Hard Rain

9

THAT NIGHT I took a long, wandering walk through Tokyo. I was restless and felt the need to move, to let the city’s currents carry me where they would.

I drifted north from Meguro, keeping to the backstreets, the alleys, the lonely paths through lightless parks.

Something about the damn city continued to draw me, to seduce me. I needed to leave. I wanted to be able to leave. Hell, I’d tried to leave. But here I was again.

Maybe it’s fate.

But I don’t believe in fate. Fate is bullshit.

Then what?

I came to Hikawa Jinja in Hiro, one of the scores of Shinto shrines that dot the city. At perhaps thirty square meters, this shrine is one of the smaller, but by no means the smallest, of these solemn green spaces. I walked through the old stone gate and was instantly enveloped in comforting darkness.

I closed my eyes, tilted my head forward, and inhaled through my nose. I raised my hands before me and extended my fingers like a blind man trying to determine where he has found himself.

It was there, just beyond the limits of ordinary perception. That feeling of the city being alive, coiled and layered and thrumming all around me. And the feeling that I was alive as part of it.

I opened my eyes and lifted my head. The shrine was built on a bluff, and through the trees at its periphery I could see the lights of Hiro, and of Meguro beyond it.

Tokyo is so vast, and can be so cruelly impersonal, that the succor provided by its occasional oasis is sweeter than that of any other place I’ve known. There is the quiet of shrines like Hikawa, inducing a somber sort of reflection that for me has always been the same pitch as the reverberation of a temple chime; the solace of tiny nomiya, neighborhood watering holes, with only two or perhaps four seats facing a bar less than half the length of a door, presided over by an ageless mama-san, who can be soothing or stern, depending on the needs of her customer, an arrangement that dispenses more comfort and understanding than any psychiatrist’s couch; the strangely anonymous camaraderie of yatai and tachinomi, the outdoor eating stalls that serve beer in large mugs and grilled food on skewers, stalls that sprout like wild mushrooms on dark corners and in the shadows of elevated train tracks, the laughter of their patrons diffusing into the night air like little pockets of light against the darkness without.

I moved deeper into the gloom and sat with my back to the honden, the symmetrical, tile-roofed structure that housed the god of this small shrine. I closed my eyes and exhaled, long and complete, then listened, for a while, to the stillness.

When I was a boy I’d gotten caught stealing a chocolate bar from a neighborhood store. The elderly couple that owned the place knew me, of course, and informed my parents. I was terrified of my father’s reaction, and denied everything when he questioned me. He didn’t get angry. He nodded slowly instead, and told me that the most important thing for a man was to acknowledge what he has done, that if he fails to do so he can only be a coward. Did I understand that? he had asked.

At the time, I didn’t really grasp what he meant. But his words induced a burning shame, and I confessed. He took me to the store, where I offered a tearful apology. In the presence of the owners, his visage had been stern, almost wrathful. But as we left, while I continued to weep in my disgrace, he had briefly and awkwardly pulled me to his side, then gently laid his hand on my neck while we walked.

I’ve never forgotten what he told me. I know what I’ve done, and I acknowledge all of it.

My first personal kill was of a Viet Cong near the Xe Kong River, the Laotian border. In Vietnam it was called a “personal kill” when you killed a specific individual with a direct-fire weapon and were certain of having done it yourself. I was seventeen at the time.

I was part of a three-man recon team. The teams were small, and depended for success and survival on their ability to operate undetected behind enemy lines. So only men with the ability to move with absolute stealth were selected for recon. The missions required ghosts more than they required killers.

It happened at daybreak. I remember the way I could just make out the mist rising off the wet ground as light crept into the sky. I always thought it was a beautiful country. A lot of soldiers hated it because they hated having to be there, but I didn’t feel that way.

We’d been in the field for two nights with no contact and were heading to the extract point when we saw this guy, alone, standing in a clearing. We froze and watched him from just inside the tree line. He was carrying an AK, so we knew he was VC. He was pacing, looking left, then right. He seemed to be trying to orient himself. I remember wondering whether maybe he’d gotten separated from his unit. He looked a little scared.

Our guidelines were to avoid contact, but our mandate was to collect intelligence, and we saw that he was carrying a large book. Some kind of ledger. It might be a nice prize. We looked at each other. The team leader nodded at me.

I knelt and brought up my CAR-15, finding the VC in the sights, waiting for a pause in the pacing.

A few seconds passed. I knew I had time and wanted to be sure of the shot.

He knelt and set down his rifle and the book. Then he stood, opened his pants, and pissed. Steam rose from where the hot liquid hit the earth. I kept him in my sights, thinking the whole time that he had no idea what was coming and that this was a fucked-up way to die.

I let him finish and get himself back in his pants. Then, ka-pop! I dropped him. I saw him go down. I had this feeling of incredible elation, that I’d succeeded! I’d won! I was good at this!

We went over to where he lay. When we got there, I was surprised to see he was still alive. I’d hit him in the sternum and he had a sucking chest wound. He’d fallen on his back and his legs were splayed out. The ground underneath him was already dark with his blood.

I remember being struck by how young he was. He looked my age. I remember that thought shooting through my mind-God, same as me!-as we stood in a circle around him, not knowing what to do.

He was blinking rapidly, his eyes jumping from one face to another and then back again. They stopped on mine, and I thought it was because he knew I was the one who shot him. Later, I realized the explanation was likely more prosaic. He was probably just trying to make sense of my Asian features.

Someone undid a canteen and extended it to him. But he made no move to take it. His breathing became faster and shallower. Tears spilled out of the corners of his eyes and he mumbled words in a high, strained voice that none of us could understand. I learned later that battlefield wounded and dying often call out to their mothers. He might have been doing that.

We watched him. The chest wound stopped sucking. The blinking stopped, too. His head settled into the wet ground at an odd angle, as though he was listening to something.

We stood around him silently. The initial sense of elation was gone, replaced with a weirdly intimate tenderness, and a horrified sadness so sudden and heavy that it actually made me groan.

Same as me, I thought again. He didn’t look like a bad guy. I knew that in some other universe we wouldn’t have been trying to kill each other. Maybe we would have been friends. He wouldn’t be lying dead on a jungle floor saturated with his own blood.

One of the men I was with started to cry. The other began moaning Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, over and over again. Both of them vomited.

I did not.

We took the ledger. It turned out to contain some fairly useful information about VC payments to local village heads and other attempts to buy influence. Although of course, in the end, none of that had mattered.

Someone on the Huey that picked us up afterward laughed and told me I’d popped my cherry. No one talked about how it really felt, or what had happened while we stood in a silent circle and watched the man die.

When the army was assessing my suitability for the joint Special Forces-CIA program known as SOG, the psychiatrist had displayed a keen interest in that initial killing experience. He seemed to think it was noteworthy that I hadn’t vomited. And that what he described as my “associated negative emotions” had dissipated. No bad dreams afterward, that was also considered a plus.

Later, I learned that I was categorized as belonging to a magical two percent of military men who are capable of killing repeatedly, without hesitation, without special conditioning, without regret. I don’t know if I really belonged there. It wasn’t as easy for me as it was for Crazy Jake. But that’s where they put me.

The average person is surprised at the extent to which a soldier has to deal with hesitation before the fact and regret afterward. Of course, the average person has never been required to kill a stranger at close range.

Men who have survived close-quarters killing know that humans are possessed of a deep-seated, innate reluctance to kill their own species. I believe there are evolutionary explanations for the existence of this reluctance, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the fundamental purpose of basic training for most soldiers is to employ classical and operant conditioning techniques to suppress the reluctance. I know that modern training accomplishes this objective with ruthless effectiveness. I also know that the training deals better with the reluctance than it does with the regret.

I sat for a long time, picking through memories. Eventually I started to get cold. I went back to the hotel, watching my back as always along the way. I took an excruciatingly hot bath, then slipped into one of the cotton yukata the hotel had thoughtfully provided. I pulled a chair in front of the window and sat in the dark, watching the traffic moving along Hibiya-dori, twenty floors below. I thought of Midori. I wondered what she might be doing at that very instant on the other side of the world.

When the traffic began to thin, I got in bed. Sleep came slowly. I dreamed of Rio. It felt far away.

10

THE NEXT NIGHT I ran an SDR as usual on my way to the fight. When I was confident I was clean, I caught a cab to the Tennozu monorail station. From there I walked.

It was cooler here by the water. A sidewalk was being repaired, and a cluster of temporary signs advising anzen daiichi!-Safety First!-swayed stiffly in the wind, squealing like lunatic chimes. I moved across the rust-colored bulk of the Higashi Shinagawa Bridge. Around me was a network of massive train and automobile overpasses, their concrete darkened by the accumulated years of diesel fumes, their bulk so densely woven against the dark sky that the earth beneath felt vaguely subterranean. A solitary vending machine sat slumped on a street corner, its fluorescent light guttering like a dying SOS.

I spotted the Lady Crystal Yacht Club, probably an advertising euphemism for a restaurant that happened to be located on the water, and turned left. To my right was another overpass with warehouses beneath; opposite, a small parking lot, mostly empty. Beyond that, another Stygian canal.

I found the warehouse door Murakami had described. It was flanked by a pair of concrete flowerpots choked with weeds. A metal sign to the left warned of fire danger. Rust ran down the wall from behind it like dried blood from a peeling bandage.

I looked around. Across the water were brightly lit high-rise office buildings, apartments, and hotels, the names of their owners proudly glowing in red and blue neon: JAL, JTB, the Dai-ichi Seafort. It was as though the ground around me was poisoned and incapable of supporting the growth of such structures here.

To my left was an indentation in the long line of warehouses. I stepped inside and spotted a door on the right, hidden from the street outside. There was a small peephole at eye level. I knocked and waited.

I heard a bolt being moved back, then the door opened. It was Washio. “You’re early,” he said.

I shrugged. I rarely make appointments. You don’t want to give someone the opportunity to fix you in time and place. On those infrequent occasions where I have no choice, I like to show up early to scout around. If someone’s going to throw me a party, I’ll get there before the musicians set up.

I glanced inside. I was looking at a cavernous room dotted with concrete pillars. Incandescent lights dangled from a ceiling eight meters up, their bulbs encased in wire. Cardboard boxes were stacked five meters high on all sides. Two forklifts rested against a wall, looking like toys in relation to the space around them. A couple of chinpira in black T-shirts were moving chairs to the edges of the room. Other than that we were alone.

I looked at Washio. “Is it a problem?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. People will be here soon enough.”

I stepped inside. “You work the door?”

He nodded. “I don’t know your face, you don’t get in.”

“Who’s fighting?”

“Don’t know. I just run the fights, I don’t promote them.”

I smiled at him. “You ever participate?”

He laughed. “No. I’m a little old for this shit. Maybe I would have when I was younger. But these fights have only been going on for a year, year and a half, which is long after my prime.”

I thought of the way I’d seen him talking to Murakami, as though he’d been delivering a briefing. “The people at the club,” I said, “you’re training them for these fights?”

“Some of them.”

“What about Murakami?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“What does he do?”

He shrugged. “A lot of things. Some of the guys he trains. Sometimes he fights. We get a good turnout when he’s fighting.”

“Why?”

“Murakami always finishes his fights. People like that.”

“ ‘Finishes’ them?”

“You know what I mean. When Murakami fights, for sure one of the fighters is going to die. And Murakami has never lost.”

I had no trouble believing that. “What makes him so good?” I asked.

He looked at me. “Let’s hope you never have to find out.”

“Is it true he fights dogs?”

He paused. “Where did you hear that?”

I shrugged. “Just talk.”

