The Last Assassin (22 page)

I
NEEDED TO CLEAR
my head, so I drove the van into Jingumae and parked, then made my way to a place I liked there called Volontaire. Coffeehouse by day and bar by night, Volontaire opened in 1977, around the time I returned to Tokyo following the late unpleasantness of my mercenary days, and I'd spent some time there while living in the city. Hidden on the second floor of a dilapidated wedge of a building off Meiji-dori, Volontaire is the ultimate neighborhood place, seating fewer than a dozen people on faded red velour–covered stools tucked up against a peeling L-shaped counter, with the space behind the bar given over more to a couple thousand vinyl jazz albums than to bottles of booze, and featuring a bathroom so tiny that its door folds in half so as to avoid banging into the toilet and sink inside.

I navigated up the spiral staircase bolted to the building's façade and went through the tiny exterior door. The place hadn't changed at all, not at all. The mamasan was behind the bar, working the espresso machine. I recognized her from before, and, in keeping with the overall timelessness of the place, she seemed not to have aged: a smart, good-looking woman, probably in her fifties, but who could really say? She called out
irasshaimase
—welcome—without looking up. When she saw me a moment later, she smiled and said,
“Hisashiburi desu ne.”
It's been a long time.

That's the problem with the really great bars. They remember their customers.

“So da ne,”
I said, offering agreement without inviting conversation, and went in. The door closed behind me and the sounds of traffic outside faded away.

The place was half full—it was lunchtime, not yet coffee hour—and I took a stool along the short end of the bar. Alto sax Lou Donaldson's “Light Foot” was playing, and the album was displayed face out on one of the shelves for all to see. Volontaire's customers come for the music as much as the atmosphere, and like to know what they're listening to.

I ordered the house blend and a roast beef sandwich, then let the smell of the beans, the assured notes of Donaldson's sax, and that wonderful feeling of being alone in a place with some history and gravitas, open my mind and help me start to think.

I hoped I was doing the right thing. Not just in asking for Delilah's help, but in the entire enterprise. I'd started off hoping to see Midori and my son and now found myself in a war, struggling simply to get back to the status quo antebellum. Every move I made seemed to hold in equal measure the promise of a complete fix and the threat of the worst possible outcome.

And I'd been hiding from that outcome, I'd been refusing to face it. Even when Tatsu had brought it up in the hospital, saying how afraid he was that he might have put my son in danger, I'd cut him off with some bromide about how we were just going to make everything all right.

But maybe we weren't. Things went wrong in war, they always did. You could manage the influence of luck and chance but never eliminate them as factors. And if my luck turned sour now, or if I did something sloppy like what had happened in Manila not so long ago…

Say it, goddamnit. Face it.

Midori and my tiny boy would be slaughtered before I could even try to stop it. And it would be my fault.

A chill swept through me as the reality of the concept settled into my gut, my bones.

For the first time, I was facing a real risk, so much so that suddenly all the risks I'd ever run previously felt like silly games by comparison. Up until now, the only chips I'd ever laid on the table had been my own. This time, if I lost a round, my son's life was the collateral to be foreclosed.

I recognized that in some ways I was making a mistake thinking about it. If you focus on the risks, they'll multiply in your mind and eventually paralyze you. You want to focus on the task, instead, on doing what needs to be done.

So why was I tormenting myself like this? It was counterproductive, it was…

You know why.

I sighed. There was an alternative. And I had to face it squarely, choose it or discard it deliberately and consciously. Otherwise I was never going to be able to clear my mind and act decisively.

Saturday night, I could walk right up to Yamaoto and blow my own brains out in front of his eyes. Then we'd be quits. Any motivation he or the Chinese might have to harm Midori or my son would end with their ability to harm me thereby. It would be the closest thing possible to a guarantee of their safety.

I didn't want to do it. If I had to do it, if I knew it was the only way, I would. But how could I, while there was still a chance of succeeding by something less extreme?

