by Barry Eisler
I looked out over the lotuses. The sun was fully visible above them now.
“Well. I’ve always wanted to see the world.”
“Haven’t you seen enough?”
I tried to smile, but it faltered. “Yeah. But I guess I’m going to see a little more.”
chapter
thirty-five
I spent the day getting to know Jikei Hospital. The reianshitsu, the hospital morgue, was in the basement of the sprawling facility. Unlike the bright, windowed, carpeted areas above, obviously intended for public consumption, the basement felt dim and dreary, an afterthought, a relic. Dusty cardboard boxes lined the peeling walls; the tile floor was chipped and cracked; an old wheelchair sat in a corner, a stack of paper folders moldering in its seat. I thought of Sayaka, then shoved the thought away. The overhead florescent lights, cold, inert, and faintly buzzing, seemed only to enhance the gloom rather than dispel it. Hardly an Elysian Fields kind of a sendoff for anyone who wound up here, though I supposed there weren’t many complaints.
I passed several hospital employees while I wandered in the area, and while I was prepared to deal with any inquiries by responding in English as though I were a lost, illiterate, visiting Nisei, no one took any notice of me, much less challenged my presence. Not only did the Jikei morgue lack security, it also plainly lacked security consciousness. Which suited me perfectly.
When I was satisfied I was sufficiently familiar with the layout of the hospital and its grounds, I picked up a few items I thought I would need: lubricant, from a bicycle store; a surgical mask, surgical scrubs, and a white lab coat from a medical supply store; a blanket, hat, spare shoes, and a new shoulder bag, from a discount store. Then I rented a car from a company in Ueno. I told them I needed it for only twenty-four hours, paid a cash deposit, and left Thanatos parked right around the corner. Then I checked the John Smith answering service. Unsurprisingly, there was a message from McGraw. I called him.
“Okay,” he said. “We managed to catch a break.”
It was weird, hearing him use the same phrase with his new go-to guy that he’d used not so long ago with me. “Yes?”
“I’m supposed to meet him at eight o’clock tomorrow morning at Benten Island. Shinobazu Pond, in Ueno Park. Do you know it?”
“I know Ueno Park.”
“The pond’s at the south end, and the island’s in the center of it. You won’t have any trouble finding it. Now, here’s the thing. Rain’s probably expecting this to be a setup. Hell, for all I know, he’s using it to set me up. He’s gotten pretty wise tactically, and I’m expecting him to show up very early. If you want to get to him, I’d advise that you get there at sunup. I imagine he’ll be there not long after to reconnoiter. But he’s going to recognize you, right? Is that a problem? Will it make him suspicious?”
“No. The opposite.”
I could almost hear him smiling. “Good. Well, good hunting. Call me when it’s done.”
Oh, don’t worry about that, I thought.
I bought a couple of bento lunches, and found a love hotel in Shinbashi. I ate, showered, and tried to get some sleep. It wouldn’t come. The gulf between what had been my hopes, and the reality that had exposed those hopes as daydream and delusion, was too vast, the contrast too stark, the outcome I was hoping for too bleak. Assuming I could even achieve that outcome. The stakes I was playing for were at once so high, and also so dispiriting. I felt like a man whose alternative to death in the electric chair was life in prison. Life in solitary. Life without possibility of parole.
At three in the morning, I changed into the scrubs and lab coat and drove back to Jikei. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but in case someone saw me, at least it was something. There was an alley leading to a set of concrete stairs that themselves descended to the corridor to the morgue. The idea, I supposed, was to provide a discreet loading area for the delivery and removal of corpses, the sight of which might be troubling for visitors coming to offer well wishes to their convalescing relatives. The alley was dark and empty now, just some refuse containers and sagging cardboard boxes lining the brick walls. A single incandescent bulb hung from a corrugated awning over the stairs, casting deep shadows over the pipes and metal ducts on the walls all around. I backed the car in, cut the engine, eased the door shut, and waited, listening. Nothing. Just the quiet hum of the building’s air-conditioning.
