A Lonely Resurrection

the end of the fishing line.
    I listened to the car as it got closer, closer. I heard it stop just a couple meters away. She had a good spot. Probably paid more for it.
    I heard the door open and then close. Then the
chirp chirp
of an automatic door lock. I looked in the mirror to confirm it was Yukiko and that she was alone. Right on both counts.
    She was wearing a black trench coat and high heels. A purse was slung across her neck and one arm. None of it was ideal attire for reaction or maneuver. But it looked good.
    Her right hand was closed around a small canister. My guess was Mace or pepper spray. A woman, late at night, in a parking garage—maybe this was nothing out of the ordinary for her. But I had a feeling she was thinking about Harry, and about me. Good.
    She was walking briskly. I watched as she approached the perimeter of the metal guardrail. My breath was moving in and out of my mouth in silent shallow drafts. One. Two. Three.
    I jerked hard on the line. It popped up from its taped moorings to ankle level and I heard her cry of surprise as she tripped over it. She might have recovered her balance, but those stylish heels were on my side. I stepped out from behind the pillar just in time to see her spill to the ground.
    I shoved my keys back in a pants pocket and darted up behind her. By the time I reached her, she had pulled herself up on all fours. She still had the canister in one hand. I stomped her wrist and she cried out. I reached down and yanked what she was holding from her fingers. I glanced at it quickly—oleoresin capsicum. Pepper spray. Five million SHU—the good stuff. I crammed it in a pocket and dragged her over to the nearest car, away from the cameras.
    I shoved her up against the passenger-side door. She looked frightened, but I didn’t see any recognition in her eyes. Given my disguise, she might have been thinking I was a mugger or rapist.
    “You don’t remember me, Yukiko?” I asked. “We met at Damask Rose. I’m Harry’s friend. Was his friend.”
    Her brow furrowed for a moment as she tried to square the evidence of her eyes with that of her ears. Then she saw it. Her mouth dropped open but no sound came out.
    “Where can I find Murakami?” I asked.
    She closed her mouth. She was breathing rapidly through her nose, but other than that she had managed to suppress any outward sign of fear. I admired her poise.
    “If you want to live, you’ll tell me what I want to know,” I said.
    She looked at me but said nothing.
    I popped an uppercut into her gut. It was hard enough to hurt, but not too hard. I needed her to be able to talk. She gasped and doubled over.
    “The next one is to that beautiful face,” I said. “I want to know who killed him. Was it you, or Murakami?”
    I didn’t really give a shit how she might answer. I certainly wouldn’t trust anything she said. But I wanted to give her the opportunity to plead something exculpatory, so she might believe I’d let her live if she told me where I could find her boss.
    “It was. . . it was him,” she gasped.
    “All right. Tell me where I can find him.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You better think of something.”
    “He’s hard to find. I don’t know how to reach him. He just shows up at the club sometimes.”
    She glanced behind me, toward the garage door. I shook my head. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “If you can just hold out long enough for another car to pull in, I’ll have to run and let you go. Or maybe someone saw what happened on those cameras, maybe they’re on their way now. But you’ve got it backward. If someone comes and you haven’t told me what I want to hear, that’s when I’ll kill you. Now where is he?”
    She shook her head.
    “We’re running out of time,” I said. “I’m going to give you one more chance. Tell me and you live. Don’t tell me and you die. Right here.”
    She clenched her jaw and looked at me.
    Damn, she was tough. I might have known, after seeing the way she handled her nitroglycerin-volatile boss.
    “All right,” I said. “You win.”
    I popped another uppercut into her midsection, this one hard enough to cause damage. She doubled over with a sharp exhalation of breath. I stepped behind her, braced a knee against her back, took her head in one gloved hand and her chin in the other, and broke her neck. She was dead before she hit the floor.
    I’d never done that to a woman before. I thought for a second of some of the things I had