by Barry Eisler
They put the call through to him. “Surprised to hear from me?” I said.
“Why would I be surprised?”
Christ, he was cool, I had to give him that.
“I didn’t think you’d expect me to walk away from Yanaka.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There was a whole fucking yakuza team. They knew exactly where I’d be and when I’d be there.”
There was a pause. “What happened?”
“Who told you Mad Dog was going to be there today?”
“I told you, son, sources and—”
“Don’t call me son. And don’t give me any more bullshit about sources and methods. I’m not just going to take you down, McGraw. I’m going to take you out.”
Another pause. “You want to watch what you say. Son.”
“This was a setup, asshole. If you weren’t behind it, your source was. Now who fucking told you Mad Dog was going to be there?”
“I don’t like your tone.”
“Yeah, well I don’t like your face, but I don’t waste time whining about it. Now I’m going to ask you one more time. You don’t want to answer, it’s fine, I’ll know exactly what it means. Who. Was your fucking. Source.”
Another pause. For the first time since I’d met him, I felt McGraw was flailing. He was stalling for time. Trying to come up with the right lie. It would have to be persuasive. Consistent. Intriguing enough for me to follow…maybe to yet another setup.
“It was Mad Dog.”
“Mad Dog?”
“Yeah. He must have known I’d tell you. I guess he’s got a bug up his ass. You did kill his cousin. I should have seen it coming. My fault. I’m sorry.”
“You know Mad Dog well enough for him to share his daily calendar with you, but the best you could do with that file was, ‘Here, I think you can find him in Tokyo’?”
I knew I had him with that. I’d put him off balance and then swept his legs out from under him.
I thought he was going to come up with some increasingly desperate bullshit to try to explain. Instead, he laughed. “Like I said. Not ineducable. Christ, what a waste. You, a bagman. You should have considered my offer.”
“Why? Why’d you do it?”
“I’ve said too much over the phone as it is. You want to hear more, let’s sit down over a drink and discuss this like civilized men.”
“That’s the problem, McGraw. I’m not civilized.”
“You name the place. It can be anywhere you want.”
“I’ll tell you where the place is going to be, asshole. Your fucking blind side. Get used to checking it.”
“What are you going to do, hotshot, kill me? It’s not enough you have the yakuza on your ass, you want the CIA, too? What are you, superman? Use your fucking head.”
“I’ll see you soon, McGraw. You better try to see me first.”
I hung up, breathing deeply. I was seething, and not just at McGraw. As the conversation had gone on, I’d wondered what benefit I’d achieved in calling him. None that I could think of, other than whatever short-term rush you get from adolescent posturing. And what cost? I’d warned him I was coming. Well, not that he wouldn’t have known it anyway, but still, what was the upside?
And his offer of a get-together. Why had I rejected that? I could have used it. I’d been more invested in saying Fuck you today than in killing him tomorrow. What sense did that make?
Relax. No harm done. You can call him back, tell him you were just angry, you’ve thought it over and you want to meet. Sure, he’ll think it’s a setup, but he’d think that anyway.
That made me feel a little better. And besides, maybe it would be useful to hear him out. If there were a way it could be done safely, I could learn something, even if it was just by reading between the lines of his lies. I was in a bad spot, and more than anything I needed intel. But I had no good way of getting it. I considered Miyamoto, but didn’t know if I could trust him, or whether he would have a clue anyway. He was just another bagman; why would anyone have ever told him anything? And Mad Dog was inaccessible, and everyone else I’d touched had turned to dead. I was flying blind. And there was no one who could help me see.
I thought of the girl, Fukumoto’s mistress. She would know something. She’d been close enough with Fukumoto to be in his house, but was also working for the opposition to have him killed. But I had no way to get to her. She might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. What was I going to do, drive around the city, hoping to spot her in her pretty yellow Porsche?
But you know the plate—that jikōshiki green. Shinagawa, 1972.
Yeah, but what the hell could I do with that? I had no way of tracking it down.
You don’t. But Tatsu does. For the National Police Force, looking up a license plate number would be about the easiest thing in the world.
