A Clean Kill in Tokyo (previously published as Rain Fall)

by Barry Eisler

  I shuffled past the old woman at the front desk, flashing my keys as I went by so she’d know I was already registered. She glanced up and then went back to her reading. I tried to give her only my right profile, which was in better shape than the left. She didn’t seem to notice my face.

  I knocked on the door so Midori would know I was coming and then let myself in with the key.

  She was sitting on the bed, and jumped when she saw my swollen eye and the scratches on my face. “What happened?” she gasped, and despite the pain, the concern in her voice warmed me.

  “Someone was waiting at my apartment,” I said, locking the door behind me. I let my coat fall off my back and eased myself onto the couch. “It looks like we’re both pretty popular lately.”

  She came over and knelt next to me, her eyes searching my face. “Your eye looks bad. Let me get you some ice.”

  I watched her walk away. She was wearing jeans and a navy sweatshirt she must have picked up while I was out, and with her hair tied back I had a nice view of the proportions of her shoulders and waist, the curve of her hips. The next thing I knew I was wanting her so much I almost could have forgotten the pain in my back. There was nothing I could do about it. As any soldier who’s really been through it can tell you, extreme horniness is a reaction to combat. One second you’re fighting for your life, and then when it’s over you’ve got a hard-on the size of Mt. Fuji. I don’t know why it happens, but it does.

  She came back with some ice in a towel and I shifted on the couch, embarrassed. Electric pain jolted through my back but it didn’t make a dent in my predicament. She knelt again and held the ice against my eye, smoothing my hair back at the same time. Better if she’d just dumped the cubes in my lap.

  She eased me back on the couch and I grimaced, intensely aware of how near she was. “Does that hurt?” she asked, her touch instantly becoming tentative.

  “No, it’s okay. The guy who cut up my face hit me in the back with a cane. It’ll be okay.”

  Midori held the ice against my eye, her free hand warm on the side of my head, while I sat stiffly, afraid to move, and the moment spun slowly out.

  At one point, she shifted the ice and I reached to take it from her, but she continued to hold it and my hand wound up covering hers. The back of her hand was warm against my palm, the ice cold on my fingertips. “That’s good,” I told her. She didn’t ask whether I meant the ice or her hand. I wasn’t sure myself.

  “You were gone for a long time,” she said after a while. “I didn’t know what to do. I was going to call you, but then I was starting to think, maybe you and those men in my apartment set this up, like good cop, bad cop, to get me to trust you.”

  “I would have thought the same. I can imagine how this must all seem to you.”

  “It was starting to seem pretty unreal, actually. Until I saw you again.”

  I looked at the towel, now speckled red where it had been pressed against my face. “Nothing like a little blood to make things seem real.”

  “It’s true. The thing I kept coming back to was how hard you kicked that man at my apartment—I saw blood shoot from his nose. If I hadn’t seen that, I think I would have left while you were gone.”

  “Glad I caught him in the head, then.”

  She laughed softly and pressed the towel against my face again. “Tell me what happened.”

  “You don’t have anything to eat here, do you?” I asked. “I’m starving.”

  She reached for a bag next to the couch and opened it for me. “I brought back some bento. Just in case.”

  “Give me a few minutes,” I said, and started wolfing down rice balls, eggs, and vegetables. I washed it all down with a can of mixed fruit juice and a few glasses of water from the sink. It tasted great.

  When I was finished, I shifted on the couch so I could see her better. “There were two of them at my apartment,” I said. “I knew one—an LDP flunky I know only as Benny. Turns out he’s connected to the CIA. Would that mean anything to you? Any connection to your father?”

  She shook her head. “No. My father never said anything about a Benny or about the CIA.”

  “Okay. The other guy was a kendoka—he had a cane he used like a sword. I don’t know what the connection is. I managed to get both their mobile phones. Maybe it’ll give me a clue about who he is.”

