Chapter
thirty-four
I picked up my bag from the locker at Tokyo Station, tossed the gun I’d used to kill the driver into the Sumida River, then spent the night at a love hotel in Shinjuku, wanting to be far away from the scene of the latest crime. I made sure there were no streetwalkers in the neighborhood, and parked Thanatos far away. I barely slept. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sayaka. She didn’t know the first thing about protecting herself, not from something like this, and even if she did, what could she have done? Yes, I was pretty sure they would bide their time with her, waiting to see whether the threat they’d established would be sufficient to get me to walk right into whatever ambush they had in store. But still, I couldn’t know any of that. I couldn’t be certain. So I was gambling, gambling with Sayaka’s life. But I didn’t know what else I could do. I told myself again and again that this was the least worst option. And tried not to imagine anything beyond that.
I went out early the next morning, and took a walk around Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park. The pond, with a circumference of about two kilometers, had three sections, one of which—called the Lotus Pond for reasons impossible to miss upon even a casual glance—was in the summer almost completely covered with giant lotus plants. Here and there, in those areas where the lotuses were less thick, ducks and other migratory birds swam and fed, and enormous, listless carp glided along, nudging at the mud, searching for whatever carp subsist on. I was glad to see the area was fairly empty in the early morning hours—on summer evenings, it could be crowded. There were a few dog walkers; some pensioners doing Tai Chi; an apparent nature photographer with a camera on a tripod. I examined the area carefully, trying to imagine everything, anticipate everything. If I could make it work, I decided, this was the spot.
When I was satisfied with my preparations, I went to a payphone and called McGraw, this time as myself. I told him I’d gotten his message.
“I’m glad you called,” he said. “Look, you know me. You know my values. Maybe they’re not good values, but they’re consistent. And like I’ve been telling you, for me, this is business. I made a bad business call, and now I’m trying to make it right.”
“Business? That’s what you call threatening a girl in a wheelchair?”
“What are you talking about?”
Was he playing dumb? Or had that been Mad Dog, acting on his own? No way to know, at least for now. I decided to drop it. “What do you want?”
“Look, I know you’re pissed and that’s understandable. But if you act on that, you’ll be doing something dangerous, probably suicidal. I’m not threatening you, just telling you the facts. Whereas, if you can set that temper aside and look at the situation dispassionately, you’ll see that what I’m offering you has a huge upside. More flexibility than what you’ve been doing, and ten times the money, maybe more. We each have something the other could use. I don’t understand why you would just walk away from that.”
I noticed he wasn’t calling me son anymore. Yeah, well, now he was trying to flatter and lull me, not keep me in my place. He might not have thought I was ineducable, but he must have still thought I was dumb.
“What are you proposing?” I said, playing along.
“Just meet me. I’ll tell you all about the program, and how you fit into it. You name the place. I’d suggest someplace public, where we’ll both feel comfortable, but other than that, your call.”
Sure, something public. As though that would make a difference. As though the assassin you think you just hired to take me out would find a few patrons in a restaurant a meaningful impediment.
What McGraw didn’t realize was that I wanted something public. But for my reasons, not his.
“How about Shinobazu Pond?”
“Sure, that would be fine. Where specifically?”
“You know the Benten Shrine, on Benten Island? Right in the center.”
“Of course I do.”
“I’ll meet you there tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock.”
“That would be fine. I’ll look forward to it.”
“If I see any yakuza, they better finish me this time.”
“There won’t be any yakuza, or anyone else. This is just you and me.”
I hung up. So far, so good.
My next call was to Tatsu. He’d offered to help me beyond just getting me Kei Takizawa’s information, and I was going to have to take him up on it. “Hey,” I said, when he picked up. “It’s me again.”
There was a pause that made me decidedly uncomfortable. “Why are you calling me?”
I went from decidedly uncomfortable to distinctly on edge. “What do you mean?”
“Kei Takizawa was murdered in her apartment early this morning.”
I felt gut-punched. “Oh, f*ck.”
“This time, I’m going to need you to explain your whereabouts.” His voice was cold.
“Damn it, Tatsu. I told her to call you. I told her not to go back to her apartment.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Can you meet right now? I’ll tell you everything.”
Twenty minutes later, we were walking around the pond. I told him what had happened the night before. I told him where I’d stayed, and that the clerk would probably remember me.
“That’s not necessary,” he said. “Forgive me for doubting you. I should have known…you wouldn’t do something like this.”
