by Barry Eisler
So far he hadn’t. But I knew Tatsu. In Vietnam he had understood the fundamentals of counterintelligence at a time when even Agency higher-ups couldn’t put together a simple wiring diagram of a typical VC unit. He had developed operational leads despite his “listen and learn only” purview. He had refused the usual attaché’s cushy life of writing reports from a villa, insisting instead on operating in the field.
His superiors had been horrified at his effectiveness, he had once told me bitterly over substantial quantities of sake, and had studiously ignored the intelligence he produced. In the end his persistence and courage had been wasted. I wished he could have learned from the experience.
But I supposed that was impossible. Tatsu was true samurai, and would continue serving the same master no matter how many times that master ignored or even abused him. Devoted service was the highest end he knew.
It was unusual for the Keisatsucho to be investigating a simple break-in. Something about Kawamura’s death, and his dealings prior, must have attracted Tatsu’s attention. It wouldn’t be the first time I had felt my old comrade-in-arms watching me as though through a one-way mirror, seeing a shape behind the glass but not knowing whose, and I was glad I’d dropped off his radar so many years earlier.
“You don’t have to tell me whether you knew about this,” Harry said, interrupting my musings. “I know the rules.”
I considered how much I should reveal. If I wanted to learn more, his skills would be helpful. On the other hand, I didn’t like the idea of his getting any closer to the true nature of my work. He was getting uncomfortably close already. Tatsu’s name on that report, for example. I had to assume Harry would follow that link, tap into Tatsu’s conspiracy theories, and sense a connection to me. Hardly proof beyond a reasonable doubt, of course, but between them, Harry and Tatsu would have a significant number of puzzle pieces.
Sitting there in Las Chicas, sipping my chai latte, I had to admit that Harry could become a problem. The realization depressed me. Christ, I thought, you’re getting sentimental.
Maybe it was time to get out of this shit. Maybe this time it really was.
“I didn’t know about it,” I said after a moment. “This is an unusual case.” I saw no harm in telling him about the stranger on the train, and did so.
“If we were in New York, I’d tell you it was a pickpocket,” he said when I was done.
“I thought the same thing when I first saw it. But pickpocket would be a piss-poor career choice for a white boy in Tokyo. You have to blend.”
“Target of opportunity?”
I shook my head. “Not too many people are that shameless and cold-blooded. I doubt one of them just happened to be standing next to Kawamura that morning. I think the guy was a Kawamura contact, there for some kind of exchange.
“Why do you suppose the Keisatsucho is investigating a simple break-in in a Tokyo apartment?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, though Tatsu’s involvement made me wonder. “Maybe Kawamura’s position in the government, the recency of his death, something like that. That’s the theory I’d go on.”
He looked at me. “Are you asking me to dig?”
I should have let it go. But I’d been used before. The feeling that it had happened again would keep me awake at night. Had Benny put a B-team on Kawamura? I figured I might as well let Harry provide some clues.
“You will anyway, right?” I asked.
He blinked. “Can’t help myself, I guess.”
“Dig away then. Let me know what else you find. And watch your back, hotshot. Don’t get sloppy.”
The warning was for both of us.
CHAPTER 3
Telling Harry to watch his back made me think of Jimmy Calhoun, my best friend in high school, of who Jimmy was before he became Crazy Jake.
Jimmy and I joined the Army together when we were barely seventeen. I remember the recruiter telling us we would need parental permission to join. “See that woman outside?” he had asked us. “Give her this twenty, ask her if she’ll sign as your mother.” She did. Later, I realized this woman was making her living this way.
Jimmy and I had met, in a sense, through his younger sister, Deirdre. She was a beautiful, black-haired girl, and one of the few people who was nice to the awkward, out-of-place kid I was in Dryden. Some idiot told Jimmy I liked her, which was true, of course, and Jimmy decided he didn’t like a guy with slanty eyes hitting on his sister. He was bigger than I was, but I fought him to a standstill. After that, he respected me, and became my ally against the Dryden bullies, my first real friend. Deirdre and I started dating, and woe to anyone who gave Jimmy a hard time about it.
