Chapter
twenty-four
I stopped at a discount store and bought a suit, shirt, and tie; some hair gel; and a pair of reading glasses. Back at the hotel in Ueno, I showered, changed into the suit and tie, and slicked my hair. I popped the lenses out of the glasses and put them on. I looked in the mirror—nothing likely to fool anyone who knew me, but enough to throw off any witness descriptions. The suit alone made me look like someone else. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn one. My father’s funeral, maybe. At my mother’s, I’d been in my military dress uniform.
Not only did the outfit look strange, it also felt uncomfortable. When I’d tried it on in the store, beyond “a suit” I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I realized I was probably making a dozen mistakes in the way I was wearing it now. Was the tie knotted correctly? Should I button the jacket? For anyone with an eye for such things, subtle mistakes could be remembered or otherwise draw attention. It wasn’t good that I was only just realizing this. I was in trouble now, Mad Dog still out there, gunning for me, and I shouldn’t have been playing catch-up with my preparations. I’d been stupid and complacent, like a homeowner who never bothered to buy insurance because nothing bad had ever happened before.
I resolved to never again be unprepared for the shit hitting the fan. I would pay attention to small things—the way people dressed and spoke and walked. The things that made them part of a background environment, or made them stand out against it. I would watch them, try to consciously identify the signs and behaviors that made them who they were, and then imitate and adopt those things as my own. It would be like performing a role, with the preparation a kind of acting school. I’d make it a game, and play it every day.
But that was for later. Assuming I made it to later. For now, I had to work with what I had.
I thought about how I might get close to Mori, how I would do it, how I would get away, how I would try to create distractions. A plan cohered. It was crude, it was ugly, and it was improvised, but given the parameters, I thought it would work. This one didn’t have to look natural, after all. This one could look like anything.
I stopped at another discount store and bought a plain furoshiki—basically, a large bandana. You don’t often see them in Japan these days, as they’ve been largely replaced by plastic shopping bags, but at the time they were widely used to wrap and carry everything—groceries, packages, boxed lunches.
Or, in my case, just a rock.
I rode around until I spotted a road crew doing construction—not something that has ever taken long to find in Tokyo, where make-work collusion between the yakuza and the Construction Ministry has long been a national disease. I parked and hunted around at the edges of the site, away from the workmen, outside the range of the floodlights, until I found what I was looking for. Not a chunk of asphalt or concrete, which might crack under pressure, but a fist-sized stone. This one was just right—maybe twice the size of a billiard ball and considerably heavier. I wrapped it in the furoshiki and drove off to Akasaka.
I parked Thanatos in a crowded lot off Roppongi-dōri, then walked into Akasaka. The air was dense with humidity and the smells of fried soba and beer and yakitori, the hum of conversation and laughter and madcap beeping of pachinko machines and the horns of taxis fighting their way through knots of pedestrians. The buildings on either side were low, many of them still of wood, but I could see how rapidly the area was changing, with five-story structures replacing two-story, and ferroconcrete replacing wood. Each building had an illuminated sign running up its side, advertising clubs and bars and restaurants. The sidewalks were crowded with salarymen out for an evening’s entertainment, couples walking arm in arm on their way to dinner, a few foreign tourists gawking at the spectacle. Hostesses in kimonos and cocktail dresses hurried to work. Touts stood in front of entrances, handing out flyers, calling to passersby. Here and there, the sidewalk was blocked by an illegally parked sedan, the driver waiting for his designated passenger, yakuza or politician or some other VIP, and the crowd would flow around it.
After a few minutes of letting the crowd carry me along, I saw the sign for Higashi West. It was in one of the newer buildings, and on its fifth floor, the highest. The name was spelled out in English, no kanji, no kana—a nod, I supposed, to the cosmopolitan flavor it promised. There was a car at the curb, driver in front, curtained windows in back. Not necessarily Mori’s, of course, but it made me hopeful. If he was here, though, and if this was his car, there would be a very short window between when he left the building and when he entered the vehicle. Not a lot of time to get to him.
I dropped the furoshiki and the rock wrapped inside it in a garbage container, then headed into the building’s vestibule. Three inebriated salarymen got on the elevator with me. I kept my head down and my eyes averted until they exited on the third floor and left me to continue alone to the fifth.
