John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories (16 page)

I dropped the curling iron into the polluted waters of the Sumida River. The towels and toiletries I threw in anonymous trash bins. Only when I was back inside the Yamanote did I permit myself a moment of exultation. I had done it. Later, I would go through what had gone well and what I might have done better. There would be lessons to be learned. But for now, I had done it.

I pulled into the shadows of a deserted parking lot and let the shakes work their way through me. So many things could have gone wrong, but they hadn’t. Logistical problems, electrical problems, witness problems. But in the end, it had all been okay.

It’s so easy to miss the forest when you’re focusing on all those trees.

chapter
seventeen

I
called McGraw. I didn’t know where he was at that hour, but an embassy staffer put me through to him.

“It’s done,” I told him.

There was a pause. “It looks the way it needs to look?”

“You’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow, I’m sure.”

“I’ll look forward to that.”

“You owe me two more files.”

“If I read in the paper what you just told me I’ll be reading, they’re yours. Meet me tomorrow morning. You know the Nakagin Capsule Tower?”

I’d read about the tower. Completed that year, it had caused a lot of excitement in Japan as an example of a movement called metabolism, which claimed to be a new approach to building and habitation, fusing architectural concepts with those of biological growth. Each of the Nakagin’s residential units was individually attached, upgradeable, and replaceable—supposedly the future of human urban living. Today, only a few of the one hundred forty capsules are still inhabited. The rest are used for storage or office space, or have been abandoned entirely, and the building itself feels like a ghost, a monument to an ideal that was promised but that never came to be, its exterior dark with rot and rust, its once bright circular windows dull as cataract-covered eyes, an Ozymandias of a structure standing mute and helpless and alone while the city fathers who blessed the building’s birth now dither over plans to bury it.

“Yeah. I know it.”

“In front, ten o’clock.”

I didn’t like him telling me what to do. “You better have those fucking files,” I said, and hung up.

I got back on Thanatos and headed off, thinking about where I should stay that night. I felt like Sayaka would take one look at me and know what I’d just done, or at least know I’d done something. But that was ridiculous. There was no mark of Cain. Or, if there was, I was already wearing it. In spite of everything that was going on, I wanted to see her. No, not in spite of…because of it. I didn’t have anything else right then. I didn’t want to lie awake alone in another anonymous room, with nothing for company but my own thoughts and nothing to look forward to but another set of files and another set of kills. I wanted something outside all that. I wanted something to look forward to. I wanted her.

I rode Thanatos to Uguisudani, parking near the station as usual and walking to the hotel. Sayaka looked up when I came in and smiled. I couldn’t help noticing the newness of both those behaviors. Ordinarily, she’d hear the door and pause before looking up from her textbooks, obviously caring more about studying than she did about who might be coming in for a room. And she’d never smiled when she saw me.

“I wondered whether you were going to come back tonight,” she said, as I walked up to the glass.

I smiled back. “It’s my home away from home.”

“Yeah? Well, you weren’t here last night.”

“Were you worried about me?”

She rolled her eyes theatrically. “Don’t get cocky.”

In fact, I didn’t feel cocky, though I was glad she seemed to be showing some interest. I just didn’t want her to ask anything more about where I’d been.

“Anyway,” I said, “here I am.”

“I guess this means you haven’t sorted out that jam yet?”

“I’m…getting closer.”

She looked at me. “You okay?”

I should have deflected it. Instead, I said, “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. You look…different. Tired or something.”

“Well, I am a little tired.”

There was an awkward moment of silence. She said, “So…a stay?”

“Yeah. The usual.”

I gave her the money and took the key. I was about to turn and go when she said, “In case I don’t see you in the morning—tomorrow’s my day off. Well, night off.”

Impulsively I said, “Yeah? You want to do something?”

She laughed. “You are feeling cocky.”

“I’m serious. How about dinner?”

Her laugh faded, and she looked at me with a directness and honesty I found half moving, and half intimidating. “Look,” she said. “I can’t get around well.”

“I don’t care.”

