Read Online John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories by Barry Eisler - Free Book Online Page B

I liked that he took an interest, and that his questions were tinged with sympathy rather than judgment. He himself had fought with the Imperial Army in the Philippines, and though he claimed not to have distinguished himself, I sensed he was being modest. All soldiers are liars: either they exaggerate, or they downplay. I’d asked him what the hell he was doing carrying a bag at his age. He’d laughed and told me that as a younger man he’d foolishly made an enemy, and that this enemy, as chance would have it, had risen to prominence among the people with whom Miyamoto worked. The menial job was supposed to be an ongoing humiliation, but Miyamoto professed not to care. He loved Tokyo, he said, loved watching it change, the seasons along with the skyline. And the walking was good for him. Life was strange, and if it was his karma to be a courier for someone else’s cash, why should he complain?
    I considered. The call might have been routine—a cancellation, change of venue, some logistical thing like that. Or maybe he just felt like exchanging pleasantries over coffee again with his fellow bagman. But given everything else going on, I couldn’t help feeling suspicious.
    I made my way to another payphone and dialed. “ Hai, Miyamoto desu ,” the voice on the other end said. Yes, this is Miyamoto.
    “It’s Rain,” I said in Japanese.
    “Ah. Thank you for getting back to me so quickly.”
    “What’s going on?”
    There was a pause. “I would prefer if we could speak in person. Perhaps…coffee?”
    A few days earlier, I would have met him without another thought. But now, I wasn’t sure. Playing for time, I said, “Where? When?”
    “Wherever you would like. Now, if that’s convenient.”
    That he was willing to leave the location to me was mildly reassuring. Still, what did I really know about this guy? He might be yakuza himself, and maybe he was contacting me for this “meeting” on behalf of Fukumoto & Sons, Inc.
    But I realized also that I had no good way to avoid him. Not if I wanted to keep my job. Once a week or so, he and I had to meet to exchange our bags. Which meant that, if Miyamoto were part of a setup, they could ambush me pretty much anytime I went to see him.
    Which was itself mildly reassuring. Why go to the trouble of calling a meeting now, when there would be one in due course soon enough? Why take a chance on alerting me with something out of the ordinary?
    Besides, he might have useful information. Maybe I was rationalizing, but on balance I thought the risks were worth it.
    “I can meet now,” I said, trying to think of the safest place possible just in case. “Where are you?”
    “Shinjuku.”
    “I can probably be there in twenty minutes. Let me call you again and I’ll tell you where.”
    “All right. That’s fine. Thank you.”
    He sounded uncertain. Maybe he was bewildered by why I wouldn’t name the place until later. That was also mildly reassuring—if he’d been too smooth about my reticence, I would have assumed he had reason to expect I might be nervous. As it was, so far he just seemed oblivious.
    Still, I wasn’t going to take any chances.
    I rode Thanatos to Shinbashi, a business district in the southeast of the city. I called Miyamoto again from a payphone just outside the JR station. “Sorry,” I told him. “I don’t think I can make it to Shinjuku. How soon can you meet me in Shinbashi?”
    “Shinbashi? Well, I could be there in a half hour.”
    “You know that row of banks—Taiyō and the Bank of Tokyo and Fuji? On Sotobori-dōri, with the view of the Kasumigaseki Building?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll meet you in the lobby of the Taiyō Bank in thirty minutes.”
    He hung up without objecting to my unusual suggestion of a meeting place. Maybe he thought I had something to take care of at the bank and was killing two birds with one stone. I didn’t really think he was trying to set me up, and being so cautious felt a bit unreal to me. In the jungle, it