My own father died just after I turned eight. I grew up without him, and his loss and subsequent absence were the first and perhaps most significant of the scars that shaped what I became. What would it be like for my own son to grow up without me? Would the lack of a father harm him the way it had me? Or would it even make a difference, if I had never been there to begin with?

It didn't matter. My desire to be part of his life, and to have him as part of mine, had impelled me to risk seeing Midori in the first place. My feelings in that regard were as strong now as ever.

Besides, I could hold suicide in reserve. If at any time I concluded it was my only means of preventing harm to my son, I would do it willingly, gratefully. But not now. Not while there was still a chance of a better way.

I'd talk to Dox, though, make sure he knew how to get my share of what we'd taken at Wajima to Midori and Koichiro. Just in case.

I realized I might have been rationalizing. I didn't care. I wasn't going to offer Yamaoto my life until I'd taken my best shot at ending his.

I felt something closing into place in my mind, the old emotional bulkheads, sealing up everything behind them, enabling me to do what I needed to. A part of me was appalled that I retained the ability even under the current circumstances. But I also knew from long experience that it was the only way to get the job done.

I looked down and saw I hadn't touched my coffee or sandwich. Enough. I fueled up and started thinking about the tools we would need for tomorrow night.

T
HAT EVENING
, I went to see Dox at the Prince in Shinagawa. I stopped at the incongruous Dean & DeLuca on the way and picked up sandwiches and side dishes for three.

He opened the door when I knocked and looked behind me. “Where's your lady?”

“Coming soon, as far as I know. Don't call her that.”

I walked in and he closed the door behind me. “You have a fight?” he asked.

“I don't know what's going on.”

“You must be making her sullen again.”

“I guess so.”

“You keep this up, she's going to defect to me. And you won't be able to blame me when it happens.”

I rubbed my sore thigh. “You can have her.”

“Sorry, man, that must have been a bad fight you had.”

I started taking the food from the bags and putting it on the desk.

“Mmm, that smells tasty,” Dox said. “But I guess we ought to wait for your lady.”

I glared at him, only to meet the irrepressible grin.

While we waited for Delilah, I took out the plans and drew a grid over them. Top to bottom, I lettered A through K. Left to right, I numbered one through twenty-four. When I was done, we had a convenient and reliable way of discussing every position in the club.

A few minutes later, there was a knock. Dox looked through the peephole, then opened the door. It was Delilah.

“Well, hello there,” he said. “Ain't you a sight for sore eyes.”

She was, too. She was wearing a black cocktail dress made of some kind of embroidered lace, with a satin capelet thrown over her shoulders. She had on high-heeled shoes, but not stilettos, which would have been too much, and was carrying a black silk, beaded evening bag. Her hair was pulled back, and she had employed just a little smoky gray eye shadow and a hint of gloss on her lips.

“Dox,” she said, smiling. She came in and he closed the door behind her. Then she turned and kissed him on both cheeks, European style. I saw the dress had an exceptionally low-cut, open back. The revealed skin and musculature of her back was gasp-inducingly erotic, and the material below hugged her ass exactly right—as though her body, not the dress, was responsible for the arresting effect. The overall impression was sophisticated, confident, and sexy as hell.

I saw Dox blushing from the kiss and could have laughed. She'd had that effect on him the first time he saw her in Phuket, and it had never gone away.

“Honey,” he said, “if they don't offer you a job on the spot tonight, they are either crazy or blind or both.”

Her smiled widened. She looked him over and said, “You kept the beard off. You look great.”

“Well, someone once told me I have good bones, and that was the end of that.”

She laughed, then turned to me and nodded. I nodded back.

The room was noticeably quiet for a moment. Dox looked at Delilah, then at me. “I don't mean to pry,” he said, “but I'm detecting some animosity in the air. Is this little tiff the two of you seem to be having going to make it hard for us to work together?”

Delilah and I looked at each other and said in stereo, “No.”

Dox nodded. “Good, I feel reassured already.”