  I took the ice from her with one hand and leaned across the couch to reach my coat, feeling angry bites of pain in my back as I did so. I pulled the coat over, reached into the inside breast pocket, and pulled out the phones. “Benny told me the Agency is after the disk. I don’t know why they’re coming after me, though. Maybe they think… maybe they think I’m going to tell you something, put something together for you? That I can make use of what you’ve got? Figure out what it is? Prevent them from getting what they want?”

  I flipped open the kendoka’s phone and pressed the dialed calls button. A number lit up on the screen. “This is a start. We can do a reverse telephone number search. There might be some numbers preprogrammed, also. I’ve got a friend, someone I trust, who can help us with this.”

  I stood, wincing from the pain in my back. “We’re going to need to change hotels. Can’t behave any differently than the other satisfied patrons.”

  She smiled. “I suppose that’s true.”

  We changed to a nearby place called the Morocco, which seemed to be organized around some sort of Arabian Nights theme—Oriental rugs, hookahs, belly bracelets, and other harem gear for the woman to wear if she were so inclined. It was the picture of Bedouin luxury, but there was only one bed, and sleeping on the couch was going to be like a night on the rack.

  “Why don’t you take the bed tonight,” she said, as though reading my mind. “With your back like that, you can’t very well sleep on this couch.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I told her, feeling strangely embarrassed. “The couch is fine.”

  “I’ll take the couch,” she said, with a smile I couldn’t read.

  I wound up accepting her offer, but my sleep was restless. I dreamed I was moving though dense jungle near Tchepone in southern Laos, hunted by an NVA counter-recon battalion. I had gotten separated from my team and was disoriented. I would side-slip and double back, but couldn’t shake the NVA. They had me surrounded, and I knew I was going to be captured and tortured. Then Midori was there, trying to get me to take a side arm. “I don’t want to be captured,” she was saying. “Please, help me. Take the gun. Don’t worry about me. Save my Yards.”

  I snapped upright, my body coiled like a spring. Easy, John. Just a dream. I tightened my abdomen and forced a long hiss of air out through my nostrils, feeling like Crazy Jake was right there in the room with me.

  My face was wet and I thought it was bleeding again, but when I put my hand to my cheek and looked at my fingers I realized it was tears. What the hell is this? I thought.

  The moon was low in the sky, its light flowing in through the window. Midori was sitting up on the couch, her knees drawn to her chest. “Bad dream?” she asked.

  I pushed the back of my hand across the sides of my face. “How long have you been up?”

  She shrugged. “A while. You were tossing and turning.”

  “I say anything?”

  “No. Are you afraid of what you might say in your sleep?”

  I looked at her, one side of her face illuminated by moonlight, the other hidden in shadow. “Yes,” I said.

  “What was the dream?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, lying. “Mostly just images.”

  I could feel her looking at me. “You tell me to trust you,” she said, “but you won’t even tell me about a bad dream.”

  I started to answer, then all at once felt irritated with her. I slid off the bed and walked over to the bathroom.

  I don’t need her questions, I thought. I don’t need to take care of her. Fucking CIA, Holtzer, knows I’m in Tokyo, knows where I live. I’ve got enough problems.

 
She was the key, I knew. Her father must have told her something. Or she had what whoever had broken into his apartment on the day of his funeral had been looking for. Why couldn’t she just realize what the hell it was?

  I walked back into the bedroom and stood facing her. “Midori, you’ve got to try harder. You’ve got to remember. Your father must have told you something, or given you something.”

  I saw surprise on her face. “I told you, he didn’t.”

  “Someone broke into his apartment after he died.”

  “I know. I got a call from the police when it happened.”

  “The point is, they couldn’t find what they were looking for, and they think you have it.”

  “Look, if you want to take a look around my father’s apartment, I can let you in. I haven’t cleaned it out yet and I still have the key.”

  The people who had broken in had come up empty, and my old friend Tatsu, as thorough a man as I have ever known, had been there afterward with the resources of the Keisatsucho. I knew another look would be a dead end, and her suggestion only served to increase my frustration.

