John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories (10 page)

I sat in the booth McGraw had described, and waited a moment. An unsmiling waitress wearing an apron over her jeans came over and silently placed a laminated menu the size of a post card on the small wooden table in front of me. The paper inside the laminate was yellowed and stained, and I realized that Lion’s scant offerings—essentially coffee, tea, and milk, hot and cold—had probably remained unchanged since more or less the beginning of time. I pointed to the entry for coffee. The waitress nodded, collected the menu, and moved off. As she did so, I noticed that the varnish on the table was so worn the wood was practically bare. I looked around and saw a similar effect everywhere else—the floor, the seat backs, even the wood around the window hasps—and I felt a sudden and surprising surge of affection for the place. In a dozen small ways, Lion indicated it didn’t give a damn how or how fast Tokyo might be changing outside. It didn’t give a damn about Tokyo, period. This place had found the right way of doing things, and it would keep on doing them without regard to fad or fashion.

The waitress returned in less than three minutes, carefully arranged before me a small white cup of exceptionally dark coffee, an even smaller bowl of sugar, and cream in a silver cup the size of a thimble. The bill went next to it all, for whenever I was ready, and then the waitress was gone, once again without a word. Her reticence didn’t feel unfriendly, though; it was more like there was an understanding here, a mutual comprehension, alongside which words would be superfluous and perhaps even rude.

I reached under the seat and touched paper taped exactly where McGraw had said it would be. But I felt no particular hurry about retrieving and opening it. Instead, I closed my eyes, listened to the music, and began sipping the coffee. It was ungodly strong but also delicious, and I realized someone had employed a lot of care to impart that much richness without bitterness or anything else creeping in to overpower the flavor. I had been expecting just a routine cup of coffee, and was struck by the notion that even in an everyday thing like coffee preparation, there was a way of doing things right, with care and maybe even devotion. Maybe this was part of what Miyamoto had been trying to describe as we had taken our tea at Nakajima. I wasn’t unfamiliar with what it meant to be ruthlessly squared away—ask any combat veteran about the care that goes into planning, training, weapons maintenance, and everything else on which your life might hang in the balance in the field—but this was different. Lion spoke of devotion brought to bear on small things, everyday things, things that otherwise might have seemed inconsequential or have been overlooked entirely, and like the confidence that characterized the place, I sensed this kind of everyday devotion was also something to which a person might want to aspire.

I pulled loose the envelope, opened it, and removed a file. There was a lot of good information: home and work addresses; known cronies and habits; a half-dozen photos; a brief bio. Married, two grown children. No known vices. He’d been a captain in the Imperial Army. Received a commendation for valor, and a leg wound in Manchuria. But that had been a while back. The man I saw in the photos was now sixty-something, thin and sallow-faced, probably from a lifetime of tobacco. His warrior days were behind him. Along with, soon enough, everything else.

I immediately understood the value of the extra photos McGraw had enclosed. A single shot can be misleading. Seeing the subject from multiple angles, on the other hand, at various times, in different clothes, and in varied surroundings, made a positive ID in person much easier and more certain. You really wouldn’t want to drop some clueless civilian because of an accidental likeness to a single low-resolution surveillance photo.

Looking at the photos was weird. Not because it made me feel queasy. Rather, because it didn’t. I was examining the face of a man I was going to kill, and I was as emotionally involved as if I were doing a crossword puzzle. I wondered about that. Was it because after all that time in the jungle, I had become inured to killing? Was it because no one knew me anymore, no one was watching, I had no one to account to?

What about God?

I laughed at that. My mother had tried to raise me as a Catholic, but war had deracinated whatever meager plantings her efforts had achieved. No God ever would have stood silent spectator to what I saw in Vietnam. To what I did there. Either there was no God, or there was and he didn’t give a damn.

And besides, was the absence of feeling really so strange? Ozawa was part of a corrupt system. You take part in a system like that, you have to realize grievances aren’t going to get aired in court, or worked out in group therapy, or solved with mediation. This guy knew the risks, and he took them. It wasn’t my fault the risk/reward ratio wasn’t going to offer the outcome he’d been hoping for.

