There was a metal guardrail set up in a U shape around the elevator entrance, with three breaks in it for access. It looked like something intended to force residents to use a separate freight elevator for bringing large items in and out of the building. For me it would serve a better purpose.
I took out the fishing line and tied one end of it to the top left of the U at knee level. Then I ran the line along the floor around the bottom points and the right top point of the U so that each break in access was covered. I secured it lightly to the floor with the translucent tape, then moved over to the nearest pillar, letting the line out as I walked.
Squatting low, I took out my key chain and used one of the keys to cut the line off. I put the spool back in one of the pants pockets along with the tape, then wrapped the excess line around one of my gloved hands. I stood and angled the dental mirror so I could see the garage door without having to expose myself from behind the pillar.
I waited like that for about an hour. Twice I heard the garage door and I checked with the mirror. The first time was a blue Saab. The second was a black Nissan. The third one was white. A Beemer. An M3.
My heart started kicking harder. I exhaled slowly and gripped the end of the fishing line.
I listened to the car as it got closer, closer. I heard it stop just a couple meters away. She had a good spot. Probably paid more for it.
I heard the door open and then close. Then the chirp chirp of an automatic door lock. I looked in the mirror to confirm that it was Yukiko and that she was alone. Right on both counts.
She was wearing a black trench coat and high heels. A purse was slung across her neck and one arm. None of it was ideal attire for reaction or maneuver. But it looked good.
I saw that her right hand was closed around a small canister. My guess was Mace or pepper spray. A woman, late at night, in a parking garage-maybe this was nothing out of the ordinary for her. But I had a feeling she was thinking about Harry, and about me. Good.
She was walking briskly. I watched as she approached the perimeter of the metal guardrail. My breath was moving in and out of my mouth in silent shallow drafts. One. Two. Three.
I jerked hard on the line. It popped up from its taped moorings to ankle level and I heard her cry of surprise as she tripped over it. She might have recovered her balance, but those stylish heels were on my side. I stepped out from behind the pillar just in time to see her spilling to the ground.
I shoved my keys back in a pants pocket and darted up behind her. By the time I reached her, she had pulled herself up on all fours. She still had the canister in one hand. I stomped on her wrist and she cried out. I reached down and yanked what she was holding from her fingers. I glanced at it quickly-oleoresin capsicum, seventeen percent. Pepper spray. The good stuff. I shoved it in a pocket and dragged her over to the nearest car, away from the cameras.
I shoved her up against the passenger-side door. She looked frightened, but I didn’t see any recognition in her eyes. Given my disguise, she might have been thinking that I was a mugger or rapist.
“You don’t remember me, Yukiko?” I asked. “We met at Damask Rose. I’m Harry’s friend. Was his friend.”
Her brow furrowed for a moment as she tried to square the evidence of her eyes with that of her ears. Then she saw it. Her mouth dropped open but no sound came out.
“Where can I find Murakami?” I asked.
She closed her mouth. She was breathing rapidly through her nose, but other than that she had managed to suppress any outward sign of fear. I almost admired her for her poise.
“If you want to live, you’ll tell me what I want to know,” I said.
She looked at me but said nothing.
I popped an uppercut into her gut. It was hard enough to hurt, but not too hard. I needed her to be able to talk. She gasped and doubled over.
“The next one is to that beautiful face,” I said. “When I’m through with your nose, teeth, and eyes, your dancing days will be over. Now I want to know one thing. Who killed him? Was it you, or was it Murakami?”
I didn’t really give a shit how she might answer. I certainly wouldn’t trust anything she said. But I wanted to give her the opportunity to plead something exculpatory, so she might believe I’d let her live if she told me where I could find her boss.
“It was… it was him,” she gasped.
“All right. Tell me where I can find him.”
“I don’t know.”
“You better think of something.”
“He’s hard to find. I don’t know how to reach him. He just shows up at the club sometimes.”
She glanced behind me, toward the garage door. I shook my head. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “If you can just hold out long enough for another car to pull in, I’ll have to run and let you go. Or maybe someone saw what happened on those cameras, maybe they’re on their way now. But you’ve got it backward. If someone comes and you haven’t told me what I want to hear, that’s when I’ll kill you. Now where is he?”
She shook her head.
“We’re running out of time,” I said. “I’m going to give you one more chance. Tell me and you live. Don’t tell me and you die. Right here.”
She clenched her jaw and looked at me.
Damn, she was tough. I might have known, after seeing the way she handled her nitroglycerin-volatile boss.
“All right,” I said. “You win.”
I popped another uppercut into her midsection, this one hard enough to cause damage. She doubled over with a sharp exhalation of breath. I stepped behind her, took her head in one gloved hand and her chin in the other, and broke her neck. She was dead before she hit the floor.
I’d never done that to a woman before. I thought for a second of some of the things I had said to Naomi about subornment, about what Midori had said about atonement. But other than a detached observation about the relative ease of the maneuver because of the lighter muscle mass, I felt nothing.
“Say hello to Harry,” I said. I picked up her purse to make it look like she’d been the victim of a random robbery, collected the fishing line and tape, and took the stairs to the first floor. I let myself out through the front entrance, keeping my head down to avoid the camera there. I ducked around the corner into the alley, where I pulled off the hat and wig, spat out the false teeth, and rubbed the ash off my face with the damp towel. I pulled off the homeless man’s clothes and the long underwear and changed into what I had bought at the Gap, then shoved everything back into the bag. I ran a mental list of the contents of the bag to ensure I wasn’t leaving anything behind, then double-checked the ground just to be sure. Everything was copacetic. I took a deep breath and strolled back out onto Aoyama-dori.
When I was a few blocks away, I stopped under a streetlight and quickly went through her purse. There was nothing in it of interest.
I walked down Roppongi-dori until I found an appropriate colony of homeless men. I left the bag and the purse close by them and walked on, peeling off and dropping the gloves as I did so. I would get rid of the teeth elsewhere. They had my DNA on them, and weren’t the kind of item that Tokyo’s shifting populations of homeless men would assimilate and thereby sanitize.
Ducking into an alley, I discharged a shot from the canister of pepper spray to confirm that it worked. I decided to keep it. When Murakami learned about Yukiko, I might want a little extra protection.