Hard Rain

but my doctor advises me to
    refrain from such indulgences."
    "I didn't know you listened to your doctor."
    He pursed his lips as though in preparation for a painful admission.
    "My wife, too, has become strict about such matters."
    I looked at him and smiled, faintly surprised at the image of this
    tough, resourceful guy deferring sheepishly to a wife.
    "What is it?" he asked.
    I told him the truth. "It's always good to see you, you bastard."
    He smiled back, a network of creases appearing around his eyes.
    "Kochira koso." The same here.
    He gestured to the waitress and ordered chamomile tea. Because he
    wasn't drinking, I stayed away from the Cragganmore. A small pity.
    Then he turned to me. "As I was saying, I need your assistance
    again."
    I drummed my fingers along my glass. "I thought you said this would be
    a social visit."
    He nodded. "I was lying."
    I had already known that, and he knew that I knew. Still: "I thought
    you said I could trust you."
    "On the important things, certainly. Anyway, a social visit doesn't
    preclude a request for a favor."
    "Is that what you're asking for? A favor?"
    He shrugged. "You are no longer obligated to me."
    "I used to get paid a lot of money when I did favors for people."
    "I am pleased to hear you say "used to."
    "I was able to say it pretty accurately, until just recently."
    "May I continue?"
    "As long as we're clear from the outset that there's no obligation
    here."
    He nodded again. "As I have said." He paused to withdraw a tin of
    mints from inside his coat pocket. He opened the tin and extended it
    toward me. I shook my head. He withdrew a mint and placed it in his
    mouth without dipping his head or stopping to look at what he was
    doing. It wasn't Tatsu's way to take his eyes off what was going on
    around him, and it showed in the little things as well as the more
    significant.
    "The weightlifter was a front man," he said. "It is true that he
    looked like a Neanderthal, but in fact he was part of the new
    generation of organized crime in Japan. His specialty, in which he had
    proven himself unusually adept,
    was the establishment of legitimate, sustainable businesses, behind
    which his less progressive cohorts could then hide."
    I nodded, knowing the phenomenon. The new generation, recognizing that
    tattoos, loud suits, and an aggressive manner offered them only limited
    upside in the society, was casting off its criminal persona and
    foraying into legitimate businesses like real estate and entertainment.
    The older generation, still wedded to drugs, prostitution, and control
    of the construction industry, was coming to rely on these upstarts for
    money laundering, tax avoidance, and other services. And, at the same
    time, the newcomers went to their forebears whenever the competitive
    pressures of business might be eased by the timely application of some
    of the traditional tools of the trade bribery, extortion, murder in
    which the older generation continued to specialize. It was a symbiotic
    division of labor that would have made a classical economist flush with
    pride.
    "The weightlifter had established an efficient system," he continued.
    "All the traditional gumi were using his services. The legitimacy this
    system afforded the gumi was making them less vulnerable to
    prosecution, and more influential in politics and the boardroom. More
    influential in society generally, in fact. Our mutual acquaintance,
    Yamaoto Toshi, had grown particularly dependent on the weightlifter's
    operation."
    Gumi means 'group' or 'gang." In the jakuza context, the word refers
    to organized crime families, the Japanese equivalent of the Gambinos or
    the fictional Corleones.
    "I don't see how his absence is going to make a difference," I said.
    "Won't someone just take his place?"
    "In the long run, yes. Where there is enough demand, eventually
    someone will offer a supply. But in the meantime, the supply is
    disrupted. The weightlifter was critical to the smooth maintenance of
    his organization. He groomed no successors, fearing, as strongmen do,
    that the presence of a successor would make a succession more likely.
    There will be a struggle in his organization now that he is gone.
    Deceit and betrayal will be part of that struggle. Assets and
    connections that are now hidden will be exposed. Criminal influence on
    legitimate enterprises will be lessened."
    "For a time," I said.
    "For a time."
    I thought of what Kanezaki had told me about Crepuscular.
    "I had a run-in with someone