The Last Assassin

7

The next morning, I went to another Internet cafe and checked the bulletin board. There was a message waiting: the Chinese kid's name was Eddie Wong. He was a ma jai, a foot soldier with a New York branch of United Bamboo, the Taiwanese triad, and the noodle place on Mulberry was their headquarters. Wong was only twenty-two, but he had an extensive criminal record in his hometown of Taipei, mostly drug smuggling but also extortion. He was known to carry a Balisong, the Filipino butterfly knife, and apparently was quick to use it.

The bald guy I'd seen him talking to was Waiyee Chan, the local gang's dai dai lo, or leader. If the gang leader was meeting directly with a mere soldier, Tatsu suggested, the matter must be important to the leader personally. United Bamboo had been at war with the yakuza in Tokyo, but currently there was an uneasy accommodation there. Tatsu speculated that the lull was the result of United Bamboo's assistance to Yamaoto in New York in exchange for some quid pro quo in Japan, just as Dox and I had speculated earlier. He was trying to find out more.

That night, Dox and I set up as we had the previous evening. This time, when Dox called me to confirm that Wong was at Zinc again, I got up and headed to the West Village.

I was more heavily disguised than before. I had a wig sprouting from under the baseball cap, horn-rimmed glasses, and two layers of thick fleece under the windbreaker that added the appearance of twenty-five or thirty pounds. I reconnoitered the area on foot, my posture, gait, and presence maximally unobtrusive. I checked the spots I would have used to watch the apartment. I even checked the local watering holes in case Wong had a partner who was waiting in the area to pick Midori up after her performance at Zinc. Everything was clear. I parked myself in a jazz joint called 55 Club a block from her building and waited.

A half-hour later my phone buzzed. I went outside to answer it.

'Set's over,' Dox said. 'Midori just got in a cab.'

'And our friend?'

'He's staying put for the moment. Just like last night.'

'Has he used a phone?'

'No.'

'All right. Sounds like we're in business.'

'You know, I've been thinking. Just because he didn't go there last night doesn't mean he's going to do the same tonight. What if…'

'Look, if he hasn't followed her yet, he's not going to. Not tonight, anyway. And I've checked all the possible spots around her apartment. It's clear. This is my chance.'

'Yeah, but…'

'I'll be fine.'

'I'm not saying you won't. But why don't I just swing by and have a look anyway. Can't hurt to have me around.'

'I appreciate that. But I'd rather… do this alone. You know?'

There was a pause. Then he sighed and said, 'It's your party, man.'

Part of me was trying to speak up, to tell me he was right, it couldn't hurt. But things felt under control. Midori would either invite me inside or send me packing. All I needed was a minute either way.

'I'll call you after,' I told him. 'I'll let you know.'

'All right. Be careful, partner.'

I closed the phone and turned it off. This was apt to be delicate and I didn't want any interruptions.

I walked partway down the street and pulled off the baseball cap and wig. I started to pocket the wig, but then imagined Midori seeing it protruding from one of my pockets and decided to toss it instead. It would have made her too suspicious, and at this point it had served its purpose. I stuffed the baseball cap in one of the windbreaker's pockets. I waited. A few minutes later, a cab approached from down the street. I started walking toward it.

The cab stopped in front of Midori's building. The door opened. I paused ten feet away on the sidewalk.

Midori got out. She thanked the driver and closed the door. The cab pulled away.

Midori looked up and saw me. She froze.

I tried to say something, but nothing came out. A long moment went by.

Finally I said, 'Midori.'

She watched me. I wanted to look around, to check my surroundings. I fought the urge. She had always hated that kind of awareness. It made her distrust me.

'Why are you here?' she asked.

'You know why.'

'How did you…' she started to say, then stopped. She'd probably decided it didn't really matter. Or that she didn't want to know.

'Can I come up?'

She was silent.

'Just for a minute,' I heard myself saying.

After a moment, she nodded. We went inside. Although I hadn't seen any cameras, I assumed they would have some sort of remote security in the lobby and I kept my head down. Midori said, 'Hello, Ken,' to the doorman, and we got in the elevator. She didn't look at me on the ride up. We didn't speak.

We got out on the seventeenth floor and walked down the corridor. She unlocked a door and we stepped into a nicely furnished living room. Dark wood floors, Gabbeh rugs, black-and-white photos of leafless winter trees. Comfortable-looking upholstered chair and couch. Some sort of indoor infant swing set was parked in a corner, surrounded by brightly colored toys. We took off our jackets and shoes and moved inside. I peeled off the double fleece, too. I didn't need it now and it was warm in the apartment.