  “That’s not going to help. What would these people think that you have? The disk? Something it’s hidden in? A key? Are you sure you don’t have anything?”

  I saw her redden slightly. “I told you, I don’t.”

  “Well, try to remember something, can’t you?”

  “No, I can’t,” she said, her voice angry. “How can I remember something if I don’t have it?”

  “How can you be sure you don’t have it if you can’t remember it?”

  “Why are you saying this? Why don’t you believe me?”

  “Because nothing else makes sense! And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t like the feeling of people trying to kill me when I don’t even know why!”

  She swung her feet to the floor and stood. “Oh, it’s only you! Do you think I like it? I didn’t do anything! And I don’t know why these people are doing this, either!”

  I exhaled slowly, trying to rein in my anger. “It’s because they think you have the disk. Or you know where it is.”

  “Well I don’t! I don’t know anything—I’ve already told you that!”

  We stood staring at each other at the foot of the bed, breathing hard. Then she said, “You don’t give a shit about me. You’re just after what they want, whatever it is.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true! I’ve had enough! You won’t even tell me who you are!” She stalked over to the door and picked up a bag, started shoving her things into it.

  “Midori, listen to me.” I walked over and grabbed the bag. “Listen to me, goddamn it! I do care about you! Can’t you see that?”

  She tugged at the bag. “Why should I believe what you say when you don’t believe me? I don’t know anything! I don’t know!”

  I yanked the bag out of her hands. “All right, I believe you.”

  “Like hell you do. Give me my bag. Give it to me!” She tried to grab it and I moved it behind my back.

  She looked at me, her eyes briefly incredulous, then started hitting me in the chest. I dropped the bag and wrapped my arms around her to stop the blows.

  Later, I couldn’t remember exactly how it happened. She was fighting me and I was trying to hold her arms. I became very aware of the feel of her body and then we were kissing, and it seemed as though she was still trying to hit me but it was more that we were tearing at each other’s clothes.

  We made love on the floor at the foot of the bed. The sex was passionate, headlong. At times it was like we were still fighting. My back was throbbing, but the pain was almost sweet.

  Afterward, I reached up and pulled the bedcovers over us. We sat with our backs against the edge of the bed.

  “Yokatta,” she said, drawing out the last syllable. “That was good. Better than you deserved.”

  I felt a little dazed. It had been a long time for me, a connection like that. It was unnerving.

  “But you don’t trust me,” she went on. “That hurts.”

  “It’s not trust, Midori. It’s…” I said, then stopped. “I believe you. I’m sorry for pushing so hard.”

  “I’m talking about your dream.”

  I pressed my fingertips to my eyes. “Midori, I can’t, I don’t…” I didn’t know what the hell to say. “I don’t talk about these things. If you weren’t there, you couldn’t understand.”

  She reached over and gently pried my fingertips from my eyes, then held them without self-consciousness at her waist. Her skin and her breasts were beautiful in the diffused moonlight, the shadows pooled in the hollows above her clavicles. “You need to talk, I can feel that,” she said. “I want you to tell me.”

  I looked down at the tangled sheets and blankets, the shadows carving stark hills and valleys like some alien landscape in the moonlight. “My mother… she was Catholic. When I was a kid, she used to take me to church. My father hated it. I used to go to confession. I used to tell the priest about all my lascivious thoughts, all the fights I’d been in, the kids I hated and how I wanted to hurt them, kill them. At first it was like pulling teeth, but it got addictive.

  “But that was all before the war. In the war, I did things… that are beyond confession.”

  “But if you keep them bottled up like this, they’ll eat you like poison. They are eating you.”

  I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to let it out.

  What’s with you? I thought. Do you want to drive her away?

  Yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe that would be best. I couldn’t tell her about her father, but I could tell her something worse.

  When I spoke, my voice was dry and steady. “Atrocities, Midori. I’m talking about atrocities.”