I told Deirdre before we left that I was going to marry her when I got back. She told me she’d be waiting. “Watch out for Jimmy, okay?” she asked me. “He’s got too much to prove.”
Jimmy and I had told the recruiter we wanted to serve together, and the guy said he would make it happen. I don’t know if he had anything to do with it, in fact he was probably lying, but it worked out the way we’d asked. Jimmy and I did Special Forces training together at Fort Bragg, then wound up in a joint military-CIA program called the Studies and Observation Group, or SOG. The Studies and Observation moniker was a joke, some idiot bureaucrat’s attempt to give the organization a low profile. You might as well name a pit bull Pansy.
SOG’s mission was clandestine reconnaissance and sabotage missions into Cambodia and Laos, sometimes even into North Vietnam. The teams were comprised of LRRPs—an acronym for men specializing in long-range reconnaissance patrols. Three Americans and nine Civilian Irregular Defense Group personnel, or CIDGs. The CIDGs were usually Khmer mercenaries recruited by the CIA, sometimes Montagnards. Three men would go into the bush for one, two, three weeks at a time, living off the land, no contact with MACV, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam.
We were the elite of the elite, small and mobile, slipping like silent ghosts through the jungle. All the moving parts on the weapons were taped down for noise suppression. We operated so much at night that we could see in the dark. We didn’t even use bug repellent because the Viet Cong could smell it. We were that serious.
We were operating in Cambodia at the same time Nixon was publicly pledging respect for Cambodia’s neutrality. If our activities got out, Nixon would have had to admit he’d been lying not just to the public, but to Congress, as well. So our activities weren’t just clandestine, they were outright denied, all the way to the top. For some of our missions we had to travel stripped, with no U.S.-issued weapons or other matériel. Other times we couldn’t even get air support for fear a pilot would be shot down and captured. When we lost a man, his family would get a telegram saying he had been killed “west of Dak To” or “near the border” or some other vague description like that.
We started out all right. Before we went, we talked about what we would and wouldn’t do. We’d heard the stories. Everyone knew about My Lai. We were going to keep cool heads, stay professional. Keep our innocence, really. I can almost laugh, when I think about it now.
Jimmy became known as Crazy Jake because he fell asleep in the middle of our first firefight. Tracer rounds were coming at us from beyond the tree line, everyone was hunkered down, firing back at people we couldn’t see, and it went on for hours because we couldn’t call in air support due to our illegal location. Jimmy said “Fuck it” in the middle of things and took a nap. Everyone thought that was pretty cool, and while they were saying, “You’re crazy man, you’re crazy,” Jimmy said, “Well, I knew everything was jake.” So after that he was Crazy Jake. Outside the two of us, I don’t think anyone ever knew his real name.
Jimmy didn’t just act crazy; he also looked the part. A teenage motorcycle accident had almost cost him an eye, and although the doctors got it back in, they couldn’t get it to align properly, so while he was talking to you Jimmy always looked as though he was watching something off to the side. “Omnidirectional,” he liked to say, with a s
mile, when he would catch someone trying to steal a glance at his wayward eye.
Jimmy had been social enough in high school but got quiet in Vietnam, training constantly, serious about his work. People were afraid of him. Once an MP with a German shepherd confronted Jimmy about some unruly behavior in a bar. Jimmy didn’t look at him, acted like he wasn’t even there. Instead he stared at the dog. Something passed between them, some animal thing, and the dog whimpered and backed away. The MP got spooked and wisely decided to let the whole thing go, and the incident became part of the growing legend of Crazy Jake, that even guard dogs were afraid of him.
But there was nobody better in the woods. He was like an animal you could talk to. He made people uncomfortable with his omnidirectional eye, his long silences. But when the sound of the insert helicopters receded into the distance, everyone wanted him there.
