She shrugged. “Probably my threat.”
I doubted it. Tatsu didn’t know her as well as I did. He would have mistakenly assumed she was bluffing.
“You really think that was all there was to it?” I asked.
“Maybe. Maybe he had some ulterior reason for wanting us to meet. But what was I going to do, spite him by refusing to see you?”
“I suppose not.” And Tatsu would have supposed it, too. I felt a momentary wave of annoyance, bordering on hostility, toward Tatsu and his ongoing machinations.
She sighed. “He said that telling me you were dead was his doing, not yours.”
This was supposed to get back to me. Did he think I was going to take out Murakami in gratitude, as a quid pro quo?
“What else did he tell you?” I asked.
“That you helped him get the disk expecting him to turn it over to the media for publication.”
“Did he tell you why he didn’t?”
She nodded. “Because its information was so explosive that it might have brought down the Liberal Democrats and paved the way for Yamaoto’s ascension.”
“Sounds like you’re pretty up-to-date, then.”
“I’m a long way from up-to-date.”
“What about Harry?” I asked after a moment. “Why didn’t you go to him?”
She looked away and said, “I did. I wrote him a letter. He said he’d heard you were dead, and didn’t know any more than that.”
The way she had looked away… there was something she wasn’t telling me.
“You believed him?”
“Should I not have?”
Good recovery. But there was something more there, I thought.
“Remember the last time I saw you?” she asked.
It had been here, at the Imperial Hotel. We’d spent the night together. The next morning I had left to intercept Holtzer’s limousine. I had spent a few days in police custody after that. Meanwhile, Tatsu had told Midori I was dead and had deep-sixed the disk. Game over.
“I remember,” I said.
“You said, ‘I’ll be back sometime in the evening. Will you wait for me?’ Well, I waited for two days before I heard from your friend Ishikura-san. I had no one to contact, no way to know.”
I saw her eyes move to the ceiling for a moment, maybe looking away from memories she didn’t want to see. Maybe willing back tears.
“I couldn’t believe you were gone,” she went on. “Then I started to wonder if you really were gone. And if you weren’t gone, what would that mean? And then I doubted myself. I doubted myself. I thought, ‘He can’t still be alive, he wouldn’t have done this to you.’ But I couldn’t get rid of the suspicions. I didn’t know whether to grieve for you, or to want to kill you.”
She turned and looked at me. “Do you understand what you put me through?” she asked, her voice dropping into a whisper. “You… you fucking tortured me!”
In my peripheral vision I saw her quickly flick her thumb across one cheek, then the other. I looked down into my glass. The last thing she would want would be for me to witness her tears.
After a moment I turned to her. “Midori,” I said. My voice was low and sounded strange to me. “I’m sorrier for all this than I can say. If I could change any of it, I would.”
We were silent for a moment. I thought of Rio and said, “For what it’s worth, I’ve been trying to get out.”
She looked at me. “How hard are you trying? Most people get along pretty well without killing someone. They don’t have to go out of their way to avoid it.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that with me.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Right now the people who know me seem to be equally divided between wanting to kill me and wanting me to kill.”
“Ishikura-san?”
I nodded. “Tatsu has devoted his life to fighting corruption in Japan. He’s got assets, but the forces he’s up against are stronger than he is. He’s trying to even the odds.”
“It’s hard for me to picture him as one of the good guys.”
“I’m sure it is. But the world he inhabits isn’t as black and white as the one you do. Believe it or not, he was trying to help your father.”
And suddenly I understood why he had sent her here. Not because he hoped that I would assist him as a quid pro quo for a few exculpatory comments he’d made to Midori. Or at least not entirely that. No, his real hope was that, if Midori came to view Tatsu as in some way trying to continue the fight her father had begun, she might want me to help him. He hoped that my seeing her would tap into my regrets about her father, make me malleable to a request that I do what he wanted.
“So now you’re ‘trying to get out,” ’ she said.
I nodded, thinking this would be what she wanted to hear.
But she laughed. “Is that your atonement after all you’ve done? I didn’t know it was that easy to get into heaven.”
Maybe I didn’t have a right, but I was starting to get irritated. “Look, I made a mistake with your father. I told you I’m sorry for it, I told you I would change it if I could. What else can I do? You want me to pour gasoline on myself and light a match? Feed the hungry? What?”
She dropped her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t know, either. But I’m trying.”
That fucking Tatsu, I thought. He’d seen all of this. He knew she would rattle me.
I finished my Bunnahabhain. I set the empty glass down on the table and looked at it.
“I want something from you,” I heard her say after a moment.
“I know,” I answered, not looking at her.
“I don’t know what it is.”
I closed my eyes. “I know you don’t.”
“I can’t believe I’m even sitting here talking to you.”
To that I only nodded.
There was another long silence while I ran through my mind all the things I wished I could say to her, things I wished could make a difference.
“We’re not through,” I heard her say.
I looked at her, not knowing what she meant, and she went on.
“When I know what I want from you, I’m going to tell you.”
“I appreciate it,” I said dryly. “That way I’ll at least see it coming.”
She didn’t laugh. “You’re the killer, not me.”
“Right.”
She looked at me for a moment longer, then said, “I can find you here?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Where, then?”
“It’s better if I find you.”
“No!” she said with a sudden vehemence that surprised me. “No more of that bullshit. If you want to see me again, tell me where you’ll be.”
I picked up my empty glass and gripped it tightly.
Walk away, I told myself. You don’t even need to say anything. Just put a few bills on the table and go. You’ll never see her again.
Except I’d always be seeing her. I couldn’t get away from it.
I’ve gotten used to hoping for so little that I seem to have lost any natural immunity to the emotion’s infection. My hopes for Midori had gotten a foothold, and as ridiculous as they’d become, I couldn’t seem to beat them back.
“Look,” I said, already knowing it was futile. “I’ve lived this way for a long time. This is the reason I’ve lived for a long time.”
“Forget it, then,” she said. She stood up.
“All right,” I said. “You can find me here.”
She looked at me and nodded. “Okay.”
I paused. “Am I going to hear from you?” I asked.
“Do you care?”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“Good,” she said, nodding. “Let’s see how you like the uncertainty.”
She turned and walked away.
I paid the bill and waited for a minute, then left, using one of the basement exits.
I couldn’t stay there any longer. I might be able to live with Midori herself knowing my whereabouts, but she had no security consciousness and I couldn’t live with the possibility that she might inadvertently lead someone to me. I wanted to make things harder for Tatsu, too. It might not have mattered all that much at this point if he had a way to find me, but I didn’t like the notion.