by Barry Eisler
“No.”
“Besides, if the Gokumatsu-gumi thinks it’s under attack by some ultraviolent Vietnamese gang, Junior’s apt to be careful for a while.”
“You said he was a fuck-up.”
“Jesus, you’re worse than my ex-wife. Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it is to have to argue with things I’ve actually said?”
“Well, is he a fuck-up or not?”
“He’s a fuck-up. That doesn’t mean you’re going to find him sitting undefended in all the usual places at all the usual times.”
That sounded promising. I said, “Are there usual places and usual times?”
He sighed. “A few.”
“Where’s the file?”
He nodded for a long moment, as though confirming a thought. “You’re good,” he said. “No question. But you’ve got one obvious limitation, and I’ll tell you what it is.”
I said nothing.
“You’re a hammer. Or maybe a buzz saw would be the better analogy. Well, regardless. It’s what you do, it’s what you are. And if all you are is a hammer, you’re going to spend all your time trying to make things into nails.”
“Where’s the file?”
“Christ. Kabaya Coffee in Ueno. Sit at the counter—”
“I’ll know where to find it.”
“You will, huh?”
“Unless you’ve done something fundamentally different this time.”
He shook his head disgustedly. “I told you, not ineducable. More’s the pity.”
I left McGraw and rode Thanatos to Kabaya. It was in Yanaka, near Ueno, the northeast of the city, part of Shitamachi, all narrow streets and tiny wooden buildings. Kabaya turned out to be one of these: a two-story corner structure, once clearly a dwelling, with a traditional tile roof and wood walls so antique they had blackened from decades of storm and sun.
The inside was as tiny as that of Café de l’Ambre, and equally unpretentious. Wood floors, wood walls, wood ceiling; three tables and twelve chairs; a counter that could seat eight. A matronly woman standing behind a cash register greeted me with a bow and an irasshaimase when I came in. I returned the bow, then spent a moment scoping the room. It was half full, mostly neighborhood-looking people: housewives enjoying a coffee klatch, retirees doing something to offer a little structure to their days. The counter was empty. I sat in the seat second farthest from the door. The counterman, who I guessed was the hostess’s husband, presented me with a small menu. I told him I would try a cup of the house blend and a portion of buttered toast. While he prepared my order, I glanced around and, seeing that no one was paying me any attention, felt under the stool for the file. There it was, taped dead center, where it was least likely to be accidentally discovered. I pulled it free and pocketed it.
Someone had left a copy of the Asahi Shinbun newspaper on the counter. I glanced over. The front page had news about pollution-borne illnesses afflicting thousands of Japanese. Horrific neurological disease and birth defects in Minamata and Niigata, where Chisso Chemicals and Showa Electrical had released untreated mercury into the local waters. Asthma in Yokkaichi, caused by vast amounts of sulfurous oil burned at the Daiichi Petrochemical Complex. Itai-itai-byō—it hurts–it hurts disease, so named because of the agonies of its victims—caused by the cadmium Mitsui Mining had released into the rivers of Toyama Prefecture. The corporations were fighting the victims in court; their flunkies had attacked a photographer who had documented the horrors of Minamata; the government was helping cover things up. The same types who forced Sayaka’s parents to take the money and keep their mouths shut. I asked myself if there was a reason I should ever refrain from killing these people. I couldn’t think of one.
When I had finished my coffee, I rode over to Sumida Park, a narrow strip of green along the river of the same name alongside Asakusa. Among mothers pushing babies in strollers and toddlers playing on the swing sets, I went through the file. Its contents weren’t encouraging. The photos were redundant—I already knew what he looked like, from Ueno, and then from when I’d seen him staring down at me at the Kodokan while Pig Eyes tried to choke me to death. As for whereabouts, Junior kept two condominiums, one in Roppongi, the other in Aoyama. There were several nightclubs he was said to manage, but between the two residences and the three nightclubs, if not more, I was facing a shell-game dynamic. Absent some specific actionable intel or a very lucky break, finding Junior could take a while. And all that time, I’d be living like a fugitive, with a yakuza contract hanging over my head.
