A Clean Kill in Tokyo

rationalizes that it’s not really his affair. Besides, Mr.
Boeikyoku
would take care of the wet stuff; Benny wouldn’t even have to watch.
    The cowardly little weasel. I squeezed his balls suddenly and hard, and he would have cried out if I hadn’t had the grip on his throat. Then I let go in both places and he spilled to the ground, retching.
    “Okay, Benny, here’s what you’re going to do,” I said. “You’re going to call your buddy at my apartment. I know he has a mobile phone. Tell him you’re calling from the subway station. I’ve been spotted and he needs to meet you at the station immediately. Use my exact words. If you use your own words or I hear you say anything that doesn’t fit with that message, I’ll kill you. Do it right and you can go.” Of course, it was always possible these guys used an all-clear code, the absence of which indicated a problem, but I didn’t think they were that smart. Besides, I hadn’t heard anything like an all-clear code on the call Benny got in my apartment.
    He looked up at me, his eyes pleading. “You’ll let me go?”
    “If you do this letter-perfect.” I handed him his phone.
    He did it, just like I told him. His voice sounded pretty steady. I took the phone back when he was done. He was still looking up at me from his knees. “I can go now?” he said.
    Then he saw my eyes. “You promised! You promised!” he panted. “Please, I was only following orders.” He actually said it.
    “Orders are a bitch,” I said, looking down at him.
    He was starting to hyperventilate. “Don’t kill me! I have a wife and children!”
    My hips were already shifting into position. “I’ll have someone send flowers,” I whispered, and blasted the knife edge of my hand into the back of his neck. I felt the vertebrae splinter and he spasmed, then slumped to the ground.
    There was nothing I could do but leave him there. But my apartment was already blown. I was going to have to find another anyway, so the heat this would bring to Sengoku would be as irrelevant as it was unavoidable.
    I stepped over the body and took a few steps back to the parking area I’d passed. I heard the door to my building slam shut.
    The front of the parking area was roped off, and the ropes were strung across pylons planted in sand. I grabbed a fistful from around one of the pylons and returned to my position at the corner of the wall, peeking out past the edge. I didn’t see Benny’s buddy. Shit, he’d made a right down the narrow alley connecting my street with the one parallel to it, about fifteen meters from my apartment. I had expected him to stick to the main roads.
    This was a problem. He was ahead of me now, and there was nowhere I could set up for him and wait. Besides, I didn’t even know what he looked like. If he made it to the main artery by the station, I wouldn’t be able to separate him from all the other people. It had to be now.
    I sprinted down my street, pulling up short at the alley. I flashed my head past the corner and saw a solitary figure walking away from me.
    I scanned the ground, looking for a weapon. Nothing the right size for a club. Too bad.
    I turned into the alley, about seven meters behind him. He was wearing a waist-length leather jacket and had a squat, powerful build. Even from behind, I could see his neck was massive. He was carrying something with him—a cane, it looked like. Not good. The sand had better do the trick.
    I had closed the gap to about three meters and was just getting ready to call out to him when he looked back over his shoulder. I hadn’t made a sound, and I’d been keeping my eyes off him for the most part and diverting my attention. There’s an old, animal part of you that can sense when you’re being hunted. I’d learned that in the war. But I’d also learned not to give off the vibrations that set off a person’s alarm bells. This guy had sensitive antennae.
    He turned and faced me, and I could see the confusion in his expression. Benny had said I’d been spotted at the station, but now I was coming from the other direction. He was trying to clear the disparity with the central computer.
    I noted he had cauliflower ears, puffed out and disfigured from repeated blows. Japanese
judoka
and
kendoka
don’t believe in protective gear; practitioners sometimes wear their scarred lobes, which they develop from head butts in judo and bamboo sword blows in kendo, like badges of honor. Awareness of his possible skills