We'll have to wait until next week to find out.
Hiro sits down across from Sushi K and the programmers, next to the television set, so that he can get a TV's-eye view of the man.
“I'm Hiro Protagonist. You got my message, I take it.”
“Fabu!” Sushi K cries, using the Nipponese abbreviation of the all-purpose Hollywood adjective “fabulous.”
He continues, “Hiro-san, I am deeply indebted to you for this once-in-a-lifetime chance to perform my small works before such an audience.” He says the whole thing in Nipponese except for “once-in-a-lifetime chance.”
“I must humbly apologize for arranging the whole thing so hastily and haphazardly,” Hiro says.
“It pains me deeply that you should feel the need to apologize when you have given me an opportunity that any Nipponese rapper would give anything for—to perform my humble works before actual homeboys from the ghettos of L.A.”
“I am profoundly embarrassed to reveal that these fans are not exactly ghetto homeboys, as I must have carelessly led you to believe. They are thrashers. Skateboarders who like both rap music and heavy metal.”
“Ah. This is fine, then,” Sushi K says. But his tone of voice suggests that it's not really fine at all.
“But there are representatives of the Crips here,” Hiro says, thinking very, very fast even by his standards, “and if your performance is well received, as I'm quite certain it will be, they will spread the word throughout their community.”
Sushi K rolls down the window. The decibel level quintuples in an instant. He stares at the crowd, five thousand potential market shares, young people with funkiness on their minds. They've never heard any music before that wasn't perfect. It's either studio-perfect digital sound from their CD players or performance-perfect fuzz-grunge from the best people in the business, the groups that have come to L.A. to make a name for themselves and have actually survived the gladiatorial combat environment of the clubs. Sushi K's face lights up with a combination of joy and terror. Now he actually has to go up there and do it. In front of the seething biomass.
Hiro goes out and paves the way for him. That's easy enough. Then he bails. He's done his bit. No point in wasting time on this puny Sushi K thing when Raven is out there, representing a much larger source of income. So he wanders back out toward the periphery.
“Yo! Dude with the swords,” someone says.
Hiro turns around, sees a green-jacketed Enforcer motioning to him. It's the short, powerful guy with the headset, the guy in charge of the security detail.
“Squeaky,” he says, extending his hand.
“Hiro,” Hiro says, shaking it, and handing over his business card. No particular reason to be coy with these guys. “What can I do for you, Squeaky?”
Squeaky reads the card. He has a kind of exaggerated politeness that is kind of like a military man. He's calm, mature, role-modelesque, like a high school football coach. “You in charge of this thing?”
“To the extent anyone is.”
“Mr. Protagonist, we got a call a few minutes ago from a friend of yours named Y.T.”
“What's wrong? Is she okay?”
“Oh, yes, sir, she's just fine. But you know that bug you were talking to earlier?”
Hiro's never heard the term “bug” used this way, but he reckons that Squeaky is referring to the gargoyle, Lagos.
“Yeah.”
“Well, there's a situation involving that gentleman that Y.T. sort of tipped us off to. We thought you might want to have a look.”
“What's going on?”
“Uh, why don't you come with me. You know, some things are easier to show than to explain verbally.”
As Squeaky turns, Sushi K's first rap song begins. His voice sounds tight and tense.
I'm Sushi K and I'm here to say
I like to rap in a different way
Look out Number One in every city
Sushi K rap has all most pretty
My special talking of remarkable words
Is not the stereotyped bucktooth nerd
My hair is big as a galaxy
Cause I attain greater technology
Hiro follows Squeaky away from the crowd, into the dimly lit area on the edge of the shantytown. Up above them on the overpass embankment, he can dimly make out phosphorescent shapes—green-jacketed Enforcers orbiting some strange attractor.
“Watch your steep,” Squeaky says as they begin to climb up the embankment. “It's slippery in places.”
