A Clean Kill in Tokyo

was watching the scene in the foyer and seemed uncertain of what to do. Something about his posture, his appearance, told me he wasn’t a civilian. Probably he was with the three on the floor.
    I steered Midori to the right, keeping clear of the flat-nosed guy’s position. “How could you know… How could you know there were men in my apartment?” she asked. “How did you know what was happening?”
    “I just knew, okay?” I said, turning my head, searching for danger, as we walked. “Midori, if I were with these people, what would I gain from this charade? They had you exactly where they wanted you. Please, let me help you. I don’t want to see you get hurt. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
    I saw the flat-nosed guy go inside as we moved away from the scene, I assumed to help his fallen comrades.
    If they had been planning to take her somewhere, they would have had a car. I looked around, but there were too many vehicles parked in the area for me to be able to pinpoint theirs.
    “Did they say where they were going to take you?” I asked. “Who they were with?”
    “No,” she said. “I told you, they only said they were with the police.”
    “Okay, I understand.” Where was their car? There might have been more of them.
All right, go, just keep on walking, they’ll have to show themselves if they want to take you.
    We cut across the dark parking lot of the building across from hers, emerging onto Omotesando-dori, where we caught a cab. I told the driver to take us to the Seibu Department Store in Shibuya. I checked the side views as we drove. There were few cars on the road, and none seemed to be tailing us.
    What I had in mind was a love hotel. The love hotel is a Japanese institution, born of the country’s housing shortage. With families, sometimes extended ones, jammed into small apartments, Mom and Dad need to have somewhere to go to be alone. Hence the
rabu hoteru
—places with rates for either a “rest” or a “stay,” famously discreet front desks, no credit card required for registration, and fake names the norm. Some of them are completely over the top, with theme rooms sporting Roman baths and Americana kitsch, the offspring of the Disney Epcot Center and a bordello.
    Beyond Japan’s housing shortage, the hotels arose because inviting a stranger into your home tends to be a much more intimate act in Japan than it is in the States. There are plenty of Japanese women who will allow a man into their bodies before permitting him to enter their apartments, and the hotels serve this aspect of the market, as well.
    The people we were up against weren’t stupid, of course. They might guess a love hotel would make an expedient safe house. That would be my guess, if the tables were turned. But with about ten thousand
rabu hoteru
in Tokyo, it would still take them a while to track us down.
    We got out of the cab and walked to Shibuya 2-
chome,
which is choked with small love hotels. I chose one at random. We told the old woman at the front desk we wanted a room with a bath, for a
yasumi
—a stay, not just a rest. I put cash on the counter and she pulled out a key.
    We took the elevator to the fifth floor and found our room at the end of a short hallway. I unlocked the door and Midori went in first. I followed her in, locking the door behind me. We left our shoes in the entranceway. There was only one bed—twins in a love hotel would be as out of place as a Bible—but there was a decent-sized couch I could curl up on.
    Midori sat on the edge of the bed and faced me. “Here’s where we are,” she said, her voice even. “Tonight three men were waiting for me in my apartment. They claimed to be police, but obviously weren’t—or if they were police, they were on some kind of private mission. I’d think you were with them, but I saw how badly you hurt them. You asked me to go somewhere safe with you so you could explain. I’m listening.”
    I nodded, trying to find the right words to begin. “You know this has to do with your father.”
    “Those men told me he had something they wanted.”
    “Yes, and they think you have it now.”
    “I don’t know why they would think that.”
    I looked at her. “I think you do.”
    “Think what you want.”
    “You know what’s wrong with this picture, Midori? Three men are waiting for you in your apartment, they rough you up a little, I appear out of nowhere and rough them up a lot, none of this exactly an average day in the life of