by Barry Eisler
“What about the girls from Japan?”
“That’s Mariko and Taeka,” she said, pointing to a petite pair at a corner table who had just said or done something to elicit gales of laughter from their two obviously inebriated, American-looking customers. She turned her head one way, then the other, then back to me. “I don’t see Emi or Yukiko. They must be getting ready to dance.”
“Seems like a good mix,” I said. “Do you all get along?”
She shrugged. “It’s like anywhere else. Some of your coworkers are your friends. Others you’re not so crazy about.”
I smiled as though preparing to enjoy a bit of gossip. “Who do you like, and who do you not like?”
“Oh, I get along all right with pretty much everyone.” It was a safe answer to a slightly different question. I admired her poise.
The house music faded out and was replaced by another round of J-Pop techno. Simultaneously, two Japanese girls, topless and high-heeled, appeared on the dance stages.
“Ah, that’s Emi,” Naomi said, indicating the pretty, appealing zaftig girl on the far stage. She turned and nodded her head at the stage closer to us. “And that’s Yukiko.”
Yukiko. At last we meet.
I watched her, a tall girl with long hair so black that under the stage lighting it coruscated like moonlit liquid. It cascaded in waves around the smooth contours of her shoulders, past the alluvial shadows of her waist, around the upturned curve of her ass. She was tall and fine-boned, with delicate white skin, high cheekbones, and small, high breasts. Put the hair up, add a little couture, and you’d have the world’s classiest courtesan.
This girl with Harry? I thought. No way.
“She’s beautiful,” I said, feeling that her striking looks demanded some commentary.
“A lot of people say so,” Naomi replied.
There was something lurking in her deliberately noncommittal reply. “You don’t think so?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Not my type.”
“I get the feeling you don’t care for her.”
“Let’s just say that she’s comfortable doing things that I’m not.”
With Harry? “I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t curious.”
She shook her head, and I knew I’d hit another dead end, even after three whiskeys.
Snow Child, indeed. There was something cold, even calculating, about the girl’s beauty. Something was wrong here, although how the hell could I tell Harry that? I imagined the conversation: Harry, I went to Damask Rose to check up on you. Trust me, my friend, this girl is way out of your league. Plus, I had a bad feeling about her generally. Steer clear.
I knew where his mind was right now: she would feel like the best thing that ever happened to him, and anything or anyone that threatened that comfortable sense would be rationalized away or ignored. A heads-up from a friend would be useless. Or worse.
I wasn’t going to get any more out of Naomi. I’d do a little more digging when I got back to Osaka. Harry was a friend and I owed him that much. But finding out what this girl was up to wasn’t really the problem. Getting Harry to acknowledge it, I knew, would be.
“Do you want to watch her?” Naomi asked.
I shook my head. “Sorry. I was thinking of something else.”
We talked more about Brazil. She spoke of the country’s ethnic and cultural variety, a mélange of Europeans, Indians, Japanese, and West Africans; its atmosphere of exuberance, music, and sport; its extremes of wealth and poverty; most of all, of its beauty, with thousands of miles of spectacular coast, the vast pampas of the south, the trackless green basin of the Amazon. Much of it I knew already, but I enjoyed listening to her, and looking at her while she spoke.
I thought of what she had said about Yukiko: Let’s just say that she’s comfortable doing things that I’m not.
But that only meant Yukiko had been in the game longer. Innocence is a fragile thing.
I might have asked for her number. I could have told her my visit had been extended, something like that. She was too young, but I liked the way she made me feel. She provoked a confusing mix of emotions: affinity based on the shared experiences of mixed blood and childhood bereavement; a paternalistic urge to protect her from the mistakes she was going to make; a sad sexual longing that was like an elegy for Midori.
It was getting late. “Will you forgive me if I forgo the lap dance?” I asked her.
She smiled. “That’s fine.”
I stood to go. She got up with me.
“Wait,” she said. She took out a pen. “Give me your hand.”
I held out my left hand. She held it and began to write on my palm. She wrote slowly. Her fingers were warm.
“This is my private e-mail address,” she said when she was done. “It’s not something I give customers, so please don’t share it. Next time you have a trip to Salvador, let me know. I’ll tell you the best places to go.” She smiled. “And I wouldn’t mind hearing from you if you find yourself back in Tokyo, either.”
I smiled into her green eyes. The smile felt strangely sad to me. Maybe she didn’t notice.
“You never know,” I said.
I settled the bill at the door, in cash as always. I took a card, then walked up the stairs without looking back.
The early morning air of Nogizaka was cool and slightly damp. Light from streetlamps lay in weak yellow pools. The pavement was slick with urban dew. Tokyo slumbered around me, dreamless and indifferent.
Goodbye to all that, I thought, and began walking toward the hotel.
5
I WENT STRAIGHT to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of Harry, of Harry with Yukiko. I knew something was wrong there. What would this girl, or whoever she worked for, want with a guy like Harry?
I supposed he might have made an enemy with one of his hacking stunts. Even if he had, though, tracing the problem back to him would be a bitch. And what would be the point of setting him up with the girl?
