Hard Rain

if possible. Eliminated
    him, if not.
    But since Tatsu himself was the one behind me, I knew I was in no
    immediate danger. As a department head with the Keisatsucho, Japan's
    FBI, he could easily have had me picked up already, if that's what he
    had wanted. The hell with it, I had decided. Akiko Grace, a young
    pianist who had electrified Japan's jazz world with her debut CD From
    New York, was appearing that night, and I wanted to see her play. If
    Tatsu was inclined to join me, he could.
    He had arrived midway through the second set. Grace was doing "That
    Morning," a melancholy piece from Manhattan Story, her second CD. I
    watched him pause just inside the entrance, his eyes scanning the
    tables in back. I would have signaled him, but he knew where to
    look.
    He made his way to my table and squeezed in next to me as though it was
    the most natural thing in the world that he should be meeting me here.
    As usual, he was wearing a dark suit that fit him like an afterthought.
    He nodded a greeting. I returned the gesture, then went back to
    watching Grace play.
    She was facing away from us, wearing a shoulderless gold-sequined gown
    that shimmered under the cool blue spotlights like heat lightning in
    the night. Watching her made me think of Midori, although as much by
    contrast as by association. Grace's attitude was funkier, with more
    swaying, more sideways approaches to the piano, and her style was
    generally softer, more contemplative. But when she got going, on
    numbers like "Pulse Fiction' and "Delancey Street Blues," she had that
    same air of having been possessed by the instrument, as though the
    piano was a demon and she its exhilarated amanuensis.
    I remembered watching Midori play, standing in the shadows of New
    York's Village Vanguard, knowing it would be the last time. I'd seen
    other pianists perform since then. It was always a sad pleasure, like
    making love to a beautiful woman, but not to the woman you love.
    The set ended and Grace and her trio left the stage. But the audience
    wouldn't stop applauding until they had returned, with an encore of
    Thelonious Monk's "Bemsha Swing." Tatsu was probably frustrated. He
    wasn't there to enjoy the jazz.
    After the encore, Grace moved to the bar. People began to get up to
    thank her, perhaps to have her sign the CDs they had brought, then to
    move on to whatever else the night had in store for them.
    When the people next to us had departed, Tatsu turned to me.
    "Retirement doesn't suit you, Rain-san," he said in his dry way. "It's
    making you soft. When you were active, I couldn't have tracked you
    down like this."
    Tatsu rarely wastes time on formalities. He knows better, but can't
    help himself. It's one of the things I've always liked about him.
    "I thought you wanted me to retire," I said.
    "From your relationship with Yamaoto and his organization, yes. But I
    thought we might then have the opportunity to work together. You
    understand my work."
    He was talking about his never-ending battle with Japanese corruption,
    behind much of which was his nemesis Yamaoto Toshi, politician and
    puppet master, the man who had suborned Holtzer, who for a time had
    been my unseen employer as well.
    "I'm sorry, Tatsu. With Yamaoto and maybe the CIA after me, things
    were too hot. I wouldn't have been much good to you even if I'd wanted
    to be."
    "You told me you would contact me."
    "I thought better of it."
    He nodded, then said, "Did you know that, just a few days after the
    last time we saw each other, William Holtzer died of a heart attack in
    the parking garage of a hotel in suburban Virginia?"
    I remembered how Holtzer had mouthed the words I was the mole ... I was
    the mole ... when he thought I was going to die. How he had set me
    against my blood brother, Crazy Jake, in Vietnam, and gloated about it
    afterward.
    "Why do you ask?" I said, my tone casual.
    "Apparently, his death came as a surprise to people who knew him in the
    intelligence community," he went on, ignoring my question, 'because
    Holtzer was only in his early fifties and also kept physically fit."
    Not physically fit enough for three hundred and sixty joules from a
    modified defibrillator, I thought.
    "It just goes to show you, you can't be too careful," I said, taking a
    sip of the twelve-year-old Dalmore I was drinking. "I take a baby
    aspirin myself, once a day. There was an article about it in the Asahi
    Shimbun a few years ago. Supposed to dramatically reduce the chances
    of heart