“Oh, I get along all right with pretty much everyone.” It was a safe answer to a slightly different question. I admired her poise.
The house music faded out and was replaced by another round of J-Pop techno. Simultaneously, two Japanese girls, topless and high-heeled, appeared on the dance stages.
“Ah, that’s Emi,” Naomi said, indicating the pretty, appealing zaftig girl on the far stage. She turned and nodded her head at the stage closer to us. “And that’s Yukiko.”
Yukiko. At last we meet.
I watched her, a tall girl with long hair so black that under the stage lighting it coruscated like moonlit liquid. It cascaded in waves around the smooth contours of her shoulders, past the alluvial shadows of her waist, around the upturned curve of her ass. She was tall and fine-boned, with delicate white skin, high cheekbones, and small, high breasts. Put the hair up, add a little couture, and you’d have the world’s classiest courtesan.
This girl with Harry? I thought. No way.
“She’s beautiful,” I said, feeling that her striking looks demanded some commentary.
“A lot of people say so,” Naomi replied.
There was something lurking in her deliberately noncommittal reply. “You don’t think so?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Not my type.”
“I get the feeling you don’t care for her.”
“Let’s just say that she’s comfortable doing things that I’m not.”
With Harry? “I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t curious.”
She shook her head, and I knew I’d hit another dead end, even after three whiskeys.
Snow Child, indeed. There was something cold, even calculating, about the girl’s beauty. Something was wrong here, although how the hell could I tell Harry that? I imagined the conversation: Harry, I went to Damask Rose to check up on you. Trust me, my friend, this girl is way out of your league. Plus, I had a bad feeling about her generally. Steer clear.
I knew where his mind was right now: she would feel like the best thing that ever happened to him, and anything or anyone that threatened that comfortable sense would be rationalized away or ignored. A heads-up from a friend would be useless. Or worse.
I wasn’t going to get any more out of Naomi. I’d do a little more digging when I got back to Osaka. Harry was a friend and I owed him that much. But finding out what this girl was up to wasn’t really the problem. Getting Harry to acknowledge it, I knew, would be.
“Do you want to watch her?” Naomi asked.
I shook my head. “Sorry. I was thinking of something else.”
We talked more about Brazil. She spoke of the country’s ethnic and cultural variety, a mélange of Europeans, Indians, Japanese, and West Africans; its atmosphere of exuberance, music, and sport; its extremes of wealth and poverty; most of all, of its beauty, with thousands of miles of spectacular coast, the vast pampas of the south, the trackless green basin of the Amazon. Much of it I knew already, but I enjoyed listening to her, and looking at her while she spoke.
I thought of what she had said about Yukiko: Let’s just say that she’s comfortable doing things that I’m not.
But that only meant Yukiko had been in the game longer. Innocence is a fragile thing.
I might have asked for her number. I could have told her my visit had been extended, something like that. She was too young, but I liked the way she made me feel. She provoked a confusing mix of emotions: affinity based on the shared experiences of mixed blood and childhood bereavement; a paternalistic urge to protect her from the mistakes she was going to make; a sad sexual longing that was like an elegy for Midori.
It was getting late. “Will you forgive me if I forgo the lap dance?” I asked her.
She smiled. “That’s fine.”
I stood to go. She got up with me.
“Wait,” she said. She took out a pen. “Give me your hand.”
I held out my left hand. She held it and began to write on my palm. She wrote slowly. Her fingers were warm.
“This is my private e-mail address,” she said when she was done. “It’s not something I give customers, so please don’t share it. Next time you have a trip to Salvador, let me know. I’ll tell you the best places to go.” She smiled. “And I wouldn’t mind hearing from you if you find yourself back in Tokyo, either.”
I smiled into her green eyes. The smile felt strangely sad to me. Maybe she didn’t notice.
“You never know,” I said.
I settled the bill at the door, in cash as always. I took a card, then walked up the stairs without looking back.
The early morning air of Nogizaka was cool and slightly damp. Light from streetlamps lay in weak yellow pools. The pavement was slick with urban dew. Tokyo slumbered around me, dreamless and indifferent.
Goodbye to all that, I thought, and began walking toward the hotel.
5
I WENT STRAIGHT to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of Harry, of Harry with Yukiko. I knew something was wrong there. What would this girl, or whoever she worked for, want with a guy like Harry?
I supposed he might have made an enemy with one of his hacking stunts. Even if he had, though, tracing the problem back to him would be a bitch. And what would be the point of setting him up with the girl?
Harry had told me his boss had taken him to Damask Rose to “celebrate” the night Harry had met Yukiko. If the girl had been a setup, Harry’s boss must have been complicit. I chewed on that.
I thought about going to the guy. I could find out his name, where he lived, brace him one morning on his way to the office.
Tempting, but even if I got the information I wanted, the incident would cause problems for Harry, possibly severe ones. No go.
Okay, try something else. Maybe someone was interested in Harry only as a conduit to me.
But nobody knows about Harry, I thought. Not even Tatsu.
There was Midori, of course. She knew where he lived. She’d sent him that letter.
Nah, I don’t see it.
I got up and paced the room. Midori had connections in the entertainment world. Use those connections, have someone get close to Harry as a way of finding me?
I remembered that last night with her at the Imperial Hotel, how we’d been standing, my arms around her from behind, her fingers intertwined with mine, the way her hair smelled, the way she tasted. I pushed the memory away.
I realized that, for the moment, there was no way of knowing who was behind Harry’s improbable romance. So I put aside Midori and concentrated on what, not who.
What makes me a hard target is that I have no fixed points in my life-no workplace, no address, no known associates-that someone can hook into and use to get to me. If someone had established a connection from Harry to me, he’d have that fixed point. He could be expected to exploit it.
That meant people would be watching Harry. Not just through Yukiko. They’d have to tail him, as often as possible.
But he’d been clean when I’d seen him at Teize. He’d told me as much, and I knew for sure that I’d been clean afterward.
I decided to conduct an experiment. It was a little bit risky, but not as risky as leveling with Harry about his situation, given his current state of mind. I’d need another night in Tokyo to do it right. No problem with that. While closing in on the weightlifter, I’d been staying in appropriately anonymous city hotels for one week at a time-not wishing to attract attention with longer stays-and the New Otani reservation was good for another three nights anyway.
I looked at the digital clock on the bedstand. It was past four in the morning. Christ, I was keeping the same hours as my lovesick friend.
I’d call him in the evening, when we’d both be awake. More importantly, when Yukiko would be at Damask Rose, and Harry, presumably, would be alone. Then, based on the outcome of my little experiment, I’d decide how much to tell him.