I laughed. If she’d been trying to get a rise out of me, she had missed the mark. I’m never going to be sensitive about my age. Most of the people I knew when I was younger are already dead. That I’m still breathing is actually a point of pride.
“Tantra is like sex,” I told her, smiling a little indulgently. “Every generation thinks it’s the one that discovered it.”
She looked away and we drove in silence. I would have preferred to have the cab take us someplace within walking distance rather than to the actual address, per my usual practice. Given the overall circumstances of the evening, though, I judged the likelihood of a problem stemming from Naomi’s lack of security consciousness to be manageably low.
A few minutes later we pulled up in front of a nondescript office building. I paid the driver and we got out. The rain had stopped but the street was empty, almost forlorn. If I hadn’t known where we were, I would have thought it an odd place to get out of a cab in the middle of the night.
Behind us, a dimly lit “T” glowed softly above a basement stairwell, the only external sign of Tantra’s existence. We moved down the steps, through a pair of imposing metal doors, and into a candlelit foyer that led like a short tunnel to the seating area beyond.
A waiter appeared and asked us in a hushed tone whether it would be just the two of us. Naomi told him it would, and he escorted us inside.
The walls were brown cement, the ceiling black. There were a few spotlights, but most of the illumination came from candles on tables and in the corners of the lacquered cement floor. In alcoves here and there were statues depicting scenes from the Kama Sutra. Around us were a half-dozen small groups of people, all sitting on floor cushions or low chairs. The room hummed with murmured conversation and quiet laughter. Some sort of light, Arabic-sounding techno music issued softly from invisible speakers.
There were two additional rooms at the back, I knew, both partially concealed by heavy purple curtains. I asked the waiter whether either was available and he gestured to the one on the right. I looked at Naomi and she nodded.
We moved past the curtains into a room that was more like a small cave or opium den. The ceiling was low and candles played flickering shadows on the walls. We sat on the floor cushions in the corner, at ninety degrees to each other. The waiter handed us a menu and departed without a word.
“You hungry?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Me, too.” I rubbed my wet shoulders. “And cold.”
The waiter returned. We ordered hot tea, their signature Ayu chips, and spring rolls. Naomi chose a twelve-year-old Highland Park and I followed suit.
“How do you know about this place really?” Naomi asked when the waiter had departed.
“I told you, it’s been around forever. Ten years, maybe more.”
“So you live in Tokyo.”
I paused. Then: “I did. Until recently.”
“What brings you back?”
“I have a friend. He’s in some kind of trouble with people from your club and doesn’t even know it.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Why did you tell me that bullshit about being an accountant?”
I shrugged. “I was looking for information. I didn’t see the need to tell you very much.”
We were quiet for a few minutes. The waiter came by with the food and drinks. I went for the tea first. It warmed me considerably. The Highland Park was even better.
“I needed that,” I said, leaning back against the wall, heat radiating from my gut.
She picked up a spring roll. “Have you really been to Brazil?” she asked.
“Yes.” It was a lie, but perhaps the moral equivalent of the truth. I couldn’t very well tell her that I was learning all I could about the country in preparation for a first and permanent trip there.
She took a bite of the spring roll and chewed it, her head cocked slightly to the side as though in consideration of something. “Tonight, when I saw who you were with, I was thinking that maybe you learned a few lines of Portuguese just to get me to open up. That I was in some kind of trouble.”
“No.”
“So you weren’t trying to meet me in particular.”
“You were dancing when I came in that night, so I asked about you. It was just a coincidence.”
“If you’re not an American accountant, who are you?”
“I’m someone who… performs services for people from time to time. Those services put me in touch with a lot of different players in the society. Cops and yakuza. Politicians. Sometimes people on the fringe.”
“You have that on your business card?”
I smiled. “I tried it. The print was too small to read.”
“You’re what, a private detective?”
“In a way.”
She looked at me. “Who are you working for now?”
“I told you, right now I’m just trying to help a friend.”
“Forgive me, but that sounds like bullshit.”
I nodded. “I can see where it would.”
“You looked pretty comfortable with Murakami tonight.”
“Did that bother you?”
“He scares me.”
“He should.”
She picked up her Highland Park and leaned back against the wall. “I’ve heard some bad stories about him.”
“They’re probably true.”
“Everyone’s afraid of him. Except for Yukiko.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. She has some kind of power over him. No one else does.”
“You don’t like her.”
She glanced at me, then away. “She can be as scary as he is.”
“You said she’s comfortable doing things that you’re not.”
“Yes.”
“Something to do with those listening devices?”
She upended her drink and finished it. Then she said, “I don’t know for certain that there are listening devices, but I think there are. We get a lot of prominent customers-politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen. The people who own the club encourage the girls to talk to them, to elicit information. All the girls think the conversations are taped. And there are rumors that certain customers even get videotaped in the lap dance rooms.”
I was gaining her confidence. And the way she was talking now, I knew I could get more. A gambler will agonize for hours over whether to put his chips on, say, the red or the black, and then, when the croupier spins the wheel, he’ll double or even triple the bet, as a way of bolstering his conviction that he must have been betting right. If he were betting wrong, why would he be putting all that extra money down?
I pointed to her glass. “Another?”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
I finished mine and ordered two more. The walls flickered in the candlelight. The room felt close and warm, like an underground sanctuary.
The waiter brought the drinks. After he had moved silently away, I looked at her and said, “You’re not involved in any of this?”
She looked into her glass. Several seconds went by.
“You want an honest answer, or a really honest answer?” she asked.
“Give me both.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “The honest answer is, no.”
She took a sip of the Highland Park. Closed her eyes.
“The really honest answer is… is…”
“Is, ‘not yet,” ’ I said quietly.
Her eyes opened and she looked at me. “How do you know?”
I watched her for a moment, feeling her distress, seeing an opportunity.
“You’re being suborned,” I said. “It’s a process, a series of techniques. If you even half-realize it, you’re smarter than most. You’ve also got a chance to do something about it, if you want to.”
“What do you mean?”
I sipped from my glass, watching the amber liquid glowing in the candlelight, remembering. “You start slow. You find the subject’s limits and get him to spend some time there. He gets used to it. Before long, the limits have moved. You never take him more than a centimeter beyond. You make it feel like it’s his choice.”