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Authors: Barry Eisler
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I wanted it. But I nodded and slipped it into an inside pocket of my blazer.
I signaled the bartender that it was time for another Lagavulin. “Did you answer this?” I asked.
“I did. I wrote back, and told her that I had heard exactly what she had, that I didn’t have any other information.”
“Did you hear from her after that?”
“Just a thank-you. She asked me to let her know if I heard anything, and told me she would do the same.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah.”
I wondered if she had bought the story. If she hadn’t thanked Harry for his response, I would have known she hadn’t bought it, because she was classy and it wouldn’t have been like her not to respond. But the thank-you might have been automatic, sent even in the presence of continued suspicions. It could even have been duplicitous, intended to lull Harry into thinking she was satisfied when in fact the opposite was true.
That’s bullshit,
some part of me spoke up.
She’s not like that.
Then a bitter smile:
Not like you, you mean.
There was nothing duplicitous about Midori, and knowing it opened up a little ache. The environment I’ve inhabited for so long has conditioned me to assume the worst. At least I still occasionally remember to resist the urge.
It didn’t matter. There were too many oddities surrounding the disk’s disposition and my disappearance, and she was too smart to miss them. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about it over the last year or so, and I knew the way she would see it.
After what had happened between us, the doubts would have started small. But there would have been nothing to check their growth.
After all,
she would think,
the contents of the disk were never published.
That was Tatsu’s doing, not mine, but she would have no way of knowing that. All she would know was that her father’s last wishes were never carried out, that his death was ultimately futile. She would wonder again how I had known where to find that disk in Shibuya, go over my previous explanations, find them wanting. That would have led her to start thinking about the timing of my appearance, so soon after her father’s death.
And she knew I was part of something subterranean, though not exactly what. The CIA? One of the Japanese political factions? Regardless, an organization with the resources to fake a death and backstop it reasonably effectively.
Yeah, with all these loose threads, and without me there to reassure her that what happened between us had been real, I knew that, eventually, she would conclude she had been used. That’s how I would see it, in her shoes.
Maybe the sex was just opportunistic for him,
she would think.
Sure, why not, might as well have a little fun while I’m using her to get the disk. And then I’ll just disappear afterward, after I’ve tricked her into cooperating.
She wouldn’t want to believe all this, but she wouldn’t be able to shake the feeling. And she wouldn’t want to believe I might actually have been involved in some way in her father’s death, but she wouldn’t be able to let that suspicion go, either.
“Did I handle it right?” Harry asked.
I shrugged. “You couldn’t have handled it any better than you did. But she’s still not buying it.”
“You think she’ll let it go?”
That was the question I was always left with. I hadn’t managed to answer it. “I don’t know,” I told him.
And there was something else I didn’t know, something I wouldn’t share with Harry. I didn’t know if I
wanted
her to let it go.
What had I just told him?
You can’t live with one foot in daylight and the other in shadows.
I needed to take my own damn advice.
CHAPTER 4
I saw Harry off around one. The subways were already closed and he caught a cab. He told me he was going home to wait for Yukiko.
I tried to picture a beautiful young hostess, pulling down the yen equivalent of a thousand dollars a night in tips in one of Tokyo’s exclusive establishments, with her pick of
I signaled the bartender that it was time for another Lagavulin. “Did you answer this?” I asked.
“I did. I wrote back, and told her that I had heard exactly what she had, that I didn’t have any other information.”
“Did you hear from her after that?”
“Just a thank-you. She asked me to let her know if I heard anything, and told me she would do the same.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah.”
I wondered if she had bought the story. If she hadn’t thanked Harry for his response, I would have known she hadn’t bought it, because she was classy and it wouldn’t have been like her not to respond. But the thank-you might have been automatic, sent even in the presence of continued suspicions. It could even have been duplicitous, intended to lull Harry into thinking she was satisfied when in fact the opposite was true.
That’s bullshit,
some part of me spoke up.
She’s not like that.
Then a bitter smile:
Not like you, you mean.
There was nothing duplicitous about Midori, and knowing it opened up a little ache. The environment I’ve inhabited for so long has conditioned me to assume the worst. At least I still occasionally remember to resist the urge.
It didn’t matter. There were too many oddities surrounding the disk’s disposition and my disappearance, and she was too smart to miss them. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about it over the last year or so, and I knew the way she would see it.
After what had happened between us, the doubts would have started small. But there would have been nothing to check their growth.
After all,
she would think,
the contents of the disk were never published.
That was Tatsu’s doing, not mine, but she would have no way of knowing that. All she would know was that her father’s last wishes were never carried out, that his death was ultimately futile. She would wonder again how I had known where to find that disk in Shibuya, go over my previous explanations, find them wanting. That would have led her to start thinking about the timing of my appearance, so soon after her father’s death.
And she knew I was part of something subterranean, though not exactly what. The CIA? One of the Japanese political factions? Regardless, an organization with the resources to fake a death and backstop it reasonably effectively.
Yeah, with all these loose threads, and without me there to reassure her that what happened between us had been real, I knew that, eventually, she would conclude she had been used. That’s how I would see it, in her shoes.
Maybe the sex was just opportunistic for him,
she would think.
Sure, why not, might as well have a little fun while I’m using her to get the disk. And then I’ll just disappear afterward, after I’ve tricked her into cooperating.
She wouldn’t want to believe all this, but she wouldn’t be able to shake the feeling. And she wouldn’t want to believe I might actually have been involved in some way in her father’s death, but she wouldn’t be able to let that suspicion go, either.
“Did I handle it right?” Harry asked.
I shrugged. “You couldn’t have handled it any better than you did. But she’s still not buying it.”
“You think she’ll let it go?”
That was the question I was always left with. I hadn’t managed to answer it. “I don’t know,” I told him.
And there was something else I didn’t know, something I wouldn’t share with Harry. I didn’t know if I
wanted
her to let it go.
What had I just told him?
You can’t live with one foot in daylight and the other in shadows.
I needed to take my own damn advice.
CHAPTER 4
I saw Harry off around one. The subways were already closed and he caught a cab. He told me he was going home to wait for Yukiko.
I tried to picture a beautiful young hostess, pulling down the yen equivalent of a thousand dollars a night in tips in one of Tokyo’s exclusive establishments, with her pick of
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