  Always a good conversation starter. But she stayed with me. “I don’t know what you did,” she said, “but I know it was a long time ago. In another world.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I can’t make you understand, not if you weren’t there.” I pressed my fingertips to my eyes again, the reflex useless against the images playing in my mind.

  “A part of me loved it, thrived on it. Operating in the NVA’s backyard—the North Vietnamese Army—not everybody could do that. Some guys, when they’d hear the insert helicopters going off into the distance and the jungle go quiet, they’d panic, couldn’t breathe. Not me. I had over twenty missions in Indian country. People would say I had used up all my luck, but I just kept going, and the missions kept getting crazier.

  “I was one of the youngest One-Zeros—SOG team leaders—ever. My teammates and I were tight. We could be twelve guys against an NVA division, and I knew not one of my people would run. And they knew I wouldn’t, either. Do you know what that’s like, for a kid who’s been ostracized his whole life because he’s a half-breed?”

  I talked faster. “I don’t care who you are. If you wade that deeply into the blood and muck, you won’t stay clean. Some people are more susceptible than others, but eventually everyone goes over the edge. Two of your people are blown in half by a Bouncing Betty mine, their legs torn from their bodies. You’re holding what’s left of them in the last moments of their lives, telling them, ‘Hey, it’s going to be okay, you’re going to be okay,’ they’re crying and you’re crying and then they’re dead. You walk away, you’re covered with their insides.

  “You lay your own booby traps for the enemy, that was one of our specialties, tit for tat, but there are only twelve of you and you can’t win that kind of war of attrition no matter how much more you bleed them than they bleed you. You take more losses, and the frustration—the rage, the strangling, muscle-bunching rage—just builds and builds. And then one day, you’re moving through a village with the power of life and death slung over your shoulder, sweeping back and forth, back and forth, muzzle forward. You’re in a declared free-fire zone, meaning anyone who isn’t a confirmed friendly is assumed to be Vietcong and treated accordingly. And intel tells you this village is a hotbed of VC activity, they’re feedin
g half the sector, they’re a conduit for arms flowing south down the Trail. The people are giving you sullen looks. Some mama-san says, ‘Hey Joe, you fuck mommie, you number ten,’ some shit like that. I mean, you’ve got the intel. And two hours earlier you lost another buddy to a booby trap. Believe me, someone is going to pay.”

  I took two deep breaths. “Tell me to stop, or I’m going to keep going.”

  Midori was silent.

  “The village was called Cu Lai. We herded all the people together, maybe forty or fifty people, including women and children. We burned their homes down right in front of them. We shot all their farm animals, massacred the pigs and cows. Effigy, you know? Catharsis. But it wasn’t cathartic enough.

  “Now what are we supposed to do with these people? I used the radio, even though you’re not supposed to because the enemy can triangulate, they can find your position. But what were we supposed to do with these people? We had just destroyed their village.

  “The guy on the other end of the radio, I still don’t know who, says, ‘Waste ’em.’ This was the way we described killing back then—so and so got wasted, we wasted ten VC

  “I’m quiet, and the guy says again, ‘Waste ’em.’ Now this is unnerving. It’s one thing to be on the brink of hot-blooded murder. It’s another to have the impulse coolly sanctioned higher up the chain of command. Suddenly I’m scared, realizing how close we had been. I say, ‘Waste who?’ He says, ‘All of ’em. Everybody.’ I say, ‘We’re talking about forty, fifty people here, some women and children, too. Do you understand that?’ The guy says again, ‘Just waste ’em.’ ‘Can I have your name and rank?’ I say, because suddenly I’m not going to kill all these people just because a voice over the radio tells me to. ‘Son,’ the voice says, ‘I assure you if I told you my rank you’d shit your pants for me. You are in a declared free-fire zone. Now do as I say.’

  “I told him I wouldn’t do it without being able to verify his authority. Then two more people, who claimed to be this guy’s superiors, got on the radio. One of them told me, ‘You have been given a direct order under the authority of the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces. Obey this order or suffer the consequences.’