Hard Rain

time to see her
    spilling 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 on 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, seventeen
    percent. Pepper spray. The good stuff. I shoved 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 that 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
    almost admired her for 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. "When I'm through
    with your nose, teeth, and eyes, your dancing days will be over. Now I
    want to know one thing. Who killed him? Was it you, or was it
    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, 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 said to Naomi about sub-ornment, about what Midori
    had said about atonement. But other than a detached observation about
    the relative ease of the maneuver because of the lighter muscle mass, I
    felt nothing.
    "Say hello to Harry," I said. I picked up her purse to make it look
    like she'd been the victim of a random robbery, collected the fishing
    line and tape, and took the stairs to the first floor. I let myself
    out through the front entrance, keeping my head down to avoid the
    camera there. I ducked around the corner into the alley, where I
    pulled off the hat and wig, spat out the false teeth, and rubbed the
    ash off my face with the damp towel. I pulled off the homeless man's
    clothes and the long underwear and changed into what I had bought at
    the Gap, then shoved everything back into the bag. I ran a mental list
    of the contents of the bag to ensure I wasn't leaving anything behind,
    then double-checked the ground just to be sure. Everything was
    copacetic. I took a deep breath and strolled back out onto
    Aoyama-dori.
    When I was a few blocks away, I stopped under a streetlight and quickly
    went through her purse. There was nothing in it of interest.
    I walked down