The car pulled up to the curb in front of him and stopped. The front passenger window went down. Rain looked at him. “Not that it isn’t good to see you, Tom, but what are you doing here?”
Kanezaki glanced in back and saw Maya, holding a little dog, plus a few faces he didn’t recognize. “Do I really need to tell you?”
Rain sighed. “Why didn’t you give us a heads-up?”
“You might have said no.”
“I might still say it.”
Kanezaki laughed. “Also better to keep communications at a minimum. Not risk giving away my location unless it’s really necessary. Just in case.” He leaned down so he could see Delilah. “The car’s fine there. And leave the keys inside. I’ve got someone coming to take care of it.”
An extremely solid-looking man got out of the back. The car seemed to rise appreciably on its shock absorbers once he was out. Kanezaki straightened. “You must be Manus,” he said.
The man nodded. “Kanezaki?”
Kanezaki gave him a nod in return.
Manus scanned the area, then looked at him. “You sent Dox? And Larison?”
Unlike Larison, who radiated danger, there was something about Manus that was as still as a bomb. Kanezaki felt nervous at the question, and how Manus might mean it. But he didn’t see a way to avoid answering. So he simply said, “Yes.”
There was a long, silent beat. Manus extended his hand. “Thank you,” he said.
They shook. Kanezaki said, “I’m glad everything worked well.”
Rain got out and did a perimeter check. It was reassuring—both substantively, and because some things, it seemed, would never change. Nor should they.
Rain held out his hand. They shook. Then Rain surprised him by offering a bow. Rain didn’t ordinarily express the Japanese half of his background, even though he’d grown up in Japan and was far more “both” than half of anything. Kanezaki had always wondered whether the reticence was some way of denying Kanezaki’s own heritage. Kanezaki was ethnic Japanese, but as a nisei, he’d been born in America and identified fully as American. And compared to Rain’s native Japanese fluency, his own language skills were a joke.
“You know,” Rain said, “the older you get, the more you remind me of Tatsu.”
Kanezaki was surprised to find himself a little choked up by that. “Thanks,” he managed to say.
Delilah came around the car from the driver’s side. “Hello, Tom.”
Kanezaki smiled. “Delilah. At last we meet.”
She kissed him on both cheeks. “I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. Though I always imagined different circumstances.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry.”
She waved a hand as though dismissing the problem. “My fault. By now, I should know better. You know, John talks about you a lot.”
“Really?” Kanezaki said. “I didn’t know he talked a lot about anything.”
She laughed. “We’ll have to work on your elicitation skills.”
He smiled. “I think you might have skills I don’t.”
He saw Maya getting out on the other side of the car, still holding the dog. Two more people emerged on his side—a pretty brunette, and a teenaged boy, lanky but filling out. Evie and her son, Dash.
“You must be Tom,” Evie said.
He nodded. “Hello, Evie.”
They shook hands. “Marvin told me what happened,” she said. “Thank you.”