Two Poisons

Helena’s disappearance did something to me. If I had known what had happened to her, it would have been better. Not knowing was agonizing.

I needed to learn more about Tadamasa Goto, how much power he had, who his allies and his enemies were. Shibata’s passing away was a big blow to me, Sekiguchi’s even bigger.

Here’s what I had gathered about Goto:

He had spearheaded the Yamaguchi-gumi infiltration of Tokyo and owned more than a hundred front companies. His personal wealth was estimated at more than half a billion dollars. At one time, he was even the largest single shareholder of Japan Airlines.

His claim to infamy was alledgedly ordering a hit on the esteemed Japanese film director Juzo Itami in May 1992. Itami had directed a film called Minbo no onna, which, unlike all previous yakuza films in Japan, portrayed the yakuza as money-grubbing, ill-mannered louts, not noble outlaws. Goto was not pleased with the film and especially disturbed by the implications that yakuza did not live up to their threats. On May 22, five members of his organization attacked Itami in the parking lot in front of his house, slashing his left cheek and his neck, inflicting serious injuries upon him.

Itami became a vocal supporter of the new anti–organized crime laws the Japanese government put in place that year and a general pain in the ass to organized crime. He was a living symbol of what the yakuza really did, not what they pretended to do. He allegedly killed himself a few years later by jumping from a tall building.

I collected hundreds of pages of material on the Goto-gumi. I used every trick I had learned while working for the Yomiuri. I had to make some moral compromises to get them, but I needed to know my enemy. What became very useful to me was a top secret report that the National Police Agency, with the aid of police organizations all over Japan, compiled about Tadamasa Goto and his organization in 2001. A very valuable source gave it to me in exchange for services rendered.

The report also noted that another characteristic of his organization was “intimidation of the mass media,” also stating that “using the organization name (and powers), members will seriously and relentlessly threaten whoever is responsible for unfavorable coverage.”

Suffice it to say, by 2006, even before I had hooked up with Shibata, I suspected that not only Goto but three other of his associates had received liver transplants at UCLA.

Shibata’s giving me Mio’s name was huge, but in a way, the person who helped me the most was Tadamasa Goto himself. Goto’s methods of keeping order within his organization had made enemies in his inner circle. The NPA report described his method of keeping control in vivid detail:

Because of Goto’s ruthless techniques, one of his soldiers, who had been forced to cripple a friend, approached me. He didn’t like me very much, but he hated Goto more. He wasn’t my only source in the organization, but he was the most reliable.

In November 2006, we had a meeting very far from Tokyo, and he told me something that took me completely off guard. Goto had been able to enter the United States because the FBI had let him in.

The FBI.

He gave me the approximate dates, and he told me the name of the person who had arranged it: Jim Moynihan, the legal attaché (de facto FBI representative) at the U.S. Embassy in Japan.

I knew Jim. He was a friend and a mentor. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew it was true. And now I understood why Goto wouldn’t like it if I wrote that story: he’d sold his friends out to get clearance to enter the United States. It was a pretty clear-cut deal. He’d given authorities the names of some of the key gang bosses, documents, and lists of front companies, and even pointed them toward the financial institutions the Yamaguchi-gumi was using to launder money in the United States. Even in the mild-mannered world of the yakuza, ratting out your comrades would not be taken well. In fact, it’s the kind of thing that could get you expelled from the organization or even killed.

In December 2006, I had dinner with Jim and asked him, as politely as I could over some cold Guinness, why the hell he would make a deal with that man.

Jim told me as much as he could. It made sense. He didn’t give me all the details, but he gave me enough. On the record.

However, the critical piece of data came in the summer of 2007, when a detective, downloading porn on his computer at the Kitazawa Police Department, accidentally leaked onto a file-sharing network WINNY, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s entire file on Tadamasa Goto. All the major Japanese newspapers reported on the leak. I immediately downloaded the files.

It was an information orgasm. It listed all his flight records, the names of most of his mistresses (at least nine of the fifteen), and other useful information. Now I knew the dates when he’d gone to UCLA for surgery and who’d accompanied him. There were other interesting tidbits in the files as well. One of his listed mistresses was a famous film actress. That was, of course, picked up and reported by the Japanese press, which loves celebrity gossip. What wasn’t reported was that in the list of front companies was Burning Productions, Japan’s largest and most powerful talent agency. Goto’s control over Burning Productions was a valuable tool in his surpression of unfavorable reporting. Any television station that crossed Goto risked being denied access to Japan’s top actresses, singers, and entertainers. This also meant that almost every newspaper affiliated with a television network, which is common in Japan, could also be indirectly threatened. Entertainment programming revenue beats news revenue every time.

In that gigabyte of data there were many things that confirmed what I had long suspected. After speaking with a source in the U.S. Justice Department and sources in the Japanese police and underworld, I was able to put it all together.

In January or February 2001, Goto’s doctors at Showa University told him that if he did not get a liver transplant soon, he would die. Goto had hepatitis C and a heart condition and was a very unlikely candidate for a liver transplant in Japan.

In April 2001, Goto approached the FBI via Hoshi Hitoshi, the former “fixer” for Nobusuke Kishi, with deep connections to the LDP. (Mr. Kishi had served twice as prime minister of Japan. Kishi’s grandson, Shinzo Abe, became prime minister in September 2006.) Kishi relayed Goto’s offer.

The FBI wanted the names of important yakuza because Japan’s National Police Agency refused to share that information with it, due to “privacy issues.” This effectively made it impossible for the FBI to monitor yakuza activity in the United States.

Goto promised to give the FBI (and possibly another intelligence agency) a comprehensive list of Yamaguchi-gumi members, related front companies and financial institutions, and information on North Korean activities.

In exchange for that information, Goto wanted a visa to the United States so he could get a liver transplant at UCLA.^1* Goto had set up the UCLA deal on his own, there’s no doubt about that. The visa came when the FBI pressured U.S. Immigration and Customs to grant him one, which it reluctantly did.

