All right. At least I had a home address. I could do a drive-by. Nothing for the development of appropriate tactics like seeing the actual terrain.
I stashed my bag in a locker in Tokyo Station, then rode to Denenchofu. I found Fukumoto’s house easily enough — it was the most impressive in an already wealthy neighborhood. The style was slick and contemporary, and Fukumoto had obviously chosen it not just for its looks, but also for its security. Situated on a corner lot, it was a three-story structure surrounded by a high metal wall, with the front entrance protected by an exterior gate and a dog run around the side similarly secured. There was a two-car garage with a vertical door — closed, unsurprisingly. I considered how I might get inside. The wall looked easy enough to climb, but I had to assume there were additional precautions on the other side. It would be a shame to pirouette perfectly over, only to land in a den of Rottweilers. I might have a shot outside the house, while Fukumoto was coming or going, but I doubted it — that garage door looked designed to get him in and out of the structure without ever having to expose himself. This was obviously no soft target like Ozawa, but rather a guy who knew he had serious enemies, who understood that his house was a potential vulnerability where he would need to be extra careful.
I circled the block, looking for possibilities, seeing none. I rode through the neighborhood. It was extremely quiet — not even any children in the streets, though I imagined that would change soon, as schools got out. The area’s torpor wasn’t going to make things easier for me — I saw nowhere I could conceal myself outside the house, whether to gather intelligence for later, or to find a way in now. Which, I supposed, was part of the reason Fukumoto would have chosen this neighborhood.
I decided I could afford one more drive past the house. But no more than that today, in case anyone was watching. As I turned onto the street facing the garage door, I saw a car nosing its way out. Son of a bitch. I was already going slowly and I dropped back even further on the throttle. But just as I was getting my hopes up that I was actually going to be able to follow Fukumoto, the rest of the car revealed itself. A yellow Porsche 911 Targa, the roof removed, with a Japanese woman alone at the wheel. She had on a pair of oversized sunglasses that did little to conceal her beauty. She paused at the edge of the street to check for traffic, saw me, and waited. Without thinking, I pulled over and waved for her to go. She smiled, looking even more confident and gorgeous as she did so; reached up to the visor and touched something; and pulled out. I heard the mechanical sound of a motor engaging and realized she had pressed an automatic garage door unit, and that the sound I heard was of the door closing. Damn, if I gunned it, I thought I might be able to scoot inside just before the door reached the ground. But the woman had paused at the corner to check for traffic. Too great a likelihood she would hear Thanatos’s engine and see me in the rearview.
She made a left, and as soon as she was gone I gunned the bike forward, but too late. The door was already too low for me to have time to get off the bike and slide under it. I leaned down and saw a shiny chrome bumper and a single pair of wheels, and then it was gone, the door connecting solidly with the ground. The hell with it, I thought. If I couldn’t improvise one way, I’d improvise another.
I pulled forward and glanced left. She was at the end of the street, her left turning signal blinking. I eased out and headed in her direction, hanging well back.
I followed her onto the main road, speculating. Her looks, the car…obviously, this wasn’t the cleaning woman. And she was far too young to be Fukumoto’s wife, given that he had an adult son. So what was she doing at Fukumoto’s house in the middle of the day?
What the hell do you think?
But why his house? Why the middle of the afternoon?
Who could say? Maybe Fukumoto’s wife was out then, having her hair done or at a weekly coffee klatch or whatever. Maybe for discretion, Fukumoto preferred to meet just before school got out, when the fewest people would be around. Maybe he’d just been horny and picked up the phone. I knew she was no call girl, though — there was that expensive car, for one thing, which felt like a gift from a rich patron. And the fact that inside her car was an opener to Fukumoto’s garage. Not something he would give to a casual acquaintance. No, my gut told me the woman in the Porsche was Fukumoto’s mistress.
But I cared about all that only secondarily. What mattered to me most right then was that if I could get to her car, I could get to that garage door opener. And if I could get to the garage door opener, I could get to Fukumoto.
I followed her to Daikanyama, northeast of Denenchofu and just west of the Yamanote, hanging back, keeping plenty of traffic between us. A yellow Porsche wasn’t exactly hard to keep in view, even from a distance. She parked on the street and went into one of the clothes boutiques Daikanyama was known for.
These days, I would never have plunged ahead with so little preparation. Hell, I never would have plunged ahead with so little thought. But back then, I was young, and impulsive, and stupid. I didn’t know how much you could manage luck, and why it’s critical to at least try.
Instead, the sum of my analysis was more or less, Never going to be a better chance than this one.
I parked Thanatos a little ways off. I strolled along the sidewalk, pausing to look at the Porsche as though admiring it. It was a new model, and in fact sported one of the jikōshiki license plates the authorities had started offering just a couple years earlier — essentially a numerical vanity plate, green by day, glow-in-the-dark by night. This one had been issued by Shinagawa, number 1972. I guessed the idea was to proclaim the car’s model year to anyone who cared.
I looked around — lots of people, no one paying me any particular attention. I snatched the garage door opener off the visor, walked back to Thanatos, and buzzed off. I could be back in Denenchofu in no time. I doubted Fukumoto would be expecting company so soon after his mistress had departed. With luck, he might even be enjoying a little postcoital nap.
So far, it had all gone smoothly, the timing and the circumstances all lining up right. I should have realized it had all been just a little too easy. But I didn’t.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I stopped at a pharmacy and bought a few medical supplies, including latex gloves. I didn’t need anything but the gloves, but I thought it would be lower profile to look as though I was preparing for surgery rather than for crime. Would it matter? Probably not, but I saw no downside to obscuring the centrality of the gloves. I was learning.
I also went to a discount store and bought several items for the kind of light disguise I’d used when I retrieved the file from Miyamoto, this time deciding on a dark nylon windbreaker instead of a wool one. I also bought a cheap kitchen knife in a plastic sheath. A gun would have been better than a knife, but I had no way of acquiring one, and I didn’t want to go in without some kind of weapon at hand. I wasn’t worried about how I would take care of Fukumoto — other things being equal, I was confident I could use an improvised blunt object or even my hands for that. The problem was, I didn’t know what kind of opposition I might encounter, and I didn’t want to be holding nothing when I encountered it.
Before parking Thanatos at the station, I removed the license plate and hid it under a vending machine. Then I slipped on the windbreaker and the rest of my light disguise, and walked the kilometer or so to Fukumoto’s house, nothing on my person but the latex gloves and knife in my pocket and the garage door opener in my hand.