Son of a bitch. I thought I’d been nearly out, but maybe I had a way back into the game.
chapter
thirty
I called Tatsu from another payphone. He picked up with a typically brusk, “Hai.”
“It’s me, Rain.”
There was a pause. “Rain-san. I was beginning to think something happened to you.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve just been a little…overwhelmed.”
“Everything all right?”
“More or less. I have a favor to ask, though.”
“Name it.”
“If I gave you a license plate number, could you tell me who owns the car and where I can find her?”
There was a pause. “That would be illegal.”
Coming from Tatsu, it wasn’t a protest. More an aside.
“Tell you what,” I said. “Get me the information, and I’ll buy the beer.”
“That sounds like a good deal for at least one of us.”
I laughed. It really was good to hear his voice. I gave him the number, then said, “Where would you like to go? I’m treating, so pick something good.”
“How about Shinsuke, in Yushima? I haven’t had good izakaya food in a while. Do you know it?”
“No, but I’m sure I can find it.”
“I’ll meet you there at five o’clock tonight. This way, I can get home at a reasonable hour. My wife is very strict.”
I couldn’t help smiling at this, knowing it was nothing but bluster from a guy who damn well wanted to get home to his wife, and to the two young daughters his face lit up over anytime he talked about them. It just would have been unseemly for a Japanese cop to admit he would rather have been home with his family than out drinking with his nakama, his buddies.
I picked up a change of shirt, pants, and underwear, bought a rest at a random love hotel to shower, then spent an hour at a coin-operated laundry washing my clothes. When I was done, I headed over to Yushima.
I had no reason to distrust Tatsu, and in fact I trusted him as much as I trusted anyone. Still, I thought I should discontinue my practice of punctuality, and be in the habit of showing up at places early. So I got to the restaurant at four o’clock. It didn’t open until five—but that was okay. I strolled the neighborhood, a salt-of-the-earth part of Shitamachi with a relaxed, low-key atmosphere and a surfeit of old-fashioned eateries and watering holes. Along the way, I stopped at Yushima Tenmangu, a sizeable Shinto shrine famous for its plum trees and dedicated to Tenjin, the kami of learning. It was a popular place for students from nearby Tokyo University to pray before exams, and it seemed fitting that I did so now myself, given how much I was trying to learn and how little time I had to do it. And given what it would mean if I failed to pass the final.
I returned to Shinsuke at five o’clock. Tatsu was just getting there, too, his shoulders rolling, his head jutting forward the way it did when he walked, as though someone had him on a leash and he was fighting it. From the white shirt and tie, he might have been a salaryman, but there was a toughness to Tatsu, and a tenacity, that read like something else. We bowed and shook hands, and I clapped him on the shoulder.
There was something so Japanese about Tatsu it made me feel American by comparison.
Shinsuke turned out to be an old-school akachōchin izakaya, a classic place, not a chain. It looked like it had been there for a while—a long wooden counter, the men behind it in traditional cotton yukata robes; nothing but locals talking, reading, laughing, creating a nice, low hubbub of conversation you didn’t have to shout over; a great selection of classic pub food. We ordered small plates of sashimi and karaage chicken and agedashi tofu; tomato and asparagus salads; a couple large bottles of beer, enough to get us started but probably insufficient to accompany the entire meal.
We each filled the other’s glass, toasted, and drank deeply. “The information we talked about,” Tatsu said. “Will you tell me why you need it?”
Small talk was never going to be Tatsu’s forte. I made a face of exaggerated hurt. “I haven’t seen you in months, and that’s it? No ‘How are you?’ No ‘How’ve you been?’”
He nodded as though accepting a rebuke he had heard many times before. “How are you?”
“Fine, thanks for asking. You?”
“Busy. What are you doing these days? Have you found work?”
For a moment, I wondered if maybe I would have been better off without the small talk. Was his question innocent? Or was he suggesting he might have suspicions about my activities that he would prefer, for the sake of our friendship, to avoid? Tatsu was more subtle than I—though I supposed that wasn’t saying much—and I sometimes had trouble reading him.
