itsuyoshi Satake's eyes were fixed on the little silver balls in motion. Word had gone out that new machines were arriving, so he'd got up early to line up for one. He'd been playing now for three hours, so he was about due for a pay-off. All he had to do was be patient. Perhaps because he'd had too little sleep, his eyes burned as he stared at the bright-coloured machine. He fished a bottle of eye drops out of the Italian leather pouch that lay on the railing in front of him and, resting his shooting hand for a moment, placed a drop in each eye. As the medicine soaked into his dry eyes, tears began to flow, and Satake, who had hardly ever cried since he was a small boy, took a certain pleasure from the warm liquid trickling down his cheeks. He let the tears flow, resisting the urge to wipe them away.

At the next machine was a woman wearing a backpack. She glanced over at his tear-streaked face, and Satake could see in her expression both a certain curiosity and a frank disinclination to get involved with a man dressed as flashily as he was. He stared back through his tears at her smooth cheeks and decided that she was barely twenty years old. He was in the habit of sizing up a woman like this without necessarily making contact.

Satake himself was forty-three. His close-cropped head was set on a thick neck atop a powerful body - a generally thuggish appearance - but his eyes had an intelligent look, slanting up at the corners, his nose was well formed, and his hands were rather beautiful. The contradiction between the powerful body and the sensitive face and hands was odd to say the least.

With one beautiful hand, Satake pulled a designer handkerchief from the pocket of his sharply tailored black pants and dabbed at his eyes. Noticing the small tear stains on the black silk of his made-to-order shirt, he carefully dabbed at these as well. The flashy clothes and the Gucci loafers he wore without socks were just his work outfit, the equivalent for him of the business suit that the young woman at the next machine would have felt more comfortable sitting beside.

He glanced at the solid gold Rolex on his wrist. It was almost two o'clock and time to go. But just as he was looking down at the balls left in his tray and beginning to gather up his things, his luck came in: a flood of pachinko balls instantly filled the pocket and began flowing over into the tray.

'Shit,' he blurted out, disgusted at the timing. He nudged the woman next to him, who looked back in slight alarm. 'I've got to go,' he said. 'They're yours if you want them.'

'Thanks,' the woman muttered, looking pleased but wary. It was obvious she wouldn't make a move to take the balls until she was sure he was leaving. Smiling ruefully, he took his bag and stood up. As he walked down the aisle between the deafening pachinko machines underscored by the heavy bass line of the rap music pouring from the speakers, he thought about how he must look to young women these days.

Out on the street beyond the automatic doors, he was met by a new wall of noise: speakers announcing the next show at a movie theatre, men hawking cheap goods on the corner, a popular tune blaring from a karaoke studio. While it was somehow comforting to immerse himself in the familiar air of Kabuki-cho, he had a vague sense that he didn't have to be here. Looking up at the sliver of overcast sky visible through the grimy buildings, he wondered how much longer the humid, threatening heat would continue.

He tucked his bag under his arm and set off at a quick pace, but as he was passing the Koma Theatre, he realised there was a piece of chewing gum stuck to the leather sole of his loafer. He stopped for a moment to try to scrape it on the kerb, but the gum was sticky from the heat and hard to get off. By this point, Satake was thoroughly irritated. The sidewalk itself was sticky with dark stains, reminders of the food and drink consumed and then left behind by the young people who gathered in this neighbourhood at night. As Satake picked his way through the mess, he nearly bumped into a line of old ladies waiting for a concert at the theater. Raising his hand, he tried to cut through them, but the women were lost in their chatter and didn't notice. He stood for a moment in disbelief but then smiled and walked around them. No point in getting pissed off with people you didn't know. No, the gum was the bigger problem right now.

A man handing out fliers, another advertising some kind of girlie show, and a gaggle of sluttish high-school girls - they all gave Satake a wide berth. They knew the streets well enough to read the danger signals he was giving out. Plunging his hands in his pockets, he turned into a back street with a scowl on his face.

The club Satake owned, 'Mika', was in a building that faced an alley off the street that led to the ward office. Springing up the stairs, he pushed open the black door at the end of the passage on the second floor. With all the lights on, the room was unnaturally brighter than the pale shimmer of daylight that came through the frosted glass of the windows. The glass was etched with designs that seemed vaguely Grecian. A woman was sitting at a table near the door, waiting for Satake. She knew how much he hated to be kept waiting and so had come early.

