Requiem for an Assassin (20 page)

I finished the bike. As soon as it was dry, I threw it in the trunk and drove to the Great Neck Public Library, where I posted a message to Kanezaki:
What relatives are staying with Jannick’s family now? Parents, siblings, whoever. Names, addresses, most of all, their jobs. Cross-reference with everything else we have. Hilger might have been after a secondary effect.

T
HE NEXT FORTY-EIGHT HOURS
were uneventful. I continued to tail Accinelli, but he never left the office during the day and always went straight home at night. I figured he was too busy for an assignation, or couldn’t come up with a believable excuse. I heard from Kanezaki. He told me he was running down the leads I had sent him, but that was all.

I started to get concerned. Hilger had given me five days, and I had only one left. I thought about contacting him, insisting on talking to Dox again. But I decided not to. Hilger wouldn’t have done anything yet: he needed Dox, at least until I was finished with Accinelli. Besides, right now, it would be too easy for him to say no. I wasn’t devoid of leverage, but what I had, I needed to use sparingly.

O
N THE MORNING
of the deadline, I was waiting in the BMW near Sara D. Roosevelt Park, about ten blocks from the Mott Street apartment, watching the readout on the iPhone. I’d been there since following Accinelli to his office as always, and so far he hadn’t moved. It was past eleven now, and I was beginning to think I might have to contact Hilger and tell him I needed more time. And then, just like that, the little light that represented Accinelli’s car on the phone started moving.
Come on,
I thought.
Come this way. A little afternoon delight.

I watched as he headed west on the LIE, then the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. When I saw him approaching the Williamsburg Bridge, I was sure.

I affixed the little side-view mirror to the shades I had on and stepped out of the car. Almost every inch of me was covered in something: thermal underwear, work boots, the wool turtleneck sweater, the peacoat, the balaclava, the neoprene gloves. I put the chain over my neck, secured the bike helmet over the balaclava, and set the box of styrofoam peanuts on the ground. I took the bike out of the trunk, propped it against the car, and looked around. There were a couple of pickup basketball games going on at the park. Construction on a nearby street. No one was paying me any attention. I waited for a break in the traffic, for the intermittent clusters of passing pedestrians to thin, and then picked up the box by a plastic strap across its top and walked the bike away from the car. The box was large and awkward, but with only styrofoam peanuts inside, it weighed almost nothing. I had stripped off all the labeling; the box was now bare, and there was no way to tell what was inside it.

Two blocks from the car, I got on the bike and rode it one-handed to Mott, just another bike messenger in eclectic cold-weather gear, a heavy chain across my chest, peddling an old bicycle I’d painted ugly like all the messengers do so no one would want to steal it. I rolled slowly down the street, checking the hot spots, finding nothing out of place. Like the last time I was here, daylight mirrored the exterior of the glass door, making the apartment corridor invisible from the sidewalk. The call box in front of the apartment was once again festooned with notices from deliverymen, and I nodded, satisfied to have one less thing to worry about.

I leaned the bike against the wall of the apartment building, to the left of the door, the side that would open when Accinelli unlocked it. I set the box down and arranged the chain around the bicycle frame but didn’t actually lock it. I wouldn’t have cared if someone stole the bike right then, and I certainly didn’t want to have to waste time unlocking it when this was done. I just needed something to look busy with for the few minutes I waited for Accinelli.

I faced north on Mott, expecting him to arrive from the south side as he had before. The little side-view mirror gave me an excellent view of the street to my rear. From Accinelli’s standpoint, it would seem that my back was to him, that I was paying him no attention at all.

A minute later, I saw him turn the corner from Prince, heading toward me on my side of the street, gradually growing larger in the side view. A hot rush of adrenaline spread out from my gut and my heart started kicking. I glanced ahead and saw no problems.

I watched him come closer in the mirror. A charcoal suit today, and a yellow tie. His keys came out, like last time. Ten yards. Five. Three.

Just as he hit the bottom of the stairs, I straightened and picked up the box, struggling with it, exaggerating its heft and awkwardness. I turned toward him. He was at the top of the stairs now. I started up behind him. He put the key in the door and turned it. I was one step below him now. He pushed the door open.

“Can you hold that for me for a sec?” I asked, stepping across the threshold and thereby not giving him much of a choice.