Another pause. Then: “I don’t know whether it’s true. I know he goes to underground dogfights. He’s a breeder. Tosas and American pit bulls. His dogs are dead game, too. He feeds them gunpowder, pumps them full of steroids. They get irritated at the world and aggressive as hell. One dog, Murakami shoved a jalapeño pepper up its ass. Fought like a demon after that.”

There was a knock at the door. Washio stood. I offered him a slight bow to acknowledge that we were done.

He reached out and took my arm. “Wait. I’ll need your cell phone first.”

I looked at his hand. “I’m not carrying one,” I said.

He eyeballed me, his expression baleful. I stared back. What I had told him was true, although if I’d been lying it would take more than a scowl to make me admit it.

His expression softened and he released my arm. “I’m not going to search you,” he said. “But no one’s allowed in here with a cell phone or pager. Too many people like to call a friend, tell ’em what they’re seeing. It’s insecure.”

I nodded. “That seems sensible.”

“If one of the bouncers sees you with one, they’ll work you over good. Just so you know.”

I nodded to show I understood, then moved off to one of the corners and watched as people began to arrive. Some I recognized from the club. Adonis was wearing sweatpants. I wondered if he was fighting.

I stood in the corner and watched the place gradually fill up. After about an hour, I saw Murakami come in, flanked by two bodyguards, a different pair than I had seen in the dojo. He exchanged a few words with Washio, who looked around and then pointed at me.

I had the sudden sense that this was more attention from Murakami than I really wanted.

I watched him nudge his two men. The three of them started moving toward me.

Adrenaline dumped into my veins. I felt the surge. I looked around casually, searching for a weapon of convenience. There was nothing handy.

They walked up and stood in front of me, three abreast, Murakami slightly in front of the other two.

“I wasn’t sure you were going to come,” he said. “Glad to see you did.”

“It’s good to be here,” I said, rubbing my palms in front of me as though in anticipation of the evening’s entertainment. In fact it was an expedient defensive stance.

“We do three fights or thirty minutes, whichever comes first. That way everyone gets his money’s worth. I’ll explain the rules.”

I didn’t understand why he was telling me this. “Who’s fighting?” I asked.

He smiled. The bridged teeth were white. Predatory.

“You are,” he said.

Oh shit.

I looked at him and said, “I don’t think so.”

The smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to waste time fucking around with you. Washio says you’re good. Says you broke a guy’s ankle inside thirty seconds. Now that guy’s friend wants payback. You’re going to fight him.”

Adonis. Should have known.

“Or…”

“Or you can fight three people that I pick. You’re so good, I’ll make sure they have police batons. The crowd will like that, too. It’s all the same to me.”

I was in a box. I picked the easiest way out.

“I’ll fight,” I told him.

His eyes crinkled with suppressed mirth. “Yes, you will.”

“Anything else I need to know?”

He shrugged. “No shirts, no shoes, no weapons. Other than that, anything goes. There’s no ring. If you get too close to the edge of the crowd, they’ll shove you back to the center. If they think you’re running from the other guy, you’ll take a few punches, too. Good news is, the winner gets two million yen.”

“What does the loser get?”

He smiled again. “We take care of the funeral expenses.”

I looked at him. “I’ll take the money.”

He laughed. “We’ll see. Now pay attention. You’re up first. That gives you fifteen minutes. These guys will stay with you to help you get ready.” He turned and walked away.

I looked up at the two goons. They kept a respectful distance, reducing my chances of making a sudden move and getting past them. Even if I could, though, there were men working the door. Several of them were watching. My chances would be better with Adonis.

I wondered about the number of fights. Multiple payouts would reduce, maybe even eliminate, the house’s take.

I pushed the thought aside and slipped off the navy blazer I was wearing, then my shirt and shoes. I looked over and saw that Adonis was doing the same.

Some vicious thing inside me stirred. I felt it in my gut, the back of my neck, my hands.

I thought of Musashi, the master swordsman, who wrote, You must think of neither victory nor of defeat, but only of cutting and killing your enemy.

I stretched and shadowboxed. I let my focus narrow. It didn’t matter where I was.

Murakami walked over. He said, “Let’s go.”

I moved to the center of the room. Adonis was waiting there.

His pupils were dilated and his hands were shaking. He looked juiced, maybe kakuseizai. Speed would give him a short-term energy boost, help him focus his attention.

I decided to give him something to focus on.

I approached him, not slowing until I was in his face. “How’s your buddy’s ankle?” I asked. “Sounded like it hurt.”

He stared at me. His respiration was rapid. Pupils, black basketballs. Definitely kakuseizai.

“Try that on me,” he said around clenched teeth.

“Oh no,” I said. “I’m not going to break your ankle. I’m going to break your knee.” I took a half-step back and pointed. “That one right there.”

The idiot actually let his glance follow my outstretched finger. I tensed to launch an uppercut to his gut, but Washio, wise to such things, had seen it coming and jumped in between us.

“You don’t start until I say start,” he growled, looking at me.

I shrugged. Can’t blame a guy for trying.

“They’ll be taking you out of here in a bag, fucker,” Adonis said. “That’s a promise.”

Washio shoved us apart. The crowd tightened like a noose.

“Are you ready?” Washio asked Adonis, who was bouncing on his toes like a hyperactive boxer.

Adonis nodded, glaring at me.

Washio turned to me. “Are you ready?”

I nodded, watching Adonis.

“Hajime!” Washio cried, and a collective shout went up around us.

Adonis immediately feinted with a kick and took a side step back. Then again. We started to move in small, migrating circles.

I saw what he was up to. For him this was effectively a hometown crowd. He would have friends in the audience. The movement of our circles would gradually take us closer to them and give them access to me.

But the presence of those friends would also engage his ego. “Doko ni ikunda?” I taunted him, moving to the center. “Koko da.” Where are you going? I’m right here.

He took a step forward, but not enough to close the distance. My earlier taunts had focused him on his knees. He was afraid I would shoot in on him the way I had on his friend, and thought that keeping his distance would prevent me.

I dropped my arms a few centimeters and kept my head and torso slightly forward. He steadied himself on his feet and I could feel him thinking Kick. His kicks were good, too. I’d seen him practicing. If I were him, I’d try to wear me down from extended range, try to keep me away with those long legs.

He planted his left foot forward and whipped in a right roundhouse kick. His foot smacked into my left thigh, then snapped back to the ground. I felt a bolt of pain and there was a shout of approval from the crowd. Adonis bounced on his toes again.

He was quick. Didn’t give me a chance to grab the leg.

I’d have to let him feel that the kicks were working for him, so he’d try to land them with a little more authority. The extra couple of milliseconds of contact would make the difference.

He snapped the kick out again. It hit my thigh like a baseball bat and shot back to the floor. The crowd shouted again. There was a roaring in my ears.

The impact hurt worse this time. A few more like that and I’d start to lose the full use of the leg. I knew he was thinking the same thing.

I shifted back a half-step and crouched, giving him more of my right side as though to protect my forward leg. I watched him in adrenalized slow-motion.

His nostrils were flaring in and out, his eyes drilling into me. He shuffled forward, his feet staying close to the floor.

In my peripheral vision I was aware of his right foot taking the ground a little more firmly. His weight began to shift to his forward left. His hips cocked for the kick.

I reined in my urge to act, forcing myself to wait the extra half-second I knew I needed.

The kick started to come off the ground and I shot forward, shortening the distance by half. He saw his error and tried to correct, but I was already too close. I jammed the kick with my left hip and swept my left arm out and around his extended right knee.

The crowd breathed, “Ahhh.”

He improvised quickly, encircling my left triceps with his right hand and thrusting his free hand at my face, the fingers forward, going for my eyes. I tightened the grip on his knee and took a drop-step forward with my left leg, levering him down toward the floor. He hopped backward on his left leg to try to recover his balance and I popped a sharp right uppercut into his exposed balls.

He grunted and tried to pull away. I took a long step forward with my right leg, ducking under his left arm and simultaneously releasing his knee. I swept behind him, clasped my hands around his waist, dropped my hips, and arched sharply backward. Adonis arced over me like the last car on a roller coaster, his arms and legs splayed at demented angles. His neck and shoulders took the impact and his legs rocketed over his head to the floor from the momentum the throw had generated.

Had I elected to release my grip around his waist, he would have done a complete somersault. I maintained the grip instead, and his feet flopped back to the floor, putting him on his back. I grabbed his face with my left hand and used it to simultaneously shove his head back and scramble from behind him. I rose up on my right knee, tensed my hips, and smashed down on his exposed throat with my right forearm, getting my weight behind the blow. I felt the crunch of systemic breakage-the thyroid and cricoid cartilage, probably the spinous process, as well. His hands flew to his throat and his body convulsed.

I stood up and stepped away from him. The crowd was now silent.

I saw his neck beginning to swell from a hematoma induced by the fractures. His legs kicked and scrabbled and he rolled from side to side. His face blued and contorted above his frantic fingers. Nobody made any move to help him. Not that they could have. After a few seconds his body started to shudder in odd spasms, as though he was being shocked. A few seconds after that, the shuddering stopped.

Someone cried out, “Yatta!” I won!, and the room reverberated with a chorus of cheers. The crowd converged on me. People slapped my back and grabbed my hands to shake them. I was uncomfortably aware that one of Adonis’s friends might use the moment to try to put a knife in me, but there was nothing I could do.

I heard Washio’s voice: “Hora, sagatte, sagatte. Ikisasete yare!” C’mon now, c’mon now, let him breathe! He and a few of the bouncers moved close to me and started to push the crowd back.

Someone handed me a towel and I wiped my face. The crowd eased away. I looked around and saw stacks of ten-thousand-yen notes changing hands.

Murakami stepped inside the circle. He was smiling.

“Yokuyatta zo,” he said. Good job.

I dropped the towel. “Where’s my money?”

He reached into his breast pocket and took out a thick envelope. He opened it so I could see that it was stuffed with ten-thousand-yen notes, then closed it and returned it to his pocket.

“It’s yours,” he said. “I’ll give it to you later.” He looked around. “Some of these people, they might try to rob you for it.”

“Give it to me now,” I said.

“Later.”

Fuck the money, I thought. I was glad just to be alive.

I started moving toward where I had left my jacket, shirt, and shoes. The crowd parted respectfully before me. A few random hands slapped my shoulders.

Murakami followed. “The money is yours. I want one more thing before I give it to you.”

“Fuck you.” I pulled on my shirt and started buttoning it.

He laughed. “Okay, okay.” He took out the envelope and tossed it to me.

I caught it two-handed and glanced inside. It looked about right. I shoved it in a pants pocket and continued buttoning my shirt.

“The extra thing I wanted,” he said, “was to tell you how you can make ten, twenty times what’s in that envelope.”

I looked at him.

“You interested?”

“I’m listening.”

He shook his head. “Not here. Let’s go somewhere where we can celebrate.” He smiled. “My treat.”

I stepped into my shoes and knelt to lace them. “What did you have in mind?”

“A little place I own. You’ll enjoy it.”

I considered. A “celebration” with Murakami would afford me the opportunity to collect additional intel for Tatsu. I didn’t see any real downside.

“All right,” I said.

Murakami smiled.

I saw two guys zipping Adonis into a body bag. Christ, I thought, they really come prepared. They loaded him onto a gurney and wheeled him toward the door. On the underside of the gurney was a stack of metal plates. One of the guys was carrying a length of chain, and I realized they were going to weight the body and dump it in one of the surrounding canals.

The next fight went for a long time. The fighters were conservative and seemed to have implicitly agreed not to employ potentially lethal or disfiguring techniques. After about ten minutes, Murakami said to me, “This isn’t worth watching. Let’s go.”