Harry had told me his boss had taken him to Damask Rose to “celebrate” the night Harry had met Yukiko. If the girl had been a setup, Harry’s boss must have been complicit. I chewed on that.
I thought about going to the guy. I could find out his name, where he lived, brace him one morning on his way to the office.
Tempting, but even if I got the information I wanted, the incident would cause problems for Harry, possibly severe ones. No go.
Okay, try something else. Maybe someone was interested in Harry only as a conduit to me.
But nobody knows about Harry, I thought. Not even Tatsu.
There was Midori, of course. She knew where he lived. She’d sent him that letter.
Nah, I don’t see it.
I got up and paced the room. Midori had connections in the entertainment world. Use those connections, have someone get close to Harry as a way of finding me?
I remembered that last night with her at the Imperial Hotel, how we’d been standing, my arms around her from behind, her fingers intertwined with mine, the way her hair smelled, the way she tasted. I pushed the memory away.
I realized that, for the moment, there was no way of knowing who was behind Harry’s improbable romance. So I put aside Midori and concentrated on what, not who.
What makes me a hard target is that I have no fixed points in my life—no workplace, no address, no known associates—that someone can hook into and use to get to me. If someone had established a connection from Harry to me, he’d have that fixed point. He could be expected to exploit it.
That meant people would be watching Harry. Not just through Yukiko. They’d have to tail him, as often as possible.
But he’d been clean when I’d seen him at Teize. He’d told me as much, and I knew for sure that I’d been clean afterward.
I decided to conduct an experiment. It was a little bit risky, but not as risky as leveling with Harry about his situation, given his current state of mind. I’d need another night in Tokyo to do it right. No problem with that. Whil
e closing in on the weightlifter, I’d been staying in appropriately anonymous city hotels for one week at a time—not wishing to attract attention with longer stays—and the New Otani reservation was good for another three nights anyway.
I looked at the digital clock on the bedstand. It was past four in the morning. Christ, I was keeping the same hours as my lovesick friend.
I’d call him in the evening, when we’d both be awake. More importantly, when Yukiko would be at Damask Rose, and Harry, presumably, would be alone. Then, based on the outcome of my little experiment, I’d decide how much to tell him.
I got back in bed. The last thing I thought of before drifting off to sleep was Midori, and how she had said in her letter that she wanted to present an offering for my spirit.
I woke up the next day feeling refreshed.
Later I would call Harry and arrange a meeting for that night. But first, I wanted to map out an SDR that I’d ask him to use beforehand.
Putting together the route took most of the afternoon. Every element had to be done right or the route itself would be a failure. It had to move through areas with which Harry was already familiar because he wasn’t going to have an opportunity to practice. Also, at several junctures, timing would be important, and I had to walk the entirety of both Harry’s route and mine to ensure that our paths would cross only as planned. I took detailed notes as I went along, using some typing paper I picked up at a stationery store.
When I was done, I stopped at a coffee shop and created a map with notations on a single sheet of paper. Then I made my way to Shin-Okubo, north of Shinjuku and a bastion of the Korean mob, where, among the unlicensed doctors and unadvertised shops hidden in crumbling apartment buildings, I was able to purchase a cloned cell phone for cash, with no ID.
Next stop was Harry’s neighborhood in Iikura, just south of Roppongi, where I found a suitable Lawson’s convenience store not far from his apartment. I browsed in the reading section, folding the map into one of the magazines there.
I called him from a pay phone at seven that evening. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” I told him.
“Hey, what’s going on?” he asked. “I didn’t expect to hear from you for a while.”
He didn’t sound groggy. Maybe he’d gotten up to see Yukiko off to the office.
“I missed you,” I said. “You alone?”
“Yeah.”
“I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Are you free right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I need you to go outside and call me from a pay phone. There’s one near the Lawson’s at Azabu Iikura Katamachi, to the left as you’re facing the store. Use it. I’ll give you my number.”
“This line is okay, you know that.”
“Just in case. This is sensitive.” I used our usual code to give him my cell phone number.
Ten minutes later the unit rang. “Okay, what’s so sensitive?” he asked.
“I think someone might be following you.”
There was a short silence. “Are you serious?”
“Stop looking over your shoulder. If they’re there right now I don’t want you to tip them off. You wouldn’t see them that way anyway.”
Another silence. Then: “I don’t get it. I’m awfully careful.”
“I know you are.”
“Why do you think this?”
“Not over the phone.”
“You want to meet?”
“Yes. But I want you to pick something up first. I’ve inserted a note behind the back cover of the second-to-the-back issue of this week’s TV Taro in the Lawson’s you’re next to. Go inside and retrieve the note. Make sure you make it look natural, in case somebody’s close. Pick up a carton of milk, some prepared food, like you’re just grabbing something quick and easy for dinner to take back to your apartment. Take it all home, wait a half-hour, then go out and call me again from a different phone. Be ready for a two-hour walk.”
“Will do.”
A half-hour passed. The cell phone rang again.
“You retrieve it?” I asked.
“Yeah. I see what you’re up to.”
