Graveyard of Memories

by Barry Eisler

  chapter

  twenty-seven

  As it happened, I didn’t have to wait long for my break.

  I’d pulled back from scouting the locations where I was supposed to have a shot at nailing Mad Dog. Too much risk the person getting nailed would be me. I checked in with my answering service regularly, but no word from McGraw. I had time on my hands and would start to get antsy, then remind myself the smart play was just to wait.

  I was spending every morning and day with Sayaka. The only times we were apart were when she had to go to class or work. In bed, it seemed like every time was better than the one before it. I didn’t know why, exactly. Probably because we were getting more comfortable with each other. But also, I thought, because we were getting more comfortable with ourselves. I loved how unselfconscious she was. She still didn’t like my seeing her legs, but even that, I felt, was going to fade over time, and on everything else she was amazingly unaffected. She wanted to try everything—sex was like a giant experiment for her, a limitless, undiscovered country, and her lack of inhibition in bed was a giant turn-on for me. A few times she would do something and then catch herself, as though realizing maybe she was going too far, and then she would see how much I loved it and she would just plunge ahead. I realized I’d gone into this thing unconsciously assuming I’d be teaching and guiding her. Well, whatever I had to teach, she’d learned it in about a day. Since then, she’d been teaching me. Occasionally, I’d catch a flash of the toughness, the guardedness she’d displayed when I’d first met her and on the subsequent nights I’d come to see her at the hotel, but those moments only served to remind me of how much she was trusting me, how far she was letting me in, and moved me tremendously. Sometimes I’d worry I sounded sappy, and think maybe I should be a little more self-censored, but whatever I said or did, she always seemed to respond in kind. It was overwhelming, certainly more than I’d been expecting and more than I could really grasp. Underneath it all, I still felt guilty for what I knew in my heart was a horrible deceit. But I couldn’t tell her, and I also couldn’t stop what was happening between us. Once I had sorted out McGraw and everything else, maybe Sayaka and I would talk about where all this was going and what it meant. But there was no rush on that. As long as we kept getting those precious morning hours in her bed, I didn’t want to think about the future, and I don’t think Sayaka cared.

  On the fourth of these wonderful mornings, while Sayaka was in class, I got the message I’d been waiting for. McGraw. I called him.

  “You making any progress on that problem you were trying to solve?” he said.

  “No,” I said, my heart beating hard. “No luck so far.”

  He grunted. “You didn’t seem to need luck before. You sure you’re really trying?”

  Son of a bitch, I thought. You have people watching and waiting—at some of the nexuses, maybe all of them. And they’ve been reporting to you that I’m nowhere to be seen.

  “Are you crazy? Why wouldn’t I be trying?”

  “Forget it, I’m just being disagreeable. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I think we just caught that break we were hoping for.”

  Oh, we is it, now?

  “Tell me.”

  “You might have seen on the news…a certain someone was laid to rest yesterday in Yanaka Cemetery.”

  I had seen it, in fact. Fukumoto’s funeral had practically been a state affair. I hadn’t even considered trying to get close to Mad Dog there. I doubted there was a gangster in Japan not in attendance.

  “Yeah?”

  “There was a lot of pomp and circumstance. Not exactly an intimate gathering. I have it on reliable authority someone close to the deceased will be paying his private respects tomorrow afternoon.”

  “What time?” I wanted to sound eager. And in fact, I was. Just not for what McGraw was thinking.

  “Jesus, you want to know what he ate for breakfast, too? I’m not that far up his ass. That’s as much as I know. But it’s reliable.”

  “How’d you hear?”

  “That would come under the heading of sources and methods, son. And need to know. If you want to say thank you, though, I’ll say you’re welcome.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now listen. These guys have a family plot. Right in the center of the cemetery. Land as expensive as the Imperial Palace grounds. Apparently in section nine, right next to where the Tokugawa shoguns are buried. Does that mean anything to you?”

  I smiled. He still thought he was dealing with someone blind. He didn’t know I’d been figuring out how to see. “Well, I don’t know what section nine is, but I know where to find the Tokugawa burial plot.”