I thought about Sayaka. I wondered what she was doing right then. Studying English? Reading a book? I knew so little about her. But at the same time, I felt like I did know her. She’d let me in, literally and figuratively, and I was still awestruck by that, by everything that had happened. I had to force myself to stop thinking about it and get back to the file.
When I’d memorized the information, I burned the pages in a public ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, then headed over to a payphone and called McGraw. “Look,” I told him, “that file you gave me, it’s not enough. I need something more specific. I held up my end, now it’s time for you to hold up yours.”
There was a pause. I thought he was going to push back, so I was pleasantly surprised when he said, “I know, it wasn’t nearly as complete I was hoping. I have to tell you again, you work a lot faster than I’d been expecting. The kind of information you need takes time to put together. I’ll keep working on it. And if something comes up, if we catch a break, I’ll let you know right away.”
I didn’t like it, but didn’t see how I could ask for much more. I hung up.
I spent the rest of the day reconning Junior’s various haunts. If I had known for sure which one and at what time, there would have been a number of approaches. But five possibilities? The two residences were as close to a choke point as it looked like I was going to get. But I could wait all night outside either one of them, and I’d never know if he was just out late or if he’d turned in early at the other one. Or if he was spending the night shacked up with one of the girls from his clubs.
As evening deepened into night, I decided I was wasting my time. Maybe I’d have better luck with Mori. Miyamoto’s hit hadn’t been as important to me because Mori wasn’t a threat, just a job. And maybe I had some vestigial concerns about the ethics of that. But I reminded myself that the guy was in the life. I thought of Kamioka, another big-shot politician, the one who’d crippled Sayaka. And of the corporate officers and corrupt politicians who had poisoned thousands of people and then conspired to deny them justice. I realized I didn’t have any pity for any of them. Was I rationalizing again? Maybe. But did that make my analysis inaccurate? Mori had made his own choices. Now he had to live with the consequences.
Or not.
chapter
twenty-four
I stopped at a discount store and bought a suit, shirt, and tie; some hair gel; and a pair of reading glasses. Back at the hotel in Ueno, I showered, changed into the suit and tie, and slicked my hair. I popped the lenses out of the glasses and put them on. I looked in the mirror—nothing likely to fool anyone who knew me, but enough to throw off any witness descriptions. The suit alone made me look like someone else. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn one. My father’s funeral, maybe. At my mother’s, I’d been in my military dress uniform.
Not only did the outfit look strange, it also felt uncomfortable. When I’d tried it on in the store, beyond “a suit” I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I realized I was probably making a dozen mistakes in the way I was wearing it now. Was the tie knotted correctly? Should I button the jacket? For anyone with an eye for such things, subtle mistakes could be remembered or otherwise draw attention. It wasn’t good that I was only just realizing this. I was in trouble now, Mad Dog still out there, gunning for me, and I shouldn’t have been playing catch-up with my preparations. I’d been stupid and complacent, like a homeowner who never bothered to buy insurance because
nothing bad had ever happened before.
I resolved to never again be unprepared for the shit hitting the fan. I would pay attention to small things—the way people dressed and spoke and walked. The things that made them part of a background environment, or made them stand out against it. I would watch them, try to consciously identify the signs and behaviors that made them who they were, and then imitate and adopt those things as my own. It would be like performing a role, with the preparation a kind of acting school. I’d make it a game, and play it every day.
But that was for later. Assuming I made it to later. For now, I had to work with what I had.
I thought about how I might get close to Mori, how I would do it, how I would get away, how I would try to create distractions. A plan cohered. It was crude, it was ugly, and it was improvised, but given the parameters, I thought it would work. This one didn’t have to look natural, after all. This one could look like anything.