If I had been Jim, I would have taken the deal. The intelligence potential was huge. The FBI wasn’t giving him a liver, it was just giving him a key to the door. UCLA did the rest. According to Manabu Miyazaki, a journalist, apologist for the yakuza, and close friend of Goto’s, in addition to the yakuza-related intelligence, the FBI was especially interested in the information Goto had on North Korea. It was at a time when North Korea had been implicated in making high-quality counterfeit U.S. currency, and this was also of great interest to the United States. Goto had always had tight connections to North Korea, which allegedly supplied him with drugs, guns, and money.

The surgery took place on July 5. However, Goto gave the FBI only a fraction of the information he had promised. Once he had his liver, he hopped back on a plane to Japan and never spoke to the FBI again. There were no records of Goto returning to Japan.

For the FBI, “the operation” was not a singular success.

For Goto, the operation was a tremendous success. Goto returned to Japan before the end of the year, no longer with jaundiced eyes but healthier than ever.

At the annual Yamaguchi-gumi New Year’s party that year, Goto was in perfect health. He was, as the Japanese say, “drinking and eating like a whale” at the festivities and smoking like a chimney.

Once he bragged to Chihiro Inagawa, another yakuza boss, “Ever since I got that new young liver, I have no trouble getting it up,” pointing at his crotch. Inagawa allegedly then said to Goto, “You’ve got the devil’s own luck. You get the perfect donor, a young teenager—dead in a car accident just two months after you’re on the donor list—unbelievable coincidence.”

Goto answered him with a chuckle, “Oh, that was no coincidence.”

Inagawa didn’t laugh.

I was never sure whether Goto was referring to the traffic death or his quick jump to the top of the donor list. Somehow I can’t imagine him not rigging the game in one way or another.

Inagawa himself would later try to get into the United States for a liver transplant, only to have his visa application denied. When he was granted a special interview to plead his case with U.S. officials, the special agent in charge told him bluntly, “If you want to know why we won’t let you into the country, go ask Mr. Goto.”

ICE wasn’t going to get screwed again. It had a dim view of the deal made with the FBI and felt that it had produced little actionable intelligence.

Goto told one of his associates that he’d paid a total of $3 million for the liver. (Police reports have the figure as $1 million and speculate that Goto’s doctor was paid $100,000 for each “house call” to Japan, usually conducted at the Imperial Hotel.) The only people who knew about the deal with the FBI were Goto’s inner circle. This was a good thing to know.

It was while first poring over the other Yamaguchi-gumi materials that I realized that Goto was probably not the only one to have received a liver transplant at UCLA. There were probably three others.

I thought I had a hell of a story, not just from an American perspective but from a Japanese perspective as well. Japan has a very stringent organ transplant system. Donors are few, and operations are rare. Most Japanese people who need an organ transplant either leave the country or die waiting for one. From an American perspective, it seemed deplorable as well. Why would Japanese criminals get precedence over law-abiding U.S. citizens? I had no idea.

I wrote up what I knew for a book, which was originally going to be published by Kodansha International, the English-language division of Kodansha, one of Japan’s oldest and best-known publishers. I tried writing the story for a weekly magazine and was told bluntly, “No way.” No reasons were given.

I decided to wait. And I would probably still be waiting if there hadn’t been a minor glitch.

Kodansha International ran a long introduction to the book on its European Web site without letting me know; I only noticed it in November 2007. It didn’t spell everything out, but it had enough, if you were Tadamasa Goto, to clue you in that trouble was brewing. I had Kodansha remove the page from its Web site, but I’d underestimated both the ability of Goto’s henchmen to read English and the possibility that they could use Google Alerts. One of Goto’s associates would later tell me that someone had probably managed to get a copy of the catalog description of my book, which might have confirmed their suspicions. By December 2007, I was getting signals that I was in serious trouble. In January 2008, I got definite confirmation that Goto was again planning to kill me.

My source asked me to come down and visit him in Kabukicho. I went and met him at his favorite bar; he liked it because it had a good selection of bourbon. He waited until I was fairly drunk before he laid it out for me.

“Jake, you’re in a lot of trouble. Goto knows you’re writing a book. He’s not happy about it. I’d be really careful if I were you.”

I didn’t try to deny it. I shrugged. “What’s he going to do? Threaten to kill me? He’s already done that before.”

“He won’t threaten you. He’ll just do it. He’ll make it look like a suicide.”

“How? I’m not the suicidal type.”

“How do you think Juzo Itami died?”

“That was a suicide. I mean, of course, I thought he was killed the first time I heard about his death, but then I heard differently. He was depressed because the weekly magazine Friday was going to expose an extramarital affair. He jumped off a roof. If it had been suspicious, I’m sure the police would have investigated.”

“Did you see the article? Do you know he was laughing about it when the journalist approached him? He said, ‘Oh, she already knows.’ Does that sound like someone depressed and upset to you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know the details of that. He left a note, though.”

“Yes, a note written on a word processor. Anyone could have written that note.”

Suddenly my bourbon didn’t taste so good.

“Why?”

“He was planning another movie. It was going to be about the Goto-gumi and its relationship with the religious group Soka Gakkai. Goto wasn’t happy about that. A gang of five of his people grabbed Itami and made him jump off that rooftop at gunpoint. That’s how he committed suicide.”

“How do you know that’s true?”

“It’s rude to ask a question like that.” His fingers curled around his glass so hard I thought he would break it.

I quickly apologized.

“So what should I do?”

“Be careful. Write it now, if you can.”

“I know most of the story.”

“If you don’t know everything, no one will believe you. It won’t do any good. You’ll have to write about everything, the others too.”

“Yes, I’ve heard there are others. Who are they?”

“I don’t know. You should know. I can introduce you to someone who can help you with that. She doesn’t like Goto very much.”

“She?”

“One of the many. She has her reasons.”

“Isn’t that dangerous for her?”