  “Another spot your mother took you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feigning irritation, being the hothead he was accustomed to underestimating. “Is there a problem with that?”

  “Relax, son. I’m just impressed again, that’s all.”

  No, you want to know if I’m familiar with the terrain so you can predict my approach. If I’m unfamiliar, I might wander at random. If I know where I’m going, I’ll do something sensible. Random isn’t predictable. Sensible is.

  “All right. This sounds promising.”

  “Go get him, tiger.”

  He hung up.

  Tiger? I thought. You have no idea.

  I bombed on Thanatos straight to the cemetery. I didn’t think McGraw would be expecting this; more likely, the plan was to hit me when I arrived for Mad Dog’s private visit tomorrow. Still, it wasn’t impossible McGraw would assume I’d recon the area first. I had to be ready for that.

  Yanaka was an old cemetery in an old ward of the same name, part of Shitamachi. Numerous important personages were laid to rest among the thousands of plots there, including, as McGraw had noted, the Tokugawa clan. It was also known for a glorious five-story pagoda that two mad lovers had set ablaze with themselves inside some years before, and for cherry trees so densely packed and spectacular that the cemetery’s central street was known as Cherry Blossom Avenue. Though I knew all this from childhood visits during hanami season, I was hardly an expert on the terrain. But I was about to become one.

  I circled the cemetery on Thanatos, then cut through it in all directions, my head sweeping left and right, searching for problems. Seeing none, I dismounted and started scouting on foot. My bag was unzipped, the Hi Power within easy reach.

  It didn’t take me long to find Fukumoto’s plot. It was on a raised square of land surrounded by an old stone wall—a kind of cemetery within a cemetery, within which sat symmetrical rows of markers, some of simple granite, others multilevel, polished pagodas. Fukumoto’s grave was at the northwest end: a massive gray obelisk, the earth before it freshly turned and barely visible beneath scores of enormous bouquets. Each wall was about twenty-five meters long and about two meters high. There was only one entrance—a gate on the south wall. I immediately understood why this was the spot: Yanaka was enormous, and I might approach from any direction. But at some point, if I wanted to get to someone inside the plot, I was going to go through or wait at this gate. Where they would position people would flow from that.

  What would you do if you wanted to get to you? That’s what they’ll do. And then you can do it to them.

  It would depend on manpower. If they had only one or two, they’d be at the gate or just inside it. But if they had a spotter, someone whose job was to note my approach and radio the others…

  I walked the circumference of the wall, examining the various possibilities. The ground outside the north wall was higher, and from here I could see over it. It occurred to me that they might know or suspect I had the dead yakuza’s Hi Power. If so, they couldn’t count on my entering through the gate. It wasn’t impossible I’d walk right up to this wall and start shooting. Of course, they wouldn’t be worried about my hitting Mad Dog—his “visit” was almost certainly a ruse, and I doubted he would even be present—but they’d need to know where to get to me regardless. If they really wanted
things covered, my guess was a minimum of four people: two inside, two out.

  Ten meters out from the north wall was another plot, on higher ground. I walked over, went up the stone steps, and immediately liked what I saw. This was another enclosed plot, but unlike Fukumoto’s, this one owed its privacy not to a stone wall, but to a perimeter of thick bushes about four feet high. I walked inside, squeezed into the gap in the bushes on the south side, and was rewarded with a panoramic view of the wall surrounding Fukumoto’s plot. Anyone approaching Fukumoto’s plot from any direction other than due south would be visible long before ever getting close. If I were doing it, I’d have a man right here, plus two more near the southeast and southwest corners of Fukumoto’s plot, plus one inside. The one inside would be someone who superficially resembled Mad Dog, maybe in dark glasses to obscure any discrepancies. If I had the manpower, I’d put one more man inside Fukumoto’s plot, who’d be playing a bodyguard or a friend, or perhaps another bereaved relative. It wouldn’t matter; the point would be just to make it two against one if for whatever reason I managed to get inside the wall.