The doors opened to reveal a somewhat gaudy interior—a lot of red velvet and curtains and lace, a caricatured Japanese take on European luxury. The air was heavy with tobacco and Scotch, and someone was crooning Don McLean’s “American Pie,” top of the charts that year, from somewhere within. The decor might not have been to my taste, but this was clearly a high-end club, the women certain to be attractive, charming, educated, and intelligent—and not at all for sale. Though westerners who find entirely natural the idea of paying for sex are simultaneously mystified at the notion of paying for conversation, is the divide really all that wide? It’s not as though a woman in the former circumstance actually wants to sleep with you, or enjoys doing it, any more than a woman in the latter situation relishes your conversation. If one is unnatural, then isn’t the other, as well? Which isn’t to say that sex with a hostess is an impossibility. It just isn’t something that can be purchased for cash. Instead, much as was the case in the geisha houses from which the modern hostess club is descended, a sexual relationship might develop over time, with the right customer, after much extracurricular wooing, and only if the girl wants it.
A Japanese hostess stepped forward to greet me. “Irasshaimase,” she said with a bow. Welcome. She produced an ice-cold oshibori, a damp washcloth, and I wiped my hands and face gratefully.
Before she could lead me to a table, I said, “I’m embarrassed to inform you, but I’m not here to stay. My boss has told me to find him a suitable place to entertain in Akasaka. I’ve heard favorable things about your establishment, but would it be all right if I just took a look for myself? He won’t be satisfied if I don’t.”
The hostess smiled. “Of course. Are you sure we can’t get you anything to drink?”
I smiled back, thinking she was wise to try to earn my gratitude with such a small investment. “No, no, I really don’t want to put you to any trouble. Already from what I can see, I think your club looks most appropriate. Would it be all right though if I were to just…”
She bowed. “By all means, please, feel free.”
I thanked her and walked inside. If Mori wasn’t here, I didn’t know what I would do next time—the “I’m just here for my boss” routine would last only so long.
The place was shaped like an L, with the long end going left from the entrance. I turned into it. There was a short bar and four tables, all occupied. At one of the tables stood the guy who was singing, the microphone partly obscuring his face. Mori? I thought so. Two western hostesses and three Japanese tablemates were laughing and applauding. I moved to the side and looked more closely, matching the face to what I had seen in the file photographs. No question now, it was him. His English was as impressive as his voice, and I was struck by a moment of private irony, the notion that he was singing a song about the plane crash that had killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper—“the day the music died.”
There was a bottle of Suntory whisky on their table, mostly empty. That might have meant they’d been there for a while. On the other hand, a guy like Mori would almost certainly have a bottle-keep—his own paid-for bottle, which the club would store and take out for him. No way to know. I’d just have to wait for as long as it took. The main thing was, he was here. I was never going to get a better chance.
I used the bathroom and headed out, thanking the hostess on the way. She escorted me to the landing and pressed the button for the elevator, waiting for it to arrive and then bowing low until the doors had closed.
I headed back out to the street, searching for the right venue. I had initially assumed I’d just ride the elevator up and down until Mori emerged, but the way the hostess had waited with me suggested this would be a no-go. Weird behavior, and therefore both suspicious and memorable. Not to mention the many opportunities it would give multiple people to see my face.
I looked around. Most of the buildings had exterior stairwells that were used primarily for storage in violation of local fire ordinances, and the Higashi West building was no exception. I supposed I could hang back inside the entrance to the stairwell and maintain a good view of the elevator. But then his back would be to me. I’d have to do something to confirm it was him. Well, I didn’t see a better way.
I retrieved the rock and the furoshiki, rewrapping the cloth so that it only covered half the rock—the half I was holding. I didn’t think the porous stone would take a fingerprint, but I didn’t want to take a chance, either. I ghosted back to the stairway and waited in the shadows. I felt nervous and out of control. Was I really doing this again, so soon after Ozawa and Fukumoto and the other three? But what difference did proximity make? The opportunity was what mattered, and the opportunity was now. I’d lain more ambushes in the jungle than I could count, and reminded myself the only meaningful difference between then and now was the venue. And why shouldn’t I do it? Mori meant nothing to me. Would I pay ten thousand dollars to save his life? Because that’s what I’d be doing, if I walked away now.
