by Barry Eisler
“Well, I’m back.”
“I can see that.”
She looked good in her usual way. Ponytail, sweatshirt, no makeup.
“I mean it’s our third meeting.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Can I ask you something?”
“I guess so.”
“Why do you keep coming here?”
I couldn’t very well admit that it was because I wanted to see her, and I couldn’t think of anything else, so I said nothing.
“I mean, the first time, I had no idea. I just figured you needed a place to spend the night for some reason. You’re a little younger and less corporate-looking than most of the clientele, but I figured, I don’t know, maybe your girlfriend threw you out.”
I didn’t say anything, and she went on. “The second night I told myself the same thing. But now I’m thinking, either you’re in some kind of trouble and trying to hide from it, or this is about me. Or both.”
Jesus, I thought. I’d been focusing so much on my own needs, my own outlook, that I hadn’t considered what things must have looked like from her perspective. That failure to consider the view from the other side was stupid. Here, the penalty was nothing more than embarrassment. In another context, the penalty could be considerably worse.
“It’s a little bit of both,” I said, not knowing how I could coherently suggest otherwise.
“What kind of trouble are you in?”
I was a little disappointed she was more interested in that side of the story. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
She laughed. “How many people do you think have been in over their heads, and said that right before they drowned?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I said, “Are you going to tell me your name?”
“Why do you want to know my name so much?”
“I don’t know. I keep thinking of you as ‘the girl at the hotel.’ It just seems demeaning.”
I was trying for funny, but she didn’t laugh. Instead, her lips parted and her eyes narrowed and she looked at me for a long time, like she was really looking at me, like she was trying to figure something out.
Then the look was gone, replaced by a frown. “To which of us?”
“Well, I meant to you. But I guess to both.”
Another long moment went by. I thought she wasn’t going to tell me, and that I should probably give up. But then she sighed and said, “Sayaka.”
I liked it. It suited her. Without thinking, I said, “Hi, Sayaka.”
I immediately regretted it, thinking she would make fun of me for saying something so lame. But instead, she said, “Welcome back, Jun. Just don’t expect any mints on the pillow, okay?”
I couldn’t tell if it was just a joke, or if she was letting me know I wouldn’t be waking up next to her. Or both.
“Do you work here every night?” I asked.
“I have a day off now and then. Do you stay here every night?”
I shrugged. “Like you said, I’m in a little bit of a jam. I need a place to stay while I figure it all out. It’s not a girlfriend, though.”
I realized that was actually a stupid thing to add. It would have been just fine if she figured my taste for stays at love hotels had to do with a domestic problem. I didn’t need her speculating, or asking, beyond that.
“Well,” she said, “I hope it’s nothing too serious.”
“I’ve seen worse,” I said, which was true. I’d been chased by a North Vietnamese battalion in Cambodia. So far, at least, I’d take the yakuza any day.
“So…a stay?”
“Yeah, as usual.” I pushed the bills under the glass, and she slid a key in the other direction.
“You know,” I said, “I think I’m going to have this whole thing straightened out pretty soon. At which point, I won’t be coming by anymore. But I thought…I found this great coffee place today, in Shibuya. You ever feel like a cup of coffee?”
She flushed, and for a moment, a look of consternation crossed her face. Then she said, “It’s nice of you, Jun, but…no.”
Damn. I’d really thought she was going to say yes. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
I should have just taken the hint. But it seemed like she was interested, somehow. I didn’t get it. Without thinking, I said, “Why? It’s just coffee. I know I’m a little younger, but…”
There was an awkward pause. “It’s…hard for me to get around. Shibuya’s a little far.”
I felt like an idiot. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think of that.”
She smiled at that. “I know you didn’t.”
“Well, how about if I could find a place closer by?”
She laughed. “Maybe.”
“I’ll try. I don’t know. It would be good to see you someplace besides this hotel.”
She looked at me. “I really don’t know what to make of you, Jun.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
I grinned, feeling a little more confident. “Well, I like that you’re thinking about it.”
“Yeah. I’ll let you know how it all turns out.”
chapter
fourteen
Tired as I was, I was also pretty keyed up from all the day’s events, and maybe especially from the conversation with Sayaka at the end of it. Sayaka. I liked her name. Liked it a lot. And liked that she had told me.
I fell asleep so late that I actually slept past eight. When I left, she was gone, replaced by a stone-faced oba-san who took my key with all the animation of a vending machine.
The first order of business was Miyamoto. I had never spoken to him other than in Japanese, but he’d told me he dealt with Americans from time to time, so I assumed his English would be at least serviceable. Well, we were going to find out. I practiced disguising my voice, slowing it down, lowering it, making it raspier, older sounding, sharpening my inflection and changing my vowels as though English was other than my native tongue. When I felt I was ready, I went to a payphone and called him.
“Miyamoto desu.” This is Miyamoto.
“Hello,” I said. “We have a mutual friend who told me you have a problem I might be able to help with. Let’s not say his name.” I spoke slowly and precisely to make sure he understood me.
There was a pause while he took it in. Maybe he hadn’t been expecting I would put him in touch with someone so quickly. “Yes, yes that’s right. He spoke with you?”
