A Lonely Resurrection

these things, as long as there was a fight. Washio, on the other hand, was probably responsible for logistics and would be accountable if there were problems.
    “Are you fighting?” I asked, looking at Murakami.
    For the first time he smiled. The front teeth were overlarge and too even, and I realized he was wearing a cheap dental bridge.
    “Sometimes I fight. But not tomorrow,” he said.
    I waited to see whether there would be more. There wasn’t.
    I briefly considered whether it could be a setup. If they were on to me, though, this was already a pretty perfect venue. They didn’t have to convince me to go somewhere else.
    “I’ll be there,” I told him.
    Murakami looked at me for a moment longer, the smile lingering, the eyes still flat, then walked away. Washio followed.
    I let out a long breath and looked at the clock. When the second hand was at the twelve, I attacked the bag again, working off the excess adrenaline Murakami’s presence had provoked.
    He was a scary one, no doubt about it. And not just the ruined face. Even without the scarring, I would have recognized him. He exuded the same deadly air I had known, and respected, in Crazy Jake. The external scars were the least of what marked him for what he was.
    I wouldn’t want to try to take this guy out with anything less than a scoped rifle. Which is something that’s hard to confuse with expiration by natural causes.
    The hell with it,
I thought.
Risks are one thing. This looks like suicide.
If Tatsu wanted him dead that much, I’d recommend a six-man squad and firearms. Much as I would have liked to do something to buy Tatsu’s continued goodwill, this one wasn’t worth it.
    I wondered if my old friend would threaten me. I didn’t think so. And if he did, I’d just step up my Rio plans. The preparations weren’t entirely complete, but moving hastily wasn’t a bad option if I found myself caught between a likely suicide mission on the one hand and pressure from Tatsu’s Keisatsucho on the other.
    But I’d go to the fight tomorrow and collect whatever intelligence I could. I’d feed it to Tatsu as a consolation prize for my bowing out.
    The clock’s second hand swept past the twelve. I unloaded a final flurry of elbow strikes and stepped back. The adrenaline dump was largely depleted, but I still felt tense. Usually a workout helps with that. Not this time.
    I found a partner and drilled leg attacks for another hour. After that I stretched and headed for the shower. I was glad this was going to be over soon.

PART II
    Music reveals a personal past of which, until then, each of us was unaware, moving us to lament misfortunes we never suffered and wrongs we did not commit.
    —Jorge Luis Borges

CHAPTER 9
    T hat night I took a long, wandering walk through Tokyo. I was restless and felt the need to move, to let the city’s currents carry me where they would.
    I drifted north from Meguro, keeping to the backstreets, the alleys, the lonely paths through lightless parks.
    Something about the damn city continued to draw me, to seduce me. I needed to leave. I wanted to be able to leave. Hell, I’d tried to leave. But here I was again.
    Maybe it’s fate.
    But I don’t believe in fate. Fate is bullshit.
    Then what?
    I came to Hikawa Jinja in Hiro, one of several score of Shinto shrines dotting the city. At perhaps thirty square meters, Hikawa is one of the smaller, but by no means the smallest, of these solemn green spaces. I walked through the old stone gate and was instantly enveloped in comforting darkness.
    I closed my eyes, tilted my head forward, and inhaled through my nose. I raised my hands before me and extended my fingers like a blind man trying to determine where he has found himself.
    It was there, just beyond the limits of ordinary perception. That feeling of the city being alive, coiled and layered and thrumming all around me. And the feeling that I was alive as part of it.
    I opened my eyes and lifted my head. The shrine was built on a bluff, and through the trees at its periphery I could see the lights of Hiro, and of Meguro beyond it.
    Tokyo is so vast, and can be so cruelly impersonal, that the succor provided by its occasional oasis is sweeter than that of any other place I’ve known. There is the quiet of shrines like Hikawa, inducing a somber sort of reflection that for me has always been the same pitch as the reverberation of a temple chime; the solace of tiny
nomiya,
neighborhood watering holes, with only two or