Memories, crowding me like a battalion of suddenly reanimated corpses.
Waste ’em means waste ’em. Num suyn!
There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done.
Let that shit go, I told myself, the refrain white noise familiar. What’s done is done.
I needed a break, and decided to take in a jazz performance at Club Alfie. Jazz has been my haven from the world since I was sixteen and heard my first Bill Evans record, and a haven sounded good at the moment.
Alfie is what’s called a raibu hausu, or live house—a small club hosting jazz trios and quartets and catering to Tokyo’s jazz aficionados. Alfie is the real deal: dark, cramped, with a low ceiling and accidentally excellent acoustics, accommodating only twenty-five people or so and specializing in young artists on the cusp of being discovered. The place is always packed and you need a reservation, a little luxury my life in the shadows doesn’t permit. But I knew Alfie’s mama-san, a roly-poly old woman with thick little fingers and a waddle that had probably once been a swish. She was past the age of flirting but flirted with me anyway, and loved me for flirting back. Alfie would be crowded, but that wouldn’t mean much to Mama if she wanted to make space for one more person.
That night I took the subway to Roppongi, Alfie’s home, running a medium-security SDR on the way. As always, I waited until the station platform had cleared before exiting. No one was following me, and I walked up the stairs into the Roppongi evening.
Roppongi is a cocktail composed of Tokyo’s brashest foreign and domestic elements, with sex and money supplying the concoction its punch. It’s full of Western hostesses who came to Japan thinking they were going to be models but who found themselves trapped in something else, selling risqué conversation and often more to their sarariiman customers, striding along in self-consciously stylish clothes and high heels that accentuate their height, their haughtiness meant to signify success and status but often indicating something closer to desperation; stunning Japanese girls, their skin perfectly salon-tanned, streaked hair worn long and straight down their backs, like the folded wings of some hungry bird of prey, on the make for rich boyfriends who for the promise of sex or simply for the opportunity to be seen with such prizes in public will give them Chanel suits and Vuitton bags and the other objects they crave; swarthy foreigners selling controlled substances that might or might not be what they claim; preposterously elderly female pimps tugging at the elbows of passers-by, trying to get them to choose a “companion” from a photo album; people walking fast, as though they’re going somewhere important, or posing nonchalantly, as though they’re waiting to meet a celebrity; everybody hungry and on the make, a universe of well-adorned predators and prey.
Alfie was to the left of the station, but I made a right as I hit the street, figuring I’d circle around behind it. The party animals were already out, pushing their leaflets in front of me, trying to get my attention. I ignored them and made a right down Gaienhigashi-dori, just in front of the Almond Cafe, then another right down an alley that took me parallel to Roppongi-dori and deposited me behind Alfie. A red Ferrari growled by, a relic of the bubble years, when trophy hunters gobbled up million-dollar Impressionist originals of which they knew nothing and faraway properties like Pebble Beach they had heard of but never seen; when it was said the land under Tokyo was worth more than that of the continental United States; when the newly minted rich celebrated their status in Ginza hostess bars by ordering thousand-dollar magnum after magnum of the best champagne, to be ruined with sugar cubes and consumed in flutes sprinkled with flakes of 14-karat gold.
I cut right on the street and took the elevator to the fifth floor, doing a last 180-degree visual sweep before the doors closed.
Predictably, there was a crowd of people outside the club’s door, which was papered over with posters, some new, some faded, advertising the acts that had appeared here over the years. There was a young guy in a cheap European-cut suit with his hair slicked back standing at the door and checking reservations. “Onamae wa?” he asked me, as I made my way forward across the short distance from the elevator. Your name? I told him I didn’t have a reservation, and he looked pained. To spare him the anguish of explaining that I wouldn’t be able to see the performance, I told him I was an old friend of Mama’s and needed to see her, could he just get her? He bowed, stepped inside, and disappeared behind a curtain. Two seconds later, Mama appeared. Her posture was businesslike, no doubt in preparation for an excruciatingly polite but firm Japanese apology, but when she saw me her eyes crinkled up in a smile.
