by Barry Eisler
“I knew it was something like this. Your ‘jam.’ I knew it.”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill someone, kill all of them. I fought to keep a lid on it. “I’m sorry. I was so stupid. I’m sorry.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I can’t even think about that now. First I need to get you safe.”
“Where? Where am I going to be safe?”
“I don’t know, a hotel—”
“I’m in a hotel.”
“A different hotel. Where they wouldn’t know where to find you.”
“Look at me, Jun. I’m pretty easy to describe. Pretty easy to find. Where are you going to hide me?”
I had no answer to that. I was so desperate to protect her, and I didn’t know how. I’d thought because I could keep it all separate in my mind, I could keep it all separate in the external world, too. Stupid. Fatally fucking stupid.
“We’ll get you out of town,” I said, flailing. “Even out of the country. And then—”
“With what? Do you know what that nice apartment with its bath costs me every month? What I have left over, I spend on English lessons. I barely have anything saved.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the money from Miyamoto’s job. I put it on the counter under the window. “Here. This is ten thousand dollars. It’ll get you to America. It’s what you want, isn’t it? To get out of this shithole and go to America? Well, here it is.”
She looked at the money. “I don’t want this.”
“I don’t care if you don’t want it, you need it!”
“Where did it come from?”
“Do you really care where it came from? Would you rather take this money and make yourself safe, or get gang-raped and killed by a bunch of fucking yakuza?”
She looked at me balefully for a moment. But she took the money. Thank God.
“I’m going to call them,” I said. “They’re not going to do anything before I do that. You’ll be able to get away. They’re not expecting you to leave the country. They don’t think you can.”
“What are they going to make you do?”
“They’re going to insist I meet them somewhere.”
“Why? So they can kill you?”
“That’ll be the idea.”
“Then you can’t do it.”
And all at once, I realized how I could. It was a long shot, it was insane…but it also had the smooth, ineluctable symmetry of fate.
“I have to,” I said, and felt an enormous weight settle onto me. It was the weight of conscience, of history, of kismet. It was the weight of everything I’d done, all the choices I’d made, all my foolish hopes and ongoing rationalizations. It was the weight of a man who’d dreamt he might be a butterfly, and knew in his soul upon waking that he was no butterfly dreaming he was a man. This was my life. My reality. My sad, doomed destiny.
“Have to what?” she said. “Meet them? That’s insane. Don’t do that. Tell me you won’t do that.”
I shook my head. I wanted to tell her everything. To make her understand. More than anything, to tell her I loved her.
“What?” she said again. “Why won’t you tell me? Wait, I’ll come out, we can talk.”
She spun the wheelchair around. But without that glass between us, I knew my resolve would crumble.
“I have to,” I said again, and was gone before she’d even made it to the door.
chapter
thirty-three
I rode west, practicing the disguised voice I’d used with Miyamoto, making sure I had it down because unlike Miyamoto, McGraw was used to me in English. I found a payphone and called him. It was late, but they put me through. “You left me a message,” I said.
There was a pause. “That’s right. I appreciate you getting back to me. I understand you’re a problem solver. And you come highly recommended.”
“Who recommended me?
“A fellow named Miyamoto. And some other mutual friends of ours.”
“What kind of problem do you need solved?”
“I’d prefer if we could discuss it in person.”
“I don’t meet people in person. Not unless they’re the problem I was hired to solve.”
He laughed—a little nervously, I thought. “Well, let’s just see if we can establish the general parameters. First, I have to ask this. If the problem you were hired to solve were…an acquaintance of yours, would you still be interested?”
“That would depend on the price.”
“Well, that’s a sensible answer. It’s good to hear. And what would be the price if the problem were named…John Rain?”
I paused as though surprised. “That’s a bit more than an acquaintance you’re talking about. An old friend, in fact.”
“Is that a problem of principle, or price?”
“The price would be fifty thousand U.S.”
“Fifty thousand? That’s five times what you charged Miyamoto.”
“Miyamoto’s problem was a stranger. For this one, I’ll need extra. For my conscience.”
McGraw laughed. “Tell you what. Twenty-five. For your conscience.”
“The fifty is nonnegotiable. If you want it done, I’ll get it done. But the price is fifty thousand.”
There was a pause. “All right. Agreed. Payment upon delivery.”
“No. Half upon delivery. The other half up front.”
“I can’t do that. I don’t know you. I’m not going to leave twenty-five thousand dollars someplace and then have you tell me it wasn’t there.”
“We would face the same difficulty upon completion.”
“Upon completion, at least I’ll have completion. Before that, all I have is risk.”
I paused as though torn between the promise of the big payday, on the one hand, and bending my rules, on the other.
“All right,” I said. “But you know what the collateral will be in the event of default.”
“Yes, I do.”
I thought of Mad Dog. Was I going to have to worry about someone else at the ambush beyond my alter ego?
“One other matter,” I said. “Have you hired anyone else for this?”