The room was quiet for another moment. To fill the silence, I said to Delilah, “You look good. You bring that outfit with you?”

She shook her head. “There are so many French designers in Tokyo, I might as well have been shopping in Paris.”

I passed out sandwiches and we ate sitting on the double beds. Dox did a nice job of keeping the conversation going, asking Delilah what she thought of Tokyo, things like that.

“I like it,” she said. “I slept for a few hours, then spent the afternoon and evening shopping and riding the trains. For some reason I didn't expect to see so many westerners.”

“Depends on where you are in the city,” I said. “Where we're going to be operating, you won't look out of place at all. In some of the eastern and outlying areas, you would.”

She nodded. “I did a walk-through past the club. Minami Aoyama is what, upscale boutiques and restaurants?”

“That's about right,” I said. “Classy and cool. Perfect venue for Whispers.”

“Right next to Roppongi, too,” Dox added. “Which is my favorite part of town.”

Roppongi is one of the city's entertainment districts, the premier place for foreign men chasing Japanese women, and Japanese women who want to be chased.

Delilah looked at him. “I've heard about Roppongi. I strolled around a bit, but it didn't seem like much.”

Dox grinned. “It's different at night.”

Delilah smiled. “I reckon it is,” she said in her best Southern drawl.

That broke Dox up. I didn't share his reaction.

“All right, here's the plan,” I said. “Delilah, you go to the club tonight. You want to get inside and see as much as possible. Ideally, you'll find a way to get invited back for tomorrow night, when Yamaoto will be there with Big Liu. But at a minimum, you can confirm certain critical details just by getting inside tonight.”

“How confident are you that I'm going to be able to just walk in there?” she asked. “From the way you've described the place, it sounds like they're pretty careful people.”

“There's no way to find out except to try,” I said. “But I have a feeling it'll be easier than you think. It's not a big cash business, so they're not concerned about getting knocked over. Even if there were a lot of cash, it's a yakuza operation, who's going to rob it? And whatever other trouble they might be looking for and trying to screen out, it doesn't look like you.”

“What about language? I speak about three words of Japanese.”

“English will be fine. Almost all their members will speak at least a little. And even if their English is terrible, it'll make them feel cosmopolitan to use it with you.”

Dox added, “I've, uh, heard there are plenty of foreign hostesses in Japan who don't speak Japanese. 'Course I don't know for sure. John's really the one to ask about that.”

I shot him a look, then said to Delilah, “In fact…in fact, you should stay with French. It'll make you that much more exotic, and anyone there using English will be more comfortable talking in front of you if they think you can't understand. Yeah, whoever you encounter, try French first, and if they can't understand it, switch to basic, struggling, screwed-up, heavily accented English. Play it right and they might actually start to feel protective, want to take care of you.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Now, assuming you can get in, and I think you can, the things we're most interested in at this point are ways of ingress and egress, whether doors open in or out, presence of emergency lighting systems…”

“I know how to case a room.”

Whatever tensions we were dealing with personally, I wasn't going to let them cause us to go about this half-assed.

“I know you do,” I said. “But can we go through this anyway? It'll help me feel sure I'm not missing anything.”

She caught the reference to the conversation we'd had on the way from the airport and knew I was being diplomatic to the point of sarcasm. But she also knew I was right. She nodded and said nothing.

I unfolded the floor plans and spread them out on the bed. “Here's the club,” I said. “Familiarize yourself with the layout. We need to confirm that these plans are current and otherwise accurate, and to know all the relevant aspects of the local terrain that don't show up here in two dimensions.”

She gave me a slow nod that said,
I'm not stupid, you know.

“I'm not talking down to you,” I said, trying to rein in my frustration. “I know you know all this. But it's better to say it out loud and not to assume. You know that, too.”

Dox said, “He does it to me all the time, too. He's a repressed man, and I've come to realize that micromanagement is one of his few ways of expressing affection. Once you realize that, you'll actually start to like it. I know I do.”