He motioned to his bodyguards, and the four of us walked outside. Washio saw us leaving and bowed.

A black Mercedes S600 with darkened windows was parked at the curb. One of the guards opened the rear door for us. A dog was curled up on the backseat. A white pit bull, its ears clipped short, its body roped with thick muscle. It had been fitted with a heavy leather muzzle, beyond the edges of which were fissures and scars that told me I was looking at one of Murakami’s fighting animals. The beast looked at me as though sighting down the barrel of its own muzzled snout, and I thought I saw the canine equivalent of insanity in its slightly bloodshot eyes. Well, they say dogs come to resemble their masters.

Murakami motioned for me to get in. “Don’t worry,” he said. “He’s okay as long as he’s muzzled.”

“Why don’t you go first, just the same,” I said.

He laughed and slid in. The dog moved to make way for him. I got in and the guard closed the door. He and the other guy took the front. We rode north on Kaigan-dori, to Sakura-dori, and then to Gaienhigashi-dori in Roppongi. No one spoke. The dog eyeballed me ceaselessly during the ride.

When we crossed Roppongi-dori I started to wonder. As we neared Aoyama-dori I knew.

We were going to Damask Rose.

11

ANY LINGERING ATTEMPTS to rationalize that Harry had just gotten lucky with a hostess disappeared. The air-conditioned interior of the Benz felt suddenly warm.

But I had a more immediate problem than Harry. The last time I’d been to Damask Rose, I’d been using English, posing as an American citizen who spoke secondhand Japanese. I’d also been using a different name. I needed to decide how to handle this.

As the Benz pulled up to the club, I said, “Ah, good place.”

“You’ve been here?” Murakami asked.

“Just once. The girls are beautiful.”

His lips parted in a smile and the overly white bridge appeared between them. “They should be. I select them.”

The driver opened the passenger-side door and we got out. The dog stayed, watching me with its hungry, demon eyes until the driver had closed the door and the dark glass separated us.

The Nigerians were gauntleting the entranceway. They bowed obsequiously low for Murakami and breathed “Irasshaimase” in unison. The one on the right spoke into his lapel mike.

We walked down the steps. The ruddy-faced man I had seen there last time looked up. He saw Murakami and swallowed.

“Ah, Murakami-san, good evening,” he said in Japanese with a low bow. “It is always a pleasure to have you here. Is there anyone special you would like to see tonight?”

A thin band of sweat had broken out on his brow. His full attention was on Murakami and he had taken no notice of me.

Murakami looked around the room. Several of the girls smiled at him. I gathered that they were already acquainted. “Yukiko,” he said.

Harry, I thought.

Mr. Ruddy nodded and turned to me. “Okyakusama?” he asked. And you? That he used Japanese indicated that he hadn’t remembered me from the last time, when our exchange had been in English.

“Is Naomi here tonight?” I asked, also in Japanese. If she were here, I wanted to see her right away, when I would have a marginally better chance of taking control of the conversation. If things went badly, at least it wouldn’t look as though I’d been trying to avoid her.

Mr. Ruddy’s eyes might have narrowed slightly in recollection of someone who had asked for Naomi some weeks earlier. I wasn’t sure.

He bowed his head. “I will bring her to you.”

I had already decided on a cover story, should Naomi comment on my name change or other inconsistencies: I was married, and didn’t want to take any chances on this sort of nocturnal foray getting back to my wife. My use of cash rather than credit cards would be consistent with such a story. Not the world’s best explanation, but I had to have something to say if she noticed the disparities.

Mr. Ruddy took two menus and escorted us into the main room, pausing first to whisper to a girl I recognized as Elsa from the last time I’d been there. I saw Elsa touch another girl, Emi, on the arm.

He walked us over to a corner table. Murakami and I took adjacent seats, both facing the entrance. I watched Emi walk over to another table, where Yukiko was entertaining another customer. Emi sat and spoke into Yukiko’s ear. A moment later Yukiko stood and excused herself. Elsa was repeating the scene at the table Naomi was working. Very smooth.

Yukiko walked over, and I saw her mouth stretch into a feline grin at the sight of Murakami. Naomi followed a moment later. She was wearing another elegant black cocktail dress, this one of silk, fitted at the waist but loose above it. The diamond bracelet glittered on her left wrist as before.

She saw me, and her expression started to break into a smile that aborted itself when her eyes shifted from my face to Murakami’s. She must have known him, and, based on the story I had told her, obviously didn’t expect to see us together. She was trying to process the incongruity, certainly. But the suddenness of her change of expression told me there was more. She was scared.

Yukiko sat next to Murakami and across from me. She looked at me for a long moment, then briefly at Murakami, then back at me. Her lips moved in the barest hint of a cool smile. Murakami stared at her as though waiting for more, but she ignored him. I felt a tension building and thought, Don’t play with this guy. He could go off. Then she turned her eyes to him again and permitted him a smile that said, I was only teasing you, darling. Don’t be such a child.

The tension dropped away. I thought that if anyone had a measure of control over the creature sitting next to me, it was probably this woman.

Naomi took the remaining seat. “Hisashiburi desu ne,” I said to her. It’s been a while.

“Un, so desu ne,” she replied, her expression now neutral. Yes, it has. She might have thought it odd that I was now using Japanese when the other night I had insisted on English. But perhaps I was only deferring to our other companions.

“You know each other,” Murakami interjected in Japanese. “Good. Arai-san, this is Yukiko.”

Naomi gave no indication of having noticed that I had a new name.

“Hajimemashite,” Yukiko said. She continued in Japanese, “I remember seeing you here a few weeks ago.”

I bowed my head slightly and returned her salutation. “And I remember you. You’re a wonderful dancer.”

She cocked her head to the side. “You look different, somehow.”

My American and Japanese personalities are distinct, and I carry myself differently depending on which language I’m using and which mode I’m in. Probably it was this, as much as his nervousness in Murakami’s presence, that had caused Mr. Ruddy not to remember me. Yukiko was responding to the difference but unsure of what to make of it.

I ran my fingers through my hair as though to straighten it. “I just came from a workout,” I said.

Murakami chuckled. “You sure did.”

A waitress came over. She set down four oshibori, hot washcloths with which we would wipe our hands and perhaps our faces to refresh ourselves, and a variety of small snacks. The arrangement completed, she looked at Murakami and, apparently knowing his preferences, asked, “Bombay Sapphire?” He nodded curtly and indicated that Yukiko would have the same.

The waitress looked at me. “Okyakusama?” she asked.

I turned to Naomi. “The Springbank?” I asked. She nodded and I ordered two.

The vibrant half-Latina that had emerged the other night had retracted like a turtle into its shell. What would she be thinking? New name, new Japanese persona, new yakuza pal. All fodder for conversation, but she was saying nothing.

Why? If I’d run into her in the street, the first thing she would have said would have been, “What are you doing back in Tokyo?” If I had used a different name, surely she would have commented on that. And if she heard me speaking in unaccented, native Japanese, of course she would have said, “I thought you said you were more comfortable with English?”

So her reticence was situation-specific. I thought of the fear I had detected when her eyes had first alighted on Murakami. It was him. She was afraid of saying or doing something that would draw his attention.

The last time I had seen her, I had the sense that she knew more than she was willing to say. Her reaction to Murakami confirmed that suspicion. And if she were inclined to give me away, she already would have done it. That she had failed to do so made her complicit, created a shared secret. Something I could exploit.

Yukiko picked up an oshibori and used it to wipe Murakami’s hands, cool as an animal handler grooming a lion. Naomi handed me mine.

“Arai-san is a friend of mine,” Murakami said, looking at me and then at the girls and smiling his bridged smile. “Please be good to him.”

Yukiko smiled deeply into my eyes as if to say If we were alone, I would take suuuch good care of you. In my peripheral vision I saw Murakami catch the look and frown.

I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of this bastard’s jealousy, I thought, imagining Harry.

The waitress came and put the drinks on the table. Murakami drained his in a single draught. Yukiko followed suit.

“Ii yo,” Murakami growled. Good. Yukiko set her glass down with practiced delicacy. Murakami looked at her. She returned the look, something almost theatrically nonchalant in her expression. The look went on for a long moment. Then he grinned and grabbed her hand.

“Okawari,” he called to the waitress. Two more drinks. He pulled Yukiko to her feet and away from the table. I watched him lead her to a room to the side of one of the dance stages.

“What was that?” I asked Naomi in Japanese.

She was looking at me. Warily, I thought.

“A lap dance,” she said.

“They seem to know each other well.”

“Yes.”

I looked around. The adjacent tables were filled with parties of Japanese men in standard sarariman attire. Even with the ambient noise, they were too close to permit a private conversation.

I leaned closer to Naomi. “I didn’t expect to be back here,” I said softly.

She winced. “I’m glad you came.”

I didn’t know what to make of the inconsistency between her reaction and her words. “You must have a lot of questions,” I said.

She shook her head. “I just want to make sure you enjoy yourself tonight.”

“I think I know why you’re acting this way,” I started to say.

She cut me off with a suddenly raised hand. “How about that lap dance?” she asked. Her tone was inviting, but her eyes were somewhere between serious and angry.

I looked at her, trying to gauge what she was up to, then said, “Sure.”

We walked to the same room that Murakami and Yukiko had gone to a few minutes earlier. Another Nigerian was waiting just inside the entrance. He bowed and pulled aside a high-backed, semicircular sofa. A matching unit was positioned on the other side of it. We stepped inside and the Nigerian pushed the front half closed behind us. We were now enclosed in a circular, upholstered compartment.

Naomi gestured to the cushioned sofa seat. I lowered myself onto it, watching her face.

She stepped back, her eyes on mine. Her hands went to her back and I heard the sound of a zipper. Then her right hand moved to the left strap of her dress and began to ease it over the smooth skin of her shoulder.

There was a sudden buzz in my pocket.

Son of a bitch. Harry’s bug detector.

Continuous, intermittent, continuous. Meaning both audio and video.

I was careful not to look around or do anything else that might have seemed suspicious. I opened my mouth to say something to her, something any other excited beneficiary of an incipient lap dance might utter. But she made a face-half scowl, half exasperation-that stopped me. She raised a subtle index finger from the strap of her dress to the ceiling. Then she cocked her head slightly and shifted her finger to her ear.

I got the message. People were listening, and watching.

Not just here. At the table, too. That’s why her responses had been so odd. She couldn’t warn me there.

And why she had looked angry tonight, I realized. Was I just the American accountant I had claimed to be, or at least a neutral party? If so, silence would be her safest course. Was I involved with Murakami, who frightened her? If so, silence, and certainly a warning like the one she had just given me, would be dangerous. I had inadvertently forced her to choose.

But the detector hadn’t buzzed at the table. Then I realized: Murakami. If the tables were monitored, they knew to turn off the equipment when the boss was around. Those would be the rules, and I imagined that no one would want a guy like Murakami finding out that they weren’t being adhered to. And the last time I’d been here, the device hadn’t been charged yet. That’s why it hadn’t warned me then.

I reached into my pocket to switch off the unit, nodding to indicate I understood.

She finished moving the strap away and slipped her arm through it, then slowly performed the identical action on the opposite side. She crossed her arms. Her nostrils were flaring slightly with her breathing. She paused for a moment. Then, still scowling, her body rigid, she moved her arms to her sides. The dress slid down, past her breasts, past her belly, gathering in black ripples at her waist.

“You can touch with your hands,” she said. “Only above the waist.”

I stood, keeping my eyes on hers. I leaned forward and put my mouth to her ear. “Thanks for the warning,” I whispered.