“No, nothing really. I’m dating someone, though.”
He raised his eyebrows. “It sounds serious.”
“I barely mentioned it.”
“You wouldn’t have mentioned it at all otherwise.”
I laughed. Tatsu couldn’t stop being a cop, even when it was just reflex.
“Yeah, it is kind of serious, I guess. She’s…pretty special. We’ll see. How about you? How’s your wife, your daughters…?”
He beamed. “Very fine, very fine. I’m fortunate they put up with me.”
Though it’s slackening a bit in more modern times, the custom in Japan is to say something mildly disparaging about one’s spouse or children, even in response to a compliment, lest one seem unduly proud. But the closest Tatsu could come to adhering to the niceties was to say something disparaging about himself. It was touching.
“I think they’re very lucky to have you.”
He shook his head and turned away to take a sip of his beer. I smiled. Had I managed to embarrass him?
The food arrived and we dug in. It was delicious, and I had no trouble understanding why Tatsu liked the place.
“Anyway,” he said, around a mouthful of chicken, “I was asking if you might tell me why you need the information you asked for.”
He could have given me the information before asking the question. That he hadn’t suggested there might be a quid pro quo.
I took a swallow of beer. “Are you asking as a friend, or as a cop?”
“As long as I don’t hear about anything illegal, we’re just two friends, enjoying an evening at an izakaya.”
I smiled. This was about as obvious as Tatsu ever got. He was telling me to feel free, short of any outright confessions.
“I’m in a bit of a jam. I think the girl knows who’s behind it, and why.”
“Did you…do something to hurt someone’s feelings?”
I laughed. Tatsu had seen me get up in a few faces back in the day. “It wouldn’t be the first time, right?”
“This jam…how serious is it?”
“I’ve faced worse.”
“What you’ve faced has left many better men dead. How serious?”
“Pretty serious.”
“Can I help?”
“The information on the girl is all I need.”
He nodded as though considering that, then dipped a slice of maguro in soy sauce, chewed and swallowed it, and washed it down with beer. “If you’re mixed up with the yakuza, I don’t think a little information from the motor vehicles department is going to be enough.”
I looked at him, appalled by his instincts. “Why do think it’s yakuza?”
“Surely you’ve heard? Hideki Fukumoto, the head of the Gokumatsu-gumi, was gunned down at his home in Denenchofu the other day, along with three associates. And today three Gokumatsu-gumi soldiers were killed while visiting his grave.”
That “surely you’ve heard” felt uncomfortably dry to me. “Yeah. The papers were speculating about some kind of turf war, Vietnamese gangs or something like that.”
He enjoyed some of the tomato salad and drank a bit more beer. Was he trying to make me sweat? Finally he said, “This doesn’t feel like Vietnamese to me. Those gangs are fearsome, but impulsive. And fundamentally small-time. This feels like a decapitation strike. Regardless, whoever is involved, I believe they’re no more than a cat’s paw for someone more intelligent and ambitious. I expect they’re being duped, and, when they’re no longer useful, will themselves be eliminated.”
Well, it wasn’t particularly flattering from my perspective, but he had the broad outlines right.
“Decapitation strike…you mean the son is in charge now that Fukumoto is dead?”
“That is my understanding.”
“But why would you think I was mixed up in any of that?”
He shrugged. “The woman whose license plate number you gave me. She is a known associate of Fukumoto Junior. A girlfriend.”
My throat went dry. Here I’d been thinking I was being so smooth, yet I’d handed Tatsu everything he needed to put the pieces together. I took a sip of beer, realizing as I did so that Tatsu would probably read it as nervousness. Christ, no wonder I’d been avoiding him. The life I was in and friendship with a cop was too dangerous a combination.
But he told you how he knew of the yakuza connection, right? A cop wouldn’t do that. A cop would have held back, seen what else he might elicit, what lies he could trap you in.
That was true, and somewhat reassuring. Though still, he had held back, to some extent. He could have told me earlier in the conversation. Instead, he’d waited to see if I would talk more, say something incriminating, before showing his hand. A classic interrogation technique. I had to be careful.
