by Barry Eisler
His eyes started to widen, then he saw I was just giving him a hard time. He smiled.
“You look good,” I told him, my expression slightly bemused.
He looked at me, trying to gauge, I knew, whether he was being set up for a ribbing of some sort. “You think so?” he asked, his tone tentative.
I nodded. “Looks like you got your hair cut at one of those expensive places in Omotesando.”
He reddened. “I did.”
“Don’t blush. It was worth whatever you paid for it.”
He blushed harder. “Don’t tease me.”
I laughed. “I’m only half teasing.”
“What’s going on?”
“Why does something have to be going on? Maybe I just missed you.”
He gave me an uncharacteristically streetwise look. I had a feeling I knew where he’d picked it up. “Yeah, I missed you, too.”
I wasn’t looking forward to the turn the conversation would take when I brought up Yukiko, and felt no hurry to get there.
A waitress came by. Harry ordered a coffee and some carrot cake.
“You hear from any of our new government friends lately?” I asked him.
“Not a peep. You must have scared them.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.” I took a sip of espresso and looked at him. “You still in the same place?”
“Yeah. But I’m almost ready to move. You know how it is. The preparations take a while if you want to do it right.”
We were silent for a moment, and I thought, Here we go.
“Planning on spending time with Yukiko at the new place?”
He gave me a wary look. “Maybe.”
“Then I wouldn’t bother moving.”
He flinched, his expression characteristically befuddled beneath the slick new haircut.
“Why?” he asked, his tone uncertain.
“She’s mixed up with some bad people, Harry.”
He frowned. “I know.”
It was my turn to be surprised. “You know?”
He nodded, still frowning. “She told me.”
“Told you what?”
“Told me the club is run by the yakuza. So what? They all are.”
“She tell you she’s involved with one of the owners?”
“What do you mean, ‘involved’?”
“ ‘Involved,’ as in closely involved.”
He was tapping his foot nervously under the table. I could feel the vibration.
“I don’t know what she has to do at the club. It’s probably better if I don’t.”
He was in denial. This was going to be a waste of time.
All right. I’d modify my approach and try one more time.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
He looked at me for a moment, off balanced. “How do you even know about any of this?” he asked. “Are you sneaking around behind my back?”
I didn’t care for the question, although I supposed its substance wasn’t too far off the mark. My answer wasn’t exactly a lie. Just incomplete.
“I’ve developed a . . . relationship with the yakuza who I think owns Damask Rose. A stone killer named Murakami. He took me there. He and Yukiko were obviously well acquainted. I saw them leave together.”
“That’s what you wanted to tell me? It sounds like he’s her boss. They left together, so what?”
Open your eyes, you idiot, I wanted to say. This woman is a shark. She’s from a different world, a different species. There’s something way fucking wrong here.
Instead: “Harry, my gut tends to be pretty good about these things.”
“Well, I’m not going to trust your gut more than I trust mine.”
The waitress came with the coffee and cake and moved off. Harry didn’t seem to notice.
I wanted to tell him more, wanted to offer Naomi’s thoughts as corroboration. But I could see it wouldn’t do much good. Besides, Harry didn’t need to know where I came across my information.
I tried one last time. “The club is wired for sound and video. The detector you gave me was going apeshit the whole time I was there. I think the place is being used to entrap politicians in embarrassing acts.”
“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean Yukiko is involved in it.”
“Haven’t you even asked yourself whether it’s a coincidence that you met this woman at about the same time we discovered that you were being followed by the CIA?”
He looked at me as though I’d finally come unhinged. “Are you saying Yukiko is mixed up with the CIA? C’mon.”
“Think about it,” I told him. “We know the Agency was tracking you to get to me. They got to you through Midori’s letter. What did they learn about you from the letter? Just an unusually spelled name and a postmark.”
“So?”
“So the Agency doesn’t have the in-house expertise to do anything useful with information like that. They need local resources.”
“So?” he said again, his tone petulant.
“So they know Yamaoto from his connections with Holtzer. They ask him for his help. He had his people check domiciles and employment records in concentric circles moving outward from the Chuo-ku postmark. Maybe they access tax records, find out where an unusually spelled Haruyoshi is employed. Now they’ve got your whole name, but they can’t find out where you live, because you’re careful to protect that. They try to follow you from work, maybe, but you show them you’re too surveillance conscious and it doesn’t work. So Yamaoto gets your boss to take you somewhere to ‘celebrate,’ somewhere where you’ll meet a real heart-stopper, someone who can find out where you live so they can follow you more often, hoping you’ll drop your guard and lead them to me.”
“Then why is she still with me?”
I looked at him. It was a good question.
“I mean, if her job was just to get my home address, she would have been gone the first time I took her home. But she’s not. She’s still with me.”
“Then maybe her role was to watch you, learn your routines, find some information that would help her people get closer to finding me. Maybe listen in on your calls, alert her people if or when one of us got in touch with the other. I don’t know for sure.”