“I don’t think she cares.”

He gave me her business card; on the back was her address. He gave me another one as well; I recognized her from the leaked police materials.

“Why these two women?”

“He confides in them, I think. You’re good with women. They’ll confide in you. They like you. I hear there’s a certain female cop you’re very friendly with.”

“I’m friendly with everyone. I’m a nice guy.”

I asked for the check and paid. As we were leaving, I asked him why Goto didn’t just have me removed right now.

“He’s waiting for something to make up his mind. I don’t know what that is. He probably doesn’t know how much you know or who you’ve shared your information with. He takes his time. He’s looking at you. He’s collecting information about you. Maybe he’ll try to discredit you before you get a chance to write anything—put drugs in your apartment and call the police. Have a woman claim you molested her on the train. There are a lot of ways to neutralize you without killing you, because killing you, well, that would bring a lot of attention. You know he’s still on trial?”

Of course I knew Goto was on trial. Here’s what had happened.

In May 2006, Goto, the president of a real estate company, and eight others were arrested on suspicion of illegally transferring the ownership of a building in Shibuya Ward. According to the police, Goto, CEO of the listed company Ryowa Life Create, and the other suspects had falsely registered the transfer of ownership of a twelve-story building, the Shinjuku Building, which was partially owned by a Goto-gumi front company. The arrest stemmed from an investigation that had begun more than a year earlier. In March 2005, Kazuoki Nozaki, a fifty-eight-year-old adviser of a building management company and partial owner of the Shinjuku Building, was stabbed to death on a street in Minato Ward, Tokyo.

The police had nabbed Goto for property law violations because they wanted to pin him for the murder of Nozaki. Everyone knew this.

The slaying had been carried out with typical Goto-gumi efficiency: small group, no witnesses, little or no trace evidence. I imagined that this was probably how I’d be taken out if the time came, stabbed to death in some back alley and left to bleed to death.

I told him that I was well aware of the trial. I was curious as to why I already hadn’t met the fate of Mr. Nozaki.

“People know you. They think you’re working for the CIA. Goto does at least. You’re a Jew, too. He thinks there might be repercussions for whacking you.”

“What does my being Jewish have to do with anything?”

“You could be Mossad.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“I’ve given you what I can. You’re on your own. Good luck. Do not underestimate the man. He’s not underestimating you.”

I didn’t doubt that he was right.

Things went sour very quickly. I was told that Goto had decided that if he was found guilty—which in his condition would be a death sentence—he would have me killed.

I was placed under police protection on March 5, 2008. An FBI special agent accompanied me to the National Police Agency, and they discussed what measures they could take. The FBI contacted local U.S. law enforcement and had them put a watch on my house in America. At the meeting I was asked to clarify who my source was in the Goto-gumi, and I refused. I was warned that that would make it harder to justify twenty-four-hour protection on the part of the Japanese police, and all I could say was “Well, I’ll take what I can get.”

I was taken to the TMPD to meet the detectives from Organized Crime Control Investigative Division 3, which would be handling my protection. In the old days, those had been the guys I wrote about, not the guys I depended on to keep me alive.

Before I went to the TMPD offices, I sent a quick e-mail to the cops I knew there warning them to pretend they didn’t know me. One of the detectives quickly wrote me back, “In a time like this, when a good friend is in trouble, I don’t give a shit about how this would affect my career. Me and the others, we’re going to tell the boss right now that we know you and you’re an upright guy. We still owe you for the Soapland intel. We’ve got your back.”

I wasn’t very close to those cops; I considered them casual friends. I felt honored. I was discovering that people whom I thought were good friends weren’t very good friends at all and people whom I considered acquaintances were some of the best friends I’d ever have. It’s not often in life that we get into a situation that measures the loyalty and dedication of our friends. The results are probably never what we anticipate.

At the TMPD, we had a good talk. One of the detectives present shook my hand as I was leaving and added, “Goto’s a real prick. The guy’s been linked to more than seventeen murders and that attempted murder in Seijo. That’s the one where his thugs couldn’t find the guy Goto wanted dead, so they stabbed his wife. You’re making his life hard. You’re doing what we should be doing. Good luck.”

It felt good to hear that.

I had some paperwork to fill out and had to go back to the National Police Agency and turn it in. On my way out, an NPA officer who knew me from my days in Saitama asked me to come downstairs to the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee.

Over a fairly decent cappuccino, we caught up on old times. The head of forensics, after serving as the head of the Saitama Police Department, had gone on to become the chairman of the local traffic safety association and was enjoying the job. A couple other cops who had been on the dog breeder serial killer case had retired as well.

He had some good information for me and some bad news as well: “You’re probably thinking you should go home. Don’t do it. If you go home and he knows where you live, you put your family in the cross fire. He’d probably hire some gangbanger to do it, and if your family is around, they’re collateral damage. He’ll probably go after your friends if he can’t get to you.”

That was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to go home. He had more to say.

“The year Goto went to UCLA, the NPA tracked close to a million dollars moving through his casino accounts. He had one in Tokyo with the Japanese branch of a major casino. You wrote about the Kajiyama case, so you know how that one works. Your information is good.”

“Do you have any suggestions?”

“I’m not really supposed to be saying this, but here’s the deal: you represent a threat to his reputation and his standing. If he wipes you out, maybe he can keep it quiet. Once you get it printed, there’s less incentive to kill you. You’re a writer, right? Time to write.”

On March 7, I pissed off the NPA by going to Goto’s trial at the Tokyo District Court. According to cops working the case, the main witness had been intimidated so much that he’d refused to testify. I managed to get into the trial for a few minutes. I sat directly behind the man.

I could have reached out my hand and strangled him if I’d been so inclined, or jabbed a pencil into his larynx. I didn’t do that. But I couldn’t resist sort of bumping him with my hand, if just for a second, to make sure he was real. He didn’t appear to notice.

I had to leave halfway through the proceedings. I wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. I waited in the hall outside.

