Free John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories by Barry Eisler

had become second nature, but just as it had been at my apartment, here all the environmental cues were different. This was the city. Glass and concrete and lights; suits and cars and restaurants. Not the jungle. Not a war.
    And then I thought of Pig Eyes at the Kodokan. The way his face had twisted into a smile as he tightened that strangle.
    Tokyo was a jungle. Hell, the world was a jungle. And I damn well needed to remember it before someone else decided to remind me.
    I walked the short distance to Taiyō Bank, these days known as Sumitomo Mitsui. There were six lanes of traffic across Sotobori-dōri and the area was bustling, but the uninterrupted clusters of buildings on either side of the street were all still low, no more than ten stories each and usually fewer, the sky wide overhead, the overall feel that of a medium-sized older city rather than a modern metropolis. But the Kasumigaseki Building, dominating the skyline to the west, made it impossible to miss that Tokyo was growing now, and growing almost impossibly fast. At thirty stories, the otherwise unremarkable structure had been Japan’s tallest building when it was completed four years earlier, but it had held that title for only two years, the Tokyo World Trade Center surpassing it in 1970. Then the World Trade Center itself had quickly been eclipsed, by the Keio Plaza Hotel in 1971. Two more skyscrapers—the Shinjuku Sumitomo Building and the Shinjuku Mitsui Building—were already under way, each set to take its brief turn as the new titleholder upon completion, and on and on and on. And for every one of these record breakers, there were scores of other monoliths sprouting freakishly skyward all over the city. At that moment, Tokyo felt to me like a city still clinging to the vestiges of its childhood, and inexorably losing its grip. The city I remembered was receding rapidly, driven off by forces it couldn’t understand, heading to oblivion, to be replaced by what I didn’t know.
    I had selected the bank for our meeting because I figured the street’s heavy financial presence, with its concomitant guards and related security measures, would dissuade anyone who might have been planning anything untoward. But I decided not to wait inside. That’s where I was expected, and I thought I’d do better to watch the entrance from a discreet distance, to make sure Miyamoto came alone. So I browsed among the storefronts at the opposite side of the street, lurking under the shadows of awnings to make myself less visible and to evade the murderous midmorning sun.
    Miyamoto showed right on time, strolling down Sotobori-dōri from the direction of the station. Probably he’d taken the Yamanote from Shinjuku. I watched him enter the bank, then spent a few moments scanning the sidewalk in his wake. He seemed to be alone, but I couldn’t be sure.
    I strolled over and reached the entrance just as he emerged. “Ah,” he said. “I thought you would have beaten me here.”
    “No, I just arrived. Do you mind if we take a cab somewhere? And then maybe just walk?”
    “A cab? But I thought…but all right, if you prefer.”
    He seemed disconcerted and possibly a little nervous, but not unduly so. If this was a setup, I figured he’d be more on edge. Still, no sense taking chances.
    We took a cab to Hamarikyu Teien, a centuries-old garden a mile or so to the southeast that was once the property of shoguns and emperors but that more recently had been opened to the public. Between the cab and a walk in the garden, I was confident anyone tagging along with Miyamoto would have to reveal himself.
    The grounds were nearly empty, and we strolled along one of the paths in silence for a few minutes, clinging to the shadows of the trees to one side, avoiding the monotonous, leaden heat of the sun, the only sounds those of our feet crunching the gravel and the raucous cries of crows in the trees. Today, the garden is surrounded almost entirely by modern high-rises and has