Hard Rain

After the encore, Grace moved to the bar. People began to get up to thank her, perhaps to have her sign the CDs they had brought, then to move on to whatever else the night had in store for them.

When the people next to us had departed, Tatsu turned to me. “Retirement doesn’t suit you, Rain-san,” he said in his dry way. “It’s making you soft. When you were active, I couldn’t have tracked you down like this.”

Tatsu rarely wastes time on formalities. He knows better, but can’t help himself. It’s one of the things I’ve always liked about him.

“I thought you wanted me to retire,” I said.

“From your relationship with Yamaoto and his organization, yes. But I thought we might then have the opportunity to work together. You understand my work.”

He was talking about his never-ending battle with Japanese corruption, behind much of which was his nemesis Yamaoto Toshi, politician and puppet master, the man who had suborned Holtzer, who for a time had been my unseen employer as well.

“I’m sorry, Tatsu. With Yamaoto and maybe the CIA after me, things were too hot. I wouldn’t have been much good to you even if I’d wanted to be.”

“You told me you would contact me.”

“I thought better of it.”

He nodded, then said, “Did you know that, just a few days after the last time we saw each other, William Holtzer died of a heart attack in the parking garage of a hotel in suburban Virginia?”

I remembered how Holtzer had mouthed the words I was the mole… I was the mole… when he thought I was going to die. How he had set me against my blood brother, Crazy Jake, in Vietnam, and gloated about it afterward.

“Why do you ask?” I said, my tone casual.

“Apparently, his death came as a surprise to people who knew him in the intelligence community,” he went on, ignoring my question, “because Holtzer was only in his early fifties and also kept physically fit.”

Not physically fit enough for three hundred and sixty joules from a modified defibrillator, I thought.

“It just goes to show you, you can’t be too careful,” I said, taking a sip of the twelve-year-old Dalmore I was drinking. “I take a baby aspirin myself, once a day. There was an article about it in the Asahi Shimbun a few years ago. Supposed to dramatically reduce the chances of heart problems.”

He was silent for a moment, then shrugged and said, “He was not a good man.”

Was this his way of telling me he knew I did Holtzer but didn’t care? If so, what was he going to ask in return?

“How did you hear about all this?” I asked.

He looked down at the table, then back at me. “Some of Mr. Holtzer’s associates from the CIA’s station in Tokyo contacted the Metropolitan Police Force. They were less concerned about the fact of his death than they were about the ma

I said nothing.

“They wanted the assistance of the Metropolitan Police Force in locating you,” he went on. “My superiors informed me that I was to offer full cooperation.”

“Why are they coming to you for help?”

“I suspect that the Agency has been tasked with trying to eliminate some of the corruption that is paralyzing Japan’s economy. The United States is concerned that if the situation worsens, Japan’s finances could collapse. A ripple effect, and certainly a global recession, would follow.”

I understood Uncle Sam’s interest. Everyone knew the politicians were focused more on ensuring that they got their share of graft from rigged public works and yakuza payoffs than they were on resuscitating a dying economy. You could smell the rot from afar.

I took another sip of the Dalmore. “Why do you suppose they’d be interested in me?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps revenge. Perhaps as part of some anticorruption effort. After all, we know Holtzer was issuing intelligence reports identifying you as the ‘natural causes’ assassin behind the deaths of so many Japanese whistle-blowers and reformers. Perhaps both.”

Just like Holtzer, I thought. Getting credit for the intelligence reports while using the subject for his own ends. I remembered how he had looked when I left him slumped and lifeless in his rent-a-car in that suburban Virginia parking garage, and I smiled.

“You don’t seem terribly concerned,” Tatsu said.

I shrugged. “Of course I’m concerned. What did you tell them?”

“That, so far as I knew, you were dead.”

Here it comes, then. “That was good of you.”

He smiled slightly, and I saw a bit of the wily, subversive bastard I had liked so much in Vietnam, where we had met when he was seconded there by one of the precursors of the Keisatsucho.

“Not so good, really. We’re old friends, after all. Friends should help each other from time to time, don’t you agree?”

He knew I owed him. I owed him just for letting me go after I’d ambushed Holtzer outside the naval base at Yokosuka, despite all the years he’d spent trying to ferret me out previously. Now he was putting the Agency off my scent, and I owed him for that, too.

The debts were only part of it, of course. There was also an implicit threat. But Tatsu had a soft spot for me that kept him from being too direct. Otherwise, he would have dispensed with all the win-win, we’re old pals bullshit and would have just told me that if I didn’t cooperate he’d share my current name and address with my old friends at Christians In Action. Which he could very easily do.

“I thought you wanted me to retire,” I said again, knowing I’d already lost.

He reached into his breast pocket and took out a manila envelope. Placed it on the table between us.

“This is a very important job, Rain-san,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask for this favor if it weren’t.”

I knew what I would find in the envelope. A name. A photograph. Locations of work and residence. Known vulnerabilities. The insistence on the appearance of “natural causes” would be implicit, or delivered orally.

I made no move to touch the envelope. “There’s one thing I need from you before I can agree to any of this,” I told him.

He nodded. “You want to know how I found you.”

“Correct.”

He sighed. “If I share that information with you, what would stop you from disappearing again, even more effectively this time?”

“Probably nothing. On the other hand, if you don’t tell me, there’s no possibility that I would be willing to work with you on whatever you’ve got in that envelope. It’s up to you.”

He took his time, as though pondering the pros and cons, but Tatsu always thinks several moves ahead and I knew he would have anticipated this. The hesitation was theater, designed to convince me afterward that I had won something valuable.

“Customs Authority records,” he said finally.

I wasn’t particularly surprised. I had known there was some risk that Tatsu would learn of Holtzer’s death and assume I had been behind it, that if he did so he would be able to fix my movements between the time he last saw me in Tokyo and the day Holtzer died outside of D.C., less than a week apart. But killing Holtzer had been important to me, and I had been prepared to pay a price for the indulgence. Tatsu was simply presenting me with the bill.

I was silent, and after a moment he continued. “An individual traveling under the name and passport of Fujiwara Junichi left Tokyo for San Francisco last October thirtieth. There is no record of his having returned to Japan. The logical assumption is that he stayed in the United States.”

In a sense, he did. Fujiwara Junichi is my Japanese birth name. When I learned that Holtzer and the CIA had discovered where I was living in Tokyo, I knew the name was blown and no longer usable. I had traveled to the States to kill Holtzer under the Fujiwara passport and then retired it, returning to Japan under a different identity that I had previously established for such a contingency. I had hoped that anyone looking for me might be diverted by this false clue and conclude that I had relocated to the States. Most people would have. But not Tatsu.