including Uncle Sam, are cracking down on the anonymous purchase of prepaid cell phones because terrorists seem to like them. Still, using the Watanabe ID, I was able to pick up a pair of slim Nokias with five hundred prepaid minutes apiece at a Cingular store in Chinatown, along with two sets of wireless earpieces.
Next on my shopping list was a folding knife. I'd left the Benchmade behind in Barcelona because to get it on the plane I would have had to check a bag, which I prefer not to do. Finding a replacement in New York, however, was tricky. The local laws governing concealed knives are so stringent that I couldn't find a store that sold anything other than the small Swiss Army variety. I had just about decided to rig up a kitchen knife in a shoulder harness when I came across the right kind of street vendor, a bald black man of indeterminate age with a megawatt smile and secrets in his eyes, who sold me a Strider folder with a four-inch recurve blade.
Next I stopped in an army/navy store and found a gray windbreaker that would be so anonymous in the city as to make me invisible. I also grabbed a plain black umbrella and dumped the blue logo-sporting Ritz Carlton model in a cluttered corner of the store. A navy baseball cap and a navy shoulder pack completed the ensemble, and, thus properly provisioned, I continued north. I adopted a steady gait, not too fast, not too slow, someone with business in whatever neighborhood I was moving through, a reason for being there, but nothing important enough to hurry over.
Tatsu had gotten me Midori's address, an apartment on Christopher Street in the West Village. His position, high up in the Keisatsucho, had its advantages when it came to acquiring information, even if the quid pro quo was an occasional off-the-books 'favor.' Tatsu's ends were noble, but he certainly believed they justified a wide range of means.
The last time I had seen Midori was in Tokyo, more than two years earlier. She had tracked me down to confront me over what had happened to her father, and I admitted what I had done. And somehow, in the midst of it all, her grief and rage and confusion, we had still fallen into bed one last time. I've thought about that night a lot since then. I've replayed it, dissected it, mined it for meaning. But it always ends the same way: Midori, leaning in close from above me, shuddering as she came and whispering
Well, we were going to find out how profound that sentiment really was. And how permanent.
I headed up Sixth Avenue all the way to Christopher, where I made a left. Of course I had already familiarized myself with these routes using various Internet maps, but there's never a substitute for direct experience with the local terrain. There it was, on the other side of the street, a seventeen-story building, prewar, from the look of it, with a doorman in a long coat standing under a green awning out front. In this light and these clothes, and with the umbrella held low against the weather, I wasn't worried about being spotted, and I slowed. I looked at the building and imagined where I might set up if I were the one waiting here for myself. There weren't a lot of great spots. There was no parking on this section of the street, so vehicle surveillance was out. And the restaurants and gay bars Christopher Street is known for were too far from the apartment to be useful.
There was the doorman, of course. It wasn't impossible that someone had gotten to him, bribed him to keep an eye out for the Asian man in some file photo. I filed him for later consideration.
I kept walking. The bars at the end of the street had some people in front of them, mostly smokers, but no one who was in a position to watch Midori's building or who otherwise felt wrong to me. I noted that several of the places offered live music, and wondered if Midori had chosen the neighborhood in part because of its proximity to her nightly gigs. Probably she had. I thought about taking a look inside, just to see if anyone caused a radar ping, but as always there was a cost-benefit equation at work and this time it argued against being too thorough. Anyone who was here to watch Midori would have to do so from close by her apartment, not from within one of the neighborhood watering holes. And if there were anyone relevant in one of these places, he could as easily spot me as I could spot him. Indoors, I wouldn't have the windbreaker and umbrella to hide behind.
I zigzagged my way south. It was hard to say what it meant that I hadn't spotted anyone tonight. It could be they were focusing more on her public performances, or that she was out at the moment and they knew it. I'd have to know more before I could safely close in.
I stopped at a SoHo bistro for a quick dinner and moved on. According to her website, Midori had a four-night appearance coming up at a jazz club called Zinc Bar on the corner of Houston and La Guardia. The club took me a minute to find, even though I knew the address. It was hidden below street level at the bottom of a steep set of stairs, and the gold letters announcing its existence were only visible when you were directly in front of the place.
I walked down, went through the red curtains, paid the five-dollar cover, and moved inside.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but when they had I was pleased to see that the place was exactly what I was hoping for. The room was a long rectangle with a bar to one side and tables along the other. The stage was set up at the far end. If someone were here watching Midori, Dox would have no trouble spotting him.
I hadn't planned to stay, but I liked the guy who was playing, a guitarist and vocalist named Ansel Matthews, so I ordered an eighteen-year-old Macallan, then sat listening and musing in the semidarkness. I pictured Midori playing in this very room just a few nights hence, and my heart kicked faster.
I spent the next three days walking ceaselessly through lower Manhattan, getting comfortable with the rhythms of its neighborhoods, reacquainting myself with the layout of the streets. The city felt remarkably safe these days. A few times, very late at night, I passed some rough-looking individuals, but my vibe was different without Delilah by my side, and the natives here had no trouble reading it and steering clear as a result.
On one of these excursions, on a garbage-strewn, graffiti-covered street on the Lower East Side at close to two in the morning, I passed an unmarked door just as a well-dressed couple was leaving it. I realized there was a bar or club inside, and, on uncharacteristic impulse, I pressed the buzzer on the building's facade. A moment later there was the sound of a lock releasing, and I pulled the door open. It was pitch-dark beyond, and it took me a moment to realize I was looking at a curtain. I moved past it and encountered another. I parted this one as well, and found myself standing at the far end of a quietly spectacular bar.
It was a single room, with a brick wall on one side and plaster and some sort of hammered metal on the other. There were about eight booths, lit mostly by candlelight, with a small wood and metal bar in between them. Soft music I couldn't identify but immediately liked played in the background, mingling with quiet laughter and conversation. The bartender, a pretty woman in her mid-twenties, asked if I had a reservation. I admitted I didn't, but she told me it was fine, I could have a seat at the bar anyway.
The place, I learned, was called Milk & Honey. The bartender, who introduced herself as Christi, asked me what I did, and I found I didn't want to lie to her. I told her I'd rather hear about the bar, and she and a colleague, Chad, explained that Milk & Honey existed to provide the best cocktails in Manhattan and the right atmosphere in which to enjoy them. They squeezed their own juice and prepared their own tinctures and even carved their own ice — it was that kind of place. I enjoyed myself so much that I wound up staying for three of their stunning mixes — including a caipirinha made with Pot Still rum and infused with muddled concord grapes. All were prepared with a level of care and enthusiasm I had never seen outside Japan.