'Thanks for meeting me here,' he said.

'That's fine,' she replied. Reika Cho was Taiwanese. Though her intonation was sometimes a bit odd, she spoke perfect Japanese, which was one reason Satake had agreed to make her the manager of his club. She was already in her late thirties, but she was proud of her smooth white skin and tended to favour low-cut blouses. Her make-up was limited to a gash of bright red lipstick. Around her long white neck she wore an intricate jade pendant and a large gold coin. She had apparently just lit a cigarette as he walked in, and now let out a long stream of smoke as she bowed slightly in his direction.

'Sorry to bother you. I know how busy you are,' he said.

'Not at all,' she said. 'What could be more important than a meeting with Satake-san?' There was something flirtatious in her tone, but Satake decided to ignore it and sat down across from her. He looked around at his club with an air of satisfaction. The colour scheme was based on a dark shade of pink, with rococostyle furniture. There was a karaoke machine near the entrance and a white piano surrounded by four tables. On a lower level toward the back were twelve more tables - a sizeable place, all in all, with a hint of old Shanghai about it.

Reika folded her pale, slender fingers in front of her and looked at him. One hand was adorned with a large jade ring. As if to throw her off guard, instead of taking up the matter they had met to discuss, Satake pointed at the vases of flowers placed around the room.

'Reika-san, you should know better than to forget to change the water in the flowers.' The vases were filled with extravagant bunches of lilies, roses and orchids, but the water had gone cloudy and the flowers were wilting.

'Oh? Yes, I'm sorry,' Reika said, her eyes following his around the room.

'You should at least be able to handle that,' he added, making a joke of it, though privately the complaint was real enough. Still, she was otherwise efficient at running the club.

'But what was it you wanted to discuss?' she asked, smiling brightly and apparently intent on changing the subject. 'Is it about the receipts?'

'No, it's about a customer. Have you been having any problems lately?'

'What sort of problems?' Reika asked. He could see the cogs turning in her head.

'It was something I heard from Anna,' said Satake, leaning forward as he noticed her tensing slightly. Anna Ri, from Shanghai, was the top hostess at Mika and its principal draw. Reika knew that Satake took special care of her and listened to what she said.

'And what did you hear?' she asked.

'Is there a customer by the name of Yamamoto?'

'We get several of them with that name.... Oh wait, I know who you mean,' Reika nodded, as if suddenly remembering. 'He's quite a fan of Anna's, I believe.'

'So she says. And that's okay, if he pays his bill; but seems he's been waiting for her outside the club and following her around.'

'Is that so?' said Reika, leaning back to emphasise how surprised she was.

'And yesterday I had a call from her saying that the guy had somehow found out where she lives and had shown up at her apartment,' Satake added.

'Now that you mention it, he has been a bit slow with his bill,' Reika said, with growing consternation.

'I've warned you about these jerks with eyes too big for their expense accounts. Next time he shows up, figure out a way to send him packing. I don't want Anna hooking up with a creep like that.'

'I understand,' she said. 'But what can I tell him?'

'That's up to you. It comes with the job,' Satake said. The rebuff seemed to put her on her mettle, and her expression changed, her lips narrowing to a fine crease.

'I understand,' she said again. 'I'll give strict orders to the floor manager.' The floor manager was a young Taiwanese who'd been off the last two days with a cold.

'And when she hasn't any customers, send Anna home by taxi.'

'I'll do just that,' said Reika, her head bobbing. The conversation at an end, Satake grunted and stood to go. She followed him to the door, as if her were a customer.

'And Cho-san,' he said, 'don't forget about the flowers.' As he watched her smile uncertainly in reply, he realised he would soon have to start looking for a better manager. The hostesses were a different story; they'd all been selected for their looks and youth and a certain class they gave the place. To Satake, they were so much living merchandise. But the manager was the one who had to make the sales.

Leaving Mika, Satake climbed the stairs to another club on the floor above and stood at the door. This one was called 'Playground' and featured baccarat tables. Here, too, he employed a full-time manager, and Satake, as owner, put in an appearance only a few times a week. About a year before, the mahjong parlour above Mika had gone under. Satake rented the space and opened an after-hours baccarat club for the customers at Mika. Since he didn't have a gaming licence, he couldn't advertise, and he had never intended it to be more than a sideline. But somehow word had got around and the place had been a hit. He had started in a low-key way with two mini-baccarat tables, but when the crowds grew, he hired several professional dealers, added a full-sized table, and kept it open every night from nine until dawn. Now the money was rolling in.

