Rain Fall (39 page)
I
HAD ONE
more stop to make. Manhattan, 178 Seventh Avenue South. The Village Vanguard.
I had checked the Vanguard’s Web site, and knew that the Midori Kawamura trio was appearing at the club from the first Tuesday in November through the following Sunday. I called and made a reservation for the 1:00
A
.
M
. set on Friday night. I didn’t need to use a credit card, although I knew they’d give away my seat if I didn’t show up at least fifteen minutes before the set, so I was easily able to use an alias: Watanabe, a common Japanese name.
I headed up Interstate 95, crossing from Maryland to Delaware and then to New Jersey. From the turnpike I could have picked up I-80 and gone on to Dryden, two hundred miles and someone else’s lifetime away.
Instead I left the turnpike for the Holland Tunnel, where I entered the city and drove the quarter mile to the Soho Grand Hotel on West Broadway. Mr. Watanabe had reserved a suite for Friday night. He arrived before six o’clock to ensure that the hotel didn’t give away his reservation, and paid cash for the suite,
counting out fourteen hundred dollar bills for the night. The staff, to their credit, evinced no surprise, probably guessing that the wealthy man with a passion for anonymity would be meeting his mistress.
The early arrival gave me time to shower, sleep for three hours, and enjoy an excellent room service dinner of Paillard of Veal and an ’82 Mouton from the hotel’s Canal House Restaurant. With another hour to kill before I left for the Vanguard, I repaired to the visually spectacular Grand Bar, where the ambience of the high ceilings, warm lighting, and wonderfully symmetrical black glass tables made up for an unimaginative selection of single malts and the annoying house music. Still, there’s no quarreling with a twenty-five-year-old Macallan.
I walked the mile or so from the hotel to the Vanguard. It was cold, and I was glad for the charcoal gabardine trousers, black cashmere mock turtleneck, and navy blazer I was wearing. The charcoal trilby I was wearing low across my forehead also provided some warmth, while obscuring my features.
I picked up my ticket at 12:35, then continued walking until almost 1:00 sharp. I didn’t want to take a chance on Midori or anyone else in her trio walking past me at the back of the wedge-shaped room before the set began.
I passed under the trademark red awning and neon sign and through the mahogany doors, taking a seat at one of the small round white tables in back. Midori was already at the piano, wearing black like the first time I saw her. It felt good to watch her for the moment, unobserved, separated by a sadness that I knew
she must have shared. She looked beautiful, and it hurt.
The lights dimmed, the murmur of conversation died away, and Midori brought the piano to life with a vengeance, her fingers ripping into the keys. I watched intently, trying to lock in the memory of the way she moved her hands and swayed her body, the expressions of her face. I knew I’d be listening to her music forever, but this would be the last time I would watch her play.
I had always heard a frustration in her music, and loved the way it would at times be replaced by a deep, accepting sadness. But there was no acceptance in her music tonight. It was raw and angry, sometimes mournful, but never resigned. I watched and listened, feeling the notes and the minutes slipping away from me, trying to find some solace in the thought that perhaps what had passed between us was now part of her music.
I thought about Tatsu. I knew he had done right in telling Midori I was dead. As he said, she would have figured out the truth eventually, or it would have found its own way of forcing itself into her consciousness.
He was right, too, about my loss not being a long-term issue for her. She was young and had a brilliant career opening up right in front of her. When you’ve known someone only briefly, even if intensely, death comes as a shock, but not a particularly long or deep one. After all, there was no time for the person in question to become woven tightly into the fabric of your life. It’s surprising, even a little disillusioning, how
quickly you get over it, how quickly the memory of what you might have shared with someone comes to seem distant, improbable, like something that might have happened to someone you know but not to you yourself.
The set lasted an hour. When it was done, I stood up and eased out the back, exiting through the wooden doors and pausing for a moment under a moonless sky. I closed my eyes and inhaled the smells of Manhattan’s night air, at once strange and yet, connected to that long-ago life, still disturbingly familiar.
“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice came from behind me.
I turned, thinking
Midori.
But it was only the coat-check girl. “You left this behind,” she said, holding out the trilby. I had placed it on the seat next to me after the lights had gone down and had then forgotten it.
I took the hat wordlessly and walked off into the night.
Midori. There were moments with her when I would forget everything I had done, everything I had become. But those moments would never have lasted. I am the product of the things I have done, and I know I will always wake up to this conclusion, no matter how beguiling the reverie that precedes the awakening.
What I needed to do was not deny what I was, but to find a way to channel it. Maybe, for the first time, into something worthwhile. Maybe something with Tatsu. I’d have to think about that.
Midori. I still listen to her music. I hang on hard to the notes, trying to keep them from vanishing into the
air, but they are elusive and ungraspable and each one dies in the dark around me like a tracer in a treeline.
Sometimes I catch myself saying her name. I like its texture on my lips, something tenuous but still tangible to give substance to my memories. I say it slowly, several times in succession, like a chant or a prayer.
Does she ever think of you?
I sometimes wonder.
Probably not,
is the inevitable reply.
It doesn’t matter. It feels good to know she’s out there. I’ll keep listening to her from the shadows. Like it was before. Like it’s always going to be.
T
O MY AGENT
, Nat Sobel, and his wife, Judith, for believing in me all the way back to the first iteration. At times Nat knew John Rain better than I did (this could be a little unsettling), and Rain would never have emerged as the complex character he is without Nat’s insight and guidance.
To Walter LaFeber of Cornell University, for being a great teacher and friend, and for writing
The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Diplomatic Relations,
the definitive study of its subject, which provided some of the historical foundations for the birth of John Rain.
To my instructors, formal and informal, and
randori
partners at the Kodokan in Tokyo, the beating heart of world judo, for imparting to me some of the skills that make their home in John Rain’s deadly toolbox.
To Benjamin Fulford,
Forbes
Tokyo Bureau Chief, for his courageous and unrelenting reporting of the corruption that plagues Japan—corruption that acts as an underpinning for this story and that should be more widely heeded by the people it most directly affects.
To Koichiro Fukasawa, a diplomat with the soul of an artist and the most bicultural person I have ever known, for sharing his insights about all things
Japanese, and for introducing me to so many of the marvels of Tokyo.
To Dave Lowry, for his sublime
Autumn Lightning: The Education of an American Samurai,
which influenced my own understanding of
shibumi
and the warrior arts, and which provided, therefore, part of the education of John Rain.
To the omnidirectional Carl, veteran of the secret wars, for teaching me to hit first, soon, early, and often, whose very presence got me thinking in the right direction.
Most of all to my wife, Laura, for putting up with my writing and other obsessions and for doing so many other things to support and encourage the creation of this book. Through countless discussions on walks, long drives, and sometimes late at night over a single malt, Laura helped me as no one else ever could to find the story, the characters, the words, the will.
W
ITH TWO EXCEPTIONS
, I have depicted the Tokyo in this book as accurately as I could. Tokyoites familiar with Shibuya will know that there is no Higashimura fruit store midway up Dogenzaka. The real fruit store is at the bottom of the street, closer to the station. And seekers after Bar Satoh in Omotesando, although they will come across a number of fine whiskey bars in the area, will find Satoh-san’s establishment only in Miyakojima-ku, Osaka. It is the best whiskey bar in Japan and worth the trip.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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