After the not-guilty verdict was announced to the press waiting in the hall, one of the detectives working the case said to me, “You know, everyone who testified against Goto in this trial is going to vanish. And then, one by one, they’ll be dead.” He shook his head.

Something unexpected happened right after that. Goto walked out of the courtroom to the elevators with his bodyguard. Not out the back exit and not with any fanfare. And not a single reporter tried to talk to him. They looked, of course. But no one would follow him; as soon as his lawyer showed up in the hall, they ran toward him and away from Goto as fast as they could. And for a brief moment, in front of the elevators, there were only me, Goto, and his bodyguard. It was the only time I’d ever meet the man face-to-face.

For the first time, I could understand why he was so powerful. He wasn’t big or muscular or imposing, but when he looked you in the eye, it felt as if he had his hand around your throat. We recognized each other. He mouthed something to me in Japanese. He wouldn’t leave behind an audible threat. It seemed like a threat to me, but then again I’m not good at lip-reading in any language. I responded nonverbally as well—a simple one-fingered gesture. That was all we had to say to each other.

After Goto’s bodyguard gently pushed his angry boss into the elevator, I followed the throng of reporters to where his lawyer, Yoshiyuki Maki, a former prosecutor, was holding court.

He was stroking his gray-speckled chin, rattling on about the injustice of Goto’s arrest and prosecution. He was also making sure to imply that every newspaper that had written about Goto as if he were presumed guilty could be sued if the client was so inclined. It was Goto putting a muzzle on the already compliant press via Maki.

“Due to his unlawful arrest and this long trial, Goto-san has been through a personal hell. I’d like the media to reflect a little on the suffering my client has endured.”

I couldn’t really stomach that bullshit, and I raised my hand to ask a question. It turned into more of a tirade than a question, which wasn’t a very professional thing to do. You’re not supposed to bring issues of right and wrong into the courtroom. We’re not supposed to accuse the lawyers for the yakuza of being sellouts and criminals themselves. They’re just doing their jobs. However, I had a little trouble divorcing myself from the proceedings. And honestly, what he was saying was an insult to the dead. If there was anyone in the yakuza who deserved to suffer, it was this man.

“Excuse me, what exactly do you mean by his suffering? This is a man whose organization kills people, sells drugs, distributes child pornography, and sexually exploits foreign women. The amount of suffering the Goto-gumi and therefore Goto have inflicted on innocent people is immense. Why should anyone give a damn about his suffering? As a former prosecutor, how can you even say those things?”

Maki was taken aback, either by the question or by my rage. He flinched visibly. The other reporters all moved away from me as if I were a rabid dog. Maki cleared his throat and said, “It’s my job to defend my client, and there is no question that Goto-san has not committed any illegal act, that this …”

As he droned on, I turned my back and walked away. A few seconds later, I heard a titter from the assembled reporters. I suppose that Maki had made a joke about me, and I guess I felt a little like a joke myself. But I’d seen him flinch, and that felt good.

The day after Goto’s trial, I went back to work. I gathered all my notes and I gave them to reporters I knew and trusted. Some I knew and didn’t trust. I didn’t want the scoop; and I wanted the story out there; I didn’t care who got credit for it.

While I was doing this, I ran into a serious problem.

Some people from the NPA came over to the house for drinks. I’d known one of them, Akira-kun, since his days in the Gunma police. Sometimes I’d show up at the place where he trained at kenjutsu (sword fighting) and join the practice. I had no aptitude for that martial art either, but it was always a good way to hang out with the cops and forget that reporter–police officer division for a few sweaty hours. In a stroke of luck, Alien Cop had been transferred to the NPA for a year, and he was now in the Organized Crime Control Bureau. He brought with him a giant bottle of Otokoyama (Man Mountain) sake. A good friend from college and part-time research assistant, Asako, was also there, pouring drinks, flirting with the cops, and cracking jokes. We sat in the tatami room, cross-legged around an antique fold-up table, a chabu-dai.

We were talking about the Goto trial and its unhappy ending and how we thought Goto’s lawyer, Maki, was a sellout shyster, and I slightly defended Maki, pointing out that he’d started out with good intentions once upon a time. He’d written an excellent book about the Japanese legal system a decade or so before.

In the midst of the festivities, Alien Cop put down his sake glass and nodded at the other three guys next to him, as if to say, “Hey, let’s do this.” He cleared his throat.

“Jake, there’s a guy in the police force who’s in Goto’s pocket, Lieutenant K. He’s been asking about you. We know he’s corrupt but he brings in good intel about non-Goto-related stuff, so he’s kind of allowed to do his thing.”

I put down my glass and filled it again.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that Goto knows everything about you. Where you live, where your family lives, everything we have about you on file. And it’s possible, actually pretty likely, that he also has your phone records. Because you have your cell phone number printed on your business cards, it probably was pretty easy for him.”

Nodding, Akira-kun added, “The word is he’s hired the G Detective Agency to do a full due diligence on you. Goto owns at least two private detective agencies. Blackmail and extortion are his speciality. If you’ve got skeletons in the closet, they’re going to be out pretty soon.”

Apparently the Kokusui-kai wasn’t the only yakuza group with its own private eyes.

Alien Cop asked me to show him my cell phone. I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it over. He looked at the directory for a second and handed it back.

“You need to figure out who you have been talking to the most in the last two months. Because if Goto feels he can’t get at you or wants to know where you are, those are the people he’ll go after. Lieutenant K. is Goto’s proxy. If K. has a phone number, he can find the address; he just has to make a few calls. Even if he can’t, G Detective Agency has the resources. You should warn the people you’re close to to be very careful.”

Alien Cop poured me another glass of sake. “Drink up. I doubt the old man will do anything at all, but we thought you should know this much—not all policemen are your friends.”

“Well,” I said, “here’s to good friends—kanpai!”