She nodded. “I know you don’t, and I won’t deny that’s something I like about you. But if you think you know what it’s like to go out with me, you don’t.”

I was mildly giddy at her protests. They all struck me as practical, and practical concerns could always be addressed, right?

“Why don’t we find out?” I said.

She was still looking at me so directly. “Because, Jun, finding out for you might be embarrassing for me.”

I realized what she was telling me wasn’t easy for her. That tough facade she always presented…it was a kind of armor. And she was removing some of it now. It was exciting, encouraging. And it also made me feel strangely honored, and in her debt. She was trusting me, and I had to show her I was worthy of that. Had to
be
worthy of it.

“I really don’t think there’s anything about you that should ever be embarrassing,” I said. “At least not to me.”

She smiled. “That’s sweet.”

“I mean it.”

“I know. Thanks.”

I shook my head. “Don’t thank me. Just let me take you to dinner.”

She laughed. “Okay.”

“Okay, great! I’ll find a place that’s…ground floor. You know, no stairs. What kind of food do you like?”

“I like everything.”

“Sushi?”

“I think sushi’s included in ‘everything,’ yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll find a place. Where do you live?”

She shook her head as though in amazement that I could be so dense. “Close by.”

“Oh. Right. Of course. Well, how about if we meet in front of JR Uguisudani Station? North entrance? Seven o’clock?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

I couldn’t help grinning. She rolled her eyes again and went back to her studying, the armor firmly back in place.

Except that I’d seen underneath it. A little.

I took the longest, hottest shower I could stand, then soaked in an equally scalding bath until the water began to cool. It relaxed my body, but my mind wouldn’t follow suit. I was excited about dinner with Sayaka and I tried to focus on that, tried to use it to eclipse everything else. But I couldn’t. Not entirely.

I felt…bad. Not as bad as I supposed I should. But maybe my mother’s efforts at Catholic indoctrination hadn’t been quite as futile as I’d told myself. I felt like I’d crossed some line tonight, done something I would need to account for, expurgate, confess. But I’d also felt the same way after my first combat kill. It had passed then, and I imagined it would now.

What was different, I thought, was that up until now, everything had been sanctioned by war. Well, the
chinpira
in Ueno hadn’t been war, but it had been self-defense, and that’s close enough. Even the civilians—and there had been civilians, and I would carry that with me forever—it had all been under the rubric of war; it had all been hot-blooded. I had been a soldier, my presence in battle sanctioned even if some of what I’d done had crossed a line, even if some of what happened had slipped out of my control. No,
because
some of it had slipped out of my control. As opposed to now, when I was being fully deliberate. That was the difference, and I felt like understanding it was important.

What was strange, and unsettling, was that none of it felt remotely as awful as it should have. I should have been wracked by conscience, tormented by guilt, appalled that I had done something enormous, irrevocable. I should have been gripped by what that poet said—“The awful daring of a moment’s surrender / Which an age of prudence can never retract.” I should have known I had crossed a bridge too far, and arrived in a land offering no hope of return passage.

Instead, mostly it felt like just another step, an incremental movement along a path I’d been traveling for years.

chapter
eighteen

I
headed out at just before six the next morning. Sayaka was dozing when I emerged from the stairs, but woke from the sound of the door.

“Sorry,” I said, walking over to the window. Jazz issued softly from her cassette deck. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay. You’re up early.”

“Places to go, people to meet.”

She looked at me. “Problems to solve.”

I shook my head. “It’s really nothing. Almost done.”

“Whatever you say.”

“So…see you tonight?”

She nodded and smiled a little ruefully. I wondered if she was having second thoughts. I almost said something that would let her off the hook, but then I thought maybe she would take it the wrong way and think I was the one having second thoughts. Better to just let it go.

I enjoyed a breakfast of fatty tuna and rice at a stall in Tskuji, adjacent to the massive wholesale fish market of the same name, then walked to the nearby Nakagin Tower. I was early, but McGraw was already waiting. He had his camera with him and I supposed if anyone asked, he was here to capture the Tower Of The Future in the bright morning light. He nodded when he saw me and walked over.

