Rainfall

fuckface,
I had answered, and we had fought again.

    The CAR-15 was swinging toward me.

    I thought of the swimming hole near Dryden, how you had to just forget about everything else and jump.

    “Last chance,” Jimmy was saying. “Last chance.”

    Do what we’re asking and you’ve got a ticket home.

    There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done.

    I raised the pistol quickly, smoothly, chest level, double-tapping the trigger in the same motion. The two slugs slammed through his chest and blew out his back. Jimmy was dead before he hit the floor.

    Two Yards burst into Jimmy’s hooch but I had already picked up the CAR. I cut them down and ran.

    Their security was outward facing. They weren’t well prepared to stop someone going from the inside out. And they were shocked, demoralized, at losing Jimmy.

    I took some shrapnel from an exploding claymore. The wounds were minor, but back at base they told me, “Okay, soldier, that’s your million-dollar wound. You’re going home now.” They put me on a plane, and seventy-two hours later I was back in Dryden.

    The body came back two days later. There was a funeral. Jimmy’s parents were crying, Deirdre was crying. “Oh God, John, I knew, I knew he wasn’t going to make it back. Oh God,” she was saying.

    Everyone wanted to know how Jimmy had died. I told them he died in a firefight. That was all I knew. Near the border.

    I left town a day later. Didn’t say good-bye to any of them. Jimmy was right, there was no home after what we had done. “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” I think some poet said.

    I tell myself it’s karma, the great wheels of the universe grinding on. A lifetime ago I killed my girl’s brother. Now I take out a guy, next thing I know I’m involved with his daughter. If it were happening to someone else, I’d think it was funny.

    I had called the Imperial before the meeting with Tatsu and made a reservation. I keep a few things stored at the hotel in case of a rainy day: a couple of suits, identity papers, currency, concealed weapons. The hotel people think I’m an expat Japanese who visits Japan frequently, and I pay them to keep my things so I don’t have to carry them back and forth every time I travel. I even stay there periodically to back up the story.

    The Imperial is centrally located and has a great bar. More important, it’s big enough to be as anonymous as a love hotel, if you know how to play it.

    I had just reached Hibiya Station on the Hibiya line when my pager went off. I pulled it from my belt and saw a number I didn’t recognize, but followed by the 5-5-5 that told me it was Tatsu.

    I found a pay phone and input the number. The other side picked up on the first ring. “Secure line?” Tatsu’s voice asked.

    “Secure enough.”

    “The two visitors are leaving Narita at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow. It’s a ninety-minute ride to where they’re going. Our man might get there before them, though, so you’ll need to be in position early, just outside.”

    “Okay. The package?”

    “Being emplaced right now. You can pick it up in an hour.”

    “Will do.”

    Silence. Then: “Good luck.”

    Dead line.

    I reinserted the phone card and called the number Tatsu had given me in Ebisu. Whispering to disguise my voice, I warned the person on the other end of the line that there would be a bomb on the undercarriage of a diplomatic vehicle visiting the Yokosuka Naval Base tomorrow. That should slow things up in front of the guardhouse.

    I had showered at Harry’s before going to meet Tatsu, but I still looked pretty rough when I checked in at the hotel. No one seemed to notice my sleeve, wet from fishing Tatsu’s package out of the fountain at the park. Anyway, I had just flown in from the East Coast of the United States — long trip, anything can happen. The attendant at the front desk laughed when I told him I was getting too old for this shit.

    My things were already waiting for me in the room, the shirts pressed and the suits hung neatly. I bolted the door and sat down on the bed, then checked a false compartment in the suitcase they had brought up, where I saw the dull gleam of the Glock. I opened up the toiletry kit, took out the rounds I wanted from a dummy can of deodorant, loaded the gun, and slipped it between the mattress and the box spring.

    At nine o’clock the phone rang. I picked it up, recognized Midori’s voice, and told her the room number.

    A minute