The Last Assassin

devoid of plan or purpose. I just wanted to walk, to keep moving.
    I couldn't get the image of Koichiro's face out of my mind. He was so small, so innocent in his sleep. So helpless.
    Midori had been right to keep me away. The thought that my presence could put my little son in danger horrified me.
    But you can change,
I told myself.
Maybe you already have. There's a way out. All you have to do is find it. For Koichiro.
    I walked. Of course I could do it. Wasn't this what I'd been looking for? What Tatsu had always told me I needed? What was it he'd said in Tokyo the last time I saw him:
You know as well as I do that you need a connection, you need something to pull you off the nihilistic path you've been treading.
    Well, maybe this was it, just as he'd contended.
    I could still smell Midori, still taste her on my lips. She'd been upset when she first saw me, true, but she'd left the door open just now, no doubt about that. All I had to do was figure out the right way to walk through it. I thought of Koichiro again. God, this could really work out. It could.
    When I was fifteen feet from the end of the block, I heard footsteps from around the corner. I looked up and
pow,
before I could do anything about it, there was Eddie Wong, turning onto Waverly from Tenth right in front of me. And I'd thrown away that fucking wig.
Stupid. Stupid.
    If I'd been myself at that moment, I could have reacted more effectively. I would have turned my face away, retracted my antenna, passed without his even knowing.
    But I wasn't myself. My body was back on the street, but my mind was still in Midori's apartment, digging out from under an avalanche of hope. Instead of looking away, for a second I stared straight at him, like a man unable to avert his eyes from the scene of a grisly accident.
    He looked at me, too. And the recognition hardening on his face was undeniable. I realized he was seeing the same expression on mine.
    No
, I thought,
no, fuck no…
    Wong slowed down, his mind no doubt struggling to sort it all through. Whatever planning he had done had probably gone on the assumption that he would spot me surreptitiously, not that we would suddenly spot each other. His body was responding to his unconscious wish for more time, for a few more precious seconds to decide what to do.
    I decided faster. It wasn't even a decision as such, more a reflex honed by a lifetime of killing. A reflex that had been delayed by my unaccustomed emotional state, but that now, as I recognized the threat to Midori and my child, snapped ferociously into place.
    I went straight for him. As I closed the distance, his right hand moved to his coat pocket, probably where he kept the Balisong he was reputed to carry.
    There's value to favoring a certain weapon and to practicing with it regularly. But there's a potential downside, too: you can come to rely on it, and to try to reach for it, when you would have been better off doing something else. This is why cops are often killed by knifers with their guns half out of their holsters. The cop sees the knife coming, but is so dependent on his pistol that he fails to recognize he's not going to have time to deploy it before he's already being stabbed. If someone has the jump on you, the better tactic is to create distance or otherwise slow down the attack and then access your favored weapon so that you'll actually have a chance to use it. Otherwise, the gun in your holster might as well have been in a safe back home.
    But apparently Wong didn't know all that. He reached for the Balisong, and while he was reaching for it, I reached him.
    I stepped in and blasted him across the front and right side of the neck with my right forearm, in the same instant catching his right bicep with my left hand. The neck shot might shock his brachial plexus and interrupt the functioning of his right arm. The bicep grab was backup.
    Wong grunted and straightened from the impact. I nailed him again with my forearm, and some of the rigidity flowed out of his body. Continuing to move in so I was facing him from his right side, I pushed his arm higher with the bicep grip and slipped my right hand to the back of his neck to arrest his backward movement. Then I yanked his head down and slammed my knee into his face. His head bounced and I kneed him in the face again. And again.
    I felt his body go slack. I kicked his feet out from under him and swept him to his back. He hit the pavement hard. I raised my foot and stomped his exposed