Requiem for an Assassin

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