Rainfall

careful.”

    “Careful’s not good enough. Be paranoid. You don’t trust anyone.”

    “Almost anyone,” he said with a slightly exasperated pursing of the lips that might have been a grin.

    “No one,” I said, thinking of Crazy Jake.

    After he’d left I called Midori from a pay phone. We had switched to a new hotel that morning. She answered on the first ring.

    “Just wanted to check in,” I told her.

    “Can your friend help us?” she asked. I had told her to watch what she said over the phone, and she was choosing her words carefully.

    “Too early to tell. He’s going to try.”

    “When are you coming?”

    “I’m on my way now.”

    “Do me a favor, get me something to read. A novel, some magazines. I should have thought of it when I went out for something to eat before. There’s nothing to do in this room and I’m going crazy.”

    “I’ll stop someplace on the way. See you in a little bit.”

    Her tone was less strained than it had been when I first told her I had found the disk. She had wanted to know how, and I wouldn’t tell her. Obviously couldn’t.

    “I was retained by a party that wanted it,” I finally said. “I didn’t know what was on it at the time. I obviously didn’t know the lengths they would go to in trying to get it.”

    “Who was the party?” she had insisted.

    “Doesn’t matter” was my response. “All you need to know is that I’m trying to be part of the solution now, okay? Look, if I wanted to give it to the party that paid me to find it, I wouldn’t be here with it right now, discussing it with you. That’s all I’m going to say.”

    Not knowing my world, she had no reason to doubt that Kawamura’s heart attack had been due to something other than natural causes. If it had been anything other than that — a bullet, even a fall from a building — I knew I would be suspect.

    I headed to Suidobashi, where I began a thorough SDR by catching the JR line to Shinjuku. I changed trains at Yoyogi and watched to see who got off with me, then waited on the platform after the train left. I let two trains pass at Yoyogi before I got back on, and one stop later I exited at the east end of Shinjuku Station, the older, teeming counterpart to sanitized, government-occupied west Shinjuku. I was still wearing sunglasses to hide my swollen eye, and the dark tint gave the frenzied crowds a slightly ghostly look. I let the mob carry me through one of the mazelike underground shopping arcades until I was outside the Virgin Megastore, then fought my way across the arcade to the Isetan Department Store, feeling like a man trying to ford a strong river. I decided to buy Midori an oversized navy cashmere scarf and a pair of sunglasses with wraparound lenses that I thought would change the shape of her face. Paid for them at different registers so no one would think the guy in the sunglasses was buying a neat disguise for the woman in his life.

    Finally, I stopped at Kinokuniya, about fifty meters down from Isetan, where I plunged into crowds so thick they made the arcade seem desolate by comparison. I picked up a couple of magazines and a novel from the Japanese best-seller section and walked over to the register to pay.

    I was waiting in line, watching to see who was emerging from the stairway and escalator, when my pager starting vibrating in my pocket. I reached down and pulled it out, expecting to see a code from Harry. Instead the display showed an eight-digit number with a Tokyo prefix.

    I paid for the magazines and the book and took the stairs back to the first floor, then walked over to a pay phone on a side street near Shinjuku-dori. I inserted a hundred-yen coin and punched in the number, glancing over my shoulder while the connection went through.

    I heard someone pick up on the other end. “John Rain,” a voice said in English. I didn’t respond at first, and the voice repeated my name.

    “I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

    There was a pause. “My name is Lincoln.”

    “That’s cute.”

    “The chief wants to meet with you.”

    I understood then that the caller was with the Agency, that the chief was Holtzer. I waited to see if Lincoln was going to add something, but he didn’t. “You must be joking,” I said.

    “I’m not. There’s been a mistake and he wants to explain. You can name the time and the place.”

    “I don’t think so.”

    “You need to hear what he has to say. Things aren’t what you think they