I like to rap about sweetened romance
My fond ambition is of your pants
So here is of special remarkable way
Of this fellow raps named Sushi K
The Nipponese talking phenomenon
Like samurai sword his sharpened tongue
Who raps the East Asia and the Pacific
Prosperity Sphere, to be specific
It's a typical loose slope of dirt and stones that looks like it would wash away in the first rainfall. Sage and cactus and tumbleweeds here and there, all looking scraggly and half-dead from air pollution.
It's hard to see anything clearly, because Sushi K is jumping around down below them on the stage, the brilliant orange rays of his sunburst hairdo are sweeping back and forth across the embankment at a speed that seems to be supersonic, washing grainy, gritty light over the weeds and the rocks and throwing everything into weird, discolored, high-contrast freeze frames.
Sarariman on subway listen
For Sushi K like nuclear fission
Fire-breathing lizard Gojiro
He my always big-time hero
His mutant rap burn down whole block
Start investing now Sushi K stock
It on Nikkei stock exchange
Waxes; other rappers wane
Best investment, make my day
Corporation Sushi K
Squeaky is walking straight uphill, paralleling a fresh motorcycle track that has cut deeply into the loose yellow soil. It consists of a deep, wide track with a narrower one that runs parallel, a couple of feet to the right.
The track gets deeper the farther up they go. Deeper and darker. It looks less and less like a motorcycle rut in loose dirt and more like a drainage ditch for some sinister black effluent.
Coming to America now
Rappers trying to start a row
Say “Stay in Japan, please, listen!
We can't handle competition!”
U.S. rappers booing and hissin'
Ask for rap protectionism
They afraid of Sushi K
Cause their audience go away
He got chill financial backin'
Give those U.S. rappers a smackin'
Sushi K concert machine
Fast efficient super clean
Run like clockwork in a watch
Kick old rappers in the crotch
One of The Enforcers up the hill is carrying a flash-light. As he moves, it sweeps across the ground at a flat angle, briefly illuminating the ground like a searchlight. For an instant, the light shines into the motorcycle rut, and Hiro perceives that it has become a river of bright red, oxygenated blood.
He learn English total immersion
English/Japanese be mergin'
Into super combination
So can have fans in every nation
Hong Kong they speak English, too
Yearn of rappers just like you
Anglophones who live down under
Sooner later start to wonder
When they get they own rap star
Tired of rappers from afar
Lagos is lying on the ground, sprawled across the tire track. He has been slit open like a salmon, with a single smooth-edged cut that begins at his anus and runs up his belly, through the middle of his sternum, all the way up to the point of his jaw. It's not just a superficial slash. It appears to go all the way to his spine in some places. The black nylon straps that hold his computer system to his body have been neatly cut wher
e they cross the midline, and half of the stuff has fallen off into the dust.
So I will get big radio traffic
When you look at demographic
Sushi K research statistic
Make big future look ballistic
Speed of Sushi K growth stock
Put U.S. rappers into shock
17
Jason Breckinridge wears a terracotta blazer. It is the color of Sicily. Jason Breckinridge has never been to Sicily. He may get to go there someday, as a premium. In order to get the free cruise to Sicily, Jason has to accumulate 10,000 Goombata Points.
He begins this quest in a favorable position. By opening up his own Nova Sicilia franchise, he started out with an automatic 3,333 points in the Goombata Point bank. Add to that a one-time-only Citizenship Bonus of 500 points and the balance is starting to look pretty good. The number is stored in the big computer in Brooklyn.
Jason grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago, one of the most highly franchised regions in the country. He attended the University of Illinois business school, racking up a GPA of 2.9567, and did a senior thesis called “The Interaction of the Ethnographic, Financial, and Paramilitary Dimensions of Competition in Certain Markets.” This was a case study of turf struggle between Nova Sicilia and Narcolombia franchises in his old neighborhood in Aurora.
