On the street. Morning.
The sun cracks behind me like a sleepy eye too long for dreaming, and casts my shadow forward, a long stretch of darkness I'm running towards, but whose end I can never seem to reach.
I'm fueled on adrenaline and rage, and I've gone feral: my nose sniffs out the rhythmic splats of life left behind by my fleeing quarry. Red blood. Black asphalt. A breadcrumb trail through a forest of concrete and steel.
But Sumo's no Ninja, no silent stalker fading into the shadows. He's a wounded bull, with no China shops to run to here.
Life begins to wake with the day, people rising and going to work. Little Tokyo, outpost of the rising sun. It's an amalgam of eastern patterns bolted on to western skeletons, bringing an exotic respectability to an otherwise dingy environment.
I do my best to conceal my pursuit, trying to appear as just another schmo late for work, or a date, or a vendetta. But New York is what it is, and a gaijin speeding down the street in a leather jacket, frothing at the mouth with anger, raises nary an eyebrow. But it's the eyes I worry about, which are connected to the mouths, which might connect themselves to a phone, and from there the police. Or worse. I had to find Sumo, and quickly. Surprisingly, it's the eyes that tell me where to go.
If you want to keep yourself out of someone's business, you turn shy. You become ignorant. When that business is yours, but you want to conceal it, you can't help but become slightly proactive. Like, say, three Asian guys wearing obvious gang colors and forming a little arm-folded human fence in front of a tenement doorway, and doing their best to look casual, their eyes intentionally looking everywhere but at me.
As far as I can tell, my birthday wasn't yesterday. And since I wasn't born yesterday, today must be just like any other day. And these days, any other day means a bad one. Figured I might as well get an early start.
I make like I'm just going to jog right on past Larry, Moe and Curly at the door, but I stop short, making a face like a dough-eyed tourist: "Excuse me, but have you seen a fat and shot man pass by here?"
The bluntness of the question catches all three off-guard, and Moe in the middle starts trying to say something, but his mouth can't seem to keep pace with his brain. It looks like a badly dubbed Kung-Fu movie. Always liked those. But I'm not laughing when Larry on the left moves to pull something from his waistband. I wag my finger at him: "Now now, if your big friend is running from me, just think what I can do to you. You've got three seconds to decide whether the rest of your life goes on out there," I motion to the rest of the bright world behind me, "or ends here on this doorstep." I think I actually see the sparks of rational thinking flicker behind the three sets of eyes.
There's a long pause as we stand there, and I look from face to face and, for a second, I'm thinking I can walk right on past. So I do. But as I reach the top of the four steps to the door I hear the scuff of one of the Stooges turning on his heel and I duck fast, a karate punch swishing through the air where my head was, cracking solidly into the hard metal front door. I hear his knuckles shatter. I spin in my crouch, note that Curly is nursing his ruined hand, and that Larry and Moe are moving to take their own swings. I keep my right foot flat on the landing, and grab the railing to my right. Using the railing to pull my body into a spin I sweep out with my left leg, the hard toe of my shoe catching Moe in the side of his knee, snapping it in a direction not advised in the Human Body Users Manual.
That leaves Larry, now fumbling for whatever he had hidden away in his pants. I give him a heartbeat or two to make the final choice he ever will. Finally, with a look of vicious triumph on his face, he pulls out a switchblade. I just look at him while his friends moan in agony beside him.
"When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way, huh Larry? Don't you know not to bring a knife to a gunfight?" I don't wait for an answer. Neither does the bullet as it plants a red badge of dead across his chest. I stand, looking down at the would-be WarDogs as they moan along with the throbbing of their wounds: "Bad doggies. Stay. I head inside.
As I shut the metal door firmly behind me, I make sure to bolt and lock it tight. Wouldn't do to have reenforcements or the police jump me that easily. I turn, and have to gape slightly.
If a portion of a Japanese palace could have been beamed like so much Spock from the old country to here, that's what the place looked like: lush red carpeting, golden statues of mythical beasts, and ancient urns depicting stories of lost glory. It looked like a museum; a showcase of a noble and ancient culture. But it was too showy, too outlandish; a white-wash over sour mold. Someone was trying to legitimize himself. I had a feeling I knew who it might be, too.
I knew that Sumo was not the Big Boss: a bag man shaking down old ladies is not exactly management material. But, he's most likely having to explain his failure to the head Dragon himself right now. And head Dragons like to be able to look out upon their grand domain. The building had four floors. Top o' the world, Momma-san.
I find the elevator almost instantly: gilded brass, open and inviting. Had a bad experience with elevators once. I duck inside, hit the button for the fourth floor, then duck back out again. The doors close and I'm loping towards the carpeted staircase at the end of the lobby, gun raised, checking corners. I might have hit it just right, and maybe it's too early for the goon squad to be out in force. But as I get up the first flight of stairs, I hear the muffled chime of the elevator hitting the top floor, and the following sprays of automatic fire. I make a silent prayer of thanks that I wasn't a fish in that particular barrel.
I move like SWAT up the stairs, through floor 2, which looks like a private, more extravagant version of Mamma-san's restaurant. Chez Yakuza. I pad upward to floor 3, and the smells I find there tell me of opium, gun oil, and money. Ideas of arson dance in my head once this is all over. It's as I ascend towards floor 4 that I start to get nervous. I hadn't seen anyone in this building yet, which meant they were all waiting for me. I stop. I take a gamble.
Heading back to the elevator, I hit the button to call it down, and in a moment it dings hello. I greet the opening doors with a quick scan of my gun barrel. The back wall could have won a swiss cheese competition, but otherwise it's empty. I step in. I hit button 4. I make another prayer.