“Nice work,” he said by way of greeting. “I read about it in the paper this morning.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t need his assessment. I knew the work was good. Though I also felt I’d been luckier than I deserved.

“You know,” he went, on, “if you hadn’t called me last night and I’d just heard about this, I’d have thought it was a coincidence.”

“If you’d told me it was a coincidence and you didn’t owe me for it, it wouldn’t have gone over well.”

He mopped his brow with a handkerchief. “How’d you do it? The paper says it was some sort of heart attack in a bathhouse.”

“Maybe it was.”

“You did something to electrocute him, didn’t you?”

“How would I do something like that?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

“What do you care? It’s done. Now give me what you owe me. The files on the yakuza.”

“I’m saying, if you’ve got a knack for this kind of thing, you could make a hell of a living. Being a bagman is bullshit. You know what certain people would pay to have problem individuals die of natural causes?”

“I don’t want to do this for a living. I just want to go on living. Now where are the fucking files?”

If he made anything of my newfound irritability and assertiveness, he didn’t comment. He shrugged and said, “Café de l’Ambre.”

“What is that?”

“A coffee shop in Ginza. Eight-chōme, ten-fifteen. Not far from Shinbashi Station. How’d you like Lion?”

“I liked it fine.”

“You’ll like this, too. Sit at the counter, seat second farthest from the entrance. The file’s under the seat. Oh, and try the Number Three blend. It’s the house specialty.”

“What is it with you and coffee shops?”

He chuckled. “Tokyo has some of the best coffee around, son, and I’ve been all over the world. If I have to spend time somewhere for a dead drop, I might as well enjoy myself. You only live once. Remember that.”

I didn’t like all the hoops he made me jump through to get these files, but I told myself not to look at it that way. It was just good tradecraft. I hadn’t wanted to meet face-to-face with Miyamoto, had I? McGraw was just being careful, not playing games.

“Just one thing,” he said. “At the moment, there’s only one file—on Fukumoto Senior.”

I looked at him, thinking,
If you fucking try to cheat me, McGraw…

“Relax,” he said. “I’ll get you the one on Mad Dog. We don’t have much that’s actionable on these two, and putting together the basics on the father seemed like the priority. He’s the one in charge. Meaning in charge of having you hunted down and killed. I would have had them both ready, but I never thought you’d manage Ozawa so fast. At least now you have something to work with while I assemble what you need on the son.”

I nodded slowly, not liking it, but not finding a further reason to protest, either. I realized that if McGraw tried to screw me, I would kill him. I would have to, like I’d told him earlier. I already had the yakuza after me. Adding the CIA seemed like not so much.

“Relax,” he said again, probably reading my thoughts from my expression. “I’ll get you the other file.”

I considered telling him what would happen if he didn’t, but recognized that doing so would have been childish, the product of ego. Worse, because he already knew what would happen, verbalizing it could only serve to dilute the strength of the threat. Because why would anyone waste breath describing what was already axiomatic?

I didn’t realize it right away, but that was a big moment in my development. Self-awareness leading to self-control. I had a long way to go, but you have to start somewhere.

It took me a little while to find the coffee shop—it was small and the signage was modest, just an illuminated placard over the window reading
CAFÉ DE L’AMBRE. COFFEE ONLY
. For some reason, I liked that. It was so confident, so assertive. Almost a fuck-off to anyone inclined to order a muffin or macchiato.

I stepped into the air-conditioned coolness of a small, unpretentious shop. A middle-aged woman behind an old-fashioned cash register to my left asked, “How many?” I told her it was just me, and she came around and escorted me the eight feet or so to the counter. To my right were six tables for two people each, a bench against the back wall, chairs facing it; to my left, an L-shaped counter with ten stools, the farthest two forming the short end of the L. The tables were full, but there were a few seats open at the counter, including the second farthest from the entrance, just around the bend on the short end of the L, the one McGraw had used for the dead drop.