“Don’t thank me,” she whispered back. “It’s not as though you left me any choice.”

“I’m not with these people.”

“No? You were fighting tonight, weren’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Your face is scratched. And I understood Murakami’s joke about your ‘workout.” ’

Adonis must have dented me a little. I hadn’t even noticed.

“You know about those fights?” I asked.

“Everyone knows about them. The fighters come in here afterward and brag. Sometimes they act like we’re deaf.”

“I wasn’t there voluntarily. I work out at a dojo, some people invited me to a fight. I didn’t know what it was all about. Turned out I wasn’t there to eat. I was supposed to be the main course.”

“Too bad for you,” she whispered.

“If you think I’m with these people,” I said, “why are you talking to me now? Why did you warn me about the listening devices?”

“Because I’m as stupid as you are.” She took a step back and looked at me, her hands on her hips, her chin high. She raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Are you afraid to touch me?”

I watched her face. What I wanted was information, not a damn lap dance.

“You’re afraid even to look?” she asked, her smile taunting.

I held her eyes for another moment, then let my gaze go south.

“You like what you see?” she asked.

“It’s okay,” I said after a moment, although in fact it was much better than that.

She turned around and pushed back against me, leaning forward slightly as she did so, molding the back of her body to the front of mine.

I realized suddenly that this was a game I could only lose.

She put her hands on her knees and moved her hips from side to side. The friction from her ass assumed a prominent place in my consciousness.

“You like that?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I said again, my voice lower this time, and she laughed.

“It feels like you like it better than ‘okay,’ no?”

“I want to talk to you,” I said. I noticed I had put my hands on her hips. I removed them.

“So talk,” she said, pressing into me harder. “Say anything you like.”

She was trying to divert me. She didn’t want to talk and I didn’t know how to make her.

She arched her back and pushed her ass higher. A shadow formed like a dark pool in the cleft of her lower spine.

“Anything you like,” she said again.

The shadow waxed and waned in time to her movements.

“Cut it out, damn it,” I whispered. My hands were on her hips again.

“But you like it,” she cooed. “I like it, too.”

Disengage, I thought. But my hands stayed put. They were moving now. I watched them as though from afar. The sound of fabric against flesh was loud in the enclosure.

She’s playing you, I thought.

Then: The hell with it. You’re supposed to be acting like an ordinary customer, anyway.

I dropped to one knee, sliding my hands down to the backs of her thighs as I did so, then stood again, my hands sweeping the dress upward en route. She was wearing a black thong. The dress dangled slightly above it, gathered at her lower back. I gripped the dress in one hand like a bridle and took hold of her ass with the other.

“Only above the waist,” she said, smiling over her shoulder, her cool voice in counterpoint to the heat in my head and gut. “Or I have to call the doorman.”

I felt a surge of anger. Let it go, I thought. Just get out of here. Like you should have before this bullshit began.

I removed my hand from her ass and took a step back, but my anger got the better of me. Still gripping the dress with one hand, I swiveled my hips in and delivered a hard spank to her exposed right cheek. There was a loud slap! and she yelped, jerking away from me as though from an electric shock.

She spun and faced me, one hand on her wounded posterior. Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flared with shock and anger. In my peripheral vision I saw her weight shift to her back leg, and thought she was going to try for a ball shot with her forward foot.

Instead, she stepped back. Her arms slipped to her sides and she drew up her shoulders and chin, the picture of suppressed regal rage. She looked at me.

“Mo owari, okyakusama?” she asked, as contemptuously as she could. Are we finished, honorable customer?

“Was that against the rules?” I asked, smiling into her eyes.

She pulled up the dress and slipped her arms through the straps. Her face was still red with anger, and I couldn’t help admiring her composure in controlling it. She managed the zipper without assistance, then said, “That was three songs, so thirty thousand yen. And you should tip the doorman ten percent. Ken?”

Ken must have been the Nigerian, because a second later the semicircular sofa was pulled aside and there he was. I took out my billfold and paid each of them.

“Thank you,” I said to Naomi. I beamed like a well-satisfied customer. “That was… special.”

She smiled back in a way that made me glad she didn’t have a weapon. “Kochira koso,” she replied. The pleasure was mine.

She escorted me back to my seat. I switched the unit back on en route. Murakami and Yukiko were waiting for us.

“Yokatta ka?” Murakami asked me, showing me the false teeth. Good?

“Maa na,” I told him. Good enough.

He took Yukiko’s hand and started moving away. “We’ll discuss our business another time,” he said.

“When?”

“Soon. I’ll find you at the dojo.”

He didn’t like to make appointments any more than I did. “Morning? Evening?” I asked.

“Morning. Soon.” He turned to Naomi. “Naomi, shikkari mendo mite yare yo.” Take good care of him, Naomi. Naomi bowed her head to show that she most certainly would.

Murakami and Yukiko left. A minute later the detector started buzzing-continuous, so audio only. I’d been right about the house rules.

Naomi and I made small talk for a few minutes for the benefit of the microphones. Her tone was cool and correct. I knew our little encounter hadn’t turned out quite the way she had planned, but she had managed to distract me from my questions, which was what she had really been after. Probably she was telling herself that the fight had been a draw, that she could settle for that.

What she didn’t know was that it had only been round one.

I told her I was bushed and had to go. “Come back anytime,” she said with a sarcastic smile.

“For another one of those lap dances?” I asked, returning the smile. “Absolutely.”

I walked up the stairs and out onto Gaienhigashi-dori. When I got to the street a horn tooted. I saw Yukiko driving by in a white BMW M3, Murakami in the passenger seat. She waved, then disappeared onto Aoyama-dori.

It was just past one in the morning. The club closed at three. Naomi would be heading home at some point thereafter.

I’d done the computer check. I knew where home was. The Lion’s Gate Building, Azabu Juban 3-chome.

The trains had already stopped running. I doubted that she’d have a car: keeping one in the city is too expensive and the trains go everywhere, anyway. Getting home would mean a taxi.

I took a cab to Azabu Juban subway station, then walked around 3-chome until I found her building. Standard upscale apartment manshon, tan ferroconcrete, new and spiffy-looking. Straightforward front entrance with double glass doors, electronically controlled. Security camera mounted on the ceiling just inside the glass.

The building was on the corner of a one-way street. I moved to the back, where I found a secondary entrance-smaller, more discreet than the first, something that only residents would use. This one had no camera.

The second access point complicated things. If I waited at the wrong entrance, I would miss her entirely.

I considered. All these streets were one-way, one of Azabu Juban’s trademarks. If she were coming from Damask Rose, the cab would have to pass the second entrance first. Most likely she would get out there. Even if the cab continued around to the front, though, I’d have time to dash around behind it and get to her before she went inside.

Okay. I looked around for the right place. Ordinarily, when I’m setting someone up, I try for maximum concealment and surprise. But that’s prior to a fatal encounter. Here, I was hoping just to talk. If I scared her too much, made her feel too vulnerable, she would just run inside and that would be the end of it.

There was a perpendicular side street that led to where I was standing, dead-ending just to the side of the second entrance to her building. I walked down it. I noticed an awning on the side of the building to my left, under the shadow of which were stacked several large plastic garbage bins. I could wait in those shadows quietly, and even someone walking right past me would be unlikely to notice.

I checked my watch. Almost two. I killed time walking around the neighborhood. I passed no more than a half-dozen people. By three the area would be almost completely deserted.

I thought about what I’d seen at the club earlier. I knew from Tatsu that Yamaoto relied in part on blackmail and extortion to run his network of compliant politicians. Tatsu had told me that the disk Midori’s father had taken from Yamaoto contained, among other things, video of politicians in compromising positions. Tatsu had also told me that Yamaoto and Murakami were connected. So it seemed likely that Damask Rose was one of the places at which Yamaoto went about capturing politicians in the midst of embarrassing acts.

Meaning that someone in Yamaoto’s network now had my face on film. That would have been bad under any circumstances. But Murakami’s new interest made things worse. I judged it probable that Murakami might show the video to someone as part of a further background check. He might even show it to Yamaoto, who knew my face. And I’d used the weightlifter’s name as an introduction to Murakami’s dojo. If they figured out who they were actually dealing with, they’d also figure out that the weightlifter’s “accident” had been anything but.

I tried to put together the rest of it. Yukiko, meaning someone higher up at Damask Rose, meaning perhaps Yamaoto, was trying to get hooks into Harry. If they were interested in Harry, it would only be because Harry might lead them to me.

What about the Agency? They’d been following Harry. According to Kanezaki, as a conduit to me. The question was, were Yamaoto and the CIA working together in some capacity, or was their interest merely convergent? If the former, what was the nature of the connection? If the latter, what was the nature of the interest?

Naomi might be able to help me answer these questions, if I played it right. I needed to resolve things quickly, too. Even if Harry’s relevance to these people was only as a means of getting close to me, he could still be in danger. And if Murakami figured out that Arai Katsuhiko was really John Rain, both Harry and I were going to have a significant problem on our hands.

At just before three, it started raining. I walked quickly back to her apartment and took up my position in the shadows near her building. I was out of the rain under the awning, but it was getting chilly. My leg ached from where Adonis had kicked me. I stretched to stay limber.

At 3:20, a cab turned onto the street. I watched it from the shadows until it passed me. There, in back, Naomi.

The cab turned left and stopped just beyond the secondary entrance to the building. The automatic passenger door opened a crack and the dome light went on. I saw Naomi hand some bills to the driver, who returned change. The door swung wide and she stepped out. She was wearing a black, thigh-length coat, light wool or cashmere, and she pulled it close around her. The door shut and the cab sped away.

She opened the umbrella and started toward the entrance. I stepped from under the awning. “Naomi,” I said quietly.

She spun around and I heard her inhale sharply. “What the hell?” she exclaimed in her Portuguese-accented English.

I raised my hands, palms forward. “I just want to talk to you.”

She looked over her shoulder for a moment, perhaps gauging the distance to her door, then turned back to me, apparently reassured. “I don’t want to talk to you.” She emphasized the first and last words of the sentence, her accent thickening somewhat in her agitation.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m just asking, that’s all.”

She looked around again. She had good danger instincts. Most people, perceiving a threat, give it their full focus. That makes them easy prey if the “threat” was just a feint and the real ambush comes from the flank.

“How do you know where I live?” she asked.

“I looked it up on the Internet.”

“Really? You think with this kind of job I’d just list my address?”

I shrugged. “You gave me your e-mail address. With a little information to start with, you’d be surprised what you can find out.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you a stalker?”

I shook my head. “No.”

It was starting to rain harder. I realized that, some physical discomfort aside, the weather hadn’t been such bad luck. She was dry and poised under her umbrella; I was wet and almost shivering. The contrast would help her feel more in control.

“Am I in trouble?” she asked.

That surprised me. “What kind of trouble?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not involved with anything, I’m just a dancer, okay?”

I didn’t know where she was going, but I didn’t want to stop her. “You’re not involved?” I parroted.

“I’m not involved! And I don’t want to be. I mind my own business.”

“You’re not in trouble, at least not with me. I really just want to talk with you.”

“Give me one good reason why.”

“Because you trust me.”

Her expression was caught between amused and incredulous. “I trust you?”

I nodded. “You warned me about the listening devices in the club.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Jesus Christ, I knew I was going to regret that.”

“But you knew you would regret it more if you had said nothing.”

She was shaking her head slowly, deliberately. I knew what she was thinking: I do this guy a favor, now I can’t get rid of him. And he’s trouble, trouble I don’t want.

I pushed dripping hair back from my forehead. “Can we go someplace?”

