Hard Rain

the sad news that our mutual friend
    Fujiwara-san has passed away. I have been given to understand that
    Fujiwara-san's body had been returned to the
    United States for burial. I have hoped to visit the gravesite to
    present an offering for his spirit, but, regrettably, I have been
    unable to discover where he has been laid to rest. If you have any
    information that would be helpful to me in this matter, I would
    sincerely appreciate your assistance. You can reach me at the above
    address.
    I humbly pray for your health and well-being. Thank you for your
    solicitude.
    Yours, Kawamura Midori
    I read it again, slowly, then a third time. Then I folded it back up
    and extended it to Harry.
    "No, no," he said, his hands raised, palms forward. "You keep it."
    I didn't want him to see that I wanted it. But I nodded and slipped it
    into an inside pocket of the blazer I was wearing.
    I signaled the bartender that it was time for another Lagavulin. "Did
    you answer this?" I asked.
    "I did. I wrote back, and told her that I had heard exactly what she
    had, that I didn't have any other information."
    "Did you hear from her after that?"
    "Just a thank-you. She asked me to let her know if I heard anything,
    and told me she would do the same."
    "That's all?"
    "Yeah."
    I wondered if she had bought the story. If she hadn't thanked Harry
    for his response, I would have known she hadn't bought it, because she
    was classy and it wouldn't have been like her not to respond. But the
    thank-you might have been automatic, sent even in the presence of
    continued suspicions. It could even have been duplicitous, intended to
    lull Harry into thinking she was satisfied when in fact the opposite
    was true.
    That's bullshit, some part of me spoke up. She's not like that.
    Then a bitter smile: Not like you, you mean.
    There was nothing duplicitous about Midori, and knowing it opened up a
    lit tie ache. The environment I've inhabited for so long has
    conditioned me to assume the worst. At least I still occasionally
    remember to resist the urge.
    It didn't matter. There were too many oddities surrounding the disk's
    disposition and my disappearance, and she was too smart to miss them.
    I'd spent a lot of time thinking about it over the last year or so, and
    I knew the way she would see it.
    After what had happened between us, the doubts would have started
    small. But there would have been nothing to check their growth. After
    all, she would think, the contents of the disk were never published.
    That was Tatsu's doing, not mine, but she would have no way of knowing
    that. All she would know was that her father's last wishes were never
    carried out, that his death was ultimately futile. She would wonder
    again how I had known where to find that disk in Shibuya, go over my
    previous explanations, find them wanting. That would have led her to
    start thinking about the timing of my appearance, so soon after her
    father's death.
    And she knew I was part of something subterranean, although she never
    knew exactly what. The CIA? One of the Japanese political factions?
    Regardless, an organization that had the resources to fake a death and
    backstop it reasonably effectively.
    Yeah, with all these loose threads, and without me there to reassure
    her that what happened between us had been real, I knew that,
    eventually, she would conclude that she had been used. That's how I
    would see it, in her shoes.
    Maybe the sex was just opportunistic for him, she would think. Sure,
    why not, might as well have a little fun while I'm using her to get the
    disk. And then "I'll just disappear afterward, after I've tricked her
    into cooperating. She wouldn't want to believe all this, but she
    wouldn't be able to shake the feeling. And she wouldn't want to
    believe that I might actually have been involved in some way in her
    father's death, but she wouldn't be able to let that suspicion go,
    either.
    "Did I handle it right?" Harry asked.
    I shrugged. "You couldn't have handled it any better than you did. But
    she's still not buying it."
    "You think she'll let it go?"
    That was the question I was always left with. I hadn't managed to
    answer it. "I don't know," I told him.
    And there was something else I didn't know, something I wouldn't share
    with Harry. I didn't know if I wanted her to let it go.
    What had I just told him? You can't live with one foot in daylight and
    the other in shadows. I needed to take my own damn advice.
    Four.
    I saw Harry off around one. The subways