John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories by Barry Eisler Read Free Book Online

with a plain, unpretentious sign advertising TAIHŌ CHUUKA RYŌRI , a few pink, vinyl-covered stools and a wraparound counter just visible below the noren curtains hung across the frontage. I ducked under the curtains, and was struck by the tangy smell of fried rice and pork and spices. A man in a black tee shirt and jeans and white apron, who I understood immediately by his demeanor was the maastaa , or master, stood behind the counter, studiously attending to the stove before him, the sounds of frying meat loud even amid the conversation of the small restaurant’s dozen or so patrons. A woman alongside him who I sensed was his wife looked up and greeted me with a smiling “ Irasshaimase. ”
    I returned her greeting with a nod and glanced to my right—the one blind spot from where I was standing—and was unsurprised to see McGraw. Once again, he was the only white face in evidence; once again, he had a beer in front of him that I sensed wasn’t his first. He was watching me as though wondering how long it would be before I finally noticed him.
    I stepped over to his table and sat. He glanced at the bag I was carrying, but didn’t comment, instead saying only, “You hungry?”
    I hadn’t been, but the delicious smell of the cooking had already changed that. “I could eat.”
    He called out to the woman behind the counter in passable Japanese that we would have two orders of gyoza , two of fried rice, and two Asahi beers. He seemed entirely at home. I wondered how he found these places, and whether he favored them more operationally or more for the food. Maybe both.
    A pretty girl appeared from the back carrying a tray laden with beer. She looked like the woman behind the counter—the daughter, then, a family operation. She placed two bottles and a glass for me on the table, collected McGraw’s empty, and went on to service other customers. McGraw picked up the fresh bottle and tended to his own glass. In Japan, failing to at least offer to fill your companion’s glass is markedly rude. Maybe he didn’t know, but I doubted that. Nor did he offer to toast, instead immediately taking a long swallow. Whatever. I followed suit, resisting the urge to say anything, reminding myself of my theory that McGraw used silence to draw people out.
    He glanced down at my glass, from which I had taken only a small sip. “You might want to finish that,” he said, his voice loud enough for me to hear but not loud enough to carry over the hubbub of conversation around us. “And maybe another, before I brief you.”
    Was that supposed to rattle me? It did, but I wasn’t going to show it. “Up to you,” I said.
    “All right. Don’t say I didn’t offer.” He took another swallow. “I have bad news. And worse news.”
    “Aren’t you supposed to ask me which I want first?” I was proud of my apparent sangfroid. In fact, I was getting increasingly worried.
    “You think this is funny?”
    “I don’t know. You haven’t told me what it is yet.”
    He looked at me for a long moment, so much disgust in his expression I sensed he was actually relishing what he was about to tell me. “That kid you tuned up in Ueno,” he said. “You killed him.”
    “Is that the bad news, or the worse news?”
    “That’s the bad news. The worse news is, he was the nephew of Hideki Fukumoto. Name ring a bell?”
    “Should it?”
    “If you know anything about the yakuza, it should. Fukumoto is the head of the Gokumatsu-gumi. The biggest yakuza syndicate in Tokyo, and therefore the biggest in Japan. You get it now? You fucked up. You killed a yakuza prince. A punk, sure, but a prince. And the two who got away? One was a nobody, relatively speaking. He’s in the hospital, where they’re not sure if he’ll recover his vision. What did you do, stick your thumbs in his eyes?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Something like that. Jesus. Well, the other was the dead nephew’s cousin. You know what that makes him?”
    “Fukumoto’s son,