The Last Assassin

rain. That would clean things up. And who was going to pay any attention to a dark spot on a Hudson River dock anyway?
    I worked. I tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but my mind kept offering up images from Midori's apartment. My son in my arms. Midori's expression as she handed him to me. I looked down at what I was doing and the contrast made me feel sick. The hope and wondrous sense of possibility I'd felt just hours earlier were receding with each stab of the knife.
Just finish this. Just get through.
    The whole thing couldn't have taken longer than a minute, but it seemed like more. When I was done, I pocketed the knife and paused, kneeling, to catch my breath. I leaned my head back and breathed the cold air and tried not to think at all.
    I heard a car coming south on the access road paralleling the highway. I looked over and saw the outline of police flashers eighty yards away. A spotlight was trained over the water.
    Oh, shit.
Without another thought, I rolled Wong into the river and vaulted in after him.
    I hung on to the edge of the pier with my fingertips, but even so I was dangling past my waist in freezing water. The cold hit my testicles like a blow and I struggled not to gasp.
    I heard the car coming closer, closer. It seemed to be taking forever. Were they slowing? Looking for something? At something?
    I looked down. Wong was already gone, sunk beneath the surface.
    I listened but couldn't hear anything. Had they stopped? The spotlight lit up the pier and I was sure they had. I pictured two cops coming toward me with guns drawn. There was nothing I could do but hang there and wait.
    Finally, the light moved on. I heard their tires moving past. I felt confused and couldn't tell how much time had gone by. I counted. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. When I reached thirty, I pulled myself back onto the pier. I dragged myself forward a few feet and lay there, exhausted. I couldn't feel my legs. If anyone came now I was doomed.
    But they were gone. After a minute, I sat up. I sucked wind and tried to massage some life back into my useless limbs. I was shivering and my teeth were chattering like an electric typewriter. I realized I was moaning.
    I heard another car coming. This time I recognized the lights and grille of Dox's pickup. I stood awkwardly and started stumbling toward him.
    He got out. The next thing I knew he had clapped an enormous arm across my back and was practically levitating me to the truck. He threw me into the passenger seat and a moment later we were back on the highway.
    'What the hell happened?' he asked.
    'C-Cops,' I said, through convulsively chattering teeth. 'Had to get in the water.'
    'Ah, Jesus, we've got to warm you up. You're bluer than old Wong back there. Can you get those pants off?'
    'Yeah.' I fumbled at the belt buckle but my fingers felt thick and useless.
    Dox turned the heat on full blast and angled the vents onto me. He drove and eventually I managed to get all the wet clothes off. I rolled them up around my shoes and tossed the bundle into the back. My skin had goose bumps the size of ski moguls. The heat blasting onto my naked thighs was a godsend.
    Dox glanced over. 'Son, you call that thing a penis? I don't know what fine ladies like Delilah and Midori find interesting in you, I really don't.'
    'You know…'
    'Yeah, yeah, I know, it was the cold water. That's what they all say.'
    I might have laughed, but my teeth were still chattering too hard.
    Dox, like any sensible-minded person who travels prepared for the worst, had a change of clothes in the truck. He also had water, food, a tent and sleeping bag, a medical kit, and about a thousand rounds of ammunition. The clothes were too big on me, but that would be a lot less noticeable than returning to the hotel naked.
    We dumped everything I'd been wearing, the blanket, and the tainted knives in a variety of sewers and dumpsters around town. When we were done, I realized I was famished. We stopped at a diner and I wolfed down a tureen of chicken soup and a mountainous pastrami sandwich. All the twenty-four-hour places in New York were certainly handy if you had a job that kept you out at night.
    By the time Dox dropped me off near the Ritz, the sun was coming up and I was flat-out exhausted. I told him I'd call him later in the day, after I'd slept and could think clearly.
    I took the hottest shower I could stand to get the last traces of cold from my bones and the stench of blood and the Hudson from