Chapter
twenty-nine
Cutting 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 f*cking 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, a*shole. If you weren’t behind it, your source was. Now who f*cking 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 f*cking. 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, a*shole. Your f*cking 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 f*cking 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 F*ck 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.