I saw a second’s uncertainty ripple across his expression. Letting a stranger into a New York apartment building is a no-no. But with the outfit, the helmet, the box, I looked legit. And it would have been impolite to not even hold the door, to leave me standing outside in the cold with that heavy, awkward parcel. I knew that somewhere, deep in his instincts, he was wondering why the bike messenger didn’t just buzz the apartment of whoever the big box was for. But because more than anything else he wanted to end this transaction quickly, to get inside and be on his way with the least fuss possible, he would tell himself that surely I would have, could have, buzzed the apartment, but just happened to see him there, opening the door, and hoped he would be kind enough to help me….

“Sure,” he said, stepping to the right and holding the door as I passed him.

“Appreciate it,” I said, looking ahead over the box. A straight, plaster-walled corridor, empty. The only danger of interruption, someone coming down the elevator or in from the street. But at a little before noon, the middle of the workday, and with only thirty units in the building, the risk was small, and in any event unavoidable.

I set the box down next to the wall on my left with a grunt, leaving only a narrow space for Accinelli to get by me on the other side. I stood there as though catching my breath, ready for him to squeeze past.

Sudden, sickening doubt hammered me in the gut. A series of thoughts shot through my mind in preconscious shorthand, laser sharp and klaxon loud, the entire message delivered and received in a millisecond:

The whole thing’s a setup. There’s no mistress. Accinelli’s on the payroll. They staged it so you would follow him here, where he could take you out.

I spun counterclockwise to face him, my hands up, so sure I would be facing a gun or knife that as I came about and saw something in his fist, I didn’t stop, I just slapped it aside with my left hand. At the instant I made contact and the object broke loose to my left, I saw what it had been: his keys, and no more than that.
Oh, shit.

The keys flew through the air. Accinelli’s head tracked them as they bounced off the corridor wall and hit the floor, his mouth wide open in surprise.

Oh, shit,
I thought again. My paranoia had finally taken me over the edge. The setup had been so perfect—he’d been a half-second away from stepping past me, unconcernedly giving me his back. Now his expression was hardening, his arms coming up, his body blading to the left, the old soldier’s instincts kicking in, readying him to fight.

I wasn’t worried about whether I could handle him; I knew I could. But if I’d lost the element of surprise, if he fought me, there was no way it was going to look natural.

Decades of experience and underlying instinct took over. I stepped back and in a high voice said, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I thought…I thought you had a knife. Oh, my God, another flashback, I can’t believe this. I was mugged once, and…I’m so sorry.”

He looked at me, confused and incredulous. No doubt part of his mind was still screaming that I was a threat, but if I were, why had I stepped back instead of pressing the attack? And my manner now was passive, even submissive in the abjectness of my tone and my apologies. Before he had a chance to put it all together, I said, “Here, let me just pick those up for you. I’m so sorry.”

“No!” he said, his hands still up, palms forward. “No, it’s fine. I’ll get them myself.” He turned and took a step toward where the keys had landed.

“No, really,” I said, moving with him, the words tumbling out in urgent cadences. “I feel so bad. I can’t believe this happened to me again. It’s so embarrassing. The hospital told me with the medications it wouldn’t, and it’s been three months since the last one so why would I expect a problem? But I guess I should have…”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he said, now thoroughly convinced I was insane, and no doubt wanting more than ever just to be away from me.

I didn’t stop my agitated rant for a second. It’s difficult to talk and attack at the same time. The average person needs to get his mind right, focus, concentrate first, even if only for a moment. Accinelli would recognize this, on some level, and would therefore find my mad logorrhea comforting by comparison with what he’d feared a moment before.

He picked up his keys and shouldered past me. He kept his head turned toward me for an extra-long beat as he moved by, but I showed him my hands, palms forward, my arms held back, to demonstrate my harmlessness, and kept up my blathering.

Finally, his head turned. At the instant I was in his blind side, I shot in and looped my right arm around his neck, yanking him toward me, getting him back on his heels, off his base. The inside of my elbow centered on his windpipe, just hard enough for positioning, not hard enough to crush anything. I caught my left biceps in my right palm, brought my left hand around to the back of his head, and squeezed. I had learned the technique at the Kodokan as
hadaka jime,
naked choke, better known in the West as a sleeper hold.