I stopped at another discount store and bought a plain furoshiki—basically, a large bandana. You don’t often see them in Japan these days, as they’ve been largely replaced by plastic shopping bags, but at the time they were widely used to wrap and carry everything—groceries, packages, boxed lunches.
Or, in my case, just a rock.
I rode around until I spotted a road crew doing construction—not something that has ever taken long to find in Tokyo, where make-work collusion between the yakuza and the Construction Ministry has long been a national disease. I parked and hunted around at the edges of the site, away from the workmen, outside the range of the floodlights, until I found what I was looking for. Not a chunk of asphalt or concrete, which might crack under pressure, but a fist-sized stone. This one was just right—maybe twice the size of a billiard ball and considerably heavier. I wrapped it in the furoshiki and drove off to Akasaka.
I parked Thanatos in a crowded lot off Roppongi-dōri, then walked into Akasaka. The air was dense with humidity and the smells of fried soba and beer and yakitori, the hum of conversation and laughter and madcap beeping of pachinko machines and the horns of taxis fighting their way through knots of pedestrians. The buildings on either side were low, many of them still of wood, but I could see how rapidly the area was changing, with five-story structures replacing two-story, and ferroconcrete replacing wood. Each building had an illuminated sign running up its side, advertising clubs and bars and restaurants. The sidewalks were crowded with salarymen out for an evening’s entertainment, couples walking arm in arm on their way to dinner, a few foreign tourists gawking at the spectacle. Hostesses in kimonos and cocktail dresses hurried to work. Touts stood in front of entrances, handing out flyers, calling to passersby. Here and there, the sidewalk was blocked by an illegally parked sedan, the driver waiting for his designated passenger, yakuza or politician or some other VIP, and the crowd would flow around it.
After a few minutes of letting the crowd carry me along, I saw the sign for Higashi West. It was in one of the newer buildings, and on its fifth floor, the highest. The name was spelled out in English, no kanji, no kana—a nod, I supposed, to the cosmopolitan flavor it promised. There was a car at the curb, driver in front, curtained windows in back. Not necessarily Mori’s, of course, but it made me hopeful. If he was here, though, and if this was his car, there would be a very short window between when he left the building and when he entered the vehicle. Not a lot of time to get to him.
I dropped the furoshiki and the rock wrapped inside it in a garbage container, then headed into the building’s vestibule. Three inebriated salarymen got on the elevator with me. I kept my head down and my eyes averted until they exited on the third floor and left me to continue alone to the fifth.
The doors opened to reveal a somewhat gaudy interior—a lot of red velvet and curtains and lace, a caricatured Japanese take on European luxury. The air was heavy with tobacco and Scotch, and someone was crooning Don McLean’s “American Pie,” top of the charts that year, from somewhere within. The decor might not have been to my taste, but this was clearly a high-end club, the women certain to be attractive, charming, educated, and intelligent—and not at all for sale. Though westerners who find entirely natural the idea of paying for sex are simultaneously mystified at the notion of paying for conversation, is the divide really all that wide? It’s not as though a woman in the former circumstance actually wants to sleep with you, or enjoys doing it, any more than a woman in the latter situation relishes your conversation. If one is unnatural, then isn’t the other, as well? Which isn’t to say that sex with a hostess is an impossibility. It just isn’t something that can be purchased for cash. Instead, much as was the case in the geisha houses from which the modern hostess club is descended, a sexual relationship might develop over time, with the right customer, after much extracurricular wooing, and only if the girl wants it.
A Japanese hostess stepped forward to greet me. “Irasshaimase,” she said with a bow. Welcome. She produced an ice-cold oshibori, a damp washcloth, and I wiped my hands and face gratefully.
Before she could lead me to a table, I said, “I’m embarrassed to inform you, but I’m not here to stay. My boss has told me to find him a suitable place to entertain in Akasaka. I’ve heard favorable things about your establishment, but would it be all right if I just took a look for myself? He won’t be satisfied if I don’t.”
