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

by Barry Eisler

  I thought of Tatsu and his conspiracy theories, my eyes unblinking behind my shades.

  “Honma lasted two weeks. He was found hanged in an Osaka hotel room, with notes addressed to his family, company, and others nearby. His body was quickly cremated, without an autopsy, and the Osaka police ruled the death a suicide without even conducting an investigation.”

  I knew these details well. Hearing Bulfinch recite them wasn’t making me particularly comfortable.

  “And Honma wasn’t an isolated event. His death was the seventh ‘suicide’ among ranking Japanese either investigating financial irregularities or due to testify about irregularities since 1997, when the depth of bad loans affecting banks like Nippon Credit first started coming to light. There was also a member of parliament who was about to talk about irregular fund-raising activities, another Bank of Japan director who oversaw small financial institutions, an investigator at the Financial Supervision Agency, and the head of the small and medium financial institutions division at the Ministry of Finance. Not one of these seven cases resulted in so much as a homicide investigation. The powers that be in this country don’t allow it.”

  These were also matters with which I was intimately familiar.

  “There are rumors of a special outfit within the yakuza,” Bulfinch said, taking off his glasses and wiping the lenses on his shirt, “specialists in ‘natural causes,’ who visit victims at night in hotel rooms, force them to write wills at gunpoint, inject them with sedatives, then strangle them in a way that makes it appear the victims committed suicide by hanging.”

  “Have you found any substance to the rumors?” I asked.

  “Not yet. But where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

  He held his glasses up above his head and examined them, then returned them to his face. “And I’ll tell you something else. As bad as the problems are in the banks, the Construction Ministry is worse. Construction is the biggest employer in Japan—it puts rice on one out of every six Japanese tables. The industry is by far the biggest contributor to the LDP. If you want to dig out this country’s corruption, construction is the place to start. Your father was a brave man, Midori.”

  “I know,” she said.

  I wondered if she still assumed the heart attack had been from natural causes. The building was starting to feel warm.

  “I’ve told you what I know,” Bulfinch said. “Now it’s your turn.”

  I looked at him through the shades. “Can you think of any reason Kawamura would have gone to meet you that morning but not brought the disk?”

  Bulfinch paused before saying, “No.”

  “The plan that morning was definitely to do the handoff?”

  “Yes. As I said, we’d had a number of previous deep background meetings. This was the morning Kawamura was going to deliver the goods.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t get access to the disk, couldn’t download whatever he was going to download that day, and that’s why he was coming empty-handed.”

  “No. He told me over the phone the day before that he had it. All he had to do was hand it over.”

  I felt a flash of insight. I turned to Midori. “Midori, where did your father live?” Of course I already knew, but couldn’t let her know that.

  “Shibuya.”

  “Which chome?” Chome are small subdivisions within Tokyo’s various wards.

  “San-chome.”

  “Top of Dogenzaka, then? Above the station?”

  “Yes.”

  I turned to Bulfinch. “Where was Kawamura getting on the train that morning?”

  “Shibuya JR Station.”

  “I’ve got a hunch I’m going to follow up on. I’ll call you if it pans out.”

  “Wait just a minute—” he started to say.

  “I know this isn’t comfortable for you,” I said, “but you’re going to have to trust me. I think I can find that disk.”

  “How?”

  “As I said, a hunch.” I started to move toward the door.

  “Wait,” he said again. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No.”

  He took me by the arm and said again, “I’ll go with you.”

  I looked at his hand on my arm. After a moment it drifted back to his side.

  “I want you to walk out of here,” I told him. “Head in the direction of Omotesando-dori. I’m going to get Midori someplace safe and follow up on my hunch. I’ll be in touch.”

  He looked at Midori, clearly at a loss.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “We want the same thing you do.”

  “I don’t suppose I have much choice,” he said, looking at me with a glare that was meant to convey resentment. But I saw what he was really thinking.

  “If you try to follow me,” I said, my voice low, “I will not react as a friend.”

  “For God’s sake, tell me what you’re thinking. I might be able to help.”

  “Remember,” I said, gesturing to the street, “the direction of Omotesando-dori. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  “You’d better be,” he said. He took a step closer and looked through the shades and into my eyes, and I had to admire his balls. “You just better.” He gave a nod to Midori and walked through the glass doors of the Spiral Building and out onto the street.

  Midori looked at me and asked, “What’s your hunch?”

  “Later,” I said, watching him through the glass. “We need to move now, before he gets a chance to double back and follow one of us. Let’s go.”

  We walked out and immediately flagged a cab heading in the direction of Shibuya. I could see Bulfinch, still walking in the other direction, as we got in and drove away.

  We got out and separated at Shibuya JR Station. Midori headed back to the hotel while I made my way up Dogenzaka—where Harry and I had followed Kawamura on a morning that now seemed so long ago, where, if my hunch was right, Kawamura had ditched the disk the morning he died.

  I was thinking about Kawamura, about his behavior that morning, about what must have been going on in his mind.

