A Clean Kill in Tokyo

where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
    He held his glasses up above his head and examined them, then returned them to his face. “And I’ll tell you something else. As bad as the problems are in the banks, the Construction Ministry is worse. Construction is the biggest employer in Japan—it puts rice on one out of every six Japanese tables. The industry is by far the biggest contributor to the LDP. If you want to dig out this country’s corruption, construction is the place to start. Your father was a brave man, Midori.”
    “I know,” she said.
    I wondered if she still assumed the heart attack had been from natural causes. The building was starting to feel warm.
    “I’ve told you what I know,” Bulfinch said. “Now it’s your turn.”
    I looked at him through the shades. “Can you think of any reason Kawamura would have gone to meet you that morning but not brought the disk?”
    Bulfinch paused before saying, “No.”
    “The plan that morning was definitely to do the handoff?”
    “Yes. As I said, we’d had a number of previous deep background meetings. This was the morning Kawamura was going to deliver the goods.”
    “Maybe he couldn’t get access to the disk, couldn’t download whatever he was going to download that day, and that’s why he was coming empty-handed.”
    “No. He told me over the phone the day before that he had it. All he had to do was hand it over.”
    I felt a flash of insight. I turned to Midori. “Midori, where did your father live?” Of course I already knew, but couldn’t let her know that.
    “Shibuya.”
    “Which
chome?” Chome
are small subdivisions within Tokyo’s various wards.
    “San-chome.”
    “Top of Dogenzaka, then? Above the station?”
    “Yes.”
    I turned to Bulfinch. “Where was Kawamura getting on the train that morning?”
    “Shibuya JR Station.”
    “I’ve got a hunch I’m going to follow up on. I’ll call you if it pans out.”
    “Wait just a minute—” he started to say.
    “I know this isn’t comfortable for you,” I said, “but you’re going to have to trust me. I think I can find that disk.”
    “How?”
    “As I said, a hunch.” I started to move toward the door.
    “Wait,” he said again. “I’ll go with you.”
    “No.”
    He took me by the arm and said again, “I’ll go with you.”
    I looked at his hand on my arm. After a moment it drifted back to his side.
    “I want you to walk out of here,” I told him. “Head in the direction of Omotesando-dori. I’m going to get Midori someplace safe and follow up on my hunch. I’ll be in touch.”
    He looked at Midori, clearly at a loss.
    “It’s all right,” she said. “We want the same thing you do.”
    “I don’t suppose I have much choice,” he said, looking at me with a glare that was meant to convey resentment. But I saw what he was really thinking.
    “If you try to follow me,” I said, my voice low, “I will not react as a friend.”
    “For God’s sake, tell me what you’re thinking. I might be able to help.”
    “Remember,” I said, gesturing to the street, “the direction of Omotesando-dori. I’ll be in touch soon.”
    “You’d better be,” he said. He took a step closer and looked through the shades and into my eyes, and I had to admire his balls. “You just better.” He gave a nod to Midori and walked through the glass doors of the Spiral Building and out onto the street.
    Midori looked at me and asked, “What’s your hunch?”
    “Later,” I said, watching him through the glass. “We need to move now, before he gets a chance to double back and follow one of us. Let’s go.”
    We walked out and immediately flagged a cab heading in the direction of Shibuya. I could see Bulfinch, still walking in the other direction, as we got in and drove away.
    We got out and separated at Shibuya JR Station. Midori headed back to the hotel while I made my way up Dogenzaka—where Harry and I had followed Kawamura on a morning that now seemed so long ago, where, if my hunch was right, Kawamura had ditched the disk the morning he died.
    I was thinking about Kawamura, about his behavior that morning, about what must have been going on in his mind.
    More than anything else he’s scared. Today’s the day; he’s got the disk that’s going to flush all the rats out into the open. It’s right there in his pocket. It’s small and almost weightless, but he’s intensely aware of its presence, this object he knows will cost him his few remaining days if