John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories Read Free Page A

least, nothing I’d have to own up to. I mean, what were they going to do, kill me?

chapter
two
    I contacted McGraw, who told me to meet him that night at a bar called Kamiya in Asakusa, one of the oldest districts in the city. I was curious about the choice of venue. Asakusa was in eastern Tokyo, and, apart from the Sensō-ji Temple complex and some related tourist attractions, presented a somewhat out-of-the-way district for foreigners and anyone else who favored the more cosmopolitan airs of the city’s west.
    After the evening’s training at the Kodokan, I rode east on my motorcycle, a 1972 Suzuki GT380J in Roman Red and Egret White I couldn’t afford but had gone ahead and bought anyway. I loved that bike, loved everything about it—the way it cornered, the growl of the engine, even the temperamental gear shifts. I called it Thanatos. Heavy-handed in retrospect, but it felt appropriate after what I’d done during the war.
    It was near dark as I rode past Asakusa Station, the western sky holding some last lines of pink, the wind a welcome counterpoint to the heat still radiating from the pavement. I looked around, not sure exactly where the place was, and immediately saw a dense-looking concrete building, at the top of which KAMIYA BAR was emblazoned in impossible-to-miss red neon.
    I parked the bike, crossed the street, and headed into a bright, spacious room with a half-dozen large communal tables and seating for maybe seventy-five people. Most of the vinyl-covered wooden chairs were taken, and the clientele seemed exclusively composed of blue-collar edokko , the salt-of-the-earth sons and daughters of old Tokyo, mostly middle-aged and older. The moist air seemed composed of equal parts oxygen, cigarette smoke, and the smell of draft beer, and the walls and low ceiling reverberated with laughter and boisterous conversation.
    It took me a minute to spot McGraw. He was sitting with his back to the wall at a smaller table in a kind of alcove to my left, the one location in the otherwise open room that offered a modicum of privacy. He was the only non-Japanese in the place—a tall, meaty Scots-Irish, mid-forties, auburn hair going to gray. Not exactly inconspicuous in Tokyo, especially back then, when there were fewer foreigners, and I assumed he chose the out-of-the-way local place to lower the chances of anyone who mattered observing us together. He was already looking at me when I saw him, and waved me over.
    I took the chair across from him. Even then, I wasn’t comfortable sitting with my back to anything but a wall, but he hadn’t left me a choice.
    “Been here long?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “Don’t like to keep people waiting.”
    McGraw struck me as someone who would keep the pope waiting without particularly giving a shit, and I wondered about his response. I noticed wet ring marks on the wooden tabletop—too many and too thick to have been made by the nearly empty single glass set before him now. Had he been here long enough to drink several beers? I sensed he had. And was immediately pleased that I had noticed the revealing detail. It was exactly the kind of thing I knew I needed to improve at—and maybe I was already doing so. But why arrive so early? Getting the tactical seat, I decided. And ambush prevention generally. If someone is setting up for you, you preempt him. The same principle for the city as for the jungle.
    Unless, of course, you’re the one doing the setup. That would require an early arrival, too. But I was confident McGraw’s tactics were primarily defensive, not offensive. I hadn’t yet developed the paranoia, or call it wisdom, of experience.
    “Beer?” he said.
    “Sure.”
    He signaled the waitress for two, then looked at me. “What happened to your face? Looks worse than usual.”
    I’d learned to ignore McGraw’s gibes—or at least to try to—by reminding myself it didn’t matter if he liked me as long I got paid. The substantive part of his question was about