She looked left, then right. The street was empty.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s get a taxi. I know a place that’s open late. We can talk there.”

We found a cab. I got in first and she slid in behind me. She told the driver to take us to 3-3-5 Shibuya-ku, south side of Roppongi-dori. I smiled.

“Tantra?” I asked.

She looked at me, perhaps a little nonplussed. “You know it?”

“It’s been around for a long time. Good place.”

“I didn’t think you’d know it. You’re a little… older.”

I laughed. If she’d been trying to get a rise out of me, she had missed the mark. I’m never going to be sensitive about my age. Most of the people I knew when I was younger are already dead. That I’m still breathing is actually a point of pride.

“Tantra is like sex,” I told her, smiling a little indulgently. “Every generation thinks it’s the one that discovered it.”

She looked away and we drove in silence. I would have preferred to have the cab take us someplace within walking distance rather than to the actual address, per my usual practice. Given the overall circumstances of the evening, though, I judged the likelihood of a problem stemming from Naomi’s lack of security consciousness to be manageably low.

A few minutes later we pulled up in front of a nondescript office building. I paid the driver and we got out. The rain had stopped but the street was empty, almost forlorn. If I hadn’t known where we were, I would have thought it an odd place to get out of a cab in the middle of the night.

Behind us, a dimly lit “T” glowed softly above a basement stairwell, the only external sign of Tantra’s existence. We moved down the steps, through a pair of imposing metal doors, and into a candlelit foyer that led like a short tunnel to the seating area beyond.

A waiter appeared and asked us in a hushed tone whether it would be just the two of us. Naomi told him it would, and he escorted us inside.

The walls were brown cement, the ceiling black. There were a few spotlights, but most of the illumination came from candles on tables and in the corners of the lacquered cement floor. In alcoves here and there were statues depicting scenes from the Kama Sutra. Around us were a half-dozen small groups of people, all sitting on floor cushions or low chairs. The room hummed with murmured conversation and quiet laughter. Some sort of light, Arabic-sounding techno music issued softly from invisible speakers.

There were two additional rooms at the back, I knew, both partially concealed by heavy purple curtains. I asked the waiter whether either was available and he gestured to the one on the right. I looked at Naomi and she nodded.

We moved past the curtains into a room that was more like a small cave or opium den. The ceiling was low and candles played flickering shadows on the walls. We sat on the floor cushions in the corner, at ninety degrees to each other. The waiter handed us a menu and departed without a word.

“You hungry?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Me, too.” I rubbed my wet shoulders. “And cold.”

The waiter returned. We ordered hot tea, their signature Ayu chips, and spring rolls. Naomi chose a twelve-year-old Highland Park and I followed suit.

“How do you know about this place really?” Naomi asked when the waiter had departed.

“I told you, it’s been around forever. Ten years, maybe more.”

“So you live in Tokyo.”

I paused. Then: “I did. Until recently.”

“What brings you back?”

“I have a friend. He’s in some kind of trouble with people from your club and doesn’t even know it.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Why did you tell me that bullshit about being an accountant?”

I shrugged. “I was looking for information. I didn’t see the need to tell you very much.”

We were quiet for a few minutes. The waiter came by with the food and drinks. I went for the tea first. It warmed me considerably. The Highland Park was even better.

“I needed that,” I said, leaning back against the wall, heat radiating from my gut.

She picked up a spring roll. “Have you really been to Brazil?” she asked.

“Yes.” It was a lie, but perhaps the moral equivalent of the truth. I couldn’t very well tell her that I was learning all I could about the country in preparation for a first and permanent trip there.

She took a bite of the spring roll and chewed it, her head cocked slightly to the side as though in consideration of something. “Tonight, when I saw who you were with, I was thinking that maybe you learned a few lines of Portuguese just to get me to open up. That I was in some kind of trouble.”

“No.”

“So you weren’t trying to meet me in particular.”

“You were dancing when I came in that night, so I asked about you. It was just a coincidence.”

“If you’re not an American accountant, who are you?”

“I’m someone who… performs services for people from time to time. Those services put me in touch with a lot of different players in the society. Cops and yakuza. Politicians. Sometimes people on the fringe.”

“You have that on your business card?”

I smiled. “I tried it. The print was too small to read.”

“You’re what, a private detective?”

“In a way.”

She looked at me. “Who are you working for now?”

“I told you, right now I’m just trying to help a friend.”

“Forgive me, but that sounds like bullshit.”

I nodded. “I can see where it would.”

“You looked pretty comfortable with Murakami tonight.”

“Did that bother you?”

“He scares me.”

“He should.”

She picked up her Highland Park and leaned back against the wall. “I’ve heard some bad stories about him.”

“They’re probably true.”

“Everyone’s afraid of him. Except for Yukiko.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know. She has some kind of power over him. No one else does.”

“You don’t like her.”

She glanced at me, then away. “She can be as scary as he is.”

“You said she’s comfortable doing things that you’re not.”

“Yes.”

“Something to do with those listening devices?”

She upended her drink and finished it. Then she said, “I don’t know for certain that there are listening devices, but I think there are. We get a lot of prominent customers-politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen. The people who own the club encourage the girls to talk to them, to elicit information. All the girls think the conversations are taped. And there are rumors that certain customers even get videotaped in the lap dance rooms.”

I was gaining her confidence. And the way she was talking now, I knew I could get more. A gambler will agonize for hours over whether to put his chips on, say, the red or the black, and then, when the croupier spins the wheel, he’ll double or even triple the bet, as a way of bolstering his conviction that he must have been betting right. If he were betting wrong, why would he be putting all that extra money down?

I pointed to her glass. “Another?”

She hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

I finished mine and ordered two more. The walls flickered in the candlelight. The room felt close and warm, like an underground sanctuary.

The waiter brought the drinks. After he had moved silently away, I looked at her and said, “You’re not involved in any of this?”

She looked into her glass. Several seconds went by.

“You want an honest answer, or a really honest answer?” she asked.

“Give me both.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “The honest answer is, no.”

She took a sip of the Highland Park. Closed her eyes.

“The really honest answer is… is…”

“Is, ‘not yet,” ’ I said quietly.

Her eyes opened and she looked at me. “How do you know?”

I watched her for a moment, feeling her distress, seeing an opportunity.

“You’re being suborned,” I said. “It’s a process, a series of techniques. If you even half-realize it, you’re smarter than most. You’ve also got a chance to do something about it, if you want to.”

“What do you mean?”

I sipped from my glass, watching the amber liquid glowing in the candlelight, remembering. “You start slow. You find the subject’s limits and get him to spend some time there. He gets used to it. Before long, the limits have moved. You never take him more than a centimeter beyond. You make it feel like it’s his choice.”

I looked at her. “You told me when you first got to the club you were so shy you could hardly move on the stage.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“At that point you would never have done a lap dance.”

“No.”

“But now you can.”

“Yes.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

“When you did your first lap dance, you probably said you would never let a customer touch you.”

“I did say that,” she said. Her voice had gone lower.

“Of course you did. I could go on. I could tell you where you’ll be three months from now, six months, a year. Twenty years, if you keep going where you’re going. Naomi, you think this is all an accident? It’s a science. There are people out there who are experts at getting others to do tomorrow what was unthinkable today.”

But for her breath, moving rapidly in and out through her nostrils, she was silent, and I wondered if she was fighting tears.

I needed to push it just a little further before backing off. “You want to know what’s next for you?” I asked.

She looked at me but said nothing.

“You know that Damask Rose girls are being used to blackmail politicians, or something like that. The other girls whisper about it, but that’s not all. You’ve been approached, right? It was an oblique approach, but it was there. Something like, ‘There’s a special customer who we think would like you. We’d like you to go out with him and show him a really good time. If he’s satisfied afterward, we’ll pay you X.’ Maybe they had a suite at a hotel where they wanted you to take him. They’d bug him there, videotape him. You refused, I guess. But there was no pressure. Why would there be? They know you’ll get worn down just from the exposure.”

“You’re wrong!” she said suddenly, jabbing a finger in my face.

I looked at her. “If I were wrong, you wouldn’t react that way.”

She watched me, her eyes hurt and angry, her lips twisting together as though trying to find words.

That was enough. Time to see if my words had the desired effect.

“Hey,” I said softly, but she didn’t look up. “Hey.” I put my hand over hers. “I’m sorry.” I squeezed her fingers briefly, then withdrew my hand.

She raised her head and looked at me. “You think I’m a prostitute. Or that I’m going to become one.”

“I don’t think that,” I said, shaking my head.

“How do you know all this?”

Time for an honest, but safely vague, response. “A long time ago, and in a different context, I went through what you’re in the middle of.”

“What do you mean?”

For a moment I pictured Crazy Jake. I shook my head to show her it wasn’t something I was willing to talk about.

We were quiet for a few moments. Then she said, “You were right. I wouldn’t have reacted so sharply if what you were saying were untrue. These are things I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I haven’t been as honest with myself as you just were.” She reached out and took my hand. She squeezed it hard. “Thank you.”

I felt an odd confluence of emotions: satisfaction that my manipulation was working; sympathy because of what she was struggling with; self-reproach for taking advantage of her naïveté.

And beneath it all I was still attracted to her. I was uncomfortably aware of the touch of her hand.

“Don’t thank me,” I said, not looking at her. I didn’t squeeze back. After a moment she withdrew her hand.

“Are you really just trying to help a friend?” I heard her ask.

“Yes.”

“I would help you if I could. But I don’t know any more than what I’ve already told you.”

I nodded, thinking of the Agency and Yamaoto, wondering about the connection. “Let me ask you something,” I said. “How many Caucasians do you see at the club?”

She shrugged. “A fair number. Maybe ten, twenty percent of the customers. Why?”

“Have you ever seen Murakami spending time with them?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“How about Yukiko?”

“Not really. Her English is pretty bad.”

Inconclusive. She didn’t know anything. I was starting to doubt that she’d be of much help after all.

I looked at my watch. It was almost five. The sun would be coming up soon.

“We should get going,” I said.

She nodded. I paid the bill and we left.

Outside it was damp but not raining. The lamplights on Roppongi-dori created glowing cones of slowly swirling mist. It was as late as it could get without getting early, and the street was momentarily silent.

“Walk me home?” she asked, looking at me.

I nodded. “Sure.”

Halfway through the twenty-minute walk it started raining again.

“Droga!” she swore in Portuguese. “I left the umbrella at Tantra.”

“Shoganai,” I said, turning up the collar of my blazer. What can you do.

We walked faster. It started to rain harder. I brushed my fingers through my hair and felt rivulets trickling down the back of my neck.

With about a half-kilometer to go, a huge crack of thunder rang out and it really started pouring.

“Que merda!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “We’re doomed!”

We ran for it, but to no real avail. We got to her apartment and ducked under the overhang in front of the rear entranceway. “Meu deus,” she said, laughing, “I haven’t gotten drenched like that in forever!” She unbuttoned her dripping coat, then looked at me and smiled. “Once you’re already wet, it’s actually kind of nice.”

Wisps of vapor were rising off her damp dress. “You’re steaming,” I observed.

She glanced down, then back at me. She pushed a few strands of clinging hair back from her face. “That run made me warm,” she said.

I wiped water from my face and thought, Time to go.

But I remained.

“Thanks for an interesting evening,” she said, after a pause. “You’re not a bad guy, for a stalker.”

I gave her a half-smile. “That’s what people tell me.”

There was an odd moment of quiet. Then she stepped in close and hugged me, her face against my shoulder.

I was surprised. My arms moved reflexively around her.

Just a little comfort, I thought. You were rough on her before. Let her go feeling good.