“He did. I’m prepared to help you with your problem. I know you don’t know me, but I hope our mutual friend’s introduction will be evidence that you can trust me.”
“All right.”
“Do you want my help?”
There was a pause. “Yes.”
“Then here’s what I need you to do. Take all the information I’ll require—name, work address, home address, photographs, and any other information you have that could reasonably be useful to me under the circumstances. Put it all in an envelope, along with half the fee that you offered our friend. The currency should be American dollars.”
I thought he might object to paying a total stranger half up front, but he didn’t. “All right,” he said. “But where shall we—”
“I don’t want to meet you. I don’t want you to know anything about me beyond the sound of my voice. It’s better that way for both of us.” Actually, even if I were really the third party I was pretending to be, not meeting would have been better only for me, but I thought it was more polite to suggest my concern was broader than just that.
“But then how can I get you the envelope?”
I’d asked myself the same question. Answering it was why I’d been riding the Ginza line the day before. “You know Gaienmae Station, on the Ginza line?”
“Of course.”
“Go in through the Number Three entrance. Walk onto the side of the platform where Shibuya-bound trains arrive. As you walk down the platform, on your left you’ll see two sets of benches
, each consisting of five chairs for a total of ten. Do you understand so far?”
“Yes.”
“Tape the envelope to the back of the first chair you pass, the one right in the corner. Do it by eight o’clock tonight, and I’ll retrieve it at some point afterward. When the job is done, we’ll do the same thing with the remaining payment.”
“But…that’s a lot of money, to just leave there in the station.”
“When you see the spot, you’ll understand it’s sufficiently secure. It won’t remain there long, I assure you. But understand one other thing, too.”
“Yes?”
“It should be obvious to you why it’s best if we make our connection as minimal as possible. And equally obvious that, for my own security, I don’t want anyone to see my face. I expect you to respect my wish for privacy. So, as I approach the platform—maybe on train, maybe on foot, maybe on one side, maybe the other—if I see anyone I think is there to make me—to identify me, that is—you will never hear from me again. Do we have an agreement?”
There was a pause. “We do.”
“Repeat my instructions, so we can be sure there are no misunderstandings.”
He did. When he was done, I said, “Good. The package will be in place by eight o’clock tonight?”
“It will be in place.”
I hung up, thinking that’s what an experienced contract killer would do at that point, and went to get some breakfast. The metabolism of a twenty-year-old isn’t something that can be ignored for long. Once I’d fueled up, I rode Thanatos to Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronics mecca. I visited a variety of stores, and bought five items: an iron, a curling iron, an extension cord, a roll of electrical tape, and a volt-ohm milliammeter, or VOM, a device for measuring electrical current. I was no electrical expert, though I did gradually and painstakingly acquire such expertise later, in no small part by “listening” to things, as the old nandemoya had described it, but I knew the basics. The danger from shocks isn’t voltage as such, but rather amperage. That is, other things being equal, it’s not the overall power that’s most directly the danger, but instead how quickly that power moves through your body. This is why even relatively low-voltage systems like home wiring can be fatal. The current is moving fast. As long as resistance is low—the way it is when, say, your skin is wet—a low-voltage shock can be enough to cause ventricular fibrillation and immediate unconsciousness, followed rapidly, absent intervention, by death.
I made one last purchase at a drugstore—mineral salts, advertised as offering relief from arthritis and a variety of skin problems, and therefore presumably something similar to what the proprietors of Daikoku-yu put in the water of their own special soaking tubs. Then I took my purchases back to a dilapidated love hotel in Ueno, all molded ferroconcrete and plastic cupids, where I paid for a rest in a deluxe room with an ofuro—a bath.
As soon as I was in the room with the door locked behind me, I turned on the bathwater, keeping it piping hot to replicate the conditions at Daikoku-yu as closely as possible. I closed my eyes, and imagined the mineral baths at Daikoku-yu. From what I knew, I thought if the electricity were introduced between Ozawa and the drain or faucet—either of which would function as a ground—much of it would bypass Ozawa. But if Ozawa were between the source of the electricity and the drain or faucet, it would have to go through him.
When the tub was full, I shut off the water, lay the VOM on the adjacent, closed toilet, ran one of the electrical leads into the water, and taped the other to the faucet. There was no outlet within reach of the tub, and I was glad I’d thought to pick up an extension cord along with the other items. I plugged the curling iron into the extension cord and the extension cord into a wall socket in the bedroom. Then I went back to the bathroom, wrapped a towel around the curling iron, and pitched it into the bath.
Nothing seemed to happen, and I realized I was half expecting something dramatic—sparks, hissing, arcs of lightning. I smiled, thinking I had seen too many movies. I yanked the plug from the outlet and checked the VOM. The needle had moved to 35 milliamps—a severe shock, no doubt, but would it be enough to be fatal? I repeated the operation, this time with the iron, and was rewarded with a reading of 76 milliamps.
Next, I dumped in the bath salts and stirred them around until they were dissolved, then repeated my experiment. The amperage more than doubled because of the better conductivity of the salt water—72 milliamps for the curling iron, and a whopping 160 milliamps for the iron. I assumed the iron was producing the more impressive results because of its larger heating element.
