by Barry Eisler
I thought about what I’d seen at the club earlier. I knew from Tatsu that Yamaoto relied in part on blackmail and extortion to run his network of compliant politicians. Tatsu had told me that the disk Midori’s father had taken from Yamaoto contained, among other things, video of politicians in compromising positions. Tatsu had also told me that Yamaoto and Murakami were connected. So it seemed likely that Damask Rose was one of the places at which Yamaoto went about capturing politicians in the midst of embarrassing acts.
Meaning that someone in Yamaoto’s network now had my face on film. That would have been bad under any circumstances. But Murakami’s new interest made things worse. I judged it probable that Murakami might show the video to someone as part of a further background check. He might even show it to Yamaoto, who knew my face. And I’d used the weightlifter’s name as an introduction to Murakami’s dojo. If they figured out who they were actually dealing with, they’d also figure out that the weightlifter’s “accident” had been anything but.
I tried to put together the rest of it. Yukiko, meaning someone higher up at Damask Rose, meaning perhaps Yamaoto, was trying to get hooks into Harry. If they were interested in Harry, it would only be because Harry might lead them to me.
What about the Agency? They’d been following Harry. According to Kanezaki, as a conduit to me. The question was, were Yamaoto and the CIA working together in some capacity, or was their interest merely convergent? If the former, what was the nature of the connection? If the latter, what was the nature of the interest?
Naomi might be able to help me answer these questions, if I played it right. I needed to resolve things quickly, too. Even if Harry’s relevance to these people was only as a means of getting close to me, he could still be in danger. And if Murakami figured out that Arai Katsuhiko was really John Rain, both Harry and I were going to have a significant problem on our hands.
At just before three, it started raining. I walked quickly back to her apartment and took up my position in the shadows near her building. I was out of the rain under the awning, but it was getting chilly. My leg ached from where Adonis had kicked me. I stretched to stay limber.
At 3:20, a cab turned onto the street. I watched it from the shadows until it passed me. There, in back, Naomi.
The cab turned left and stopped just beyond the secondary entrance to the building. The automatic passenger door opened a crack and the dome light went on. I saw Naomi hand some bills to the driver, who returned change. The door swung wide and she stepped out. She was wearing a black, thigh-length coat, light wool or cashmere, and she pulled it close around her. The door shut and the cab sped away.
She opened the umbrella and started toward the entrance. I stepped from under the awning. “Naomi,” I said quietly.
She spun around and I heard her inhale sharply. “What the hell?” she exclaimed in her Portuguese-accented English.
I raised my hands, palms forward. “I just want to talk to you.”
She looked over her shoulder for a moment, perhaps gauging the distance to her door, then turned back to me, apparently reassured. “I don’t want to talk to you.” She emphasized the first and last words of the sentence, her accent thickening somewhat in her agitation.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m just asking, that’s all.”
She looked around again. She had good danger instincts. Most people, perceiving a threat, give it their full focus. That makes them easy prey if the “threat” was just a feint and the real ambush comes from the flank.
“How do you know where I live?” she asked.
“I looked it up on the Internet.”
“Really? You think with this kind of job I’d just list my address?”
I shrugged. “You gave me your e-mail address. With a little information to start with, you’d be surprised what you can find out.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you a stalker?”
I shook my head. “No.”
It was starting to rain harder. I realized that, some physical discomfort aside, the weather hadn’t been such bad luck. She was dry and poised under her umbrella; I was wet and almost shivering. The contrast would help her feel more in control.
“Am I in trouble?” she asked.
That surprised me. “What kind of trouble?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not involved with anything, I’m just a dancer, okay?”
I didn’t know where she was going, but I didn’t want to stop her. “You’re not involved?” I parroted.
“I’m not involved! And I don’t want to be. I mind my own business.”
“You’re not in trouble, at least not with me. I really just want to talk with you.”
“Give me one good reason why.”
“Because you trust me.”
Her expression was caught between amused and incredulous. “I trust you?”
I nodded. “You warned me about the listening devices in the club.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “Jesus Christ, I knew I was going to regret that.”
“But you knew you would regret it more if you had said nothing.”
She was shaking her head slowly, deliberately. I knew what she was thinking: I do this guy a favor, now I can’t get rid of him. And he’s trouble, trouble I don’t want.
I pushed dripping hair back from my forehead. “Can we go someplace?”
She looked left, then right. The street was empty.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s get a taxi. I know a place that’s open late. We can talk there.”
We found a cab. I got in first and she slid in behind me. She told the driver to take us to 3-3-5 Shibuya-ku, south side of Roppongi-dori. I smiled.
“Tantra?” I asked.
She looked at me, perhaps a little nonplussed. “You know it?”
“It’s been around for a long time. Good place.”