Accinelli grunted and backed into me, trying to get his weight under him, to find his balance. His left hand scratched at my right forearm but found only the slippery neoprene gauntlet of the bicycle glove. He dropped his keys and reached back with his right, by instinct or long-ago training going for my eyes, but I buried my face in his shoulder and his scrabbling fingers were stymied by the bicycle helmet.

It was over in less than five seconds. Some people last a bit longer, some a bit shorter, but no one can go very long once the carotids have been closed off and oxygen is no longer reaching the brain. His groping hands abruptly fell away and he slumped in my arms. I leaned back against the wall, supporting some of his weight with my body, and held him there.

I was very conscious of how much pressure I was using. In the heat of the moment, it would be easy to apply too much, which at a minimum would cause bruises. The purpose of the choke was just to deny his brain oxygen. Anything more than that was unnecessary and would leave signs. I had a lot of experience with
hadaka jime
from my judo days, and always had a knack for it. I could feel just how firmly to squeeze.

I remained like that, controlling my breathing, counting off the seconds. Someone might have come down the elevator or in through the door, but the possibility didn’t trouble me. If it happened, I would just drop Accinelli, walk away, and deal with Hilger and everything else afterward. In any event, there was nothing I could do to influence, let alone control, the eventuality. I knew how I would react if it happened and that was enough.

I imagined what would come next: his mistress tries him on his cell phone, then checks downstairs when there’s no answer. Or some other resident finds him here. No sign of foul play—no gunshot, stab wounds, or blunt trauma—and therefore no justification to expend resources on an autopsy. There would be questions, of course, but he was a prominent man, and his family would be only too eager to close the matter quickly and obscure the details of where he died and what he might have been doing there. The cause would remain unknown, and would probably be treated as an embolism or some other such story that doctors proffer to families to help them find closure when death can’t otherwise be explained.

After four minutes, I knew he was past any attempt at resuscitation. I eased him down on the floor and looked outside. Two women in wool coats and fur earmuffs walked by, laughing about something, maybe on their way to an early lunch. I watched them pass. No one else was coming. Okay.

I picked up the box and stepped outside. I left the keys where they had fallen. Logical enough that Accinelli had been holding them when he was struck down by his mysterious embolic event, and that they would wind up on the floor beside him.

I headed down the stairs, glancing south on Mott as I moved. All clear. I glanced north. Then, only by virtue of years of experience, I turned my head away and continued down the stairs as though I had noticed nothing of any relevance.

What I had noticed, in fact, was the blond guy from Saigon. Hilger’s backup. And he was walking straight toward me.

D
OX WAS STANDING
next to his cot, doing isometric exercises against his chains. He knew from the sounds on the boat that they were in a port somewhere; that, unusually, three of them were off the boat; that the one who’d stayed behind was Uncle Fester. Despite knowing it was a victory for the psycho, he couldn’t help feeling dread. Fester was going to give him the “surprise” now, he could feel it. That, or something worse.

Things were quiet for a while, and then he heard Fester’s footsteps, coming down the stairs, heading his way. He sat up on the cot and pulled futilely against the chains, not for the first time. Goddamnit, if there had been just a little more slack. He’d thought a hundred times about improvising a weapon, something sharp, but there wasn’t a single thing in the cabin, not a doorstop or a window crank, the workings in the toilet tank, nothing. With a weapon, he might, just might, have had a chance. But as it was, he couldn’t stand straight, he could barely fucking move, he couldn’t even defend himself against Fester’s knees and elbows when the psycho paid him a visit, how the hell was he going to take the man out like he needed to?

Fester looked in through the window, then opened the door. He was carrying a large canvas bag and smiling, and Dox thought,
Nothing good can come of this.

“I was just thinking about you, Uncle Fester,” Dox said.

Fester smiled. “Yeah? I’m glad I didn’t find you touching yourself, then. It would have been embarrassing.”

“Well, funny you should say that, ’cause that’s exactly the thing I was thinking about. I was wondering if you’d ever had any kind of psychosexual workup. I think you might be intrigued by the insights. Did you know that eighty-five percent of people with an inclination to torture were bed wetters and fire setters?”

Fester’s eyes narrowed and his ears flattened against his scalp, and Dox was pleasantly surprised. He was making this shit up as he went along, but who could say what kind of fucked-up childhood might produce an adult specimen like Uncle Fester? Anyway, it seemed like he’d just hit a nerve.

