Chapter
six
I checked in with the answering service I used. There were two messages. One from McGraw: I should meet him that night at a place called Taihō Chinese Cuisine in Minami Azabu. Okay, that was good. I didn’t have to worry about the pros and cons of what he might make of my not calling him about what had happened at the Kodokan. I could hear what he said, and play the rest by ear.
The other message was from a good friend, maybe my only friend, who I’d been avoiding since getting mixed up with McGraw. His name was Tatsuhiko Ishikura—Tatsu—and we’d known each other in Vietnam, where the Keisatsucho, Japan’s National Police Force, had seconded him to learn counterterror strategies. We’d gotten close there, being the only two Japanese speakers for thousands of miles, and had seen each other a few times since I’d arrived back in Tokyo. He was a good man—smarter than the people he worked for; stout as a bulldog and twice as tenacious; and funny as hell when he’d had too much sake and was venting about his “superiors.” I missed him. With my mother gone, my father no more than the increasingly remote memory of a child, and no siblings or other close relatives, I felt worse than orphaned. I felt marooned, unmoored, capable of anything because no one knew me anymore, no one was watching. I needed a connection to someone, or something—even at twenty I understood that. But Tatsu was a cop, and working for McGraw and hanging out with a cop just didn’t strike me as a particularly tenable set of simultaneous relationships. I felt sad about it, but there wasn’t much to be done. If I didn’t call back, maybe he’d stop trying. And that would probably be for the best.
I spent the day reading in a variety of parks and coffee shops, feeling like a homeless man. I was used to having time on my hands, but this was different. It was knowing I shouldn’t go to the usual places. My apartment was out, obviously, and so was training at the Kodokan. Even the Tokyo Metropolitan Library, where I’d whiled away many an afternoon with a book, felt suddenly dangerous and uncertain. All I could do was drift from place to place on Thanatos, my bag slung across my back, feeling disconnected, in between, a rōnin—a masterless samurai, literally “a floater on the waves”—with nothing to look forward to but a single scheduled meeting, and nothing to do but wait.
I arrived in Minami Azabu on Thanatos at seven, and found a small storefront with a plain, unpretentious sign advertising TAIHō CHUUKA RYōRI, a few pink, vinyl-covered stools and a wraparound counter just visible below the noren curtains hung across the frontage. I ducked under the curtains, and was struck by the tangy smell of fried rice and pork and spices. A man in a black tee shirt and jeans and white apron, who I understood immediately by his demeanor was the maastaa, or master, stood behind the counter, studiously attending to the stove before him, the sounds of frying meat loud even amid the conversation of the small restaurant’s dozen or so patrons. A woman alongside him who I sensed was his wife looked up and greeted me with a smiling “Irasshaimase.”
I returned her greeting with a nod and glanced to my right—the one blind spot from where I was standing—and was unsurprised to see McGraw. Once again, he was the only white face in evidence; once again, he had a beer in front of him that I sensed wasn’t his first. He was watching me as though wondering how long it would be before I finally noticed him.
I stepped over to his table and sat. He glanced at the bag I was carrying, but didn’t comment, instead saying only, “You hungry?”
I hadn’t been, but the delicious smell of the cooking had already changed that. “I could eat.”
He called out to the woman behind the counter in passable Japanese that we would have two orders of gyoza, two of fried rice, and two Asahi beers. He seemed entirely at home. I wondered how he found these places, and whether he favored them more operationally or more for the food. Maybe both.
A pretty girl appeared from the back carrying a tray laden with beer. She looked like the woman behind the counter—the daughter, then, a family operation. She placed two bottles and a glass for me on the table, collected McGraw’s empty, and went on to service other customers. McGraw picked up the fresh bottle and tended to his own glass. In Japan, failing to at least offer to fill your companion’s glass is markedly rude. Maybe he didn’t know, but I doubted that. Nor did he offer to toast, instead immediately taking a long swallow. Whatever. I followed suit, resisting the urge to say anything, reminding myself of my theory that McGraw used silence to draw people out.
He glanced down at my glass, from which I had taken only a small sip. “You might want to finish that,” he said, his voice loud enough for me to hear but not loud enough to carry over the hubbub of conversation around us. “And maybe another, before I brief you.”
Was that supposed to rattle me? It did, but I wasn’t going to show it. “Up to you,” I said.
“All right. Don’t say I didn’t offer.” He took another swallow. “I have bad news. And worse news.”
“Aren’t you supposed to ask me which I want first?” I was proud of my apparent sangfroid. In fact, I was getting increasingly worried.
