The Last Assassin

operating, you won't look out of place at all. In some of the eastern and outlying areas, you would.'
    She nodded. 'I did a walk-through past the club. Minami Aoyama is what, upscale boutiques and restaurants?'
    'That's about right,' I said. 'Classy and cool. Perfect venue for Whispers.'
    'Right next to Roppongi, too,' Dox added. 'Which is my favorite part of town.'
    Roppongi is one of the city's entertainment districts, the premier place for foreign men chasing Japanese women, and Japanese women who want to be chased.
    Delilah looked at him. 'I've heard about Roppongi. I strolled around a bit, but it didn't seem like much.'
    Dox grinned. 'It's different at night.'
    Delilah smiled. 'I reckon it is,' she said in her best southern drawl.
    That broke Dox up. I didn't share his reaction.
    'All right, here's the plan,' I said. 'Delilah, you go to the club tonight. You want to get inside and see as much as possible. Ideally, you'll find a way to get invited back for tomorrow night, when Yamaoto will be there with Big Liu. But at a minimum, you can confirm certain critical details just by getting inside tonight.'
    'How confident are you that I'm going to be able to just walk in there?' she asked. 'From the way you've described the place, it sounds like they're pretty careful people.'
    'There's no way to find out except to try,' I said. 'But I have a feeling it'll be easier than you think. It's not a big cash business, so they're not concerned about getting knocked over. Even if there were a lot of cash, it's a yakuza operation, who's going to rob it? And whatever other trouble they might be looking for and trying to screen out, it doesn't look like you.'
    'What about language? I speak about three words of Japanese.'
    'English will be fine. Almost all their members will speak at least a little. And even if their English is terrible, it'll make them feel cosmopolitan to use it with you.'
    Dox added, 'I've, uh, heard there are plenty of foreign hostesses in Japan who don't speak Japanese. 'Course I don't know for sure. John's really the one to ask about that.'
    I shot him a look, then said to Delilah, 'In fact… in fact, you should stay with French. It'll make you that much more exotic, and anyone there using English will be more comfortable talking in front of you if they think you can't understand. Yeah, whoever you encounter, try French first, and if they can't understand it, switch to basic, struggling, screwed-up, heavily accented English. Play it right and they might actually start to feel protective, want to take care of you.'
    She nodded. 'Okay.'
    'Now, assuming you can get in, and I think you can, the things we're most interested in at this point are ways of ingress and egress, whether doors open in or out, presence of emergency lighting systems…'
    'I know how to case a room.'
    Whatever tensions we were dealing with personally, I wasn't going to let them cause us to go about this half-assed.
    'I know you do,' I said. 'But can we go through this anyway? It'll help me feel sure I'm not missing anything.'
    She caught the reference to the conversation we'd had on the way from the airport and knew I was being diplomatic to the point of sarcasm. But she also knew I was right. She nodded and said nothing.
    I unfolded the floor plans and spread them out on the bed. 'Here's the club,' I said. 'Familiarize yourself with the layout. We need to confirm that these plans are current and otherwise accurate, and to know all the relevant aspects of the local terrain that don't show up here in two dimensions.'
    She gave me a slow nod that said,
I'm not stupid, you know.
    'I'm not talking down to you,' I said, trying to rein in my frustration. 'I know you know all this. But it's better to say it out loud and not to assume. You know that, too.'
    Dox said, 'He does it to me all the time, too. He's a repressed man, and I've come to realize that micro-management is one of his few ways of expressing affection. Once you realize that, you'll actually start to like it. I know I do.'
    Delilah closed her eyes and laughed. I supposed I should have been grateful to Dox for managing the tension in the room, but it was irritating to see them getting along like old friends while I could hardly find anything to say to her that didn't provoke an angry response.
    'Start with the entrance,' I said. 'How do you get in? Do the doors open freely, or does someone need to buzz you in from inside? Is there a camera out front? Security? All I could see when I