“I didn’t think you’d know it. You’re a little . . . older.”
I laughed. If she’d been trying to get a rise out of me, she had missed the mark. I’m never going to be sensitive about my age. Most of the people I knew when I was younger are already dead. That I’m still breathing is actually a point of pride.
“Tantra is like sex,” I told her, smiling a little indulgently. “Every generation thinks it’s the one that discovered it.”
She looked away and we drove in silence. I would have preferred to have the cab take us someplace within walking distance rather than to the actual address, per my usual practice. Given the overall circumstances of the evening, though, I judged the likelihood of a problem stemming from Naomi’s lack of security consciousness to be manageably low.
A few minutes later we pulled up in front of a nondescript office building. I paid the driver and we got out. The rain had stopped but the street was empty, almost forlorn. If I hadn’t known where we were, I would have thought it an odd place to get out of a cab in the middle of the night.
Behind us, a dimly lit “T” glowed softly above a basement stairwell, the only external sign of Tantra’s existence. We moved down the steps, through a pair of imposing metal doors, and into a candlelit foyer that led like a short tunnel to the seating area beyond.
A waiter appeared and asked us in a hushed tone whether it would be just the two of us. Naomi told him it would, and he escorted us inside.
The walls were brown cement, the ceiling black. There were a few spotlights, but most of the illumination came from candles on tables and in the corners of the lacquered cement floor. In alcoves here and there were statues depicting scenes from the Kama Sutra. Around us were a half-dozen small groups of people, all sitting on floor cushions or low chairs. The room hummed with murmured conversation and quiet laughter. Some sort of light, Arabic-sounding techno music issued softly from invisible speakers.
There were two additional rooms at the back, I knew, both partially concealed by heavy purple curtains. I asked the waiter whether either was available and he gestured to the one on the right. I
looked at Naomi and she nodded.
We moved past the curtains into a room that was more like a small cave or opium den. The ceiling was low and candles played flickering shadows on the walls. We sat on the floor cushions in the corner, at ninety degrees to each other. The waiter handed us a menu and departed without a word.
“You hungry?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Me, too.” I rubbed my wet shoulders. “And cold.”
The waiter returned. We ordered hot tea, their signature Ayu chips, and spring rolls. Naomi chose a twelve-year-old Highland Park and I followed suit.
“How do you know about this place really?” Naomi asked when the waiter had departed.
“I told you, it’s been around forever. Ten years, maybe more.”
“So you live in Tokyo.”
I paused. Then: “I did. Until recently.”
“What brings you back?”
“I have a friend. He’s in some kind of trouble with people from your club and doesn’t even know it.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Why did you tell me that bullshit about being an accountant?”
I shrugged. “I was looking for information. I didn’t see the need to tell you very much.”
We were quiet for a few minutes. The waiter came by with the food and drinks. I went for the tea first. It warmed me considerably. The Highland Park was even better.
“I needed that,” I said, leaning back against the wall, heat radiating from my gut.
She picked up a spring roll. “Have you really been to Brazil?” she asked.
“Yes.” It was a lie, but perhaps the moral equivalent of the truth. I couldn’t very well tell her that I was learning all I could about the country in preparation for a first and permanent trip there.
She took a bite of the spring roll and chewed it, her head cocked slightly to the side as though in consideration of something. “Tonight, when I saw who you were with, I was thinking that maybe you learned a few lines of Portuguese just to get me to open up. That I was in some kind of trouble.”
“No.”
“So you weren’t trying to meet me in particular.”
“You were dancing when I came in that night, so I asked about you. It was just a coincidence.”
“If you’re not an American accountant, who are you?”
“I’m someone who . . . performs services for people from time to time. Those services put me in touch with a lot of different players in the society. Cops and yakuza. Politicians. Sometimes people on the fringe.”
“You have that on your business card?”
I smiled. “I tried it. The print was too small to read.”
“You’re what, a private detective?”
“In a way.”
She looked at me. “Who are you working for now?”
“I told you, right now I’m just trying to help a friend.”
“Forgive me, but that sounds like bullshit.”
I nodded. “I can see where it would.”
“You looked pretty comfortable with Murakami tonight.”
“Did that bother you?”
“He scares me.”
“He should.”
She picked up her Highland Park and leaned back against the wall. “I’ve heard some bad stories about him.”
“They’re probably true.”
“Everyone’s afraid of him. Except for Yukiko.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. She has some kind of power over him. No one else does.”
“You don’t like her.”
She glanced at me, then away. “She can be as scary as he is.”
“You said she’s comfortable doing things that you’re not.”
“Yes.”
“Something to do with those listening devices?”
