Killing Rain

weren’t yet able to say who the dead man was.
    I was in an Internet café in Minami Azabu, one of my favorite parts of the city, early in the evening, when Tatsu’s message came. It was brief: an address in Batangas, about a two-hour drive south of Manila. Characteristically, he asked no questions about why I might want this information, but a brief note, at the bottom of his post, indicated that he might already know:
It was very good to see you the other night. I think we should try to meet more often. Neither of us is getting younger.
    Let me know how you would like to proceed in the matter we discussed. Obviously you would have the benefit of all my resources to assist you.
    Good luck with what you have to do first.
    The benefit of all my resources. Well, that was saying a lot. It wasn’t just his position with the Keisatsucho, the Japanese FBI. That would be the least of it. Tatsu had his own loyal cadre of men, along with other assets that would make a grizzled spy-master sit up and beg. I’d have to think about it. But first things first.
    I made the appropriate travel arrangements on the Internet, moved money from one offshore account into another, then stopped at a Citibank to make a large cash withdrawal—the fullamount I had been paid for Manny. I took the entire amount in ten-thousand-yen notes, which amounted to four bricks, each five hundred notes high, and put it all in the attaché.
    I walked out and did a bit of shopping in the area: traditional Japanese sweets like daifuku and sakura-mochi and kashiwa-mochi; a kimono and geta slippers; several packages of high-end calligraphy paper. Each store wrapped the items exquisitely—after all, they were obviously gifts—and placed them in a elegant bag.
    My shopping completed, I stopped in a Kinko’s, where I cut down the contents of one of the calligraphy paper packages so it would accommodate the bricks of cash. I resealed the package and placed it back in the appropriate bag.
    I checked out of the hotel early the next morning and caught a flight to Manila. I arrived at nine-thirty and had no trouble passing through customs along with the dozens of other visiting businessmen from Tokyo, all of us bearing traditional gifts from exotic Japan. I took a cab to the Mandarin Oriental in Makati. I explained to them that, although I wasn’t a guest, I had business in town and would like to rent a car and driver for half the day. I would of course pay cash. They told me that would be fine, and I was immediately provided with a Mercedes E230 and driver. I gave him the address and we set off.
    The weather was hot and sticky, as it usually is in the region, and the sky was full of the kind of pollution that almost begs to be washed away in some violent thunderstorm to come. While we drove, I replaced the innocuous contents of the attaché with the four bricks of cash.
    The urban knot of Metro Manila unraveled as we drove, and soon we were moving past rice paddies and coconut groves. I had seen the same countryside just a few days earlier, but today it felt different. Unwelcoming, maybe. Maybe unforgiving.
    I looked out the window at the fields and farm animals andwondered whether the woman would have learned of Manny’s demise. It had been only a few days, and I supposed it wasn’t impossible that somehow the news wouldn’t yet have reached her.
    The roads we drove on became narrower, with more frequent and deeper potholes. Twice the driver had to stop and ask for directions. But eventually we pulled up in front of a low-slung, ramshackle dwelling at the end of a dirt road with paddies all around. A few gaunt cows swished their tails near the house, and chickens and small dogs ran freely. There were a dozen people sitting out front in plastic chairs. An extended family, I sensed, but more than could be living in this small dwelling. Something had happened, some tragedy, you might have guessed, and the visitors were here to offer support, to help the survivors make it through.
    I saw Manny’s wife, seated across from two other young women who might have been her sisters. The boy sat listlessly on the lap of an older woman, perhaps his grandmother. I knew the scene well, and for a moment my resolve faltered. And then, ironically, the same icy blinders that had moved in to allow me to finish Manny started to close again, and enabled me to move forward this time, as well.
    I got out of the car. Conversation, I noticed, had come to a halt. The assembled