Heads Will Roll Read online

  Heads Will Roll

  Joanie Chevalier

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright @2017 Joanie Chevalier

  All rights reserved.

  ***

  Fact or Fiction? Real-Life Doctor to Perform Head Transplant Surgery

  Head transplantation is a fascinating subject. There is a real-life doctor who plans on becoming the first doctor to ever attempt a human head transplant. Read more about the doctor and his Russian volunteer, on my blog.

  Visit my website and enjoy free short stories and other fun stuff.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 Sinister Shadows - Tokyo, Japan

  Chapter 2 Boys with a Coffin - California USA

  Chapter 3 Aiko’s Purchase - Tokyo

  Chapter 4 It’s a Family Business - California

  Chapter 5 AK-47 Rifles - California

  Chapter 6 Cash for Deliveries - California

  Chapter 7 Barry’s Quest - San Francisco

  Chapter 8 The Stalker - California

  Chapter 9 Aiko’s Inner Reflection - Tokyo

  Chapter 10 Dr. Farkis and His Fancy Shoes - California

  Chapter 11 Aiko Buys a Body - Tokyo

  Chapter 12 Poster Boy - California

  Chapter 13 Tears and Smiles - Tokyo

  Chapter 14 Jenny Believes - California

  Chapter 15 Detective’s Tattoo - California

  Chapter 16 Head Swap with a Chihuahua - San Francisco

  Chapter 17 Dumpster Graveyard - Oakland

  Chapter 18 Stapled Rat Heads - Oakland

  Chapter 19 Barry Spills the Beans - Oakland

  Chapter 20 Ferris Wheel - Oakland

  Chapter 21 Body Snatcher - Oakland

  Chapter 22 The Odd Couple - Oakland

  Chapter 23 Bonding Before the Storm - San Francisco

  Chapter 24 Basement Experiments - Oakland

  Chapter 25 Barry’s Closer to a New Body - Oakland

  Chapter 26 Corrupt Senator - Oakland

  Chapter 27 Heads in Jars - Oakland

  Chapter 28 Barry Seeks Revenge - Oakland

  Chapter 29 Severed Head Causes Havoc - Oakland

  Chapter 30 Barry Can’t Have a New Body So He Makes a Bomb - Oakland

  Chapter 31 Brett Bloodies a Mobster - Oakland

  Chapter 32 Dumpster Diving - Oakland

  Chapter 33 Fat Farm Graduate - Tokyo

  Epilogue

  Sharp Saw Makes a Comeback - A Jungle Village Somewhere

  Fact or Fiction? Real-Life Doctor to Perform Head Transplant Surgery

  Contact the Author

  Chapter 1

  Sinister Shadows - Tokyo, Japan

  Kaneko had no way of knowing that after tomorrow, her head would be attached to a new body.

  ***

  It was a cold and misty morning. Kaneko shivered and wrapped her thin arms around herself. It didn’t matter how cold or hot the weather was, she’d always wear a fashion style of her own. Today she wore a short pink skirt, more like a ballerina’s tutu, a tight green t-shirt, green leggings, and moon boots. Her hoodie was thin, but was her favorite: glued-on rhinestones and Justin Bieber’s face smiling from the back.

  There was only one difference between her and a typical Japanese teenager. They were skinny where she was chunky. Thus, the reason why her clothes were so tight. Trying to find clothes for chunky girls in Japan was nearly impossible. Everything on the rack was either sized zero or negative zero. Chunky girls had to order online or wear homemade clothes, which, for a teenaged girl, were not reasonable options.

  Her father, a proper business man, was impeccably dressed in his black suit and crisp white shirt, as usual. He stood ramrod straight. He knew Kaneko would be cold this morning, but he believed in tough love. “If Kaneko wants to dress as if she were in the Bahamas, then so be it,” he had told his wife as he was getting ready for the day. “If she wants to shiver all morning, then so be it.” He didn’t want to hear any whining, and Kaneko knew her father’s expectations, so she suffered in silence.

  Her actions weren’t silent though, obvious about her discomfort by stomping her feet, sighing, and pacing back and forth while rubbing her hands together, but at least she adhered to his rule of not whining.

