"Would ya mind turning that old-school J-pop of yours down fo'bout a minute or so, so I can actually concentrate on my duties?" That was the most recent order from "il capo"-"the boss", or, alternatively, "the captain", Arturo Scangalore, a longtime Italian Mafia hit man assigned to some of the roughest streets in some of the world's biggest cities, among which was the Japanese yakuza stronghold of Kobe, Japan. Perhaps fittingly enough, the person receiving the orders was somebody with a rather uneasy relationship with Mafia types in general-Tokyo, Japan-based businessman Shingo Yobito, who more often than not would much rather prefer such a mention to be followed up with the Japanese honorific -san, lest the offending person or persons be physically harmed. Despite their often frigid relations, Scangalore and Yobito-san both managed to play successful roles in their organizations' respective most famous all-time crimes; Yobito-san orchestrated many parts of the infamous 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway system that would put any terrorists' attempts on any U.S., Canadian, or European subway systems to complete shame, while Scangalore retaliated against mafiosos who testified against the group in the 1980s Maxi Trial and also repeatedly ignored the CIA's and its Italian counterpart's requests to follow their lead in becoming an informant.
When they weren't so busy organizing their latest hit on some unsuspecting members of the civil society, they were mostly busy playing the illegal, yet highly popular, Japanese gambling game pachinko, basically a cross between pinball and casino slot machines, except with the added risk of arrest and prosecution for yakuza members caught using the machines, while everybody else in the parlors managed to roam freely, provided they weren't profiting on the theft of the little metal pachinko balls used to actually play the game itself! One such leisure session, set up rather leisurely by Yobito-san, except at the Osaka Dome just east of Kobe instead of inside a pachinko parlor, provided a rather awkward exchange between Scangalore and (undercover) FBI agent Dean Hannelman, perhaps made so by the fact that it is the CIA, not the FBI, with jurisdiction to arrest international criminals under federal law:
"Have ya rounded up all yer drug cartel prisoners yet near the Mexican border, or have some of them escaped yer grasp so far?"
"Not quite... As much as we keep trying to round up the druggies one by one instead of launching the massive stings the public has gotten used to, we've had to let a few of 'em off for the time being, and who knows what municipality they could be brutalizing next..."
"I hear ya loud and clear there, man; our guys up in Beantown just narrowly escaped a sweeping Boston P.D. sting once, but not before Harvard got particularly busted up, with 10 alumni falsely suspected, mind ya, of informing us, instead of the truth o'da matter, which was that they were embezzling money from the stores in downtown Cambridge that prey on all the Harvard tourists!"
"Didn't the MBTA also get caught up in part of that sting?"
"I dunno that; aren't you guys usually in the middle of dem operations?"
"If that information wasn't confidential, I'd tell you, but remember, you could just as easily been having this conversation with an undercover CIA agent instead of myself, and then, you'd be in just as much trouble as those Harvard alums got themselves into, for a totally different reason!"
Awkward conversations about drug cartels and Harvard scandals aside, the home standing Orix Buffaloes defeated Japanese baseball's equivalent of the Boston Red Sox, the Hanshin Tigers, 7-4, that afternoon, and out of nowhere, an urgent all-caps message flashed on FBI agent Hannelman's phone, alerting him to another drug cartel situation flaring up in El Paso, Texas, that had been spilling in from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, threatening both sides of the border equally:
"ALERT-EL PASO DRUG CARTEL CRISIS GROWING BY THE DAY-JUAREZ IN TOTAL ANARCHY MODE-REINFORCEMENTS NEEDED STAT-END TRANSMISSION"
Agent Hannelman's response was rather predictable, but also somewhat measured, given the urgency of the situation at hand:
"Darn you, Texas National Guard, federal Border Patrol, and everybody else... Where in the living **** were you when this crisis was just starting?"
Yobito-san just so happened to have caught up to the other two men just as they noticed that transmission, and he mustered up enough coherent thought upon seeing their reactions to wonder about all the other international crises facing law enforcement agencies in the recent past:
"It could be worse for you than just drug cartels running all over the place...Have you heard about what happened to this country's Peruvian embassy many years ago?"
"What?"
"This domestic terrorist group took many diplomats hostage, and it took many of your country's own men many months to clear out the embassy, but not before four months passed and dozens of lives had to be taken to spare our international reputation..."
"...that crisis," proclaimed agent Hannelman, "in which none of our men were technically involved; in which Canada had more involvement by default?"
"Exactly;" countered Yobito-san, "when you could have saved your reputation as the world's top law enforcement agency, you instead let one of the world's most volatile governments and your northern counterparts take the lead!"
"What was all dat racket for?" wondered the mafioso, Scangalore, through his heavy Boston-area accent that would suggest, at least upon first hearing it, that he was one of the suspects in the Harvard embezzlement scheme.
"Nothing..." Hannelman and Yobito-san both exclaimed at once, as if to avoid contradicting each other, or perhaps they had something else in the backs of their minds, as, suddenly, a message not from an urgent FBI briefing, but instead from a cartel leader himself, Francisco "Frankie" Ortiz, appeared on Hannelman's screen, as well as playing through the device's speakers, as if to taunt him and, by extension, the entire unit of undercover agents in both the CIA and FBI by announcing that Juarez was, indeed, still under the cartels' grip:
"Hola, Señor Hannelman, agente de la FBI... si estas escuchando este mensaje, es por que tu no nos has matado todavía... Nosotros estamos ganando la batalla para territorio en nuestro país querido, los Estados Unidos no de America, sino de Mexico... Nuestras drogas serán, con un poco de tiempo, los mas finos en todo el mundo, y después de esa fecha, el mundo entero nos va recordar como la organización que gano sobre las fuerzas supuestamente intimidades del CIA y FBI... Por que no vengas a nuestra tierra cerca de El Paso, Texas, en lugar de estar escondiendo en Japón, con tu tecnología y materiales ayudantes?"
"Well, it looks like we've practically got to bring those bastards here, instead of letting them con us into stepping foot in Ciudad Juarez, where they'll most certainly outnumber us," a visibly annoyed Hannelman stammered upon hearing and seeing the message, after which Yobito-san might have summed up the new crisis the best out of all three men:
"Now, it is only up to you to fight the cartels... Some of our yakuza members might try to deceive you into returning here to aid the CIA in arresting them, but the cartels are not our duty, and never will be..."
Having said that, Yobito-san sent both agent Hannelman and Scangalore off with traditional Japanese bows, slightly deeper this time than usual, given the urgency of the latest Juarez crisis, and they both set off for Osaka's Kansai Airport, looking to catch the Juarez cartels "behind the 8-ball" relatively early on in their latest turf-grabbing maneuvers in northeastern Mexico...
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