“You think this is funny?”
“I don’t know. You haven’t told me what it is yet.”
He looked at me for a long moment, so much disgust in his expression I sensed he was actually relishing what he was about to tell me. “That kid you tuned up in Ueno,” he said. “You killed him.”
“Is that the bad news, or the worse news?”
“That’s the bad news. The worse news is, he was the nephew of Hideki Fukumoto. Name ring a bell?”
“Should it?”
“If you know anything about the yakuza, it should. Fukumoto is the head of the Gokumatsu-gumi. The biggest yakuza syndicate in Tokyo, and therefore the biggest in Japan. You get it now? You f*cked up. You killed a yakuza prince. A punk, sure, but a prince. And the two who got away? One was a nobody, relatively speaking. He’s in the hospital, where they’re not sure if he’ll recover his vision. What did you do, stick your thumbs in his eyes?”
“Something like that.”
“Something like that. Jesus. Well, the other was the dead nephew’s cousin. You know what that makes him?”
“Fukumoto’s son, I’m guessing.”
“Well, listen to Albert Einstein here. I guess you’re not as dumb as you act. And the best part is, the two cousins were close. Close as brothers. You want to know Fukumoto Junior’s nickname?”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
“Mad Dog. So you, genius, just killed the cousin of a yakuza named Mad Dog. Proud of yourself?”
I didn’t say anything. I was suddenly scared, and I felt like McGraw could see right through my bravado.
The waitress returned with our food. But I had no appetite. I picked up a gyoza with my chopsticks, dipped it in sauce, and chewed it, barely noticing the taste. “What does this mean?”
“Mean? It means you need to get your candy ass out of Japan. And not come back, ever.”
I shook my head. “I can’t just…”
I stopped. I didn’t even know what I was trying to say. What was it I couldn’t do? Go back to the States, which felt like an alien planet when I’d briefly returned after the war? Admit I wasn’t reliable even to carry a bribery bag for a bunch of corrupt politicians and businessmen? Accept that I’d lost my temper, and f*cked up, and blown everything?
McGraw must have seen my distress. Uncharacteristically, his face softened. “I’m sorry, son. You’re no good to me now. You’re too hot. Word is, they already have a contract out on you.”
“Yeah, I got that feeling. They already made a run at me at the Kodokan.”
“What?”
I wasn’t sure why he was so surprised. What did he think a yakuza contract entailed? I told him what had happened.
“Well, it’s good you didn’t kill the guy,” he said, when I was done. “Bad enough you have the yakuza on your ass, you don’t need the police, too. Now look, I’ll make sure you get a ticket home. But that’s all I can do.”
I don’t have a home, I thought. No, not thought. Realized. What the hell was I going to do?
He inhaled several gyoza, then tucked into the fried rice. I forced down a few more bites, thinking hard, looking for a way out.
After a few minutes, I said, “What if I don’t want to go?”
He took an enormous swallow of beer and belched. “You stick around, the Agency will put out a burn notice on you. They don’t want the attention, you understand? Or worse, they’ll drop a dime. Not to the police. To Fukumoto, or to Mad Dog, or to whoever. A lot of people would be happy to have guys like that in their debt.”
“Why don’t you?”
He looked at me, his skin puffy, gin blossoms under his eyes and across his nose. But somehow, for an instant, I could see the formidable young man he must have once been.
“Because I’m not gutless. Because I believe in karma. Because if you get your shit together and learn to control your temper, you have your whole life ahead of you, and I don’t want to be the one who cuts it short.”
We sat in silence again, eating, McGraw with gusto, I with considerably less enthusiasm. My mind was racing, rebelling. Things had been okay. After some of the places I’d been, okay was worth a lot. And now this. It was a mistake. It didn’t have to happen. I didn’t want to go.
Something came to me. A long shot, but I didn’t see a lot of options. “Who’s my problem here?” I asked.
McGraw looked at me suspiciously. He chewed and swallowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, who’s motivated to come after me?”
“I told you, Fukumoto and his son.”
“Because I killed Fukumoto’s nephew. The son’s cousin.”
“Is that so hard to understand?”
“But you said the nephew was a punk. A prince, but a punk. What did you mean by that?”
McGraw waved a hand dismissively. “The kid had a reputation. Trouble with the police. Multiple f*ck-ups. High profile, low profits. He and Mad Dog were peas in a pod, and equally close.”
“So this…problem I have. It’s being driven just by, what, family honor?”