“That is a hell of a coincidence,” I managed.
“Indeed. So much so, I feel no need to inquire into your whereabouts at the times of these killings.”
I took another swallow of beer and let out a long breath. He was telling me he wasn’t going to press it further, that we were all right. But…Jesus.
I cleared my throat. “So…you think the dupes who did it will find a way to survive what they’ve gotten themselves mixed up in?”
He looked grave. “I wouldn’t bet on it. If they would listen, I would advise them to run.”
“Run from the yakuza?”
“They would have to run far.”
“They probably would, if they thought they could. If they thought it would work. But maybe they feel they need to finish what’s been started.”
He sipped his beer. He knew I would tell more if I wanted to. And maybe he hoped I would another time, if not tonight. Was that the quid pro quo? We were friends; he would prefer not to ask directly. And it would be rude for me to make him.
“So that thing at Fukumoto’s grave today,” I said. “You think that was what, someone trying to finish the Fukumotos’ control over the Gokumatsu-gumi?”
“I’d be more interested in your theories.”
I’m sure you would. “The truth is, I’m flying blind. If I had a theory worth a damn, I’d tell you, but so far I don’t know more than what’s been reported in the news. Of course, if I learn more, I’ll tell you.”
He looked at me and nodded once as though to say, Deal. “I think this is about control, yes, though control over what or by whom I don’t know. And I think whoever killed Fukumoto Senior knew or anticipated that his son would be at Yanaka today. Either the i
nformation was faulty, or the son got away. The son denies having been there, but I don’t believe him.”
I’d been hoping he would know more, but it seemed he was going on even less than I had. “What do your superiors think?”
He laughed. “A turf war with the Vietnamese. Always the most comforting, conservative, conventional view.”
I could have mentioned the CIA payments, my role as a bagman, McGraw—those were important pieces, and maybe if Tatsu had them, he could combine them with whatever other information he held and provide me with some actionable intel. But I couldn’t do it. Telling a Keisatsucho cop about CIA payments to the LDP…it was too big, too explosive. I wasn’t going to put myself in the middle of something like that. I did consider asking him about Ozawa. Something like, Hey, hypothetically, what if that guy who died at the sentō in Kita-Senju weren’t accidental? But it felt too risky. A bunch of dead gangsters was one thing, but if Tatsu suspected I had killed the sōmukaicho of the LDP, that would probably be a bridge too far. It wasn’t just my concern about my own skin, though of course that was part of it. I also didn’t want to put him in a position where he would so starkly have to choose between giri and ninjō—duty, and human feeling. And besides, it seemed he didn’t know that much anyway. I decided to hold questions about a possible Ozawa-Fukumoto connection in reserve, for an emergency. First I’d see what I might get from Mad Dog’s girlfriend.
Although he hadn’t handed that information over yet, had he? I wondered what he was waiting for, what I was missing.
We spent a while commiserating about his frustrations at having to kowtow to a bunch of cerebrally challenged higher-ups, and finished the meal with ochazuke rice and plum sherbet for dessert. When we were done, I paid, and we headed out.
The sun was down, but the air was still radiant with the residual heat of the buildings, streets, and sidewalks. I smelled skewered chicken and onion roasting over briquettes at a street stall yakitoriya on the corner next to us, dripping fat sizzling on the fire. From somewhere down the street, a man was karaoke-crooning to accompanying cries of approval and delight—the signature sounds of a sunaku, a tiny neighborhood bar. From the second floor of the tiny wooden house across from us came the distinctive crack! of a dozen shinai, the bamboo practice swords used in kendo, accompanied by as many war cries, the house practically shaking with the simultaneous violence of the kendōka’s distinctive stomping attack. An old man in a blue yukata shuffled past us, probably on his way to the neighborhood sentō, his wooden geta clop-clopping on the pavement. The Yamanote train’s arrival bells pealed from nearby Ueno Station, like an aria underpinning it all. Tokyo nocturnes, I thought, and couldn’t help but smile at this city I loved no matter how I tried not to.