Whatever kind of overcurrent protection the hotel had—and given its parlous state, “whatever kind” might easily have meant “none”—160 milliamps in the bath hadn’t been enough to trip it. With a little luck, things at Daikoku-yu would be similarly lax. And if Ozawa’s way of grabbing the faucet to pull himself up was a habit, and if I could time things right, I could deliver the shock into the water and from there right through his chest and out through his arm, which would be attached to a metal pipe that would offer the path of least resistance, and therefore the most attractive route for the jolt I planned to deliver.
I had a sudden moment of doubt. Yes, the salt water was a better conductor, but electricity seeks the path of least resistance. What if, relative to the salt water, Ozawa’s body was more resistant than it would be relative to fresh water, and therefore pulled in less electricity?
I decided I’d have to take the chance. If he wasn’t in one of the small tubs—both of which were filled with mineral water—none of this was going to work no matter what. There was too much water in the main bath; there would be other people in it; and I wouldn’t have unobtrusive access in any event. Regardless of salinity, I thought if I got the iron in the water in the right spot, and if Ozawa’s hand were on the faucet at the right moment, his body would conduct enough of the electricity to stop his heart.
I left the hotel and headed over to the Tokyo Metropolitan Library, where I spent several hours perusing a series of old medical and engineering tomes on the effects of electricity on the body. It seemed there was a sweet spot for inducing a ventricular fibrillation: between 100 and 200 milliamps. Lower than a hundred, and although the muscles in the vicinity of the shock might seize up, the heart itself wouldn’t be sufficiently affected. And shocks over 200 milliamps seemed to induce the heart itself to seize, protecting it from arrhythmia, while also involving the risk of burns. But those numbers were about conductivity in the water or at contact with the skin. They didn’t account for the possibility of funneling the shock directly through someone’s chest. On balance, I decided the curling iron would be the better alternative. High enough amperage to induce an arrhythmia; not so high that it might cause marks on the skin or prevent an arrhythmia entirely. Also, the curling iron was significantly smaller and less obtrusive than the clothes iron.
When I was done at the library, I stopped at several hardware stores and picked up a variety of door locks. Then I went to a discount store and bought a baseball cap, a pair of sunglasses, a cloth surgical mask, and a heavy wool jacket that would add the appearance of twenty pounds to my build. Hell, yes, it would look like a disguise, for anyone inclined to pay attention to such things, but this was long before 9/11 and the birth of the national surveillance state. If someone wanted to ride the Tokyo subway looking like a movie star hiding from paparazzi while sweating off a few pounds in an unseasonable jacket, no one was going to give him a hard time about it.
At eleven o’clock that night, about an hour before the trains stopped for the evening, I got on an Asakusa-bound Ginza-line train at Shibuya Station. I boarded a car at the front and stood on the left, the side with a view of the opposite platform. As we pulled into Gaienmae Station and slowed to a stop, I got a complete view of the Shibuya-bound platform. There were a handful of late-night office workers waiting for a train, but no one who rubbed me the wrong way. I noted each of them carefully. If anyone I saw now was still standing on the
platform when I returned, I would know I had a problem.
At Aoyama-itchōme, one stop farther down the line, I got off and waited for a train in the other direction. I didn’t have to wait long: even off peak, Ginza-line trains ran every three minutes. I got on, this time near the back. As we approached Gaienmae Station, I pulled the surgical mask up over my nose and mouth. Japan is a remarkably considerate society, and it was common for people suffering from head colds to wear the cloth masks to reduce the spread of germs. Happily, the masks have other uses, too. Between the hat, the sunglasses, the mask, and the coat, I was confident even someone who knew me as well as Miyamoto did wouldn’t recognize me. And if someone managed to snap a photo, that would be useless to them, too.
The train eased to a stop. I got off quickly and started walking down the platform toward the Number Three exit. Everyone I could see who had been waiting on the platform got on the train. The twenty or so people who got off started heading toward various exits. Everything looked copacetic.
I continued along the platform. The train started pulling away. No one lingered. When the train was gone, I checked the platform on the other side of the tracks. There were a dozen or so people there, but I had seen none of them when I had passed through a few minutes earlier.
I came to the benches I had described to Miyamoto. I sat on the last of them and looked around. No one was within view on my side of the tracks. On the other side, two salarymen were walking down the platform, neckties loosened, laughing about something or other. They didn’t even glance my way. This was the moment. I reached around to the back of the chair and felt an envelope. I gripped one side and pulled. There was the sound of adhesive giving way, and then it was in my hand, two inches thick and wrapped in heavy tape. I shoved it into my bag and headed out. I passed several people and a station guard on the way, but if any of them wondered why Halloween seemed to have come early to Tokyo, none gave any sign. I left the station and, when I was satisfied I wasn’t being followed, found a public restroom and checked the contents of the envelope. The money was all there—five thousand dollars, a fortune to me at the time. And there was a file on a guy named Mori, which I’d review later. I called Miyamoto and, disguising my voice again, told him I’d picked up the package and that I’d be in touch soon.