A Lonely Resurrection

me,” I said, my tone mild, “I’m going to start seeing you as a threat.”
    He looked at me for a long moment. Finally he said, “All right. Kanezaki has been getting the money from a man named Fumio Tanaka. Someone with inherited money and the right political sympathies. I don’t see that as relevant to the job at hand.”
    I paused as though considering. “Well, even if Kanezaki goes away, Tanaka is still around, isn’t he? Why don’t I interfere with his activities, too?”
    He shook his head violently. “No,” he said. “That won’t be necessary. I’ve asked for your assistance with a particular matter and would like an answer with regard to that matter only, please.”
    “I’ll need a way to contact you,” I said.
    “Will you take the job?”
    I looked at him. “I want to think about your story first. If I decide I can work with you safely, I’ll do it.”
    He took out a Mont Blanc Meisterstück, unscrewed it, and scrawled a number on a napkin. “You can reach me here,” he said.
    “Oh, one more thing,” I said, taking the napkin. “The guy you were using to try to get to me. Haruyoshi Fukasawa. He died recently.”
    He swallowed. “I know. Kanezaki told me.”
    “What do you think happened there?”
    “From what Kanezaki told me, I gather it was an accident.”
    I nodded. “The thing is, Fukasawa was a friend of mine. He wasn’t much of a drinker. But apparently he was loaded when he fell from that roof. Strange, isn’t it?”
    “If you think we had something to do with this. . .”
    “Maybe you can just tell me who did.”
    He glanced to his right again. “I don’t know.”
    “Your people were following Harry. And I know his death was no accident. If you can’t do any better than what you’ve already told me, I’m going to start thinking it was you.”
    “I’m telling you, I don’t know who did it. Even assuming it wasn’t an accident.”
    “How did you find out where Harry lived in the first place?”
    He repeated Kanezaki’s story about Midori’s letter.
    “With only that to go on, you must have used local resources,” I suggested.
    He looked at me. “You seem to know a lot. But I’m not going to start confirming or denying the specifics of local resources for you. If you suspect local resources might have been involved in your friend’s death, I can’t help you. As I said, I don’t know.”
    I wasn’t going to get any more out of him in a place like this. I wished for a second we were alone.
    I got up to go. “I’ll be in touch,” I said.
    • • •
    Tatsu and I had agreed to meet in Yoyogi Park after I’d braced Biddle. I went there, taking the usual precautions. He was already waiting, sitting on a bench beneath one of the park’s thousands of maple trees, reading a newspaper, looking like some of the retirees in the area who were passing the day doing the same thing.
    “How did it go?” he asked.
    I briefed him on what Biddle had told me.
    “I know of Tanaka,” he said when I was done. “His father founded an electronics company in the twenties that survived the war and prospered afterward. Tanaka sold it when his father died and has been living off the considerable proceeds ever since. He is said to have an enormous libido, particularly for a man nearing seventy. He is also said to be addicted to codeine and other narcotics.”
    “What about his politics?”
    “He has none, so far as I know.”
    “Then why would he want to fund an Agency program to aid reformers?”
    “I’d like you to help me find out.”
    “Why?”
    He looked at me. “I need a bad cop. And we may get a lead about Murakami.”
    “Nothing from the guy you took into custody?”
    He shook his head. “The problem is that he is much more afraid of his boss than he is of me. But I’ve always been impressed by how much a man’s attitudes will change at between forty-eight and seventy-two hours of sleep deprivation. We may learn something yet.”
    He took out his mobile phone and input a number. Asked a few questions. Listened. Issued instructions. Then he hung up and turned to me. “One of my men is on his way to pick us up now. He will take us to Tanaka’s residence, which is in Shirokanedai.”
    Shirokanedai is arguably Tokyo’s poshest neighborhood. Apart from the main artery of Meguro-dori, which runs through it, its narrow streets of elegant single-family homes and apartments are astonishingly hushed and peaceful, as though the neighborhood’s money has