A pretty brown-skinned woman emerged from behind the door to what I assumed was a bedroom. She glanced at me, then looked at Midori.

'Everything okay, Digne?' Midori asked.

The woman nodded. 'The little angel is sleeping. I give him a big bottle before he goes to sleep.'

Her accent was Latina. I guessed El Salvador.

Midori nodded. 'Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow night?'

'Of course.' The woman picked up a coat from the couch, slipped on her shoes, and paused at the door. She smiled and said, 'Oyasumi nasai,' with a passable Japanese accent. Good night.

Midori smiled back and said, 'Buenas noches.'

The woman closed the door behind her.

We stood there. I heard a clock ticking on the wall.

'How… how old is he?' I asked, after a moment.

'Fifteen months.'

That would be about right. Almost exactly two years since our last night in Tokyo.

'I heard you call him Koichiro,' I said, remembering my conversation with Tatsu.

She nodded.

'It's a good name.'

She nodded again.

I tried to think of something that wouldn't sound banal. Nothing would come.

'You're happy?' I asked.

Still just a nod.

'Damn it, Midori, will you at least say something to me?'

'Your minute is up.'

I glanced away, then back to her. 'You don't really mean that.'

'Maybe you forgot. You killed my father.'

I imagined myself saying, Come on, haven't we been over all that? I decided it would be the wrong approach.

'Then why did you have the baby?' I asked.

She looked at me, her expression frozen in neutral. 'When I learned I was pregnant,' she said, 'I realized I wanted a baby. The fact that it was your baby was incidental.'

She was being so hurtful, it occurred to me that maybe it was deliberate. That she was protecting herself from something she was afraid of.

'Look, I can imagine how you feel…' I started to say.

'No, you can't.'

'I've told you, I'm sorry for what happened with your father. But you know I did everything I could to make things right afterward. To carry out his wishes.'

I thought about adding, And remember, he was dying of lung cancer anyway. At least the way I did it, he didn't suffer.

But I had a feeling she might take that as a rationalization. And maybe it was.

'Well, you didn't do enough,' she said.

'This is punishment, then,' I said.

There was a long pause. She said, 'I don't want you in his life. Or mine.'

There it was. The very thing, the very words I'd been afraid of. Hanging in the air between us.

'What are you going to tell him?' I asked. 'That his father is dead?'

It would be a sensible enough lie. But the thought of it horrified me. Because I realized if she said it, in many ways that mattered it would actually be so.

'I haven't figured it all out,' she said.

'Well, maybe you should. Maybe you should think about what something like that would cost him.'

She laughed harshly, I supposed at my impertinence.

'Can I ask you a question?' she asked.

I nodded.

'When was the last time you killed someone?'

I tried to think of how to answer. A long moment went by.

She laughed again. 'Don't you see right there that something's wrong? How many people have to think about a question like that?'

I felt myself flush. 'You want to know the last time I killed someone? It was about a month ago. And the guy I killed was one of the worst bomb makers in the world. You know what killing him did? It saved who knows how many lives.'

'I imagine that's what all killers tell themselves.'

The anger I'd been trying to contain suddenly burst through. 'And that's what I imagine all yuppie jazz pianists tell themselves, because it makes them feel so fucking superior.'

She glared at me. Good, I thought. I needed that.

'Maybe you're right,' I said. 'Maybe my problem is rationalization. But yours is denial. You think you can live a squeaky-clean life like this one without someone else getting his hands dirty? Do you really want Koichiro to grow up in a world where no one's out there trying to cull the same kinds of people who leveled the towers just two miles south of here?'

We were silent for a moment, glaring at each other, breathing hard.

'But you're still killing people,' she said.

I closed my eyes. 'Look, I've been trying to change. To do something good. And a lot of that… a lot of that is because of you. And your father.'

There was another pause. She said, 'Maybe you're right, maybe what you're doing keeps children like Koichiro safe in their beds at night. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you. The life you lead and the things you do, it would put Koichiro himself at risk. Can't you see that?'

I almost sagged under the weight of her words. After all, hadn't I needed to find the gaps in Yamaoto's surveillance just to achieve this single clumsy visit?