“And by the way,” Alien Cop said while pouring rounds for everyone, including Asako, “apparently K. is looking for a good picture of you. There aren’t many. He knows that I know you and asked me if I had any. I said no. He may try to meet you. Don’t take that meeting.”

“Why not?”

“Lieutenant K. is a sketch artist with a photographic memory. Sketches are actually better for identifying people than photos sometimes. You meet the guy once, and there’s going to be a nice portrait of you hanging up in Goto-gumi headquarters. And maybe a wallet-size copy with the guys that are sent to take you out.”

“Great. What should I do now?”

“Write the fucking article and stop pissing around. Remove the incentive to shut you up. Pretty simple. And then you can take me out to that strip bar with all the white chicks with ushipai [cow breasts]. You owe me, Adelstein.”

Asako laughed at that. “Jake, I didn’t know you frequented such places.”

Alien Cop chuckled. “You don’t know him very well at all then.”

Alien and I sneaked outside for a smoke once during the evening, and he asked me how I was doing.

“Pretty good.” It was all I could say.

“I checked around on that friend of yours.”

“And?”

“Nothing. The place she was working got raided, maybe in February 2006. They reopened without gaijin babes. I tried to locate her. I called in a favor with Immigration. There’s no record of anyone named Helena leaving the country. Maybe she had a different name? Dual citizenship?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Were you sleeping with her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was a good friend. I mean, she is a good friend.”

“You had issues with what she did?”

“That’s not it.”

“Are you screwing anyone else?”

“I’m a gentleman. On principle alone I won’t answer that question.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?”

“About?”

“You know.”

“Oh, yeah. Expediency rules. You were wrong about one thing, though.”

“Which was?”

“It’s not a slippery slope, it’s a friggin’ waterslide.”

“Well, Jake, sometimes, you know, you have to fight poison—”

“—with poison. I’m familiar with the proverb.”

“Well, you do what you have to do to get the job done. That’s what matters at the end of the day. You get that.”

“I do,” I assured him. He wasn’t anything like Sekiguchi, but he was wise in his own way. Maybe not a good cop but a good person and a good friend. He was putting his career on the line for me, breaking the blue wall of silence. I wasn’t sure I deserved his benevolence, but I was glad to have it.

We kept drinking until 11:30, when everyone split to catch the last trains home. After they had gone, I poured myself a drink and lit a cigarette, turned on some Miles Davis, and turned down the lights, thinking.

When you drink alone, you know you have problems. The whole world seemed dead, and the only sounds were the crackle of cigarettes, the wind lightly shaking the rain shutters, and the CD gently spinning in the Bose stereo, radiating the sounds of “Final Take 2.”

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that lonely in my entire life.

It hit me like a punch in the gut: the realization that I’d endangered every person I cared about, liked, loved, or simply knew. And it didn’t really matter how they felt about me—anyone I’d called on that damn phone was now potential leverage for a man who had no qualms about using people like cannon fodder.

I really needed someone to talk to. I was a little drunk and not thinking very clearly, and I called Sekiguchi’s cell phone. It was still in my address book; I’d never taken it out. It rang a few times before I realized that he could never answer it. I had no one to guide me now. No one to ask for good advice. No mentor. I was on my own.

What would Sekiguchi do?

That was my mantra to myself. Okay, first he’d assess the situation. I did. It didn’t look good.

Most yakuza leave civilians out of a conflict. At least that’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s not considered honorable to attack the wife, the lover, the best friend of a guy who’s wronged you. Any real yakuza isn’t going to beat up the brother of a deadbeat; he’s going to beat up the deadbeat himself.

Tadamasa Goto was a different breed. He had a reputation for scorching and burning. And this fucking cop had practically handed him a can of gasoline. Now I had to figure out who he was the most likely to burn, maybe literally.

I needed to do some damage control, and I decided it couldn’t wait. I went upstairs, grabbed my box of business cards, and came back down. I dumped all the cards on the floor, fanning them out. I opened my laptop and typed the names of everyone on my cell phone, not being bright enough to transfer them to my computer digitally. I ranked my friends by potential risk. I didn’t have my own phone records, so I went through two months of e-mails and tried to reconstruct from them where I had been and whom I had been with.

And among all the business cards, there was Helena’s. Crumpled, the edges frayed from being stuffed in my wallet and taken out, discolored from being carried in my pockets, creased, faded.

I remember when she gave it to me. I had to earn that meishi. I’d given her mine on the first meeting. It wasn’t until the third or fourth time we met that she trusted me enough to tell me her real name. She was wearing a black leather jacket over a simple red dress and riding boots, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She did an elaborate parody of a Japanese bow as she offered her meishi with both hands, adding, “Helena desu. A whore but not just any whore—a professional whore.” And she had laughed when she said it, her eyes twinkling with amusement at her own joke.

I’ve always kept a haphazard diary. It’s a good thing to have because we forget so much. As a reporter you meet so many people, cover so many tragedies, write so many stories, it’s hard to keep track of what’s gone by and where you have been. But in some objects there are more memories than in a phonebook-sized diary. I held that card in my hand, and I felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds’ worth of memory.

We’d used that card once to represent Park Place in her Monopoly set. I dropped by her place on a rainy Sunday, after doing some work at the office, and we played a marathon session. We were missing Park Place, so she put down her card in its place. I argued that it didn’t have the rent or any of the pertinent information on it, and she recited all the figures from memory, adding, “I know Park Place, baby. This woman only goes for the high-class real estate, and I am so going to own your ass by the time we’re done.”

It was true. By the time the game was over, I was Lehman Brothers Japan. She was really good at tactical games. Monopoly, Battleship, Othello. It was bad for my ego. I think those were her only hobbies.

Among the piles of business cards, I found the deed for Park Place. I guess I’d been the culprit.

I couldn’t recall the last time I’d played Monopoly. And then I remembered how much I missed having her to speak to, and then I couldn’t breathe for a few seconds.

I didn’t want to think about it. But I did.