“What? No, why would I do that?”
“I wouldn’t know your reasons. Redundancy, perhaps. A plan B. That’s not what matters. What matters is, you need to know my rules. When you hire me, it’s an exclusive. I won’t tolerate someone else tripping up the smooth running of my operation. That is also nonnegotiable, and also subject to collection of collateral upon default.”
“I understand. You don’t have to worry, there’s no one else. Hell, how many people do you think I could staff this with, anyway, at fifty grand a pop?”
“Again, I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, then. You’re it, and that’s it. Now, how soon can you do this?”
“Impossible to say right now. It depends on too many factors.”
“I might have something that could fix him in time and place for you. Would that be worth a discount?”
“No.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. All right, I’ll give it to you anyway. I need this done.”
“How will you get it to me?”
“Check in with me again tomorrow. With a little luck, I’ll have something then.”
“Regardless, we have a contract?”
“If you can guarantee success within a week, we do.”
“I can’t guarantee it. But I can tell you it’s likely. With good information from you, very likely.”
“Well, if you want the money, get it done. And hopefully I’ll have more intel for you tomorrow.”
I hung up. I should have felt relieved, excited, triumphant.
Instead, all I could feel was that weight. I wondered if I would ever get used to it.
chapter
thirty-four
I picked up my bag from the locker at Tokyo Station, tossed the gun I’d used to kill the driver into the Sumida River, then spent the night at a love hotel in
Shinjuku, wanting to be far away from the scene of the latest crime. I made sure there were no streetwalkers in the neighborhood, and parked Thanatos far away. I barely slept. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sayaka. She didn’t know the first thing about protecting herself, not from something like this, and even if she did, what could she have done? Yes, I was pretty sure they would bide their time with her, waiting to see whether the threat they’d established would be sufficient to get me to walk right into whatever ambush they had in store. But still, I couldn’t know any of that. I couldn’t be certain. So I was gambling, gambling with Sayaka’s life. But I didn’t know what else I could do. I told myself again and again that this was the least worst option. And tried not to imagine anything beyond that.
I went out early the next morning, and took a walk around Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park. The pond, with a circumference of about two kilometers, had three sections, one of which—called the Lotus Pond for reasons impossible to miss upon even a casual glance—was in the summer almost completely covered with giant lotus plants. Here and there, in those areas where the lotuses were less thick, ducks and other migratory birds swam and fed, and enormous, listless carp glided along, nudging at the mud, searching for whatever carp subsist on. I was glad to see the area was fairly empty in the early morning hours—on summer evenings, it could be crowded. There were a few dog walkers; some pensioners doing Tai Chi; an apparent nature photographer with a camera on a tripod. I examined the area carefully, trying to imagine everything, anticipate everything. If I could make it work, I decided, this was the spot.
When I was satisfied with my preparations, I went to a payphone and called McGraw, this time as myself. I told him I’d gotten his message.
“I’m glad you called,” he said. “Look, you know me. You know my values. Maybe they’re not good values, but they’re consistent. And like I’ve been telling you, for me, this is business. I made a bad business call, and now I’m trying to make it right.”
“Business? That’s what you call threatening a girl in a wheelchair?”
“What are you talking about?”
Was he playing dumb? Or had that been Mad Dog, acting on his own? No way to know, at least for now. I decided to drop it. “What do you want?”
“Look, I know you’re pissed and that’s understandable. But if you act on that, you’ll be doing something dangerous, probably suicidal. I’m not threatening you, just telling you the facts. Whereas, if you can set that temper aside and look at the situation dispassionately, you’ll see that what I’m offering you has a huge upside. More flexibility than what you’ve been doing, and ten times the money, maybe more. We each have something the other could use. I don’t understand why you would just walk away from that.”
I noticed he wasn’t calling me son anymore. Yeah, well, now he was trying to flatter and lull me, not keep me in my place. He might not have thought I was ineducable, but he must have still thought I was dumb.
“What are you proposing?” I said, playing along.
“Just meet me. I’ll tell you all about the program, and how you fit into it. You name the place. I’d suggest someplace public, where we’ll both feel comfortable, but other than that, your call.”
Sure, something public. As though that would make a difference. As though the assassin you think you just hired to take me out would find a few patrons in a restaurant a meaningful impediment.
What McGraw didn’t realize was that I wanted something public. But for my reasons, not his.
“How about Shinobazu Pond?”
“Sure, that would be fine. Where specifically?”
“You know the Benten Shrine, on Benten Island? Right in the center.”
“Of course I do.”
“I’ll meet you there tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock.”
“That would be fine. I’ll look forward to it.”
“If I see any yakuza, they better finish me this time.”
“There won’t be any yakuza, or anyone else. This is just you and me.”
I hung up. So far, so good.
My next call was to Tatsu. He’d offered to help me beyond just getting me Kei Takizawa’s information, and I was going to have to take him up on it. “Hey,” I said, when he picked up. “It’s me again.”