  I considered for a moment. Could I really be sure Mad Dog wouldn’t be there? It was possible McGraw had set this thing up using only his own people and had never said a word to Mad Dog, but I doubted it. I didn’t think McGraw had the necessary manpower, for one thing. If I saw anything other than an authentic-looking Japanese cast of characters, I might easily spot the setup and abort. No, I didn’t think McGraw could have arranged this without Mad Dog knowing, and helping. And even if McGraw had told him to stay the hell away—that just the promise of Mad Dog’s presence was sufficient and that the reality would be unnecessary—Mad Dog didn’t strike me as the type who would listen. He’d come to the Kodokan to watch Pig Eyes try to kill me, after all. Wouldn’t he want the chance to watch me die here, as well? He wouldn’t think the danger was excessive. Not with all the additional men, and the element of surprise.

  The strange thing was, I didn’t think the underlying dynamics had changed so much from when McGraw had first told me I had run afoul of the Fukumotos. Mad Dog still wanted to kill me—whether out of honor or some other mix of motives, I couldn’t know. But his reasons were secondary to his intent. He wanted me dead, and it could only be to my benefit if the one who wound up dead were him.

  And not just Mad Dog. The reasoning was equally applicable to McGraw. I didn’t expect him to be at the cemetery tomorrow—his style seemed to be to work through cutouts and dupes—but maybe I’d get lucky.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon getting intimate with the terrain—the angles of approach, the cover and concealment. Tomorrow would be a kind of experiment, a proof of concept. If it worked out the way I was expecting, Mad Dog would be just an appetizer. McGraw would be the main course.

  chapter

  twenty-eight

  I spent the night at the hotel and then, as had become our habit, the drowsy morning hours at Sayaka’s. We would wind up in bed within minutes of our arrival and make love for an hour or two, sometimes getting up to eat a small breakfast, sometimes too exhausted and spent to move.

  This time, she had pushed me on my back and straddled me, a position I knew she had come to like. Her arms were amazingly strong and she supported herself with one hand on my chest, reaching down with the other to guide me in. She kept her hand there, holding me, feeling through her fingers what her injury denied her from feeling elsewhere. I caressed her face, her breasts, her hips, loving the way she looked like that, moving, swaying, her face partly hidden by her hair. Periodically, she looked down to take in with her eyes what she was feeling through her hand. I loved when she did that, loved how unselfconscious she was about it, how it seemed to fill her with awe and wonder. She looked back at me and rode me harder, more urgently, her mouth open, her breathing hard, confusion and frustration playing out alternately across her face.

  “Jun,” she said, and moved faster, almost angrily. She had so much weight on my chest it was getting hard to breathe, and she was grinding herself into me so hard it hurt my pelvis, albeit in a wonderful way. “Jun,” she said again, looking into my eyes, and then again, more loudly, and then her mouth opened in a perfect O and her eyelids fluttered and her voice dissolved into a long, startled cry.

  I kept moving with her, confused, surprised, afraid to hope. Was she coming? God, it was so beautiful, she was so beautiful.

  It went on for a long time, and then suddenly she was sagging against me, panting. I held her and stroked her hair and whispered her name over and over. She settled against me, her face to my shoulder, and I could feel tears against my skin.

  “Are you okay?” I said softly, still stroking her hair, trying to see her face.

  She pushed herself up and looked at me, her eyes watery, her cheeks streaked with tears. She shook her head. “That felt so good. I never felt anything like that.”

  “Sayaka…did you, do you think you just came?”

  She smiled and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t know. It just…it felt so good. Like an explosion. But did I? I didn’t know I could.” She cried harder. “I didn’t know.”

  I felt my own eyes fill up, and I pulled her into me, embarrassed she would see. But I was too late. She pushed herself up again and laughed. “Jun,” she said. “My tough guy.”

  I laughed, too, but the tears were still coming.

  She stroked my cheek. “Why are you crying?”

  I cleared my throat and tried to blink away the tears. “I’m not.”

  She laughed again. “Liar.”

