Hard Rain

then
    walked up the stairs without looking back.
    The early morning air of Nogizaka was cool and slightly damp. Light
    from streetlamps lay in weak yellow pools. The pavement was slick with
    urban dew. Tokyo slumbered around me, dreamless and indifferent.
    Goodbye to all that, I thought, and began walking toward the hotel.
    Five.
    I went straight to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking of
    Harry, of Harry with Yukiko. I knew something was wrong there. What
    would this girl, or whoever she worked for, want with a guy like
    Harry?
    I supposed he might have made an enemy with one of his hacking stunts.
    Even if he had, though, tracing the problem back to him would be a
    bitch. And what would be the point of setting him up with the girl?
    Harry had told me his boss had taken him to Damask Rose to 'celebrate'
    the night Harry had met Yukiko. If the girl had been a setup, Harry's
    boss must have been comp licit I chewed on that.
    I thought about going to the guy. I could find out his name, where he
    lived, brace him one morning on his way to the office.
    Tempting, but even if I got the information I wanted, the incident
    would cause problems for Harry, possibly severe ones. No go.
    Okay, try something else. Maybe someone was interested in Harry only
    as a conduit to me.
    But nobody knows about Harry, I thought. Not even Tatsu.
    There was Midori, of course. She knew where he lived. She'd sent him
    that letter.
    Nab, I don't see it.
    I got up and paced the room. Midori had connections in the
    entertainment world. Use those connections, have someone get close to
    Harry as a way of finding me?
    I remembered that last night with her at the Imperial Hotel, how we'd
    been standing, my arms around her from behind, her fingers intertwined
    with mine, the way her hair smelled, the way she tasted. I pushed the
    memory away.
    I realized that, for the moment, there was no way of knowing who was
    behind Harry's improbable romance. So I put aside Midori and
    concentrated on what, not who.
    What makes me a hard target is that I have no fixed points in my life
    no workplace, no address, no known associates that someone can hook
    into and use to get to me. If someone had established a connection
    from Harry to me, he'd have that fixed point. He could be expected to
    exploit it.
    That meant people would be watching Harry. Not just through Yukiko.
    They'd have to tail him, as often as possible.
    But he'd been clean when I'd seen him at Teize. He'd told me as much,
    and I knew for sure that I'd been clean afterward.
    I decided to conduct an experiment. It was a little bit risky, but not
    as risky as leveling with Harry about his situation, given his current
    state of mind. I'd need another night in Tokyo to do it right. No
    problem with that. While closing in on the weightlifter, I'd been
    staying in appropriately anonymous city hotels for one week at a time
    -not wishing to attract attention with longer stays and the New Otani
    reservation was good for another three nights anyway.
    I looked at the digital clock on the bed stand It was past four in the
    morning. Christ, I was keeping the same hours as my lovesick friend.
    I'd call him in the evening, when we'd both be awake. More
    importantly, when Yukiko would be at Damask Rose, and Harry,
    presumably, would be alone. Then, based on the outcome of my little
    experiment, I'd decide how much to tell him.
    I got back in bed. The last thing I thought of before drifting off to
    sleep was Midori, and how she had said in her letter that she wanted to
    present an offering for my spirit.
    I woke up the next day feeling refreshed.
    Later I would call Harry and arrange a meeting for that night. But
    first, I wanted to map out an SDR that I'd ask him to use beforehand.
    Putting together the route took most of the afternoon. Every element
    had to be done right or the route itself would be a failure. It had to
    move through areas with which Harry was already familiar because he
    wasn't going to have an opportunity to practice. Also, at several
    junctures, timing would be important, and I had to walk the entirety of
    both Harry's route and mine to ensure that our paths would cross only
    as planned. I took detailed notes as I went along, using some typing
    paper I picked up at a stationery store.
    When I was done, I stopped at a coffee shop and created a map with
    notations on a single sheet of paper. Then I made my way to
    Shin-Okubo, north of Shinjuku and a bastion of the Korean mob, where,
    among