Rain Fall (14 page)

He’d been taking Midori’s picture, and I would be in the shots. This was the kind of risk I’d be taking if I stayed close to her now.

Okay. I’d have to leave with the three of them, then invent an excuse, maybe that I left something,
double back to the bar and catch him as he was leaving to follow Midori again. I wasn’t going to let him keep that camera, not with my pictures on the film in it.

But Mr. Bland gave me another option, instead. He got up and started walking in the direction of the rest room.

“I’m going to head home, too,” I said, standing up, feeling my heart beginning to beat harder in my chest. “Just need to hit the rest room first.” I eased away from the table.

I followed a few meters behind Mr. Bland as he maneuvered along the polished black floor. I kept my head down somewhat, avoiding eye contact with the patrons I was passing, hearing my heart thudding steadily in my ears. He opened the rest-room door and went inside. Before the door had quite swung closed, I opened it and followed him in.

Two stalls, two urinals. I could see in my peripheral vision that the stall doors were open a crack. We were alone. The thudding of my heart was loud enough to block out sound. I could feel the air flowing cleanly in and out of my nostrils, the blood pumping through the veins of my arms.

He turned to face me as I approached, perhaps recognizing me from his peripheral vision as one of the people who was with Midori, perhaps warned by some vestigial and now futile instinct that he was in danger. My eyes were centered on his upper torso, not focusing on any one part of him, taking in his whole body, the position of his hips and hands, absorbing the information, processing it.

Without pausing or in any way breaking my stride I
stepped in and blasted my left hand directly into his throat, catching his trachea in the
V
created by my thumb and index finger. His head snapped forward and his hands flew to his throat.

I stepped behind him and slipped my hands into his front pockets. From the left I retrieved the camera. The other was empty.

He was clawing ineffectually at his damaged throat, silent except for some clicking from his tongue and teeth. He started to stamp his left foot on the ground and contort his torso in what I recognized as the beginning of panic, the body moving of its own primitive accord to get air,
air,
through the broken trachea and into the convulsing lungs.

I knew it would take about thirty seconds for him to asphyxiate. No time for that. I took hold of his hair and chin in a sentry removal hold and broke his neck with a hard clockwise twist.

He collapsed backward into me and I dragged him into one of the empty stalls, sitting him on the toilet and adjusting his position so that the body would stay put. With the door closed, anyone coming in to use the bathroom would see his legs and just think the stall was occupied. With luck, the body wouldn’t be discovered until closing time, long after we were gone.

I eased the door shut with my right hip and used my knee to close the latch. Then, gripping the upper edge of the stall divider, I pulled myself up and slid over to the stall on the other side. I pulled a length of toilet paper from the dispenser and used it to wipe the two spots that I had touched. I jammed the toilet paper in
a pants pocket, took a deep breath, and walked back out into the bar.

“All set?” I asked, walking up to the table, controlling my breathing.

“Let’s go,” Midori said. The three of them stood up, and we headed toward the cashier and the exit.

Tom was holding the bill, but I took it from him gently and insisted that they all let me pay; it was my privilege after the pleasure of their performance. I didn’t want to take a chance on anyone trying to use a credit card and leaving a record of our presence here tonight.

As I was paying, Tom said, “I’ll be right back,” and headed toward the rest room.

“Me, too,” Ken added, and followed him.

I imagined vaguely that the body could slide off the toilet while they were in there. Or that Murphy’s Law would make an appearance in some other way. The thoughts weren’t unduly troubling. There was nothing I could do but relax and wait until they had returned.

“You want a walk home?” I asked Midori. She had mentioned during the evening that she lived in Harajuku, although of course I already knew that.

She smiled. “That would be nice.”

Three minutes later, Tom and Ken returned. I saw them laughing about something as they approached us, and knew that Mr. Bland had gone undiscovered.

We stepped outside and walked up the steps into the cool Omotesando evening.

“My car’s at the Blue Note,” Ken said when we were outside. He looked at Midori. “Anyone need a ride?”

Midori shook her head. “No, I’m fine. Thanks.”

“I’ll take the subway,” I told him. “But thanks.”

“I’ll go with you,” Tom said, diffusing the slight tension I could feel brewing as Ken did the math. “John, it was nice meeting you tonight. Thank you again for coming, and for the dinner and drinks.”

I bowed. “My pleasure, really. I hope I’ll have another opportunity.”

Ken nodded. “Sure,” he said, with a demonstrable lack of enthusiasm. Tom took a step backward, his cue to Ken, I knew, and we said good night.

Midori and I strolled slowly in the direction of Omotesando-dori. “Was that okay?” she asked when Tom and Ken were out of earshot.

“I had a good time,” I told her. “They’re interesting people.”

“Ken can be difficult.”

I shrugged. “He was a little jealous that you had invited someone else to tag along, that’s all.”

“He’s just young. Thanks for handling him gently tonight.”

“No problem.”

“You know, I don’t usually invite people I’ve only just met to come to a performance, or to go out afterwards.”

“Well, we’d met once before, so your guideline should be intact.”

She laughed. “You feel like another single malt?”

I looked at her, trying to read her. “Always,” I said. “And I’ve got a place I think you’ll like.”

I took her to Bar Satoh, a tiny second-story establishment nestled in a series of alleys that extend like a spider’s web within the right angle formed by
Omotesando-dori and Meiji-dori. The route we took gave me several opportunities to check behind us, and I saw that we were clean. Mr. Bland had been alone.

We took the elevator to the second floor of the building, then stepped through a door surrounded by a riot of gardenias and other flowers that Satoh-san’s wife tends with reverence. A right turn, a step up, and there was Satoh-san, presiding over the solid cherry bar in the low light, dressed immaculately as always in a bow tie and vest.

