A Clean Kill in Tokyo (previously published as Rain Fall)

by Barry Eisler

  Strangely, the time my mother took me to the United States from our home in Japan does not represent a dividing line, then or now. I was an outsider in both places, and the move merely confirmed that status. Nor are any of my subsequent geographic ramblings particularly distinct. For a decade after Crazy Jake’s funeral, I wandered the earth a mercenary, daring the gods to kill me but surviving because part of me was already dead.

  I was fighting alongside Lebanese Christians in Beirut when the CIA recruited me to train the Mujahadeen guerillas battling the Soviets in Afghanistan. I was perfect: combat experience, and a mercenary history that allowed for maximum governmental deniability.

  For me, there has always been a war, and the time before feels unreal, dreamlike. War is the basis from which I approach everything else. War is all I really know. You know the Buddhist parable? “A monk awoke from a dream that he was a butterfly, then wondered whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man.”

  At a little after eleven, I heard sounds of movement within Midori’s apartment. Footsteps, then running water, which I took to be a shower. She worked at night, I realized; of course she would be a late riser. Then, shortly before noon, I heard a closing exterior door and the mechanical click of a lock, and I knew she was finally on the move.

  I paid for the two espressos I had drunk and walked out onto Omotesando-dori, where I began to amble in the direction of JR Harajuku Station. I wanted to get to the pedestrian overpass at Harajuku. This would give me a panoramic view, but it would also leave me exposed, so I wouldn’t be able to linger.

  The timing was good. I only had to wait on the overpass for a minute before I caught sight of her. She was approaching from the direction of her apartment building and made a right onto Omotesando-dori. It was easy for me to follow her from there.

  Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, her dark eyes concealed by sunglasses. She was wearing snug black pants and a black V-necked sweater, and walked confidently, with purpose. I had to admit she looked good.

  Enough, I told myself. How she looks has nothing to do with this.

  She was carrying a shopping bag I recognized from the distinctive maple color came from Mulberry, the English leather goods manufacturer. They had a store in Minami Aoyama, and I wondered if she was on her way to return something.

  Midway to Aoyama-dori she turned into Paul Stuart. I could have followed her in, tried for a chance meeting there, but I was curious about where else she was going, and decided to wait. I set up in the Fouchet Gallery across the street, where I admired several paintings that afforded me a view of the street until she emerged, a Paul Stuart shopping bag in hand, twenty minutes later.

  Her next stop was at Nicole Farhi London. This time I waited for her in the Aoyama Flower Market, on the ground floor of the La Mia building. From there, she continued onto a series of nameless Omotesando backstreets, periodically stopping to browse in one of the area’s boutiques, until she emerged onto Koto-dori, where she made a right. I followed her, staying back and on the opposite side of the street, until I saw her duck into Le Ciel Bleu.

  I turned into the Tokyo J.M. Weston shop, admiring the handmade shoes in the windows at an angle that afforded me a view of Le Ciel Bleu. I considered. Her taste seemed mostly European. She eschewed the large stores, even the upscale ones. She seemed to be completing a circle that would take her back in the direction of her apartment. And she was carrying that Mulberry bag.

  If she was indeed on her way to return something, I had a chance to be there first. It was a risk because if I set up there and she went the other way, I would lose her. But if I could anticipate her and be waiting at her next stop before she got there, the encounter would seem more like chance and less like the result of being followed.

  I left the Weston store and moved quickly up Koto-dori, window-shopping as I walked so that my face was turned away from Midori’s position. Once I was clear of Le Ciel Bleu, I cut across the street and ducked into Mulberry. I strolled over to the men’s section, where I told the proprietress I was just looking, and began to examine some of the briefcases.

  Five minutes later, Midori entered the store as I had hoped, removing her sunglasses and acknowledging the welcoming “irrashaimase” of the proprietress with a slight bow of her head. Keeping her at the limits of my peripheral vision, I picked up one of the briefcases as though examining its heft. From this angle, I felt her gaze stop on me and then linger longer than would have been warranted by a casual glance around the store. I gave the briefcase a last once-over, then set it down and looked up. She was still watching me, her head cocked slightly to the right.

  I blinked once, as though in surprise, and approached her. “Kawamura-san,” I said in Japanese. “This is a nice surprise. I just saw you at Club Alfie last Friday. You were tremendous.”

  She evaluated me silently for a long moment before responding, and I was glad my gamble had worked. I sensed this intelligent woman would be cynical about coincidences, and might have suspected, had I come in after her, that she had been followed.

  “Yes, I remember,” she said finally. “You’re the one who thinks jazz is like sex.” Before I could come up with a suitable response, she continued. “You didn’t have to say that, you know. You could try to be more forgiving.”

  For the first time, I was in a position to notice her body. She was slender and long limbed—perhaps a legacy from her father, whose height had made him easy to follow down Dogenzaka. Her shoulders were broad, a lovely counterpart to a long and graceful neck. Her breasts were small, and, I couldn’t help but notice, shapely beneath her sweater. The skin on the exposed portion of her chest was beautiful: smooth and white, framed by the contrast of the black V-neck.