  Aiko glanced at his Rolex. They had been waiting in line since a quarter after four. It was now five a.m. The tour would begin soon. He believed promptness was a key ingredient to success, and he expected that virtue from others, as his numerable employees would attest, if asked.

  Kaneko had bought their breakfast; tea and a few onigiri from a sidewalk vendor. The traditional food, made with brown rice wrapped in seaweed, would fortify them for a while. She’d bought her favorite, salmon, and Aiko had only nodded when she handed him a few.

  She hadn’t asked any questions when he had told her last week to be ready to leave today at two-thirty. But he hadn’t expected her to ask questions. His two children were very obedient, and if he told them to be up and ready to go somewhere in the middle of the night, they’d dress and be waiting by their bedroom door five minutes early.

  Of course, they’d visited the fish market many times before, as a family, but had never taken the tour. Only tourists took the tour. Their quarterly visits were a mission to buy tuna and salmon, fresh herbs, and vegetables.

  Kaneko may assume they were here for the tour, but Aiko had his own purpose. After he had made the decision to go ahead with his plan, he’d thought long and hard about how to go about it.

  Aiko didn’t necessarily want to wait in line with all the tourists. He was a busy man. Kaneko was silent on their thirty-minute ride here, but she knew the answers would be forthcoming in due time. He admitted he could be impatient, but he did not tolerate this same fault in his daughter.

  When early morning dawn made a showing, and street lamps blinked off one by one, people in the queue could now watch the scurrying and bustling of the market’s vendors. The line of tourists began to shuffle towards the entrance to the depths of the famous fish market, hushed murmuring amongst themselves. The market tour was very popular, and most of the people in line were giddy with excitement, except for Kaneko, her reserved father, and one bored American teenaged girl.

  The American girl sighed when her mother told her to take her earbuds out and stand up. She noticed Kaneko watching them and she dramatically rolled her eyes. Kaneko covered her mouth and giggled, glancing towards her father. He was not paying any attention, so she gave two thumbs up, grinning back at the girl.

  The tour guide warned them to watch their step and keep a cautious eye out for market workers rushing around, as well as dozens of forklifts and machinery in the area. “It’s a working fish market, after all. Any misconduct from any of you will get you kicked out of the tour. No exceptions!”

  The guide turned the crowd’s attention to a half dozen men in knee-high plastic rain boots, hoodies, and heavy winter coats, on their way to the tuna auction, one floor below. A beeping horn from a forklift passed by, interrupting the guide's memorized speech. Some chuckled at the timing.

  Kaneko chuckled too, and again noticed her father was preoccupied, his eyes scanning the crowd up ahead. Kaneko didn’t think much of it. Her father was a company man. He always tried to forecast the future, calculating, predicting, and thinking of ways to stay productive.

  When the guide began walking again, the crowd followed.

  Aiko grabbed his daughter’s upper arm before she got too far ahead of him. “Stay with me,” he said. He walked slower than the tourists, and after several minutes, they began to fall behind. A side door marked Caution: Flammables opened,
first with hesitation, and then with purpose when a guard noticed them. He gestured with his hand, as if expecting them.

  “Come, come,” the guard said. “Hurry.”

  Aiko guided Kaneko through the door with a gentle push on her back, and the guard closed it behind them, setting a dead bolt. He pulled a bar away from the wall and latched it across the door.

  Noticing Aiko’s puzzlement, the guard explained. “There’s no way anyone can get through this door uninvited. Unless they have a bomb. And not too many people carry a bomb while touring Tsukiji Fish Market.” The guard chuckled at his own joke, showing a few decaying teeth. Not expecting a response from his two guests, he turned around and walked ahead of them. “Follow me.”

  The guard led them down a crude stone tunnel with a gaited limp, as if he had an injured foot. Bare bulbs cast elongated sinister shadows as they passed under each one. Their shadows began as huge hump-backed monsters, dwindling to small elves as they continued down the tunnel. If Kaneko wasn’t so perplexed about what they were doing here, she would’ve giggled at the comedic shapes the trio created.

