Killing Rain (40 page)

I paused and felt a flush of anger. I looked at him and said, “That’s why you told me.”

He shrugged. “Certainly some of my motives were selfish. Some weren’t. You know as well as I do that you need a connection, you need something to pull you off the nihilistic path you’ve been treading. It seems that fate has taken a hand.”

“Right. To get out of the killing business, all I need to do is kill a few more people.”

“It does seem paradoxical when you put it that way. But yes, I believe you have accurately described the heart of the matter.”

I shook my head, trying to understand. “I can’t see them unless I take out Yamaoto first.”

“Yes.”

“And Yamaoto is smart. He understands this dynamic. Which means he’s probably tightened his security as a result.”

“He most certainly has.”

I looked at him. “For Christ’s sake, why don’t you just arrest this fucking guy? What do they pay you for?”

“Yamaoto is a prominent politician, with many protectors, as you know. If I tried to arrest him, I would simply lose my job. He is inaccessible by ordinary means.”

“I don’t even know if she would see me. Why hasn’t she contacted me?”

“Does she have your address?”

“No. But she could have contacted you.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps she is ambivalent. Who wouldn’t be? True, she didn’t contact you. On the other hand, she had your baby. She is the mother of your son.”

“Oh, my God,” I said again. I felt dizzy.

“It’s a strange thing, having a child,” he said. “It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything—anything—to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It’s quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of the worth of your own life is changed by it.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for all that,” I said. I felt like I was outside my body, that someone else was talking.

“Of course you’re not. No one ever is. Because there’s a responsibility that comes with the privilege.” He licked his lips. “When my little son died, there was nothing I could do to save him. All the things I would have done, would have been overjoyed to do, were meaningless. You can’t imagine the impact of knowing that the most precious thing over which you have full control—your own life—is useless as barter or bribe to save the life of your child.”

He took a swallow from his beer mug. “You see? For your whole life, you’ve believed the sun revolved around the earth. You are about to discover otherwise. With everything that implies.”

I didn’t know what to say. My head was spinning but I ordered us another round.

We drank in silence for a while after that. At one point Tatsu asked if I wanted to be alone. I told him no, I wanted him there, wanted his company. I just needed to think.

Three rounds later, I said to him, “I can’t figure this out. Not in one night. But there’s one thing I am going to do. And I need your help to do it.”

I
T TOOK TATSU
a few days to manage it, but eventually he was able to discover where I could find Manny’s Filipina wife. I had a feeling that, after what had almost happened to him in Manila, Manny might have sent her to stay with her family outside the city, and it turned out I had been right.

While I waited for the information, I stayed at my suite at the Four Seasons. It was a beautiful hotel and a good base from which to revisit the many areas in the city I had missed during my recent exile. I avoided those areas I had once frequented often enough to be recognized if I were to return, not wanting to do anything that might put me on Yamaoto’s radar screen. But there were plenty of places I had patronized anonymously before, and which I could therefore safely visit again: bars like Teize and Bo Sono Ni in Nishi Azabu; shrines like Tomioka
Hachimangu, where the wisteria would be blooming soon; bright boulevards like Chuo-dori in Ginza and dim alleyways and backstreets too obscure to name.

Tatsu had been right, I realized, about the earth and the sun. Everything I saw measured correctly against the template in my memory, and yet the contours were subtly and indescribably different. The thought that I had become a father was overwhelming. I’d never even seen my child outside of a few surveillance photos, never even suspected his existence until just a few days before, and yet suddenly I felt connected to a possible future in a way I had never imagined. And it wasn’t just that I had a son; my parents, a posthumous grandchild. It was the connection the child gave me with Midori, something I intuitively sensed could never be denied, not even after what I had done to her father. I didn’t know if a life to come could trump a death dealt previously, but I wondered at the possibility. It filled me with frightful hope.

I responded to Delilah’s post, telling her that I needed a vacation like I’ve never needed one before. I had some things to take care of over the next few days, but after that I could meet her anywhere. She asked me if I’d ever been to Barcelona. I told her I hadn’t, but that I’d always wanted to go. We agreed to be in touch over the next few days, while her situation sorted itself out and while I tied off a few loose ends of my own.

Every day I checked various news sites, chief among them the
Washington Post.
I was hoping to see Hilger’s name in the papers. Publicity, as Kanezaki knew, would put Hilger out of business, might even make his protectors turn on him. But so far there was nothing, and I had a feeling there never would be. Hilger was too smart.

The shooting at the China Club and on the Star Ferry got a lot of press in the
South China Morning Post
and other local English language papers. Witnesses had provided descriptions of
various people involved, but so far the only “arrest” had been of a Caucasian man—Gil—who had died of gunshot wounds before he could be questioned. Manny’s body had been identified. His bodyguard had been revived with nothing worse than a horse tranquilizer hangover and a huge lump on the back of his head, and the man had identified his late client for the police. And a body had been fished out of the turbid waters of Victoria Harbor. Police were checking dental records and DNA, but weren’t yet able to say who the dead man was.

I was in an Internet café in Minami Azabu, one of my favorite parts of the city, early in the evening, when Tatsu’s message came. It was brief: an address in Batangas, about a two-hour drive south of Manila. Characteristically, he asked no questions about why I might want this information, but a brief note, at the bottom of his post, indicated that he might already know:

It was very good to see you the other night. I think we should try to meet more often. Neither of us is getting younger.

Let me know how you would like to proceed in the matter we discussed. Obviously you would have the benefit of all my resources to assist you.

