The next morning, I worked out at Murakami’s dojo in Asakusa. When I arrived, the men who were already training paused and gave me a low collective bow-a sign of their respect for the way I had dispatched Adonis. After that, I was treated in a dozen subtle ways with deference that bordered on awe. Even Washio, older than I and with a much longer and deeper association with the dojo, was using different verb forms to indicate that he now considered me his superior. My sense was that, whatever Yamaoto and Murakami might have discovered about me, the knowledge had not been shared with the lower echelon.
Tatsu had given me a Glock 26, the shortest-barreled pistol in Glock’s excellent 9-millimeter line. Definitely not standard Keisatsucho issue. I didn’t know how Tatsu had acquired it in tightly gun-controlled Japan, and I didn’t ask. Despite its relatively low profile, I couldn’t keep it concealed on my person while I was working out. Instead I left it in my gym bag. I stayed close to the bag.
Tatsu had also given me a cell phone with which I would alert him when Murakami showed. I had created a speed dial entry so that all I had to do was hit one of the keys, let the call go through, and hang up. When Tatsu saw that a call had come from this number, he’d scramble his nearby men to the dojo.
But Murakami didn’t show. Not that day, not the next.
I was getting antsy. Too much living out of hotels, a different one every night. Too much worrying about security cameras. Too much thinking about Harry, about the useless way he’d died, about how hard I’d been on him that very night.
And too much thinking about Midori, wondering whether she’d get in touch again, and what she would want if she did.
I went to the dojo for a third day. I was doing long workouts, trying to give Murakami the widest possible window in which to appear, but there was still no sign of him. I was starting to think he just wasn’t going to show.
But he did. I was on the floor, stretching, when I heard the door buzzer. I looked up to see Murakami, wearing a black leather jacket and head-hugging shades, and his two bodyguards, similarly dressed, enter the room. As usual, the atmosphere in the dojo changed when he entered, his presence aggravating everyone’s vestigial fight-or-flight radar like a mild electric current.
“Oi, Arai-san, yo,” he said, walking over. “Let’s talk.”
I stood up. “Okay.”
One of the bodyguards approached. I started toward my bag, but he got there ahead of me. He picked it up and slid it over his shoulder. “I’ll take this,” he said.
I gave no sign that this was a problem for me. The cell phone, at least, much smaller than the gun, was in my pocket. I shrugged and said, “Thanks.”
Murakami motioned toward the door with a tilt of his head. “Outside.”
My heart rate had doubled but my voice was cool. “Sure,” I called to him. “Just going to take a leak first.”
I walked to the back of the room and into the bathroom. I was already so juiced from adrenaline that I couldn’t have pissed if I had to, but that wasn’t what I had come to do.
I was looking for a weapon of convenience. I would call Tatsu after I found it. Maybe some powdered soap that I could toss into someone’s eyes, or a mop handle that I could break off into a nightstick. Anything that would improve the currently ugly odds.
My eyes swept the room but there was nothing. The soap was liquid. If there was a mop, they kept it elsewhere.
You should have done this before it mattered. Stupid. Stupid.
One thing. There was a brass doorstop screwed into the wall just above the floor and behind the door. I knelt and tried to turn it. It was too close to the floor for me to get a hand around. And it was coated in probably ten layers of paint and looked as old as the building. It wouldn’t budge.
“Fuck,” I breathed. I could have tried stomping on it with my heel, but that might have broken off the point that was screwed into the wall.
Instead I tried pressing one way with my palm, then the other. Up, down. Left, right. I jiggled it but felt no new play. Damn it, this is taking too long.
I squeezed it between the thumbs and forefingers of both hands as hard as I could and rotated it counterclockwise. For a second I thought my fingers had slipped, but then I realized that it had turned.
I unscrewed it the rest of the way and stood just as the bathroom door opened. It was one of the bodyguards.
He looked at me. “Everything okay?” he asked, holding the door open.
I palmed the doorstop. “Just washing my hands. Be right with you.”
He nodded and left. The door closed behind him and I shoved the doorstop into my right front pocket.
Of course, I didn’t know for certain that they were on to me. Murakami might have just been there to talk about whatever it was he had in mind at Damask Rose. But that didn’t matter. The important thing is to accept the facts early. Most people don’t want to believe the crime or the ambush or whatever the violence is going to be is really going to happen. At some level they know better, but they keep themselves in denial until the proof really comes in. At which point, of course, it’s too late to do anything about it.
If I have to err, it’s on the side of assuming the worst. This way, if I’m wrong, I can always apologize. Or send flowers. You err on the other side, the flowers will be coming to you.
I pulled out the cell phone and pressed the speed dial key as I walked out. The first thing I noticed was that the gym was empty. It was just Murakami and his two goons, standing between me and the door. They’d set my bag down near the front entrance. I didn’t see the gun, so it seemed that they hadn’t thought to open the bag during my brief absence.
“What’s going on?” I asked, but casually, as though I was too stupid to realize anything was seriously amiss and was counting on Murakami for a straight answer.
“Everything’s fine,” he said, and they began to move toward me. “We just asked the others to wait outside so we could have some privacy.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. I held up the cell phone. “Just got to make a quick phone call.”
“Later,” he said.
I hoped Tatsu and his men were close by. They’d have to be right around the corner if they were going to be of any use to me.
“You sure?” I asked, looking at him, giving the call time to go through. “It’ll only take a minute.”
“Later,” he said again. The bodyguards had fanned out to his flanks.
I glanced down and saw that the call had connected. “Okay,” I said with a shrug. I put my hands in my pockets-putting the phone away with my left, palming the doorstop with my right. I would wait until they were in striking distance.
But they stopped just outside that range. I watched them with a quizzical, sheepish look, as if to say, Hey, guys, what’s all this about?
Murakami eyeballed me for a long moment. When he spoke his voice was a low growl. “We’ve got a problem,” he said.
“A problem?”
“Yeah. A problem as in, your name isn’t Arai. It’s Rain.”
I let my eyes move fearfully from face to face, to the exit, then back again. I wanted them to think I might bolt. Which I sure as shit would if I could.
“Hold him,” Murakami said.
The man to my left lunged. I was ready for it. My hands had already popped free of my pockets and I extended my left arm as though to block him. He took the bait, grabbing my forearm with both hands to immobilize it while his partner moved in from the right. I snaked the hand he was trying to hold over his left wrist, trapping it, and used the grip to yank myself toward him. He was braced for me to try to pull in the opposite direction and couldn’t react in time to stop me from closing the distance. The doorstop was already out, palmed in my fist with the screw point jutting out between my middle and forefinger like the world’s nastiest signet ring.