I dropped to one knee, sliding my hands down to the backs of her thighs as I did so, then stood again, my hands sweeping the dress upward en route. She was wearing a black thong. The dress dangled slightly above it, gathered at her lower back. I gripped the dress in one hand like a bridle and took hold of her ass with the other.
“Only above the waist,” she said, smiling over her shoulder, her cool voice in counterpoint to the heat in my head and gut. “Or I have to call the doorman.”
I felt a surge of anger. Let it go, I thought. Just get out of here. Like you should have before this bullshit began.
I removed my hand from her ass and took a step back, but my anger got the better of me. Still gripping the dress with one hand, I swiveled my hips in and delivered a hard spank to her exposed right cheek. There was a loud slap! and she yelped, jerking away from me as though from an electric shock.
She spun and faced me, one hand on her wounded posterior. Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flared with shock and anger. In my peripheral vision I saw her weight shift to her back leg, and thought she was going to try for a ball shot with her forward foot.
Instead, she stepped back. Her arms slipped to her sides and she drew up her shoulders and chin, the picture of suppressed regal rage. She looked at me.
“Mo owari, okyakusama?” she asked, as contemptuously as she could. Are we finished, honorable customer?
“Was that against the rules?” I asked, smiling into her eyes.
She pulled up the dress and slipped her arms through the straps. Her face was still red with anger, and I couldn’t help admiring her composure in controlling it. She managed the zipper without assistance, then said, “That was three songs, so thirty thousand yen. And you should tip the doorman ten percent. Ken?”
Ken must have been the Nigerian, because a second later the semicircular sofa was pulled aside and there he was. I took out my billfold and paid each of them.
“Thank you,” I said to Naomi. I beamed like a well-satisfied customer. “That was… special.”
She smiled back in a way that made me glad she didn’t have a weapon. “Kochira koso,” she replied. The pleasure was mine.
She escorted me back to my seat. I switched the unit back on en route. Murakami and Yukiko were waiting for us.
“Yokatta ka?” Murakami asked me, showing me the false teeth. Good?
“Maa na,” I told him. Good enough.
He took Yukiko’s hand and started moving away. “We’ll discuss our business another time,” he said.
“When?”
“Soon. I’ll find you at the dojo.”
He didn’t like to make appointments any more than I did. “Morning? Evening?” I asked.
“Morning. Soon.” He turned to Naomi. “Naomi, shikkari mendo mite yare yo.” Take good care of him, Naomi. Naomi bowed her head to show that she most certainly would.
Murakami and Yukiko left. A minute later the detector started buzzing-continuous, so audio only. I’d been right about the house rules.
Naomi and I made small talk for a few minutes for the benefit of the microphones. Her tone was cool and correct. I knew our little encounter hadn’t turned out quite the way she had planned, but she had managed to distract me from my questions, which was what she had really been after. Probably she was telling herself that the fight had been a draw, that she could settle for that.
What she didn’t know was that it had only been round one.
I told her I was bushed and had to go. “Come back anytime,” she said with a sarcastic smile.
“For another one of those lap dances?” I asked, returning the smile. “Absolutely.”
I walked up the stairs and out onto Gaienhigashi-dori. When I got to the street a horn tooted. I saw Yukiko driving by in a white BMW M3, Murakami in the passenger seat. She waved, then disappeared onto Aoyama-dori.
It was just past one in the morning. The club closed at three. Naomi would be heading home at some point thereafter.
I’d done the computer check. I knew where home was. The Lion’s Gate Building, Azabu Juban 3-chome.
The trains had already stopped running. I doubted that she’d have a car: keeping one in the city is too expensive and the trains go everywhere, anyway. Getting home would mean a taxi.
I took a cab to Azabu Juban subway station, then walked around 3-chome until I found her building. Standard upscale apartment manshon, tan ferroconcrete, new and spiffy-looking. Straightforward front entrance with double glass doors, electronically controlled. Security camera mounted on the ceiling just inside the glass.
The building was on the corner of a one-way street. I moved to the back, where I found a secondary entrance-smaller, more discreet than the first, something that only residents would use. This one had no camera.
The second access point complicated things. If I waited at the wrong entrance, I would miss her entirely.
I considered. All these streets were one-way, one of Azabu Juban’s trademarks. If she were coming from Damask Rose, the cab would have to pass the second entrance first. Most likely she would get out there. Even if the cab continued around to the front, though, I’d have time to dash around behind it and get to her before she went inside.
Okay. I looked around for the right place. Ordinarily, when I’m setting someone up, I try for maximum concealment and surprise. But that’s prior to a fatal encounter. Here, I was hoping just to talk. If I scared her too much, made her feel too vulnerable, she would just run inside and that would be the end of it.
There was a perpendicular side street that led to where I was standing, dead-ending just to the side of the second entrance to her building. I walked down it. I noticed an awning on the side of the building to my left, under the shadow of which were stacked several large plastic garbage bins. I could wait in those shadows quietly, and even someone walking right past me would be unlikely to notice.
I checked my watch. Almost two. I killed time walking around the neighborhood. I passed no more than a half-dozen people. By three the area would be almost completely deserted.
I thought about what I’d seen at the club earlier. I knew from Tatsu that Yamaoto relied in part on blackmail and extortion to run his network of compliant politicians. Tatsu had told me that the disk Midori’s father had taken from Yamaoto contained, among other things, video of politicians in compromising positions. Tatsu had also told me that Yamaoto and Murakami were connected. So it seemed likely that Damask Rose was one of the places at which Yamaoto went about capturing politicians in the midst of embarrassing acts.
Meaning that someone in Yamaoto’s network now had my face on film. That would have been bad under any circumstances. But Murakami’s new interest made things worse. I judged it probable that Murakami might show the video to someone as part of a further background check. He might even show it to Yamaoto, who knew my face. And I’d used the weightlifter’s name as an introduction to Murakami’s dojo. If they figured out who they were actually dealing with, they’d also figure out that the weightlifter’s “accident” had been anything but.
I tried to put together the rest of it. Yukiko, meaning someone higher up at Damask Rose, meaning perhaps Yamaoto, was trying to get hooks into Harry. If they were interested in Harry, it would only be because Harry might lead them to me.
What about the Agency? They’d been following Harry. According to Kanezaki, as a conduit to me. The question was, were Yamaoto and the CIA working together in some capacity, or was their interest merely convergent? If the former, what was the nature of the connection? If the latter, what was the nature of the interest?
Naomi might be able to help me answer these questions, if I played it right. I needed to resolve things quickly, too. Even if Harry’s relevance to these people was only as a means of getting close to me, he could still be in danger. And if Murakami figured out that Arai Katsuhiko was really John Rain, both Harry and I were going to have a significant problem on our hands.