It was a rationalization, of course. Even back then, I knew that. Maybe I needed the rationalization, like a shot of booze to get up my courage. The strange thing was, even knowing it was a rationalization didn’t make it less effective.

People talk about morality. Sometimes I think there’s just what you can do, and what you can’t.

Well, I could. And I was going to.

chapter
eleven

B
efore leaving Lion, I memorized the Ozawa file, then walked outside and burned it as McGraw had instructed. I briefly considered saving it as leverage in case anything went wrong, but decided there was no point. There was nothing on any of the pages to tie them to McGraw, or to anyone else. I’d come to appreciate how careful McGraw was, and imagined he would have handled everything so as to ensure he left no fingerprints, literal or figurative. The person the file could connect to Ozawa, though, was me. Better to just get rid of it.

I took a long and aimless ride on Thanatos, setting Ozawa aside temporarily and thinking about how to communicate with Miyamoto, instead—mapping out the logistics, creating a coherent cover story, pressure-checking all of it. When I had a plan in place, I parked the bike in Shibuya and rode the Ginza line. It didn’t take me long to find what I wanted—Gaienmae Station would work well enough. I walked up and down the platform, decided how I wanted to handle things, then got back on the train.

When I reemerged in Shibuya, it was late afternoon. There was still time to start my recon on Ozawa. The path to solving my yakuza problem went through him, and I wanted to get started.

According to McGraw’s file, Ozawa lived in Kita-Senju, a neighborhood way out in the northeast on the other side of the Sumida River. I’d actually never been there, never having had a reason to go. Well, I did now. I stopped at a gas stand to fill up Thanatos, then headed over, not sure what I would find, hoping it would be something I could use. Killing a guy was one thing. Making it look natural…I didn’t know how the hell I was going to pull off something like that.

Kita-Senju turned out to be a quiet, unpretentious neighborhood consisting primarily of modest single-family houses interspersed with mom-and-pop shops, doubtless run by couples living over the store. Off the main thoroughfares, the streets were barely wide enough for Thanatos, their narrowness accentuated by the tendency of residents to line the few inches of curb in front of their houses with a variety of potted plants, and to park bicycles in front of those. The houses were of wood or ferroconcrete, some even of corrugated iron, most of them small and clustered closely together, but all well maintained. I liked the neighborhood. There was nothing fancy about it, certainly, but it felt real.

I found Ozawa’s street and turned onto it, slowing as I came to his house. Unlike the other houses I’d seen, it was built partly of brick—unpretentious, but denoting a certain level of importance and success. Two stories, with just a little bit of land in front and to either side; surrounded by a short metal fence; a concrete parking space behind a sliding gate to one side. The parking space was currently occupied by a shiny Toyota sedan. McGraw’s file claimed the household possessed only one car, and that Ozawa himself was provided a driver by virtue of his position as LDP
sōmukaicho
. I took this to mean the wife was home. Ozawa probably was not—a guy like that would rarely be home before dinner, and in fact probably not until well after, when his business socializing was done.

I drove on, feeling discouraged. The house itself seemed to offer few possibilities. I imagined I could get inside while the wife was out, but what then? And what if I was mistaken and the wife was home, or there was a parent or in-law around for that matter? These days, it’s less common for Japanese extended families to all live under the same roof, but back then it was the norm. I pictured myself intercepting Ozawa as he got in or out of his chauffeured car. Sure, I could do it, but it would be about the least natural-looking outcome imaginable.

I circled the block and came to a large building with an elaborate, authentic Japanese roof, several dozen bicycles lined up before it at the curb. A Buddhist temple? I wondered how long it had been there—from the style and grandeur of those graceful, tiled curves, probably since at least the turn of the century. The word for “roof” in Japanese is
yane
—literally “house root,” implying the importance of the roof as the basis for everything else. Whoever had designed this structure had taken that philosophy seriously, and I felt an odd sense of respect for and even connection with the architect, unknown to me and probably long since gone.