  I looked into her dark eyes, and felt my usual urge to spar dissipate. “You’re right,” I told her. “I’m sorry.”

  She closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. “You enjoyed the performance?”

  “Immensely. I have your CD, and have been meaning to catch you and your trio for the longest time. I travel a lot, though, and this was my first chance.”

  “Where do you travel?”

  “Mostly America and Europe. I’m a consultant,” I said in a tone indicating that my work would be a boring topic for me. “Nothing as exciting as being a jazz pianist.”

  She smiled. “You think being a jazz pianist is exciting?”

  She had a natural interrogator’s habit of reflecting back the last thing the other party had said, encouraging the speaker to share more. It doesn’t work with me. “Well, let me put it this way,” I said. “I can’t remember anyone ever suggesting to me that consulting is like sex.”

  She threw back her head and laughed then, not bothering to cover her open mouth with her hand in the typical Japanese woman’s unnecessarily dainty gesture, and again I was struck by the unusual confidence with which she carried herself.

  “That’s good,” she said after a moment, folding her arms across her chest and conceding a small, lingering smile.

  I smiled back. “What’s today? A bit of shopping?”

  “A bit. And you?”

  “The same. It’s past time for a new briefcase. We consultants have to maintain appearances, you know.” I glanced down at the shopping bag she was carrying. “I see you’re a fan of Paul Stuart. That was going to be my next stop.”

  “It’s a good store. I know it from New York, and was glad when they opened a Tokyo branch.”

  I raised my eyebrows slightly. “Have you spent much time in New York?”

  “Some,” she said with a faint smile, looking into my eyes.

  Damn, she’s tough, I thought. Challenge her. “How’s your English?” I asked, switching from Japanese.

  “I get by,” she said, without missing a beat.

  “You want to get a cup of cawfee?” I asked, staying with English and using my best Brooklyn accent.

  She smiled again. “That’s pretty authentic.”

  “So is the suggestion.”

&nbs
p; “I thought you were going to Paul Stuart.”

  “I was. But that can wait. Do you know the Tsuta coffee house? It’s great. And right around the corner, just off Koto-dori.”

  Her arms were still folded across her chest. “I don’t know it.”

  “Then you’ve got to try it. Koyama-san serves the best coffee in Tokyo, and you can drink it listening to Bach or Chopin, looking out onto a wonderful secret garden.”

  “A secret garden?” she asked, playing for time, I knew. “What’s the secret?”

  I gave her a sober look. “Koyama-san says if I tell you, I have to kill you. So it would be better if you were to see for yourself.”

  She laughed again, cornered but seeming not to mind. “I think I’d have to know your name first,” she said.

  “Fujiwara Junichi,” I replied, bowing automatically. Fujiwara was my father’s last name.

  She returned the bow. “It’s nice to meet you, Fujiwara-san.”

  “Let me introduce you to Tsuta,” I said, smiling, and we headed off.

  The stroll over to Tsuta took less than five minutes, during which we made small talk about how the city had changed over the years, how we missed the days when the boulevard in front of Yoyogi Park was closed to automobile traffic on Sundays and host to a delirious outdoor party of costumed revelers, when the identity of Japanese jazz was being newly forged in hundreds of basement bars and coffee houses, when there was no gleaming new City Hall in Shinjuku and the area was alive with real yearning and romance and grit. I enjoyed talking with her, and knew at some level this was strange, even undesirable.

  We were in luck, and one of Tsuta’s two tables, each of which overlooks the establishment’s secret garden through a single oversized picture window, was open and waiting for us. Alone, I typically enjoy a seat at the counter, where a view of Koyama-san’s reverential coffee preparations is always a wonder, but today I wanted an atmosphere more conducive to conversation. We each ordered the house demitasse, made with an intense dark roast, and sat at right angles to each other, so we could both see the garden.

  “How long have you lived in Tokyo?” I asked, when we were settled in.

  “On and off for my whole life, really,” she said, slowly stirring a spoonful of sugar crystals into her demitasse. “I lived abroad for a few years when I was little, but mostly I grew up in Chiba, one town over. I used to come to Tokyo all the time when I was a teenager, to try to sneak into the live houses and listen to jazz. Then I spent four years in New York, studying at Julliard. After that, I came back to Tokyo. And you?”

  “Same as you—off and on my whole life.”

  “And where did you learn to order coffee in an authentic New York accent?”

  I took a sip of the bitter liquid before me and considered how to answer. It’s rare for me to share biographical details. The things I’ve done, and continue to do, have marked me, just as Crazy Jake said they would, and, even if the mark is invisible to most of the wider world, I’m always aware of its presence. Intimacy is no longer familiar to me. Probably, I sometimes realize with a measure of regret, it is no longer possible.

  I haven’t had a real relationship in Japan since my move into the shadows. There were some faltering dates, perfunctory on my part. Tatsu, and some other friends I no longer see, sometimes tried to set me up with women they knew. But where were these relationships going to go, when the two subjects that most define me were unmentionable, taboo? Imagine the conversation: “I served in Vietnam.” “How did you manage that?” “I’m half-American, you see, a mongrel.”

