A Lonely Resurrection

to the elevators. I automatically scanned the area around me, first keying on the seats offering the best view of the entranceway, the places where an ambush team would position a spotter, the person tasked with supplying a positive ID. I saw no likelies. My radar stayed on medium alert.
    As I approached the elevators, I noticed a striking Japanese woman, midthirties, shoulder-length hair wavy and iridescent black, skin smooth and pale white in contrast. She was wearing faded blue jeans, black loafers, and a black V-neck sweater. She was standing in the middle of the bank of elevators and looking directly at me.
    It was Midori.
    No,
I thought.
Look more closely.
    Since that last time, about a year earlier when I had watched her perform from the shadows at the Village Vanguard in New York, I’ve seen a number of women who resemble Midori at first glance. Each time it happens, a part of my mind fills in the details, perhaps wanting to believe it really is her, and the illusion lasts for a second or two before closer inspection convinces that hopeful part of my mind of its error.
    The woman watched me. Her arms, which had been crossed, began to unfold.
    Midori. There was no question.
    My heart started thudding. A fusillade of questions erupted in my mind:
How can she be here? How can it be her? What is she doing back in Tokyo? How would she know where to find me? How would anyone know?
    I shoved the questions aside and started checking the secondary areas around me. Just because you’ve spotted one surprise doesn’t mean there isn’t another. In fact, the first one might have been a deliberate distraction, a setup for a fatal sucker punch.
    No one seemed out of place. Nothing set off my now elevated radar. Okay.
    I looked at her again, still half expecting the second examination would tell me I’d been hallucinating. I hadn’t. It was her.
    I glanced around the room again, then slowly walked over to where she stood. I stopped in front of her. I thought the
ba-boom, ba-boom
in my chest might be loud enough for her to hear.
    Get it together,
I thought. But I didn’t know what to say.
    “How did you find me?” is what came out.
    Her expression was placid, almost empty. Her eyes were dark. They radiated their characteristic untouchable heat.
    “I looked in a directory of people who are supposed to be dead,” she said.
    If she’d been trying to fluster me, she’d done a nice job of it. I glanced around the room again.
    “Are you afraid of something?” she asked mildly.
    “All the time,” I said, settling my eyes on hers again.
    “Afraid of me? Why would that be?”
    A pause. I asked, “What are you doing here?”
    “Looking for you.”
    “Why?”
    “Don’t play dumb. I know you’re not.”
    My heart rate was starting to slow. If she thought I was going to start spilling my guts in response to her vague replies, she was mistaken. I don’t play it that way, not even for her.
    “You going to tell me how you found me?” I asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    Another pause. I looked at her. “You want to get a drink?”
    “Did you kill my father?”
    My heart rate reversed course.
    I looked at her for a long time. Then I said, very quietly, “Yes.”
    I watched her. I didn’t avert my eyes.
    She was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was low and husky.
    “I didn’t think you would admit it. Or at least not so easily.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, thinking how ridiculous it sounded.
    She pressed her lips together and shook her head, as though to say,
You can’t be serious.
    I looked around the lobby again. I didn’t spot anyone who was positioned to do me harm, but there were a lot of people coming and going and I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to move. If she had any accomplices, this would draw them out.
    “Why don’t we go to the bar,” I said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
    She nodded without looking at me.
    What I had in mind was not the lobby-level Rendezvous Bar, which is so heavily trafficked as to be useless from a security standpoint, but the mezzanine-level Old Imperial Bar. The latter is a relic from the original Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Imperial that was torn down in 1968, ostensibly in the name of earthquake safety, more likely in obeisance to misguided notions of “progress.” A walk to the mezzanine level would mean moving back across the lobby, taking a flight of stairs, and making several turns around mostly deserted corridors with various points of