Barry Eisler - Hard Rain

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Don’t lead me, Tatsu.”

“All right. Consciously or unconsciously, you want to be worthy of her. I respect you for that sentiment because there is much about Kawamura-san to admire. But you may be going about it in the wrong way, and I wanted to give you the opportunity to see that.”

“You’re wrong,” I said.

“Then why are you here?”

I looked at him. “I’m going to help you on this. It has nothing to do with Midori.” I pictured Harry for a second, then said, “No, you’re going to help me.”

The waitress set down his tea and moved on.

“What happened?” he asked.

My reflex was to not tell him, to protect Harry, like I’d always tried to do before. But it didn’t matter anymore.

“Murakami killed a friend of mine,” I said. “A kid named Haruyoshi. Yamaoto was using him, I think to find me. When they thought they’d gotten what they wanted, they got rid of him.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I shrugged. “It works out well for you. If I didn’t know you as well as I do, I might have been suspicious.”

I regretted saying it as soon as it was out. Tatsu had too much dignity to respond.

“Anyway, I want you to look into something for me,” I said.

“All right.”

I told him about how Kanezaki had been following Harry, how Midori’s letter had been the start of it, how Yukiko and Damask Rose were involved.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Your friend was… young?” he asked.

I looked at him. “Young enough.”

He nodded, his eyes sad.

I thought of how he had first briefed me on Murakami, how his jaw had clenched and unclenched when he told me that he believed Murakami had been involved in the murder of a child. I had to ask. “Tatsu, was there… did you have a son?”

There was a long silence, during which he must have been digesting the realization that I knew something of his personal life, and deciding on how he wanted to respond.

“Yes,” he said after a while, nodding. “He would have turned thirty-two this past February.”

He seemed to be carefully weighing, even carefully pronouncing, the words. I wondered when he had last spoken of this.

“He was eight months old, just weaned,” he went on. “My wife and I had not been out together in some time, and we hired a baby-sitter. When we came home, the sitter was distraught. She had dropped the little boy and he had a bruise on his head. He had cried, she told us, but now he seemed all right. He was sleeping.

“My wife wanted to take him to the doctor right away, but we checked on him and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. ‘Why trouble the little one’s sleep unnecessarily?’ I said. ‘If there were a problem, we would know it by now.’ My wife wanted to believe everything was all right, and so I was able to persuade her.”

He took a sip of tea. “In the morning the baby was dead. The doctor told us it was a subdural hematoma. He told us that it would have made no difference if we had sought immediate medical attention. But of course I will always wonder. Because I had a choice, you see? It may be terrible for me to say it, but it would have been easier if my son had died instantly. Or if the sitter had been less decent, and had mentioned nothing to us. The same outcome, and yet completely different.”

I looked at him. “How old were your girls, Tatsu?” I asked.

“Two and four.”

“Christ,” I muttered.

He nodded, not bothering to make a show of stoicism by arguing with me. “Losing a child is the worst thing,” he said. “There is no greater grief. For a long time I wanted to take my own life. Partly on the chance that by doing so I might be reunited with my son, that I might be able to comfort him and protect him. Partly to atone for how I had wronged him. And partly simply to end my pain. But my duty to my wife and daughters was greater than these irrational and selfish impulses. And I came to view my pain as a just punishment, as my karma. But still, every day I think of my little son. Every day I wonder if I will have a chance to see him again.”

We were silent for a moment. From behind the counter came the sound of beans being ground.

“We’re going to take this guy out,” I told him. “I can’t do it alone, and neither can you, but maybe we can do it together.”

“Tell me what you propose.”

“Murakami shows up at the dojo from time to time, but you can’t stake the place out. It’s on a quiet street with minimal automobile or pedestrian traffic, so not much cover. Plus I spotted at least two sentries on my way in.”

He nodded. “I know. I had a man make a casual pass.”

“I figured you would. But we might not need a stakeout. If I show up, someone is likely to call Murakami. That’s when we nail him.”

He looked at me. “If Murakami killed your friend because they decided they didn’t need him anymore to get to you, they probably know who you are.”

“Exactly. That’s why I know that, when I show up, someone will call him. And even if I’m wrong, and they don’t know who I am, Murakami said he wanted to talk to me at the dojo . Sooner or later he’ll show up there. And when he shows up, I’ll call you. You come with picked men, arrest him, and take him into custody.”

“He might attempt to resist arrest,” he said dryly.

“Oh yeah. A guy like that might resist fiercely. I’m sure lethal force would be justified in subduing him.”

“Indeed.”

“In fact, it’s even possible that, after you have him handcuffed, someone who might be described afterward as ‘one of his cohorts who got away’ might appear and break his neck.”

He nodded. “I can see where something like that could occur.”

“I’ll go for two hours at a time,” I said. “During those two-hour periods you have men mobile and nearby, ready to pounce on my signal.”

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I hesitate to suggest it, but it’s possible that Murakami will not show. He may simply subcontract the work to someone else. In which case you would be walking into extreme danger for nothing.”

“He’ll show,” I said. “I know this guy. If he knows who I am, he’s going to want a piece of me. And I’m going to give it to him.”

THAT NIGHT I stayed at a small business hotel in Nishi-Nippori. It was spare enough to make me miss the New Otani and the Imperial, but it was a quiet place in a lonely part of the city and I felt reasonably safe there for the night.

The next morning, I worked out at Murakami’s dojo in Asakusa. When I arrived, the men who were already training paused and gave me a low collective bow-a sign of their respect for the way I had dispatched Adonis. After that, I was treated in a dozen subtle ways with deference that bordered on awe. Even Washio, older than I and with a much longer and deeper association with the dojo , was using different verb forms to indicate that he now considered me his superior. My sense was that, whatever Yamaoto and Murakami might have discovered about me, the knowledge had not been shared with the lower echelon.

Tatsu had given me a Glock 26, the shortest-barreled pistol in Glock’s excellent 9-millimeter line. Definitely not standard Keisatsucho issue. I didn’t know how Tatsu had acquired it in tightly gun-controlled Japan, and I didn’t ask. Despite its relatively low profile, I couldn’t keep it concealed on my person while I was working out. Instead I left it in my gym bag. I stayed close to the bag.

Tatsu had also given me a cell phone with which I would alert him when Murakami showed. I had created a speed dial entry so that all I had to do was hit one of the keys, let the call go through, and hang up. When Tatsu saw that a call had come from this number, he’d scramble his nearby men to the dojo .