“‘Just’ family honor? Do you know anything at all about the yakuza? You think a guy named Mad Dog is going to turn the other cheek when someone kills the cousin who was like a brother to him? And Fukumoto Senior can’t let this go. He’d look weak. He’d lose face. His enemies would move in. If he wants to prevent all that—and I promise you, he does—he needs to kill you, simple as that.”
“Right, he has enemies. People who don’t give a shit about the nephew. People who would celebrate if something were to happen to Fukumoto himself.”
McGraw stared at me for a moment. Then he chuckled. The chuckle migrated to a laugh. The laugh became a guffaw. The guffaw went on and on. He looked at me, wiping tears from his eyes. A few times he tried to speak, but was unable. I watched him. I was tempted to make him stop laughing. More than tempted. And I could have. I could have made it so he never laughed again. But I needed him. Maybe I was learning to control my temper. If so, he had no idea how lucky he was.
Finally, his fit subsided. “Oh come on, son. I know you SOG guys are tough. But what are you going to do, take on the entire Japanese mafia?”
“From what you’ve told me, I don’t have a problem with the entire Japanese mafia. Just with Fukumoto. And his Mad Dog son.”
McGraw was watching me. He wasn’t laughing anymore. “You’re serious.”
I said nothing.
“No,” he said. “I can’t authorize this. It’s—”
“Who said anything about authorization? We’re just…this is all just hypothetical.”
He snorted. “Hypothetically, where would you get your intel? Their locations, movements, that kind of thing.”
“Who could say? Maybe I could hear a rumor. An anonymous tip.”
“Yeah? What would be in it for the informant?”
I looked at him. “That would depend on what the informant wanted.”
He rubbed his chin. I thought he looked intrigued. Certainly he seemed to be considering something.
He went back to the fried rice. After a few moments, he said, “You need intel on two people. What if the informant gave you intel on three?”
I didn’t even pause. “Then I’d take care of all three.”
He nodded. “That might make it worthwhile.”
“It would also have to make us even. The informant and me, I mean. Hypothetically.”
It amazes me now, that something like that once struck me as tough negotiating.
“I’m sure it would,” he said.
I didn’t even pause. “All right. Who’s the third?”
He looked at me for a long moment. “You sure you’re up for this, son? Have you really thought it through?”
“Have you?”
“I just did. But you’d be the one taking all the risk. You really want that?”
“Who’s the third?”
He shrugged. After a pause, he said, “Hypothetically? The third would be Kakuei Ozawa.”
The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Kakuei Ozawa…”
“The LDP sōmukaicho.”
“The Liberal Democratic Party LDP?” This was the political party that had been running Japan since the war. And presumably, the primary beneficiary of the American largesse I delivered regularly in a briefcase to Miyamoto.
“The same.”
“And…the sōmukaicho, you mean the chairman of the Executive Council.”
“I do, yes.”
“You’re talking about the second most powerful politician in Japan.”
“Third, actually, or even fourth. The secretary-general and the chairman of the Policy Affairs Research Council have more clout, at least on paper. But the sōmukaicho has the most influence over the day-to-day dispensation of patronage. More even than the prime minister himself.”
“And you want me to waste this guy.”
McGraw winced at my directness. “You want my help with your problem? Help me with mine.”
“All I need from you is intel. You’re asking me to pull the trigger. On an extremely high-profile target.”
“I didn’t know you SOG guys were so squeamish.”
“If that’s what you call my preference for not spending the rest of my life in a Japanese prison, then fine, I’m squeamish.”
“You only go to prison if you’re caught.”
I didn’t much care for how smoothly it glided out of his mouth. “What’s that, the official CIA slogan?”
“No, our official slogan is, ‘And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ John 8:32.”
“Odd choice of slogan for people who lie for a living.”
“Sometimes, son, we’re defined by our paradoxes.”
“And sometimes by our bullshit.”
He laughed. “Sometimes they’re one and the same.”
“Anyway. I’m not doing it.”
He shrugged. “Up to you, hotshot. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head.”
I nodded, wondering whether that was true, strictly speaking.
He polished off the last of the fried rice and slid back his chair. “Well, good luck with everything. I’m sure it’ll all work out.”
“Wait a minute. What about…the intel. On Fukumoto. And his son.”
“I thought you didn’t want that.”
“That’s…you know I want it. I told you I did.”
“And I told you what it would cost. You said you didn’t want to pay. That’s fine. Just capitalism at work.”
“It’s not capitalism. You’re trying to gouge me.”
“Call it what you want. Either way, it’s what the market will bear. Or not.”
