Requiem for an Assassin

datapoints until there were enough for a breakthrough.
    How. How.
    I could pretend everything went fine. Accinelli is dead, apparently of an embolism. Let me talk to Dox. Give me the particulars on the third target.
    But no, that would unsettle him. He’d learn soon enough about Mr. Blond. He might already suspect the worst, because his man sure as hell hadn’t reported in since I’d last seen him. He’d know I was gaming him somehow if I didn’t acknowledge what had happened.
    Play it straight, then. Accuse him, threaten him, fly off the handle. That’s what he’d be expecting, what he’d be ready for. If I gave him the predictable stimulus, he’d give me the predictable response.
    Which would be…what? I wasn’t sure. Some form of denying everything, stalling for time, finding a way to get at me again. He didn’t know I’d seen Mr. Blond in Saigon—if he did, he would have sent someone else to ambush me in New York—so he would probably believe he could bluff his way through.
    I’d insist on talking to Dox again, of course. And if Hilger wouldn’t let me? Well, that would mean only one thing. And I would spend the rest of my life finding a way to make him pay for it.
    I drove to the Great Neck Public Library and posted an update to Kanezaki. Then I called him from a pay phone. It wasn’t yet five in the morning there. Well, he was going to start his day early.
    The phone rang only once, then I heard his voice: “Yeah.”
    “What, do you sleep with that thing on your pillow?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “You need to check the bulletin board right away. All the particulars for the second person on the list are there now. But he’s already been taken care of. Things are moving fast.”
    “Already been…you did it again. You waited to tell me.”
    “I don’t have time to argue with you now. Remember the blond guy in the photos I sent you?”
    “Of course. I haven’t been able to find out anything.”
    “You’ll be able to now. He had a bad accident in New York City not two hours ago.”
    “Oh, God.”
    “Yeah, our friend sent him to anticipate me. I got lucky.”
    “Our friend…that means…”
    “Right. There’s no number three on the list. Or rather, I was number three.”
    “What about…”
    “I don’t know yet. But I’m hoping he’s still okay. He’s our friend’s leverage, remember? I’m going to set up another call to find out. But we’ll get to that in a minute. Are you up now? Are you listening?”
    “Of course,” he said, sounding as though my question might have offended his dignity.
    “Good. The blond guy was probably traveling sterile. But I have a strong feeling he was driving something, probably a van, that’s still parked on the street. If the cops were to find it, they might be able to associate it with a name. If we get a name, we can find out who applied for that visa to a certain Asian country recently. You following me?”
    “Of course,” he said again.
    I realized I was being too didactic. He wasn’t green anymore, and he’d never been stupid.
    “You haven’t had time to think about this yet,” I said. “I have. That’s the only reason I’m asking.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and I imagined a reluctant smile on the other end of the phone.
    “Anyway. If we have a name and visa application for Mr. Blond, we’ll be awfully close to our friend.”
    “Understood.”
    I paused, thinking there were other things. Christ, I needed to sleep.
    “What about those secondary effects we talked about?” I asked. “You know, the family.”
    “Almost done. I should have something later this morning.”
    “All right, great. One other thing that occurs to me. I have a feeling our friend knew the second guy on the list. They served in the same theater of operations, you’ll see that. I don’t know what it means, exactly, but…my gut tells me it’s significant. Part of the nexus we’re trying to establish.”
    “All right, good. I’ll follow up on that. What’s next?”
    “I’m going to send a message to our friend to set up another call. I’ll slow things down as best as I can, but if I don’t push to do the call quickly, he’ll smell a setup. So my guess is, if you can come up with a breakthrough about his location, we need it within forty-eight hours. No, less than that. Because I’m going to have to travel to wherever he is.”
    “Why don’t you leave now?”
    “I don’t know where…”
    “You don’t need to know, at