The Detachment

before they could go with him. I envied his touch. I’ve never been good with children. I think because they sense things adults have learned to suppress.
    Yuki made a right into the parking lot and circled counterclockwise over to a satellite parking area. It was far from the mall and mostly empty, the few vehicles belonging to employees, I guessed, not to mall patrons who would have had to trek across the baking pavement to reach the stores. One of the vehicles was a large U-Haul truck—twelve feet, I estimated, maybe fourteen. It struck me as a little odd that it would be parked in a shopping mall, and so far from the building itself, and I wondered if this might be what Kanezaki meant when he said the vehicle was “taken care of.”
    It was indeed. As we pulled closer, the driver-side door opened and Kanezaki stepped out. He looked like pretty much any other D.C. area drone on his way home from the office—suit jacket gone, tie loosened, skin a little oily from repeated trips between air-conditioned buildings and the blast furnace outside. He still had the wireframe spectacles, but he was a little thinner than I remembered, a new maturity in his eyes and his features. Still the same guy I’d first run into in Tokyo so many years earlier, yes, but no longer a fresh-faced, idealistic kid. He’d been grappling with the real world since then, and its weight had left marks.
    Yuki pulled in alongside the truck. I got out and shook Kanezaki’s hand. “Keys are in it,” he said, characteristically dispensing with small talk. “You should go.”
    “You have anything new for me?”
    He waved to Yuki. “The truck’s not enough?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “No. No new intel. But when I do, I’ll upload it to the secure site.”
    “What do we do with the truck? When does it need to be back?”
    “I got it for a month. Hopefully by then the pressure will be off and we’ll figure something out. The rental agreement is in the glove compartment.”
    The side door slid open and Rina and Rika both exclaimed, “Uncle Tomo!”
    Kanezaki waved to them.
    I said, “Uncle Tomo?”
    He shrugged. “You know, for Tomohisa. Uncle Tom sounds odd, anyway.”
    Dox squeezed out and shook Kanezaki’s hand. “Good to see you, man,” he said. “Seems like you’re always helping us out of a jam.”
    “And always in exchange for something,” I said.
    Larison and Treven got out. Rina called out, “Uncle Tomo, what are you doing here?”
    “Your mom’s picking me up, hon! It’s a long story. I’ll tell you on the way.”
    He turned to the four of us. “I don’t know where you’re going, and it’s better if I don’t. Just make it far away. They’re going to be looking for you in the capital, and they can look hard there.”
    Larison eyeballed the truck. “I like your choice of ride.”
    Kanezaki nodded. “Nobody’s going to notice a moving truck. This one’s got Wyoming plates and no one looks twice even here in Maryland. Plus, two or even three of you can stay concealed in back while one drives. They’re looking for four, so best if you’re not seen together. Speaking of which. You should go.”
    “My lord,” Dox said. “It’s going to be a goddamn sauna back there. Anybody mind if I drive?”
    No one said anything. Dox got in the truck. Treven and Larison went around to the back.
    “I didn’t have time to pick up water or anything else,” Kanezaki said. “It’s got a full tank of gas and I bought a bunch of boxes and rolls of bubble wrap so you’ll at least have something to sit on in back, but that’s about it. When it’s dark and you’re well clear of the city, you can stop and pick up whatever you need. I’ll be in touch as soon as I learn more.”
    “There was a problem at the hotel,” I said.
    He looked at me, his expression strained. “What do you mean?”
    “Four guys. They must have been Horton’s. Somehow they followed us, or anticipated us. They came up short. I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it.”
    He didn’t say anything. He just looked over at the van. At his nieces.
    “Sounds like your sister’s pretty smart,” I said. “She told me she borrowed the plates on the van from some random car in a suburban neighborhood. There must be tens of thousands of vans like hers in the D.C. area. She’s safe. No one can track her.”
    He wiped the sweat off his forehead and ran his fingers back through his hair. “Jesus. I didn’t…Jesus.”
    He went to the van and slid