Good luck with what you have to do first.

The benefit of all my resources.
Well, that was saying a lot. It wasn’t just his position with the Keisatsucho, the Japanese FBI. That would be the least of it. Tatsu had his own loyal cadre of men, along with other assets that would make a grizzled spy-master sit up and beg. I’d have to think about it. But first things first.

I made the appropriate travel arrangements on the Internet, moved money from one offshore account into another, then stopped at a Citibank to make a large cash withdrawal—the full
amount I had been paid for Manny. I took the entire amount in ten-thousand-yen notes, which amounted to four bricks, each five hundred notes high, and put it all in the attaché.

I walked out and did a bit of shopping in the area: traditional Japanese sweets like
daifuku
and
sakura-mochi
and
kashiwa-mochi;
a kimono and
geta
slippers; several packages of high-end calligraphy paper. Each store wrapped the items exquisitely—after all, they were obviously gifts—and placed them in a elegant bag.

My shopping completed, I stopped in a Kinko’s, where I cut down the contents of one of the calligraphy paper packages so it would accommodate the bricks of cash. I resealed the package and placed it back in the appropriate bag.

I checked out of the hotel early the next morning and caught a flight to Manila. I arrived at nine-thirty and had no trouble passing through customs along with the dozens of other visiting businessmen from Tokyo, all of us bearing traditional gifts from exotic Japan. I took a cab to the Mandarin Oriental in Makati. I explained to them that, although I wasn’t a guest, I had business in town and would like to rent a car and driver for half the day. I would of course pay cash. They told me that would be fine, and I was immediately provided with a Mercedes E230 and driver. I gave him the address and we set off.

The weather was hot and sticky, as it usually is in the region, and the sky was full of the kind of pollution that almost begs to be washed away in some violent thunderstorm to come. While we drove, I replaced the innocuous contents of the attaché with the four bricks of cash.

The urban knot of Metro Manila unraveled as we drove, and soon we were moving past rice paddies and coconut groves. I had seen the same countryside just a few days earlier, but today it felt different. Unwelcoming, maybe. Maybe unforgiving.

I looked out the window at the fields and farm animals and
wondered whether the woman would have learned of Manny’s demise. It had been only a few days, and I supposed it wasn’t impossible that somehow the news wouldn’t yet have reached her.

The roads we drove on became narrower, with more frequent and deeper potholes. Twice the driver had to stop and ask for directions. But eventually we pulled up in front of a low-slung, ramshackle dwelling at the end of a dirt road with paddies all around. A few gaunt cows swished their tails near the house, and chickens and small dogs ran freely. There were a dozen people sitting out front in plastic chairs. An extended family, I sensed, but more than could be living in this small dwelling. Something had happened, some tragedy, you might have guessed, and the visitors were here to offer support, to help the survivors make it through.

I saw Manny’s wife, seated across from two other young women who might have been her sisters. The boy sat listlessly on the lap of an older woman, perhaps his grandmother. I knew the scene well, and for a moment my resolve faltered. And then, ironically, the same icy blinders that had moved in to allow me to finish Manny started to close again, and enabled me to move forward this time, as well.

I got out of the car. Conversation, I noticed, had come to a halt. The assembled people eyed me curiously. I took the attaché and walked confidently over to Manny’s wife. I bowed my head before speaking.

“I am an attorney, representing the estate of Manheim Lavi,” I said to her. In the suit, carrying the attaché, I felt I looked the part. And if the average lawyer carries himself stiffly at moments like this one, then that part of the act was spot-on, too, because I was having a hard time even looking at her.

She came to her feet. She was petite and very pretty, and, like many Filipinas, looked younger than she probably was.

“Yes?” she asked, in lightly accented English.

“Mr. Lavi left clear instructions with my firm, to be carried out in the event of his death. That certain funds were to be transferred to you, for the benefit of . . . your son.”

I knew Manny might already have provided for them. Although, with a primary family back in Johannesburg, he might not have. I didn’t care. That wasn’t the point.

The little boy ran over from his grandmother. He must have gotten spooked seeing his mother talking to a stranger. His arms were outstretched and he was saying, “Mama, Mama.”

The woman picked him up with some effort and he clutched her tightly. He had regressed, I noted, from the trauma of the news he must have just received.
That’s normal,
I told myself.
That’s normal.

She shook her head. “Funds?”

I cleared my throat. “Yes. From Mr. Lavi’s estate. Here.”

I went to hand her the attaché, but she couldn’t take it with the boy in her arms.

I felt oddly light-headed. Maybe it was the heat, the humidity.

“This is yours,” I said, setting the case down in front of her. I cleared my throat again. “I hope . . . my firm hopes it will be helpful. And I am very sorry for your loss.”

The boy started to cry weakly. The woman stroked his back. I swallowed, bowed my head again, and turned to walk back to the car.

Christ, I almost felt sick. Yeah, it must have been the heat. I got in the car. As we drove away I looked back. They were all watching me.

We drove past the paddies, the indifferent farm animals. I sat slumped in the seat. In my head, the boy cried out,
Mama, Mama,
again and again, and I thought I might never stop hearing his voice.

We drove. The potholes in the road felt like craters.

“Stop,” I said to the driver. “Stop the car.”

He pulled over to the side of the dirt road. I opened the door and stumbled out, barely making it in time. I clutched the side of the door and leaned forward and everything inside me came up, everything. Tears were streaming down my face and snot was running out of my nose and I felt like my stomach itself might tear loose from its moorings and make its way onto the potholed road I stood on.