A Clean Kill in Tokyo

people on their way to work don’t change their pace that way. But Harry had been the one walking point, the more conspicuous position, and I hadn’t done anything to arouse attention before stopping in the drugstore.
    I heard Harry again: “I’m at 109.” Meaning he had turned into the landmark 109 Department Store, famous for its collection of one hundred and nine restaurants and trendy boutiques.
    “No good,” I told him. “The first floor is lingerie. You going to blend with fifty teenage girls in blue sailor school uniforms picking out padded bras?”
    “I was planning to wait outside,” he replied, and I could imagine him blushing.
    The front of 109 is a popular meeting place, typically crowded with a variegated collection of pedestrians. “Sorry, I thought you were going for the lingerie,” I said, suppressing the urge to smile. “Just hang back and wait for my signal as we go past.”
    “Right.”
    The fruit store was only ten meters ahead, and still no sign of Kawamura. I was going to have to slow down. I was on the opposite side of the street, outside Kawamura’s probable range of concern, so I could risk stopping, maybe to fiddle with a mobile phone. Still, if he looked, he would spot me standing there, even though, with my father’s Japanese features, I don’t have a problem blending into the crowds. Harry—a pet name for Haruyoshi—being born of two Japanese parents, has never had to worry about sticking out.
    When I returned to Tokyo in the early eighties, my brown hair, a legacy from my American mother, had worked for me the way a fluorescent vest does for a hunter, and I dyed it black to develop the anonymity that protects me now. But then the country went mad for
chappatsu,
or tea-color dyed hair, and I don’t have to be so vigilant about the dye anymore. I like to tell Harry he’s going to have to go
chappatsu
if he wants to fit in, but Harry’s too much of an
otaku,
a geek, to give much thought to issues like personal appearance. I guess he doesn’t have that much to work with, anyway: an awkward smile that always looks like it’s offered in anticipation of a blow; a tendency to blink rapidly when he’s excited; a face that’s never lost its baby fat, its pudginess accentuated by a shock of thick black hair that on bad days seems almost to float above it. But the same qualities that keep him off magazine covers confer the unobtrusiveness that makes for effective surveillance.
    I had reached the point where I was going to have to stop when Kawamura popped out of the fruit store and reentered the flow. I hung back as much as possible to increase the space between us, watching his head bobbing as he moved down the street. He was tall for a Japanese and that helped, but he was wearing a dark suit like ninety percent of the other people in this crowd—including Harry and me, naturally—so I couldn’t drop back too far.
    Just as I’d redeveloped the right distance, he stopped and turned to light a cigarette. I continued walking slowly behind and to the right of the group of people that separated us, knowing he wouldn’t be able to make me moving with the crowd. I focused on the backs of the suits in front of me, just a bored morning commuter. After a moment he turned and started moving again.
    I allowed myself the trace of a satisfied smile. Japanese don’t stop to light cigarettes; if they did, they’d lose weeks over the course of their adult lives. Nor was there any reason, such as a strong headwind threatening to blow out a match, for him to turn and face the crowd behind him. Kawamura’s obvious attempt at countersurveillance simply confirmed his guilt.
    Guilt of what I didn’t know, and in fact I never ask. I insist on only a few questions. Is the target a man? I don’t work against women or children. Have you retained anyone else to solve this problem? I don’t want my operation getting tripped up by someone’s idea of a B-team, and if you retain me, it’s an exclusive. Is the target a principal? I solve problems directly, like the soldier I once was, not by sending messages through uninvolved third parties like a terrorist. The concerns behind the last question are why I like to see independent evidence of guilt: it confirms that the target is indeed the principal and not a clueless innocent.
    Twice in eighteen years the absence of that evidence has stayed my hand. Once I was sent against the brother of a newspaper editor who was publishing stories on