I was distantly aware that this sounded like a rationalization. It troubled me vaguely. Ordinarily I get along well without.

I could feel her soft shape, the heat of her, conducted with electric clarity through the wet of our clothes.

I felt my body responding. I knew she felt it, too. Ah, shit.

She lifted her head from my shoulder. Her mouth was very close to my ear. I heard her say, “Come inside.”

The last person I’d gotten involved with when I should have treated her only as an asset was Midori. I was still paying the price on that one.

Don’t be stupid again, I thought. Don’t get too close. Don’t blur the line.

But the thoughts were disconnected. No one seemed to be listening.

She’s a bargirl. You don’t know where her loyalties lie.

That one was unconvincing. No one had directed her against me-I was the one who had been pursuing her. She hadn’t needed to warn me about the bugs. My gut told me she wasn’t dissembling.

She put a hand on my chest. “You haven’t… been with someone for a long time,” she said.

I reminded myself that this was part of the reason I’ve lived so long.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“I can tell. The way you look at me.”

Her hand pressed closer. “I can feel your heart,” she said.

Between her hand over my heart and her hips at my crotch, she might as well have been administering a polygraph.

I looked out at the street beyond the overhang. The rain was coming in at gray angled streaks. One of my hands moved to her cheek. I closed my eyes. Her skin was wet from the rain and I thought of tears.

She lifted her head and I felt the side of her face settle against mine. Her head moved up and down just slightly, as though in time to some music I could almost hear. I kept my eyes closed, thinking, Don’t do it, don’t be stupid.

I could hear my own breath, flowing through my nose, moving past my teeth.

I started to pull back, sliding my wet cheek past hers. She moved one of her hands to the back of my neck and stopped me.

I shifted my head slightly. The corners of our mouths brushed together. I felt her breath on my cheek.

Then we were kissing. Her mouth was warm and soft. Our tongues entwined and simultaneously I thought Oh you fucking idiot and Oh that feels so good.

My hands found their way inside her coat to her waist. She took my face between her palms and kissed me harder.

I squeezed her hips, then ran my hands up and over the curve of her ribs to her breasts. Her nipples were hard under the wet fabric of her dress. Her body radiated heat. I heard myself groan. It sounded like capitulation.

She stepped back and fumbled in her purse. She pulled out a key and looked at me, her eyes dark, her breathing heavy.

“Come inside,” she said.

She turned and put her key in the lock. The door slid open and we went in.

We kept kissing in the elevator on the brief ride to the fifth floor. On the way down the corridor we were pulling at each other’s clothes.

We moved inside her apartment, into a foyer at the end of a short hallway. There was a living area beyond. Everything was dimly illuminated by the reflected gray light of the street without.

She closed the door behind me and pushed me back against it. She started kissing me again, hungrily, her hands unbuttoning my shirt. Ordinarily I don’t get comfortable in a place until I’ve had a chance to look around it, but the narrow hallway, with Naomi between me and any potential attackers, wouldn’t have worked well for an ambush. I didn’t pick up any danger vibes, at least not of those kind. And Harry’s bug and video detector was blessedly quiescent.

I eased her coat off her shoulders and let it fall behind her. She kissed my neck, my chest, while her fingers worked on my belt and pants. I reached around and undid the zipper at the back of her dress. I moved the straps off her shoulders and the dress slipped soundlessly to the floor. I felt her kick off her shoes.

She pushed my blazer back, but the wet material clung to me. I shrugged out of it and pulled off my shirt. She put a warm hand against my belly for a moment as though to freeze me in that position. I felt the diamond bracelet, a small cold circle around her wrist. Then she reached lower and started to ease my pants down. I stopped her so I could get my shoes and socks off first. Pants-pooled-at-the-ankles is too helpless a posture for me.

I stepped out of my pants and undershorts and kicked them aside. She pushed me back against the door again, circled her arms around my lower back, and pulled us tightly together. Her breasts and belly pressed against me, warm and soft and insanely inviting, and at that instant I didn’t care what this was all going to cost me. What it might cost her.

I took her face gently in both my hands and eased her head back slightly. I looked into her eyes. In the dim light of the hall they seemed to have their own quiet luminescence.

Her hands dropped to my hips and she lowered herself in front of me. I watched her, breathing faster now. The door was cold on my naked back and then her mouth engulfed me and for a moment I couldn’t feel anything else.

One of her hands rose to my belly and I took it in mine, then let it go. My head dropped back against the door with a quiet thump. Some stray hair brushed against my thigh. I could feel every strand of it, as though I’d been stroked with hot filament.

One of my hands drifted down and traced the edge of her ear, the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. I exhaled hard, tightening my abdomen until there was nothing left in my lungs, then breathed in sharply through my nose.

I dipped my fingers under her chin and tried to draw her upward.

She tilted her head back and looked up at me. “I want to finish,” she said.

I stooped, placed my hands on her upper ribs, and raised her to her feet. I slipped one arm behind her neck and the other under her ass, stepped forward, and scooped her up. She laughed in surprise and clasped her arms around my neck.

“There’s something I want to finish,” I told her.

The living room was attached to a small kitchen and an only slightly larger bedroom. I headed toward the latter. I was dimly aware of my hard-on swaying before me like some absurd blind man’s cane as I walked.

There was a futon on the floor just inside the bedroom doorway. I stepped onto it and gently set her down on her back. She slipped her arms from around my neck, her palms brushing past my ears and face. I reached down with both hands and eased the thong over the flat of her pelvis. She raised her hips and the garment moved over the curve of her ass. I pulled it past her ankles and tossed it aside.

I put my hands on the futon on either side of her and kissed her throat, her breasts, her belly. I made my way to the creases of her thighs. She grabbed a fistful of hair at the back of my head and pulled hard enough to make it hurt, but I made her wait longer before I gave her what she wanted.

When I did, she exhaled sharply and tightened her grip on my hair. I drew my knees up and took her ass in both hands, raising it off the futon. I heard her say, “Isso, isso, continua,” felt her other hand move to the back of my neck. I glanced up. Her stomach muscles were clenched tight, her breasts trembling slightly from the action of my head and hands.

I took my time with her. She tasted clean and salty and sweet. Her fingers ran through my hair, sometimes grabbing, sometimes pulling, in time to the way I was touching her. I didn’t rush it, even when the pressure of her hands urged me faster.

I heard her say, “Isso,” again, over and over. Her legs rose behind me and tightened across my ears, and her voice was suddenly far away, reaching me as though from underwater. Her legs tensed further, her knuckles dug into my scalp. Then her body slowly unwound and sound came back into the room.

I lowered her back to the futon and looked at her. The gray light of the room had grown a shade brighter. It picked up the green in her eyes, and without thinking, I said, “You’re beautiful.”

She reached up and took my face in her hands. “Agora, venha aqui,” she said in Portuguese. Come here.

I went to her. She reached down for me but I found my own way in.

I slid my hands under her arms and around to her face. I dipped my head forward and closed my eyes, the way I had once been taught to pray. I felt her lips against my face, mouthing silent words.

A minute went by, maybe two. Our movement together, back and forth, gradually slowed, like waves advancing and receding on a beach. More than that and I knew I was done.

She arched her head up to mine and the kiss quickened. I felt a sensation, like purring or a low growl, across her lips and tongue.

“Agora, mete tudo,” she said, her mouth moving against mine. Now, everything now.

She pushed against me, not holding anything back. I held her face in my hands and kissed her harder. She raised her knees and I felt her thighs and ankles sliding against my hips. We moved faster. She locked her legs around my back. I heard her moan something in Portuguese. My back arched and my toes dug into the futon, and I let myself go with a long kussouu that sounded as much like pain as pleasure.

The strength flowed out of my body and I felt suddenly heavy. I lay down on the futon beside her, facing her, my hand resting lightly on her belly.

“Isso, foi otimo,” she said, turning her head to me. That was delicious.

I smiled. “Otimo,” I repeated. My limbs felt jellified.

She covered my hand with hers and squeezed my fingers. We were quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Can I ask you something?”

I looked at her. “Sure.”

“Why were you so reluctant, at first? I could tell you wanted to. And you knew I wanted to.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, flirting with sleep. “Maybe I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’m the one who should have been afraid. When you said you had something you wanted to finish, I half thought you were going to try to spank me again.”

I smiled, my eyes still closed. “I would have, if you’d deserved it.”

“I would have made you sorry.”

“You didn’t. You made me happy.”

I heard her laugh. “Good. You still haven’t told me what you were afraid of.”

I thought for a moment. Drowsiness was settling on me like a blanket.

“Of getting involved. Like you said, I haven’t been with someone for a long time.”

She laughed again. “How can we be involved? I don’t even know who you are.”

With an effort, I opened my eyes. I looked at her. “You know better than most,” I said.

“Maybe that’s what scares you,” she replied.

If I stayed any longer I would fall asleep. I sat up and ran a hand over my face.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know you have to go.”

She was right, of course. “Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She paused. Then: “I’d like to see you again. But not at the club.”

“That makes sense,” I said, my mind having defaulted to its usual security setting. She furrowed her brow at my response. I saw my mistake, smiled, and tried to correct. “After tonight, I don’t think I could respect that ‘no below the waist’ rule, anyway.” She laughed at that, but the laughter wasn’t entirely comfortable.

I used the bathroom, then made my way back to the foyer, where I pulled on my still-wet clothes. They were cold and clinging.

She came over as I was lacing my shoes. She had combed her hair back and was wearing a dark flannel robe. She looked at me for a long moment.

“I’ll try to help you,” she said.

I told her the truth. “I don’t know how much you can really do.”

“I don’t either. But I want to try. I don’t want… I don’t want to wind up someplace where I can’t find my way back.”

I nodded. “That’s a good reason.”

She reached into a pocket of the robe and pulled out a piece of paper. She extended her arm to hand it to me, and I noticed the diamond bracelet again. I reached out and took her wrist, softly.

“A gift?” I asked, curious.

She shook her head slowly. “It was my mother’s,” she said.

I took the paper and saw that she had written a phone number on it. I put it in my pocket.

I gave her my pager number. I wanted her to have a way to contact me if something came up at the club.

I didn’t say, “I’ll call you.” I didn’t hug her because of the wet clothes. Just a quick kiss. Then I turned and left.

I made my way quietly down the hallway to the stairwell. I could tell she thought she wasn’t going to see me again. I had to admit that she might be right. The knowledge was as damp and dispiriting as my sodden clothes.

I came to the first floor and looked out at the entranceway to the building. For a second I pictured the way she had hugged me here. It already seemed like a long time ago. I felt an unpleasant mixture of gratitude and longing, streaked with guilt and regret.

And in a flash of insight, cutting with cold clarity through the fog of my fatigue, I realized what I hadn’t been able to articulate earlier, not even to myself, when she’d asked me what I was afraid of.

It had been this, the moment after, when I would come face-to-face with knowing that it would all end badly, if not this morning, then the next one. Or the one after that.

I used the rear entrance, where there was no camera. It was still raining when I got outside. The day’s first light was gray and feeble. I walked in my wet shoes until I found a cab, then made my way back to the hotel.

12

THE NEXT DAY I contacted Tatsu via pager and our bulletin board, and arranged to meet him at noon at the Ginza-yu sento, or public bath. The sento is a Japanese institution, albeit one that has been in decline since not long after the war, when new apartments began to feature their own tubs and the sento became less a hygienic necessity and more a periodic indulgence. But, like all indulgences that are valued not just for their product but for their process, the sento will never entirely disappear. For in the unhurried rituals of scrubbing and soaking, and in the perspective of profound relaxation that can only be derived from immersion in water that the meek might describe as scalding, there are qualities of devotion, and celebration, and meditation, qualities that are necessary concomitants to a life worth living.