If I hadn’t backed down in 2005, maybe Goto would’ve been ousted from power and this wouldn’t be happening. At the time, it had seemed like the right decision. A strategic retreat. But had it really been that? Had it been an act of cowardice? Maybe just laziness? I replay that moment a lot.

I decided then that I would do anything to bring him down. I was tired of running. Realistically, I didn’t have much. I didn’t have nine hundred people working for me or a couple million hidden in the bank. I had some good friends, some information, some contacts, and a lot of raw anger.

But before I could do anything, I had to make some phone calls, send some e-mails. Many people were not very happy to hear what I had to say. Some of them were never my friends again. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bitter about that but I understand. Friendship does not usually include an implicit agreement to become a human target.

I wrote the piece.

It seemed like such a simple thing: publish or perish. Literally.

The problem was that no one would publish my article. Not even the people I was counting on.

“The story is too old.” “We don’t want to upset the NPA, they’d look pretty foolish if this is true.” “I don’t think the FBI would confirm this for us.” One newspaper seemed interested in publishing it, but all it wanted to do was lambaste the FBI. I didn’t think that served any real purpose. I didn’t think the FBI was wrong to have made the deal, and I didn’t want Jim lampooned. I couldn’t go along with that.

Only one person, a senior editor at a publishing house, was straight up with me. “This is scary stuff. We publish this, and not only will we have to deal with Goto’s lawyers, we’ll have to spend a fortune on beefing up corporate security. Retaliation will be certain. People will get hurt. Maybe our offices will be firebombed. And frankly, we do some printing for Soka Gakkai, and Goto will have it drop its contracts with us. Sorry.”

I think it was probably one of the worst times in my life. I had almost everything, but I couldn’t do anything with it. One magazine assured me that it would run the story if I could just get a little more hard evidence. I made a quiet trip to the West Coast of the United States to talk to an art dealer who laundered money for the Goto-gumi. It was a disastrous meeting.

I couldn’t get what the magazine wanted and demanded. I had an increasing sense of things falling apart. I spent one evening with the The Perfect Manual of Suicide in an old hotel built in the twenties, contemplating giving it a try. It seemed like an option. In Japan, after a certain number of years, many life insurance policies pay off even in cases of suicide. If I took myself out, I’d leave behind money for my family and there would be no reason for Goto to bother anyone I cared about. I never would have imagined a decade before that I might even consider joining the ranks of the unfortunate who put the manual into practice. I wasn’t very happy with myself, and I worried—about everything.

You could say I was a little depressed. If it hadn’t been for a phone call at the right time from the right person, I might have taken that route, which I’m ashamed to admit.

Finally I decided to write the story myself—in English. I was smoking a cigarette, watching the sun come up at an airport, and getting ready to go back to Japan, and then I suddenly knew what to do. I should have known that my article would never be published in Japanese first. I should have taken a different approach from the start.

I figured I could get it published in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) newspaper. I was wrong about that as well. After submitting the story, I was accidentally e-mailed a memo from one of the editors, the gist of which was “The FBI giving a visa to an infamous yakuza so he can get a liver transplant? Sounds totally unbelievable. Maybe this guy is a little nuts.”

That hurt. Yeah, I’m sure I came across as a fruitcake. You have to admit, it was an incredible story.

I reached out to everyone I knew, and then a family friend introduced me to John Pomfret, the editor of The Washington Post’s Outlook section. He thought I was a little crazy as well. I didn’t blame him. He asked for proof. I gave him everything I had, about a hundred pages.

I’ve never had a story vetted as hard as that one. I spent hours a day answering questions, checking facts, and sourcing my material in the more than a month it took for Mr. Pomfret to be satisfied. Finally, The Washington Post got independent confirmation from the FBI that I was telling the truth. And on May 11, it ran the story. The FCCJ came around as well, publishing my article but omitting Goto’s name.

I did one more thing before the article was published. I contacted a guy in another faction of the Yamaguchi-gumi—the board. I knew that Goto was considered a troublemaker by its top executives.

I explained to the guy from the board that I was writing an article about Tadamasa Goto making a deal with the FBI. It would be in English. I asked him to pass on the article, and I requested a comment from Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters, not that I thought they’d really give me one. I told him, “I want to know if this deal was okayed by the Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters and if so, why? Is this considered a problem or not?”

I gave him the the story in English and my translation of it. He read it on the spot. He showed no reaction at all.

He called me a few days later. He was very polite.

“We don’t have an official comment. The Yamaguchi-gumi, as you know, doesn’t do interviews anymore, nor do we make comments. However, I have been authorized to say thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. We did not know. We would really prefer to handle this matter internally. We realize you’ve spent a lot of time on this story, and we’d like to compensate you for your time and effort.”

I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, so I asked bluntly, “I’m not Japanese. I’m a foreigner. Subtlety is lost on me. What are you saying?”

“I can offer you three hundred thousand dollars not to write the story. I just need the name of your bank, your account number, and the branch you bank at. You’ll have the money tomorrow.”

“I can’t accept that.”

“I can get you half a million in a week. But I’ll have to send it to two different bank accounts. You can set up another one easily if you don’t already have one.”

“It’s not the amount that I have trouble with. Thank you. I will continue to keep you posted.”

“Well, I don’t think you’re making the wisest of decisions. You could accomplish what I think you’d like to accomplish and walk away a wealthy man. Start a new life.”

“I like my life. I appreciate the offer, and I am honored. I will have to decline.”

“Please keep me posted.”

I promised I would.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to take the money and run. But if I had, they would have owned me.

I sent a copy of the article to the Yomiuri before it came out. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do. It ignored it. So did every other newspaper in Japan. I had pretty much figured that this would be the case.

