Free RainStorm by Barry Eisler Page B

choice," she said. "We make a great caipirinha."
    I raised my eyebrows. "'We'?"
    Her smile widened. "I'm one of the owners."
    "I'm impressed," I said, looking around and then back to her.
    "How did that happen?"
    She smiled and said, "First, the caipirinha."
    We sat near the windows, open to the air outside, in the semi-dark
    of the third floor. A waiter brought us a pitcher of caipirinha and two glasses, and, as Naomi had promised, the drink was expertly
    made: astringent but sweet, cold and strong, redolent of the
    tropics. Unlike whiskey, with its decades of associations, the taste of caipirinha holds no memories for me.
    I asked her how she wound up coming to own a place like Scenarium,
    and she explained that it was part serendipity, part her father's
    connections. The government was investing in restoring the
    Lapa district--which explained some of the renovations I had
    noticed--and was offering tax breaks to new businesses in the area.
    She had some money saved, and some entertainment business expertise,
    from her time in Tokyo, so her father had put her in touch
    with a group that was hoping to open a bar/restaurant.
    "What about you?" she asked me. "What have you been doing?"
    I took a sip of caipirinha. "Figuring some things out. Trying to
    get a new business going."
    "Something safer than the last one?"
    She didn't know the specifics. Just that whatever I did had a tendency
    to put me in touch with some shady characters and that it
    had nearly gotten both of us killed in Tokyo. "If I'm lucky," I told her.
    "It looks like you're staying in shape," she observed.
    I smiled. "Pilates."
    "And you're tan. You get that dark in Tokyo?"
    She was zeroing in. I should have expected that.
    Maybe you did. Maybe you wanted that.
    But I wasn't ready to tell her. "You know how it is, with all that
    fluorescent lighting," I said.
    She didn't laugh. "I'm getting the feeling that you've been in
    Rio for a while."
    I didn't say anything.
    "Why did you wait so long?" she went on after a moment. "To
    look me up. I'm not mad. And only a little hurt. I just want to
    know why."
    I drank some more and considered. "I can be a danger to the
    people I get close to," I said after a moment. "Maybe you noticed
    that, in Tokyo."
    "That was a long time ago. In another place."
    I nodded, thinking of Holtzer, the late CIA Chief of Tokyo
    Station, and how he'd reappeared in my life in Tokyo like a resurgent
    disease, very nearly managing to have me killed in the process.
    Of how the Agency had patiently watched Midori, hoping she
    would lead them to me. "It's never that long ago," I said.
    We were quiet for a while. Finally she asked, "How long will
    you be in Rio?"
    I looked around. "I don't want to complicate your life," I said.
    "You came all the way out here to tell me that? You should have
    just sent me a damn postcard."
    I had tried to resist her charms in Tokyo because I knew it
    would all end badly. None of that had changed.
    Yet here I was.
    "I'd like to stick around for a while," I told her. "If that's okay
    with you."
    She offered me a small smile. "We'll see," she said.
    We made love that night, and again and again on the nights that
    came after. She had a small high-rise apartment near the Lagoa Rodrigo
    de Freitas, just slightly removed from the crowded beaches
    and trendy boutiques of Ipanema. From one of her windows there
    was a view of nearby Corcovado, or Hunchback Mountain, topped
    by the massive, illuminated statue of Christo Redentor, Christ the
    Redeemer, his head bowed, his arms outstretched in benediction
    to the city below him, and on some nights I would gaze out upon
    this edifice while Naomi slept. I would stare at the statue's distant
    shape, perhaps daring it to do something--strike me down if it
    wanted, or show some other sign of sentience--and, after an uneventful
    interregnum, I would turn away, never with satisfaction.
    The statue seemed to mock me with its muteness and its immobility,
    as though offering the promise,