Satake carefully wound up the loose cord on the white sign and polished the brass doorknob with his handkerchief, but he resisted the urge to go in for a full-scale inspection the way he did at Mika. This was, after all, a gambling club, one of his pet projects, and it was also a gold mine. The cell phone in the bag under his arm began to ring.

'Where are you, honey? I have to go get my hair done.' Anna's Japanese wasn't always perfect, but cute nonetheless. No one had taught her to talk like that - it just came naturally - but it was clearly a wonderful tool for getting men to do her bidding.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Sit tight and I'll be right there.' He had almost thirty Chinese hostesses working for him, but Anna's looks and brains set her apart from the rest. And he was just on the verge of getting her the right kind of patron. All her previous customers had been hand-picked, and he wasn't going to let some pushy asshole with an empty wallet step in and mess up his plans.

Satake made his way out of Kabuki-cho and back to the white Mercedes he had parked nearby. It was a ten-minute drive to Anna's apartment in Okubo. Though it was a new building, there was no security in the lobby. If this guy was really stalking her, she would probably have to move elsewhere. He rang the doorbell on the sixth floor.

'It's me,' he said into the intercom.

'It's open,' said a low, sweet voice. As he opened the door, a fragile-looking toy poodle came yipping around his legs. It had apparently heard him coming and was waiting for him. He disliked the dog, but Anna adored it, so he had to at least pretend to indulge it. He pushed it back with the toe of his shoe.

'Don't you think you're being a bit too laid-back about locking the door?' he called.

'What does that mean, "laid-back"?' Anna shouted from the bedroom. Satake decided against answering the question. The little dog was writhing with pleasure at his feet, so he teased it with his shoe while he waited for her. The hall of the apartment was filled with rows of shoes in various colours and styles. It had been Satake who had put them in some semblance of order so that she could find the pair she wanted when it was time to go out.

Anna appeared at last, looking as flamboyant as usual. Her long, wavy black hair was pulled back in a pony-tail, her eyes concealed behind Chanel sunglasses. She wore a large T-shirt with lame embroidery over leopard-skin tights. Even behind the large sunglasses it was immediately apparent that her flawless skin needed no make-up. Satake studied her face, noting again the thick, slightly curled lips that were so enticing to most men.

'Same place as usual?' he asked.

'Uh-uh.' She worked her bare feet into a pair of enamelled mules, the red polish on her toenails showing through the open toes. At this point, the dog, realising it was about to be left behind, stood on its back legs and began barking frantically.

'Now, Jewel,' she said, as if scolding a child, 'you mustn't be naughty.'

They left the apartment and waited at the elevator. Anna generally rose sometime after noon and went out shopping or for a beauty treatment. After that she would go to get her hair done, have something light to eat, and set out for Mika. Whenever he was free, Satake would chauffeur her on her rounds, just in case someone else came along and grabbed her when he wasn't looking. As they stepped into the elevator, his cell phone rang again.

'Satake-san?'

'Kunimatsu? Is that you?' Kunimatsu was the manager at Playground. Satake glanced over at Anna, and for a second she returned the look before glancing away in apparent disinterest and busying herself with a bottle of nail polish, the same shade she wore on her toenails. 'What's up?' Satake said into the phone.

'There's something I'd like to get your advice about. Do you have any time later today?' Kunimatsu's shrill voice echoed in the tight space of the elevator, and Satake held the phone away from his ear as he answered.

'Sure,' he said. 'I'm taking Anna to the beauty parlour now, so I'll have time while she's there.'

'Where will you be?' Kunimatsu asked.

'Nakano. Why don't we meet there?' After deciding on the time and place, Satake hung up. The elevator had reached the ground floor, and Anna, getting off first, turned to look at him coyly.

'Sweetie, did you talk to Cho-san 'bout that little problem?' she asked.

'I told her not to let him into the club any more. You just do your job and don't worry about it.'

'Okay,' she said, looking up at him over the top of the sunglasses. 'But even if he doesn't come to the club, he could still come here,' she added.

'Don't you worry about it,' he repeated. 'I'll keep an eye out.'

'But I think I'd still like to move,' she said.

'Okay. If it keeps up, I'll think about it.'

'Good,' she said.

'What's he like anyway?' Satake asked. He rarely showed his face at Mika.

