Hard Rain

of Holtzer's death and assume I had been behind it,
    that if he did so he would be able to fix my movements between the time
    he last saw me in Tokyo and the day Holtzer died outside of D.C." less
    than a week apart. But killing Holtzer had been important to me, and I
    had been prepared to pay a price for the indulgence. Tatsu was simply
    presenting me with the bill.
    I was silent, and after a moment he continued. "An individual
    traveling under the name and passport of Fujiwara Junichi left Tokyo
    for San Francisco last October thirtieth.
    There is no record of his having returned to Japan. The logical
    assumption is that he stayed in the United States."
    In a sense, he did. Fujiwara Junichi is my Japanese birth name. When
    I learned that Holtzer and the CIA had discovered where I was living in
    Tokyo, I knew the name was blown and no longer usable. I had traveled
    to the States to kill Holtzer under the Fujiwara passport and then
    retired it, returning to Japan under a different identity that I had
    previously established for such a contingency. I had hoped that anyone
    looking for me might be diverted by this false clue and conclude that I
    had relocated to the States. Most people would have. But not Tatsu.
    "Somehow, I could not see you living in the States," he went on. "You
    seemed ... comfortable in Japan. I did not believe you were ready to
    leave."
    "I suppose you might have been on to something there."
    He shrugged. I asked myself, if my old friend hadn't really left
    Japan, but only wanted me to believe that he had, what would he have
    done? He would have reentered the country under a new name. He would
    have then relocated to a new city, because he had become too well known
    in Tokyo."
    He paused, and I recognized the employment of a fortune-teller's trick,
    in which the party ostensibly charged with supplying information
    instead cleverly elicits it, probing under the guise of informing. So
    far, Tatsu had offered only suggestions and generalities, and I wasn't
    going to fill in the blanks for him by confirming or denying any of
    it.
    "Perhaps he would have used the same new name to reenter the country,
    and then to relocate within it," he said, after a moment.
    But I hadn't used the same new name when I had relocated. Doing so
    would have presented too obvious a nexus for a determined tracker to
    follow. Tatsu must not have been sure of that, and, as I suspected,
    was hoping to learn more by getting me to react. If I were to slip and
    confirm that I had used the same name, he would tell me that it was by
    this that he had managed to find me, thereby avoiding the need to
    reveal how he had really done it, and leaving the vulnerability intact,
    perhaps to be exploited again later.
    So I said nothing, affecting a slightly bored expression instead.
    He looked at me, the corners of his mouth creeping upward into the
    barest hint of a smile. It was his way of acknowledging that I knew
    what he was up to, meaning it was useless for him to keep at it, and
    that he would now get to the point.
    "Fukuoka was too small," he said. "Sapporo, too remote. Nagoya was
    too close to Tokyo. Hiroshima was possible because the atmosphere is
    good, but I thought the Kansai region more likely because it's less
    distant from Tokyo, to which I guessed you might want to maintain some
    proximity. That meant Kyoto, possibly Kobe. But more likely Osaka."
    "Because ..."
    He shrugged. "Because Osaka is bigger, more bustling, so there is more
    room to hide. And it has a larger transient population, so a new
    arrival draws less attention. Also I know how you love jazz, and Osaka
    is known for its clubs."
    I might have known that Tatsu would key on the clubs. During the
    Taisho Period, from 1912 to 1926, jazz migrated from Shanghai to
    Kansai, the western region of Honshu, Japan's main island, where Osaka
    is located. A host of dance halls and live houses were built in the
    Soemoncho and Dotonbori entertainment districts, and jazz took off in
    cafes everywhere. The legacy lives on today in establishments like
    Mr. Kelly's, Overseas, Royal Horse, and, of course, the Osaka Blue
    Note, and I couldn't deny that the presence of these places had been a
    factor in my thinking.
    I had even recognized, for the very reasons Tatsu had just articulated,
    that Osaka might be a somewhat predictable choice. But I had also
    found that I was reluctant to forgo the lifestyle advantages that the
    city would afford me. When I was younger, I would have