John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories

by Barry Eisler

  I had no doubt the pensioners who had been walking toward me, stunned and in disbelief, would hurry over and check the water. They would see a body in it. They would call the police and describe what they had just witnessed: a man, shooting another man point-blank in the face and then fleeing on foot. Tatsu was waiting for that call, and knew roughly when to expect it. He would be the first to arrive. The water and muck would somewhat conceal the discrepancies I was worried about, at least to any casual observers, and Tatsu would have to handle the rest. The victim, he would discover, had no next of kin, and even if he did, the injuries to his face would make identification difficult. His identity would have to be confirmed by what was found in his pockets, and in the bag around his shoulder, and by the motorcycle key he was carrying and the motorcycle itself, registered in Tokyo, parked close by. The dead man was named John Rain, and the only clue to what happened to him would be a phone number in his pocket. A phone number Tatsu, as lead investigator, would naturally call, so that he could question the person on the other end of it. Did you know the victim? What was your relationship? Why was he carrying your phone number? Where were you when he was gunned down?

  Of course, McGraw would claim to have no knowledge of me, and insist he had no idea why I would be carrying his phone number. No one would be able to prove otherwise, or even be much inclined to try, given his diplomatic immunity and likely connections. On top of which, I knew he’d have an alibi. After all, he had known there was going to be a murder in Ueno early this morning, and he was a careful man, a thorough man. Still, the pucker factor he would feel under Tatsu’s penetrating cop gaze and pointed questioning would help blind him to the real reason he was being interviewed: to provide unimpeachable, official police confirmation that I was dead. After which, he could rest easy. He would have no way of knowing news of my death had been greatly exaggerated.

  Not until I told him myself.

  chapter

  thirty-seven

  I called McGraw and told him it was done.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Entirely sure.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful. I’ll just need independent confirmation. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Confirmation wasn’t part of our bargain.”

  He cleared his throat. “It was an implicit part. Look, I’m talking about just a few hours, I don’t think it’ll take me longer than that. And then we can meet and I’ll pay you what you’re owed.”

  I smiled. I knew he would come back to insisting we meet. Wanting his own killer for hire was the motivation. The leverage he had as the party holding the money was the opportunity.

  “A meeting was also not part of our bargain.”

  There was a pause. It was fascinating to see a slightly different aspect of his persona in play. He’d always treated me like a punk. This new guy, he respected. Maybe even feared.

  “Then we’ll change our bargain, all right? Listen, I could use someone like you. You have nothing to worry about from me. It sounds like you did a good job and I’ve got others like it if you’re interested. This could be a lucrative relationship. But I’m not going to do that with someone who’s no more than a faceless voice on the other end of a telephone.”

  I waited a long moment, as though struggling with my doubts. Then I said, “Where?”

  “Zōshigaya Cemetery. Do you know it?”

  I smiled again. “Can you spell that?”

  He did. And told me to meet him there in the northwest corner at four o’clock that afternoon. It was enough to give me déjà vu.

  “Let me say this,” I told him. “I don’t like the way you have modified our agreement but I have acceded to your wishes. If after my accommodation, you fail to show up with my money at the appointed place and at the appointed time, you won’t hear from me again. Do you understand what that means?”

  There was a pause. “I understand fully.”

  I hung up, smiling grimly. I thought of the monk I had seen at Zenpuku-ji Temple. It had never occurred to me before, but I wondered where they bought their robes. Well, a logical place would be Nakamise-dōri, the dense shopping arcade leading to Sensō-ji, Tokyo’s largest Buddhist temple.

  I rode the subway to Asakusa, feeling hobbled, trying not to miss Thanatos. I had no trouble finding what I needed—in fact, there were dozens of stores selling more than I reasonably could have hoped for. I thought I could probably get away with no more than the kesa robe, which would conceal whatever I was wearing underneath. But I sensed that if I did so, I wouldn’t feel the part, I would still carry myself as a civilian. So I bought everything—not just the outer garments, but the special underclothes, too, and the slippers and split-toe socks. I would have preferred footwear better suited to pursuit and evasion, but reasoned that part of what made Buddhist monks move like Buddhist monks was what they were wearing on their feet.

  I stopped at an electronics shop and bought a barber’s electric clipper. Then I went to a love hotel, shaved my head, changed into my Buddhist garb, and looked at myself in the mirror. I was pleased—it looked pretty genuine. The shaved head and the robe were so associated with monks, I thought the combination would work almost as a trigger, temporarily overriding any discrepancies. When I left, I sensed a few raised eyebrows at my monkish passage from such a den of earthly pleasures, but Japan is nothing if not a polite society, and no one said a word.

  I took the Ginza line back to Ueno, changed to the Yamanote, then rode to Ikebukuro, where I stashed my bag in a coin locker, keeping only the Hi Power. If Buddhist monks had designed their kesa robes specifically for concealed carry, they couldn’t have done any better. I could have been hiding a bazooka under the excess material, and I doubted anyone would have noticed so much as a bulge.