Several dozen people came and went while I waited, and each time a group emerged from the elevator, I’d get a pointless adrenaline dump while I tried to assess from behind whether one of them was Mori. I stretched and did light calisthenics to stay limber, switching the cloth-covered rock from one hand to the other, breathing deeply in and out. I reminded myself repeatedly of who I was supposed to be tonight, how I would act, how I wanted this to look to any witnesses and to the police. I was starting to feel exhausted, and had endured so many false alarms, that when a group of three men in identical dark suits emerged from the elevator, it took me a moment to realize from the build and posture of the one in the middle that this was probably him. Shit.
I eased out from the stairwell, getting closer, afraid to commit in case I was mistaken. What light there was came in a pall of yellow from a few inadequate sodium vapor lamps, and the men were mostly in shadow. Good concealment for me, but it made positive ID a bitch, too.
The men had paused in front of the sedan. They were chuckling about something—what, I couldn’t make out. I wanted to circle around the car and come at them from the front so I could get a clear look at his face before I committed. But I was afraid if the timing were bad, he might get into the car before I could close with him.
I was already in character. My heart was pounding and I was juiced with adrenaline. F*ck it. I paused and said in Japanese, “Mori-san? Is that you?”
All three turned, the one in the center slightly more quickly. I saw his face. It was him.
“Yes, I’m Mori,” he said, annoyance in his tone. “Who’s that?”
My heart was slamming harder. I tightened my hand around the cloth-covered rock. I was only three meters away.
I thought I was going to be able to get closer before he would react. But something in my demeanor cued him. He flinched and turned to the rear car door. Grabbed the handle. Started to open it. Everything happening now in slow motion through my adrenalized vision.
“You like f*cking my wife?” I shouted. “You like f*cking my wife?”
He yanked the door open and started to pull himself inside. I grabbed him by the collar with my free hand, hauled him back, and straight-armed the rock into the back of his head. It connected with a satisfying crunch and I felt the rigidity flow out of his body. His companions jumped back, one of them crying out, “Oi!” I barely heard him.
Mori slumped over the trunk. I still had my hold on his collar and used it to drag him face down to the pavement. “You like f*cking my wife?” I screamed again, sounding as hysterical as I felt. I reared up and smashed the rock into the back of his head again. This time, there was nowhere for him to float with the blow, and I heard the crack of his skull opening. I hit him a third time, still screaming. And then again.
I let the rock fall from the furoshiki and took off in the direction I had come from. The whole thing had taken maybe ten seconds. I’d given no one time to react. Maybe the driver would think to try to chase me, but it was a one-way street and he was pointed in the wrong direction. And I thought it would be some time before his companions recovered from their shock, and even then I doubted they’d have the stomach to come after someone who had just done what they’d witnessed. Still, I cut through the first alley I came to, and then a parking lot, and a minute later I was out of Akasaka proper, on quiet, deserted neighborhood streets. I stopped running and made myself walk at a normal pace, my breath heaving in and out of my chest. Relax, I told myself. Relax. You’re a civilian again. Just a normal salaryman. Relax.
I ducked into an alley and let the shakes pass through me. Killing with electricity was better than killing with a gun, and killing with a gun was better than killing with a rock. It was a matter of proximity, and therefore of intimacy. It wasn’t logical—dead was dead, whether brained with a rock or bombed from thirty thousand feet—but it was true. I’d killed at close range in Vietnam and Cambodia, and I reminded myself this was no different—ethically, morally, whatever. I reminded myself that Mori was in the life and knew he was taking his chances, or should have known. But even so, the shakes were bad this time.
