“Well, I’m not going to trust your gut more than I trust mine.”
The waitress came with the coffee and cake and moved off. Harry didn’t seem to notice.
I wanted to tell him more, wanted to offer Naomi’s thoughts as corroboration. But I could see it wouldn’t do much good. Besides, Harry didn’t need to know where I came across my information.
I tried one last time. “The club is wired for sound and video. The detector you gave me was going apeshit the whole time I was there. I think the place is being used to entrap politicians in embarrassing acts.”
“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean Yukiko is involved in it.”
“Haven’t you even asked yourself whether it’s a coincidence that you met this woman at about the same time we discovered that you were being followed by the CIA?”
He looked at me as though I’d finally come unhinged. “Are you saying Yukiko is mixed up with the CIA? C’mon.”
“Think about it,” I told him. “We know the Agency was tracking you to get to me. They got to you through Midori’s letter. What did they learn about you from the letter? Just an unusually spelled name and a postmark.”
“So?”
“So the Agency doesn’t have the in-house expertise to do anything useful with information like that. They need local resources.”
“So?” he said again, his tone petulant.
“So they know Yamaoto from his connections with Holtzer. They ask him for his help. He had his people check domiciles and employment records in concentric circles moving outward from the Chuo-ku postmark. Maybe they access tax records, find out where an unusually spelled Haruyoshi is employed. Now they’ve got your whole name, but they can’t find out where you live, because you’re careful to protect that. They try to follow you from work, maybe, but you show them you’re too surveillance conscious and it doesn’t work. So Yamaoto gets your boss to take you somewhere to ‘celebrate,’ somewhere where you’ll meet a real heart-stopper, someone who can find out where you live so they can follow you more often, hoping you’ll drop your guard and lead them to me.”
“Then why is she still with me?”
I looked at him. It was a good question.
“I mean, if her job was just to get my home address, she would have been gone the first time I took her home. But she’s not. She’s still with me.”
“Then maybe her role was to watch you, learn your routines, find some information that would help her people get closer to finding me. Maybe listen in on your calls, alert her people if or when one of us got in touch with the other. I don’t know for sure.”
“I’m sorry. It’s too far-fetched.”
I sighed. “Harry, you’re not in a good position to be objective here. You have to acknowledge that.”
“And you are?”
I looked at him. “What possible reason would I have to distort any of this?”
He shrugged. “Maybe you’re afraid I won’t help you anymore. You said it yourself: ‘You can’t live with one foot in daylight and the other in shadows.’ Maybe you’re afraid I’ll move into the daylight and leave you behind.”
I felt a wave of angry indignation and willed it back. “Let me tell you something, kid,” I said. “In a very short while, I plan to be living in the daylight myself. I won’t need your ‘help’ after that. So even if I were the selfish, manipulative piece of shit you seem to think I am, I wouldn’t have any motive to try to keep you in the shadows.”
He flushed. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment.
I waved a hand. “Forget about it.”
He looked at me. “No, really, I’m sorry.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
We were quiet for a moment. Then I said, “Look, I’ve got an idea of what you feel for this woman, okay? I saw her. She’s a head-turner.”
“She’s more than that,” he said softly.
The dumb, sappy bastard. His only hope with that ice bitch would be that she’d recognize how helpless he was and have some scruples about whatever it was she was up to.
I wouldn’t count on it, though.
“The point is,” I said, “it doesn’t give me any pleasure to give you reason to doubt. But I’m telling you, there’s something wrong here, Harry. You need to be careful. And nothing makes you less careful than the kind of feelings that have taken hold of you right now.”
After a while he said, “I’ll think about what you’ve said. Okay?”
He didn’t look like he’d think about it, though. He looked like he wanted to jam his hands over his ears. Stick his newly coiffed head in the sand. Hit the Delete key on everything I’d told him.
“Look, I’m going to see her tonight,” he said. “I’ll watch more closely. I’ll keep in mind what you’ve said.”
I realized I’d been wasting my time.
“I thought you were smarter than this,” I said, shaking my head. “I really did.”
I stood and dropped a few bills on the table and left without looking at him.
I walked to the train station, thinking about what I had told Tatsu earlier, about risk and reward.
Harry had a lot to offer. I supposed he always would. But he wasn’t being careful anymore. Keeping him in my life now entailed more risk than it had previously.
I sighed. Two goodbyes in one night. It was depressing. And it’s not as though I’ve got a whole Rolodex full of friends.
But no sense being sentimental about it. Sentiment is stupid. On balance, Harry had become a liability. I had to leave him behind.
PART THREE
God. That bastard, he doesn’t exist.
– SAMUEL BECKETT
14
I MADE MY way back to the Imperial, entering the hotel through the Hibiya Park side. In my mind, anyplace where I’m staying is a potential choke point for an ambush, and my radar bumped up a notch as I moved through the spacious lobby to the elevators. I automatically scanned the area around me, first keying on the seats offering the best view of the entranceway, the places where an ambush team would position a spotter, the person tasked with supplying a positive ID. I saw no likelies. My radar stayed on medium alert.
As I approached the elevators, I noticed a striking Japanese woman, midthirties, shoulder-length hair wavy and iridescent black, skin smooth and pale white in contrast. She was wearing faded blue jeans, black loafers, and a black V-neck sweater. She was standing in the middle of the bank of elevators and looking directly at me.
It was Midori.
No, I thought. Look more closely.
Since that last time, about a year earlier when I had watched her perform from the shadows at the Village Vanguard in New York, I’ve seen a number of women who resemble Midori at first glance. Each time it happens, a part of my mind fills in the details, perhaps wanting to believe that it really is her, and the illusion lasts for a second or two before closer inspection convinces that hopeful part of my mind of its error.
The woman watched me. Her arms, which had been crossed, began to unfold.
Midori. There was no question.
My heart started thudding. A fusillade of questions erupted in my mind: How can she be here? How can it be her? What is she doing back in Tokyo? How would she know where to find me? How would anyone know?
I shoved the questions aside and started checking the secondary areas around me. Just because you’ve spotted one surprise doesn’t mean there isn’t another. In fact, the first one might have been a deliberate distraction, a setup for a fatal sucker punch.
No one seemed out of place. Nothing set off my now-elevated radar. Okay.
I looked at her again, still half-expecting that the second examination would tell me I’d been hallucinating. I hadn’t. It was her.
She was standing now, watching me. Her posture was stiff and somehow determined. Her eyes were fixed on me, but I couldn’t read them.
I glanced around the room again, then slowly walked over to where she stood. I stopped in front of her. I thought the ba-boom, ba-boom in my chest might be loud enough for her to hear.