Rain Fall (20 page)

“It’s true. The thing I kept coming back to was how hard you kicked that man at my apartment—I saw blood shoot from his nose. If I hadn’t seen that, I think I would have left while you were gone.”

“Makes me glad I caught him in the head.”

She laughed softly and pressed the towel against my face again. “Tell me what happened.”

“You don’t have anything to eat here, do you?” I asked. “I’m starving.”

She reached for a bag next to the couch and opened it for me. “I brought back some
bento.
Just in case.”

“Give me a few minutes,” I said, and started wolfing down rice balls, eggs, and vegetables. I washed it all down with a can of mixed fruit juice. It tasted great.

When I was finished, I shifted on the couch so I
could see her better. “There were two of them at my apartment,” I said. “I knew one—an LDP flunky I know only as Benny. Turns out he’s connected to the CIA. Would that mean anything to you? Any connection to your father?”

She shook her head. “No. My father never said anything about a Benny or about the CIA.”

“Okay. The other guy was a
kendoka
—he had a cane that he used like a sword. I don’t know what the connection is. I managed to get both their cell phones. Maybe it’ll give me a clue about who he is.”

I took the ice from her with one hand and leaned across the couch to reach my coat, feeling angry bites of pain in my back as I did so. I pulled the coat over, reached into the inside breast pocket, and pulled out the phones. Both standard DoCoMo issue, small and sleek. “Benny told me the Agency is after the disk. I don’t know why they’re coming after me, though. Maybe they think . . . maybe they think I’m going to tell you something, put something together for you? That I can make use of what you’ve got? Figure out what it is? Prevent them from getting what they want?”

I flipped open the
kendoka
’s phone and pressed the recall button. A number lit up on the screen. “This is a start. We can do a reverse telephone number search. There might be some numbers preprogrammed, also. I’ve got a friend, someone I trust, who can help us with this.”

I stood up, wincing at the pain in my back. “We’re going to need to change hotels. Can’t behave any differently than the other satisfied patrons.”

She smiled. “I suppose that’s true.”

We changed to a nearby place called the Morocco, which seemed to be organized around some sort of Arabian Nights theme—Oriental rugs, hookahs, belly bracelets, and other harem gear for the woman to wear if she were so inclined. It was the picture of Bedouin luxury, but there was only one bed, and sleeping on the couch was going to be like a night on the rack.

“Why don’t you take the bed tonight?” she said, as though reading my mind. “With your back like that, you can’t very well sleep on this couch.”

“No, that’s okay,” I told her, feeling strangely embarrassed. “The couch is fine.”

“I’ll take the couch,” she said, with a smile that lingered.

I wound up accepting her offer, but my sleep was restless. I dreamed I was moving though dense jungle near Tchepone in southern Laos, hunted by an NVA counter-recon battalion. I had become separated from my team and was disoriented. I would sideslip and double back, but couldn’t shake the NVA. They had me surrounded, and I knew I was going to be captured and tortured. Then Midori was there, trying to get me to take a side arm. “I don’t want to be captured,” she was saying. “Please, help me. Take the gun. Don’t worry about me. Save my Yards.”

I snapped upright, my body coiled like a spring.
Easy, John. Just a dream.
I tightened my abdomen and forced a long hiss of air out through my nostrils, feeling like Crazy Jake was right there in the room with me.

My face was wet and I thought it was bleeding
again, but when I put my hand to my cheek and looked at my fingers I realized that it was tears.
What the hell is this?
I thought.

The moon was low in the sky, its light flowing in through the window. Midori was sitting up on the couch, her knees drawn to her chest. “Bad dream?” she asked.

I flicked my thumb across the sides of my face. “How long have you been up?”

She shrugged. “Awhile. You were tossing and turning.”

“I say anything?”

“No. Are you afraid of what you might say in your sleep?”

I looked at her, one side of her face illuminated by moonlight, the other hidden in shadow. “Yes,” I said.

“What was the dream?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, lying. “Mostly just images.”

I could feel her looking at me. “You tell me to trust you,” she said, “but you won’t even tell me about a bad dream.”

I started to answer, then all at once felt irritated with her. I slid off the bed and walked over to the bathroom.

I don’t need her questions,
I thought.
I don’t need to take care of her. Fucking CIA, Holtzer, knows I’m in Tokyo, knows where I live. I’ve got enough problems.

She was the key, I knew. Her father must have told her something. Or she had what whoever had broken into his apartment on the day of his funeral had been looking for. Why couldn’t she just realize what the hell it was?

I walked back into the bedroom and stood facing
her. “Midori, you’ve got to try harder. You’ve got to remember. Your father must have told you something, or given you something.”

I saw surprise on her face. “I told you, he didn’t.”

“Someone broke into his apartment after he died.”

“I know. I got a call from the police when it happened.”

“The point is, they couldn’t find what they were looking for, and they think you have it.”

“Look, if you want to take a look around my father’s apartment, I can let you in. I haven’t cleaned it out yet, and I still have the key.”

The people who had broken in had come up empty, and my old friend Tatsu, as thorough a man as I have ever known, had been there afterward with the resources of the Keisatsucho. I knew another look would be a dead end, and her suggestion only served to increase my frustration.

“That’s not going to help. What would these people think that you have? The disk? Something it’s hidden in? A key? Are you sure you don’t have anything?”

I saw her redden slightly. “I told you, I don’t.”

“Well, try to remember something, can’t you?”

“No, I can’t,” she said, her voice angry. “How can I remember something if I don’t have it?”

“How can you be sure you don’t have it if you can’t remember it?”

“Why are you saying this? Why don’t you believe me?”

“Because nothing else makes sense! And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t like the feeling of people trying to kill me when I don’t even know why!”