'He gets so angry if they try to give him any of the other girls.' Anna grimaced. 'He's always making trouble, and then just recently he stopped paying his bills and asked for credit. I hate that! Everyone knows there are rules about that kind of thing, even in a place like ours.' She finished her little speech as she lowered herself into the Mercedes. Anna may have looked like a beautiful doll, but inside she was a sturdy young woman from Shanghai. She had come to Japan four years earlier to study Japanese, and even now her visa status suggested she should still be attending language classes.

***

After dropping Anna at the hairdresser, Satake headed for the cafe where they had agreed to meet. Kunimatsu, who had arrived first, waved discreetly from a table at the back.

'Thanks for coming,' he said, smiling amiably as Satake settled into the deep sofa. In his polo shirt and golf pants, Kunimatsu, who wasn't yet forty, looked more like an instructor at a sports club than a casino manager. In fact, though, he had been in the business quite a while. Satake had recruited him from a mahjong place in the Ginza where he'd been an assistant manager for some years.

'So what's up?' he asked, lighting a cigarette.

'It's probably not that important,' Kunimatsu began, 'but I'm a bit worried about one of the customers.'

'Worried how?' said Satake. 'You think he's a cop?' The old saying that 'the nail that sticks up gets hammered down' went double for this business. If word got out that Playground was making money, the police were likely to make it a scapegoat for all the other gambling clubs.

'No, no, not that,' said Kunimatsu, fluttering his long fingers. 'It's a man who's been coming almost every night lately, and losing heavily.'

'Nobody who plays baccarat every night wins,' Satake laughed. Kunimatsu, too, gave a laugh as he stirred the straw in his orange juice. Neither he nor Satake could drink. Satake took a sip of the iced caf£ au lait sitting in front of him. 'So how much has he lost?' he asked.

'About four or five million in the last two months. Not all that much, really, but once they get started they usually don't stop.'

'But it's small-stakes stuff, right? So what's worrying you?' said Satake.

'Well, the other night he suddenly started asking to borrow from the house.' In general, Satake's club operated strictly on a cash-stakes basis, but on rare occasions a regular customer was sometimes advanced a few hundred thousand yen, though no more. He must have seen someone else taking advantage of this service.

'Then don't mess around with him,' Satake said. 'Throw him out.'

'Which is exactly what I did. I was polite enough about it, but I made it clear he wasn't welcome. He made a helluva fuss before leaving.'

'A loser,' said Satake. 'What does he do, anyway?'

'Works for some little company somewhere. Actually, I wouldn't have bothered you about it at all except that I had an idea he was stopping in at Mika, too, so I called Cho-san. She tells me he's blacklisted there as well.'

'It's Yamamoto. Women and money.' Satake sighed and stubbed out his cigarette. There were plenty of men falling all over themselves for his beautiful young Chinese hostesses, but when the money ran out, they usually came to their senses and gave up on the women. But this character seemed to be trying to win at baccarat in order to keep seeing Anna. Or maybe he had suddenly realised how much he'd spent on her and was trying to win some of it back. Whichever it was, Yamamoto had come unglued, and Satake had seen enough people like him to know that neither the woman nor the gambling was any fun for him anymore. He probably hadn't even meant to cause so much trouble, but Satake could sense the danger to both Anna and his business.

'If he shows up again, could I tell him that the owner wants to have a word with him?' Kunimatsu asked.

'Okay. Call me if he comes, but I'm not sure he's going to get it, even coming from me.'

'No, I guarantee that when he sees that the owner looks like a yakuza, that'll be the last of him.' Satake laughed quietly at the little joke, but his dark eyes didn't change. 'You know, you really can be pretty scary,' Kunimatsu went on, seemingly oblivious.

'You think so?' said Satake.

'Those clothes, that look - you'll send him running.'

'What's so scary?'

'Well, you look nice enough, but there's something a bit... disturbing....' Just then, the cell phone in Satake's bag rang, as if to put a damper on Kunimatsu's laughter. It was Anna.

'Honey, I'm finished,' she said. The words - the exact same words - sent a jolt of recognition through him.

***

The woman had gasped beneath his heavy body. He rubbed against her, lubricated by the warm, sticky liquid, but as her body gradually grew cold, he felt as though they'd been glued together. She seemed to be seesawing between agony and ecstasy, but finally Satake pressed his lips over hers to quiet the groans - of pain or pleasure - that were leaking from her mouth. He found the hole that he had made in her side and worked his finger deep into the opening. Blood was pumping from the wound, staining their sex a gruesome crimson. He wanted to get further inside, to melt into her. As he was about to come, he pulled his lips from hers and she whispered in his ear: 'I'm finished... finished.'

