Along with the right location, I had an ice-cold alternate identity, something I’d been nurturing for a long time in preparation for a day when I might have to drop off the map more completely than I ever had before. About a decade earlier, as I was surveilling and preparing to eliminate a certain bureaucrat, I was struck by the degree to which the man superficially resembled me-the age, height, build, even the face wasn’t too far off. The subject also had a wonderful name: Taro Yamada, the Japanese equivalent of John Smith. I had done some digging, and learned that Yamada-san lacked a close family. There seemed to be no one who would miss him enough to go looking for him if he happened to disappear.
Now, a lot of books will tell you that you can build a new identity using the name of someone deceased, but that’s only true if no one filed a death certificate. If the authorities were involved in any way-say, the person died in a hospice or hospital, or gets buried or cremated, which, if you think about it, applies to pretty much everyone, or if someone files a missing person report-a certificate will be filed. Or if a relative wants to get his or her hands on any aspect of the decedent’s estate-in which case you’re talking about the transfer of title to real and personal property and probably probate-again, a certificate will be filed. And if you decide to proceed anyway, then even if you do manage to get some additional new identification based on the dead person’s particulars, the new ID will always be fatally flawed, and, eventually, when you apply for a driver’s license, or for credit, or when you try to get pretty much any job, or file a tax return, or when you try to cross a border-in short, when you try to do any one of the innumerable things for which you needed your new identity in the first place-a “what’s wrong with this picture” alert will pop up on someone’s screen, and you will be promptly and thoroughly screwed.
So what about the identity of someone who’s still living? This works fine for short-term scams, known colloquially as “identity theft,” although perhaps better understood as “identity borrowing,” but is infeasible for anything long-term. After all, who’s going to be responsible for those new credit cards? And where do the bills get sent? Okay, then what about using someone who’s, say, disappeared for some reason, assuming you even know of such a person? Well, what about it? Did the person have debts? Was he a drug dealer? Because if he had anyone looking for him before, now they’ll be looking for you. And anyway, what do you do if Mr. Missing Person suddenly resurfaces?
Of course, if you know of someone who’s dead because you happen to have killed him, that’s a little different. True, you’d have to dispose of the body-in a manner that ensures it will never be found-a risky and often grisly chore that isn’t for everyone. But if you’ve come this far, and if you know that no one is going to report the person dead, or even missing, you’ve got something potentially valuable on your hands. If you also know that he’s got a good credit history, because you’ve gone on paying bills incurred in his name, you might just have landed yourself a winner.
So yes, I did carry out the contract on the unfortunate Mr. Yamada, but I didn’t tell the client that. Instead, the subject seemed to have gone “underground,” I reported, unable to resist the pun. Perhaps he had somehow gotten wind of the fact that a contract had been put out on his life? The client hired a PI, who confirmed the presence of all the indicia of sudden flight: a closed bank account and other personal matters efficiently tied up; mail forwarded to a foreign drop; missing clothes and other personal items from the apartment. I, of course, had been taking care of all of this. The client let me know that, for his purposes, disappearance was as good as death, and that I needn’t trouble myself tracking Yamada down to complete the contract. I was paid for my efforts anyway-no one wants someone like me to feel that he may have been treated unfairly-and that was that. The client himself has long since come to his own unfortunate end, and enough time has elapsed for me to have resurrected Yamada-san, opening up a small consulting operation in his unobtrusive name, paying taxes, securing an appropriate postal address, incurring debt and paying it off-all the little things that, taken together, add up to existence as a thoroughly unremarkable, thoroughly legitimate, member of society.
All I had to do now was slip into the Yamada identity and begin my new life. But first, Taro Yamada had to do some of the things that any guy in his position would do after deciding to give up on his failed consulting business and move to Brazil to teach third-generation Japanese their now forgotten language. He needed a visa, a legitimate bank account-as opposed to the illegitimate, pseudonymous ones I maintain offshore-assistance with housing, an office. He would be nominally based in São Paulo, where almost half of Brazil’s ethnic Japanese are concentrated, which would make him even more difficult to track to Rio. It would have been easier to take care of much of this with the assistance of the Japanese consulate in Brasilia, of course, but Mr. Yamada preferred less formal, less traceable means.
While I went about setting Yamada up in Brazil, I read about a string of corruption scandals and wondered how they figured in Tatsu’s shadow war with Yamaoto. Universal Studios Japan, it turned out, had been serving food that was nine months past its due date and falsifying labels to hide it, while operating a drinking fountain that was pumping out untreated industrial water. Mister Donut was in the habit of fortifying its wares with meat dumplings containing banned additives. Snow Brand Food liked to save a few yen by recycling old milk and failing to clean factory pipes. Couldn’t cover that one up-fifteen thousand people were poisoned. Mitsubishi Motors and Bridgestone got nailed hard, concealing defects in cars and tires to avoid safety recalls. The worst, shocking even by Japanese standards, was the news that TEPCO, Tokyo Electric Power, had been caught submitting falsified nuclear safety reports that went back twenty years. The reports failed to list serious problems at eight different reactors, including cracks in concrete containment shrouds.
The amazing thing wasn’t the scandals, though. It was how little people seemed to care. It must have been frustrating for Tatsu, and I wondered what drove him. In other countries, revelations like these would have precipitated a revolution. But despite the scandals, despite the economy, the Japanese just went right on reelecting the same usual Liberal Democratic Party suspects. Christ, half the problem Tatsu was fighting comprised his nominal superiors, the people to whom, in a sense, he had to salute. How do you keep going, in the face of such determined ignorance and relentless hypocrisy? Why did he bother?
I read the news and tried to imagine how Tatsu would interpret it, how, indeed, he might even be trying to shape it. Not all of it was bad, I supposed. In fact, there were some developments in the provinces that must have encouraged him. Kitagawa Masayasu beat the bureaucrats in Mie by simply deciding against a proposed nuclear power plant. In Chiba, Domoto Akiko, a sixty-eight-year-old former television reporter, prevailed against candidates backed by business, trade unions, and the various political parties. In Nagano, Governor Tanaka Yasuo stopped all dam building despite pressure from the country’s powerful construction interests. In Tottori, Governor Yoshihiro Katayama opened the prefecture’s books to anyone who wanted to see them, setting a precedent that must have caused his counterparts in Tokyo nearly to soil themselves.
I also spent time checking computer records on Yukiko and Damask Rose. Compared to Harry I’m a hacking primitive, but I couldn’t ask for his help on this one without revealing that I’d been checking up on him.
Getting into the club’s tax information gave me Yukiko’s last name: Nohara. From there, I was able to learn a reasonable amount. She was twenty-seven years old, born in Fukuoka, educated at Waseda University. She lived in an apartment building on Kotto-dori in Minami-Aoyama. No arrests. No debt. Nothing remarkable.