The Last Assassin

It was as brief as it was furious. Our hands were everywhere and we never stopped kissing. When she came, she groaned something in Hebrew, groaned it right into my mouth, and I came with her.

I settled back onto the mattress pad, spent. She stayed as she was, looking down at me, hands on my shoulders.

'I like when you do that,' I said, looking into her eyes, gray in the interior gloom of the van.

'What?'

'Talk in Hebrew.'

She nodded. 'You make me.'

I watched her. The last time I'd seen her kill someone, she got the shakes afterward. But that had been her first time. It gets easier after that.

'You all right?' I said.

She nodded. 'I shouldn't be, I guess, but I am.'

I reached up and touched her cheek. 'I can't… I don't know how to thank you for what you did tonight. For everything you've done.'

She said nothing.

'I don't know what's going to happen,' I told her. 'I do know I don't want to lose you.'

'That's up to you,' she said, her eyes down. 'It always has been.'

We stayed like that for another minute. I thought about Midori again. I could call her and tell her everything, make her understand how bad it was and convince her to move someplace with Koichiro, at least until I'd settled this.

But that would be it for us. I knew it. Whatever tenuous possibility of rapprochement she had hinted at in New York would be extinguished like a flickering ember under a boot heel.

And Yamaoto was wounded now, wasn't he? Hell, for all I knew he had just finished bleeding out in the back of his limousine. Or he was in emergency surgery somewhere. Any minute now I might get news from Tatsu about where to get to him. Nothing was going to happen to Midori and Koichiro just this moment. I could wait a little while longer, see how the situation with Yamaoto played out. If I learned he'd made it, if it seemed I couldn't finish him, I could warn Midori then.

We pulled on what was left of our clothes. I said, 'A lot of people saw you at the club. With Big Liu dead and Yamaoto wounded, they're all going to be in disarray. But Kuro's still at large. You have to be careful.'

She smiled. 'I know.'

'Sorry. I just…'

'I know,' she said again, and kissed me.

She got out of the van and I watched her until she had turned off the street. Then I drove to find a new hotel.

45

I checked into a business hotel in Shinjuku and took a shower and then a long, hot bath. It didn't do much to relax me. I couldn't stop thinking. The thoughts weren't good.

What if Yamaoto didn't wind up in a hospital? What would it mean? A guy that powerful would have doctors on the payroll, people who could patch a bullet hole without involving the authorities. Maybe one of them was making a house call right now. But from what Dox had said, Yamaoto was going to need a lot more than that. A trauma surgical team, probably, and a lot of blood.

Regardless, what if he lived, and told his people, and Big Liu's, what happened at the club? With all the bad blood, the Chinese might not have believed him, but the bullet hole in his chest might be persuasive of truthfulness. And regardless of what the Chinese thought, Yamaoto's own people would do what he told them. If he got the chance to send them after Midori and Koichiro…

I glanced at the phone, perched on the edge of the sink counter within grabbing distance of the tub.

Call her, I thought. Call her right now.

Just a little while longer. I can get to him. I can finish this. All I need to know is where.

The phone rang. I half leaped out of the bath to grab it. I looked at the caller ID. Tatsu.

I flipped it open, my heart pounding. 'Yeah.'

'You'll never guess where our friend is.'

'Tell me.'

'Right here at Jikei hospital. In surgery. It took my people some time to find him. There are quite a few hospitals in Tokyo, and Yamaoto is here under a false name.'

I was gripping the phone hard and tried to relax. 'Is he going to make it?'

'The doctors seem optimistic. He was lucky. From what I understand, another centimeter and he would have been past saving.'

'How do I get to him?'

'You can't while he's in the operating room. And he'll be in the ICU afterward for at least twenty-four hours, being monitored constantly. You have to wait until he's in intermediate care.'

'I can't wait that long,' I said. I felt like shouting, putting my fist through the wall, smashing things. 'He could move against Midori.'

'I don't believe so. He's fighting for his life now. That's all he's doing. That's all he can do.'

'What about when he's out of the ICU? Won't he have people guarding him?'

'He already does, quite a few of them. Don't worry. I'm going to take care of it.'

'What about Kuro? What's his status?'

'Leave Kuro to me. You focus on Yamaoto.'

I looked left and right as though I might see a way out. Finally I said, 'Goddamnit, just keep me posted.'

'I'll call you the moment I learn more.'

I clicked off and put the phone back on the sink counter.

I thought again about calling Midori. The thing was, even if I warned her, she might not listen. She hated everything about the life and didn't want any part of it.

I realized I might be rationalizing, but I decided to hold off for just a little while longer.

If I was wrong, though, I knew the opportunity to take my own life would seem in retrospect like a state of grace that had been offered to me and that I had stupidly, perversely refused. I'd have no more options then. I would have used them all up and cashed them in for damnation.

46

I hardly slept at all that night. In the morning, I did an intense hour of bodyweight calisthenics and stretches. I worked through Hindu push-ups, Hindu squats, and neck and stomach exercises. I finished with twenty doorjamb pull-ups, suspended only by my fingertips, and a hundred fingertip push-ups after that. When I was done, I felt a little less anxious than I had the night before.

But the rest of the day wasn't easy. I kept picturing Midori and Koichiro in New York, imagining how easy it would be to get to them outside that Greenwich Village apartment, or at a park, or on the way to a store, or anywhere at all.

Whispers was all over the news. There were rumors of yakuza ownership, and the working theory was that it had been attacked by affiliates of United Bamboo as part of a gang war. Three of the dead were Taiwanese nationals, and one of them, called Big Liu, was a known organized crime member. Police were interviewing various employees. But the nature of the club's business, and its organized crime affiliations, seemed to have the effect of preventing witnesses from clearly recollecting the evening's events.

I briefed Dox and Delilah on what I'd heard from Tatsu, but other than that I stayed away from them. I told them it was operational, that it was better if we didn't get together unless we needed to. But there was more to it than that. I felt like I was on the edge of a precipice. If things went one way, I'd be safely back on firm ground. If they went the other, I'd be plunged into the abyss. Despite what had happened with Delilah in the van, I couldn't share the feeling with anyone else. I had to live with it alone.

That night, three United Bamboo members were shot to death in front of a club they ran in Shinjuku. The media was all over it again, treating the shootings as yet another street battle in an ongoing war between the yakuza and ethnic gangs. Tatsu called me about it. He said, 'You weren't behind this, were you?'