She upended her drink and finished it. Then she said, “I don’t know for certain that there are listening devices, but I think there are. We get a lot of prominent customers—politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen. The people who own the club encourage the girls to talk to them, to elicit information. All the girls think the conversations are taped. And there are rumors that certain customers even get videotaped in the lap dance rooms.”
I was gaining her confidence. And the way she was talking now, I knew I could get more. A gambler will agonize for hours over whether to put his chips on, say, the red or the black, and then, when the croupier spins the wheel, he’ll double or even triple the bet, as a way of bolstering his conviction that he must have been betting right. If he were betting wrong, why would he be putting all that extra money down?
I pointed to her glass. “Another?”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
I finished mine and ordered two more. The walls flickered in the candlelight. The room felt close and warm, like an underground sanctuary.
The waiter brought the drinks. After he had moved silently away, I looked at her and said, “You’re not involved in any of this?”
She looked into her glass. Several seconds went by.
“You want an honest answer, or a really honest answer?” she asked.
“Give me both.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “The honest answer is, no.”
She took a sip of the Highland Park. Closed her eyes.
“The really honest answer is . . . is . . .”
“Is, ‘not yet,” ’ I said quietly.
Her eyes opened and she looked at me. “How do you know?”
I watched her for a moment, feeling her distress, seeing an opportunity.
“You’re being suborned,” I said. “It’s a process, a series of techniques. If you even half-realize it, you’re smarter than most. You’ve also got a chance to do something about it, if you want to.”
“What do you mean?”
I sipped from my glass, watching the amber liquid glowing in the candlelight, remembering. “You start slow. You find the subject’s limits and get him to spend some time there. He gets used to it. Before long, the limits have moved. You never take him more than a centimeter beyond. You make it feel like it’s his choice.”
I looked at her. “You told me when you first got to the club you were so shy you could hardly move on the stage.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“At that point you would never have done a lap dance.”
“No.”
“But now you can.”
“Yes.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.
“When you did your first lap dance, you probably said you would never let a customer touch you.”
“I did say that,” she said. Her voice had gone lower.
“Of course you did. I could go on. I could tell you where you’ll be three months from now, six months, a year. Twenty years, if you keep going where you’re going. Naomi, you think this is all an accident? It’s a science. There are people out there who are experts at getting others to do tomorrow what was unthinkable today.”
But for her breath, moving rapidly in and out through her nostrils, she was silent, and I wondered if she was fighting tears.
I needed to push it just a little further before backing off. “You want to know what’s next for you?” I asked.
She looked at me but said nothing.
“You know that Damask Rose girls are being used to blackmail politicians, or something like that. The other girls whisper about it, but that’s not all. You’ve been approached, right? It was an oblique approach, but it was there. Something like, ‘There’s a special customer who we think would like you. We’d like you to go out with him and show him a really good time. If he’s satisfied afterward, we’ll pay you X.’ Maybe they had a suite at a hotel where they wanted you to take him. They’d bug him there, videotape him. You refused, I guess. But there was no pressure. Why would there be? They know you’ll get worn down just from the exposure.”
“You’re wrong!”
she said suddenly, jabbing a finger in my face.
I looked at her. “If I were wrong, you wouldn’t react that way.”
She watched me, her eyes hurt and angry, her lips twisting together as though trying to find words.
That was enough. Time to see if my words had the desired effect.
“Hey,” I said softly, but she didn’t look up. “Hey.” I put my hand over hers. “I’m sorry.” I squeezed her fingers briefly, then withdrew my hand.
She raised her head and looked at me. “You think I’m a prostitute. Or that I’m going to become one.”
“I don’t think that,” I said, shaking my head.
“How do you know all this?”
Time for an honest, but safely vague, response. “A long time ago, and in a different context, I went through what you’re in the middle of.”
“What do you mean?”
For a moment I pictured Crazy Jake. I shook my head to show her it wasn’t something I was willing to talk about.
We were quiet for a few moments. Then she said, “You were right. I wouldn’t have reacted so sharply if what you were saying were untrue. These are things I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I haven’t been as honest with myself as you just were.” She reached out and took my hand. She squeezed it hard. “Thank you.”
I felt an odd confluence of emotions: satisfaction that my manipulation was working; sympathy because of what she was struggling with; self-reproach for taking advantage of her naïveté.
And beneath it all I was still attracted to her. I was uncomfortably aware of the touch of her hand.
“Don’t thank me,” I said, not looking at her. I didn’t squeeze back. After a moment she withdrew her hand.
“Are you really just trying to help a friend?” I heard her ask.
“Yes.”
“I would help you if I could. But I don’t know any more than what I’ve already told you.”
I nodded, thinking of the Agency and Yamaoto, wondering about the connection. “Let me ask you something,” I said. “How many Caucasians do you see at the club?”
She shrugged. “A fair number. Maybe ten, twenty percent of the customers. Why?”