“I need your assistance again,” he said, after a moment.
Predictable. And right to the point, as always. But I’d make him wait before responding. “You want a whiskey?” I asked. “They’ve got a nice twelve-year-old Cragganmore.”
He shook his head. “I’d like to join you, but my doctor advises me to refrain from such indulgences.”
“I didn’t know you listened to your doctor.”
He pursed his lips as though in preparation for a painful admission. “My wife, too, has become strict about such matters.”
I looked at him and smiled, faintly surprised at the image of this tough, resourceful guy deferring sheepishly to a wife.
“What is it?” he asked.
I told him the truth. “It’s always good to see you, you bastard.”
He smiled back, a network of creases appearing around his eyes. “Kochira koso.” The same here.
He gestured to the waitress and ordered chamomile tea. Because he wasn’t drinking, I stayed away from the Cragganmore. A small pity.
Then he turned to me. “As I was saying, I need your assistance again.”
I drummed my fingers along my glass. “I thought you said this would be a social visit.”
He nodded. “I was lying.”
I had already known that, and he knew that I knew. Stilclass="underline" “I thought you said I could trust you.”
“On the important things, certainly. Anyway, a social visit doesn’t preclude a request for a favor.”
“Is that what you’re asking for? A favor?”
He shrugged. “You are no longer obligated to me.”
“I used to get paid a lot of money when I did favors for people.”
“I am pleased to hear you say ‘used to.” ’
“I was able to say it pretty accurately, until just recently.”
“May I continue?”
“As long as we’re clear from the outset that there’s no obligation here.”
He nodded again. “As I have said.” He paused to withdraw a tin of mints from inside his coat pocket. He opened the tin and extended it toward me. I shook my head. He withdrew a mint and placed it in his mouth without dipping his head or stopping to look at what he was doing. It wasn’t Tatsu’s way to take his eyes off what was going on around him, and it showed in the little things as well as the more significant.
“The weightlifter was a front man,” he said. “It is true that he looked like a Neanderthal but in fact he was part of the new generation of organized crime in Japan. His specialty, in which he had proven himself unusually adept, was the establishment of legitmate, sustainable businesses, behind which his less progressive cohorts could then hide.”
I nodded, knowing the phenomenon. The new generation, recognizing that tattoos, loud suits, and an aggressive manner offered them only limited upside in the society, was casting off its criminal persona and foraying into legitimate businesses like real estate and entertainment. The older generation, still wedded to drugs, prostitution, and control of the construction industry, was coming to rely on these upstarts for money laundering, tax avoidance, and other services. And, at the same time, the newcomers went to their forebears whenever the competitive pressures of business might be eased by the timely application of some of the traditional tools of the trade-bribery, extortion, murder-in which the older generation continued to specialize. It was a symbiotic division of labor that would have made a classical economist flush with pride.
“The weightlifter had established an efficient system,” he continued. “All the traditional gumi were using his services. The legitimacy this system afforded the gumi was making them less vulnerable to prosecution, and more influential in politics and the boardroom. More influential in society generally, in fact. Our mutual acquaintance, Yamaoto Toshi, had grown particularly dependent on the weightlifter’s operation.”
Gumi means “group” or “gang.” In the yakuza context, the word refers to organized crime families, the Japanese equivalent of the Gambinos or the fictional Corleones.
“I don’t see how his absence is going to make a difference,” I said. “Won’t someone just take his place?”
“In the long run, yes. Where there is enough demand, eventually someone will offer a supply. But in the meantime, the supply is disrupted. The weightlifter was critical to the smooth maintenance of his organization. He groomed no successors, fearing, as strongmen do, that the presence of a successor would make a succession more likely. There will be a struggle in his organization now that he is gone. Deceit and betrayal will be part of that struggle. Assets and connections that are now hidden will be exposed. Criminal influence on legitimate enterprises will be lessened.”
“For a time,” I said.
“For a time.”
I thought of what Kanezaki had told me about Crepuscular.
“I had a run-in with someone from the CIA recently,” I said. “He mentioned something you might want to know about.”
“Yes?”
“His name is Tomohisa Kanezaki. He’s American, ethnic Japanese. He mentioned a CIA program for ‘furthering reform and removing impediments to reform.’ Something called Crepuscular. Sounds like your bailiwick.”
He nodded slowly for a moment, then said, “Tell me about this program.”
I started to tell him the little I’d heard. Then I realized. “You know this guy,” I said.
He shrugged. “He was one of the people who came to the Metropolitan Police Force requesting assistance in locating you.”
Marvelous. “Who was the other?”
“Holtzer’s successor as the CIA’s chief of Tokyo Station. James Biddle.”
“Haven’t heard of him.”
“He’s young for the position. About forty. Perhaps part of a new generation at the CIA.”
I told him how I had met up with Kanezaki and his escort, fudging the details to conceal Harry’s involvement.
“How did they manage to find you?” he asked. “It took me an entire year, even with local resources and access to Juki Net and the cameras.”
“A flaw in my security,” I told him. “It’s been corrected.”
“And Crepuscular?” he asked.
“Just what I told you. I didn’t get details.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “It doesn’t matter. I doubt that Kanezaki-san could have told you more than I already know.”
I looked at him, as always impressed with the breadth of his information. “What do you know?”
“The U.S. government is funneling money to various Japanese reformers. This is the same kind of program the CIA ran after the war, when it was supporting the Liberal Democratic Party as a bulwark against communism. Only the recipients have changed.”
“What about the ‘removing impediments’ part?”
He shrugged. “I imagine that, as Kanezaki-san suggested, they might want you to help with that.”
I laughed. “Sometimes these guys are so presumptuous that a certain grandeur creeps into it.”
He nodded. “Or they could be under the misapprehension that you had something to do with William Holtzer’s demise. Either way, you should stay away from them. I think we know that they are not to be trusted.”
I smiled at his use, probably deliberate, of “we” and “they,” as though Tatsu and I were partners.
“All right,” I said. “Tell me about the favor you want.”
He paused, then said, “Another key Yamaoto asset. And also a man whose primitive appearance masks a more sophisticated set of skills.”
“Who is he?”
He looked at me. “Someone you should understand quite well. A killer.”
“Really,” I said, affecting nonchalance.
The waitress brought his tea and set it down before him. He extended the cup in my direction in a silent toast, then took a sip.