  They came to a fork, as if the tunnel-boring machine had quit mid-project, but the guard didn’t miss a beat as he pivoted left. The air was musty, like an old dryer vent. Kaneko hugged herself as a cold draft connected with her skirt, billowing it upwards with stale, frigid air. The hall was eerily quiet, and Kaneko jumped when a loud ping sounded from a small pipe running along the wall of the tunnel.

  They again came to a sudden dead-end. This time the guard stopped in front of a door with a padlock. He pulled out a headlamp from his jacket pocket and strapped it onto his head. He pulled out a ring of keys from his other pocket and fumbled with them before inserting one into the lock and opening it. Kaneko glanced back at her father, but he was staring at the guard’s hands. Their shadows were now intertwined with the darkness, the only light in this corner of the dead-end coming from the guard’s headlamp.

  The room beyond the padlocked door was brighter, a light source coming through a hole in the ceiling and from a halogen floor lamp plugged into a quiet humming generator. A small metal desk sat at the back of the room, which resembled a huge cave rather than an office. The desk was clear other than a nondescript penholder with a few ink pens.

  Behind the desk on the stone wall was an outdated tourist map of Tsukiji Fish Market, held up with huge crooked concrete nails, as if a young child had pounded them in with a toy hammer. A flagpole stood next to the desk, its flag hanging limp and dusty.

  The guard nodded towards two metal chairs in front of the desk and gestured with a sweeping motion of his arm, as if presenting something more appealing.

  “Please,” he said, drawing out the word, “make yourselves comfortable.” He turned to a large red button on the wall and pressed it. The guard then stood next to the short flagpole and whistled softly, rocking on his feet. Kaneko shuddered at the guard’s curious, open stare.

  After waiting for a few moments in awkward silence, Kaneko glanced at her father, but he only stared at the floor with concern, picking off pieces of lint from his suit jacket. She squirmed in the hard, plastic uncomfortable chair.

  A small Asian man with slicked back jet-black hair entered through a door to the left of the desk. The guard smirked behind his hand, entertained by their startled reactions. The man’s aura changed the room’s vibe from nervous anticipation to high-energy vivacity. He nodded his head in greeting before he sat down behind the desk in a similar metal, utilitarian chair. The man was in his early forties, wore a fashionable, three-piece pinstripe suit, and held his head up with confidence, full of self-importance. He gave a wave of dismissal to the guard, who nodded and left through the side door.

  There was no introduction or preamble when the man spoke, as if he had somewhere else to be and wanted to save time. “If you weren’t in my family, I would not have let you in,” he said in a clipped tone, his stare at Aiko unflinching.

  Aiko cleared his throat. “If you were from the worthy side of the family, I wouldn’t have had to pay you my hard-earned money to get in here, Tanaka.”

  Tanaka chuckled and folded his child-like hands in front of him. “Touché. And thank you, Uncle, for the deposit. I received your check via messenger last evening.” Tanaka paused, swiveling his head first to Kaneko and back again to Aiko. “Tell me, Aiko, why are you here?”

  Aiko glanced at his daughter, who sat next to him, stiff and uncomfortable. She eyed him, puzzled, waiting for his answer. She didn’t know why she was here either. Her mother had stuffed some clothes into her backpack and had left it near her bedroom door so she wouldn’t forget it. Before they had left, her mother, in her robe and slippers, yawned as she hugged her, something she didn’t often do.

  Perhaps her mother was getting rid of her. Kaneko knew her mother thought she was a disappointment. She’d heard her mother’s tirade to her father many times, and she always timed it after his exhausting, sixteen-hour work day. Maybe it was strategy to tear him down, Kaneko thought. By the apparent anxiety in her father’s face, her mother’s mission must be working.

  “Look at our daughter! It’s your fault she’s nothing! She’s meant to be married. I want grandchildren. Don’t you want grandchildren, Father? You are not helping our family get ahead! What will my sisters think about my lazy husband and fat daughter?”

  On and on the arguments would go, for hours. Sometimes her mother insisted her father sleep on the hammock out on the porch. During her mother’s last tirade, Kaneko had heard her father respond.

  “Secretly, sometimes I don’t mind sleeping on the porch in our hammock. At least I get to listen to raindrops on the roof lulling me to sleep instead of my wife’s shrill, nagging voice!”