The way Mori had reacted had spooked me. He’d seen the violence in my demeanor, the intent. Some of that had been deliberate: I wanted it to look like a brutal crime of passion, barely planned and hastily executed, the antithesis of a detached, professional hit. To bolster that impression, I had played a role, that of enraged, jealous husband, which is what I wanted the witnesses to report and the police to investigate, and playing that role involved making myself feel like the role. But that wasn’t all of it. Some of what Mori had sensed, I thought, was simply a part of who I was. Or, to put it another way, my very presence had warned him of what I was going to do. If he’d been a little faster, or I a little slower, that warning might have made the difference. And it was the same with those chinpira in Ueno. Whether it was overt posturing or subliminal messaging, either way I was inadvertently warning people of what I was about to do, and therefore giving them time to prepare. Was there any upside to that? No, there wasn’t. In the field, if something represents only a cost and no offsetting benefit, you jettison it. I had to find a way to jettison this, too—to control those unconscious, nonverbal signals, retract them, conceal them. There had to be a way to be able to do great violence, ultimate violence, without any outward manifestation ahead of the violence itself. I thought something like that would be rare. Certainly I’d never seen anything like it myself. But if there were a way to acquire it, it would offer significant tactical advantages.
I realized I was distracting myself from the nature of what I had just done by focusing on the tactics. I’d done so many after-action reports after missions that the reflex was now ingrained. I found myself grateful for that.
I left the alley and ditched the glasses in a garbage bin. The furoshiki went into a sewer drain. I scrubbed the slickness out of my hair, loosened the tie, and kept walking. Five minutes later, I was riding Thanatos north on Uchibori-dōri. It was only when I was under the bright lights of the main road that I noticed my sleeve was flecked with blood and gore. It didn’t show up too badly on the dark jacket, but on the white sleeve it was impossible to miss.
Shit. I should have stashed a change of clothes somewhere. How could I have been so stupid?
I pulled over and rolled up my shirtsleeves, just enough so they didn’t show beyond the edges of the jacket. Then I found a public restroom, where I examined myself in a mirror and scrubbed the gore off my hands. At a discount store, I bought a tee shirt and a pair of jeans. None of the costume changes was particularly expensive, but I was far from rich, and between the various props, the nightly hotel rooms, and gas for Thanatos, I was glad I had a load of cash waiting for me back at the hotel, with more on the way.
I stopped in a park and changed into my new clothes, using the tie to wrap the shirt and suit around a rock and sink the whole package into a pond. Doubtful anyone would ever find it; if they did, it would offer no connection to me. Routine forensic DNA analysis was still far in the future.
Back on Thanatos, clean and in my new clothes, I started to feel calmer, more detached. But I was still horrified to consider how much I’d just relied on luck. How well did I really know the areas in which I was operating? Kita Senju might have been another city. And even Akasaka…I knew the main streets, sure, but the alleyways? The hidden passages between and through buildings? And what kind of shape was I in? For the mat, top shape, sure, and if I ever had to use judo to save my life, maybe I’d manage, as I had when Pig Eyes had attacked me at the Kodokan. But what if I had to run, really run? The half a kilometer out of Akasaka had gassed me. What if I’d needed to go farther? Could I have outlasted whoever was chasing me? Probably not. And that wasn’t good.
I needed to game things out better in my head. I needed to take what I’d learned about combat—the mentality, the preparation, the focus—and apply it in life generally. I needed to stop pretending there was some clear dividing line between the military and the civilian, the jungle and the city, war and peace. There wasn’t. Not before, and certainly not now.
I called Miyamoto from a payphone. “It’s done,” I told him in my disguised voice.
“Already?”
For some reason, the comment annoyed me. “How long did you want to wait?”
“I didn’t. I’m just…surprised. That you were able to do it so quickly.”
“I want you to get me the balance of what you owe me tomorrow. Same place, same rules. Place it there at eleven in the morning. Do you understand?”
“Of course. The money will be there. But listen. I’d like to have a way of contacting you. You seem…very professional. I’m sure the people I represent would like to do business with you again.”
I almost said no. But then I thought, What’s the downside?
“I’ll leave you a number where you can reach me,” I said. “In the same place you leave the money, after I retrieve it. Now, repeat back to me how, where, and when you’re going to leave me the balance.”
He did. When he was done, I said, “I know we have a mutual friend. But you should know, if I see anyone trying to make me when I go to retrieve that payment, I will hold you personally accountable.”
“I’m going to place the envelope there myself. As I did last time. No one else will even know where to look.”
I hung up. I didn’t feel great. But I reminded myself that sometimes there’s just what you can do, and what you can’t.
I’d done it. Now I had to live with it.