“No,” Fester said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s all in the
New England Journal of Medicine
and the
Harvard Psychiatric Review.
You ought to read the articles, you could learn something about your nature.”

“Yeah,
cabrón
? I wonder why you enjoy reading those articles.”

“Oh, psychos like you are a hobby of mine. For example, did you know that almost eighty percent of soldiers who volunteered for work as interrogators in World War Two were denied the necessary security clearances because the tests proved they were latent homosexuals? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. Gay será, será.”

Fester smiled and one of his eyes twitched. “Remember how we talked about these?” he said, reaching into the bag and taking out a car battery and alligator clips. “When we waterboarded you and you screamed like a girl. It made me think…why not?”

“Oh, Fester, you shouldn’t have. Sharing your toys with me like this, it’s touching.”

“Keep talking, motherfucker. It’s a nice warm-up for screaming.”

Dox smiled, continuing to play the game, but inside he felt a rush of adrenaline at the possibility that had just suggested itself. So this was the “surprise.” Fester wasn’t going to settle for a few well-balanced pops today. He wanted to use electricity, instead, which would involve getting close and staying close while he fucked around with a bunch of wires.

No one else was on the boat. There was never going to be a better chance.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” Dox said. “Don’t you ever wonder why you enjoy this shit so much? Or were you afraid if people found out about it back in old Mexico they’d have turned you out good and made you somebody’s bitch? And the worst part is—admit now, it’s just the two of us—you secretly wish somebody would.”

Fester smiled his psychopath smile again. “Turn around,
cabrón.
”

“Sorry, amigo, but giving my back to someone with your documented proclivities would likely spoil my whole weekend.”

“Turn around,
cabrón.
Or I’ll turn you around.”

Dox felt a dip in the boat that told him someone had just stepped onto it. Then footsteps on the stairs.
Shit.
He’d been so close to provoking Fester into a heedless charge. Well, maybe he could cause a little more animosity, enough to guarantee another encounter like this one.

“Come on, Fester, tell me the truth. You like those photos, don’t you? Where the men are wearing black leather masks and holding cat-o’-nine tails? Maybe some Nazi SS uniforms, you know what I’m talking about, the good stuff. I’ll bet you’ve got yourself a collection, I’ll bet you know all the best Internet sites.”

Fester’s face went white and Dox thought,
Damn, I’ve nailed you dead to rights, you damn pervert.

The door opened and the young-looking guy walked in. He looked at Fester, then at the battery he was holding. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Fester said. “Why are you back so soon?”

“What’s with the battery?” the young guy asked, his expression indicating he had a good idea of the answer and didn’t like it at all.

“Uncle Fester finds gratification in getting in some extra licks when he thinks no one’s looking,” Dox said. “This is just the first time he’s been caught in the act. You are all aware he’s homosexual, right? Ask him about his photo collection.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Fester snarled, and took a step toward Dox.

The young guy had a gun in his hands, and was pointing it at Fester, so fast it seemed like a magic trick. Dox blinked, wondering for a second whether he was seeing this right.

“I can’t allow that,” the young guy said, his voice perfectly calm.

“Mind your own fucking business,” Fester said, and the look in his eyes was so hate-filled and dangerous that Dox decided the young guy had shown first-rate judgment in not waiting to draw his weapon.

“I am,” the young guy said, still in the same no-nonsense tone. “And you’ll thank me for it later, when you’ve had a chance to cool off. For now, I want you to back up and go through that door. If you do anything other than comply with my clear instructions, I will shoot you dead.”

For one second, the room was perfectly silent. Then Dox said, “This is a difficult way to come out of the closet, Fester, but there are organizations that can help you with the transition. Hotlines, things like that. You just have to…”

The young guy took a step back. Keeping the gun on Fester, he turned his head to Dox. “You, shut the fuck up,” he said, and something in his tone made Dox decide he ought to comply.

Fester backed out as directed, and the young guy followed a moment later. Dox heard the door lock, then their footsteps going up the stairs.

He sat there for a long time after, thinking. He wasn’t sure whether he’d just created an opportunity for himself, or a death sentence. The one thing he did know was the next time Fester managed to be alone on the boat with him, he was going to find out.