Hard Rain

threat to them. Besides, they don't have much in-house
    muscle. Congress wouldn't like it. That's why they need people like
    me."
    "What about the police? A taxi picked me up at the same spot where
    someone is going to find a body."
    "Kanezaki will make a few calls and that body will be gone before
    anyone stumbles across it. And even if the cops were to get involved,
    what do they have? Even if they found a way to contact the cab driver,
    all he's got is a fake name and an average-looking guy he barely saw in
    the dark, right?"
    "I guess that's true."
    "But you still have to be cautious," I said. "This girl you're
    involved with, Yukiko, you trust her?"
    He looked at me. After a moment, he nodded.
    "Because, if you're spending the night with this girl, she knows where
    you live. That's a weakness in your defenses right there."
    "Yeah, but she's not involved with these people ..."
    "You never know, Harry. You never really know."
    There was a long pause, then he said, "I can't live that way. The way
    you do."
    A thought flashed in my mind: Maybe you should have figured that out
    before you got involved in my world.
    But that wasn't fair. Or particularly useful.
    The waitress brought two demitasses of the Nire Blend and set them down
    with exquisite care, as though they were priceless artifacts. She
    bowed and moved away.
    We drank the coffee. Harry said positive things about his, but there
    was some obvious effort behind this. It used to be that he would
    delight in mocking my gustatory recommendations. I couldn't help
    noticing the contrast, and I didn't care for it.
    We made small talk. When the coffee was done, we said goodnight, and I
    left him to make my circuitous way back to the hotel.
    I wondered if I really believed that the Agency posed little danger to
    Harry. I supposed that mostly I did. Whether they posed a danger to
    me was another story. They might have wanted me for help, as Kanezaki
    had said. Or they might have been looking for payback for Holtzer. I
    had no way to be sure. Regardless, eliminating Kanezaki's escort
    earlier wasn't exactly going to engender endearment.
    And there was Yukiko. She still didn't feel right to me, and I had no
    way of knowing whether she was hooked up with the Agency or with
    someone else.
    Back at the hotel, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, again unable
    to sleep.
    So it wasn't Midori, after all, I thought.
    The Agency instead of Midori. Talk about a fucking consolation
    Enough. Let it go.
    I was suddenly less certain than I had been the night before that this
    would be my last in Tokyo. I stared at the ceiling for a long time
    before descending into sleep.
    Six.
    The next morning I took the bullet train back to Osaka. Arriving early
    in the afternoon at bustling Shin-Osaka station, I was surprised to
    find that it felt good to be back. Maybe I'd gotten tired of living in
    hotels. Or maybe it was something about knowing that I was going to
    have to leave again, this time permanently.
    I knew I'd been clean when I left Tokyo, but the two-and-a-half-hour
    train ride had afforded me no new opportunities to check my back.
    That's a long time for me, especially given my recent run-in with
    Kanezaki and company, and to ease my discomfort I took an appropriately
    circuitous route before catching a Tanimachi line train to Miyakojima,
    where I took the stairs of the A4 exit to the street.
    For no particular reason I made a left around the police box at the
    Miyakojima Hon-dori intersection, maneuvering around the hundreds of
    commuter bicycles jammed in all directions around the exit. I could as
    easily have made a right, past the local high school and toward the
    Okawa River. One of the things that had attracted me to the high-rise
    in Belfa is that the complex is approachable from all directions.
    I took a left at Miyakojima Kita-dori, then a right against traffic
    down a one-way street, then another left. The move against traffic
    would impede anyone's attempts at vehicular surveillance. And each
    turn gave me an opportunity to unobtrusively glance behind me while
    putting me on a narrower, quieter road then the last. Anyone hoping to
    follow me on foot would have to stay close or lose me. There were
    dozens of high-rises in the area, too, and the fact that I might have
    been going to any one of them was another factor that would have
    rendered ineffective anything other than close-range surveillance.
    In some ways the neighborhood was the poster child for bad