At the bottom of the stairs, there were two rusted metal doors, each with a frosted glass insert, secured only by a trivial knob lock. I’d considered jamming the lock when I’d been here earlier in the day, but had rejected the idea as too likely to be noticed. Besides, I was confident I could handle it. If I was wrong, my backup plan was the emergency room entrance, but if possible I didn’t want to be seen at all. I crept down the stairs and glanced through the frosted glass. Nothing, just the vague, florescent-lit contours of the corridor. I pulled out the tube of lubricant I’d bought earlier, after seeing how rusty the hinges looked, and applied it now. The lock took me less than a minute to defeat and I made a mental note to thank the nandemoya in Shin Ōkubo, assuming of course I survived what I was planning. I opened the door a fraction, moved it back, opened it a fraction more, and so on, letting the lubricant work its way into the hinges. Finally, when I’d confirmed it was moving noiselessly, I moved inside.
The corridor looked exactly as it had earlier in the day—the boxes, the dust, the abandoned wheelchair—though if possible it felt even more still and silent. I crept up to the morgue door. It was wood with a frosted glass insert. I could see the light was off inside. Almost certainly no one was in there, but best to be careful. I pushed the door open, grimacing at the squeak, and said, “Shimura-san, are you in there?” In the unlikely event of an answer, I would apologize for my mistake and purport to go looking for “Shimura-san” elsewhere, and the intrusion would be disguised as something other than surreptitious. But unsurprisingly, there was no response. The room was empty.
I closed the door behind me and quickly oiled the hinges—no sense making any unnecessary noise on my way out. There was a decent amount of light spilling in through the glass from the corridor outside, and I had no trouble seeing. The walls to either side were lined with refrigerated drawers, three high, five across. On the far wall was a long metal cabinet, drawers closed, top covered with instruments. In the middle of the room was a large metal table with a drain in the center and a light fixture hanging over it—the spot where the pathologist would conduct exams. The air was heavy with antiseptic and bleach—not pleasant, but it beat what it must have been concealing.
I paused to game out how I would react if someone showed up while I was in here. This was a version of the when/then thinking that had been drilled into me in counter-ambush training, and I was pleased to see how, with sufficient motivation and practice, it applied also in more urban settings. I decided if I had time to hide, my best move would be to go under the metal cabinet. It had high legs, presumably to make it easier to get a mop under in case of spillage from the examination table. If there was no time for that, I’d say something about being overwhelmed and needing a quiet place to collect myself. Thin, but better than just standing there stammering.
I hit the refrigerated drawers methodically, starting top left and moving down right. Most of them were empty—maybe it had been a slow week for the hospital. One of them contained a startlingly voluptuous young woman, who I assumed from her unblemished condition was a drug overdose. Several were of ordinary-looking old people who I assumed had died naturally at the hospital. The next was of a bloody, mangled corpse—the yakuza who’d been crushed when the car crashed on Roppongi-dōri. I was getting warmer. The next was the prize I’d been looking for: the car’s driver, who I’d shot in the head. His height, weight, and build were similar to mine. That was good. And the point-blank shot from the Hi Power had rendered his face unrecognizable. That was better.
I realized I should have brought the wheelchair in. Now I would have to go back out to get it.
I went to the door and paused to listen. From somewhere down the corridor I heard a door close. Then footsteps approaching. Shit. A maintenance man on the graveyard shift? Who else would come down here in the dead of night? I doubted whoever it was would come in, but I couldn’t take the chance—I had no reasonable explanation for being here, and if someone saw me, it would make taking the corpse that much more problematic.
I dashed to the bank of refrigerated drawers, slid the yakuza in, and closed the door. Then I dropped down and rolled under the metal cabinet. I lay face-up, my head turned to the side, breathing silently through my mouth. The footsteps stopped. Had someone heard me somehow, and come down to investigate? I heard the door open and close. Whoever it was didn’t turn on the light. What the hell?
I saw a man’s shoes and the lower half of a pair of surgical scrubs. There was something stealthy about his approach, surreptitious. Again, I thought, What the hell?
