Barry Eisler - Hard Rain

Washio was gesturing to various men who were training. The newcomer was nodding. It felt like a briefing.

The thirty-second rest was up. I returned my attention to the bag. Left elbow. Right uppercut. Left knee. Again.

When the one-minute sequence was done I looked over. Washio and the newcomer were walking toward me. The bodyguards remained by the door.

“ Oi , Arai,” Washio called out when they were a couple meters away. “ Chotto mate .” Hold up for a minute.

I picked up a towel from the floor and wiped my face. They came closer and Washio gestured to the man next to him. “I want to introduce you to someone,” he said. “One of the backers of this dojo .”

I already knew who he was. Per Tatsu’s briefing, the left cheek was flattened, with the opposite side exhibiting what looked like a golf-ball-sized fissure pocked with jagged edges. I imagined a dog getting hold of him there and hanging on even as he shoved the animal away.

Something told me the dog had come out the worse.

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck pop up, a fresh surge of adrenaline dump into my veins. My fight-or-flight reaction is finely honed, and this guy’s presence was making it sing.

“ Arai desu ,” I said, bowing slightly.

“ Murakami da ,” he said with a nod, his voice not much more than a growl. “Washio tells me you’re good.” He looked doubtful.

I shrugged.

“There’s a fight tomorrow night,” he went on. “We put them on from time to time. Most people pay a hundred thousand yen to attend, but members of the dojo get in free. You interested?”

A hundred thousand yen-I’d been in the right neighborhood about the economics of these things. And if this guy was comfortable issuing the invitation, someone must have checked me out. I was glad that I’d had Tatsu backstop the Arai identity.

I shrugged again and said, “Sure.”

He looked at me, his eyes flat, as though focused somewhere behind and through me. “The fight starts at ten o’clock sharp. People get there a little early for betting. We’re doing this one in Higashi Shinagawa, five-chome. Just across the canal from Tennozu Island.”

“The harbor district?” I asked. The area is part of Tokyo but wasn’t a place I ever frequented while living in the city. It’s in Tokyo’s southeast, the home of meat processing plants and sewage disposal, of steam power facilities and wholesale warehouses, all of it fed and fattened by Tokyo’s great port. I supposed the attraction was that it would be deserted at night.

“That’s right. The address is Eight-twenty-five. A warehouse with the character for ‘transport’ painted in a big circle on the door. Across from the Lady Crystal Yacht Club. On your right as you walk from the monorail. Should be easy to find.”

“It’s important that you not tell anyone about this,” Washio added. “Only people who are invited get in anyway, and we don’t want trouble from the police.”

Murakami nodded once, acknowledging Washio’s point as though it had been barely worth mentioning. I gathered that Murakami didn’t particularly care who showed up at these things, as long as there was a fight. Washio, on the other hand, was probably responsible for logistics and would be accountable if there were problems.

“Are you fighting?” I asked, looking at Murakami.

For the first time he smiled. The front teeth were overlarge and too even, and I realized he was wearing a cheap dental bridge.

“Sometimes I fight. But not tomorrow,” he said.

I waited to see whether there would be more. There wasn’t.

I briefly considered whether it could be a setup. If they were on to me, though, this was already a pretty perfect venue. They didn’t have to convince me to go somewhere else.

“I’ll be there,” I told him.

Murakami looked at me for a moment longer, the smile lingering, the eyes still flat, then walked away. Washio followed.

I let out a long breath and looked at the clock. When the second hand was at the twelve I attacked the bag again, working off the excess adrenaline Murakami’s presence had provoked.

He was a scary one, no doubt about it. And not just the ruined face. Even without the scarring, I would have recognized him. He exuded the same deadly air I had known, and respected, in Crazy Jake. The external scars were the least of what marked him for what he was.

I wouldn’t want to try to take this guy out with anything less than a scoped rifle. Which is something that’s hard to confuse with expiration by natural causes.

The hell with it , I thought. Risks are one thing. This looks like suicide . If Tatsu wanted him dead that much, I’d recommend a six-man squad and firearms. Much as I would have liked to do something to buy Tatsu’s continued goodwill, this one wasn’t worth it.

I wondered if my old friend would threaten me. I didn’t think so. And if he did, I’d just step up my Rio plans. The preparations weren’t entirely complete, but moving hastily wasn’t a bad option if I found myself caught between a likely suicide mission on the one hand and pressure from Tatsu’s Keisatsucho on the other.

But I’d go to the fight tomorrow and collect whatever intelligence I could. I’d feed it to Tatsu as a consolation prize for my bowing out.

The clock’s second hand swept past the twelve. I unloaded a final flurry of elbow strikes and stepped back. The adrenaline dump was largely depleted, but I still felt tense. Usually a workout helps with that. Not this time.

I found a partner and drilled leg attacks for another hour. After that I stretched and headed for the shower. I was glad this was going to be over soon.

THAT NIGHT I took a long, wandering walk through Tokyo. I was restless and felt the need to move, to let the city’s currents carry me where they would.

I drifted north from Meguro, keeping to the backstreets, the alleys, the lonely paths through lightless parks.

Something about the damn city continued to draw me, to seduce me. I needed to leave. I wanted to be able to leave. Hell, I’d tried to leave. But here I was again.

Maybe it’s fate.

But I don’t believe in fate. Fate is bullshit.

Then what?

I came to Hikawa Jinja in Hiro, one of the scores of Shinto shrines that dot the city. At perhaps thirty square meters, this shrine is one of the smaller, but by no means the smallest, of these solemn green spaces. I walked through the old stone gate and was instantly enveloped in comforting darkness.

I closed my eyes, tilted my head forward, and inhaled through my nose. I raised my hands before me and extended my fingers like a blind man trying to determine where he has found himself.

It was there, just beyond the limits of ordinary perception. That feeling of the city being alive, coiled and layered and thrumming all around me. And the feeling that I was alive as part of it.

I opened my eyes and lifted my head. The shrine was built on a bluff, and through the trees at its periphery I could see the lights of Hiro, and of Meguro beyond it.

Tokyo is so vast, and can be so cruelly impersonal, that the succor provided by its occasional oasis is sweeter than that of any other place I’ve known. There is the quiet of shrines like Hikawa, inducing a somber sort of reflection that for me has always been the same pitch as the reverberation of a temple chime; the solace of tiny nomiya , neighborhood watering holes, with only two or perhaps four seats facing a bar less than half the length of a door, presided over by an ageless mama-san, who can be soothing or stern, depending on the needs of her customer, an arrangement that dispenses more comfort and understanding than any psychiatrist’s couch; the strangely anonymous camaraderie of yatai and tachinomi , the outdoor eating stalls that serve beer in large mugs and grilled food on skewers, stalls that sprout like wild mushrooms on dark corners and in the shadows of elevated train tracks, the laughter of their patrons diffusing into the night air like little pockets of light against the darkness without.