I came closer. A blue
noren
curtain with the name Daikoku-yu was stretched across the entrance, the three kanji meaning Great Black Hot Waters, and there were several dozen shoes placed in cubbies inside a small vestibule. Interesting. Whatever purpose it might have served originally, the place was obviously now a
sentō
—a public bath. Though they’ve been gradually disappearing since the war, back then the
sentō
—literally, “hot water for a penny”—served a vital function, fostering both a sense of community and good hygiene, and Tokyo still had several thousand, ranging from tiny no-frills neighborhood places to grand ones like this.

I thought about Ozawa’s house again. It was impressive, but it looked fifty years old at least. Newer places were being built with their own baths, but there was a decent chance the Ozawa residence wouldn’t have one. If that were the case, I imagined Ozawa would visit the neighborhood
sentō
regularly, perhaps every night. Or even if the home had its own bath, it would be a shame to live so close to a
sentō
as spectacular as this one and not make use of it. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that of course Ozawa would be a frequent visitor. Japanese politicians always mixed with their constituents. They had to show their humble origins, demonstrate they were of the
shomin
, the common folk. And though Ozawa’s house was better than average, a guy in his position easily could have afforded more. That he chose to scale back was another reason to expect I might find him at the
sentō
. After all, it wouldn’t do to be living aloof in that better-than-average home and to never engage in a little old-school
hadaka-no-tsukiai
—naked bonding—with the hoi polloi. My gut told me the
sentō
was the opportunity I needed, either the place itself or somewhere between it and his house. I just had to find the right way.

I parked Thanatos and wandered the neighborhood on foot. There were two routes Ozawa might use—one along the neighborhood’s little
shōtengai
, or shopping street; the other something of a shortcut along several much narrower roads. No way to know which he’d prefer, or whether he would consistently use one or the other. And even if I could know, neither potential route offered a way I could loiter inconspicuously. I decided to try the
sentō
itself.

I walked inside, placing my shoes in one of the cubbies at the entrance. The interior was old but well kept: sturdy-looking pillars ascending to a lovely, carved wooden ceiling; leather couches for anyone who wanted to relax before or after a bath; good lighting and immaculate lacquered floors. I walked over to the
mama-san
, who was seated behind a desk between the women’s entrance to one side and the men’s to the other, and along with the entrance fee paid for soap, shampoo, a towel, and a washcloth. No question the place would be popular in the neighborhood, but the fact that they were selling toiletries and renting towels suggested they also attracted visitors from farther away—maybe because of the grand old structure itself; maybe because in addition to the
sentō
, they offered an
onsen
or
rotenburo
, natural spring or outdoor bath. Certainly the
mama-san
evinced no surprise at the sight of an unfamiliar face—another good sign.

I walked into the men’s changing area, undressed, and put my clothes and bag in a locker secured with a charmingly inadequate lock. Then I went through the sliding-glass doors and into the men’s bathing area. Instantly I was enveloped by steam and heat and the floral smell of soap. High on one wall was the requisite mural of Mount Fuji, practically a national law. There was a lot of light—not just from fixtures, but from a pair of large windows along the high ceiling and a skylight overhead. About twenty men of all ages were seated on short stools before the spigots lining the walls, some shaving, some scrubbing, some dowsing themselves with hot water from wooden buckets. One man was helping a little boy into the tub, and for a moment I was struck by a memory of my own father, introducing me to the neighborhood
sentō
when I was no longer young enough to be bathed in the kitchen sink. I remembered that day clearly, the steam and the soap and the sight of all those unselfconsciously naked people. It had felt like a rite of passage, and my parents had been sure to mark it as such, with my mother fussing afterward about how grown-up I was now, and even my ordinarily distant father, perhaps pressed by some memories of his own, smiling with uncharacteristic sentiment, and for the second time that day I sagged under the paradoxical weight of memories of people and things that no longer were.