“Even if I agreed to be part of this, how would you call off Mad Dog?”
He glanced back at me, his eyes bright with hope. “Leave Mad Dog to me. He depends on me. I can manage him. Anyway, he thinks you’re dead, remember?”
“What about the girl in the wheelchair?”
“She’ll be fine. She only mattered as a conduit to you.”
“So you did know about her. And you were okay with it.” I brought out the Hi Power.
He realized he’d slipped. “Look, I didn’t want to. It was Mad Dog’s idea.”
“I thought you said you could manage him.”
“I can. I’m sorry for what happened. Let’s wipe the slate clean, all right? This is a different set of circumstances than before. I know how valuable you are now. And you know how important the program is.”
“Did you know about Takizawa, too? Mad Dog’s girlfriend?”
“Don’t get all sanctimonious on me now, Rain, all right? You’re no different than me. You got yourself in a jam and were more than willing to kill your way out of it, remember?”
I thought of Tatsu. “It’s about having limits. I have them. You don’t.”
“Limits? Please. Killing Mad Dog and his father was your goddamn idea, even if I did lead you to it. And you didn’t hesitate when I told you you’d have to take out another guy who didn’t even have anything to do with it.”
“They were principals. Not bystanders.”
“That was a happy coincidence. You’re making a virtue of a necessity.”
“So you did know about the girlfriend.”
“Respectfully, son, I think you’re focusing on the wrong things here.”
“Am I?”
He must have felt it in my tone. He stopped and turned to me. He saw the Hi Power and went white. “Now listen to me. Don’t revert to being a hothead now, okay? You don’t think I’m protected? You don’t think I share the wealth with people back home?”
“You think that means they have your back? They won’t stick their necks out once you’re gone. They’ll just find a new business partner. Costs and benefits and all that.”
“Yes, they do, they do have my back.”
He was flailing now. I found it deeply satisfying.
“Besides,” I said. “I’m dead now, remember? You said it yourself. I can do anything.”
He licked his lips. “Is this about the girl in the wheelchair? Look, I’m sorry for that. I didn’t realize you were that close.”
“Then why did you and Mad Dog threaten her? She wouldn’t have seemed any use to you if you didn’t know I cared for her.”
He held out his hands, beseeching. “Look, son, you’ve got it all wrong. If you’ll just listen to me, we can—”
“I told you. Don’t call me son.”
His hands started to come up in an instinctive and futile flinch. I raised the Hi Power and pressed the trigger. The pistol jumped in my hand. The crack of the shot was loud among the gravestones. A small hole appeared in McGraw’s forehead. His mouth dropped open and his eyes turned in, then his body crumbled to the ground.
I put the Hi Power back beneath the robe, and walked away at a dignified, monkish pace. I glanced around. A few visitors were looking about, wondering what they had just heard. But when all they saw was a harmless monk, they went back to setting out flowers, and lighting incense, and saying their prayers for the dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I spent the next few days in a torment about whether to contact Sayaka. I was reasonably confident that, with Mad Dog believing I was dead, she would be safe. And that probably no one was watching her. Probably. But if I was wrong, I could get her killed. I kept morbidly imagining what it would have been like to tear back to the hotel on Thanatos that night and find her not alive and angry, but raped and beaten and dead. The thought was unbearable. I’d been lucky the first time had been just a threat. I doubted I’d get so lucky again.
When I was ready, I called Tatsu. We met at Meiji Shrine. He looked long and hard at my shaved head when we saw each other, but said nothing. As we strolled beneath the shrine’s towering trees, he told me how things had gone at Ueno and with McGraw. He’d handled everything just as I had hoped, and no one suspected anything. I briefed him on what I’d learned from McGraw. It was the least I could do.
“You’re lucky you were able to speak to him,” he told me. “It must have been just afterward that someone executed him at Zōshigaya Cemetery.”
“I know, I saw something on the news. Maybe someone in his organization learned he was flapping his gums.”
“Indeed,” he said dryly. It wasn’t always easy for me to know what Tatsu was thinking. But one thing was becoming clear about his general philosophy: being a cop was more about the ends than it was about the means.
“Will you be able to use any of what I’ve told you?” I asked.
“I think so, though it will take some time, and some maneuvering. I understand the corruption goes to the very top — Finance Minister Satō, Air Force Chief of Staff Genda, even Prime Minister Tanaka. But with the information you’ve given me, I can make at least some of it come out.”
“What about the States? McGraw suggested he was spreading the skim to American politicians, too.”
“It would be naïve to believe otherwise. Whether anyone will care is another story. But supposedly there’s a senator named Frank Church who’s forming a committee on intelligence and other abuses. This might interest him, too. I’ll get him what I can.”
We walked. It was pleasant under the trees, cool for a summer morning, quiet. The shrine itself was an oasis of stillness within the swirling city around it. It was the kind of place I loved in Tokyo. The kind of place I would miss.
“It’s been relatively quiet for the Keisatsucho since you died,” he said. “Other than McGraw, no more bodies turning up.”
“Well, that’s good. I’m sure you guys need a break from time to time.”
“Yes. Though I keep expecting to hear about Fukumoto Junior’s untimely demise. But for the moment, he seems to be all right.”
Mad Dog. Punting on him wasn’t easy for me. I reminded myself for probably the hundredth time it was the right call, the only call. McGraw’s death could be attributed to a dispute with the guy he had hired to kill me. Mad Dog dying right afterward would be too much of a coincidence. Tatsu had handled the discrepancies with the yakuza’s body, but if anyone started looking too closely, the story would unravel. And if the story unraveled, Sayaka would be at risk again. So Mad Dog got to live. I took some small comfort in knowing my decision was a sign of greater maturity and self-control. But still, it was killing me.
“As long as Mad Dog thinks I’m dead,” I said, “he has nothing to fear from me.”
“But while he’s alive, you won’t be safe in Japan.”
Christ. Was Tatsu encouraging me to go after Mad Dog? I would have loved to, but I didn’t want to tell him why I couldn’t.
“Of course,” he went on, “Fukumoto Junior is weak, and not widely respected. He is seen in certain quarters as illegitimate, the product of nepotism. His enemies might even learn of his role in his own father’s death. I wouldn’t want to be him if that information were to emerge.”
I looked at him. Was he telling me he was going to make that happen?
“Anyway,” he continued, “perhaps you’ll be able to return sooner than you imagine.”
“I don’t know what will be here for me when I do.”
“I’ll be here. Perhaps we can work together again.”
I laughed. “Oh, have we been working together?”
He shrugged. “Not always intentionally, but our activities often seem to dovetail, do they not? Would it be a bad thing if that were to…continue?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.” I doubted I would, though. I had no desire to ever again be part of anyone else’s larger strategy. I might be a contractor, but I was never going to be an employee.