I heard one of the refrigerated drawer doors open, the tray inside sliding out. The sound of cloth moving. Silence for a few moments. Then the unmistakable rhythmic beat of a man masturbating. Jesus, I thought. The dead girl. I almost got caught stealing a corpse by a guy jerking off to one. And in the crazy tension of the moment, I had to stifle a fit of hysterical laughter. Then I thought, Well, everyone needs a hobby, and it got worse. All I could do was lie there under the cabinet, choking back laughter, and listen to this guy—a resident, probably, a physician-in-training, a fine, upstanding practitioner of the healing arts and pillar of the community—panting and abusing himself to a corpse. Was it Bismarck who said no one should have to see how laws or sausages are made? It occurred to me the Iron Chancellor had omitted an important third item, and the thought almost did me in again. I clamped my jaw shut and waited, and presently the skin-against-skin sounds of Mr. Hippocratic Oath’s strange self-pleasure quickened, his panting became a moan, the moan itself dissolved into a satisfied groan, and then there was silence again. I heard the sound of cloth moving over cloth, the tray sliding back into the refrigerated drawer, the door closing after it. Then footsteps, the door to the room opening and closing, and footsteps outside, fading and then gone entirely.
I waited about a minute, just in case the guy might have forgotten something and come back for it. When nothing happened, I rolled out, came to my feet, and checked the door again. All clear. I went out, moved the boxes off the wheelchair, pushed it inside, and slid out the yakuza again. He’d been dead for about twenty-four hours, and in cold storage for much of that time, so his rigor mortis was pretty advanced. I spent several minutes flexing the joints until I was able to get the body off the tray and into the wheelchair. As I moved him, for the first time I noticed his back. Shit, he was covered in tattoos. Well, not covered—he was a young yakuza, and apparently only getting started—but still, there was a fair amount of ink. Clearly a yakuza body, not civilian. Okay, nothing I could do about it now. And I supposed the skin ink would be no more problematic than the rigor mortis and lividity and other incongruities that would similarly give up the game if Tatsu weren’t able to hold up his end. I put it out of my mind and focused on the simple if unpleasant job at hand, and within five minutes, I had the body and the wheelchair in the trunk of the rental car. Once I had pulled out and was safely away, the surrealism of the whole tableau hit me again, and I started laughing so hard I almost had to pull over.
I thought about the young doctor in love, a mental description that produced another laughing fit. I was glad I’d only had to overhear the episode; I thought if I’d been forced to witness it, I would have to find a way to bleach my eyes. But on reflection, I was glad to know such things could occur. After all, the hospital morgue had just lost a body, and I wouldn’t have wanted a facility where everything was carefully checked and monitored and confirmed to be the one trying to explain the body’s absence. No, I thought it would be better for the incident to have occurred in a place where at least some of the employees might prefer to disappear a little paperwork rather than report that a body had been misplaced. I imagined recollections might become suitably vague, records difficult to find, chains of custody confused and contradictory. The one constant would be that no one would want to own up to losing a corpse. And why would they have to? After all, who would want to steal one?
As I got closer to Ueno Park, light was creeping into the sky. The improbable craziness of what had just happened faded, and the reality of what was coming next began to weigh increasingly on my mind. Compared to getting and moving the corpse, I didn’t think the next part would be hard. But luck was always a factor. Of course, luck could be managed, but what happened after this would be almost entirely out of my hands. It would all come down to how tightly Tatsu could control the investigation and steer it where it needed to go.
chapter
thirty-six
I parked in a deserted lot near Shinobazu Pond. It was five in the morning, and though the summer sun hadn’t yet made it over the horizon, the sky was now completely light. The area was quiet and empty.
I got the yakuza’s body out of the trunk and situated in the wheelchair, slipped the hat and a surgical mask on him to conceal the mangled mess that had once been his face, and covered him with the blanket I had bought the day before. I closed the trunk and wheeled him into the park. For anyone who happened to be up and about at this hour, I’d look like an attendant from a nearby hospital or convalescent home, kindly taking out an old and rather arthritic ward to watch the sun rise over the lotuses.
At the south end of the pond was a public restroom. I wheeled the yakuza in, dragged him into a stall, locked the door, pulled myself over the top, and wiped down the spots I had touched. Doubtful anyone would be here in the next fifteen minutes or so, and even if someone did come in, there were two open stalls.