The hostess smiled. “Of course. Are you sure we can’t get you anything to drink?”
I smiled back, thinking she was wise to try to earn my gratitude with such a small investment. “No, no, I really don’t want to put you to any trouble. Already from what I can see, I think your club looks most appropriate. Would it be all right though if I were to just…”
She bowed. “By all means, please, feel free.”
I thanked her and walked inside. If Mori wasn’t here, I didn’t know what I would do next time—the “I’m just here for my boss” routine would last only so long.
The place was shaped like an L, with the long end going left from the entrance. I turned into it. There was a short bar and four tables, all occupied. At one of the tables stood the guy who was singing, the microphone partly obscuring his face. Mori? I thought so. Two western hostesses and three Japanese tablemates were laughing and applauding. I moved to the side and looked more closely, matching the face to what I had seen in the file photographs. No question now, it was him. His English was as impressive as his voice, and I was struck by a moment of private irony, the notion that he was singing a song about the plane crash that had killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper—“the day the music died.”
There was a bottle of Suntory whisky on their table, mostly empty. That might have meant they’d been there for a while. On the other hand, a guy like Mori would almost certainly have a bottle-keep—his own paid-for bottle, which the club would store and take out for him. No way to know. I’d just have to wait for as long as it took. The main thing was, he was here. I was never going to get a better chance.
I used the bathroom and headed out, thanking the hostess on the way. She escorted me to the landing and pressed the button for the elevator, waiting for it to arrive and then bowing low until the doors had closed.
I headed back out to the street, searching for the right venue. I had initially assumed I’d just ride the elevator up and down until Mori emerged, but the way the hostess had waited with me suggested this would be a no-go. Weird behavior, and therefore both suspicious and memorable. Not to mention the many opportunities it would give multiple people to see my face.
I looked around. Most of the buildings had exterior stairwells that were used primarily for storage in violation of local fire ordinances, and the Higashi West building was no exception. I supposed I could hang back inside the entrance to the stairwell and maintain a good view of the elevator. But then his back would be to me. I’d have to do something to confirm it was him. Well, I didn’t see a better way.
I retrieved the rock and the furoshiki, rewrapping the cloth so that it only c
overed half the rock—the half I was holding. I didn’t think the porous stone would take a fingerprint, but I didn’t want to take a chance, either. I ghosted back to the stairway and waited in the shadows. I felt nervous and out of control. Was I really doing this again, so soon after Ozawa and Fukumoto and the other three? But what difference did proximity make? The opportunity was what mattered, and the opportunity was now. I’d lain more ambushes in the jungle than I could count, and reminded myself the only meaningful difference between then and now was the venue. And why shouldn’t I do it? Mori meant nothing to me. Would I pay ten thousand dollars to save his life? Because that’s what I’d be doing, if I walked away now.
Several dozen people came and went while I waited, and each time a group emerged from the elevator, I’d get a pointless adrenaline dump while I tried to assess from behind whether one of them was Mori. I stretched and did light calisthenics to stay limber, switching the cloth-covered rock from one hand to the other, breathing deeply in and out. I reminded myself repeatedly of who I was supposed to be tonight, how I would act, how I wanted this to look to any witnesses and to the police. I was starting to feel exhausted, and had endured so many false alarms, that when a group of three men in identical dark suits emerged from the elevator, it took me a moment to realize from the build and posture of the one in the middle that this was probably him. Shit.
I eased out from the stairwell, getting closer, afraid to commit in case I was mistaken. What light there was came in a pall of yellow from a few inadequate sodium vapor lamps, and the men were mostly in shadow. Good concealment for me, but it made positive ID a bitch, too.
The men had paused in front of the sedan. They were chuckling about something—what, I couldn’t make out. I wanted to circle around the car and come at them from the front so I could get a clear look at his face before I committed. But I was afraid if the timing were bad, he might get into the car before I could close with him.