'I know,' he'd said, and he could still hear the exact sound of his own voice.

***

Satake had once killed a woman.

During high school he'd had a fight with his father and left home for good. For a while, he made it as a mahjong hustler, until a gang member from a yakuza family took him under his wing. His patron was getting rich in the prostitution and drug rackets in Shinjuku, and Satake took on the job of making sure that none of the girls decided to jump ship. One day, however, something bad happened. The gang had learned that a certain woman was recruiting their girls for another gang, and had sent Satake to work her over; but he had killed her instead. He was twenty-six at the time, and he spent seven years in jail for the crime, a fact that not even Anna knew, let alone Kunimatsu or Cho-san. It was his prison record, though, that had convinced him to keep a low profile in his businesses, hiring Cho and the Taiwanese floor manager for Mika and Kunimatsu for the casino.

Now, almost twenty years later, he could still recall the whole incident in vivid detail - the sound of her voice, the expression on her face at the moment she died, the sensation of her fingers scraping across his back, the chill running down his spine. The fact was, you never really knew your own limits until you'd killed someone - there was nothing else quite like it. To be sure, there was a deep sense of guilt, but Satake had also discovered in himself a tendency to enjoy inflicting pain, as well as a powerful charge from the proximity to death itself.

'That's kind of overdoing it.' The other guys in the gang had looked at him in disgust when they saw what he'd done, though they were used to violence themselves. He would never forget the look of revulsion on their faces, but in the end he told himself that no one else could understand what had passed between the two of them.

While he was inside, he'd been haunted by the memory of torturing her to death - but what troubled him wasn't guilt so much as the desire to do it all over again. Ironically, though, when he finally got out, he was completely impotent. It wasn't until some years later that he realised that the intensity of the moment when he'd killed her had somehow shut him off from the more mundane experience. When you discovered your limits, it seemed, you sealed the knowledge away, and ever since, Satake had been very careful not to break the seal. No one else could really know the self-control this required or the loneliness it entailed. Still, since they could never see this hidden self, women came to him, defences down, and became his pets. And since they lacked the power to disturb his well-guarded dream, they remained nothing more than lovely pets.

Satake knew that the only woman who could ever really understand him, the only one who could tempt him - to heaven or to hell - was the woman he'd killed. So it was only in his dreams that he could be with a woman, only in his dreams that he could find that intensity again. But that was enough. And because he lived only in his dreams, there was no pimp more considerate than he was. He kept the face of the woman he'd killed locked away inside him, a face he had never seen before the day they met. But in the end, this arrangement had made him a bitter man. And though he had no desire ever to open the lid he had closed on his personal hell, now, with just a few words from Anna, the lid had been knocked loose. Satake quickly wiped the sweat off his forehead, hoping that Kunimatsu hadn't noticed.

***

When he got to the beauty salon, Anna was waiting outside. He opened the door and waited for her to get in. Seeing the way Anna's hair had been set, piled up on her head 1970s style, Satake laughed out loud.

'That takes me back,' he said. 'That's how all the women wore their hair when I was young.'

'That's ancient history,' Anna said.

'More than twenty years ago, before you were born,' he said. He studied her for a moment. It was somehow miraculous that a woman could be so beautiful and have a good head on her shoulders, and plenty of nerve, too. Lately, she had also started to show signs of the pride that went with being his number one girl, a kind of unapproachable self-possession. Privately, he even felt a certain sympathy for the men who'd fallen for her. As he steered the Mercedes away from the kerb, he found himself gazing at the seam of her tights where it dug into her thigh; the flesh was soft yet elastic, the effect one of luxuriance.

'Always stay this beautiful,' he said eventually. 'I'll take care of the rest.' He knew how short-lived beauty was and that when she got older, he would have to look for a new Anna. The remark had been meant to acknowledge this.

'Then you'll have to sleep with me, at least once,' said Anna, her tone both seductive and almost serious. Satake knew that the people in the clubs, ignorant as they were of his past, thought he was a cold fish.

'I don't think so,' he said. 'As products go, you're much too valuable.'

'Am I a product?' she asked.