Ginza-yu exists at both geographical and psychological remove from the nearby shopping glitz for which its namesake is best known, hiding almost slyly in the shadow of the Takaracho expressway overpass, and making its presence known only with a faded, hand-painted sign. I waited in a doorway across the street until I saw Tatsu pull up in an unmarked car. He parked at the curb and got out. I watched him turn the corner into the bathhouse’s side entrance, then followed him in.

He saw me as I came up behind him. He had already taken off his shoes, and was about to place them in one of the small lockers just inside the entrance.

“Tell me what you have,” he said.

I retracted a bit as though hurt. He looked at me for a long moment, then sighed and asked, “How are you?”

I bent and took off my shoes. “Fine, thanks for asking. You?”

“Very well.”

“Your wife? Your daughters?”

He couldn’t help smiling at the mention of his family. He nodded and said, “Everyone is fine. Thank you.”

I grinned. “I’ll tell you more inside.”

We put our shoes away. I had already purchased the necessary accoutrements at the convenience store across the street-shampoo, soap, scrubbing cloth, and towels-and handed Tatsu what he needed as we went in. We paid the proprietor the government-mandated and -subsidized four hundred yen apiece, walked up the wide wooden stairs to the changing area, undressed in the unadorned locker room, then went through the sliding glass door to the bath beyond. The bathing area was empty-peak time would be in the evening-and, like the locker room, almost Spartan in its unpretentiousness: nothing more than a large square space, a high ceiling, white tile walls dripping with condensation, bright fluorescent lighting, and an exhaust fan on one wall that seemed forlorn from its long and losing battle with the steam within. The only concession to an aesthetic not strictly utilitarian was a large, brightly colored mosaic of Ginza 4-chome on the wall above the bath itself. We sat down to scrub.

The trick is to use hot water at the spigots where you sit, filling the sento-supplied low plastic pail with increasingly painful bucketfuls and pouring them over your head and body. If you bathe using only tepid water, the soaking tub will be unbearable when you first try to enter it.

Tatsu completed his cleaning cycle with characteristic brusqueness and got in the bath ahead of me. I took a bit longer. When I was ready, I eased in beside him. Immediately I felt my muscles trying to shrink back from the heat, and knew that in a moment they would give up their fruitless struggle and surrender to delirious relaxation.

“Yappari, kore ga saiko da na?” I said to him, feeling myself begin to unwind. This is great, isn’t it?

He nodded. “An unusual place for a meeting. But a good one.”

I settled deeper into the water. “You’ve been drinking all that tea, so I figured you’d appreciate a place that’s good for your health.”

“Ah, you were being considerate. I thought that perhaps this was your way of showing me you had nothing to hide.”

I laughed. I briefed him on the dojo and the underground fights, and on Murakami’s connection with both. I gave him my assessment of Murakami’s strengths and weaknesses: deadly, on the one hand; unable to blend, on the other.

“You say the promoters of these fights are losing money,” he said when I was done.

I watched the mural, my eyes half-closed. “Based on what Murakami told me, yes. At three fights in a night with two-million-yen payouts to the winners, plus expenses, they’ve got to be in the red. Even on those nights where they have two or even one, they can’t be doing more than breaking even.”

“What does that tell you?”

I closed my eyes. “That they’re not doing it for the money.”

“Yes. The question, then, is why are they doing it? What is the benefit they derive?”

I pictured the bridged, predatory smile. “Some of these people, like Murakami, are pretty sick. I think they enjoy it.”

“I’m sure they do. But I doubt that entertainment alone would be sufficient motive to create and sustain this kind of enterprise.”

“What do you think, then?”

“When you were with Special Forces,” he asked, his tone musing and thoughtful, “how did you treat personnel who performed a vital function for the unit?”

I opened my eyes and glanced at him. “Redundancy. A backup. Like an extra kidney.”

“Yes. Now put yourself in Yamaoto’s shoes. With you, he could quietly eliminate anyone who proved uninterested in his rewards, or invulnerable to his blackmail, or who otherwise presented a threat to the machine he has established. You served a vital function. Following your loss, Yamaoto would have learned not to allow such reliance on a single person. He would seek to build redundancy into the system.”

“Even if Murakami had been a total replacement.”

“Which you say he is not.”

“So the dojo Murakami is running, the fights…”

“It seems they constitute a training course of sorts.”

“A training course…,” I said, shaking my head. I saw him looking at me, waiting, one step ahead as usual.

Then I saw it. “Assassins?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows, as if to say You tell me.

“The dojo is the course introduction,” I said, nodding. “And with the kind of training they do there, they’ve already selected for individuals predisposed to violence. Exposure every day, sometimes twice a day, to that regimen desensitizes the individual further. Being a spectator at actual death matches is the next step.”

“And the fights themselves…”

“The fights complete the process. Sure, the whole thing is just a form of basic training. Better, in fact, because only a relatively few soldiers who pass through basic training experience combat and killing afterward. Here, killing is part of the curriculum. And the cadre you create is composed only of the ones who survive, who are the most proficient at what they’ve learned.”

It made sense. A resort to assassins wasn’t even original. In past centuries, the shogun and daimyo employed ninja in their own internecine struggles. I remembered Yamaoto from our run-in a year earlier and knew he would probably be flattered by the comparison.

“Do you see how this development fits in with Yamaoto’s longer-range plans?” he asked.

I shook my head. It was hard to think through the penetrating heat.

He looked at me the way you might look at a slow but still likable child. “What are Japan’s overall prospects for the future?” he asked.

“How do you mean?”

“As a nation. Where will we be in ten, twenty years?”

I considered. “Not so well off, I suppose. There are a lot of problems-deflation, energy, unemployment, the environment, the banking mess-and no one seems to be able to do anything about it.”

“Yes. And you are correct in distinguishing Japan’s problems, which all countries have, from our powerlessness to solve those problems, in which respect we are unique among industrialized nations.”

He was looking at me, and I knew what he was thinking. Until recently, I had been one of the causes of that powerlessness.

“All that consensus-building takes time,” I said.

“Often it takes forever. But a cultural predisposition to consensus-building is not the real problem.” I saw a trace of a smile. “Even you were not the real problem. The real problem is the nature of our corruption.”

“Quite a few scandals lately,” I said, nodding. “Cars, nuclear, the food industry… I mean, if you can’t trust Mr. Donut, who can you trust?”

He grimaced. “What was happening at the TEPCO nuclear facilities was worse than a disgrace. The managers should be executed.”

“Are you asking me for another ‘favor’?”

He smiled. “I must take care in my phraseology when I’m talking to you.”

“Anyway,” I said, “didn’t the responsible TEPCO managers resign?”

“Yes, they resigned. While the regulators remained-the same regulators who get a cut from the funds allocated to the building and maintenance of nuclear plants, who only just publicized dangers they had known about for years.”

He pulled himself up and sat on the edge of the tub to take a break from the heat. “You know, Rain-san,” he said, “societies are like organisms, and no organism is invulnerable to disease. What matters is whether an organism can mount an effective defense when it finds itself under attack. In Japan, the virus of corruption has attacked the immune system itself, like a societal form of AIDS. Consequently, the body has lost its ability to defend itself. This is what I mean when I say that all countries have problems, but only Japan has problems it has lost the ability to solve. The TEPCO managers resign, but the men charged with regulating their activities for all those years remain? Only in Japan.”

He looked pretty down in the mouth, and I wished for a moment that he wouldn’t take this shit so seriously. If he kept it up, he’d have an ulcer the size of an asteroid. I sat down next to him.

“I know it’s bad, Tatsu,” I said, trying to give him a little perspective, “but Japan is hardly unique when it comes to corruption. Maybe it’s a little worse here, but in America, you’ve got Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, analysts pumping their clients’ stock to get their kids into the right preschools…”

“Yes, but look at the outrage those revelations have induced in America’s regulatory system,” he said. “Open hearings are conducted. New legislation is passed. Heads of corporations go to jail. But in Japan, outrage is considered outrageous. Our culture seems strongly disposed toward acquiescence, ne?”

I smiled and in response offered one of the most common phrases in the language. “Shoganai,” I said. Literally, There is no way of doing it.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Elsewhere they have ‘C’est la vie,’ or ‘That’s life.’ Where the focus is on circumstances. Only in Japan do we focus on our own inability to change those circumstances.”

He wiped his brow. “So. Consider this state of affairs from Yamaoto’s perspective. He understands that, with the immune system suppressed, there must eventually be a catastrophic failure of the host. There have been so many near-misses-financial, ecological, nuclear-it is only a matter of time before a true cataclysm occurs. Perhaps a nuclear accident that irradiates an entire city. Or a countrywide run on banks and loss of deposits. Whatever it is, it will finally be of sufficient magnitude to shake Japan’s voters from their apathy. Yamaoto knows that violent disgust with an existing regime historically tends to cause an extremist backlash. This was true in Weimar Germany and czarist Russia, to list only two examples.”

“People would finally vote for change.”

“Yes. The question is, a change to what?”

“You think Yamaoto is trying to position himself to surf that coming wave of outrage?”

“Of course. Look at Murakami’s training course for assassins. This will augment Yamaoto’s ability to silence and intimidate. Such an ability is one of the historical prerequisites of all fascist movements. I’ve told you before, Yamaoto is at heart a rightist.”

I thought of some of the good news from the provinces I’d been reading, how some of the politicians there were standing up to the bureaucrats and other corrupt interests, opening up the books, eschewing the public works projects that have all but buried the country under poured concrete.

“And you’re working with untainted politicians to make sure that Yamaoto isn’t the outraged voters’ only choice?” I asked.

“I do what I can,” he said.

Translation: I’ve told you as much as you need to know.

But I knew the disk, practically a who’s who of Yamaoto’s network of corruption, would have provided by negative implication an invaluable road map to who was absent from that network. I imagined Tatsu working with the good guys, warning them, trying to protect them. Positioning them like stones on a go board.

I told him about Damask Rose and Murakami’s apparent connection to the place.

“Those women are being used to set up and suborn Yamaoto’s enemies,” he said when I was done.

“Not all of them,” I said, thinking of Naomi.

“No, not all. Some of them might not even know what is happening, although I imagine they would at least suspect. Yamaoto prefers to run such establishments as legitimate enterprises. Doing so makes them difficult to ferret out and dislodge. Ishihara, the weightlifter, was instrumental in that capacity. It’s good that he is gone.”

He wiped his forehead again. “I find it interesting that Murakami seems to have an important function with regard to that end of Yamaoto’s means of control, as well. He may be even more vital to Yamaoto’s power than I had first suspected. No wonder Yamaoto is attempting to diversify. He needs to reduce his dependence on this man.”

“Tatsu,” I said.

He looked at me, and I sensed he knew what was coming.

“I’m not going to take him out.”

There was a long pause. His face was expressionless.

“I see,” he said, his voice quiet.

“It’s too dangerous. It was dangerous before, and now they’ve got my picture on Damask Rose home video. If the wrong person sees that picture, they’ll know who I am.”

“Their interest is in politicians and bureaucrats and the like. The chance of that video making its way to Yamaoto, or to one of the very few other people in his organization who might recognize your face, seems remote.”

“It doesn’t seem remote to me. Anyway, this guy is a hard target, very hard. To take out someone like that and make it look natural, it’s almost impossible.”

He looked at me. “Make it look unnatural, then. The stakes are high enough to take that chance.”

“I might do that. But I’m no good with a sniper rifle, and I’m not going to use a bomb because bystanders would get blown up, too. And short of those two options, putting this guy down and getting away clean is too much of a long shot.”