“Jun-chan! Hisashiburi ne!” she greeted me, smoothing her skirt with her hands. Jun is Mama’s pet name for Junichi, my Japanese first name, bastardized to John in English. I bowed to her formally but returned her welcoming smile. I explained that I just happened to be in the neighborhood and hadn’t had a chance to make a reservation. I could see they were crowded and didn’t want to be a bother…
“Tonde mo nai!” she interrupted me. Don’t be ridiculous! She hustled me inside, dashed behind the bar, and whisked off a shelf the bottle of Caol Ila I kept there. Snatching a glass, she returned to where I was standing and motioned me to a seat at a corner table.
She sat with me for a moment, poured me a drink, and asked me if I was with someone—I don’t always come to Alfie alone. I told her it was just me, and she smiled. “Un ga yokatta ne!” she said. My good luck! Seeing Mama made me feel good. I hadn’t been there in months, but she knew exactly where my bottle was; she still had her tricks.
My table was close to the small stage. The room was shadowy, but a light hanging from the ceiling illuminated a piano and the area just to the right of it. Not a great view of the entrance, but you can’t have everything.
“I’ve missed you, Mama,” I told her in Japanese, feeling myself unwind. “Tell me who’s on tonight.”
She patted my hand. “A young pianist. Kawamura Midori. She’s going to be a star, she’s already got a gig at the Blue Note this weekend, but you can say you saw her at Alfie in the early days.”
Kawamura is a common Japanese name, and I didn’t think anything of the coincidence. “I’ve heard of her, I think, but don’t know her music. What’s she like?”
“Wonderful—plays like an angry Thelonious Monk. And completely professional, not like some of the young acts we book here. She lost her father just a little while ago, poor thing, but she kept her engagement tonight.”
That’s when the name struck me. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said slowly. “What happened?”
“Heart attack one morning, right on the Yamanote. Kawamura-san told me it wasn’t a complete surprise—her father had a heart condition. We have to be grateful for every moment we’re given, don’t we? Oh, here she comes.” She patted me on the hand again and slipped away.
I turned and saw Midori and her trio walking briskly, expressionless, toward the stage. I shook my head, trying to take it all in. I had come to Alfie to get away from Kawamura and everything associated with him, and instead here was his ghost. I would have gotten up and left, but that would have been conspicuous.
And at
the same time there was an element of curiosity, as though I was driving back past the aftermath of a car accident I had caused, unable to avert my eyes.
I watched Midori’s face as she took her post at the piano. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and had straight, shoulder-length hair so black it seemed to glisten in the spotlights. She was wearing a short-sleeved pullover, as black as her hair, the smooth white skin of her arms and neck an arresting contrast beside it. I tried to see her eyes but could catch only a glimpse in the shadows cast by the overhead light. She had framed them in eyeliner, I saw, but other than that she was unadorned. Confident enough not to trouble herself. Not that she needed to. She looked good and must have been aware of it.
I could feel a tension in the audience, a leaning forward. Midori raised her fingers over the keyboard, levitating them there for a second. Her voice came, quiet: “One, two, one two three four,” and then her hands descended and brought the room to life.
It was “My Man’s Gone Now,” a song I knew well from Bill Evans’s Sunday At The Village Vanguard, not one of her own. I like the piece and I liked the way she played it. She brought a vibrancy to it that made me want to watch as well as listen, but I found myself looking away.
I lost my own father just after I turned eight. He was killed by a rightist in the street demonstrations that rocked Tokyo when the Kishi administration ratified the 1960 U.S.-Japan Security Pact. My father had always approached me as though from a great distance when he was alive, and I sensed I was the source of some strain between him and my mother. But my understanding of all that came later. Meanwhile, I cried a small boy’s nightly tears for a long time after he was gone.