'I know you care about me,' she went on. 'And that, even though you haven't met him, you care about Koichiro. Why would you want to put us in danger?'

I closed my eyes and exhaled. I had no argument. She was right. I wondered what the hell I'd been thinking, why I had come here.

A long, silent moment spun out.

'All right,' I said, nodding. 'Okay.'

She looked at me. I saw sympathy in her eyes and it hurt.

'Thank you,' she said.

I nodded again. 'Could I just see… my son?'

'I don't think…'

I looked at her. 'Please. Don't turn me away without that.'

After a long moment, she gestured toward the door Digne had come through earlier. She turned and I followed her.

It was a small bedroom in the corner of the building, with curtained windows on two of its walls. I saw a crib, a changing table, a rocking chair. A lamp shaped like a bunny had been turned to a low, comforting setting.

We walked over to the crib. I put my hands on the edge and looked down into it.

On the mattress, covered in a blue fleece blanket, was a little person with a dark head of hair. His eyes were shut and he had a tiny nose and I could see his chest rising and falling as he slept.

For the first time, I understood that all of this was real. This child was mine. I was his father.

I felt tears trying to surface and blinked them down I couldn't remember the last time I'd cried and I wasn't going to start tonight, in front of Midori.

'Could I… would it be all right if…' I started to say.

Midori looked at me, then nodded. She reached into the crib and carefully lifted out Koichiro, still wrapped in his blue blanket. She kissed him softly on the forehead, then looked at me again. Her eyes were wide and honest and I saw that she was afraid. But she was doing this anyway. Fuck, I had to blink again.

She eased the baby into my arms and stayed close, watching. The boy let out a long sigh in his sleep and turned toward me as though searching for warmth. I looked at him and suddenly the tears were flowing down my cheeks and I couldn't stop them. I couldn't even wipe them away. All I could do was blink to clear my eyes and look at that little face until I had to blink again.

I don't know how long we stood like that. At some point Midori put her hand on my shoulder and I became aware of an ache in my jaw from the way I had been clenching it. I handed Koichiro back to her and wiped my face while she got him settled again in his crib.

We went back into the living room. Midori closed the door behind us.

I looked up at the ceiling and deliberately breathed in and out, in and out, trying to steady myself. A hundred jumbled thoughts were pinballing through my brain.

'What if…' I started to say, then thought better of it.

'What?'

I looked at her. 'What if I could get out of the life? Really out of it'

She sighed. 'I don't believe you can.'

'But what if I could.'

A long moment went by. Finally she said, 'I guess we'd have to see then.'

I wanted her to say more, but I was afraid to ask.

There was a pad of paper and a pen on the coffee table next to the couch. I walked over and wrote down my cell phone number.

'Here,' I said. 'If you ever need help, with anything, call me.'

She took the piece of paper. 'Is this a phone number?'

'Yeah. Cell phone. If I don't answer, leave a voice mail. I check it all the time.'

'Wow, a number where I can actually call you,' she said, with a small smile. 'I guess that's progress.'

I smiled back. 'Told you I could change.'

'We'll see.'

I reached out and touched her shoulder.

'Thank you,' I said.

She nodded.

I was still touching her shoulder. I realized she hadn't objected.

I moved closer, and she didn't step back.

I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed. Then, after a moment, she was squeezing me, too.

We stood like that for a while, just holding each other. I kissed her forehead, then her cheek. Then her forehead again. She smelled good, she smelled the way I remembered.

She whispered, 'Jun, don't.'

She was the only one who called me by the diminutive of Junichi, my Japanese given name. It felt good to hear her say it.

I kissed her eyelids. Again she said, 'Don't.'

I didn't care. I didn't care about anything. I kissed her softly on the lips. She didn't kiss me back, but she didn't move away, either. I could hear her breathing.

She put a hand on my chest. I thought she was going to push me away, but she left it there. It felt warm through my shirt.

I kissed her again. This time she made a sound that was somewhere between a whimper and a reproach and suddenly seized the sides of my head with both hands. Then she was kissing me back, kissing me hard.

I put my hands on her and she pressed against me. But when I started to lift her shirt out of her jeans, she twisted away.

'Jun, stop. We have to stop.'

I nodded, breathing hard. 'Yeah,' I said.

'You need to go. Please.'

I blinked and shook my head. 'Will you call me?' I asked.

'Will you get out of the life?'

'I'll try.'