  I wanted so much to tell her I loved her. To just blurt it out. But I was afraid to. I was afraid she’d think it was just a crush, that I was too young for her, that I was being silly.

  But I did. God, I loved her.

  “I’m just happy,” I said. “You make me happy.”

  Sometimes I wonder now whether it would have made any difference if I’d told her right then. Probably not. And I try to convince myself that she knew anyway. But I’ll never really know. I wish I’d told her. Wish it as much as I wish anything. But I didn’t.

  I headed out not long after that. I felt bad I couldn’t tell her why beyond that it was work, and it made me feel worse when she didn’t press. I wanted to get this all behind me. But to do it, I couldn’t just walk away, not unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life in rooms at shabby love hotels, constantly looking over my shoulder. If I wanted to win, first I had to double down. Then I could leave behind everything I’d been mixed up in. Dead, buried, and gone. Over time, maybe even forgotten.

  I stopped at a discount store and bought a pair of green pants, a green long-sleeve tee shirt, and a green baseball hat. Not exactly top-level camouflage, but enough to confer an advantage. I also picked up some face paint, the kind children use to turn themselves into cats and turtles and God knows what. I left my bag in a coin locker in Ueno Station—keeping only the Hi Power—parked Thanatos, and walked to Yanaka. I used a public restroom on the way. I’d deliberately drunk nothing that morning and I didn’t really need to go, but still I knew it was probably my last safe piss for a while.

  I was several hours early, but had to approach carefully in case they might anticipate that. I didn’t think they would—I’d never shown up early to meet McGraw, and he would have noted this laxness on my part, likely assumed he could count on it, and then briefed Mad Dog’s people accordingly. But no sense taking chances.

  I came in over the northeast wall rather than through one of the entrances. I doubted they had the manpower to post someone at every gate, but on the other hand I didn’t know what kind of influence Mad Dog might command following his father’s death. Maybe there were dozens of soldiers trying to curry favor with him.

  I made my way to the elevated plot by cutting between the grave sites, avoiding the main roads traversing the cemetery. Again, probably unnecessary, but also again no downside to being careful. There were only a few people about, mostly pensioners walking dogs
; a few devoted friends or family members laying flowers or lighting incense; mothers with toddlers in the attached children’s park. Nothing rubbed me the wrong way.

  Approaching from the north, I avoided the stone steps, instead pulling myself up the side and into the row of bushes there. I waited, watching and listening. Crows cawed; summer insects buzzed; a Yamanote train chimed in the distance. Other than that, it was as quiet as…well, you know.

  I opened the little jar of face paint and wiped diagonal streaks across my face, my fingers tracing the lines from combat memory. Then I pocketed the paint, flipped the baseball cap around backward, flattened out on the earth, and waited. It was hot and humid and the mosquitoes were a pain in the ass, and I realized I’d probably been excessive in wondering whether Mad Dog and his people would put themselves through this kind of discomfort. You’d have to be crazy. Or at least accustomed to much worse after humping a sixty-pound ruck in the Southeast Asian boonies. The sick thing was, it was comfortable for me. Yes, I was holding a pistol rather than a CAR-15, and Yanaka smelled like city rather than jungle, but overall it felt familiar, natural, like something I’d been honed for and maybe even was meant for. I felt compact and mean and deadly. And God help the team that was coming here to take me out.

  I’d been in place for two hours when I heard footfalls on the stone steps to my right. I kept perfectly still, glancing over without moving my head. A burly, thirty-something, punch-permed Japanese guy in a double-breasted suit with lapels as wide as the wings on a 747 was approaching. A nice little adrenaline flush spread through my gut. Okay, looked like they’d sent the yakuza A-team this time, not a threesome of incompetent chinpira. He walked with a swagger, I noted, and I liked that, liked the over-confidence it suggested. He didn’t even examine his surroundings. He just walked over to the south side, found a relatively sparse spot in the bushes, and pushed the branches aside. He pulled out a radio, keyed it up, and said, “I’m here. Yes, I can see you both.”