Barry Eisler - Hard Rain

I didn’t know what to say, or even whether to touch her, and we remained that way for a long time. Then she eased off me and walked silently to the bathroom. I sat up and waited. After a few minutes she came out, wearing one of the hotel’s white terrycloth robes. She looked at me but didn’t say anything.

“You want me to go?” I asked.

She closed her eyes and nodded.

“Okay.” I got up and started pulling on my clothes. When I was done I faced her.

“I know you’re doing well in New York,” I said. “ Ganbatte .” Keep it up.

She looked at me. “What are you going to do?”

I shrugged. “You know how it is with us creatures of the night. Gotta find a rock to crawl under before the sun comes up.”

She forced a smile. “After that.”

I nodded, thinking. “I’m not sure.”

There was a pause.

“You should work with your friend,” she said. “It’s the only thing for you.”

“Funny, he’s always saying that, too. Good thing I don’t believe in conspiracies.”

The smile reappeared, a little less forced this time. “His motives are probably selfish. Mine aren’t.”

I looked at her. “I’m not sure whether I can trust your motives, after what you just said to me.”

She looked down. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. You were being honest. Although I don’t think anyone has ever been honest with me in quite that way. At least not at that moment.”

Another smile. It was sad, but at least it looked genuine. “I’m being honest now.”

I needed to get it over with. I moved in close, close enough to smell her hair and feel the warmth of her skin. I paused there for a moment, my eyes closed. Took a deep breath. Slowly let it out.

I used English to avoid the unambiguous finality of sayonara . “Goodbye, Midori,” I said.

I walked to the door and, habitual as always, checked through the peephole. The corridor was empty. I moved into it without looking back.

The hallway was hard. The elevator was a little easier. By the time I got to the street I knew the worst was over.

A voice spoke up inside me, quiet but insistent. So is the best , it said.

I MADE MY way through the backstreets of Shinjuku, heading east, deciding where I wanted to stay for the night and what I would do when I awoke the following morning. I tried not to think about anything else.

It was late, but there were small clusters of people about, moving like dim constellations in the surrounding emptiness of space: vagrants and beggars; hustlers and pimps; the disheartened, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed.

I hurt, and I couldn’t think of a way to make the pain go away.

My pager buzzed.

Of course I thought, Midori .

But I knew it wasn’t her. She didn’t have the number. Even if she did, she wasn’t going to use it.

I looked at the display, but didn’t recognize the caller.

I found a pay phone and dialed the number. It rang once, then a woman answered in English. She said, “Hey.”

It was Naomi.

“Hey,” I said. “I almost forgot I’d given you this number.”

“You don’t mind my using it, I hope.”

“Not at all. Just a little surprised.” I was surprised. My alertness had bumped up a notch.

There was a pause. “Well, things were slow tonight at the club and I got off a little early. I wondered if you might want to come by.”

It was hard to imagine a slow night at Damask Rose, but maybe it was true. Even so, I would have expected her to want to go someplace first-a late dinner, a drink. Not just a standard tryst at her apartment. My alertness edged up further.

“Sure,” I said. “If you’re not too tired.”

“Not at all. Would love to see you.”

That was odd. She’d pronounced “would” like something halfway to “we’d.” The blurring was contrary to her usual Portuguese accent. A message? A warning?

I looked at my watch. It was almost one thirty. “I’ll be there in about an hour.”

“I can’t wait.”

I heard her click off.

Something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what.

There was the oddity of her having contacted me. And the story about having come home early, although I suppose the latter might adequately explain the former. Her tone seemed pretty normal. But there was that peculiarly pronounced word.

The question was, what would I do if I knew it was a setup? Not what I would do if I suspected, but if I knew .

I went to another pay phone and called Tatsu. I got his voice mail. I tried again. No dice. He must have been on a stakeout or something.

Well, he does have a day job , I thought. But shit.

The safe thing, the smart thing, would have been to stay away until I could go in with backup. But there might be an opportunity here, and I didn’t want to let it slip.

I took a cab to the edge of Azabu Juban. I knew the security layout outside Naomi’s apartment well, of course, having reconnoitered and exploited it myself the night I had waited for her in the rain. The building on that perpendicular side street, with the awning and the plastic garbage bins, was a perfect spot. If someone were waiting for me, he’d wait there. Just like I had waited for her.

I was making my way to the end of the street that led to the back of the building when I heard the buzz of a two-cycle motorbike coming toward me. It was a pizza delivery scooter with a portable warmer strapped to the back and a sign advertising the shop that had dispatched it. I watched carefully to confirm that it was nothing other than what it seemed. Yeah, just a young guy trying to make a few extra yen with a late night job. I could smell the pizza from inside the warmer.

I had an idea.

I flagged him down. He pulled up next to me.

“Can you do me a favor?” I asked him in Japanese. “For ten thousand yen.”

His eyes widened a bit. “Sure,” he said. “What is it?”

“There’s a building at the end of this street, on the right as you approach it from this direction. It’s got an awning and a bunch of garbage containers stacked up along its side. I think a friend of mine might be waiting for me there, but I want to surprise him. Can you drive past it from the other direction, take a good look as you go by, and tell me if you see anyone there?”

His eyes widened more. “For ten thousand yen? Yeah, I can do that.”

I pulled out my wallet and took out a five-thousand-yen note. “Half now, half when you get back,” I said.

He took the money and buzzed off. Three minutes later he was back.

“He’s there,” he said. “Right where you told me.”

“Thanks,” I said, nodding. “That was a lifesaver.” I gave him the other five thousand yen. He looked at it, his expression momentarily unbelieving. Then he broke into an enormous sunny grin.

“Thanks!” he said. “This is great! Anything else you need?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Not tonight.”

He looked a little wistful, then smiled again as though he knew he’d been hoping for too much. “Okay, thanks again,” he said. He gunned the engine and drove away.

I untaped the baton and palmed it in my right hand. I took out Yukiko’s pepper spray and held it in my left. I moved with the furtiveness I had learned in long-range recon patrols in Vietnam, hugging the buildings I passed, checking each corner, each hot spot, confirming it was clear before advancing farther.

It took me almost a half-hour to cover the hundred meters to the ambush site. When I was three meters away, the cover provided by the garbage bins had thinned too much for me to go any farther. I hunkered low, waiting.

Five minutes went by. I heard the strike of a match, then saw a cloud of blue smoke waft out from just beyond a stack of containers. Whoever was waiting there wasn’t Murakami. Murakami wouldn’t have done something so stupid.