A Clean Kill in Tokyo

masturbation.”
    His uncharacteristic crudeness surprised me, and I laughed. “I don’t know, Tatsu. I don’t know if I can trust you that much. You’re a manipulative bastard. Look what you’ve been up to while I’ve been in jail.”
    “Whether I’m manipulative and whether you can trust me are two different matters,” he said, easily able to compartmentalize such things because he was Japanese.
    “I’ll think about it,” I told him.
    “That’s all I would ask.”
    “Now let me out of here.”
    He motioned to the door. “You’ve been free to go since I came in.”
    I gave him a small smile. “You should have said so sooner. We could have done this over coffee.”

CHAPTER 25
    I took my time getting back to Tatsu. There were a few things I needed to settle first.
    Harry, for one. He had hacked the
Keisatsucho
files the same day I ambushed Holtzer at Yokosuka, so he knew I’d been arrested. Several days later, he told me, all references to me had been deleted from their files.
    “When I saw those files had been deleted,” he said, “I thought they had disappeared you. I figured you were dead.”
    “That’s what people are supposed to believe,” I said.
    “Why?”
    “They want my help with certain matters.”
    “That’s why they let you go?”
    “Nothing for nothing, Harry. You know that.” I told him about Midori.
    “Maybe that’s for the best,” he said.
    He had most of the pieces, I knew. But what would be the use of either of us acknowledging any of that?
    “What are you going to do now?” he asked me.
    “I haven’t figured all that out yet.”
    “If you ever need a good hacker, you know where to find me.”
    “I don’t know, Harry. You had a lot of trouble with that music lattice reduction or whatever the hell it was. The
Keisatsucho
cracked it no problem.”
    “Hey, those guys have access to supercomputers at Japanese universities!” he sputtered, before noticing my grin. Then: “Very funny.”
    “I’ll be in touch,” I told him. “I’m just going to take a little vacation first.”
    I flew out to Washington D.C., where Tatsu said they had shipped Holtzer. Processing his “retirement” would take a few days, even weeks, and in the meantime he’d be in the Langely area.
    I thought I’d be able to find him by calling all the hotels listed in the suburban Virginia Yellow Pages. I worked my way outward from Langely in concentric circles, but there was no guest named William Holtzer at any of them. Probably he had checked in somewhere under an assumed name, using cash and no credit cards, afraid I might be coming after him.
    What about a car, though? I started phoning the 800 numbers of the major rent-a-car companies. It was William Holtzer calling, wanting to extend his service contract. Avis didn’t have a record of a William Holtzer. Hertz did. The clerk was kind enough to tell me the plate number, which I told him I needed for some supplementary insurance I wanted to get through my credit card company. I was ready for him to ask why I didn’t just get the information from the key chain or the car itself, but he never did. After that, all I had to do was search a DMV database to learn that Holtzer was driving a white Ford Taurus.
    Back to concentric circles. That night I drove through the parking lots of the major hotels closest to Langely, slowing to examine the license plate of every white Ford Taurus I passed.
    At about two o’clock that morning I found Holtzer’s car in the parking garage of the Ritz Carlton, Tyson’s Corner. After confirming the license-plate, I drove over to the nearby Marriott, where I took the license plates from a parked car. At the edge of the deserted parking lot of the Tyson’s Corner Galleria, I switched the plates over to the rental van I was driving. The new plates and the light disguise I was wearing would be enough to beat any unforeseen witnesses or security cameras.
    I drove back to the Ritz. The spaces adjacent to the Taurus were taken, but there was an empty spot behind it to one side. It was better not to park alongside him anyway. If you’re savvy about the ways of my world, or even just sensitive to where and how you’re likely to be mugged, you’ll get nervous if you see a van parked right next to your car. Especially a model with darkened rear windows, like mine. I pulled in, nose forward so the van’s sliding door would be facing Holtzer.
    I checked my equipment. A 250,000-volt “Thunder Blaster”