I wasn’t as certain as he was. But weirdly, I wanted to deserve his confidence.
“I wouldn’t and I didn’t. But I should have known she wouldn’t listen to me. She was out of her mind and told me she didn’t want to go to the cops because most of them are in bed with the yakuza. I should have called you myself and told you to pick her up.”
He sighed. “Well, she was scared, but she wasn’t stupid. Remind me, why do you think Fukumoto Junior had her killed?”
This part was delicate. “She told me Mad Dog is the one who had his old man killed, and that he used her to help make it happen. It sounds like this was just a case of tying up loose ends.”
We walked in silence for a moment. “I don’t think you’re lying to me, Rain-san. But your truth is like the lotuses on this pond. Captivating, certainly, but more than anything they conceal what lies beneath.”
I glanced out at the lotuses, then at him. “That was unusually poetic of you.”
He nodded. “An early morning flight of fancy. Was it inaccurate?”
“All right. I’ll tell you what I know. And then I’m going to ask you another favor. A slightly larger one than last time.”
So I told him. I elided what needed eliding, but he got the drift. Miyamoto I left out entirely, claiming I knew nothing about my bagman counterpart, which would have been expected in any event. Not many bagmen would be stupid enough—or, as it had turned out, fortunate enough—to have struck up the kind of friendship and trust I had with Miyamoto. Naturally, I told him nothing about the service I had performed for Miyamoto, or about my involvement in any of the other killings. He would intuit and suspect much of it, of course, but he’d already told me that as long as I confessed to no crimes, we had an understanding.
“This is potentially explosive,” he said when I was finished. “The CIA, bribing Japanese politicians?”
“I think they conceive of it more as ‘political assistance’ or whatever than as bribes.”
“I’m sure they do. What kind of proof do you have of any of this?”
I had a feeling he would ask. “Virtually none. It’s all done with cash and through cutouts. And before you ask me to go in undercover, number one, the answer is no, and number two is, I’m blown anyway. They’re all after me.”
“All because of the incident at Ueno? Those chinpira who jumped you?”
He knew it was bullshit. And he could sense the rest. But I wasn’t going to confirm anything.
“As far as I know.”
We walked in silence again. The sun was up now, and it was beginning to get hot. There were more people around, more sounds of traffic and trains in the distance. The city was stirring itself from slumber.
“What will you do?” he said. “This time, you’ve really pissed off the wrong people.”
“That’s…the favor I need to ask.”
“Yes?”
“Those two yakuza killed on Roppongi-dōri last night—or actually, early this morning. What’s the procedure with the bodies?”
He shrugged. “The bodies were taken to the Jikei Hospital morgue. They’ll be pronounced dead, a forensic pathologist will examine them and file his report, and they’ll be cremated. Why?”
“I need one of them.”
He stopped and looked at me, and for once, his unflappable calm, which always seemed the product of his ability to think faster and see farther ahead, seemed to desert him. He shook his head as though bewildered and said, “For what?”
I told him my plan. “All I need from you,” I said, “is a little help…shaping the way it looks after.”
“You mean a cover-up.”
“That seems like a strong phrase. No one’s going to get hurt. And it seems like a fair trade in exchange for the kind of information I just gave you on CIA payoffs to the LDP.”
“You have no proof of those payoffs.”
“Maybe not, but now that you know about them, and everything else, you’ll know where to find proof. If you want to look for it. I’m not sure it’s a good idea. These people don’t like exposure, I’ve discovered.”
He nodded, watching me.
“What?” I said.
He sighed. “I feel unaccountably sad.”
“Imagine how I feel.”
He offered a small smile. “Do you need money?”
I squeezed his shoulder, touched. “No. I’ve got enough.”
“A passport?”
“That…I could use a little help with. Wouldn’t be a good idea to travel under my own.” I realized I should have thought of a new passport sooner, before it counted. So much had been happening, I hadn’t gamed things out all the way through. I promised I would never let that happen again.
“I can help you with the travel papers. But how long will you stay away?”
“How long do you think I’ll need to?”
“At least a year,” he said, nodding resignedly and sounding like a doctor delivering the diagnosis for a fatal disease. “Probably longer.”
I looked out over the lotuses. The sun was fully visible above them now.
“Well. I’ve always wanted to see the world.”
“Haven’t you seen enough?”
I tried to smile, but it faltered. “Yeah. But I guess I’m going to see a little more.”