I scrambled out from under him, scared about the noise of the shot. My hand felt numb from the way he had pounded it against the ground. Did I have blood on me? I couldn’t have avoided it entirely, though from what I had seen I thought most of it had exited to my side. I glanced around. I saw no one in the immediate vicinity, and maybe whatever visitors were in the area, saying their prayers and laying their wreaths, would listen for a moment, and then tell themselves it must have been something else. It didn’t matter. I had to get the hell away. I thumbed the safety up on the unfired gun and shoved it back into my pants, held the other under my tee shirt, and started walking fast on shaking legs.
I’d gone maybe twenty feet when I heard a car to my left. I turned just in time to see a black sedan screech to a halt on the access road I was crossing. The driver was pure yakuza—scarred face, punch perm, dark glasses. And in the backseat—
Mad Dog.
I brought out the Hi Power and took aim with a two-handed grip. The driver floored it. There was the sound of burning rubber and wheels spraying pebbles and then he was rocketing straight at me. I pressed the trigger. I’d been aiming at the driver, but the shot went through the windshield dead center—that numbness in my hand was screwing up my aim. I tried to recalibrate and then he was on me. I dove out of the way, breaking into a judo roll and yelling involuntarily as the two pistols bit into my back. I didn’t care—I was just glad the damn things hadn’t seen fit to fire and shoot my ass off.
I came to my feet and had just enough time to fire once more. It hit the trunk, and then the car went around the corner and was gone. If I was lucky, the bullet went through the backseat and drilled Mad Dog. But I didn’t think so—it had hit too far to the other side. And I didn’t think the first shot had hit him, either.
I made my way quickly back toward where I’d originally come in, the baseball cap pulled low, wiping the face paint off with spit and a handkerchief. I kept my head down and stayed on the narrow dirt paths between plots, avoiding the main roads and pedestrian arteries. I couldn’t avoid passing a few people, but between the cap and my averted face, I wasn’t unduly concerned about anyone identifying me for the police.
So Mad Dog had been here—as a spectator, naturally, not a player, the same as at the Kodokan. They’d heard the shot and thought someone had dropped me. Maybe they’d radioed and hadn’t gotten an answer. Regardless, they’d come racing around so Mad Dog could see his trophy, recently stuffed and mounted.
Well, slight miscalculation, asshole
.
I kept moving, my back singing where the pistols had bitten into it. Yanaka Cemetery was large enough to have its own
kōban
, police box, and though I imagined the officers there were more accustomed to helping the newly bereaved locate the plots of loved ones and instructing
hanami
revelers to clean up the garbage disgorged by their picnics, I didn’t want a confrontation. I didn’t want anything at all to get in the way of my finishing Mad Dog. And that lying piece of shit, McGraw. I thought again of what he’d said.
This is a business relationship. You provide some benefit, and you represent a cost
.
You got that right,
I thought
. I do represent a cost. And I’m going to cost you everything
.
chapter
twenty-nine
C
utting through Ueno Park on my way back to the station, I ducked into a public restroom and examined myself in the mirror. I’d done an okay job getting the face paint off, but there was enough residue on my skin to make me look noticeably green around the gills. I scrubbed it off in the sink and wet my hair back. There had been some blood on the green tee shirt, but I’d pulled it off and balled it up, and the navy polo shirt I’d been wearing under didn’t show any blood at all. My back and hand ached but were functional. I got my bag from the locker, dumped the guns in it, tossed the tee shirt in a refuse container in the park, got back on Thanatos, and took off. The gun I’d used to kill the third yakuza I tossed in the river. It was okay—now I had two spares.
After riding west for ten minutes, I realized I was all right, I’d made it. I promptly got the shakes, and had to pull over in a park and wait while they subsided.
Christ, that had been a near thing with Pig Eyes. And with the car after it. I’d been careful, but I’d also been lucky.
And damn, I’d been so close to nailing Mad Dog. If my hand hadn’t been messed up, if I’d had just another second to prepare, if I’d been a little cooler…
It didn’t matter. I was alive. I’d have another chance. I’d
make
another chance.
I went to a payphone and called McGraw. It wasn’t something I’d do now, with the benefit of experience and the understanding that warnings put you at a disadvantage when afterward you have to act. But back then, I was still young. With a temper, as McGraw had been keen to point out. I wanted my hands around his throat, and for the moment, this was the closest I could get.
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?”