Hard Rain

me
    the anonymous recipient of at least two such legal encomia one on a
    bridge traversing the polluted waters of the Sumida River, in which a
    certain politician drowned in 1982 ("Warning Do Not Climb On These
    Bars'); another, a decade later, following the aquatic electrocution of
    an unusually diligent banker, on the packaging of hair dryers ("Warning
    Do Not Use While Bathing').
    The health club was also convenient because I wouldn't have to worry
    about fingerprints. In Japan, where costumes are a national pastime, a
    weightlifter wouldn't pump iron without wearing stylish padded gloves
    any more than a politician would take a bribe in his underwear. It was
    a warm early spring for Tokyo, portending, they said, a fine cherry
    blossom season, and where else but at a gym could a man in gloves have
    gone unnoticed?
    In my business, going unnoticed is half the game. People put out
    signals body language, gait, clothes, facial expression, posture,
    attitude, speech, mannerisms that can tell you where they're from, what
    they do, who they are. Most import andy do they fit in. Because if
    you don't fit in, the target will spot you, and after that you won't be
    able to get close enough to do it right. Or the rare uncorrupt cop
    will spot you, and you'll have some explaining to do. Or a
    countersurveillance team will spot you, and then -congratulations! the
    target will be you.
    But if you're attentive, you begin to understand that the identifying
    signals are a science, not an art. You watch, you imitate, you
    acquire. Eventually, you can shadow different targets through
    different societal ecosystems, remaining anonymous in all of them.
    Anonymity wasn't easy for me in Japan when my parentage was a matter of
    public record and schoolyard taunts. But today, you wouldn't spot the
    Caucasian in my face unless someone tipped you off that it was there to
    be found. My American mother wouldn't have minded that. She had
    always wanted me to fit in in Japan, and was glad that my father's
    Japanese features had prevailed in that initial genetic struggle for
    dominance. And the plastic surgery I had undergone when I returned to
    Japan after my fling with U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam largely
    completed the job that chance and nature had begun.
    The story my signals would tell the jakuza was simple.
    He'd only begun seeing me at his gym recently, but I was already
    obviously in shape. So I wasn't some middle-aged guy who'd decided to
    take up weighdifting to try and regain a lost college-era physique. The
    more likely explanation would be that I worked for a company that had
    transferred me to Tokyo, and, if they had sprung for digs near
    Rop-pongi, maybe in Minami-Aoyama or Azabu, I must be someone
    reasonably important and well compensated. That I was apparently into
    body building at all at this stage in my life probably meant affairs
    with young women, for whom a youthful physique might ameliorate the
    unavoidable emotional consequences of sleeping with an older man in
    what at root would be little more than an exchange of sex and the
    illusion of immortality for Ferragamo handbags and the other implicit
    currencies of such arrangements. All of which the jakuza would
    understand, and even respect.
    In fact, my recent appearance at the jakuzas gym had nothing to do with
    a company transfer it was more like a business trip. After all, I was
    in Tokyo just to do a job. When the job was finished, I would leave.
    I'd done some things to generate animosity when I'd been living here,
    and the relevant parties might still be looking for me, even after I'd
    been away for a year, so a short stay was all I could sensibly
    afford.
    Tatsu had given me a dossier on the jakuza a month earlier, when he'd
    found me and persuaded me to take the job. From the contents, I would
    have concluded that the target was just mob muscle, but I knew he must
    be more than that if Tatsu wanted him eliminated. I hadn't asked. I
    only wanted the particulars that would help me get close. The rest was
    irrelevant.
    The dossier had included the jakuza's cell phone number. I had fed it
    to Harry, who, compulsive hacker that he was,
    had long since penetrated the cellular network control centers of
    Japan's three telco providers. Harry's computers were monitoring the
    movements of the jakuza's cell phone within the network. Any time the
    phone got picked up by the tower that covered the area around the
    jakuza's health club, Harry paged me.
    Tonight, the page