  More than anything else he’s scared. Today’s the day; he’s got the disk that’s going to flush all the rats out into the open. It’s right there in his pocket. It’s small and almost weightless, but he’s intensely aware of its presence, this object he knows will cost him his few remaining days if he’s caught with it. In less than an hour he’ll meet Bulfinch and unload the damn thing, and thank God for that.

  What if I’m being followed right now? he would think. What if they find me with the disk? He starts looking over his shoulder. Stops to light a cigarette, turns and scans the street.

  Someone behind him looks suspicious. Why not? When you’re hopped up on fear, the whole world is transformed. A tree looks like an NVA regular down to the details—the dark uniform, the Kalashnikov. Every guy in a suit looks like the government assassin who’s going to reach into your pocket, take out the disk, and smile as he raises the pistol to your forehead.

  Get rid of the damn thing, you might decide in a near panic, and let Bulfinch retrieve it himself. Anywhere, anywhere at all… there, the Higashimura fruit store, that’ll do.

  It wouldn’t have been a bad idea. In fact, they should have used a dead drop instead of a handoff to begin with. But these guys were amateurs, not pros.

  I stopped outside the store’s small door and looked at the sign. This was where he had ducked into that morning. If it wasn’t here it could be anywhere. But if he had unloaded it on his way to see Bulfinch, this was the place.

  I walked in. The proprietor, a short man with defeated-looking eyes and skin the hue of a lifetime of tobacco, looked up and acknowledged me with a tired “irrashaimase,” then went back to reading his manga. The store was small and rectangular, and the proprietor had a view of the whole place. Kawamura would have been able to hide the disk only in places where a patron could acceptably put his hands. He would be moving quickly, too. As far as he was concerned, it would only need to stay hidden for an hour or so, anyway, s
o he didn’t have to find an incredibly secure spot.

  Which meant it was probably already gone, I realized. It wouldn’t still be here. But I had nothing else to go on. It was worth a try.

  Apples. I had seen an apple rolling out of the train car as the doors had closed.

  There was a selection of Fujis, polished and beautiful in their netted Styrofoam blankets, at the farthest corner of the store. I imagined Kawamura strolling over, examining the apples, slipping the disk under them as he did so.

  I walked over and looked. The bin was only a few apples deep, and it was easy for me to search for the disk simply by moving around the apples, as though I was trying to select just the right one.

  No disk. Shit.

  I repeated the drill with the adjacent pears, then the tangerines. Nothing.

  Damn it. It had felt right. I had been so sure.

  I was going to have to buy something to complete the charade. I was obviously a discriminating buyer, looking for something special.

  “Could you put together a small selection as a gift?” I asked the owner. “Maybe a half-dozen pieces of fruit, including a small musk melon.”

  “Kashikomarimashita,” he answered with a wan attempt at a smile. Right away.

  As he went about carefully assembling the gift, I continued my search. In the five minutes during which the proprietor was preoccupied with my request, I was able to check every place to which Kawamura would have had access that morning. It was useless.

  The proprietor was just about finished. He pulled out a green moiré ribbon and wrapped it twice around the box he had used, finishing it in a simple bow. It was actually a nice gift. Maybe Midori would enjoy it.

  I took out some bills and handed them over. What were you hoping for, anyway, I thought. Kawamura wouldn’t have had time to hide it well. Even if he tried to ditch it in here, someone would have found it by now.

  Someone would have found it.

  He was counting out my change with the same slow approach he had employed in creating the fruit basket. Definitely a careful man. Methodical.

  I waited for him to finish, then said, “Excuse me. I know it’s not likely, but a friend of mine lost a CD in here a week or so ago and asked me to check to see if anyone had found it. It’s so unlikely that I hesitated to bring it up, but…”

  “Un,” he grunted, squatting behind the counter. A moment later he stood, a generic plastic jewel box in his hand. “I wondered whether anyone would claim this.” He wiped it with a few listless strokes of his apron and handed it to me.

  “Thank you,” I said, vaguely surprised. “My friend will be happy.”

  “Good for him,” he said, and his eyes filmed over again.

  CHAPTER 15

  At first light the whole of Shibuya feels like a giant sleeping off a hangover. You can still sense the merriment, the heedless laughter of the night before, you can hear it echoed in the strange silences and deserted spaces of the area’s twisting backstreets. The drunken voices of karaoke revelers, the unctuous pitches of the club touts, the secret whispers of lovers walking arm in arm, all are departed, but somehow, for just a few evanescent hours in the quiet of early morning, their shadows linger, like ghosts who refuse to believe the night has ended, that there are no more parties to attend.

  I walked, in the company of those ghosts, following a series of alleys that more or less paralleled Aoyama-dori, the main artery connecting Shibuya and Aoyama. I had gotten up early, easing out of the bed as quietly as I could to let Midori sleep, and had taken the disk to Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronics Mecca, where I tried to play it on a PC in one of the enormous, anonymous computer stores. No dice. It was encrypted.

  Which meant I needed Harry’s help. The realization wasn’t comfortable: given Bulfinch’s description of the disk’s contents—that it contained evidence of an assassin or assassins specializing in natural causes—I knew what was on the disk could implicate me.