  I didn’t think McGraw was going to arrive quite as early as usual, knowing as I did that he would first be spending a few uncomfortable hours being interviewed by some of Tokyo’s finest. Still, I wanted to be there first. I walked from Ikebukuro, came in at the northwest entrance, and headed southeast, insects buzzing, crows calling raucously from the trees, the sun beating down on my freshly shaved scalp. I was surprised at how much the genuine clothes made me feel like a monk. I would remember that—that the details mattered, not just in how you looked, but in how you felt, in the kind of unconscious vibe you emanated and that people might key on one way or the other. The only reminder that I was here for something other than the lighting of incense and prayers for the dead was the Hi Power tucked into my waistband and concealed beneath the robes. There was another monk in the cemetery, along with a few other visitors, but thankfully he seemed as happy to avoid me as I was him. It was one thing to look like a monk to a casual observer. It would be quite another to sound like one to someone who knew better.

  McGraw didn’t show until nearly three-thirty, and I had to suppress a smile when I saw him—Tatsu must have been grilling him pretty hard. He came in through the southeast exit, just as I had expected. And why not? It wouldn’t be good tradecraft to show up exactly at the designated meeting point without first reconning the area from another direction. He walked right by me, not twenty feet away, carrying one of the bags we had used for our exchanges, and looked right at me—but utterly failed to make the connection. The shaved head, the clothes, the context, his conviction that I was dead—it all served to obscure his ordinarily acute powers of perception. That, and maybe he was feeling stressed about not getting here as early as he would have liked for a meeting with a demonstrably dangerous person he knew almost nothing about, a person who made him nervous.

  “McGraw,” I said, as he passed my position.

  He stopped and turned. Maybe he thought he’d heard wrong. Maybe he thought, Clever, my new assassin disguised himself as a monk. Whatever it was, it occupied enough of his brain’s processing power to keep him standing there, looking confused, while I walked toward him. When I was ten feet away, he realized. His mouth dropped open and his ruddy face went white. His body tensed as though i
n preparation for flight. I shook my head, showed him the Hi Power, then slipped it back beneath my robe.

  “What is it, McGraw? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” A little corny, but it was so perfect.

  “I…How…”

  “No. I’ll ask all the questions. You’ll provide all the answers. Tell me now if you have a problem with that. I’ll put a bullet in your head right here and save myself some time.”

  He swallowed. “There’s no problem. I just—”

  “Open the bag and show me what’s inside. Slowly.”

  He did. The bag was stuffed with hundreds, just like it was when I used to pick it up from him for delivery to Miyamoto, a thousand years earlier.

  “Now set it down. Slowly. Good. Step away from it. Good. Now lift your shirt. Keep it up. Good. Now turn all the way around. Slowly. Good. Now lift your pants legs. Good.”

  When I was satisfied he was unarmed, I picked up the bag. “Now walk. I’ll be right behind you. Be forthcoming in your responses to my questions. I’m not going to make any big speeches. If I get bored, I’ll shoot you and leave you here among all the famous people whose graves you used to photograph. Are we clear?”

  He nodded and started walking.

  “I have to tell you,” he said over his shoulder. “This was a beautiful play. Christ, but I underestimated you. You realize this makes you even more valuable to me, don’t you? You’re a ghost now, you can go anywhere, do anything. Invisible. Deniable. Name your price, you’re obviously worth it and I’m not going to haggle with you.”

  “You set me up, didn’t you? Those chinpira in Ueno. That was you. To dupe me into killing Ozawa and Fukumoto Senior.”

  “Yes, that’s true. I won’t deny it. At the time, I didn’t realize how capable you are. How valuable. They were supposed to rob you and put you in the Agency’s debt. They were incompetent, though. I should have expected that, with Mad Dog running the show.”

  “Then why did Mad Dog try to have me killed right afterward, at the Kodokan?”

  “Because you killed his cousin. I told you, he’s a fuck-up. Like the cousin you killed. A hothead, like you used to be, before you started to wise up.”

  “If Mad Dog is so lame, why are you working with him? Why would you want him in charge of the Gokumatsu-gumi?”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to tell you about. If you’d just listened to me earlier when I tried to call you off Mad Dog, we could have done business. I never wanted any of this to happen.”

  I didn’t respond, and he went on. “All right, the program. It’s not that complicated, really. It’s just a way of channeling money from American corporations to Japanese decision makers—the people who can ensure the American corporations get the contracts they want, and that the U.S. government gets the policies it needs.”

  I smiled, liking the way silence seemed to draw him out. I might have thanked him for teaching me the technique.

  “Decision makers…”

  “That’s right. You know Japan. The government, the corporations, the yakuza…they’re all just different limbs attached to the same body.”

  “And you wanted to cut off some of the limbs?”

  “Not cut off. Replace, with something better.”

  “You told me Ozawa was charging too much. And Fukumoto, too?”

  “No, that was just a convenient story because you insisted on knowing why I wanted Ozawa killed. What you need to understand now is that the opposite is true. They were taking too little. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t, so I said nothing. After a moment, he went on. “The problem was, the old guard was too conservative. They felt they were making enough and didn’t want to rock the boat by demanding more. Even though I encouraged them.”

