“Yes.”

“These questions. You already know the answers.”

“Of course.”

“Then why are you asking me?”

He shrugged. “I believe this man we are dealing with is a sociopath. That he is capable of killing under any set of circumstances. I am trying to understand how such a creature operates.”

“Through me?”

He nodded his head once in acknowledgment.

“I thought you just said I’m not the right model.” My tone was more forceful than I had intended.

“You are as close to such a creature as I have known. Which makes you ideally suited to hunt him.”

“What do you mean, ‘hunt him’?”

“He is careful in his movements. Not an easy man to track. I have leads, but they would need to be followed.”

I took another sip of tea, considering. “I don’t know, Tatsu.”

“Yes?”

“The first guy, with the business fronts, okay, he was strategic. I understand. But this guy, the dog fighter, he’s just muscle. Why aren’t you going after Yamaoto and the other kingpins?”

“The ‘kingpins,’ as you put it, are difficult to get to. Too many bodyguards, too much security, too much visibility. Yamaoto in particular has hardened his defenses, I believe out of fear that you may be hunting him, and is now as inaccessible as the Prime Minister. And even if they could be gotten to, there are many like them in the various factions, waiting to take their places. They are like shark’s teeth. Knock one out, and there are ten rows waiting to fill in the gap. After all, to be a kingpin is not so hard. What does it take? Some political acumen. A capacity for rationalization. And greed. Not a particularly rare profile.”

He took a sip of his tea. “Besides, this man is no ordinary foot soldier. He is ruthless, he is capable, he is feared. An unusual individual, whose loss would not be a trivial blow to his masters.”

“All right,” I said. “What are you offering me? Given that I’m under no obligation.”

“I have no money to offer you. Even if I did, I doubt that I could match what Yamaoto and the Agency were paying you previously.”

He might have been trying to get a rise out of me with that. I ignored it.

“I’m sorry to be so blunt, old friend, but you’re asking me to take a hell of a risk. Just spending time in Tokyo entails risks for me, you know that.”

He looked at me. When he spoke, his tone was measured, confident. “It would not be like you to assume that your risk from Yamaoto and the CIA is confined only to Tokyo,” he said.

I wasn’t sure where he was going with that. “It’s where the risk is most pronounced,” I said.

“I’ve told you, Yamaoto has felt compelled to live a much more heavily defended existence since the last time you saw him. He has curtailed his political appearances, he no longer trains at the Kodokan, he travels only surrounded by bodyguards. My understanding is that he does not enjoy these new restrictions. My understanding, in fact, is that he resents them. Most of all, he resents the cause of them.”

“You don’t have to tell me Yamaoto has a motive,” I said. “I know what he’d like to do to me. And it’s not just business, either. He’s the kind of man who would feel humiliated, enraged by how I helped steal that disk from him. He’s not going to forget that.”

“Yes? And none of this keeps you awake at night?”

“If I let that kind of shit keep me awake at night, I’d have bags under my eyes the size of Sado Island. Besides, he can have all the motive he wants. I’m not going to give him the opportunity.”

He nodded. “I’m certain that you wouldn’t. At least not deliberately. But, as I have mentioned, I am not the only one with access to Juki Net.”

I looked at him, wondering whether there was a threat hidden in there. Tatsu is always subtle.

“What are you saying, Tatsu?”

“Only that if I could find you, Yamaoto will be able to, also. And he is not alone in his efforts. The CIA, as you know, is also eager to make your reacquaintance.”

He took a sip of his tea. “Putting myself in your shoes, I see two possible courses. One is that you stay in Japan, but not in Tokyo, and try to return to your old ways. This is perhaps the easier course, but the less safe one.”

He sipped again. “Two is that you leave the country and start over somewhere. This is the harder course, but would perhaps afford you greater security. The problem, in either case, is that you will have left things unfinished with certain parties who wish you ill, parties with global reach and long memories, and that you will have no allies against them.”

“I don’t need allies,” I said, but the rejoinder sounded weak even to me.

“If you plan to leave Japan, we can part as friends,” he said. “But if I cannot count on your help today, it will be difficult for me to help you tomorrow, when you may need that help.”

That was about as direct as Tatsu ever got. I thought about it, wondering what to do. Drop everything and disappear to Brazil, even though my preparations weren’t complete? Maybe. But I hated the thought of leaving a loose end, something someone could grab on to and use to track me. Because, despite his obvious self-interest in emphasizing the dangers of Yamaoto and the CIA, Tatsu’s assessment was not so far off from my own.

The other possibility would be to do this last job and keep him off my back, keep him off balance while I finished my preparations. What he was offering me in return wasn’t trivial, either. Tatsu has access to people and places that even Harry can’t hack. No matter what I did next, he would be a damn useful contact.

I thought it through for another minute. Then I said, “Something tells me you’re carrying an envelope.”

He nodded.

“Give it to me,” I said.

I TOOK THE envelope to my apartment and perused it there. I sat at my desk and spread out the papers. I highlighted passages. I scribbled thoughts in the margins. Parts I read in order. Other times I skipped around. I tried to get the pattern, the gist.

The subject’s name was Murakami Ryu. The dossier was impressive on background, on much of which Tatsu had already briefed me, but light on the sorts of current detail that I need to get close to a subject. Where did he live? Where did he work? What were his habits, his haunts, his routines? With whom did he associate? All blanks, or too vague to be immediately useful.

He wasn’t a ghost, but he was no civilian, either. Civilians have addresses, places of employment, tax records, registered cars, medical files. The lack of such details surrounding Murakami was itself a form of information. Which provided a frame, but I still didn’t have a picture.

That’s okay. Start with the frame.

No information meant a careful man. Serious. A realist. A man who didn’t take chances, who was careful in his movements, who could be expected to make few mistakes.

I shuffled papers. Even his known organized crime associates were from multiple families. He didn’t exclusively patronize any of the known yakuza gumi. He was a freelancer, a straddler, connected to many worlds but a part of none.

Like me.

He liked hostess bars, it seemed. He had been spotted in several, typically high-end, where he would spend the yen equivalent of twenty thousand dollars in a night.

Not like me.

High rollers get remembered. In my business, careful means not being remembered. Evidence of impulsiveness? Lack of discipline? Maybe. Still, there was no pattern to the behavior, only its existence. No trail for me to follow.

But there was something there, something in those periodic splurges. I tagged that thought for reexamination, then closed my eyes and tried to let the bigger picture cohere.

The fighting. That was a common theme. But Tatsu’s information on where the underground bouts occurred, when, and under whose auspices, was sketchy.