  I called Harry from a payphone in Nogizaka. He sounded groggy, and I figured he’d been sleeping, but I could feel him become alert when I mentioned the construction work going on in Kokaigijidomae—our signal for an immediate, emergency meeting. I used our usual code to tell him I wanted to meet at the Doutor Coffee Shop on Imoarai-zaka in Roppongi. It was near his apartment, so he would be able to get there fast.

  He was already waiting when I arrived twenty minutes later, sitting at a table in back, reading a paper. His hair was matted down on one side and he looked pale. “Sorry to get you up,” I said, sitting across from him.

  He shook his head. “What happened to your face?”

  “Hey, you should see the other guy. Let’s order some breakfast.”

  “I think I’ll just have coffee.”

  “You don’t want eggs or something?”

  “No, just coffee is good.”

  “Sounds like it was a rough night,” I said, trying to imagine what that would consist of for Harry.

  He looked at me. “You’re scaring me with the small talk. I know you wouldn’t have used the code unless it was something serious.”

  “You wouldn’t forgive me for getting you up otherwise,” I said.

  We ordered coffee and breakfast and I filled him in on everything that had happened since the last time I saw him, beginning with how I met Midori, through the attacks outside her apartment and mine, the meeting with Bulfinch, the disk. I didn’t tell him about the previous night. I just told him we were using a love hotel as a safe house.

  Looking at him there, feeling his concern, I realized I trusted him. Not just because I knew that, operationally, he had no way to hurt me, which was my usual reason for extending some minimal measure of trust, but because he was worthy of trust. Because I wanted to trust him.

  “I’m in a bit of a tight spot here,” I told him. “I could use your help. But… you’re going to need to know some fairly deep background first. If that’s not comfortable for you, all you need to do is say so.”

  He reddened slightly, and I knew it meant a lot to him that I would ask for his help, that I needed him. “It’s comfortable,” he said.

  I told him about Holtzer and Benny, the apparent CIA connection.

  “I wish you’d told me earlier,” he said when I was done. “I might have been able to do more to help.”

  I shrugged. “The less you know, the less I have to worry about you.”

  He nodded. “Typical CIA outlook.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “No, no. Remember, I worked at the Puzzle Palace. It’s the Agency types who turn paranoia into a point of pride. Anyway, why would I want to hurt you?”

  “Just being careful, kid,” I said. “It’s nothing personal.”

  “You saved my butt that time in Roppongi, remember? You think I’d forget that?”

  “You’d be surprised what people forget.”

  “Not me. Anyway, has it occurred to you how much I’m trusting you by letting you share this information with me, letting you make me a potential point of vulnerability? I know how careful you are, and I know what you’re capable of.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I said, concerned and not showing it.

  He looked at me for a long time before he responded. “I’ve kept your secrets for a long time. I’ll continue to keep them. Fair enough?”

  I underestimated you, I thought.

  “Fair enough?” he asked again.

  “Yes,” I said, not having anywhere else to go. “Now, let’s work the problem. Start with Holtzer.”

  “Tell me more about how you know him.”

  “Not right after I’ve eaten.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  I shrugged. “I knew him in Vietnam. He was with the Agency then, attached to SOG, a joint CIA-military Special Operations Group. He’s was tough, I’ll give him credit for that—grew up on the streets of South Boston, and he wasn’t afraid to go into the field, unlike some of the other bean counters I worked with out there. I liked tha
t about him when I first met him. But even then he was nothing but a careerist. The first time we locked horns was after an ARVN—Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the South’s army—operation in Military Region Three. The ARVN had mortared the shit out of a suspected Vietcong base in Tay Ninh, based on intelligence from a source that Holtzer had developed. So we were involved in the body count, as a way of verifying the intelligence.

  “The ARVN had really pounded the place, and it was hard to identify the bodies—there were pieces everywhere. But there were no weapons. I told Holtzer this didn’t look like Vietcong activity to me. He says, ‘What are you talking about? This is Tay Ninh, everyone here is Vietcong.’ I say, ‘Come on, there aren’t any weapons, your source was jerking you off. There was a mistake.’ He says, ‘No mistake, there must be two dozen enemy dead.’ But he’s counting every blown-off limb as a separate body.

  “Back at base, he writes up his report and asks me to verify it. I told him to fuck off. There were a couple officers nearby, out of earshot but close enough to see us. It got heated, and I wound up laying him out. The officers saw it, which is exactly what Holtzer had wanted, though I don’t think he bargained for the rhinoplasty he needed afterward. Ordinarily that kind of thing wouldn’t have aroused much attention, but at the time there was some sensitivity to the way Special Forces and the CIA were cooperating in the field, and Holtzer knew how to work the bureaucracy. He made it sound like I wouldn’t verify his report because I had a personal problem with him. I wonder how many subsequent S&D operations were based on intelligence from his so-called fucking source.”

  I took a swallow of coffee. “He caused a lot of problems for me after that. He’s the kind of guy who knows just which ears to whisper in, and I’ve never been good at that game. When I got back from the war I had some kind of black cloud over me, and I always knew he was the one behind it, even if I couldn’t catch him pulling the strings.”