“Good. Just follow the route. Start at eight thirty sharp. When you’re done, wait for me at the place I’ve indicated on the note. You know how to interpret the place I’ve indicated.”
My reference to “interpretation” was a reminder that he wasn’t to take our meeting place literally, but was instead to use the Tokyo Yellow Pages per our usual code to divine my true intent. If people were following Harry and they moved on him right now, presumably they’d pick up the note, see the location of the meet, and go to the wrong place to ambush me.
“Understood,” he said.
“Be cool. You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ll explain everything when I see you. And don’t worry if I’m a little late.”
“No worries. I’ll see you later.”
I hung up.
Harry had been clean when we’d gotten together at Teize, but that didn’t mean he’d been clean beforehand. I’d taught him to start out his SDRs unobtrusively, acting like any other civilian so that anyone who might be watching him would be lulled into believing he was no more than that. But the low-level stuff was only for the outset. As the route progresses, it becomes increasingly aggressive, less concerned with lulling potential followers and more concerned with forcing them into the open. You get off a subway car and wait until the platform is completely empty, then get back on a train going in the opposite direction. You turn corners, stop, and wait to see who rushes around just behind you. You use a lot of elevators, which forces followers to snuggle up with you shoulder-to-shoulder or let you go. Et cetera. The idea is that it’s better to get caught acting like a spy than it is to lead the bad guys to the source you’re trying to protect in the first place.
Harry would have observed the protocol on his way to Teize when we met there. And, as his counter-surveillance moves became more aggressive, his followers would have had to choose between being spotted, on the one hand, and giving up the quarry so as not to alert him and trying again another day, on the other. If they’d chosen door number 2, Harry would have shown up at the meeting clean, never knowing that he’d been followed a little while earlier.
And, having seen him engage in blatant counter-surveillance tactics, his followers would then assume that he had something to hide, perhaps the very thing they were looking for. They would intensify coverage as a result.
Tonight’s exercise was intended to determine whether all this was indeed the case. The route I’d devised was designed to take whoever might be following Harry in a circle through the Ebisu Garden Palace, a multistoried outdoor shopping arcade that would afford me several opportunities to unobtrusively watch him and whatever might be trailing in his wake. It was aggressive enough to enable me to spot a tail, but not so aggressive as to scare the tail off. Except at the end, when Harry would pull away in front and I would close in from behind.
At eight o’clock I made my way to the Rue Favart restaurant on the corner of Ebisu 4-chome, across from the Sapporo Building. I wanted to get there early to ensure that I would get one of the three window seats on the restaurant’s third floor, which would give me a direct view of the sidewalk that Harry would shortly be using. If the tables were taken, I would have time to wait. I was hungry, too, and the Rue, with its eclectic collection of pastas and sandwiches, would be a good spot to fuel up. I had enjoyed the place from time to time while living in Tokyo and was looking forward to being back.
I followed a waitress up the wooden stairs to the third floor, taking in the zany décor on the way—lime green walls with enormous flower murals, helter-skelter chairs and tables of wood and metal and molded plastic. The window seats were indeed all occupied when I arrived, but I told the waitress not to worry, I would be happy to wait for the privilege of such a splendid view. I sat on a small sofa, enjoying an iced coffee and the hallucinatory ceiling murals of beetles and moths and dragonflie
s. After a half-hour, the two office ladies at one of the window seats departed, and I took their table.
I ordered the shiitake mushroom risotto and a minestrone soup, asking if they could bring it in a hurry because I was hoping to catch a nine thirty movie. I would need to leave immediately after Harry passed by, and had to time things right.
I thought about what I would do if my experiment were successful—that is, if I confirmed that Harry was indeed being followed. The answer, I supposed, depended largely on who they were, and why they were interested. My main concern was that nothing should interfere with my preparations for departure, which, now that I had finished the “favor” for Tatsu, I was going to have to accelerate. I had to protect my plans, even if it meant leaving Harry on his own.
The risotto was good, and I would have liked more time to enjoy it at my leisure. Instead, I ate quickly, watching the street below. When I was done, I checked my watch. Just enough time for one of the Rue’s celebrated hot cocoas, dense concoctions crafted with pure cocoa and dollops of whipped cream, of which the Rue serves no more than twenty a day. I ordered one and savored it while I waited and watched.
I saw Harry at a little after nine, moving clockwise from Ebisu station toward Kusunoki-dori. He was moving quickly, as I’d instructed him. At this time of the evening, Ebisu comprises mostly pleasure-seekers attracted to the swank restaurants and bars of the Garden Court complex. The pace of the area is accordingly relaxed. Anyone attempting to match Harry’s speed would find himself out of sync with the area’s rhythms, and therefore conspicuous.
I spotted the first likely candidate as Harry turned right onto Kusunoki-dori at the Ebisu 4-chome police box. A young Japanese in a navy suit, slight of build, with gelled hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He was following about ten meters behind Harry on the opposite side of the street—sound technique, as most people are aware, if at all, only of what is transpiring directly behind them. I couldn’t yet be sure, of course, but from his position and his manner, and his pace, I had a feeling.