Graveyard of Memories

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I rocketed to Uguisudani on the elevated Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway, the wind buffeting my body and whipping back my hair, my eyes streaming. I tried to concentrate along the way, to not let fear and rage and my temper dictate the approach.

Think. Think. Think.

I breathed steadily in and out, getting my mind clear. Then:

It could be a setup. They could be there now.

Yes. But…

If they knew about Sayaka, why haven’t they already tried to get to you at the hotel?

I considered. Focusing on the tactical problem helped keep the fear in check.

Maybe they only just found out. And they decided that after Yanaka, trying to ambush you without insurance was a losing proposition. So they came and collected their policy, and now they’ll just demand that you surrender yourself as the payout.

It didn’t matter. I could figure all that out later. For now, I just had to get to her.

If she’s still there.

I tried to push the thought away. I couldn’t.

I parked Thanatos a quarter mile from the hotel and pulled out the Hi Power, folding a discarded page of newspaper over it for concealment.

Slowly. Slowly, goddamn it. Where would you set up if you were on the other end of this? That’s where you need to look.

I moved as carefully as I could. The streetwalkers were still out. I couldn’t know which one had given me up. I wanted to kill them all.

Outside the hotel’s privacy wall, I paused and dropped the newspaper, the Hi Power at high-ready, breathing quietly, listening. Nothing. Just the normal sounds of nocturnal Uguisudani: a few cars in the distance, a barking dog, music from a pub. I popped my head past the side of the wall and back. Nothing. I eased around and pulled up to the side of the entrance door, my heart pounding like a war drum.

One. Two. Three.

I burst inside, the Hi Power out, sweeping the room, moving, getting off the X the way I’d learned in the jungle. The reception area was deserted and morgue-silent. Sayaka was behind the desk, looking at me.

I swept the room one last time, then moved up alongside the window, the Hi Power still in hand. “Are you all right?” I said.

She looked both angry and afraid. “What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t want to explain here. We need to go. Right now.”

“Two men were here an hour ago. They said, ‘Tell your friend to get in touch. If he doesn’t, we’ll come back.’”

I was so relieved I could have cried. She was all right. They hadn’t hurt her. They hadn’t taken her. I supposed they figured, Why bother? She’s in a wheelchair, she’s not going anywhere. And she worked the night shift in a crappy love hotel — it was obvious she had no money and no means of flight. They could get to her anytime they wanted. If they wanted to motivate me, it was better to maintain the threat than it would be to fulfill it. To point the gun rather than pull the trigger.

This time. Next time, I couldn’t say.

“I’m just glad you’re okay. But we need to go.”

“You know what else they said? ‘The good news is, you won’t feel it when we dump you from that wheelchair and fuck you on the floor. The bad news is, you won’t be able to run away.’”

I thought of the chinpira in Ueno. They were trying to bait me again, get me reactive, make me lose my temper, make me lose control. I wouldn’t let them.

But that didn’t mean they weren’t going to pay.

“Sayaka, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never thought—”

“You never thought what?”

“That any of this would affect you. I thought I could keep it all separate. But they tracked me here. They want to get to me through you.”

“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.