I realized that I’d allowed myself to start arguing with him on practical grounds. I should have just told him no and shut my mouth.

Another long pause. Then he said, “What does he make of you, do you think?”

I took a deep breath of the moist air and let it out. “I don’t know. On the one hand, he’s seen what I can do. On the other hand, I don’t send out danger vibes the way he does. He can’t control that sort of thing, so it wouldn’t occur to him that someone else could.”

“He underestimates you, then.”

“Maybe. But not by much. People like Murakami don’t underestimate.”

“You’ve proven that you can get close to him. I could get you a gun.”

“I told you, he’s always with at least two bodyguards.”

The second I said it I wished I hadn’t. Now we were negotiating. This was stupid.

“Line them up right,” he said. “Take out all three.”

“Tatsu, you don’t understand this guy’s instincts. He doesn’t let anyone line up anything. When we got out of the Benz in front of his club, I saw him scoping rooftops for snipers. He knew where to look, too. He’d feel me lining him up from a mile away. Just like I’d feel him. Forget it.”

He frowned. “How can I convince you?”

“You can’t. Look, this was a risky proposition to begin with, but I was willing to undertake the risk in return for what you can do for me. I’ve learned that the risk is now greater than I had originally thought. The reward is the same. So the equation has changed. It’s no more complicated than that.”

Neither of us said anything for a long time. Finally, he sighed and said, “What will you do, retire?”

“Maybe.”

“You can’t retire.”

I paused. When I spoke, my voice was quiet, not much more than a whisper. “I hope you’re not saying that you might interfere.”

He didn’t flinch. “There would be no need for me to interfere,” he said. “You don’t have retirement in you. I wish you could recognize that. What will you do, find an island somewhere, spend time on the beach catching up on all the books you’ve been missing? Join a go club? Anesthetize yourself with whiskey when your restless memories refuse to permit sleep?”

But for the jellifying effects of the heat, I might have gotten upset at that.

“Maybe therapy,” he went on. “Yes, therapy is popular these days. It could help you come to terms with all the lives you have taken. Perhaps even with the one you have decided to waste.”

I looked at him. “You’re trying to goad me, Tatsu,” I said softly.

“You need goading.”

“Not from you.”

He frowned. “You say you might retire. I understand that. But what I’m doing is important and right. This is our country.”

I snorted. “It’s not ‘our’ country. I’m just a visitor.”

“Who told you that?”

“Everyone who mattered.”

“They would be glad to know that you listened.”

“Enough. I owed you. I paid. I’m done.”

I got up and rinsed with cold water at one of the spigots. He did the same. We changed and walked down the stairs.

Just outside the entranceway, he turned to me. “Rain-san,” he said. “Will I see you again?”

I looked at him. “Are you a threat to me?” I asked.

“Not if you are really going to retire, no.”

“Then we might see each other. But not for a while.”

“Then we needn’t say sayonara.”

“We needn’t say it.”

He smiled his sad smile. “I have a request.”

I smiled back. “With you, Tatsu, it would be a little dangerous to agree to anything up front.”

He nodded, accepting the point. “Ask yourself what you hope to get out of retirement. And whether retirement will achieve it.”

I said, “That I can do.”

“Thank you.”

He extended his hand and I shook it.

“De wa,” I said, by way of goodbye. Well, then.

He nodded again. “Ki o tsukete,” he said, a farewell that can be intended as an innocuous Take care or as a more literal Be careful.

The ambiguity felt deliberate.

13

I WAITED UNTIL after seven that evening, when I knew Yukiko would have left for the club, then called Harry. I was going to tell him what he needed to hear. I owed him that much. What he decided to do with the information would then be his problem, not mine.

We set up a meeting at a coffee shop in Nippori. I told him to take his time getting there. He understood the translation: With the Agency snooping around, do a damn thorough SDR.

I got there early per my usual practice and passed the time sipping an espresso and leafing through a magazine someone had left on the table. After about an hour Harry showed up.

“Hey, kid,” I said when I saw him. I noticed he was wearing a stylish lambskin jacket, and wool trousers instead of the usual jeans. He’d gotten a haircut, too. He looked nearly presentable. I realized there was no way he was going to listen to me, and almost decided not to bother telling him.

But that wouldn’t be right. I would give him the information, and it would be his responsibility to use it. Or not.

He sat down and, before I could open my mouth, said, “Don’t worry. There’s no way I was followed.”

“Doesn’t that go without saying?”

His eyes started to widen, then he saw I was just giving him a hard time. He smiled.

“You look good,” I told him, my expression slightly bemused.

He looked at me, trying to gauge, I knew, whether he was being set up for a ribbing of some sort. “You think so?” he asked, his tone tentative.

I nodded. “Looks like you got your hair cut at one of those expensive places in Omotesando.”

He reddened. “I did.”

“Don’t blush. It was worth whatever you paid for it.”

He blushed harder. “Don’t tease me.”

I laughed. “I’m only half teasing.”

“What’s going on?”

“Why does something have to be going on? Maybe I just missed you.”

He gave me an uncharacteristically streetwise look. I had a feeling I knew where he’d picked it up. “Yeah, I missed you, too.”

I wasn’t looking forward to the turn the conversation would take when I brought up Yukiko, and felt no hurry to get there.

A waitress came by. Harry ordered a coffee and some carrot cake.

“You hear from any of our new government friends lately?” I asked him.

“Not a peep. You must have scared them.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.” I took a sip of espresso and looked at him. “You still in the same place?”

“Yeah. But I’m almost ready to move. You know how it is. The preparations take a while if you want to do it right.”

We were silent for a moment, and I thought, Here we go.

“Planning on spending time with Yukiko at the new place?”

He gave me a wary look. “Maybe.”

“Then I wouldn’t bother moving.”

He flinched, his expression characteristically befuddled beneath the slick new haircut.

“Why?” he asked, his tone uncertain.

“She’s mixed up with some bad people, Harry.”

He frowned. “I know.”

It was my turn to be surprised. “You know?”

He nodded, still frowning. “She told me.”

“Told you what?”

“Told me the club is run by the yakuza. So what? They all are.”

“She tell you she’s involved with one of the owners?”

“What do you mean, ‘involved’?”

“ ‘Involved,’ as in closely involved.”

He was tapping his foot nervously under the table. I could feel the vibration.

“I don’t know what she has to do at the club. It’s probably better if I don’t.”

He was in denial. This was going to be a waste of time.

All right. I’d modify my approach and try one more time.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

He looked at me for a moment, off balanced. “How do you even know about any of this?” he asked. “Are you sneaking around behind my back?”

I didn’t care for the question, although I supposed its substance wasn’t too far off the mark. My answer wasn’t exactly a lie. Just incomplete.

“I’ve developed a… relationship with the yakuza who I think owns Damask Rose. A stone killer named Murakami. He took me there. He and Yukiko were obviously well acquainted. I saw them leave together.”

“That’s what you wanted to tell me? It sounds like he’s her boss. They left together, so what?”

Open your eyes, you idiot, I wanted to say. This woman is a shark. She’s from a different world, a different species. There’s something way fucking wrong here.

Instead: “Harry, my gut tends to be pretty good about these things.”

“Well, I’m not going to trust your gut more than I trust mine.”

The waitress came with the coffee and cake and moved off. Harry didn’t seem to notice.

I wanted to tell him more, wanted to offer Naomi’s thoughts as corroboration. But I could see it wouldn’t do much good. Besides, Harry didn’t need to know where I came across my information.

I tried one last time. “The club is wired for sound and video. The detector you gave me was going apeshit the whole time I was there. I think the place is being used to entrap politicians in embarrassing acts.”

“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean Yukiko is involved in it.”

“Haven’t you even asked yourself whether it’s a coincidence that you met this woman at about the same time we discovered that you were being followed by the CIA?”

He looked at me as though I’d finally come unhinged. “Are you saying Yukiko is mixed up with the CIA? C’mon.”

“Think about it,” I told him. “We know the Agency was tracking you to get to me. They got to you through Midori’s letter. What did they learn about you from the letter? Just an unusually spelled name and a postmark.”

“So?”

“So the Agency doesn’t have the in-house expertise to do anything useful with information like that. They need local resources.”

“So?” he said again, his tone petulant.

“So they know Yamaoto from his connections with Holtzer. They ask him for his help. He had his people check domiciles and employment records in concentric circles moving outward from the Chuo-ku postmark. Maybe they access tax records, find out where an unusually spelled Haruyoshi is employed. Now they’ve got your whole name, but they can’t find out where you live, because you’re careful to protect that. They try to follow you from work, maybe, but you show them you’re too surveillance conscious and it doesn’t work. So Yamaoto gets your boss to take you somewhere to ‘celebrate,’ somewhere where you’ll meet a real heart-stopper, someone who can find out where you live so they can follow you more often, hoping you’ll drop your guard and lead them to me.”

“Then why is she still with me?”

I looked at him. It was a good question.

“I mean, if her job was just to get my home address, she would have been gone the first time I took her home. But she’s not. She’s still with me.”

“Then maybe her role was to watch you, learn your routines, find some information that would help her people get closer to finding me. Maybe listen in on your calls, alert her people if or when one of us got in touch with the other. I don’t know for sure.”

“I’m sorry. It’s too far-fetched.”

I sighed. “Harry, you’re not in a good position to be objective here. You have to acknowledge that.”

“And you are?”

I looked at him. “What possible reason would I have to distort any of this?”

He shrugged. “Maybe you’re afraid I won’t help you anymore. You said it yourself: ‘You can’t live with one foot in daylight and the other in shadows.’ Maybe you’re afraid I’ll move into the daylight and leave you behind.”

I felt a wave of angry indignation and willed it back. “Let me tell you something, kid,” I said. “In a very short while, I plan to be living in the daylight myself. I won’t need your ‘help’ after that. So even if I were the selfish, manipulative piece of shit you seem to think I am, I wouldn’t have any motive to try to keep you in the shadows.”

He flushed. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment.

I waved a hand. “Forget about it.”

He looked at me. “No, really, I’m sorry.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

We were quiet for a moment. Then I said, “Look, I’ve got an idea of what you feel for this woman, okay? I saw her. She’s a head-turner.”

“She’s more than that,” he said softly.

The dumb, sappy bastard. His only hope with that ice bitch would be that she’d recognize how helpless he was and have some scruples about whatever it was she was up to.

I wouldn’t count on it, though.

“The point is,” I said, “it doesn’t give me any pleasure to give you reason to doubt. But I’m telling you, there’s something wrong here, Harry. You need to be careful. And nothing makes you less careful than the kind of feelings that have taken hold of you right now.”

After a while he said, “I’ll think about what you’ve said. Okay?”

He didn’t look like he’d think about it, though. He looked like he wanted to jam his hands over his ears. Stick his newly coiffed head in the sand. Hit the Delete key on everything I’d told him.

“Look, I’m going to see her tonight,” he said. “I’ll watch more closely. I’ll keep in mind what you’ve said.”

I realized I’d been wasting my time.

“I thought you were smarter than this,” I said, shaking my head. “I really did.”

I stood and dropped a few bills on the table and left without looking at him.

I walked to the train station, thinking about what I had told Tatsu earlier, about risk and reward.

Harry had a lot to offer. I supposed he always would. But he wasn’t being careful anymore. Keeping him in my life now entailed more risk than it had previously.

I sighed. Two goodbyes in one night. It was depressing. And it’s not as though I’ve got a whole Rolodex full of friends.

But no sense being sentimental about it. Sentiment is stupid. On balance, Harry had become a liability. I had to leave him behind.