“Ah, Fujiwara-san,”
he said in his soft baritone, smiling a broad smile and bowing as he caught sight of us.
“Irrashaimase.”
Welcome.

“Satoh-san, it’s good to see you,” I said in Japanese. I looked around, noting that his small establishment was almost full. “Is there a possibility that we could be seated?”

“Ei, mochiron,”
he replied. Yes, of course. Apologizing in formal Japanese, he had the six patrons at the bar all shift to their right, freeing up an additional seat at the far end and creating room for Midori and me.

Thanking Satoh-san and apologizing to the other patrons, we made our way to our seats. Midori’s head was moving back and forth as she took in the décor: bottle after bottle of different whiskeys, many obscure and ancient, not just behind the bar but adorning shelves and furniture throughout the room, as well. Eclectic Americana like an old Schwinn bicycle suspended from the back wall, an ancient black rotary telephone that must have weighed ten pounds, a framed photograph of President Kennedy. As a complement to his whiskey-only policy, Satoh-san plays
nothing but jazz, and the sounds of singer/poet Kurt Elling issued warm and wry from the Marantz vacuum-tube stereo in the back of the bar, accompanied by the low murmur of conversation and muffled laughter.

“I . . . love this place!” Midori whispered to me in English as we sat down.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” I said, pleased that she appreciated it. “Satoh-san is a former
sarariman
who got out of the rat race. He loves whiskey and jazz, and saved every yen he could until he was able to open this place ten years ago. I think it’s the best bar in Japan.”

Satoh-san strolled over, and I introduced Midori. “Ah, of course!” he exclaimed in Japanese. He reached under the bar, shuffling things around until he found what he was looking for: a copy of Midori’s CD. Midori had to beg him not to play it.

“What do you recommend tonight?” I asked him. Satoh-san makes four pilgrimages a year to Scotland and has introduced me to malts that are available almost nowhere else in Japan.

“How many drinks?” he asked. If the answer were several, he would conduct a tasting, starting with something light from the Lowlands and progressing to the iodine tang of the Islay malts.

“Just one, I think,” I responded. I glanced at Midori, who nodded her head.

“Subtle? Strong?”

I glanced at Midori again, who said, “Strong.”

Satoh-san smiled. “Strong” was clearly the answer that he was hoping for, and I knew he had something special in mind. He turned and took a clear glass bottle
from in front of the mirror behind the bar, then held it before us. “This is a forty-year-old Ardbeg,” he explained. “From the south shore of Islay. Very rare. I keep it in a plain bottle because anyone who recognized it might try to steal it.”

He took out two immaculate tumblers and placed them before us. “Straight?” he asked, not knowing Midori’s preferences.

“Hai,”
she answered, to Satoh-san’s relieved nod of approval. He carefully poured off two measures of the bronze liquid and recorked the bottle.

“What makes this malt special is the balance of flavors—flavors that would ordinarily compete with or override one another,” he told us, his voice low and slightly grave. “There is peat, smoke, perfume, sherry, and the salt smell of the sea. It took forty years for this malt to realize the potential of its own character, just like a person. Please, enjoy.” He bowed and moved to the other end of the bar.

“I’m almost afraid to drink it,” Midori said, smiling and raising the glass before her, watching the light turn the liquid to amber.

“Satoh-san always provides a brief lecture on what you’re about to experience. It’s one of the best things about this place. He’s a student of single malts.”

“Jaa, kanpai,”
she said, and we touched glasses and drank. She paused for a moment afterward, then said, “Wow, that is good. Like a caress.”

“Like what your music sounds like.”

She smiled and gave me one of her shoulder checks. “I enjoyed our conversation the other day at Tsuta,”
she said. “I’d like to hear more about your experiences growing up in two worlds.”

“I’m not sure how interesting a story that is.”

“Tell it to me, and I’ll tell you if it’s interesting.”

She was much more a listener than a talker, which would make my job of collecting operational intelligence more difficult.
Let’s just see where this goes,
I thought.

“Home for me was a little town in upstate New York. My mother took me there after my father died so she could be close to her parents,” I said.

“Did you spend any time in Japan after that?”

“Some. During my junior year in high school, my father’s parents wrote to me about a new U.S./Japan high-school exchange program that would allow me to spend a semester at a Japanese high school. I was actually pretty homesick at the time and enrolled right away. So ultimately, I got to spend a semester at Saitama Gakuen.”

“Just one semester? Your mother must have wanted you back.”

“Part of her did. I think another part of her was relieved to have some time to focus on her own career. I was pretty wild at that age.” This seemed an appropriate euphemism for constant fights and other discipline problems at school.

“How was the semester?”

I shrugged. Some of these memories were not particularly pleasant. “You know what it’s like for returnees. It’s bad enough if you’re just an ordinary Japanese kid with an accent that’s been Americanized
by time abroad. If you’re half-American on top of it, you’re practically a freak.”

I saw a deep sympathy in her eyes that made me feel I was worsening a betrayal. “I know what it’s like to be a returnee child,” she said. “And you had envisioned the semester as a homecoming. You must have felt so alienated.”

I waved my hand as though it was nothing. “It’s all in the past.”

“Anyway, after high school?”

“After high school was Vietnam.”

“You were in Vietnam? You look young for that.”

I smiled. “I was a teenager when I joined the army, and when I got there the war was already well under way.” I was aware that I was sharing more personal details than I should have. I didn’t care.

“How long were you over there?”

“Three years.”

“I thought that back then getting drafted meant only one year.”

“It did. I wasn’t drafted.”