She swung her feet to the floor and stood up. “Oh,
it’s only you! Do you think I like it? I didn’t do anything! And I don’t know why these people are doing this, either!”

I exhaled slowly, trying to rein in my anger. “It’s because they think you have the damn disk. Or you know where it is.”

“Well, I don’t!
Oai nikusama! Mattaku kokoroattari ga nai wa yo! Mo nan do mo so itteru ja nai yo!
” I don’t know anything! I’ve already told you that!

We stood staring at each other at the foot of the bed, breathing hard. Then she said, “You don’t give a shit about me. You’re just after what they want, whatever it is.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true!
Mo ii! Dose anata ga doko no dare na no ka sae oshiete kurenain da kara!
” I’ve had enough! You won’t even tell me who you are! She stalked over to the door and picked up a bag, started shoving her things into it.

“Midori, listen to me.” I walked over and grabbed the bag. “Listen to me, goddamnit! I do care about you! Can’t you see that?”

She tugged at the bag. “Why should I believe what you say when you don’t believe me? I don’t know anything! I don’t know!”

I yanked the bag out of her hands. “All right, I believe you.”

“Like hell you do. Give me my case. Give it to me!” She tried to grab it and I moved it behind my back.

She looked at me, her eyes briefly incredulous, then started hitting me in the chest. I dropped the bag and wrapped my arms around her to stop the blows.

Later, I couldn’t remember exactly how it happened. She was fighting me and I was trying to hold her arms. I became very aware of the feel of her body and then we were kissing, and it seemed as though she was still trying to hit me but it was more that we were tearing at each other’s clothes.

We made love on the floor at the foot of the bed. The sex was passionate, headlong. At times it was like we were still fighting. My back was throbbing, but the pain was almost sweet.

Afterwards I reached up and pulled the bedcovers over us. We sat with our backs against the edge of the bed.

“Yokatta,”
she said, drawing out the last syllable. “That was good. Better than you deserved.”

I felt a little dazed. It had been a long time for me, a connection like that. It was almost unnerving.

“But you don’t trust me,” she went on. “That hurts.”

“It’s not trust, Midori. It’s . . . ,” I said, then stopped. “I believe you. I’m sorry for pushing so hard.”

“I’m talking about your dream.”

I pressed my fingertips to my eyes. “Midori, I can’t, I don’t . . .” I didn’t know what the hell to say. “I don’t talk about these things. If you weren’t there, you couldn’t understand.”

She reached over and gently pried my fingertips from my eyes, then held them without self-consciousness at her waist. Her skin and her breasts were beautiful in the diffused moonlight, the shadows pooled in the hollows above her clavicles. “You need to talk, I can feel that,” she said. “I want you to tell me.”

I looked down at the tangled sheets and blankets,
the shadows carving stark hills and valleys like some alien landscape in the moonlight. “My mother . . . she was Catholic. When I was a kid, she used to take me to church. My father hated it. I used to go to confession. I used to tell the priest about all my lascivious thoughts, all the fights I’d been in, the kids I hated and how I wanted to hurt them. At first it was like pulling teeth, but it got addictive.

“But that was all before the war. In the war, I did things . . . that are beyond confession.”

“But if you keep them bottled up like this, they’ll eat you like poison. They are eating you.”

I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to let it out.

What’s with you?
I thought.
Do you want to drive her away?

Yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe that would be best. I couldn’t tell her about her father, but I could tell her something worse.

When I spoke, my voice was dry and steady. “Atrocities, Midori. I’m talking about atrocities.”

Always a good conversation starter. But she stayed with me. “I don’t know what you did,” she said, “but I know it was a long time ago. In another world.”

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t make you understand, not if you weren’t over there.” I pressed my fingertips to my eyes again, the reflex useless against the images playing in my mind.

“A part of me loved it, thrived on it. Operating in the NVA’s backyard, not everybody could do that. Some guys, when they’d hear the insert helicopters going off into the distance and the jungle go quiet, they’d panic, they couldn’t breathe. Not me. I had over twenty
missions in Indian country. People would say I had used up all my luck, but I just kept going, and the missions kept getting crazier.

“I was one of the youngest One-Zeros—SOG team leaders—ever. My teammates and I were tight. We could be twelve guys against an NVA division, and I knew that not one of my people would run. And they knew I wouldn’t, either. Do you know what that’s like, for a kid who’s been ostracized his whole life because he’s a half-breed?”

I talked faster. “I don’t care who you are. If you wade that deeply into the blood and muck, you won’t stay clean. Some people are more susceptible than others, but eventually everyone goes over the edge. Two of your people are blown in half by a Bouncing Betty mine, their legs torn from their bodies. You’re holding what’s left of them in the last moments of their lives, telling them, ‘Hey, it’s going to be okay, you’re going to be okay,’ they’re crying and you’re crying and then they’re dead. You walk away, you’re covered with their insides.

“You lay your own booby traps for the enemy—that was one of our specialties, tit for tat—but there are only twelve of you and you can’t win that kind of war of attrition no matter how much more you bleed them than they bleed you. You take more losses, and the frustration—the rage, the strangling, muscle-bunching rage—just builds and builds. And then one day, you’re moving through a village with the power of life and death slung over your shoulder, sweeping back and forth, back and forth, muzzle forward. You’re in a declared free-fire zone, meaning anyone who isn’t a
confirmed friendly is assumed to be Vietcong and treated accordingly. And intel tells you this village is a hotbed of V.C. activity, they’re feeding half the sector, they’re a conduit for arms that are flowing south down the Trail. The people are giving you sullen looks, and some mama-san says, ‘Hey, Joe, you fuck mommie, you number ten,’ some shit like that. I mean, you’ve got the intel. And two hours earlier you lost another buddy to a booby trap. Believe me, someone is going to pay.”