That’s why I had already begun talking to the Los Angeles Times before the Washington Post article was ready to go. I’d met the San Francisco bureau chief, John Glionna, on his trip to Japan that May, and he’d quickly picked up the scent of a good story. I worked with him and Charles Ornstein for weeks. The Washington Post article hadn’t mentioned UCLA, and that made them very happy. It was the frontpage story of their newspaper on May 31. This time the Japanese media couldn’t ignore it, although some did. Almost every media outlet that did report the story chickened out by writing, “According to an article in the Los Angeles Times …” It’s a standard tactic in Japan for reporting troublesome news: blame it on someone else. “We didn’t say it—it was the Los Angeles Times!” I didn’t see a single article in which anyone attempted independent verification of the story or an attempt to dig any deeper.

The story was out. However, Goto remained unfazed. I don’t know how he explained it away, but it had no visible impact. I, on the other hand, slept a lot better at night. Now I was a very visible target, and in many ways that made it a lot less likely for me to be snuffed out or harm to come to anyone associated with me. But it was clear that if I wanted to take Goto down, I’d have to write everything in detail and in Japanese.

Tomohiko Suzuki, a good friend and former yakuza fan magazine editor, approached me and asked if I was interested in writing a chapter of an anthology of “forbidden news stories” for Takarajima Publishing House. I asked if we could write it together. It was a hell of a thing to ask him because it meant that he’d be raising the ire of the Goto-gumi as well. He didn’t flinch. He warned me that I’d be taking a huge risk. I said I was willing to do it.

That’s when he told me I’d need a bodyguard. I recognized the name of the guy, Teruo Mochizuki. He had been a good friend of Yasunobu Endo’s, the yakuza crime boss that Gen Sekine had killed in the 1990s. They weren’t in the same organized crime group, but sometimes friendships among yakuza transcended organizational restraints. A Sumiyo Shikai member could be “blood brothers” with an Ina-gawakai member; a Yamaguchi-gumi member could be brothers with a Kokusuikai member. Mochizuki and Endo had one of those relationships. What mattered is that we knew each other. I asked Suzuki why Mochizuki was willing to do it.

“He’s no longer a yakuza. He left last year. He has a one-year-old son and no job. He’s the perfect bodyguard and driver. He’s a good guy.”

“Yeah, I know him. But he used to be a crime boss! He had, like, a hundred guys working for him, I think.”

“Yes.”

“So isn’t that a step down, working for me?”

“Absolutely. But it’s not like a middle-aged yakuza with nine fingers and a whole-body tattoo has a lot of options. It’ll be fine!”

So I hired Mochizuki. I had some money saved away from a well-paid project researching the pachinko industry for a company in California. I didn’t really think I had much of a choice.

By July the anthology was ready to go. Mochizuki had been with me for some time by then. I wanted his opinion before I submitted the final draft. He knew Goto fairly well; I thought he’d be a good person to ask.

He read the manuscript, and he did not look well for the reading. He’s a very polite fellow, and it took him a few second to say what was on his mind.

“Jake, you know, if you write this, he may try to have both of us killed. You first, of course. He really hates you. No one will think less of you if you don’t want to do it. You could walk away.”

Mochizuki-san took out a cigarette from his coat pocket, handed it to me, and shielded the flames of his Zippo as he lit it for me.

It’s a weird feeling having an ex–yakuza crime boss light your cigarettes and make coffee for you in the morning.

Of course, he wasn’t a crime boss now; he was working for me. I’d like to say he was working with me—but that’s not how Mochizuki-san would see it. I paid his salary; that made me the boss. He was fifty years old, I was thirty-nine. He was my senpai and a lot tougher than me, but he was following my orders. I never quite understood that yakuza soldier mentality, but I appreciated the work ethic.

He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt as usual; it covered up the tattoos. The missing finger on his left hand, though, couldn’t be covered up. He should never have been a yakuza, he should have been an artist. He’d been an artist once and not a bad one. But he’d hung out with the wrong people, racked up debts in Soapland, and drifted into the yakuza. When his subordinate screwed up and he chopped off part of his pinkie to show atonement and remorse, that pretty much killed his chances of returning to life as an artist—you need all ten fingers to do his kind of art. He was forced out of the yakuza as well—for insubordination. He didn’t like the increasingly “money at all costs” approach the upper management was taking; he was behind the times, a relic of a period when all yakuza adhered to some sort of code, morally flawed as it might have been. A year ago, he’d been in charge of a hundred gangsters; now he was lighting cigarettes for some weird Jewish guy who was more Japanese than American. And putting his life on the line as my bodyguard twenty-four hours a day.

We were both outcasts in our own way, I guess. We certainly hadn’t ended up where we’d planned to be. I inhaled shallowly, and I exhaled deeply. My lungs weren’t what they used to be. I looked at Mochizuki. He was waiting for my answer.

“I’m willing to do it. Fuck it, he’s going to kill me anyway. He’s just waiting for things to settle down. If this is a chance to ruin the man for good and maybe get him kicked out of the Yamaguchi-gumi, I want to do it.”

“Then I’ll watch your back.”

“I appreciate that, but what’s in it for you?”

“A new life. I like working for you.”

“I pay you a terrible salary.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I thought you wanted to go back to being a crime boss once things settle down at your old organization.”

“Nope. I’ve changed my mind. These last couple of months, getting to spend time with my son and the wife, it’s been good. I like the work you give me to do as well. I can walk down the street on a rainy day and not have to watch my back.”

“I only have enough cash to pay you until the end of the year.”

“Well, then I’ll look for a new job.”

“Thank you. Any suggestions?”

“Take out the word betrayed. Betrayal is a loaded word. If you say Goto ‘betrayed’ the Yamaguchi-gumi, you’re throwing gasoline on the flames. Find a better word.”

I followed his suggestion.

He made one small request as publication neared.

We were sitting downstairs, smoking cigarettes in the living room and listening to an obscure Japanese rock band that he loved, when he asked me for a favor.

“Jake, I want you to know that if anything happens to you, I’d find out who did it. And I’d kill them. You probably know that, right?”

“No, I wouldn’t expect it, and you shouldn’t do it.”