'Then you call me. When you're out.'

I couldn't ask for more than that. I walked to the door and pulled on my shoes, the fleeces, and the jacket. I nodded to her. She nodded back. Neither of us spoke.

I got the baseball cap on in the elevator and moved through the lobby with my head down. I stepped outside and checked the hot spots. All clear. I headed east. The chill air hit my face but I was barely aware of it. I felt exhausted, empty. I should have known I wasn't in the right condition to protect myself. I should have known what was going to happen next.

Midori stood and watched the door for a long time after Rain left. He was gone as suddenly as he had appeared, but his presence lingered everywhere and changed everything, from the feel of her lips and tongue to the contours of the apartment to her thoughts of the future.

How many times had she told herself she hated him, for what he did to her father, for the lies he told her afterward, for everything he was? And yet, not two minutes earlier, she had been kissing him with such abandon that she was still light-headed from it. How the hell had she summoned the will to send him away? She wished for a moment she hadn't, and the thought made her feel ashamed.

She sat on the couch, closed her eyes, and put her head in her hands. That thing he had said about what she was going to tell Koichiro about his father had stung. She had considered the issue many times, of course, but could never come up with a comfortable answer. It was easier to just defer things, to tell herself she would figure it out as Koichiro got older, but now she wasn't sure.

When she had first learned she was pregnant, she felt her body had betrayed her, as though she was a woman carrying the child of a soldier who had raped her in war. She had made an appointment at a clinic, determined to end the pregnancy immediately and never think of it again. But that same night, as she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, one hand half-consciously rubbing her belly, she thought maybe it was better not to act so hastily. It was still early. Why not sleep on it for a few nights, make up her mind more deliberately? The option to abort would still be there. It wasn't going away.

But those few nights turned into many. She thought ceaselessly about her circumstances. She loved living in New York, loved doing gigs here, loved the freedom of life away from Japan. And meeting men was easy enough. She saw the way they gazed at her while she played, many of them repeat customers, and she was aware of the nervous timbre of their voices when they approached her to thank her after a performance. She went out with a few, but none of them had interested her long-term.

At some point, she had come to understand that, in her late thirties, the chance for marriage and a family had probably passed. But that was okay. She concentrated on all the good things in her life and told herself that a husband and the rest would have interfered. But on those long sleepless nights after she learned she was pregnant, she realized she had been making a virtue of a necessity. Because her circumstances had seemed unchangeable, she had been motivated to accept them. But everything was different now.

She believed in fate, and this felt like fate to her. Yes, she knew she could choose to abort as she could choose to have the baby, so how could either alternative be fate, really? But she didn't care about the logic so much. It was her intuition she listened to. And her intuition told her to have the baby.

But she felt no desire to try to contact Rain. It wasn't only because of her father. It was because of what Rain was. Then, when the baby was born, her conviction that she should never tell him only deepened. From the moment the doctor brought that tiny child from her agonized, exhausted body and she heard him cry and held him hot and slick in her arms, she knew she had to keep him from the danger Rain represented.

And now that she had Koichiro, she couldn't imagine anything other than the two of them together. Her previous life, good as it was, seemed almost a dream, and the thought that she had nearly gone through with an abortion was enough to make her feel sick, as though she had once in a moment of weakness contemplated murdering her child. She would never have thought it possible, but she defined herself as this little boy's mother more than she had defined herself as anything else before.

She stood up, went into the bedroom, and watched Koichiro sleep. She realized that all her internal protests about her feelings for Rain had been window dressing, a flimsy façade that had crumbled at his first appearance. She felt a pang of guilt, as though her own feelings for this man were a betrayal of her father. But would her father have wanted her to die leaving him no grandchildren? And would he have wanted his grandchild to grow up not knowing his father? Surely Koichiro's paternity was of small significance in comparison with these larger issues. And it was true that Rain had tried to finish her father's efforts to expose corruption in the government, that this was his way of trying to rectify, even to atone for what he had done. She felt that in some inexplicable way, her father would have appreciated what Rain had done afterward. That he might even have… forgiven him.

She leaned over and kissed Koichiro's forehead, then stood looking at him again. Seeing Rain holding their baby, and for the first time seeing him cry, had softened something inside her, she knew. She didn't know what she wanted, or what she would do if Rain came back. She no longer felt sure of anything. Except for this sweet child. She would do anything to protect him. Anything in the world.