John Rain 08: Graveyard of Memories Read Online Free PDF Page B

told myself the precautions were temporary. The war in Vietnam didn’t last forever; this one wouldn’t, either.
    Outside, I slung the bag across my neck and shoulder, got on Thanatos, and started up the engine. I paused to gaze once more at the industrial wasteland below me. It was ugly, and I had always ignored it before. But suddenly it felt like some comforting thing that was about to be torn away from me. I knew I couldn’t come back until I figured out what the hell was going on. And, whatever it was, resolved it. But when would that be? And how?
    I rode off, Thanatos’s engine whining, wanting only to put some distance between myself and the apartment or anywhere else someone might lay an ambush. It started to rain but I didn’t care; I was soaked with sweat already. The city went by me in a wet, gray blur, windshield wipers and umbrellas and dripping overpasses and eaves, droplets fine as mist suspended in Thanatos’s headlight.
    Away from the apartment, I started to relax a little and think. My gut told me the run-in with the three chinpira in Ueno had been a coincidence. If they were still after me, it was likely follow-up—revenge for the outcome of the initial encounter. But then how had they known where to find me?
    I considered. They’d seen how confidently and crisply I’d dropped the lead guy with that suplay. Maybe they hadn’t recognized the move specifically, but I was clearly some kind of grappler, and one whose skills were pretty sharp. If you were looking for a grappler in Tokyo, where would you start? It wouldn’t be a sure thing, of course, but with nothing more to go on, you might want to check out judo dojos. And the one you’d probably begin with, because it’s the biggest and best known, would be the Kodokan.
    I chewed on that, and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Yeah, it made sense. A little imagination, a little diligence, and a little luck, and there I was. They’d probably been thinking it would be a long shot. They must have been thrilled when the bet paid out.
    Well, it hadn’t paid out quite the way they’d been hoping. But damn, it had been a near thing. That guy in the daidōjō had been intent to kill me—I had seen it in his pig eyes. So who were these people? They had enough time and manpower to start casing judo dojos in Tokyo on a long-shot bet. They were motivated enough by revenge to invest that time and manpower. And they had at least one guy on the payroll who was willing to kill someone, in a public venue in front of two hundred witnesses, just because they told him to.
    The only thing that made sense was, the three in Ueno hadn’t been just punks. They were more connected than I’d guessed. Maybe one or more of them was a made member of one of the yakuza clans. Maybe I’d pissed off the wrong people.
    The really wrong ones.
    I nodded as I bombed along on Thanatos, pleased with myself for coming up with what felt like the right explanation. It was only later that I came to learn how dangerous it is to allow yourself to be seduced by that first attractive theory. If you don’t keep testing for alternatives, you might wind up satisfying yourself with, and proceeding on, what’s no more than a partial truth. And a partial truth, I would understand soon enough, can be more dangerous than a lie.
    If the problem was yakuza, what would be the solution? McGraw might be helpful. At a minimum, he would have access to information I didn’t. But if he knew I had this much heat on me, I didn’t know what he might do. Probably just cut me loose. Damn it, I didn’t want to take that chance. Better to just sit tight and wait to hear from him—he’d said he would be in touch as soon as he learned anything about what had happened in Ueno.
    But shit, if I waited to tell him about the latest problem, he’d conclude—correctly—that I was holding out on him. He wouldn’t like it.
    It wasn’t an easy decision, but I decided not to call him. Better to seek