Dox and I spent the next hour and a half driving around, familiarizing ourselves with Wajima. The area was still pretty in places, I thought, but like much of Japan it was under siege from development. The native deciduous trees, orange and red in the chill air, were everywhere being cut down and replaced with monoculture cedar by the region's logging interests. What remained looked like a patchwork of native flesh half covered with green bandages that did nothing to stanch the wounds beneath. Everything was paved — riverbeds, hillsides, even the coast. It seemed that only the sea itself was free from the metastasizing onslaught of development, but as we drove along the coast I saw that some council or interest group or bureaucracy was in the midst of partially enclosing Wajima harbor with a giant wall of concrete. I thought of what Dox had said, about Americans professing to love peace but always waging war. Japanese maintain a traditional reverence for nature, but here they were entombing all traces of it in a concrete sarcophagus. At what point would this culture have to look in the mirror and admit that its traditional love of nature had become a living lie?
When we had seen as much as was useful from the van, we parked so I could have a look around on foot. Dox wanted to get out, too, but accepted that in sleepy Wajima, his white face and outsized frame would eclipse his ordinarily strong cloaking skills. He lay down in back while I set out underneath a cold sky darkening with rain clouds.
The town felt tired to me. I saw much gray hair and no children, although I imagined the latter must exist somewhere. The local economy seemed to be on a subsistence diet of foresting, fishing, and farming, supplemented by a trickle of tourists taking the waters and returning home with gifts of locally made lacquerware.
I walked down to the harbor, my shoulders hunched against a bitter sea breeze. The road in was hemmed on both sides with detritus from the fishing industry — torn nets, broken ballast, rusted-out crab traps. Much of it was covered in blue tarpaulins that blanketed the shapes beneath like trembling shrouds. Everywhere there were gulls, cooing and cawing. Beyond the debris, scores of small fishing boats rose and fell, creaking against their moorings, their tangled rigging skeletal against the scudded horizon. A crushed coffee cup skidded past my feet, impelled by the wind, and a cold mist started down from the sky and in from the water.
They might have been planning to meet here, but I doubted it. The layout was too confusing, for one thing; people might be around, for another. I headed east along the coast. Giant concrete tetrapods lay at the water's edge like unexploded ordinance from a long forgotten war. The mist was getting heavier and the clouds darker, and I sensed we were in for a storm.
Past the tetrapods, I came to some sort of park that was being used as a staging ground for further construction. Trucks were parked here and there and I saw piles of cement and girders and similar materials. A wide grassy field gave way to dirt, and dirt gave way to open water.
We finished going through the pictures just before two o'clock, and I drove us to the inn. It was a small, three- story structure separated from the sea by the narrow coastal road and a short embankment of grass. I parked in the lot behind the building. 'You going to be all right?' I asked Dox. 'I don't know when Yamaoto's people are going to arrive. It might be a while.'
'Partner, I once waited three days in the mud before my quarry came into view. Nailed him, too, from eight hundred yards out. The inside of a van feels like paradise by comparison. Got my sleeping bag, foam mattress, food, water, a plastic jug for number one and a bucket and plastic bags for number two. Plus reading material, including some high-quality Japanese pornography. Life couldn't be better.'
'Well, I'll be sure to knock before I come inside,' I told him, and he laughed.
I looked through the driver's and passenger's side windows. There were three other cars in the lot, possibly belonging to inn employees, possibly to guests who had checked in yesterday or earlier. They were all small, older model Toyotas and the like, and none had Tokyo plates. I had a feeling Yamaoto's men weren't here yet. Still, I would remember the cars so I could compare later.
'You might see them before I do,' I said. 'I expect they'll be parking back here, just like us.'
'Yeah, I'll sneak a look whenever I hear a car pull in. If I see anything promising, I'll call you on the cell phone.'
I got out and walked around to the front entrance. I stepped inside and was immediately transported by the warm smell of incense and tatami mats. A middle-aged woman in a blue kimono welcomed me with a bow. I took off my shoes and followed her in. She had me sit at a low table in the lobby while I — or I should say Mr Watanabe — filled out some check-in paperwork.
The procedure had an air of ritual about it, and I realized Yamaoto's men would probably have to pause here, too. I looked around for a good vantage point and was pleased to see a second-story sitting area open to the lobby below. It offered stellar views of the sea and, more important from my perspective, of where Yamaoto's men would enter as I had.
The woman returned with a cup of barley tea. 'You're traveling alone, Watanabe-san?' she asked, no doubt hoping for an answer to her implicit question of 'Why?'
'Yes,' I told her. 'My wife passed away recently, and because we honeymooned in this area I wanted to return to it.'
'I'm saddened to hear of your loss,' she said, bowing her head. As I expected in the face of Watanabe's sad story, she asked no further questions, and I needed tell her no further lies. But I was confident that word would now circulate among the staff, and that consequently no one would find it at all remarkable that sad Watanabe-san might sit brooding for long hours alone on that second-floor balcony.
I dropped off my bag in my room on the third floor, a twelve-mat square with an alcove and a view of the sea that was impressive in spite of the tangle of high-tension wire in front of it. Then I went down to the lobby restaurant, sat so I had a view of the entrance, and ate a long, leisurely lunch of oysters from Anamizu Bay, sweet shrimp from the deep waters of the Sea of Japan, and locally caught winter yellowtail with sliced radish and red pepper. During my repast a few elderly couples checked in, but they obviously weren't the people Dox and I were waiting for.
Afterward, I repaired to the second-story balcony, where I waited as though absorbed in my memories. It was just getting dark outside when my cell phone buzzed. I glanced at the caller ID readout — Dox.
I pressed the receive button. 'Yeah.'
'Looks like our company has finally arrived,' Dox said.
'You sure?'
