The way Mori had reacted had spooked me. He’d seen the violence in my demeanor, the intent. Some of that had been deliberate: I wanted it to look like a brutal crime of passion, barely planned and hastily executed, the antithesis of a detached, professional hit. To bolster that impression, I had played a role, that of enraged, jealous husband, which is what I wanted the witnesses to report and the police to investigate, and playing that role involved making myself feel like the role. But that wasn’t all of it. Some of what Mori had sensed, I thought, was simply a part of who I was. Or, to put it another way, my very presence had warned him of what I was going to do. If he’d been a little faster, or I a little slower, that warning might have made the difference. And it was the same with those chinpira in Ueno. Whether it was overt posturing or subliminal messaging, either way I was inadvertently warning people of what I was about to do, and therefore giving them time to prepare. Was there any upside to that? No, there wasn’t. In the field, if something represents only a cost and no offsetting benefit, you jettison it. I had to find a way to jettison this, too — to control those unconscious, nonverbal signals, retract them, conceal them. There had to be a way to be able to do great violence, ultimate violence, without any outward manifestation ahead of the violence itself. I thought something like that would be rare. Certainly I’d never seen anything like it myself. But if there were a way to acquire it, it would offer significant tactical advantages.
I realized I was distracting myself from the nature of what I had just done by focusing on the tactics. I’d done so many after-action reports after missions that the reflex was now ingrained. I found myself grateful for that.
I left the alley and ditched the glasses in a garbage bin. The furoshiki went into a sewer drain. I scrubbed the slickness out of my hair, loosened the tie, and kept walking. Five minutes later, I was riding Thanatos north on Uchibori-dōri. It was only when I was under the bright lights of the main road that I noticed my sleeve was flecked with blood and gore. It didn’t show up too badly on the dark jacket, but on the white sleeve it was impossible to miss.
Shit. I should have stashed a change of clothes somewhere. How could I have been so stupid?
I pulled over and rolled up my shirtsleeves, just enough so they didn’t show beyond the edges of the jacket. Then I found a public restroom, where I examined myself in a mirror and scrubbed the gore off my hands. At a discount store, I bought a tee shirt and a pair of jeans. None of the costume changes was particularly expensive, but I was far from rich, and between the various props, the nightly hotel rooms, and gas for Thanatos, I was glad I had a load of cash waiting for me back at the hotel, with more on the way.
I stopped in a park and changed into my new clothes, using the tie to wrap the shirt and suit around a rock and sink the whole package into a pond. Doubtful anyone would ever find it; if they did, it would offer no connection to me. Routine forensic DNA analysis was still far in the future.
Back on Thanatos, clean and in my new clothes, I started to feel calmer, more detached. But I was still horrified to consider how much I’d just relied on luck. How well did I really know the areas in which I was operating? Kita Senju might have been another city. And even Akasaka…I knew the main streets, sure, but the alleyways? The hidden passages between and through buildings? And what kind of shape was I in? For the mat, top shape, sure, and if I ever had to use judo to save my life, maybe I’d manage, as I had when Pig Eyes had attacked me at the Kodokan. But what if I had to run, really run? The half a kilometer out of Akasaka had gassed me. What if I’d needed to go farther? Could I have outlasted whoever was chasing me? Probably not. And that wasn’t good.
I needed to game things out better in my head. I needed to take what I’d learned about combat — the mentality, the preparation, the focus — and apply it in life generally. I needed to stop pretending there was some clear dividing line between the military and the civilian, the jungle and the city, war and peace. There wasn’t. Not before, and certainly not now.
I called Miyamoto from a payphone. “It’s done,” I told him in my disguised voice.
“Already?”
For some reason, the comment annoyed me. “How long did you want to wait?”
“I didn’t. I’m just…surprised. That you were able to do it so quickly.”
“I want you to get me the balance of what you owe me tomorrow. Same place, same rules. Place it there at eleven in the morning. Do you understand?”
“Of course. The money will be there. But listen. I’d like to have a way of contacting you. You seem…very professional. I’m sure the people I represent would like to do business with you again.”
I almost said no. But then I thought, What’s the downside?
“I’ll leave you a number where you can reach me,” I said. “In the same place you leave the money, after I retrieve it. Now, repeat back to me how, where, and when you’re going to leave me the balance.”
He did. When he was done, I said, “I know we have a mutual friend. But you should know, if I see anyone trying to make me when I go to retrieve that payment, I will hold you personally accountable.”
“I’m going to place the envelope there myself. As I did last time. No one else will even know where to look.”
I hung up. I didn’t feel great. But I reminded myself that sometimes there’s just what you can do, and what you can’t.
I’d done it. Now I had to live with it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I headed back to the hotel in Uguisudani. The closer I got, the more nervous I felt. The night before had been magical, but then Sayaka and I had both gone back to our separate lives. Did she feel the same way I did? What was she thinking? Would it be awkward? And she was probably wondering all the same about me. Or wasn’t she? That would be worse, much worse.
But at the same time, worrying about Sayaka was a relief. I felt like I was riding away from someone else, some other part of myself, and leaving him behind. Thinking of Sayaka made me feel like…like what she imagined me to be. Wanted me to be. I was different with her. She’d said as much, and I felt it, too. I wanted to make it so that one world would have nothing to do with the other. And that by stepping into that world, I’d close the door on the other. It felt possible. It felt good.
She was at the desk when I walked in. She smiled when she saw me, but there was tension in her expression, too.
“Hey,” I said, walking over. “You look good.”
That seemed to relax her a little. “Yeah? So do you.”
I had to push back an image of Mori, but I managed. “Hey, no flirting with the customers.”
She laughed a little at that. There was an awkward pause.
I ran my fingers through my hair. “Last night—”
“I know.”
I felt myself flush. “You don’t even know what I was going to say!” Actually, neither did I.
She laughed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I was just going to say…it was amazing. I kept thinking about it today.” It sure as hell beat everything else I was thinking about, but I kept that part to myself.
She smiled. “Yeah, me too. I couldn’t wait for tonight. Well, for tomorrow morning. When I get off here.”
“Sure you can’t slip away for a special, really loyal customer?”
“This place? Even if I could, and I can’t, no. This is just to pay the bills. I don’t want to have any other associations with it.”
“All right, I guess I can wait. Can I kiss you goodnight?”