  “Why would you encourage them to demand more?”

  “Because if there’s more for them, there’s more for the Agency—and we need the goddamn money. Look around you. Communist China’s next door. So is Communist North Korea. That was my war, son, and we lost thirty-four thousand men just for a goddamn stalemate. And Vietnam is going to fall, too, now that Nixon’s pulling out the last combat troops. Fifty-eight thousand American lives, and we’re outright going to lose this time, it won’t even be a draw. Do you understand? Communism is more dangerous than ever, and the politicians who left you high and dry in Vietnam are pretending that just because we got a bloody nose or a couple of barked shins we don’t have to fight it anymore, they can just cut all our funding so they can build rural electrification plants in Appalachia or whatever it is they do to buy votes these days. So yeah, we need this funding, the politicians aren’t giving it to us, and the taxpayer doesn’t want to cough it up either, because they’re misinformed and they don’t trust the clusterfuck politicians who lost in Vietnam. Can’t really blame them for that, but that’s the state of play.”

  “So you want to be able to skim off the corporate bribes the CIA is funneling to Japanese politicians. To create…a slush fund.”

  “If you want to call it that, yes.”

  “With you in charge.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just here in Japan?”

  He glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you were smarter than I thought. Of course not just Japan. This thing can be taken global. Hell, it already is global, but small time. It can be expanded. I want you to help me expand it.”

  “By killing people who don’t get what you’re trying to do?”

  “What would you prefer? That we invade another country and lose another fifty or sixty thousand men?”

  “Are those really our only alternatives?”

  “Apparently so. Look, there’s a lot of money out there, if we can work with people with the imagination to ask for it and divide it equitably.”

  “You mean kickbacks to you.”

  “Not kickbacks, partnerships. I’m offering a way to grow the pie. The recipients keep more, and I keep more.”

  “Embezzling from graft, is that it?”

  “Jesus, are you just trying to insult me? I’m creating a covert action fund, all right? The fund is necessary, and on balance, my means are pretty benign. I know some operators who are trying to make ends meet by smuggling heroin into the United States. You probably knew some of them, too, in Vietnam. This is better.”

  “Even if I agreed to be part of this, how would you call off Mad Dog?”

  He glanced back at me, his eyes bright with hope. “Leave Mad Dog to me. He depends on me. I can manage him. Anyway, he thinks you’re dead, remember?”

  “What about the girl in the wheelchair?”

  “She’ll be fine. She only mattered as a conduit to you.”

  “So you did know about her. And you were okay with it.” I brought out the Hi Power.

  He realized he’d slipped. “Look, I didn’t want to. It was Mad Dog’s idea.”

  “I thought you said you could manage him.”

  “I can. I’m sorry for what happened. Let’s wipe the slate clean, all right? This is a different set of circumstances than before. I know how valuable you are now. And you know how important the program is.”

  “Did you know about Takizawa, too? Mad Dog’s girlfriend?”

  “Don’t get all sanctimonious on me now, Rain, all right? You’re no different than me. You got yourself in a jam and were more than willing to kill your way out of it, remember?”

  I thought of Tatsu. “It’s about having limits. I have them. You don’t.”

  “Limits? Please. Killing Mad Dog and his father was your goddamn idea, even if I did lead you to it. And you didn’t hesitate when I told you you’d have to take out another guy who didn’t even have anything to do with it.”

  “They were principals. Not bystanders.”

  “That was a happy coincidence. You’re making a virtue of a necessity.”

  “So you did know about the girlfriend.”

  “Respectfully, son, I think you’re focusing on the wrong things h
ere.”

  “Am I?”

  He must have felt it in my tone. He stopped and turned to me. He saw the Hi Power and went white. “Now listen to me. Don’t revert to being a hothead now, okay? You don’t think I’m protected? You don’t think I share the wealth with people back home?”

  “You think that means they have your back? They won’t stick their necks out once you’re gone. They’ll just find a new business partner. Costs and benefits and all that.”

  “Yes, they do, they do have my back.”

  He was flailing now. I found it deeply satisfying.

  “Besides,” I said. “I’m dead now, remember? You said it yourself. I can do anything.”

  He licked his lips. “Is this about the girl in the wheelchair? Look, I’m sorry for that. I didn’t realize you were that close.”

  “Then why did you and Mad Dog threaten her? She wouldn’t have seemed any use to you if you didn’t know I cared for her.”

  He held out his hands, beseeching. “Look, son, you’ve got it all wrong. If you’ll just listen to me, we can—”

  “I told you. Don’t call me son.”

  His hands started to come up in an instinctive and futile flinch. I raised the Hi Power and pressed the trigger. The pistol jumped in my hand. The crack of the shot was loud among the gravestones. A small hole appeared in McGraw’s forehead. His mouth dropped open and his eyes turned in, then his body crumbled to the ground.

  I put the Hi Power back beneath the robe, and walked away at a dignified, monkish pace. I glanced around. A few visitors were looking about, wondering what they had just heard. But when all they saw was a harmless monk, they went back to setting out flowers, and lighting incense, and saying their prayers for the dead.