I humbly pray for your health and well-being. Thank you for your solicitude.

Yours,

Kawamura Midori

I read it again, slowly, then a third time. Then I folded it back up and extended it to Harry.

“No, no,” he said, his hands raised, palms forward. “You keep it.”

I didn’t want him to see that I wanted it. But I nodded and slipped it into an inside pocket of the blazer I was wearing.

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, although she never knew exactly what. The CIA? One of the Japanese political factions? Regardless, an organization that had 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 that 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 that 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.

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 wealthy businessmen and politicians for paramours, hurrying home to Harry’s apartment after work. I just couldn’t see it.

Don’t be so cynical, I thought.

But my gut wasn’t buying it, and I’ve learned to trust my gut.

It’s still early. Just take a look. It’s practically on the way to the hotel.

If Harry had changed his mind about going home and had gone to Damask Rose instead, though, he’d know I was checking up on him. He might not be surprised, but he wouldn’t like it, either.

But the chances that Harry would stop by there on his own dime, when Yukiko was due to come to his place in just a few hours anyway, were slim. The risk was worth taking.

And Nogizaka was only a few kilometers away. What the hell.

I tried directory assistance from a public phone, but there was no listing for a Damask Rose. Well, Harry had said they didn’t advertise.

Still, I could just go and have a look.

I walked the short distance to Nogizaka, then strolled up and down Gaienhigashi-dori until I found the club. It took a while, but I finally spotted it. There was no sign, only a small red rose on a black awning.

The entrance was flanked by two black men, each of sufficient bulk to have been at home in the sumo pit. Their suits were well tailored and, given the size of the men wearing them, must have been custom-made. Nigerians, I assumed, whose size, managerial acumen, and relative facility with the language had made them a rare foreign success story, in this case as both middle management and muscle for many of the area’s entertainment establishments. The mizu shobai, or “water trade” of entertainment and pleasure, is one of the few areas in which Japan can legitimately claim a degree of internationalization.

They bowed and opened the club’s double glass doors for me, each issuing a baritone irasshaimase as they did so. Welcome. One of them murmured something into a microphone set discreetly into his lapel.

I walked down a short flight of stairs. A ruddy-faced, prosperous-looking Japanese man whom I put at about forty greeted me in a small foyer. Interchangeable J-Pop techno music was playing from the room beyond.

“Nanmeisama desho ka?” Mr. Ruddy asked. How many?

“Just one,” I said in English, holding up a finger.

“Kashikomarimashita.” Of course. He motioned that I should follow him.

The room was rectangular, flanked by dance stages on either end. The stages were simple, distinguished only by mirrored walls behind them and identical brass fire poles at their centers. One stage was occupied by a tall, long-haired blonde wearing high heels and a green G-string and nothing more. She was dancing somewhat desultorily, I thought, but seemed to have the attention of the majority of the club’s clientele regardless. Russian, I guessed. Large-boned and large-breasted. A delicacy in Japan.

Harry hadn’t mentioned floor shows. Probably he was embarrassed. My sense that something was amiss deepened.

On the other stage I saw a girl who looked like a mix of Japanese and something Mediterranean or Latin. A good mix. She had that silky, almost shimmering black hair that so many modern Japanese women like to ruin with chapatsu dye, worn short and swept over from the side. The shape of the eyes was also Japanese, and she was on the petite side. But her skin, a smooth gold like melted caramel, seemed like something else, maybe African or mulatto. Her breasts and hips, too, appealingly full and slightly incongruous on her Japanese-sized frame, seemed to suggest some foreign origin. She was using the pole skillfully, grabbing it high, posing with her body held rigid and parallel to the floor, then spiraling down in time to the music. There was real vitality in her moves and she didn’t seem to mind that most of the patrons were focused on the blonde.