There was a pause that made me decidedly uncomfortable. “Why are you calling me?”
I went from decidedly uncomfortable to distinctly on edge. “What do you mean?”
“Kei Takizawa was murdered in her apartment early this morning.”
I felt gut-punched. “Oh, fuck.”
“This time, I’m going to need you to explain your whereabouts.” His voice was cold.
“Damn it, Tatsu. I told her to call you. I told her not to go back to her apartment.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Can you meet right now? I’ll tell you everything.”
Twenty minutes later, we were walking around the pond. I told him what had happened the night before. I told him where I’d stayed, and that the clerk would probably remember me.
“That’s not necessary,” he said. “Forgive me for doubting you. I should have known…you wouldn’t do something like this.”
I wasn’t as certain as he was. But weirdly, I wanted to deserve his confidence.
“I wouldn’t and I didn’t. But I should have known she wouldn’t listen to me. She was out of her mind and told me she didn’t want to go to the cops because most of them are in bed with the yakuza. I should have called you myself and told you to pick her up.”
He sighed. “Well, she was scared, but she wasn’t stupid. Remind me, why do you think Fukumoto Junior had her killed?”
This part was delicate. “She told me Mad Dog is the one who had his old man killed, and that he used her to help make it happen. It sounds like this was just a case of tying up loose ends.”
We walked in silence for a moment. “I don’t think you’re lying to me, Rain-san. But your truth is like the lotuses on this pond. Captivating, certainly, but more than anything they conceal what lies beneath.”
I glanced out at the lotuses, then at him. “That was unusually poetic of you.”
He nodded. “An early morning flight of fancy. Was it inaccurate?”
“All right. I’ll tell you what I know. And then I’m going to ask you another favor. A slightly larger one than last time.”
So I told him. I elided what needed eliding, but he got the drift. Miyamoto I left out entirely, claiming I knew nothing about my bagman counterpart, which would have been expected in any event. Not many bagmen would be stupid enough—or, as it had turned out, fortunate enough—to have struck up the kind of friendship and trust I had with Miyamoto. Naturally, I told him nothing about the service I had performed for Miyamoto, or about my involvement in any of the other killings. He would intuit and suspect much of it, of course, but he’d already told me that as long as I confessed to no crimes, we had an understanding.
“This is potentially explosive,” he said when I was finished. “The CIA, bribing Japanese politicians?”
“I think they conceive of it more as ‘political assistance’ or whatever than as bribes.”
“I’m sure they do. What kind of proof do you have of any of this?”
I had a feeling he would ask. “Virtually none. It’s all done with cash and through cutouts. And before you ask me to go in undercover, number one, the answer is no, and number two is, I’m blown anyway. They’re all after me.”
“All because of the incident at Ueno? Those chinpira who jumped you?”
He knew it was bullshit. And he could sense the rest. But I wasn’t going to confirm anything.
“As far as I know.”
We walked in silence again. The sun was up now, and it was beginning to get hot. There were more people around, more sounds of traffic and trains in the distance. The city was stirring itself from slumber.
“What will you do?” he said. “This time, you’ve really pissed off the wrong people.”
/>
“That’s…the favor I need to ask.”
“Yes?”
“Those two yakuza killed on Roppongi-dōri last night—or actually, early this morning. What’s the procedure with the bodies?”
He shrugged. “The bodies were taken to the Jikei Hospital morgue. They’ll be pronounced dead, a forensic pathologist will examine them and file his report, and they’ll be cremated. Why?”
“I need one of them.”
He stopped and looked at me, and for once, his unflappable calm, which always seemed the product of his ability to think faster and see farther ahead, seemed to desert him. He shook his head as though bewildered and said, “For what?”
I told him my plan. “All I need from you,” I said, “is a little help…shaping the way it looks after.”
“You mean a cover-up.”
“That seems like a strong phrase. No one’s going to get hurt. And it seems like a fair trade in exchange for the kind of information I just gave you on CIA payoffs to the LDP.”
“You have no proof of those payoffs.”
“Maybe not, but now that you know about them, and everything else, you’ll know where to find proof. If you want to look for it. I’m not sure it’s a good idea. These people don’t like exposure, I’ve discovered.”
He nodded, watching me.
“What?” I said.
He sighed. “I feel unaccountably sad.”
“Imagine how I feel.”
He offered a small smile. “Do you need money?”
I squeezed his shoulder, touched. “No. I’ve got enough.”
“A passport?”
“That…I could use a little help with. Wouldn’t be a good idea to travel under my own.” I realized I should have thought of a new passport sooner, before it counted. So much had been happening, I hadn’t gamed things out all the way through. I promised I would never let that happen again.
“I can help you with the travel papers. But how long will you stay away?”
“How long do you think I’ll need to?”
“At least a year,” he said, nodding resignedly and sounding like a doctor delivering the diagnosis for a fatal disease. “Probably longer.”