said. “The bullet will ricochet and could hit anyone.” He was a cautious man. She only had to start feeling a bit high from the vodka and she could get very trigger-happy, he thought. Even Shinobu, who had no desire to die, could just idly pull the trigger the way she might flip the ‘on’ switch on the karaoke mike. If the bullet hit the driver in the back of the head, the car would crash and in seconds the three of them would be caviar-smeared corpses. She was the last person who should be holding the gun.

Kita felt the same way, and the stress of it kept him awake and alert till dawn. He could feel a pleasant tingling sensation in his thighs. He wouldn’t mind if he dropped dead the next minute right there on the highway, he thought, and with this the tingle grew. The car could burst apart, his guts could be ripped open and his bones pulverized, but it seemed to him he wouldn’t register any pain. The only sensation that would remain would be this tingle in his thighs.

“Go faster!” he ordered, though the speedometer was already registering eighty miles an hour.

“You suddenly remembered an urgent appointment, or something?”

“Do people feel a tingling when they’re about to die?”

“I’ve no idea.” The doctor was concentrating on driving, now ten miles an hour faster. Actually, Kita thought, your whole body feels kind of tingly when you’re driving at high speeds like this. It was the same when you jumped from someplace high. Speed and falling… both were natural associates of death.

Kita had a sudden urge to experiment. He asked Shinobu to press the mouth of the pistol against his temple. The tingle in his thighs responded slightly to the touch of the barrel, warm from Shinobu’s hands.

“Put your finger on the trigger.”

“This is dangerous.”

“Go on, just do it.”

Shinobu’s pale finger slipped through the ring that circled the trigger. The tingling sensation spread from his thighs up his back, then spread slowly to between his legs. This must be the pleasant feeling that accompanies death, he thought. Eureka!

“Dr Killer, you ought to write a paper on this. Do some research on the link between death and tingling.”

“You really feel it that much, huh?”

“You bet I do.”

“You’re bringing me out in a cold sweat,” said Shinobu, slipping the Makarov back into the carrier bag.

Only twenty-four hours remained until the decreed time of Kita’s death.

As they passed the “Tokyo Thirty Miles” sign, Kita recalled the face of Yashiro, the first to have leapt out of the Pandora’s box. Suddenly he was filled with hatred for this man who’d dogged his footsteps this past week, meddled continually, and tried to buy his life. The nausea in his belly wasn’t all due to the caviar and vodka, he thought. Yashiro was also to blame. OK, he decided, he’d follow the yakuza rule. It was payback time.