Hard Rain

He dropped to one knee but I didn’t rush in. My gut told me he was faking, again trying to lure me inside, where he could neutralize the greater distance afforded by the baton.

Blood ran down from the side of his head. He looked at me and for a split instant I saw fear sweep across his face like a sheet of driving rain. His feints hadn’t worked and he knew it. He knew I was going to wear him down carefully, methodically, that I wasn’t going to do anything stupid that he could exploit.

His only chance would be something desperate. I circled again and waited for it.

I let him get a little bit closer, close enough to give him hope.

I feinted and dodged, forcing him to move on his ankle. He was panting now.

With a loud kiai he lunged at me, reaching with his free hand, hoping to snag a jacket sleeve and reel me into the knife.

But his ankle slowed him down.

I took a long step back and to the side and snapped the baton down on his forearm. I traded force for accuracy and speed, but it was still a solid shot. He grunted in pain and I took two more steps back to assess the damage. He held his injured arm against his body and looked at me. He smiled.

“C’mon,” he said. “I’m right here. Finish me off. Don’t be afraid.”

I circled again. His taunts meant nothing to me.

“Your friend screamed on the way down,” he said. “He…”

I closed the distance with a single step and thrust the baton into his throat. He raised his injured arm to try to grab it, but I had already retracted it across my body. In the same motion I changed levels, dropping into a squat, and whipped the baton into his leg again. He screamed and crumbled to his knees.

I stepped behind him, away from any possibility of a lunge.

“Did he sound like that?” I snarled, and brought the baton down on his head like a hatchet.

He sank down to his side, then fought to regain his balance. I brought the baton down again. And again. Gouts of blood flew from his scalp. I realized I was yelling. I didn’t know what.

I rained blows down on him until my arm and shoulder ached. Then I took a long step backward and sank down to my knees, sucking wind. I looked over at the dog. It was still.

I waited a few seconds to catch my breath. I tried to jam the baton closed but couldn’t. I looked at it and saw why. The straight steel rod had deformed into a bow shape from what I had done to Murakami.

Jesus. I stood up and dragged his body into the shadows under the awning, next to what was left of his buddy. Dragging him one-armed was a bitch but I managed it. The dog was easier. I took the cell phones out, wiped them down, and dropped them. Ditto for the shades. Last was the baton. I didn’t want to be found walking around with a twenty-six-inch murder weapon bent into the shape of one of the victim’s skulls. I shrugged off the leather jacket I had taken and dropped it on top of the mess.

Some of the buckets near the awning had collected rainwater. I used them to wash the area down and make the blood less obvious. I wiped them for prints when I was done.

Last stop was the front of the building, where I found the cigarette I had spat out before taking out the second guy. I stubbed it out and pocketed the butt.

I walked over to Naomi’s building and pressed a knuckle to her apartment buzzer. A moment later I heard her voice. Her tone was fearful. “Who is it?” she asked.

For a second I couldn’t even remember what I’d told her to call me when I’d first met her at the club. Then I remembered: my real name.

“It’s me,” I said. “John.”

I heard her breathing. “Are you alone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“All right. Just come up. Hurry.”

The door buzzed and I opened it. I kept my head low so that whoever would surely be reviewing the building security tapes later that morning wouldn’t get a good look at my face. I took the stairs to the fifth floor and knocked softly on her door when I got to it.

I saw the light blotted out for a moment behind the peephole. Then the door opened. Her mouth opened wide when she saw me.

“Oh meu deus,” she said, “meu deus, what happened?”

“I ran into them on their way out.”

She shook her head and blinked. “Come in, come in.” I walked into the genkan and she closed the door behind me.

“I can’t stay,” I said. “Someone is going to find them out there soon, and when that happens there are going to be cops swarming all over your neighborhood.”

“Find them…,” she said, then recognition hardened onto her features. “You… you killed them?” She shook her head as though she couldn’t believe it. “Oh merda.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She looked at me. “They came for me at the club tonight. They told me I had to leave with them but wouldn’t say why. I was really scared. They made me take them back here, up to my apartment. Murakami had a dog with him. He told me he would sic it on me if I didn’t do exactly what he wanted.”

She looked at me, afraid, I thought, of what I might be thinking.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Keep going.”

“He told me he knew I’d been seeing you outside the club, that he knew I had a way to contact you. He told me to call you and ask you to come over.”

“He was probably bluffing,” I said. “Maybe the bugs picked it up when you gave me your e-mail address that first night, and he played on that. Or maybe Yukiko sensed something and told him. It doesn’t matter.”

She nodded. “He asked me what language we used when we were together. I told him mostly English. His English isn’t so good, but he told me if he heard anything wrong, anything that sounded like a warning, he would feed me to the dog. He was listening right next to me. I was afraid if I tried to warn you, you might say something back and he would know what I had done. But I tried to tell you, in a way you wouldn’t notice or comment on right away. Did you notice?”

I nodded. “ ‘Would love to,” ’ I said, pronouncing it the way she had.

“Sim. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. I was too scared. He would have known.”

I smiled. “That was perfect,” I said. “It was good thinking. Obrigado.”

I was cradling my wrist in front of me and she looked at it. “What happened to your arm?” she asked.

“Murakami’s dog.”

“Jesus! Are you all right?”

I looked at my forearm. The leather jacket had kept the animal’s teeth from breaking the skin, but the area was purple and badly swollen and I thought something might be broken.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “It’s you I’m worried about. There was a triple murder outside your building just now. As soon as someone finds one of the bodies, which isn’t going to be hard to do, the police are going to subpoena the security tapes from every building in the area. They’ll see you getting escorted by a guy with a white dog, the same white dog that’s getting cold now with its master a few meters from your building. You’re going to have a lot of questions to answer.”

She looked at me. “What should I do?”

“If you get picked up, tell the truth. You won’t want to mention that you opened the door just now-it’ll make you look complicit. But don’t deny that someone came up here and tried to get in. They’re going to see me on the security tapes, although I was careful to hide my face.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“But the police aren’t your real problem. Your real problem is going to be the associates of the men who came here tonight. They’re going to come after you, either for revenge, or as a way to get to me, or both.”

The color drained away beneath her caramel skin. “He would have killed me tonight, wouldn’t he,” she said.

I nodded. “If I had shown up as he hoped, they would have killed me and then eliminated you as a potential witness and loose end. My not showing up made you less of a liability. In their minds, killing you became not worth the trouble. It’s that simple.”