“I’m sorry. It’s too far-fetched.”
I sighed. “Harry, you’re not in a good position to be objective here. You have to acknowledge that.”
“And you are?”
I looked at him. “What possible reason would I have to distort any of this?”
He shrugged. “Maybe you’re afraid I won’t help you anymore. You said it yourself: ‘You can’t live with one foot in daylight and the other in shadows.’ Maybe you’re afraid I’ll move into the daylight and leave you behind.”
I felt a wave of angry indignation and willed it back. “Let me tell you something, kid,” I said. “In a very short while, I plan to be living in the daylight myself. I won’t need your ‘help’ after that. So even if I were the selfish, manipulative piece of shit you seem to think I am, I wouldn’t have any motive to try to keep you in the shadows.”
He flushed. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment.
I waved a hand. “Forget about it.”
He looked at me. “No, really, I’m sorry.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
We were quiet for a moment. Then I said, “Look, I’ve got an idea of what you feel for this woman, okay? I saw her. She’s a head-turner.”
“She’s more than that,” he said softly.
The dumb, sappy bastard. His only hope with that ice bitch would be that she’d recognize how helpless he was and have some scruples about whatever it was she was up to.
I wouldn’t count on it, though.
“The point is,” I said, “it doesn’t give me any pleasure to give you reason to doubt. But I’m telling you, there’s something wrong here, Harry. You need to be careful. And nothing makes you less careful than the kind of feelings that have taken hold of you right now.”
>
After a while he said, “I’ll think about what you’ve said. Okay?”
He didn’t look like he’d think about it, though. He looked like he wanted to jam his hands over his ears. Stick his newly coiffed head in the sand. Hit the Delete key on everything I’d told him.
“Look, I’m going to see her tonight,” he said. “I’ll watch more closely. I’ll keep in mind what you’ve said.”
I realized I’d been wasting my time.
“I thought you were smarter than this,” I said, shaking my head. “I really did.”
I stood and dropped a few bills on the table and left without looking at him.
I walked to the train station, thinking about what I had told Tatsu earlier, about risk and reward.
Harry had a lot to offer. I supposed he always would. But he wasn’t being careful anymore. Keeping him in my life now entailed more risk than it had previously.
I sighed. Two goodbyes in one night. It was depressing. And it’s not as though I’ve got a whole Rolodex full of friends.
But no sense being sentimental about it. Sentiment is stupid. On balance, Harry had become a liability. I had to leave him behind.
PART THREE
God. That bastard, he doesn’t exist.
—SAMUEL BECKETT
14
I MADE MY way back to the Imperial, entering the hotel through the Hibiya Park side. In my mind, anyplace where I’m staying is a potential choke point for an ambush, and my radar bumped up a notch as I moved through the spacious lobby to the elevators. I automatically scanned the area around me, first keying on the seats offering the best view of the entranceway, the places where an ambush team would position a spotter, the person tasked with supplying a positive ID. I saw no likelies. My radar stayed on medium alert.
As I approached the elevators, I noticed a striking Japanese woman, midthirties, shoulder-length hair wavy and iridescent black, skin smooth and pale white in contrast. She was wearing faded blue jeans, black loafers, and a black V-neck sweater. She was standing in the middle of the bank of elevators and looking directly at me.
It was Midori.
No, I thought. Look more closely.
Since that last time, about a year earlier when I had watched her perform from the shadows at the Village Vanguard in New York, I’ve seen a number of women who resemble Midori at first glance. Each time it happens, a part of my mind fills in the details, perhaps wanting to believe that it really is her, and the illusion lasts for a second or two before closer inspection convinces that hopeful part of my mind of its error.
The woman watched me. Her arms, which had been crossed, began to unfold.
Midori. There was no question.
My heart started thudding. A fusillade of questions erupted in my mind: How can she be here? How can it be her? What is she doing back in Tokyo? How would she know where to find me? How would anyone know?
I shoved the questions aside and started checking the secondary areas around me. Just because you’ve spotted one surprise doesn’t mean there isn’t another. In fact, the first one might have been a deliberate distraction, a setup for a fatal sucker punch.
No one seemed out of place. Nothing set off my now-elevated radar. Okay.
I looked at her again, still half-expecting that the second examination would tell me I’d been hallucinating. I hadn’t. It was her.
She was standing now, watching me. Her posture was stiff and somehow determined. Her eyes were fixed on me, but I couldn’t read them.
I glanced around the room again, then slowly walked over to where she stood. I stopped in front of her. I thought the ba-boom, ba-boom in my chest might be loud enough for her to hear.
Get it together, I thought. But I didn’t know what to say.
“How did you find me?” is what came out.
Her expression was placid, almost empty. Her eyes were dark. They radiated their characteristic untouchable heat.
“I looked in a directory of people who are supposed to be dead,” she said.
