Requiem for an Assassin

selfishness, a contagion of insecure conceit. I hated them. I hated all of them.
    “You there?” I heard Kanezaki ask.
    “Yeah.”
    “If you don’t mind my saying, and you probably will, you seem like you’re on a short fuse lately.”
    “You’re right, I mind.”
    “I’m only bringing it up because…”
    “Because what?”
    “Never mind.”
    “What? Just say it.”
    He sighed. “Don’t push away the people who are trying to help you. You can’t afford it. And neither can our friend who’s in trouble.”
    “Oh, now you’re trying to help me. Not use me. Help me.”
    “Look, there’s something I want out of this, yes. I’ve been upfront with you about it. But that doesn’t mean…”
    “That’s exactly what it means,” I shouted. “Exactly. When are you going to grow up and realize you can’t fucking have it both ways?”
    I slammed down the phone and clenched my hands into fists, fighting the urge to smash something. A sound rumbled up out of my throat. It might have been a snarl.
    I looked up and saw three husky college kids watching from five yards away. White, dressed like gangsta wannabes. I realized they had stopped because of my outburst.
    “Chill, dude,” one of them said.
    I stood perfectly still. Inside, a war raged: the need to avoid trouble so I could focus on Dox; the overwhelming urge to slaughter the three creatures looking at me like I was an animal in the zoo. I imagined myself tearing into them like a lawn mower up on its back wheels, slashing, ripping, gutting. I could almost hear their high-pitched wails of terror and surprise, could practically smell the hot blood pouring out of them. I gritted my teeth into an insane smile and stood staring at them, panting with the effort of holding back, praying for one of them to say something, do something, to tip the balance and make me lose control.
    One of them smacked Mr. Chill on the back of the head and gave him a shove. “Let’s go, man,” he said. And Mr. Chill, perhaps guided by some reptile-brain recognition of the image of a predator just before it pounces, nodded and silently complied. The three of them walked away, and somehow I managed to let them.
    I glanced around. A few other people in the area were studiously looking elsewhere. Goddamnit, I’d drawn attention to myself. Stupid. I pulled out a handkerchief and wiped down the phone receiver, obscuring the act with my torso, then walked away, keeping my head down.
    I found another pay phone and called the toll-free number for Hilton hotels. Their property in Beverly Hills had a room available tonight, did I want that? I told them I did, and would be there shortly. One night was fine. I was just passing through.
    I had the car for a week anyway, so I decided to hold on to it. It beat figuring out the bus system, or trying to get around by cabs. I had nowhere to go for two days. I might as well stay here.
    The nav system took me onto the Santa Monica Boulevard and east toward Beverly Hills. I drove through alternating patches of feeble yellow light and serene urban darkness, the interior of the Mercedes strobing weakly with each passing lamppost. Fragments without were illuminated, revealed, then gone again: a shuffling homeless man, glancing up at me as indifferently as a sea creature outside a passing bathysphere. Shuttered storefronts, graffitied walls, construction sites suffocating under profusions of slapped-on posters. A homeless woman, sunk to her side in the shadows, her head in her hands, another soul swallowed up by the city.
    A few miles from the hotel, as concrete gave way to palm trees and graffiti to the shiny windows of boutiques, I turned on my old cell phone to check the voice-mail account. Part of me hoped for a message from Delilah. Part of me dreaded it.
    What I got, though, wasn’t a message. Just a second after I fired up the phone, it buzzed. I checked the readout, surprised, and saw that Delilah was calling me right then.
    I hesitated for two full rings. Then I picked up and said, “Hey.”
    “You’re hard to reach,” she said. “And you don’t return calls.”
    I thought of several things to say. What came out was just, “Sorry.”
    “You know how many times I’ve called you, hoping I’d catch you with your phone on?”
    “A lot, I’m getting the feeling.”
    “Any news?”
    “Some. He’s okay for now.”
    “Did you meet with…”
    “I met him.”
    “And?”
    “I learned a few things. But not enough.”
    “Where