  Kaneko tried to be careful about what she ate. She was quiet in her family’s home, studying for hours. She practiced her piano lessons every day for two hours, as was expected, but that was never enough for her mother. She had finally given up, like her father.

  “Take my daughter away first,” Aiko said. “She has no need to be here for the rest of this interview.”

  “Where am I going, Father?” Kaneko’s voice was high and timid. Her dark eyes darted around the room through her thick black bangs. Her father’s face showed a flash of disgust as he noticed a quiver in her double chin. He reached over to grip her shaking leg with his strong fingers. Kaneko flinched at the pain, but didn’t cry out. In their family, showing fear or pain was disrespectful when with your elders, as if they didn’t know how to take care of you.

  Tanaka jumped up with a burst of energy and strode to the door where they had come through fifteen minutes earlier. He gestured to Kaneko. “Come. This way.”

  Kaneko turned towards her father and studied his face. She noticed his left eye twitched, but other than that, his face was devoid of emotion. After several seconds with no response from her father, she obediently followed Tanaka out of the room, only glancing back once. Her father continued to stare straight ahead, never turning in her direction.

  Chapter 2

  Boys with a Coffin - California USA

  “Do you have to be so noisy? Damn,” Brett said. “Kilmer can probably even hear you, and he’s the poor bastard in the coffin.”

  “Bejesus, what do you have in here? Everything and the kitchen sink?” Joey disturbed the quiet as he rummaged through the glove box. The sound reverberated throughout the hearse as he groped through salt and pepper packets, coffee cup sleeves, napkins, and pens. He found what he was searching for, pulled out a reefer from his suit jacket pocket and lit it with the newly-found disposable lighter. He let out a loud, satisfied sigh.

  “Damn it, Joey! We’ve talked about this, what, how many times?” his brother exclaimed.

  “Hey now, quit mean-mugging, bro. I know what you’re going to say: ‘Wait until the job is done!’” Joey answered in his best fake Italian accent, gesturing with his hands for emphasis. He held the joint between his lips and exhaled, his eyes narrowing against
the smoke. “I mean, come on, can you blame me for lighting up?”

  Their vehicle sped down I-880 North toward Oakland. Everyone in the Bay area drove at least twenty miles per hour over the legal limit, even through a foggy mist like tonight. But they weren’t attracting attention because of speeding. What did attract the attention was the fact the vehicle was a hearse, and it was after midnight. Vehicle brake lights lit up as drivers either slowed to watch them pass by, or as they changed lanes when they noticed its beams tailgating them, the headlights creating eerie halos in the fog.

  Over in the driver’s seat, Brett grimaced, but kept his thoughts to himself. Jim mentioned yesterday he had another appointment so he couldn’t drive tonight. Yeah, right. Jim had a business meeting. At midnight? More like another woman.

  “Even though you opted out of the family business, you can assist every now and then, you know. You owe us that much.” Brett didn’t disclose Jim had been missing a lot of work – again.

  It was the policy to ride two-up, although Brett insisted he could make the deliveries himself. Jim was adamant someone else be on the ride-along in Maude. Their father had given the hearse its nickname after he watched Harold & Maude, the cult film he loved.

  Brett didn’t ask any questions. Jim was the oldest brother after all, and boss of Andersen & Sons Funeral Home & Crematorium. He’d been the rainmaker for their family business for the last several years, raking in more funds in six months than their dad had brought in over a two-year period. A cash flow like this business had never seen, and which they were all enjoying, thank you very much. Brett wasn’t sure if their father would be celebrating or wary, if he were still alive. Concern about how Jim was making money nagged at Brett, but extra cash was always welcomed.

  “You know my shop keeps me busy,” Joey said as he took another toke.

  “Then why are you here?”

  Joey chuckled. “Cool, man. Jeez, why so glum? You know it’s a one-man shop.” He shrugged. “Not everyone pays on time.”

  Brett’s abrupt laugher was dry. “You took your share of the inheritance and did what you wanted.” He shook his head. “If you had only gone into another business, other than a motorcycle repair shop…”