Salmonella Men on Planet Porno (Vintage Contemporaries) Read Online Free PDF

at the client’s office.
    “I told you, didn’t I? We were being followed!”
    “Whatever. You can have your five hundred yen back.”
    “Go on. You keep it.”
    “No way! Have it back!”
    “Well… All right. If that’s the way you feel. Anyway, will you take me to Shinjuku now?”
    “How could I say no? Next thing they’d say I refused a fare!”
    And with that he started off towards Shinjuku.
    I was gradually realizing that the plot to drive me out of my mind was unimaginably massive in scale. Apart from anything else, my enemy appeared to have bought off the mass media. Who on earth could it be? And what was his motive? Why would anyone want to do something like this?
    All I could do was to follow the flow for now. It would be virtually impossible to uncover the mastermind at the bottom of it. Even if I caught one of my pursuers, he would just be small fry. He wouldn’t know who the mastermind was. That was the big cheese – big enough to buy off the media, at least!
    “I’m not trying to make excuses, sir,” the cabbie said suddenly. “But I did lose that black Nissan. I did, really.”
    “I’m sure you did,” I replied. “But I reckon it’s not that simple anyway. They’re not just following me in a car. They’ve probably even bugged this taxi.”
    Hold on a minute
, I thought. How did I know I could trust this driver, anyway? He could be in on it too. Otherwise, how did they know the tip was five hundred yen?
    I suddenly noticed a helicopter circling above us. It was flying at dangerously low altitude, almost skimming the tops of the buildings.
    “I’m sure I saw that chopper on the way out, sir,” said the driver, squinting up at the sky. “Maybe they’re the ones that are following you.”
    There was a thunderous crash, and a blood-coloured flash of light streaked across the sky. I looked up to see fireballs flying in all directions. The helicopter had crashed into the top floor of a multi-storey building. The pilot must have been paying too much attention to events on the ground and lost control.
    “Serves him right! Heheheheheheheh!”
    The cabbie laughed insanely as he sped away from the scene. He already had the look of a deranged man.
    I knew I’d be in danger if I stayed in the taxi any longer. “Ah, I’ve just remembered something,” I said. “Could you let me off here.” Actually, I’d remembered there was a small psychiatric clinic nearby.
    “Where are you going?” the cabbie asked.
    “That’s my business,” I answered.
    “Well, I’m going straight home to sleep,” he continued. He looked pale-faced as he took the fare from me. That decided it – he wasn’t one of them.
    “Good idea,” I said as I stepped out into the unbearable heat.
    I entered the clinic and sat in the waiting room for about twenty minutes. An apparently hysterical middle-aged woman was followed by an apparently epileptic young man. I was next. I went into the treatment room, where the doctor was looking at a television on a desk by the window. News of the helicopter crash was just coming through.
    “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Even the sky’s getting congested now,” the doctor muttered as he turned to face me. “And of course, there’ll be more patients as a result. But they won’t come for treatment until it’s too late, oh no. Another bad characteristic of people today.”
    “Yes, you’re right,” I said with a nod of agreement. I didn’t want to seem pushy, but jumped straight in and started to explain my situation anyway. I was supposed to be at work, after all, and didn’t have much time. “They suddenly started talking about me onTV last night. And there were articles about me in this morning’s papers. They made an announcement about me at the station. I was even mentioned on the radio. At work, they’re all talking about me in whispers. I’m sure they’ve bugged my house and the taxis I travel in. In fact, I’m being followed. It’s a major operation. That