Last National Bank of Boot Hill,
Moorgate, London EC2
It is maybe the low point of my career when two dozen Japanese secret policemen come marching down Moorgate and turn left into Hangmans Alley and thru the vestibule and up the stairs and burst into my office, where they bow, present me with two dozen cards and arrest me.
I am so shocked it takes me some time to figure out they are not just a reunion of the Eurotunnel Lenders club, or a team of analysts from Yamaichi looking for a sponsor, in fact I am about to offer them green tea and sympathy when the lead cop digs into his briefcase and pulls out handcuffs and makes his intentions clear.
There is just time for me to yell for our legal eagle from Murder & Might before the guy reads out a charge of offering corrupt inducements, contrary to Section Whatnot of the Imperial Japanese Penal Code, in that you attempted to suborn an official of the Bank of Japan with intent to secure his favor in the matter of the Fugu Fish Bank of Hokkaido.
This must be poor old Yasu, only the other day I see on the wires how they storm in and arrest him and throw him in the slammer, where he joins three guys from the MoF on a diet of fishheads and rice, and Governor Matsushita is so mortified, his loss of face is terminal, all that remains is to fall on his date stamp.
But what I cannot make out is that they charge Yasu with accepting entertainment to the tune of four million yen, which in terms of comparative purchasing power is about five bucks and a half – it scarcely buys two holes at a pitch and putt golf course and an Asahi ale in the bar.
I run across him when I am in Tokyo this winter, negotiating for the Fugu Fish Bank, which I figure the suffering stockholders are ready to hand over with a ribbon tied round it, the guys who need calling are in MoF and the central bank, I have long sessions with them when I am received with exquisite politeness and go round and round in circles.
After a while I find being holed up in the Okura with room service and CNN gets boring, which is why one day I ask Yasu if he has plans for the evening, he suggests we meet at a downtown place he knows called Lo Lan, where the hotpot comes on very nicely, at that, and the service, he says, is exceptional.
Mom, I see what he means, he seems quite at home there, and the waitress simpers and brings us a fifth of Johnnie Walker Blue Label without having to be asked, but I sure feel sorry for her, she seems to be having trouble with her underpinnings, maybe she snags the elastic, but Yasu just laughs and says she is a model of price elasticity.
It is what happens next that is kinda embarrassing, on the table is a bellpush and I figure that this is to attract her attention, which it does, in a way, some fault in the wiring connects it to the air conditioning, and blows a jet right under her, and sends her skirt flying up like Marilyn Monroe’s in the poster picture, I just do not know where to look.
Now this cop tells me he and his men have the restaurant staked out, they are there every night, in the cause of duty, in case they spot a bureaucrat who has his hotpot paid for, so I am to pack my toothbrush and accompany them to the airport, where they have me booked on the next flight out of Tokyo, one way.
Then in the nick of time in flies my eagle from Murder & Might to throw the lawbook at him, what with jurisdiction and extradition and domicile and the governing law, quite a lot of the time he is speaking in Latin, which leaves all these Japanese cops even colder than me, Mom, I never think I say so but at this time the guy earns the hourly rate he charges.
In the end the two sides arrive at a standoff, I am released pending further enquiries, and left brooding on the outcome, I mean, if a hotpot qualifies as a corrupt inducement it turns the whole world of banking upside down and I cannot figure this for an improvement.
For a start it must be curtains for the Dealmakers’ Arms, where half the guys are there to have their lunch bought by the other half, I can see why after all these years of repelling hostile boarders the Savoy now seems ready to hoist the white flag, maybe it is time for them to quit while they are ahead.
Also it casts a blight on the whole summer here in London, the invitations just start to come in, for Glyndebourne and Ascot and Henley and Goodwood and Wimbledon, and even cricket for those who can take it, of course at these venues no business gets talked, so nothing improper occurs, but we may have to prove this.
Any day now some desk jockey in the great new regulation factory in Docklands begins to cast his eye on corporate entertainment, and calls for full disclosure and attendance lists and copies of the checks, and our compliance barons build up a new wing to their empires, and maybe leave the rest of us with half an hour a week to get our work done.
When I moan about this to our legal eagle he suggests I meet the enemy halfway, Herbie, he says, what you need is good old self regulation and a code of conduct and a panel to adjudicate, and as for the panel, guess who chairs it, you do, if you play your cards right you need never buy your own lunch again.
I warm to this idea but it still leaves me with the cops to deal with, I do not wish to meet them next time I stop over in Sapporo. The eagle thinks he can fix this, tho’ he warns me it may come dear.
Boy, it sure does, taking two dozen Japanese police out on the town leaves me with a check a guy could shake a stick at, and how I can get it thru my expenses I cannot imagine, much love from
Your entertaining son
Herbie is out to lunch with Christopher Fildes