I pushed the empty wheelchair back to the car and drove it to a medical clinic near the station, wiping the handgrips before walking away. No one would know who it belonged to or how it got there, but nor would anyone pay it any mind. Eventually, someone would bring it inside and the clinic would appropriate it, or it would be discarded, or stolen, or whatever. Regardless, it wouldn’t be connected with me. The scrubs and lab coat went into a nearby trash bin. Then I returned the car to the rental agency. They were closed, and it was a little unusual for someone to return a vehicle outside business hours, but there was enough space under the door to slide the keys. I got on Thanatos, rode back to the pond, and parked right across from it. I cut the engine, dismounted, and stood there for a moment, just gazing at that beautiful machine. Roman Red and Egret White. I sighed. I patted the gas tank, the seat. I smiled a little, knowing I was being stupid. It was just a motorcycle. I supposed I was turning it into some kind of surrogate, a microcosm of the life I was leaving, a receptacle for all my sorrow and regret. But I couldn’t help it. “Going to miss you,” I said, and turned and walked away.
I headed back to the bathroom and climbed over the stall where I’d left the yakuza, pausing to wipe down the spots I touched. The body was getting warmer, which was good. A non-refrigerated victim would mean one less discrepancy for Tatsu to have to manage. I opened my bag, pulled out some clothes, and dressed him. Underwear, socks, everything. I took off the shoes I was wearing and put those on him, too, taking the new pair for myself. Soles without any scuff marks would have looked strange, and again, the fewer discrepancies Tatsu had to manage, the better. There were going to be enough as it was.
I put my wallet in his pocket, and, smiling grimly now, a folded piece of paper with McGraw’s number on it. I even put my watch on his wrist. I slipped my bag around his shoulder. Everything I owned was inside it. Even the letters from my parents, the fading photographs, everything. All I kept were the gun and some cash. Probably there was some symbolism in that. If so, I was too young at the time to be dissuaded by it.
I stood and looked down at the yakuza, at myself. My heart was beating hard. There was no coming back from this. In a weird way, I felt I really was
about to die, that Ueno Park had become a giant gallows and I was ascending the steps.
I unlatched the stall door with a knuckle, eased it shut behind me, and went to the restroom entrance. The path around the pond formed a C from here, with the restroom at its center. I could see far in both directions. No one was around. I dashed back to the stall, got the yakuza’s arm around my neck and my arm around his waist, and hauled him up. If someone saw us now, I was just helping my stumbling-drunk drinking buddy back to his apartment after an all-night bender. Weak, but probably enough to get me by. But there was still no one around. I heard a Yamanote train pull out of Ueno Station, traffic in the street. Tokyo was waking. I wouldn’t have long to wait.
There was a waist-high metal fence separating the path from the pond. I propped the yakuza against it, his ass on its edge, the balance of his body tipped toward the lotuses, the only thing preventing him from going over my grip on one of his wrists. I took the hat off his head and pulled it low over mine. The surgical mask went into one of my pockets. Then I pulled the last of the Hi Powers from the back of my pants, and waited.
A few minutes later, I saw two old women in track suits walking toward me on the path to my right, apparently out for a little early morning exercise around the pond. I checked left, and was pleased to see an old man with a small dog. I wondered absently what it was about old people that got them up so early. Well, it didn’t matter. The main thing was, they looked like sober, reliable, socially conscious citizens, who no doubt would make good witnesses. Their eyesight might be somewhat in doubt, but I wasn’t worried about them getting too close. They didn’t look like they’d be able to mount much of a chase.
I monitored them with peripheral vision until they were each about twenty-five meters away. Then I raised the gun, pointed it just past the yakuza’s unrecognizable head and out into the lotuses, and held it there for a long, theatrical moment. I fired. The sound was huge and unmistakable in the early morning quiet surrounding the pond. I let go of the yakuza’s wrist and the body tumbled backward into the water with a splash. Several ducks took off from around him, quacking. I kept the gun out for just a moment longer, making sure everyone had time to confirm what they thought they had just heard and seen. Then I glanced furtively left and right, tucked the gun back into my pants, and walked off the path through the bushes and trees, keeping my head down as I moved, trying to look like a criminal.