“Isshukuippaku no ongi. It’s Japanese you should know. In the yakuza world it refers to the debt owed to the man who puts you up for a night and feeds you. You’ve taken me in and looked after me, and my family and I owe you. I always pay my debts. That’s what a real yakuza does.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but—”

“Then respect what I say. That’s what I’ll do. If I didn’t do that, what kind of man would I be? I wouldn’t be a man at all.”

“What’s your request?”

“If anything happens to me, don’t try to avenge me. Leave it alone. You’re not a yakuza, but you’re a good man in the end. Promise that you will take care of my son—make sure he gets a good education, grows up right. That’s what I need you to do. That’s what I would ask you to do.”

“Of course I’ll do that. If that happened, I’d adopt him as my own. And what would you want me to tell him about you?”

“Tell him that his father was a yakuza, one of the last real yakuza and damn proud of it.”

“I will. If that happens. And your wife?”

“Her? Oh, just make sure she doesn’t remarry an asshole. Or a journalist. Those guys are nothing but trouble.”

I wasn’t sure he was kidding.

The anthology was published on August 9, under the title Heisei Nihon Taboo Daizen 2008 (The Taboo News of Japan 2008). My guy in the the board had a copy of the chapter long before it was available on the newsstands.

I included something that had never been published: the names of the other three yakuza who had gotten liver transplants. After Goto, there was Yoshiro Ogino, a gang boss in the Matsuba-kai, another Tokyo yakuza group.^2* He and Goto were blood brothers. Ogino also allegedly donated $100,000 to UCLA after his surgery. He was probably followed by Hisatoshi Mio, the name Shibata had given me. Then there was Saburo Takeshita. He’s the Keyser Söze of the Goto-gumi, a financial wizard. He runs twenty front companies and a lot of the Goto-gumi finances. In 1992 he was arrested for threats and assault by the Shizuoka Police Department along with an accomplice. He had gone to collect money from a local company owner, and when the fifty-one-year-old man couldn’t pay, Takeshita had ordered him to “bring out your daughter so I can slice open her face.” When the man wouldn’t comply, Takeshita and his buddy kicked the man so hard in the chest and legs that he had to be hospitalized for several weeks.

Yes, all of them were hardworking Japanese men worthy of receiving livers before any lazy, worthless Americans should.

In UCLA’s defense, it has never been proven that UCLA or Dr. Busuttil knew at the time of the transplants that any of the patients had ties to the Japanese mafia. Both have said in statements that they do not make moral judgments about patients and treat them in accordance with their medical needs. However, they have not explicitly denied knowing that some of these patients had yakuza ties; they have simply refused to address the issue of what they knew about the four and when they knew it. It should also be noted that the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in conjunction with UCLA conducted an investigation into whether the UCLA medical center or its staff acted improperly when it performed liver transplants on the four Japanese patients. According to the Los Angeles Times, the investigation found no evidence of improper conduct. However, many have questioned the morality of giving organs to foreigners with criminal records at the expense of Americans.

What happened at UCLA may not just be morally questionable, but federal law enforcement sources suggest that UCLA may unwittingly have gotten involved in money laundering. Several special agents explained to me on background that money laundering, on an international level, simply means the transfer of criminal proceeds from overseas to the United States, as in the Emperor of Loan Sharks case. Since yakuza generally obtain most of their money from criminal activity, there is at least a good possibility that some of the money paid to UCLA by at least one of the four treated men with yakuza ties stemmed from illegal activity in Japan. To my knowledge, none of the men treated have been investigated for money laundering and any investigation would require the assistance of the Japanese authorities. And, of course, the question remains whether UCLA even knew that the men they treated were yakuza (to my knowledge, they have never denied knowing the men had yakuza ties but emphasized that they do not pass moral judgment on their patients) and whether they knew that any of the payments (or donations, for that matter) could have stemmed from illegal activities. I would love to know the answers.

The reaction to the anthology was fierce. Suzuki got all the phone calls and the threats. I guess I was lucky in that I didn’t have to deal with it. The book was noticed and written up a little here and there. One yakuza fan magazine, Shukan Jitsuwa, did an article on the book and myself, accusing me of being (a) a CIA agent, (b) a pawn of the CIA and possibily the International Jewish Conspiracy, or (c) a publicity hound and an idiot American with no understanding of how great the yakuza really are and how much they contributed to Japanese society.

I didn’t know it, but around the time the anthology was published, Mochizuki’s blood brother, who was still an organization man, parked four cars in my neighborhood twenty-four hours a day. It was a warning to the Goto-gumi that I was essentially under the protection of another crime group. I hadn’t asked for that to happen, but I’m glad it did. He didn’t ask me if it was okay because I would have said no. I never wanted to find myself in debt to any Japanese mafia group. But that’s how it worked out. I owed the man, and I had to respect him for sticking his neck out for me.

There was one more negative repercussion. Kodansha International pulled the book. It had outsourced a risk assesment of publishing it. The conclusion hadn’t been good.

However, around October 14, Goto was officially expelled from the Yamaguchi-gumi. Who says anthologies lack punch? In essence, the party line was that the wealthiest and most influential yakuza in the country had been kicked out for partying and playing hooky. However, the police assured me that in fact the publication of Heisei Nihon Taboo Daizen 2008 had been the tipping point. I was warned to lie low for a while.

A number of Goto’s associates were also suspended, expelled, or banished for life from the organization. The Goto-gumi was split into two crime families, and Goto was no longer a crime boss—he was an ex–crime boss. It was a great day for me. I got congratulatory calls from cops, friends, other reporters, and sources.

On the fifteenth, I answered the phone and heard a voice that blew me away. I’d heard it before on a DVD of a Yamaguchi-gumi ceremony, but I’d never expected to get a call from someone that high up in the organization. He identified himself, and then he was short and to the point.

“Thank you for bringing matters to our attention. We’ve resolved them satisfactorily, I believe. We appreciate your hard work.”

Then he hung up.

I have no idea how he got my number.