Enrique Cortazar ran the failing Narcolombia franchise upon which Jason had hinged his argument. Jason interviewed him several times over the phone, briefly, but never saw Mr. Cortazar face to face.
Mr. Cortazar celebrated Jason's graduation by fire-bombing the Breckinridges' Omni Horizon van in a parking lot and then firing eleven clips of automatic rifle ammunition through the front wall of their house.
Fortunately, Mr. Caruso, who ran the local string of Nova Sicilia franchulates that was in the process of beating the pants off of Enrique Cortazar, got wind of these attacks before they happened, probably by intercepting signal intelligence from Mr. Cortazar's fleet of poorly secured cellular phones and CB radios. He was able to warn Jason's family in time, so that when all of those bullets flew through their house in the middle of the night, they were enjoying complimentary champagne in an Old Sicilia Inn five miles down Highway 96.
Naturally, when the B-school held its end-of-the-year job fair, Jason made a point of swinging by the Nova Sicilia booth to thank Mr. Caruso for saving everyone in his family from certain death.
“Hey, y'know, it was just, like a neighbor kinda thing, y'know, Jasie boy?” Mr. Caruso said, whacking Jason across the shoulder blades and squeezing his deltoids, which were the size of cantaloupes. Jason did not hit the steroids as hard as he had when he was fifteen, but he was still in great shape.
Mr. Caruso was from New York. He had one of the most popular booths at the job fair. It was being held in a big exhibition space in the Union. The hall had been done up with an imaginary street pattern. Two “highways” divided it up into quadrants, and all the franchise companies and nationalities had their booths along the highways. Burbclaves and other companies had booths hidden among the suburban “streets” within the quadrants. Mr. Caruso's Nova Sicilia booth was right at the intersection of the two highways. Dozens of scrubby B-school grads were lined up there waiting to interview, but Mr. Caruso noticed Jason standing in line and went right up and plucked him out of line and grabbed his deltoids. All the other B-school grads stared at Jason enviously. That made Jason feel good, really special. That was the feeling he got about Nova Sicilia: personalized attention.
“Well, I was going to interview here, of course, and at Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, because I'm real interested in high tech,” Jason said, in response to Mr. Caruso's fatherly questioning.
Mr. Caruso gave him an especially hard squeeze. His voice said that he was painfully surprised, but that he didn't necessarily think any less of Jason for it, not yet anyway. “Hong Kong? What would a smart white kid like you want with a fuckin' Nip operation?”
“Well, technically they're not Nips—which is short for Niponese,” Jason said. “Hong Kong is a predominantly Catonese—”
“They're all Nips,” Mr. Caruso said, “and y'know why I say that? Not because I'm a fuckin' racist, because I'm not. Because to them—to those people, y'know, the Nips—we're all foreign devils. That's what they call us. Foreign devils. How d'ya like that?”
Jason just laughed appreciatively.
“After all the good things we did for them. But here in America, Jasie boy, we're all foreign devils, ain't we? We all came from someplace—'cept for the fuckin' Indians. You ain't gonna interview over at the Lakota Nation, are ya?”
“No, sir, Mr. Caruso,” Jason said.
“Good thinkin'. I agree with that. I'm gettin' away from my main point, which is that since we all have our own unique ethnic and cultural identities, we have to get a job with an organization that uniquely respects and seeks to preserve those distinctive identities—forging them together into a functionin' whole, y'know?”
“Yes, I see your point, Mr. Caruso,” Jason said.
By this point, Mr. Caruso had led him some distance away and was strolling with him down one of the metaphorical Highways o' Opportunity. “Now, can you think of some business organizations that fill that fuckin' bill, Jasie boy?”
“Well . . .”
“Not fuckin' Hong Kong, That's for white people who want to be Japs but can't, didja know that? You don;t wanta be a Jap, do ya?”
“Ha, ha. No, sir, Mr. Caruso.”
