Barry Eisler: Hard Rain

The sequence had taken less than two seconds. I straightened and continued on my way as before, my eyes forward but my ears trained behind me for sounds of pursuit.

There were none, and as the distance widened I indulged a small smile. I don’t like bullies-they formed too large a portion of my childhood on both sides of the Pacific-and I had a feeling it would be a long time before these chinpira worked up a fresh appetite to dispute someone’s passage along that sidewalk.

I continued along, cutting left east of the cemetery, then right on Gaiennishi-dori, taking advantage of the turn as I always automatically do to monitor the area to my rear while ostensible checking for traffic. The cemetery was now to my right, but there was no sidewalk on that side of the street, so I stayed on the left until I was opposite a long riser of stone steps, a byway between the green piazza of the dead and the living city without. I stood looking at those steps for a long time. Finally I decided that the urge to which I had almost succumbed was ridiculous, as I had decided so many times in the past. I turned and moved slowly down the street, back the way I had come.

As always after finishing a job, I was aware of the need to be among other people, to find some comfort in the illusion that I am part of the society through which I move. A few meters down the street I ducked into the Monsoon Restaurant, where I could enjoy the Southeast Asian-derived cuisine and the anodyne sounds of other people’s conversation.

I chose a seat set slightly back from the restaurant’s open-air façade, facing the street and the entrance, and ordered a simple meal of rice noodles with vegetables. Although it was late for dinner, the tables were mostly occupied. To my left were the remnants of a small office party: a few young men with loosened ties and identical navy suits, two women with them, pretty and more stylishly dressed than their companions, at ease with the traditional Japanese female role of serving food, pouring drinks, and fostering conversation. Behind them, a solitary couple, high school or college kids, leaning toward each other and holding hands across the table, the boy talking with his eyebrows raised as though suggesting something, the girl laughing and shaking her head no. To the other side, a group of older American men, dressed more casually than the other patrons, their voices appropriately low, their skin shining slightly in the light of the table lamps.

It was almost surreal, finding myself back in a restaurant or bar after finishing a job, my mind starting to drift, relief settling in after the adrenaline rush had ended. The sensations weren’t new, but the context rendered them strange, like the feel of a familiar business suit donned to attend a funeral.

I had thought I was out of all this after finishing things with Holtzer, the late chief of the CIA’s Tokyo Station. My cover had been blown, and it was time to reinvent myself, not for the first time. I had thought about the States, maybe the west coast, San Francisco, someplace with a large Asian population. But establishing a new identity in America, without the sort of groundwork that I had long since prepared in Japan, would have been difficult. Besides, if the CIA had been looking for payback for Holtzer, they might have had an easier time coming after me on their home turf. Staying in Japan left Tatsu to contend with, of course, but Tatsu’s interest in me had nothing to do with revenge, so I had judged him the lesser of the risks.

I had to smile at that. I had learned that the danger Tatsu posed to me, while certainly less acute than the straightforward possibility of getting put to sleep by some lucky CIA contractor, was far more insidious.

He had tracked me down in Osaka, Japan’s second largest metropolis, where I had gone after disappearing from Tokyo. I had moved into a highrise community called Belfa in Miyakojima, the northwest of the city. Belfa was inhabited by sufficient numbers of corporate transferees so that a recent arrival wouldn’t provoke undue attention. It was also home primarily to families with small children, the kind of people who stay aware of the composition of their neighborhood, whose presence makes it difficult to mount effective surveillance or a successful ambush.

At first I had missed Tokyo, where I had lived for two decades, and was disappointed to find myself in a city that the average Tokyoite would reflexively dismiss as a backwater in every category save brute geographical sprawl. But Osaka had grown on me. Its atmosphere, though arguably less sophisticated and cosmopolitan than Tokyo’s, is also lacking in pretense. Unlike Tokyo, whose financial, cultural, and political center of gravity is so strong that at times the city can feel self-satisfied, even solipsistic, Osaka compares itself ceaselessly to other places, its cousin to the northeast chief among them, emerging victorious, of course, in matters of cuisine, financial acumen, and general human goodness. I found something endearing in this scrappy, self-declared contest for supremacy. Maybe we don’t have the refined-read effete-manners, or the most powerful-read corrupt-political establishment, Osaka seems to declare to a Tokyo that isn’t even listening, but we’ve got a bigger heart. Over time, I began to wonder if the city didn’t have a point.

I had spotted Tatsu behind me one night as I was making my way to Overseas, a jazz club in Honmachi that I had come to like. Although I gave no sign, I had recognized him immediately. Tatsu has a squat build and a way of rolling his shoulders from side to side when he walks that makes him hard to miss. If the tail had been someone else, I would have doubled back and questioned him, if possible. Eliminated him, if not.

But since Tatsu himself was the one behind me, I knew I was in no immediate danger. As a department head with the Keisatsucho, Japan’s FBI, he could easily have had me picked up already, if that’s what he had wanted. The hell with it , I had decided. Akiko Grace, a young pianist who had electrified Japan’s jazz world with her debut CD From New York , was appearing that night, and I wanted to see her play. If Tatsu was inclined to join me, he could.

He had arrived midway through the second set. Grace was doing “That Morning,” a melancholy piece from Manhattan Story , her second CD. I watched him pause just inside the entrance, his eyes scanning the tables in back. I would have signaled him, but he knew where to look.

He made his way to my table and squeezed in next to me as though it was the most natural thing in the world that he should be meeting me here. As usual, he was wearing a dark suit that fit him like an afterthought. He nodded a greeting. I returned the gesture, then went back to watching Grace play.

She was facing away from us, wearing a shoulderless gold-sequined gown that shimmered under the cool blue spotlights like heat lightning in the night. Watching her made me think of Midori, although as much by contrast as by association. Grace’s attitude was funkier, with more swaying, more sideways approaches to the piano, and her style was generally softer, more contemplative. But when she got going, on numbers like “Pulse Fiction” and “Delancey Street Blues,” she had that same air of having been possessed by the instrument, as though the piano was a demon and she its exhilarated amanuensis.

I remembered watching Midori play, standing in the shadows of New York’s Village Vanguard, knowing it would be the last time. I’d seen other pianists perform since then. It was always a sad pleasure, like making love to a beautiful woman, but not to the woman you love.

The set ended and Grace and her trio left the stage. But the audience wouldn’t stop applauding until they had returned, with an encore of Thelonious Monk’s “Bemsha Swing.” Tatsu was probably frustrated. He wasn’t there to enjoy the jazz.