The Advocate's Daughter by Anthony Franze
For Jake, Emma, and Aiden
PROLOGUE
Misawa, Japan
Thirty Years Ago
It all started with a bottle of Nikka whiskey and a cold stare.
Sean set the bottle on the counter and smiled at the old woman who glowered at him from behind the register. The liquor store was quiet but for the buzz of fluorescent lamps, which cast a flickering haze over the narrow aisles and faded cardboard signs scrawled in Japanese.
Sean didn’t know if she could tell that he was only fourteen years old. Maybe his height, six feet, and perhaps cultural differences would make it difficult for the woman to discern an American’s age. But he glanced at Kenny, who’d sauntered over with another bottle. Short, floppy mess of hair, mouth full of braces. The old lady had to realize they were teenagers. And the disdain in her eyes—a wrinkled look of disgust—said that she not only knew, but hoped the boys would drink every drop, pass out, and choke on their own vomit. That’s how it was outside the military base. The locals hated them. Sean’s dad said it was because Americans corrupted and polluted everywhere they went. The community surrounding a base was always filled with two things, his dad would say: bars and whores. He would know.
Sean dug out the money from the front pocket of his jeans and handed the ball of sweaty bills to the woman. She smoothed them on the counter, mumbling something to herself. She packed the bottles in a single brown sack.
“Domo,” Sean said. He scooped up the sack and headed toward the door, Kenny trailing after him.
The woman said nothing.
Another storekeeper, probably the old lady’s husband, narrowed his eyes as Sean marched past him toward the door.
“Hey, get your fucking hands off me.” It was Kenny’s voice.
Sean spun around and saw the old man gripping Kenny’s arm. Kenny wrenched it free and kept moving.
“Thief!” the storekeeper bellowed in a thick accent. “Thief!”
The woman joined in, screaming words Sean couldn’t understand.
Kenny sprinted out of the store, and Sean instinctively tore after him.
“Thief! Thief!”
The boys raced past a blur of pachinko parlors and bars on the shuttered main drag. Kenny disappeared around the corner up ahead. Sean kept running, the sting of sweat dripping into his eyes, the sack a clumsy bundle in his arms. He veered right, following Kenny, but his friend was nowhere in sight. Sean risked a quick look over his shoulder. The storekeeper hadn’t kept up, but Sean didn’t slow down until he heard a loud whisper from an alleyway.
“Seany boy.”
Sean ran over to his friend. Kenny was bent over, a hand on each thigh, breathing raggedly. Kenny looked up and flashed a smile.
“What the hell?” Sean’s voice was labored, his chest heaving up and down. “You stole something? Why?… We had money.”
“They had it coming—treating us like that, thinking we’d steal something from their shitty store.”
“We usually do steal something from their shitty store.”
“Yeah, but it’s the principle of the thing.” Kenny pulled a flask-sized bottle from the front of his jeans. “It’s their own fault.” He untwisted the bottle’s cap and took a swig, followed by a quiver. “You know how hard it is to run with this in your underwear? My dick nearly broke off.”
Sean smiled in spite of himself. “Small loss.”
They left the alley and walked a maze of side streets to another alleyway, this one lined with vacant buildings. Sean stopped in front of a boarded-up former nightclub sprayed with graffiti: their clubhouse. He pried at the door until it gave way and the two ambled inside. The smell of damp and rot filled the air. They walked to the stairwell, went up to the second floor, and out onto the crumbling terrace. There was an explosion of flapping wings as crows squawked away into the sky. They sat on a two-foot ledge, feet hanging over the side.
Sean opened a bottle, took a long pull, and passed it to his friend. The sun was setting as they stared out over the alleyway. There was a bar wedged between two abandoned buildings. The place had no customers out front and was as run-down as the clubhouse, but muffled music seeped out from the cracks in its walls. Behind the bar, Misawa Air Base’s tall perimeter wall. Beyond the wall, an overgrown lot.
“You think he’s coming?” Sean asked.
Kenny shrugged. He took another drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He then pointed his chin to the alley below. “Here comes the dipshit now.”
Sean was about to call out to Juan, but Kenny shushed him. As Juan approached the clubhouse door, Kenny held out the bottle, set his aim, and let it fall.
The glass shattered noisily on the pavement and Juan jumped back with a yelp.