Delilah closed her eyes and laughed. I supposed I should have been grateful to Dox for managing the tension in the room, but it was irritating to see them getting along like old friends while I could hardly find anything to say to her that didn't provoke an angry response.

“Start with the entrance,” I said. “How do you get in? Do the doors open freely, or does someone need to buzz you in from inside? Is there a camera out front? Security? All I could see when I reconnoitered was a pair of valets.”

I pointed to the plans. “Now we go inside. This space inside the front entrance—I would guess there's a hostess or hostesses waiting there, probably to check coats and lead customers into the club itself. There might also be security. Maybe an additional set of doors. And here, this small room opposite the entrance doors. Probably a back office. It would be good to know what and who is in there.”

“Got it.”

“Now this big space,” I said. “Presumably it's the main room. I'm guessing tables, booths…Is it cluttered? Spacious? Are there clear fields of fire? If there are obstructions, I want to know where.”

“Okay.”

“These rooms here, off the main room,” I said, pointing to the plans again, “my guess is that they're for private meetings, like the one Yamaoto is hosting tomorrow night. One is bigger than the other, but we don't know how much of an entourage he's going to have, so I don't know which he's likely to use, if he uses one at all. And this room here, probably a kitchen.”

She looked at the plans. “No kitchen entrance?”

“Not according to the plans.”

“Where do they take the garbage out?”

“I don't know. My guess is, they take it out the front after hours. But I'll check out the exterior and grounds to make sure.”

She nodded.

I pointed to another area. “There are two emergency exits—here off the main room, and here in the basement. The exterior basement stairs lead to the same side of the building where the front entrance is located, so Dox can cover both the main entrance and the basement emergency exit simultaneously. But the main room exit goes out the other side of the building. We're going to need to find a way to close it off to make sure anyone who gets past me has to cross Dox's field of fire on the way out. Anything you can tell us about the exit doors would be useful.”

“Okay.”

“Now this staircase leads down to the basement level, which is restrooms, a utility room, and again that emergency exit. See if you can use a bathroom break to get into the utility room. My source tells me that code for this building requires emergency lighting run off a backup generator. I need to know what they're using and whether you can disable it tomorrow night. And regardless, look around for stand-alone battery-operated units, especially in stairwells and above doorways. If they're already required by the building code to have a generator system, I doubt they'd go to the expense of installing stand-alone units, too, but we have to know.”

“Okay.”

“The final thing is cameras. They probably don't have any overt ones, except again possibly one monitoring the front entrance. The place is supposed to be the ultimate in discretion, and obvious security cameras inside would spoil the ambience. But they might have some less obvious ones. Here's something that will help you spot them if they do.”

I took out the custom-made, pocket-sized bug detector Harry had made for me before he died, and handed it to Delilah. “Here. It picks up the horizontal oscillator frequency radiated by video cameras. It's not exactly a divining rod, but it'll give you an idea.”

Delilah hefted it in her hand and looked at it approvingly. “Nice.”

“I'd like it back, if possible. It's one of a kind. And it has sentimental value.”

Dox started to break out into the grin. “You? Sentimental?”

I looked at him, thinking of Harry. “Is there a problem?” I asked.

The grin retreated. “No problem.”

I looked at Delilah, then Dox. “Questions? Comments?”

Delilah said, “So Plan A is for Dox to drop Yamaoto as he leaves his car and enters the club. The rest of this is all Plan B.”

“That's right. But Plan A is nothing to count on here. You've seen the street the club is on. There aren't many places we can position Dox for a shot at the front entrance. There's no parking on the street, so we can't set him up in the van. There's a building site near Aoyamadori that might work, but even then the angle is such that he'll only have a second to make the shot. Yamaoto travels in an armored Mercedes, and he'll probably have a phalanx of bodyguards. Unless he lingers for a few moments outside the entrance, we won't be able to get to him until he's inside.”

“Yeah,” Dox said. “Plan B is the new Plan A.”