I didn’t answer. I was looking for a way out, and didn’t see one.
He looked at me, as though wondering where he found the patience. Then he pulled his chair in again and leaned forward. “Let me explain something to you, son. We’re not partners. We’re not friends. We’re not brothers-in-arms. This is a business relationship. You provide some benefit, and you represent a cost. Well, now your own damned stupidity has increased the cost you represent, by turning you into a shit magnet for the yakuza. You want me to keep you on the payroll anyway? Fine. Tell me what’s in it for me. How are you going to increase the benefit you provide to offset the increased cost? Tell me. I’m listening.”
I said nothing.
“All right then, I think I understand. You want me to keep you around, at increased risk to my own operation, and you want me to provide you with classified intelligence files to help you commit what the Japanese judicial system would surely call murder, and you expect me to do that…what, out of the goodness of my heart?”
Again I said nothing. Inside, I was smoldering. Half at the situation, half at the brutally direct way he’d just characterized it. He had me, had me so tight he didn’t even have to pretend otherwise. I hated it. I hated that I had no choice.
“All right,” I said. “You win.”
He chuckled. “Don’t think of it that way, son. This is business, remember? We’re both coming out ahead.”
I blew out a long breath, trying to shake off the humiliation. “What did Ozawa do?”
McGraw frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you want him dead?”
“Listen, son, don’t forget your pay grade. You don’t need to know why. All you need to know is who. That’s all.”
Maybe I sensed this new thing he wanted gave me leverage I hadn’t had earlier. Maybe I just couldn’t tamp down the anger anymore regardless. I said, “Like hell I do. You want to keep me in the dark about a bunch of cash in a briefcase? Fine, I don’t give a shit. You ask me to grease the f*cking Executive Council chairman of the LDP? I want to know what I’m getting into.”
He smiled slightly, as though impressed by my gumption. “All right. Suppose the U.S. government supported elements of the Japanese government. In exchange for the continuation of policies the U.S. government finds desirable. Maintenance of the mutual security and cooperation treaty. Keeping the Seventh Fleet at Yokosuka. The Marines on Okinawa. Purchase of aircraft from U.S. defense contractors. That kind of thing.”
“The U.S. government bribes Japanese politicians?”
“Capitalism at work, son, how many times do I have to tell you? Each side has something the other needs.”
“You mean, one has policies to sell and the other has cash to pay.”
“Like I said, you’re not as dumb as you act. Keep this up and you might start to understand the way the world really works.”
I wondered for a moment if McGraw’s insults might really be intended as terms of endearment. I thought it would be helpful if I could look at it that way. Otherwise, at some point I might lose my temper, as he liked to put it.
“So what’s the problem with Ozawa? He’s asking too much?”
“He’s giving out too little. He seems to have developed the idea that the program is a private annuity. It isn’t. And the people he’s freezing out are beginning to squawk. As in, ‘If we don’t get dealt in properly, we go to the press.’ They’ll nuke the financial gatekeepers and the whole program along with it. We need someone who’ll spread the wealth more equitably. Someone with a diplomat’s touch, not a selfish entitled prick like Ozawa. Got the picture now?”
“I think so. How do I get to him?”
“I’ll get you his particulars. He’s no hard target. Should be a piece of cake for a SOG hard case like you. How it happens is your call. Within certain parameters.”
“Which are?”
There was a pause, then, “Make it look natural.”
“How am I going to do that?”
“What, now you’re asking me to micromanage you? You’ll figure something out. What we don’t want is for the LDP Executive Council chairman to eat a bullet, not unless the coroner would prove it came from his own gun and by his own hand. He’s not the prime minister, not even close, but a straight-up assassination of a prominent political figure would bring down way more heat than anyone is willing to accept. Do this well, and you’ll be in a position to call in a lot of favors. But don’t f*ck it up. You’ll find yourself in a very uncomfortable position if you do.”
“Give me the information on the two yakuza first.”
He laughed. “Do you know something called the ‘call-girl principle,’ son?”
“Not exactly.”
“It means the value of services rendered plummets immediately after the rendering. Right now, you need me, so you like my price, or at least you’re willing to pay it. Once I give you the two yakuza, all you’ll want to know is what I’ve done for you lately.”
“If I do Ozawa first, how do I know you’ll follow through with the information I need?”
“If I don’t, will you kill me?”
I looked at him, and a strange chill settled inside me. “I think I’d have to, yeah.”
He laughed. “I told you. You’re not as dumb as you act.”