'Yes,' he said. 'A beautiful, dreamy toy.' For some reason, the word 'toy' reminded him of the other woman, but he was temporarily distracted by the tail lights of the car ahead and the thought passed. 'A very expensive toy, one that only rich men can play with.'

'But what if I fall in love, then someone else might get me.'

'You won't,' said Satake, looking over at this new, more assertive Anna.

'I will,' she replied, reaching over and folding her hand around Satake's as it rested on the steering wheel. He immediately returned the hand to the soft surface of her thigh. Satake lived his life in the secret embrace of a dark memory, and the only woman he needed wasn't alive. His main source of satisfaction now was to make a series of pretty toys available to the men who wanted them. Hence his concern over the success of his two clubs, and hence the need to see to the matter at hand: getting rid of this man named Yamamoto.

***

That evening, as Satake was getting ready to leave his own apartment in West Shinjuku, a call came from Kunimatsu.

'Yamamoto's here,' he said. 'He wants to play, for about twenty or thirty thousand. What should I do? Kick him out?'

'No, let him play. I'll be right there.' Satake put on a collarless shirt and a grey sharkskin suit he'd just had made and left the apartment. After parking the car at a batting cage in Shinjuku, he first looked in at Mika. Anna glanced up from her table at the back and waved. She had on her work face: sexy yet somehow utterly innocent. As if not to be outdone by Anna, the other girls looked stunning as well. Satisfied that they passed muster, he summoned Cho-san. She made her way through the club, discreetly greeting the customers, and stood next to him.

'Thanks for making time,' he said, 'and thanks for putting Kunimatsu wise to that guy.'

'Sure. I hadn't realised he was going upstairs as well.'

'And having no more luck up there,' said Satake. Cho giggled. In her pale green Chinese-style dress, she looked younger yet somehow more reliable than usual. But when he glanced around at the vases, he noticed that the water was still cloudy and the flowers even more wilted. Without saying anything, though, he took his leave, anxious now to get a look at this Yamamoto who was after Anna.

Going up to the third floor, he stood at the door to Playground. He had told Kunimatsu to keep the sign unlit so as not to attract the cops' attention, but once you opened the door, there was no hiding the noise and excitement of a casino that came pouring out. Satake slipped inside and surveyed his club. In about seventy square metres, he had managed to arrange two small baccarat tables that could accommodate seven customers and one full-sized table where fourteen could play for higher stakes. At the moment, there were crowds around all three. In attendance were three black-suited men, Kunimatsu among them, and three girls in bunny costumes to serve drinks and snacks, all circulating briskly through the room.

The dealer at one of the smaller tables noticed him come in and nodded, though his hands never stopped stacking the chips that lay in front of him. Satake nodded back. He was familiar with this type of disciplined, skilled young man from his mahjong days. All in all, he found the whole club exactly to his liking.

Baccarat was a simple game. The customers bet on either the player or the banker to win the hand, and the dealer took a fivepercent commission from the banker's winnings as the house cut. That was all there was to it. The mark of a good dealer was his ability to get the customers to compete against each other, but the game was such that most people got caught up in it without much coaxing.

The player and the banker were each dealt two cards, as in blackjack, but the object in baccarat was to get cards adding up to, or as close as possible to, nine. The player or banker was allowed to draw a third card depending on the total of the original hand. If the player was dealt cards totalling eight or nine, that was considered a 'natural', and he either won or tied, and the banker wasn't allowed to take another card. If the player was dealt a six or seven, he would 'stand' and wait to see the banker's cards. Below five, he took a third card. Besides that, there were just a few simple rules relating to particular card totals.

The secret of the game's popularity was that anyone could learn to play almost immediately; and because of this, the place always seemed to be full of respectable-looking young businessmen or office girls on their way home from work. But Satake knew the truth about his customers. Though the atmosphere of the place was trendier than a traditional casino, Playground attracted a crowd of losers and scumbags. Still, he was more than happy to watch them throw their money away.

'There he is,' Kunimatsu whispered in his ear, pointing at a man seated next to one of the tables, sipping a drink and watching the other customers play. 'And he's already down about a hundred thousand for the night.' Satake moved to a corner of the room where he could observe Yamamoto without being noticed.

He seemed to be in his mid-thirties. Short-sleeved white shirt, nondescript tie, grey pants. A forgettable man with a forgettable face. You would never notice him in the endless crowds of other office workers. So then what was this nobody doing falling for Anna? She was still just twenty-three, the prettiest girl in Mika, which was full of pretty girls. But more than that, she was his number one - Yamamoto was way out of his league by any standards. Anna was right: just as there were rules in gambling, there were rules in this game as well; and it made Satake, who was himself so scrupulous, furious to see someone like Yamamoto ignoring them.