I duck low and to the side of the car as it dings for the top floor, and I'm gratified to see two leather-clad backs facing me as the doors open, their guns aimed toward the staircase I almost came up. I jump forward, the adrenaline thrusting through my nervous system, and the world takes on football slow-mo. I aim casually, kicking four shell casings out of the 9mm to fall like a spring drizzle to the soft carpet. Each goon gets a double-tap to their heads, and I'm getting back on my feet as their brains are added to the decor of this pagoda of pain. I turn and, as usual, there the long hallway, terminating in a large pair of thick wooden doors, sporting ceremonial carvings of mountain sides and dragons. The mountain parts, and out hobbles Sumo.
He's shirtless, revealing a torso more muscle than fat. The ankle has been bandaged, and his right hand is roughly wrapped in white cloth, a smear of red oozing larger as I look at it. But whatever happed to his hand didn't matter next to the stock of the M-60 it held aloft. My body dove before my brain registered that I had to move, and tufts of red carpet kicked into the air as the line of heavy caliber rounds cut a line in the floor where I had just been standing. My leap had been rough, and so was my landing, banging my shoulder against a wooden statue adorned with full Samurai armor. I scoot to put the ancient steel between me and the doomsday gun, reloading one gun and filling my hand with the other. I take a breath. Sumo roars behind me like an angry god. I hear the clack of the gun being leveled. I move.
I plant my feet and push back, tipping the statue forward and giving Sumo something to focus his fire on for the split-second I need. I roll towards the middle of the hall as the Samurai erupts in a shower of sparks and ricochets. I feel a hot pain in my arm. I ignore it. I snap my torso around and aim at Sumo as I land, over-extending my back but bringing my aim true and straight. I open up the whoop-ass like a present on Christmas Day. Three rounds strike the M-60, turning it into not much else than a steel club. The other three rounds find Sumo's bicep, shoulder and neck. He falls to his knees, the gun clattering softly onto the lush carpet. He grasps at the neck wound, blood spouting impressively from what can only be a ripped artery. For a second, he looks like a macabre Buddha, bald and large and serene, seeing his destiny as clearly as epiphany, as dark as sin.
I shuffle to him, finally acknowledging the pain in my shoulder and feeling something warm and wet running down the sleeve of my jacket. Sumo stares up at me, and tries to speak but all that comes out is a gurgling sound. I stand there for a minute, as we bleed together. His face is losing its color, he'll bleed out eventually. I raise a muzzle to stare at his skull, think better of it, and plant a round through each of his knees. He screams wetly, curling into a ball on the floor. I picture Momma-san in the same position, back at the restaurant. Let him suffer. Life is suffering. And then you die.
I walk past the blubbering Sumo towards those big, dark doors. I fire through them, to make whoever might be in there to seek cover and give me another few seconds to assess the situation. The warmth along my arm is increasing, my vision getting blurry. I press onward. I open the gateway to the Dragon. He's there, sitting calmly at his desk: Gucci suit, primped and preened like a Grand Master and just as deadly. I know who he is.
When Alex and I started on the Valkyr case, one of our first leads gave us a whiff towards Little Tokyo, and the local crimelords there. Alex had heard rumors that Valkyr was an opium derivative, whose recipe was similar to drugs coming from overseas. The lead never panned out though, and not long after we caught on to Lupino's gang. But the one guy who was at the top of the list until then was the Dragon I was staring down now: Abraham "The Emperor" Hirohito. His father loved America so much after immigrating, he named his son after one of our better Presidents. Harvard educated, Abraham had inherited his family's shipping business and made a killing. I guess he graduated to Yakuza boss along the way.
I noticed the little guillotine, and the severed pinky that was its victim, sitting on the corner of the desk. Guess Sumo paid double for his failure at the restaurant. I raise my gun.
"This was a detour I wasn't looking for Emperor, but there's a little old lady's ghost looking for some payback, and I mean to deliver it. Have anything catchy to say before I...." I trail off, my eyes lolling slightly in dizziness, and then regaining focus. I see something else laying on the desk, and my vision is green: not from envy, but from something that fills a small vial. A vile vial. Valkyr. "That such a horrid thing could bear such an anciently noble title. Valkyr indeed." Emperor picked up the object of my revulsion, turning it over in his hand. It took me a second to get it straight in my head what I was seeing, because I could have sworn there was an explosion or two...or three...or five...back in my past that had meant the end of Valkyr production.
"You're Max Payne, aren't you? I had heard you were put away. I suppose I must revise my information." He got up. My muzzle followed, but he moved as though he didn't have a care in the world. "Oh, don't act so bullish Mr. Payne. You won't kill me. Not yet at least. You're too curious about where the Valkyr came from. Yes, I know of your exploits. Interesting attempt at becoming the city's number one drug lord, systematically murdering all of your associates and competitors. For that, I am impressed." He crossed over to a cabinet, opened it, and placed the vial with its brothers in a chemistry-set test-tube holder. Closing the cabinet, the Emperor turned back to me looking, of course, imperious. Enough with this super-villain bullshit.
I fire twice, cutting Dishonest Abe's ankles out from under him. He goes down like all the big ones do: hard. The imperiousness was gone and I loomed over him, reaching down to pull him up by his collar. My spittle peppers his face as I bark through gritted teeth: "You're wrong, Emperor. I am going to kill you. But you're not going to die any time soon."
I yank off his shoes, and grab the little guillotine from the desk.
Let's play...This...Little...Piggy....
* * * *
part 11 coming soon (promise!)