If she’d been trying to fluster me, she’d done a nice job of it. I glanced around the room again.
“Are you afraid of something?” she asked mildly.
“All the time,” I said, settling my eyes on hers again.
“Afraid of me? Why would that be?”
A pause. I asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“Why?”
“Don’t play dumb. I know you’re not.”
My heart rate was starting to slow. If she thought I was going to start spilling my guts in response to her vague replies, she was mistaken. I don’t play it that way, not even for her.
“You going to tell me how you found me?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Another pause. I looked at her. “You want to get a drink?”
“Did you kill my father?”
My heart reversed course.
I looked at her for a long time. Then I said, “Yes,” very quietly.
I watched her. I didn’t avert my eyes.
She was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was low and husky.
“I didn’t think you would admit it. Or at least not so easily.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking how ridiculous it sounded.
She pressed her lips together and shook her head, as though to say You can’t be serious.
I looked around the lobby again. I didn’t spot anyone who was positioned to do me harm, but there were a lot of people coming and going and I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to move. If she had any accomplices, this would draw them out.
“Why don’t we go to the bar,” I said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
She nodded without looking at me.
What I had in mind was not the lobby-level Rendezvous Bar, which is so heavily trafficked as to be useless from a security standpoint, but the mezzanine-level Old Imperial Bar. The latter is a relic from the original Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Imperial that was torn down in 1968, ostensibly in the name of earthquake safety, more likely in obeisance to misguided notions of “progress.” A walk to the mezzanine level would mean moving back across the lobby, taking a flight of stairs, and making several turns around mostly deserted corridors with various points of egress. If Midori had anyone following her, either with her knowledge or without, they’d have a hard time remaining unexposed while we moved.
We took the stairs to the mezzanine level. With the exception of the dozen or so patrons seated in the restaurants we passed, there was no one about. I checked behind us while we waited at the bar entrance to be seated. No one approached. It seemed she was alone.
We sat next to each other in one of the high, semicircular booths, hidden from the entrance. Anyone hoping to confirm our presence now would have to come inside and reveal himself. I ordered us a couple of eighteen-year-old Bunnahabhains from the bar’s excellent single malt menu.
The feeling was a bit odd under the circumstances, but I was glad to be back at the Old Imperial. Windowless and low-ceilinged, dark and subdued, intimate despite its spaciousness, the bar has an air of history, of gravitas, perhaps a consequence of being the sole surviving feature of the hotel’s martyred progenitor. Like the hotel itself, the Old Imperial feels a bit past its prime, but retains a dignified beauty and mysterious allure, like a grande dame who has seen much of life, known many lovers, and kept many secrets, who does not dwell on the glory of her more exuberant youth but who has neither forgotten it.
We sat in silence until the drinks arrived. Then she said, “Why?”
I picked up my Bunnahabhain. “You know why. I was hired.”
“By whom?”
“By the people your father took that disk from. The same people who thought you had it, who were trying to kill you.”
“Yamaoto?”
“Yes.”
She looked at me. “You’re an assassin, aren’t you? When there are rumors that the government has someone on the payr
oll, they’re talking about you, right?”
I let out a long exhalation. “Something like that.”
There was a pause. Then she asked, “How many people have you killed?”
My eyes moved to my glass. “I don’t know.”
“I’m not talking about Vietnam. Since then.”
“I don’t know,” I said again.
“Don’t you think that’s too many?” The mildness of her voice made the question worse.
“I don’t . . . I have rules. No women. No children. No acts against nonprincipals.” The words echoed flatly in my ears like a moron’s mantra, talismanic sounds suddenly stripped of their animating magic.
She laughed without mirth. “ ‘I have rules.’ You sound like a whore who wants credit for virtue because she won’t kiss the clients she fucks.”
It stung. But I took it.
“And then your friend from the Metropolitan Police Force told me you were dead. And you let me believe it. Do you know I grieved for you? Do you know what that’s like?”
I grieved for you, too, I wanted to say.
“Why?” she asked. “Why would you put me through that? Even beyond what you did to my father, why would you put me through that?”
I looked away.
“Tell me, goddamn it,” I heard her say.
I gripped my glass. “I wanted to spare you. From this . . . knowledge.”
“I don’t believe you. I half knew anyway. What did you think I would think when the evidence of corruption on that disk, which my father died trying to get published, wasn’t? When I tried to find out what had been done with your remains so I could offer my respects, but couldn’t?”
“I didn’t know it wouldn’t be published,” I said, not looking at her. “In fact I thought it would be. But regardless, I expected you to forget about me. At times I had my doubts, but what could I do at that point? Just show up in your life and explain? What if I’d been wrong, what if you had forgotten, you didn’t suspect, you’d gotten on with your life the way I’d hoped?” I looked at her. “I would have just caused you more pain.”
She shook her head. “You couldn’t have caused me more pain if you’d tried.”
There was a long silence. I said, “Are you going to tell me how you found me?”