A Clean Kill in Tokyo

you.”
    Shit.
“What did you tell her?”
    “That if I were a little younger, I wouldn’t tell her anything.” She clapped a hand over her mouth and shook with silent laughter. “But since I’m too old, I told her you’re a jazz enthusiast and a big fan of hers, and that you came here tonight especially to hear her.”
    “That was good of you,” I said, realizing I was losing control of the situation, and not sure how to regain it.
    She leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Well? Don’t you think you should introduce yourself? She told me she wants to meet you.”
    “Mama, you’re setting me up. She didn’t say anything like that.”
    “No? She’s expecting you—look.” She turned and waved to Midori, who looked over and waved back.
    “Mama, don’t do this,” I said, knowing it was already over.
    She leaned forward abruptly, the laugh disappearing like the sun behind a cloud. “Now don’t embarrass me. Go say hello.”
    The hell with it. I had to take a leak anyway.
    I got up and walked over to Midori’s table. I sensed she was aware of my approach, but she gave no sign until I was directly in front of her. Then she looked up from her seat, and I was struck by her eyes. Unreadable, even looking right at me, but not distant, and not cold. Instead they seemed to radiate a controlled heat, something that touched you but that you couldn’t touch back.
    I knew instantly I had been right about Mama setting me up. Midori didn’t have a clue who I was.
    “Thank you for your music,” I said to her, somewhat formally in Japanese, trying to think of something else to say. “It rescued me from something.”
    The bass player, super cool in his head-to-toe black threads, long sideburns, and rectangular Euro glasses, snorted audibly, and I wondered whether there was anything between them. Midori conceded a small smile that said she’d heard it all before, and simply said
“Domo arigato,”
the politeness of her thanks a form of dismissal.
    “No,” I told her, “I mean it. Your music is honest, it’s the perfect antidote for lies.”
    I wondered for a moment what the hell I was saying.
    The bass player shook his head, as though disgusted. “We don’t play to ‘rescue’ people. We play because it pleases us to play.”
    Midori glanced at him, her gaze detached and registering the slightest disappointment, and I knew these two were dancing steps they knew well, steps that had never led to the bass player’s satisfaction.
    But fuck him anyway. “But jazz is like sex, isn’t it?” I said to him. “It takes two to really enjoy it.”
    His eyes flared open. Midori pursed her lips in what might have been a tightly suppressed smile.
    “We’re happy to go on rescuing you, if that’s what we’ve been doing,” she said in a tone as even as a flatlined EKG. “Thank you.”
    I held her gaze for a moment, trying unsuccessfully to read it, then excused myself. I ducked into Alfie’s washroom, which has about the same square footage as a telephone pole, where I reflected on the notion that I had survived some of the most brutal fighting in Southeast Asia, some of the world’s worst mercenary conflicts, but still couldn’t beat one of Mama’s ambushes.
    I emerged from the washroom a few moments later and returned to my seat, acknowledging Mama’s satisfied grin en route. As I waited for the second set to begin, I heard the club’s door open behind me, and casually glanced back to see who would be walking through it. My head automatically returned to the front less than a second later, guided by years of training—the same training that prevented the attendant surprise from revealing itself in my expression.
    It was the stranger from the train. The one I had seen searching Kawamura.

CHAPTER 4
    I keep a number of unusual items on my key chain, including several homemade lock picks and a sawed-off dental mirror. The mirror can be held up to the eye unobtrusively, particularly if the user is leaning forward on an elbow and supporting his head with his hand.
    From this posture I was able to watch the stranger arguing with a scowling Mama as the second set began. No doubt she was telling him he wouldn’t be able to stay, that there weren’t any more seats and the room was already overcrowded. I saw him reach into his jacket pocket and produce a wallet, which he then opened, revealing something for Mama’s inspection. She looked closely, then smiled and gestured magnanimously to the far wall.