  There are a few women from the mizu shobai, the water trade, as Japan calls its demimonde, whom I see from time to time. We’ve known each other long enough so that things are no longer conducted on a straight cash basis, expensive gifts instead providing the necessary currency and context, and there is even a certain degree of mutual affection. They all assume I’m married, an assumption that makes it easy for me to explain the subtle security measures in which I engage as a matter of course. And the assumption also renders explainable the suspended, on-again, off-again nature of our relationship, and my reticence about personal details.

  But Midori had a reticence about her, too, a reticence she had just breached in telling me a bit about her childhood. I knew if I failed to reciprocate, I would learn nothing more from her.

  “I grew up in both countries,” I said after a long pause. “I never lived in New York, but I’ve spent some time there, and I know some of the region’s accents.”

  Her eyes widened. “You grew up in Japan and the States?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you come to do that?”

  “My mother was American.”

  I was aware of a slight intensification of her gaze, as she searched for the first time for the Caucasian in my features. It’s still there, if you know what you’re looking for.

  “You don’t look very—I mean, I think you must have inherited mostly your father’s features.”

  “That bothers some people.”

  “What does?”

  “That I look Japanese, but I’m really something else.”

  I remembered for a moment the first time I heard the word ainoko—half-breed. It happened at school, and I asked my father about it that night. He scowled and said only, “Taishita koto jaa nai.” It’s nothing. But pretty soon I got to hear the word from the ijimekko, the school bullies, as they tried to beat the shit out of me, and I put two and two together.

  She smiled. “I don’t know about other people. For me, the intersection of cultures is where things get most interesting.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. Look at jazz. Roots in black America, branches in Japan and all over the world.”

  “You’re unusual. Japanese are typically racist.” I realized my tone was more bitter than I had intended.

  “I don’t know that the country is so racist. It’s just been insular for so long, and we’re always afraid of what’s new or unknown.”

  Ordinarily I find such idealism in the face of all contrary facts irritating, but I recognized that Midori was simply projecting her own good sentiment onto everyone around her. Looking into her dark, earnest eyes, I couldn’t help smiling. She smiled back, her full lips parting, her eyes brightening, and I had to look away.

  “What was it like to grow up that way, in two countries, two cultures?” she asked. “It must have been incredible.”

  “Pretty standard, really,” I said, reflexively.

  She paused, her demitasse halfway to her lips. “I don’t see how something like that could really be ‘standard.’”

  Careful, John. “No. It was difficult, actually. I had a hard time fitting in either place.”

  The demitasse continued upward, and she took a sip. “Where did you spend more time?”

  “I lived in Japan until I was about ten, then mostly in the States after that. I came back here in the early eighties.”

  “To be with your parents?”

  I shook my head. “No. They were already gone.”

  My tone rendered unambiguous the word “gone,” and she nodded in sympathy. “Were you very young?”

  “Early teens,” I said, averaging things out, still trying to keep it vague when I could.

  “That’s terrible, to lose both parents so young. Were you close with them?”

  Close? Though my face bore the stamp of his Asian features, and although he married an American, I believe my father had a typically outsized Japanese focus on race. The bullying I received in school both enraged and ashamed him.

  “Fairly close, I suppose. They’ve been gone a long time.”

  “Do you think you’ll go back to America?”

  “I did at one point,” I said, remembering how I’d gotten drawn into the work it now seemed like I’d been doing forever. “After returning as an adult, I spent ten years here always thinking I would stay just one more and then go back. Now I don’t really dwell on it.”

  “Does
Japan feel like home to you?”

  I remembered what Crazy Jake had told me, just before I did what he asked of me. There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done.

  “It’s become my home, I guess,” I said after a long time. “What about you? Would you want to live in America again?”

  She was gently tapping on her demitasse, her fingers rippling up its sides from pinky to forefinger, and I thought, She plays her moods. What would my hands do if I could do that?

  “I really loved New York,” she said after a moment, smiling at some memory, “and I’d like to go back eventually, even to stay for a while. My manager thinks the band isn’t too far off. We’ve got a gig at the Vanguard in November, that’ll really put us on the map.”

  The Village Vanguard—the Manhattan Mecca of live jazz. “The Vanguard?” I said, impressed. “That’s quite a pedigree. Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, the whole pantheon.”

  “It’s a big opportunity,” she said, nodding.

  “You could leverage that, make New York your base, if you wanted to.”

  “We’ll see. Don’t forget, I’ve lived in New York before. It’s a great place, maybe the most exciting place I’ve ever been. But it’s like swimming underwater, you know? At first you feel as though you could go along forever, seeing everything from this new perspective, but eventually you have to come up for air. After four years, it was time for me to come home.”

  That was the opening. “You must have had indulgent parents, if they were willing to send you abroad for that long.”

  She smiled faintly. “My mother died when I was young—same as you. My father sent me to Julliard. He loved jazz and was thrilled I wanted to be a jazz pianist.”

  “Mama told me you lost him recently,” I said, hearing a flat echo of the words in my ears. “I’m sorry.” She bowed her head in acknowledgment of my expression of sympathy, and I asked, “What did he do?”