The Last Assassin

I hadn't planned to stay, but I liked the guy who was playing, a guitarist and vocalist named Ansel Matthews, so I ordered an eighteen-year-old Macallan, then sat listening and musing in the semidarkness. I pictured Midori playing in this very room just a few nights hence, and my heart kicked faster.

I spent the next three days walking ceaselessly through lower Manhattan, getting comfortable with the rhythms of its neighborhoods, reacquainting myself with the layout of the streets. The city felt remarkably safe these days. A few times, very late at night, I passed some rough-looking individuals, but my vibe was different without Delilah by my side, and the natives here had no trouble reading it and steering clear as a result.

On one of these excursions, on a garbage-strewn, graffiti-covered street on the Lower East Side at close to two in the morning, I passed an unmarked door just as a well-dressed couple was leaving it. I realized there was a bar or club inside, and, on uncharacteristic impulse, I pressed the buzzer on the building's façade. A moment later there was the sound of a lock releasing, and I pulled the door open. It was pitch-dark beyond, and it took me a moment to realize I was looking at a curtain. I moved past it and encountered another. I parted this one as well, and found myself standing at the far end of a quietly spectacular bar.

It was a single room, with a brick wall on one side and plaster and some sort of hammered metal on the other. There were about eight booths, lit mostly by candlelight, with a small wood and metal bar in between them. Soft music I couldn't identify but immediately liked played in the background, mingling with quiet laughter and conversation. The bartender, a pretty woman in her mid-twenties, asked if I had a reservation. I admitted I didn't, but she told me it was fine, I could have a seat at the bar anyway.

The place, I learned, was called Milk & Honey. The bartender, who introduced herself as Christi, asked me what I did, and I found I didn't want to lie to her. I told her I'd rather hear about the bar, and she and a colleague, Chad, explained that Milk & Honey existed to provide the best cocktails in Manhattan and the right atmosphere in which to enjoy them. They squeezed their own juice and prepared their own tinctures and even carved their own ice – it was that kind of place. I enjoyed myself so much that I wound up staying for three of their stunning mixes – including a caipirinha made with Pot Still rum and infused with muddled concord grapes. All were prepared with a level of care and enthusiasm I had never seen outside Japan.

I imagined taking Midori here, with no reason or circumstance other than our desire to be together. We'd never had that before, I realized. Initially, I'd used her for information about her father. Then I'd gone on the run with her, protecting her from the people who'd hired me to kill him. Finally, when she was safe, she'd hunted me down to confront me over her suspicions about who I was and what I had done. All of it had been so intense, we'd never had a chance to just relax, to see what it was between us.

What it was between us? I thought. You killed her father.

Jesus. What the hell was I thinking? I was never going to be able to take her here, here or anywhere else. This was crazy, it was never going to work.

I wanted to get out, get the next plane to anywhere and forget that Midori lived here, forget everything. What I had with Delilah was good. I was an idiot for doing anything to risk it.

But I had to see the child. I had to know.

The problem was, it wasn't just Delilah I was risking. It was much more than that, and I knew it.

But I couldn't think of the stakes now. I couldn't fully face them.

5

I called Dox Monday evening as we had discussed. He had already arrived and checked in at 60 Thompson in SoHo, and at his suggestion we met at a place called The Ear Inn, on Spring between Washington and Greenwich. It was about a half-hour walk from the Ritz and the weather was cold and crisp, so I strolled north along the river, then cut east to the restaurant. I went inside and liked what I saw: a dark, unpretentious room of wood and brick with a palpable sense of history. There was a long bar and a dozen wooden tables scattered throughout.

I looked around and there was Dox, big as a linebacker and still as the Buddha, sitting at a corner table with a view of the entrance. When he saw me, he got up, strode over, and gave me one of his bear hugs. Other than the momentary inability to breathe it induced, it felt good, I had to admit, and I found myself hugging him awkwardly back.

'Good to see you, man,' he said, slinging an arm around my shoulders. 'And in the Big Apple, of all places.'

I scanned the room and saw an odd but somehow natural mix of what I classified as teamsters and hipsters. No one was posturing, no one was using a cell phone, no one was paying us any attention. People were just enjoying themselves. No one set off my radar.

'It's good to see you, too,' I told him. 'No goatee today?'

He grinned and rubbed his chin. 'You heard Delilah, partner. When she told me in Hong Kong I had good bones, my facial hair was gone forever.'

I laughed. We walked back to his table so we could watch the room and talk more privately.

'You just fly in today?' I asked.

'Nah, I drove in. Been away a lot and wanted to spend a few days seeing the country go by. Plus there's so much security in airports these days. I hate to choose between death by paperwork on the one hand and disarmament on the other just to travel a little, you know what I mean?'

'You mean they wouldn't let you bring a rifle on the plane with you? There's no justice, Dox.'

He laughed. 'Well, there's always a workaround. Got my trusty M40A1 in the trunk, just in case. Like they say in the ads, don't leave home without it.'

We ordered burgers and Guinness stouts. While we ate, I briefed him on everything: Midori, and my role in her father's death; my last night with her in Tokyo; Tatsu's revelation about the baby; what was going on with Delilah. Everything.

'Damn, man, my first impulse is to congratulate you,' he said, when I was done. 'But you seem so ambivalent I don't know what to say.'

'How would you react?'

'Well, that's a fair question. I've had a few scares along the way, but they all seemed to resolve themselves before I really had a chance to panic'

'So you were on the verge of panic at the prospect, and you're giving me a hard time for being ambivalent at the reality?'

He smiled. 'Not a hard time. Just trying to be sensitive to what you're going through. Underneath this rugged exterior I'm actually a caring and compassionate man.'

'I don't know what I'm going through.'

'Well, what do you want to do?'

'I need to see her. And the baby. But with Yamaoto's people watching her… it's complicated.'

'What's with you and this Yamaoto again?'

'He's a politician with his fingers in everything in Japan – construction kickbacks, bribery, prostitution, narcotics, extortion, you name it. Close ties to the yakuza. In fact, he is yakuza. They take orders from him, not the other way around. The politics is just a hobby he can use to indulge his right-wing convictions and convince himself that all the crime is really for a noble purpose.'

He scratched his head. 'And you met Midori through him?'

'Sort of. He was the one who hired me to take out her father, although at the time I didn't even know I was on his payroll. I met Midori by a coincidence after that, and when I learned Yamaoto was gunning for her, too, I stopped him. Midori and I… for a while we were on the run together. It was… I don't know, it was just one of those crazy things that happen.'