I lurched towards him, and stabbed at his chest with a finger. “Sorry’s not going to do it, Koizumi. There’s a hell of a lot more you need to tell me. I took this assignment because of certain promises and each and every one of them has turned out to be a lie. I’ve been misled. I’m sick of stumbling around in the dark, bumping into things.”

“Again,” he said. “I have nothing else to tell you.”

“So Yukio Koizumi is a message boy?”

Koizumi brought his hand down to his sides and stood a moment in the rain. “Yes,” he said. “More than you can know.”

“Pathetic,” I spat.

Koizumi smiled a small sad smile. “Yes,” he said.

“Not good enough,” I said. “I need to know more. I need to know everything.”

“I have nothing more to say, Mr. Baxter. You have everything I know about Mr. Danning, his plan, his methods. I’m sorry.”

“Forget Danning. Danning isn’t what I’m talking about. He’s the tiny part of this whole thing that’s poked out into the light. I want to know about your bosses.”

Koizumi twitched suddenly, slightly, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He ignored me, turned and spent a very long time looking out over the L.A. basin, watching the light squirm.

The rain turned heavy for a moment, and cold water ran down the back of my neck, clammy and unpleasant. The coat was working hard to pull it off my skin and failing.

I pulled the pulsegun from its holster and put it to Koizumi’s head.

“Does this make you any more talkative?” I said.

He didn’t even turn to look at me. “No,” he said.

I thumbed the primer and the gun whined as it powered up. “You sure?”

“Mr. Baxter, if I hadn’t reconciled myself to a sudden, violent death a long time ago, I would be comfortably sedated in an asylum somewhere. You can do nothing to me that cannot be done many, many times worse.”

The high whine of the pulsegun hung between us for a moment, but Koizumi didn’t back away at all. Didn’t even move.

“Damn,” I said, and powered the gun down, dropping it back in its holster.

The way I usually dealt with people was to either kill them or threaten to kill them. It kept things nice and simple and I almost always got what I wanted as a result. But Koizumi didn’t seem to care all that much. What holds sway over a man more than his own life?

I knew the answer to that question. Before, in my apartment. It wasn’t anger that was driving Koizumi’s little tantrum, it was fear. He was afraid of something.

Danning. Or Danning’s death, or Danning’s life. The job. The only thing that I had ever seen shake Koizumi was the idea that Danning might go on living, that he wouldn’t be killed. That I wouldn’t kill him.

I didn’t have any idea what that meant, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t use it.

“OK,” I said. “The gun isn’t as scary as I thought. You’re not afraid of me. Fine. But there are people you’re afraid of, and unless you’re willing to let me in on a few things, they’re not going to get what they want.”

Koizumi’s jaw tightened, just a little, but he kept looking out at the city, ignoring me.

“Out of this whole mess, the only thing I know for sure is that it’s very important to you — to your superiors — that Danning die, and that I be the one to kill him. I don’t even care why. All I know is that it’s something you want. So I’m using it.”

I took a step towards him, but he didn’t look over. “Either you tell me about your bosses or I walk. I’m sick of being ignored, led around like a puppy. You tell me what I want to know or I go back to my office right now and spend the next two weeks looking for my deck of cards.”

He ignored me.

“I feel a mean solitaire streak coming on,” I said.

Koizumi sighed and raised a hand to wipe the rain from his face. “Very well,” he said. “I would like time to speak to my sup—”

“No,” I said. “No speaking, no superiors. If they frighten you, they scare the shit out of me. But I’m sick of being the last to know about who I work for and who is going to be throwing furniture at me and who is going to kill the President. Either you talk right now or I’m gone.”

“I hesitate to speak, Mr. Baxter,” Koizumi said. “They will hear of it. I will be punished.”

“That’s not my problem,” I said. “Tell me.”

Koizumi’s head dipped slightly, and he nodded. He had shrunk somehow, seemed smaller, seemed scared. Whatever was holding him up, whatever made him Yukio Koizumi, was collapsing, folding up, disappearing. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped.

“Now,” I said. “Tell me everything.”

He nodded again. “I was born in Osaka—”

“OK,” I said. “Not everything.”

“—after the Eastern Crash, in a slum. My mother died of starvation, so my sister and I could eat. By rights, I should still be there—”

“I know your history.”

“What you don’t know, Mr. Baxter, is that I had very little to do with my history.” He turned to me, and I saw anger flare in his eyes, suddenly and unexpectedly. “My entire career, my entire life, has been the work of my superiors. I have done nothing. Koizumi Extranational has been built on information that they provided. I am told what to say, and I say it. I am told what to do, and I do it. That is all, that is all it has ever been.” His jaw was set hard and his fists were clenched at his side. He was furious, almost shaking. “I am a puppet,” he said.

But as quickly as it had risen, his anger curled and turned inward. I can recognize self-disgust when I see it, from all those mornings looking in the mirror. “Days or weeks or years later, it seems prescient, even brilliant,” he said. “But it is not me. I am an actor, an automaton, a pretty face on an ugly truth.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “You—”

“With due respect, Mr. Baxter, shut your mouth. Spare me your protest. I have lived this way for half a century. It has been a very comfortable life, but what once seemed like extraordinary luck has turned sour.” He swung his arms wide, in the most sarcastic way possible. “Yukio Koizumi! Corporate titan! Exemplar of the new Japan! As you said, pathetic. I am sixty-eight years old, Mr. Baxter, and I look back on what I have done with my time and see only toadying and subservience, a joyless life spent being dragged forward by something I cannot see. I build what I am told to build, destroy what I am told to destroy. Kill who I am told to kill. That is all. I am free to choose when I use the toilet,” he said. “Most days.”

“You don’t know who they are? Who you work for?”

“I have no idea. Each time they communicate, it is different. A messenger, an implant upload, notes hidden under plates in my refrigerator, dreams. They give me information and tell me how to turn it into money, into power. Fifty years ago, I was told to ally myself with a currency trader in Osaka. Three weeks ago, I was told to hire you to kill Danning. I do as I am told. I always have. I always will. Until the day I die.”

He wrapped his arms around himself and turned away. He might have been crying. I pulled my hands out of my pockets and leaned my elbows on the wall, my turn to watch the light. The Emitter clanked and shifted again, and an ad for a retroviral deodorant swept across the sky.

“I thought I was in over my head before,” I said.

Koizumi said, “Ha,” and before the word could linger, be mistaken for cheer, bile rose up and over it, swallowing it, like an island consumed by the sea. He turned slowly to face me, anger, shame and fear fighting for his expression.

“Good night, Mr. Baxter,” he said. “And if I may offer you some advice: Forget who you work for. Forget what I’ve told you. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but the job. You must kill Roland Danning before he fires on the President,” he said. “Get it done. Just do as you are told.”