“Y'know what I heard?” Mr. Caruso let go of Jason, turned, and stood close to him, chest to chest, his cigar zinging past Jason's ear like a flaming arrow as he gesticulated. This was a confidential portion of the chat, a little anecdote between the two men. “In Japan, if you screw up? You gotta cut off one a your fingers. Chop. Just like that. Honest to God. You don't believe me?”
“I believe you. But that's not all of Japan, sir. Just in the Yakuza. The Japanese Mafia.”
Mr. Caruso threw back his head and laughed, put his arm around Jason's shoulders again. “Y'know, I like you, Jason, I really do,” he said. “The Japanese Mafia. Tell me something, Jason, you ever hear anyone describe our thing as “The Sicilian Yakuza'? Huh?”
Jason laughed. “No, sir.”
“Y'know why that is? Y'know?” Mr. Caruso had come to the serious, meaningful part of his speech.
“Why is that, sir?”
Mr. Caruso wheeled Jason around so that both of them were staring down the length of the highway to the tall effigy of Uncle Enzo, standing above the intersection like the Statue of Liberty.
“Cause there's only one, son. Only one. And you could be a part of it.”
“What? Listen to this! You got a three-point grade average! You're gonna kick butt, son!”
Mr. Caruso, like and other franchisee, had access to Turfnet, the multiple listing service the Nova Sicilia used to keep track of what it called “opportunity zones.” He took Jason back to the booth—right past all of those poor dorks waiting in line, Jason really liked that—and signed onto the network. All Jason had to do was pick out a region.
“I have an uncle who owns a car dealership in southern California,” Jason said, “and I know that's a rapidly expanding area, and—”
“Plenty of opportunity zones!” Mr. Caruso said, pounding away on the keyboard with a flourish. He wheeled the monitor around to show Jason a map of the L.A. area blazing with red splotches that represented unclaimed turf sectors. “Take your pick, Jasie boy!”
Now Jason Breckinridge is the manager of Nova Sicilia #5328 in the Valley. He puts on his smart terracotta blazer every morning and drives to work in his Oldsmobile. Lots of young entrepreneurs would be driving BMWs or Acuras, but the organization of which Jason is now a part puts a premium on tradition and family values and does not go in for flashy foreign imports. “If an American car is good enough for Uncle Enzo . . .”
Jason's blazer has the Mafia logo embroidered on the breast pocket. A letter “G” is worked into th
e logo, signifying Gambino, which is the division that handles accounts for the L.A. Basin. His name is written underneath: “Jason (The Iron Pumper) Breckinridge.” That is the nickname that he and Mr. Caruso came up with a year ago at the job fair in Illinois. Everyone gets to have a nickname, it is a tradition and a mark of pride, and they like you to pick something that says something about you.
As manager of a local office, Jason's job is to portion work out to local contractors. Every morning, he parks his Oldsmobile out front and goes into the office, ducking quickly into the armored doorway to foil possible Narcolombian snipers. This does not prevent them from taking occasional potshots at the big Uncle Enzo that rises up above the franchise, but those signs can take an amazing amount of abuse before they start looking seedy.
Safely inside, Jason signs onto Turfnet. A job list scrolls automatically onto the screen. All Jason has to do is find contractors to handle all of those jobs before he goes home that night, or else he has to take care of them himself. One way or another, they have to get done. The great majority of the jobs are simple deliveries, which he portions out to Kouriers. Then there are collections from delinquent borrowers and from franchisees who depend on Nova Sicilia for their plant security. If it's a first notice, Jason likes to drop by in person, just to show the flag, to emphasize that his organization takes a personal, one-to-one, hands-on, micromanaged approach to debt-related issues. If it's a second or third notice, he usually writes a contract with Deadbeaters International, a high-impact collection agency with whose work he has always been very happy. Then there is the occasional Code H. Jason hates to deal with Code Hs, views them as symptoms of a breakdown in the system of mutual trust that makes society work. But usually these are handled directly from the regional level, and all Jason has to do is aftermath management and spin control.