Hard Rain

conviction behind it.
    "Those men are finished, then?" I asked.
    He nodded. "I have to assume that Yamaoto owns them now, and warn the
    others."
    "What about Kanezaki?"
    "I'll brief him on our meetings with Biddle and Tanaka."
    "Tell him his boss tried to put a contract out on him?"
    He shrugged. "Why not? The young man already feels indebted to me.
    This sentiment might prove useful in the future. No harm in
    reinforcing it now."
    "What about Murakami?"
    "As I said, we will continue to question the man we took in. He may
    provide us with something useful."
    "Contact me as soon as you have something. I want to be there when it
    happens."
    "So do I," he said.
    Twenty.
    I checked the Imperial voice mail account from a pay phone. A
    mechanical female voice told me that I had one message.
    I tried not to hope, but the attempt felt pretty thin. The female
    voice instructed me to press the 'one' key if I wanted to hear the
    message. I did.
    "Hi, Jun, it's me," I heard Midori say. There was a pause, then, "I
    don't know if you're still really staying at the hotel, so I don't know
    if you'll even get this message." Another pause. "I'd like to see you
    tonight. I'll be at Body and Soul at eight o'clock. I hope you'll
    come. Bye."
    The female voice told me the message had been left at 2:28 p.m." that
    I should press the 'one' key if I wanted to repeat it. I pressed it.
    And again.
    There was something so disarmingly natural about the way she called me
    Jun, short for Junichi. No one calls me Jun anymore. No one knows the
    name. I had been using Junichi, my real name, selectively even before
    leaving Tokyo, and had discarded it entirely afterward.
    Hi, Jun, it's me. Such an ordinary message. Most people probably get
    ones like it all the time.
    It felt as though the ground beneath me had borrowed some extra gravity
    from somewhere.
    The part of my brain that has served me well for so long spoke up:
    Place and time. Could be a setup.
    Not from her. I didn't buy that.
    Who else might have heard that message, though'?
    I considered. To intercept the message, someone would have to know
    where I was staying and under what fictitious name, and they'd have to
    be able to hack the hotel voice mail system. Outside of Tatsu, who
    wasn't a current threat, there wasn't much chance of that.
    A chance, though.
    My response to that was, The hell with it.
    I went to see her.
    I took a long, meandering route, moving mostly on foot, watching as the
    city gradually grew dark around me. There's something so alive about
    Tokyo at night, something so imbued with possibilities. Certainly the
    daytime, with its zigzagging schools of pedestrians and thundering
    trains and hustle and noise and traffic, is the more upbeat of the
    city's melodies. But the city also seems burdened by the quotidian
    clamor, and almost relieved, every evening, to be able to ease out into
    the twilight and set aside the weight of the day. Night strips away
    the superfluity and the distractions. You move through Tokyo at night
    and you feel that you're on the verge of that thing you've always
    longed for. At night, you can hear the city breathe.
    I stopped at an Internet cafe to check the Body & Soul website and see
    who was playing. It was Toku, a young vocalist and flugelhorn player
    who had already developed a reputation for a soulful sound that belied
    his twenty-nine years. I had two of his CDs but hadn't seen him
    perform.
    It was possible that Yamaoto had learned that Midori was in Tokyo from
    the investigative firm she had retained. If so, there was a chance she
    was being watched, perhaps by Murakami himself. I did a thorough check
    of the likely spots around the club. They were all clear.
    I went in at about eight thirty. The place was full, but the doorman
    let me in when I told him I was a friend of
    Kawamura Midori, who was here for Toku's performance. "Oh yes," he
    told me. "Kawamura-san mentioned that someone might come. Please."
    She was sitting at the end of one of the two long tables that parallel
    Body & Soul's walls and overlook the floor, where the musicians were
    set up. I scanned the room but didn't spot any likely threats. In
    fact, the evening's demographic was young, female, and obviously there
    to see Toku, who, with his quintet, was now captivating them with his
    elegiac "Autumn Winds."
    I smiled at what the band was wearing: tee-shirts, jeans, and sneakers.
    They all had long hair, died chapatsu brown. Their contemporaries
    would think it was cool.