The game at Yamamoto's table was coming to an end. The cards in the tray would give out in another round or two. Trying to look decisive, Yamamoto took the few chips he had left and bet them all on the player's hand. Almost everyone else around the table immediately bet on the banker, anxious to avoid following Yamamoto's lead. The dealer, pretending not to notice the stampede to the banker's side, quickly dealt the cards. The player drew two face cards, or zero. Loser, Satake thought to himself. The banker's cards totalled three, so both sides had to take a third card. The player took the card dealt him and, in the customary fashion, curled up both edges before looking at it. Then he threw it down in disgust. Another face card. The banker flashed a smile of relief and showed a four. Zero to seven, bank wins, and the game was over.

'The card shark gets bitten,' Satake muttered, and Kunimatsu, who was standing close by, chuckled softly. A young woman dealer took over at the table, and several of the customers changed places as well, but Yamamoto, though he was now out of chips, sat where he was and sulked. A young woman dressed like a bar hostess who was waiting for the place at the table glanced over at Kunimatsu by way of protest. Satake signalled that he was ready to step in and walked up behind Yamamoto.

'Excuse me,' he said.

'Yeah?' A shock must have gone through Yamamoto as he turned to look: the hard body, the soft face, and the outfit that could only suggest one profession. He managed to keep it from showing on his face, but inside everything was probably numb.

'If you aren't going to play, would you mind letting this customer have your seat?' Satake said.

'Why should I?'

'Because people are waiting.' Satake's tone was still polite.

'Who says I can't sit here and watch?' He had apparently had a few too many free drinks, and was flicking the ash from his cigarette on to the table. Satake called an assistant manager and asked him to clean up the mess.

'I'm sorry, but I'd like to have a word with you. Please come this way.'

'You can tell me here,' Yamamoto muttered. The other customers at the table eyed him with distaste, and several of them, noticing Satake standing behind him, seemed scared and looked away.

'No, I think you'd better follow me.' Yamamoto made a show of being offended, but Satake managed to lead him to the door. When they reached the dimly lit corridor outside, he turned to face him. 'I've been told that you've asked to borrow money from the house, and I wanted to inform you that making loans to customers is against our policy. If you need funds to play with, please make arrangements elsewhere.'

'This is a business, isn't it?' Yamamoto said, beginning to look like a pouting child. 'People ask to borrow money all the time.'

'That's exactly why we don't do it,' said Satake. 'And another thing, I have to ask you to stop following Anna around. She's still young, and you've been frightening her.'

'Hold on. Who says you can tell me what to do when it comes to her?' Yamamoto looked indignant. 'I'm still a customer, aren't I? I've spent enough money on her, that's for sure.'

'And we appreciate it. But you should stop following her. It's not allowed to see the girls outside the club.'

'Who says?' he snorted. 'She's a hooker, isn't she?'

'She's way too good for the likes of you.' Satake was losing his temper. 'We asked you nicely to stay away, now fuck off!'

'Who the fuck d'you think you are?!' Yamamoto shouted, suddenly throwing a punch. Satake blocked it with his right arm and grabbed him by the collar. Planting a knee in his groin, he pinned him against the wall and held him immobile and gasping for air.

'Go home now, before you get hurt,' he hissed. Just then, a group of business types came up the stairs and, seeing the two of them at it, hurried inside Playground. This was exactly the kind of thing that started rumours that the mob was running the show, which was never good for business. He loosened his grip. Given an opening, Yamamoto threw a wild punch that caught him on the jaw. Satake swore, then jabbed his elbow into the man's stomach and, when he doubled over, kicked him down the stairs. As he watched him roll down and come to rest sitting on the landing, for a moment he felt the rush of adrenalin that fighting had once given him. But only for an instant, before his carefully cultivated self-control kicked in again. 'If you come back, I'll kill you, asshole,' he called down at him.

Yamamoto sat in a daze, wiping the blood from his mouth. Maybe he hadn't even heard the threat. A bunch of young women heading upstairs stopped short, screamed, and ran back down. Shit, thought Satake, not wanting women to get scared away as well.

It never occurred to him to wonder what else might happen to Yamamoto that night as he straightened his suit and went back inside.