The Last Assassin

to Christopher, where I made a left. Of course I had already familiarized myself with these routes using various Internet maps, but there’s never a substitute for direct experience with the local terrain. There it was, on the other side of the street, a seventeen-story building, prewar, from the look of it, with a doorman in a long coat standing under a green awning out front. In this light and these clothes, and with the umbrella held low against the weather, I wasn’t worried about being spotted, and I slowed. I looked at the building and imagined where I might set up if I were the one waiting here for myself. There weren’t a lot of great spots. There was no parking on this section of the street, so vehicle surveillance was out. And the restaurants and gay bars Christopher Street is known for were too far from the apartment to be useful.
    There was the doorman, of course. It wasn’t impossible that someone had gotten to him, bribed him to keep an eye out for the Asian man in some file photo. I filed him for later consideration.
    I kept walking. The bars at the end of the street had some people in front of them, mostly smokers, but no one who was in a position to watch Midori’s building or who otherwise felt wrong to me. I noted that several of the places offered live music, and wondered if Midori had chosen the neighborhood in part because of its proximity to her nightly gigs. Probably she had. I thought about taking a look inside, just to see if anyone caused a radar ping, but as always there was a cost-benefit equation at work and this time it argued against being too thorough. Anyone who was here to watch Midori would have to do so from close by her apartment, not from within one of the neighborhood watering holes. And if there were anyone relevant in one of these places, he could as easily spot me as I could spot him. Indoors, I wouldn’t have the windbreaker and umbrella to hide behind.
    I zigzagged my way south. It was hard to say what it meant that I hadn’t spotted anyone tonight. It could be they were focusing more on her public performances, or that she was out at the moment and they knew it. I’d have to know more before I could safely close in.
    I stopped at a SoHo bistro for a quick dinner and moved on. According to her Web site, Midori had a four-night appearance coming up at a jazz club called Zinc Bar on the corner of Houston and LaGuardia. The club took me a minute to find, even though I knew the address. It was hidden below street level at the bottom of a steep set of stairs, and the gold letters announcing its existence were only visible when you were directly in front of the place.
    I walked down, went through the red curtains, paid the five-dollar cover, and moved inside.
    It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but when they had I was pleased to see that the place was exactly what I was hoping for. The room was a long rectangle with a bar to one side and tables along the other. The stage was set up at the far end. If someone were here watching Midori, Dox would have no trouble spotting him.
    I hadn’t planned to stay, but I liked the guy who was playing, a guitarist and vocalist named Ansel Matthews, so I ordered an eighteen-year-old Macallan, then sat listening and musing in the semidarkness. I pictured Midori playing in this very room just a few nights hence, and my heart kicked faster.
    I spent the next three days walking ceaselessly through lower Manhattan, getting comfortable with the rhythms of its neighborhoods, reacquainting myself with the layout of the streets. The city felt remarkably safe these days. A few times, very late at night, I passed some rough-looking individuals, but my vibe was different without Delilah by my side, and the natives here had no trouble reading it and steering clear as a result.
    On one of these excursions, on a garbage-strewn, graffiti-covered street on the Lower East Side at close to two in the morning, I passed an unmarked door just as a well-dressed couple was leaving it. I realized there was a bar or club inside, and, on uncharacteristic impulse, I pressed the buzzer on the building’s façade. A moment later there was the sound of a lock releasing, and I pulled the door open. It was pitch-dark beyond, and it took me a moment to realize I was looking at a curtain. I moved past it and encountered another. I parted this one as well, and found myself standing at the far end of a quietly spectacular bar.
    It was a single room, with